“No, Master Chief, I have not!”
“Then go show me!”
They charged off with their team. It was the fifth day of Hell Week, the last, and they were running on four hours of sleep, running on a sense of sheer willpower none of them knew they possessed until now.
In fact, the intestinal fortitude displayed by Moore and his team was awe-inspiring, he later heard. They powered their way through more runs, rock portages at night, an “around the world” paddle covering the north end of the island and then back to San Diego Bay and the amphibious base. They cast themselves into the scummy muck of the demo pits and clawed their way out, looking like brown mannequins with flashing eyes.
“In the unlikely event you actually make it through the next two days, there will be a nice meal waiting for you,” shouted one of the instructors.
“We got one day left!” cried Moore.
“No, you’ve got two.”
The instructors were lying to them, messing with their minds, but Moore didn’t care.
They were held in the freezing-cold surf until they were mere minutes away from hypothermia. They were pulled out, given warm soup, then tossed back in. Guys passed out, were revived, and returned to the water. Moore and Carmichael did not falter.
When the final hour arrived, when Moore and Carmichael and their classmates felt as close to death as ever, they were ordered to haul themselves from the Pacific and roll themselves in the sand. Then came a cry from their proctor to gather around. And once they were huddled up, he nodded slowly.
“Everyone, look around the beach! Look to your left. Look to your right. You are class 198. You are the warriors who’ve survived because of your teamwork. For class 198, Hell Week is secured!”
Moore and Carmichael fell to their knees, both teary-eyed, and Moore had never felt more exhausted, more emotionally overwhelmed, in his life. The hooting, hollering, and hooyahing that came from just twenty-six men sounded like a hundred thousand Romans ready to attack.
“Frank, buddy, I owe you big-time.”
Carmichael choked up. “You owe me nothing.”
They burst out laughing, and the joy, the pure unadulterated joy that he’d actually made it, swelled in Moore’s heart and sent chills rushing up his back. He thought he might collapse as the world tipped on its axis, but that was only Carmichael helping him to his feet.
Later, Moore became class 198’s Honor Man because of his ability to inspire his classmates to keep on going when they were ready to quit. Carmichael had taught him how to do that, and when he told his swim buddy that it was
11 JOINT TASK FORCE JUAREZ
By the time Moore exited the 15, drove down Balboa, and reached the DEA office on Viewridge Avenue, he was already twenty minutes late for the meeting. His hair hung in his eyes, and his beard still reached down to his clavicle — two years’ worth of growth that would soon come off, and thankfully so, as a few gray hairs had appeared near his chin. As he navigated down the long hall toward the conference room, he stole a quick look at his Dockers, the fabric now a relief map of wrinkles. That he’d spilled coffee down his shirt didn’t help. He’d blame that on the lady with the three kids who’d failed to note that the enormous cement truck in front of her was rapidly slowing. She’d braked hard, so had Moore, and his coffee obeyed the laws of physics. While his appearance did bother him, it wasn’t on the forefront of his mind.
A new e-mail from Leslie Hollander contained a cell phone picture of her terrific smile, and Moore had difficulty purging that image as he simply opened the door and barged into the room.
Heads turned to him.
He sighed. “Sorry I’m late. I’ve been in the boonies on piggyback tours. I’d forgotten about the traffic around here.”
A small group manned the sides along a conference table the length of an aircraft carrier. The table looked long enough to support a steel-deck picnic, touch-and-go landings, and maybe a couple of Harriers. Five individuals had clustered chairs near the head, and a man with a crew cut, his hair glistening like steel shavings under the fluorescent lights, turned away from a dry-erase board, where he’d been writing his name: Henry Towers.
“What do we have here?” asked Towers, using his marker to point out an empty chair. “Are you man? Or beast?”
Moore cracked a grin. The hair and beard did suggest that he’d spent the night in a refrigerator box. With a little grooming, though, Moore would be back to his old self, and it’d be nice to actually feel his cheeks again. He drew back his head. “Where’s Polk? They told me the NCS would be heading up this task force.”
“Polk’s out, I’m in,” snapped Towers. “You guys just got lucky, I guess.”
“And who are you?” Moore asked, shifting around the table, a portfolio in one hand, his coffee in the other.
Towers eyed him with a crooked grin. “Not much of a reader, are you?”
A lean Hispanic man who had to be Ansara (based on the picture and profile Moore had reviewed) turned to Moore and began laughing. “Relax, bro, he’s done this to all of us. He’s cool. Just trying to lighten the mood a little.”
“That’s right, I’m cool,” said Towers. “We need to loosen up around here — because what we’re about to do will be tense. Very tense.”
“What agency are you from?” Moore asked.
“BORTAC. You know what that is?”
Moore nodded. The U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) was the global special response team for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). BORTAC agents deployed in more than twenty-eight countries around the world to respond to terrorist threats of all types. Their weapons and gear were comparable to those of SEALs, Army Special Forces, Marine Corps Force Recon, and other special operations units. BORTAC teams worked alongside military units in Iraq and Afghanistan to help find, confiscate, and destroy opium and other drugs being smuggled across the border. They had earned an excellent reputation in the special operations community, and Moore had on several occasions shared intelligence with BORTAC operators who exhibited the highest level of professionalism.
The unit was founded in 1984, and within three years it was already engaged in counter-narcotics operations in South America during Operation Snowcap between 1987 and 1994. BORTAC agents were tasked with helping to disrupt the growing, processing, and smuggling of cocaine in a long list of countries, including Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Agents worked alongside the DEA and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Interdiction Assist Team.
In more recent years, BORTAC teams had taken on a broader array of responsibilities, to include Tactical Relief Operations (TRO) during hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. They provided personnel support, equipment assistance, and training to local law enforcement agencies.
Moore would later learn that Towers had more than twenty-five years with BORTAC. He’d been deployed in Los Angeles during the riots that had broken out in the wake of the Rodney King trial. He’d also participated in Operation Reunion, in which BORTAC raided a home in Miami, Florida, in order to safely return refugee Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba. Following the World Trade Center attack, Towers was sent overseas to assist Army Special Forces personnel during some of the first attacks in Afghanistan. In 2002, he worked with the United States Secret Service to secure sports venues at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.
“I head up the San Diego sector,” Towers went on. “But the deputy commissioner wanted me to work with you gorillas for this operation. In my humble opinion, I’m uniquely suited for this job because our mission involves both exposing and dismantling the Juarez Drug Cartel and exposing their relationship with Middle Eastern terrorists,
