Against All Enemies

She nodded. “I have to be honest. After you told me you went there, I looked it up online. It’s one of the most expensive boarding schools …I mean, anywhere. And you got to go to school in Switzerland. That’s fantastic.”

“I guess so. I just …I really missed my father, and we were never the same after that. He didn’t know how to deal with losing her or with raising me, so off I went. I saw him only three or four times a year, and it wasn’t like meeting your dad, more like meeting your boss. I don’t resent him for it. He only wanted the best for me. I just wish, sometimes, I don’t know what I’m saying …Sometimes I think he’s trying to help all these schoolkids because he feels guilty for what happened to me …”

“Maybe you need to talk to him. I mean, really talk. You keep traveling everywhere. Maybe you need to stay home and get to know each other again.”

“You’re right. But I don’t know if he’d want to do that. He’s all over the place, too. When you own most of Mexico, you need to keep an eye on things, I guess.”

“Your father seems like an honest man. I think he’d be honest with you. You just have to talk.”

“I’m a little apprehensive about that. He’s already got my life planned out for me, and if we get into a conversation, he’s going to hand me a road map. Really, I’m hoping to take off at least the rest of this summer before he puts me to work. Then in the fall it’s off to graduate school.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“I haven’t told you a lot of things. Remember how you said you wanted to move to California?”

“Yes.”

“Well, in the fall, we can move there together. I’ll be going to school, and you can be with me, maybe find a job at one of the studios, like you said.”

She gasped. “That would be amazing! Oh, wow, I could really find something that—”

She broke off suddenly, and her expression soured.

“What’s wrong?”

“You know my father will never let me do any of this.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“That won’t work.” She lowered her voice to mimic her dad. “His ‘stubborn dedication to quality’ is what made him successful — at least that’s the way he phrases it. And his stubborn dedication to his daughter is the same.”

“Then I’ll have my father talk to him.”

“What are you saying, Miguel?” She hoisted her perfectly tweezed eyebrows.

“I’m saying that your father wants to make you happy. And trust me — I can do that. I can make you very happy. Well, at least I’ll try my best.”

“You already have…” She leaned toward him, and their kiss was deep and passionate, and it quickened Miguel’s pulse.

When they finished, he turned away and found his father staring at them from across the deck. Jorge waved them over.

“Here we go,” Miguel said with a sigh. “He’s going to ask my opinion on every global crisis — and God help me if I don’t have one …”

“No worries,” said Sonia. “I’ll offer mine if you don’t.”

He grinned and took Sonia’s hand. “Excellent.”

6 VERSE OF THE SWORD

Shawal Area

North Waziristan

The chief of the Shawal tribes had called an important meeting to be held at his mud-brick fort down in the Mana Valley, but Mullah Abdul Samad had no intentions of attending. Instead, while the chief’s misharans began to gather outside the fort, he remained on the hilltop, crouched beside a stand of trees, along with his two most trusted lieutenants, Atif Talwar and Wajid Niazi.

Samad had detected movement on the opposite hillside, and on closer inspection with his binoculars, he marked two men, one dark-haired and bearded, the other much younger and leaner, his beard thin and short. They were dressed like tribesmen, but one consulted a satellite phone and what Samad assumed was a portable GPS unit.

Talwar and Niazi studied the men themselves, and while both were still in their twenties, nearly half Samad’s age, he’d spent the last two years training them, and they both offered the same assessment of their visitors: They were advance scouts for American intelligence, for the Pakistan Army, or even for an American Special Forces unit. The chief’s foolish and poorly trained men had not picked up these two, and so his forces would pay the price for their ineptitude.

The chief liked to throw the tribal code of conduct into the faces of government officials. He liked to threaten the Army and point out its losses in South Waziristan as an example of what would happen if they attacked him. He said the government should know that his people would use the tribal codes and councils like the jirgas to find answers to their problems and needed the government’s help with only the basic necessities of life, not with how to rule their people. He assured them that his people would never harbor criminals, that there were no “foreigners” in Shawal, and that bringing harm to his people and their land was the farthest thing from his mind. But the chief wasn’t a very good liar, and Samad would make sure he died for that … perhaps not today …or tomorrow …but soon.

The scouts did not move as they surveyed the surrounding valleys with their own binoculars. They seemed particularly interested in the long lines of apple trees that curved down the hill, toward more rows of apricots. Fields had been hewn into some of the steepest hills overlooking the village, and the trees did make for good cover. These men had indeed spotted a few of the chief’s guards posted on the perimeter. But they were hardly paying attention to the spies behind them, and once more Samad could only shake his head in disgust.

The American and Pakistani governments had good reason to believe that the tribes here were sheltering Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters; the Datta Khail and Zakka Khail tribesmen had been known for hundreds of years for their deep bonds of loyalty and for their land being a natural sanctuary for rebels. The current chief was no exception, except that he’d been receiving a lot of pressure from the Americans now, and Samad thought it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to their force and betrayed him and the forty other men training here on the Pakistan side of Shawal and about ten kilometers away, within the Afghan side of the area.

After September 11, 2001, the Pakistan Army entered the area with a mission to secure the border against Northern Alliance soldiers pushing eastward from Afghanistan. While there could have (and in Samad’s opinion, should have) been a confrontation, the local tribes welcomed them, and check posts were established. In the years to follow, the tribal leaders would regret that mistake, as many near and dear to them were killed by American drones and daisy cutter bombs because the Americans suspected there were terrorists in the area. The Americans would offer an apology and pathetic reparations, even as they murdered civilians in the name of justice.

In recent months, however, the tribesmen had come to their senses and had been refusing requests from both the Americans and the Pakistani government. There had been, for a few years, a tribal lashkar formed, and it was this group’s mission to arrest all fugitives and resistance fighters within the Shawal area. Only a few days prior, the chief had received word from Islamabad that officials were not pleased with the lashkar’s performance and that the Army might need to return in great numbers to the area to weed out the fugitives. Samad and his people, along with their leader, Mullah Omar Rahmani, who was presently in the Afghan area, had struck a deal: If the Army returned, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces would equip and reinforce the tribesmen against any attacks. Moreover, Rahmani had assured the chief that he would be paid handsomely for his assistance. Rahmani had no shortage of funds so long as the poppies continued to grow and the opium bricks continued shipping overseas. Their most recent deal with the Juarez Cartel of Mexico would make them the major provider of opium into that country if the cartel was able to crush its enemies. While Mexico had never been one of the major buyers of Afghan-produced opium, Rahmani planned to change that and have his product better compete with South America’s cocaine and crystal-meth industries, which