anything? You’ll arrest me, and I’ll walk away.”
“I know,” said Moore, releasing his rifle and drawing one of his Glocks, a round already chambered. He lifted the gun to Rojas’s head. “I’m not here to arrest you.”
Castillo was lying against one of Rojas’s antique cars, the 1963 Corvette to be precise, dying from a gunshot wound to the neck when he heard a shot go off from inside the vault. He removed his mask and his eye patch and began to pray for God to take his soul. It had been a good life, and he’d suspected that the end would be like this. If you lived by the bullet then you should die by the bullet. He only wished he knew if Senor Rojas had escaped. If he could die knowing that much was true, then he would leave this earth with a grin after he took in his last breath. He owed Jorge Rojas everything.
During the raid, Soto’s men had successfully captured the chef, several other servants, and a woman identified as Alexsi, Rojas’s girlfriend. Once the house had been secured, Towers, who was wearing a sling, joined Moore as they climbed into one of the civilian cars left parked around the corner for their escape. “It’s too bad you had to shoot him …”
Towers lifted his brow, prying for details.
Moore glanced away and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Let’s go before the circus arrives. We need to pick up Sonia and get to the airport.”
Miguel heard the knock on their door, and when he looked up, Sonia, wearing her robe, was already answering it. She allowed two men dressed in slacks and dark jackets to enter, then she flicked on a light. He squinted into the glare.
“Sonia, what the hell? Who’re these guys?”
She came over to the bed and raised her palms. “Just relax. These guys are part of my team.”
“Your team?”
She took a deep breath, her gaze wandering as though she was groping for words. In fact, she was. “Look, it’s all about your father. It’s always been about him.”
He bolted from the bed, started toward her, but one of the men approached and glowered at him.
“Sonia, what is this?”
“This is me saying good-bye. And that I’m sorry. You’re still a young man with a great future, despite everything your father has done. You should know that.”
He began to tremble, to lose his breath. “Who are you?”
Her voice turned cool, steely, strangely professional. “Obviously I’m not who you think I am. And neither is your father. You were right about him.”
“I was?”
“I have to go. You won’t see me ever again.” She tossed him his cell phone. “Take care, Miguel.”
“Sonia?”
She started toward the door with the two men.
“Sonia, what the fuck is this?”
She didn’t look back.
“SONIA, DON’T LEAVE! YOU CAN’T LEAVE!”
One of the men turned back and pointed a finger. “You stay here,” he warned. “Until after we’ve left.”
He shut the door after himself, leaving Miguel standing there, in shock, as his mind rewound through everything Sonia had ever said to him, through the millions of lies.
41 IMPACT
The agency wanted Moore and Sonia out of there immediately, and Towers received the same directive from his BORTAC senior administrators. While the operation had been a success, Soto, along with seven of his men, had been killed. The Black Hawk pilots and crew chiefs were also lost. Terrible news, but these were men who had known the risks and accepted them.
Sonia was a bit shaken when they’d picked her up at the hotel, but within five minutes she was talking rapidly and thanking Moore for saving her back in San Juan Chamula.
“And yes,” she said, “I do owe you coffee.”
“And I will collect,” he said with a wink.
Once on the plane, she folded her arms over her chest and buried herself in her seat, losing herself in her smartphone. Moore appreciated the sacrifices she had made, giving all of herself to Miguel in order to get close to Rojas, a man who had so well protected himself that her mission had become nearly impossible. She was young, though remarkably professional, having understood the ramifications of what she was doing and the toll it would take on her emotions. Her level of commitment had never wavered, and early on, she had seen that her mission could lead to familial collateral damage: Rojas had condemned his son to years of investigations and probes. Who was going to believe that Miguel Rojas didn’t know what his father was doing? Sonia could not come to his aid. There was no way the CIA would compromise itself and allow her to testify in any court, open or closed. She might be allowed to testify in a “closed” session before a congressional intelligence committee, but that would never help Miguel. She knew this, knew the full extent of her betrayal. Her strength thoroughly impressed Moore.
Towers had allowed the Mexican medics to bandage him up, and they’d stopped the bleeding, but as soon as he and Moore arrived in San Diego, he was going to the hospital for some additional care. He needed X-rays, an MRI, and stitches, since the exit wound on his shoulder was not pretty, but he insisted on having that work done back in San Diego. And so he was resting easy at Moore’s side.
For his part, Moore had only a few bruises on his chest, new additions to a collection that had been growing since the start of the operation. With his computer balanced on his lap, he watched the Mexican news coverage of the raid on Rojas’s mansion and snickered over how the media billed it as the “shocking discovery of a secret life led by one of the world’s wealthiest men.” As they’d planned, the Mexican Navy was given credit for the raid with no mention of American assistance. Moore couldn’t believe it, but the Mexican authorities had already allowed the media to get footage of the vaults. The walls of money were long gone, having already been “taken care of” by the FES troops. The Mexican government was no doubt torn between being grateful and being furious over a rogue FES mission that had received no clearance from anyone but had turned into a remarkable find and a great public- relations story of the Mexican president’s war on drugs.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press had picked up another story, of a government raid on the jungle warehouse of Juan Ramon Ballesteros, reputed leader of one of Colombia’s most productive and profitable cocaine cartels, with direct ties to the Juarez Cartel of Mexico (as revealed to them earlier by Dante Corrales). Ballesteros had, quite surprisingly, been captured alive, and Moore accessed a CIA report to learn that fellow agents had been the ones leading the raid on Ballesteros’s camp.
True to his word, Towers handed over the name of every corrupt Federal Police officer that Gomez had given them, twenty-two names in all, including a surprising if not depressing revelation: The secretary of public security in the federal cabinet was also on Rojas’s payroll. The names were not only delivered to the Federal Police but deliberately leaked to the media and e-mailed to the president of Mexico himself. Rioting of the kind that Gloria Vega had described outside the Delicias station would soon occur all over Juarez and in cities throughout Mexico, as local officers demanded the ousting of their corrupt bosses. Towers had said he wanted to force the issue, and, oh, yes, they were forcing it, all right. Gomez, who believed he was getting a plea bargain, would be extradited to the United States to face conspiracy-to-murder charges and everything else the attorneys could throw at him. Small battle number two won …
