Against All Enemies

which I’ll remind you is Mr. Moore’s area of expertise.”

“Reporting for duty as ordered—sir,” Moore said with a mock scowl.

“Now you’re playing along,” Towers said with a genuine smile. “Welcome to Joint Task Force Juarez. And as a matter of fact, I’ve been asked to make you our field team leader.”

Moore chuckled under his breath. “What crazy drunk suggested that?”

“Your boss.”

That drew some laughs from the table.

“All right, team, in all seriousness, we’ve got a lot to cover here. I heard you guys love PowerPoint presentations, so I’ve got a few of them. Just give me a minute to load them up.”

Ansara groaned and turned to Moore. “Good to meet you. They didn’t put much in your file.”

“They never do. Just your friendly neighborhood spook is all I am.”

“And you were a Navy SEAL.”

“With a little help from my friends.”

“You’ve been doing some good work over in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not sure I’d last five minutes.”

Moore smiled. “Maybe ten.”

Ansara was a damned fine FBI agent with numerous successful operations under his belt. More recently, he’d been performing recon operations in Sequoia National Park, where the cartels were growing marijuana and where he’d been tracking the sicario who’d murdered one of his associates. He was, in Moore’s estimation, a bit too handsome for his own good, but his welcoming smile and tone suggested they’d become friends.

Seated beside him was Gloria Vega, a thirty-two-year-old CIA agent like Moore who would be embedded with the Mexican Federal Police. She was a broad-shouldered, no-nonsense Hispanic woman with black hair pulled tightly into a bun. According to a few of Moore’s colleagues, she was appreciated and feared because of her exacting nature and utter dedication to the job. She was a single woman and an only child whose parents had already died. The Agency was her life. Period. Her scrutinizing glance when Moore had entered was probably just the beginning of her interrogation of him. That the Federal Police were aiding and abetting the cartels in Mexico was old news; that an American CIA agent would be working alongside them would be as dangerous as it might be enlightening. The NCS had been working directly with Federal Police authorities to establish a relationship that would grant Vega full access while also protecting her identity. That sounded fine in theory; however, Ms. Vega was being dropped into a pit of rattlers, and Moore was glad he didn’t have her job.

The man seated across from her was David Whittaker, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). He had thinning gray hair combed straight back, a graying goatee, and wire-frame glasses. He wore a blue polo shirt with his agency’s patch on the breast and a badge hung loosely from a chain around his neck. He rose from his chair to hand Towers a USB key, which probably contained his own presentation. According to his file, Whittaker had been working for several years on the cartels’ gun-smuggling operations and had more recently helped organize ten-member teams based in seven border cities to address the problem. The cartels were recruiting “straw buyers” in the United States, who made purchases of firearms on their behalf and then paid people to bring the weapons across the border. In one of his reports, Whittaker noted that the Juarez Cartel had created an elaborate network based in (of all places) Minnesota to have weapons smuggled down into Mexico. Because law enforcement efforts had been doubled and redoubled in states such as California, Texas, and Arizona, the cartels had resorted to more extreme measures and remote locations to serve as hubs for transport. Whittaker’s contacts also led him to believe that military-grade weapons from Russia were being smuggled up through South America. Going after the cartels’ gun-smuggling operations was at least as difficult, dangerous, and frustrating as was trying to bring down their drug operations, and Whittaker’s report ended on an ominous note: He wasn’t sure the cartels could ever be stopped, only delayed, slowed, temporarily dismantled …

Moore caught the gaze of the man near the head of the table, Thomas Fitzpatrick, who, despite his surname, could easily pass for a Mexican sicario. His father was half Irish, half Guatemalan, and his mother was Mexican. He’d been born and raised in the United States and been recruited out of community college to join the DEA. Eighteen months ago he’d been sent into Mexico to penetrate the Juarez Cartel, but as happenstance would have it, he’d more easily penetrated and become a trusted member of the Sinaloas. He worked for a man named Luis Torres, who was Zuniga’s right hand and head of his enforcer gang.

Fitzpatrick, whose sinewy arms were covered in tattoos depicting Catholic imagery and whose head was shaven, narrowed his gaze and spoke rapidly in Spanish: “What’s up, Moore? I hope your Spanish is good, because these guys will lay you out in a second if you don’t sound legit. And to be honest, my cover right now is more important than you, so you’d better brush up and forget about all those terrorist languages you’ve been speaking. You running with the big dogs now.”

Moore’s Spanish was excellent, although his knowledge of gang and cartel slang was admittedly lacking. He would, indeed, have to brush up on them. He answered in Spanish: “No worries, vato. I know what I need to do.”

Fitzpatrick, who went by the nickname Flexxx, reached across the table and made a fist, three of his fingers sporting thick gold rings. He banged fists with Moore, then settled back into his seat.

Gloria Vega glanced over at Moore and asked in Spanish, “Take a shower lately?”

“Yeah, but …yeah …I’m still jet-lagging.”

She rolled her eyes and faced the projector screen being lowered by Towers.

Moore squinted at the intelligence photograph of two young Hispanic males.

“I assume you’ve all seen this?” asked Towers.

“Yeah,” Moore began, hoping to demonstrate to the others that he wasn’t a total slacker. “The guy on the left is Dante Corrales. He’s the leader of the cartel’s enforcer gang. They call themselves The Gentlemen, if I recall. The guy on the right is Pablo Gutierrez. He killed an FBI agent in Calexico. Mr. Ansara would like to get his hands on him.”

“You have no idea,” said Ansara, with a hiss of anger.

Towers nodded. “Our boy Corrales is a very clever young man, but he keeps hitting the Sinaloas head-on. We don’t think his superiors approve of this.”

“Why?” asked Moore.

Towers looked to Fitzpatrick, who cleared his throat and said, “Because of Escuadron de la Muerte, the Guatemalan death squads. They’re back in action after a two-year hiatus. They’ve reorganized, and they’re killing members of Guatemala City’s meth labs and maritime exporting ops out of Puerto Barrios and Santo Tomas de Castilla in the Caribbean. They’ve also taken out cartel members at the Port of San Jose and Port of Champerico on the Pacific side.”

“And let me guess, they’re only hitting the other cartels. The Juarez Cartel has not been touched.”

“Exactly,” said Towers. “So if they want to terrorize the Sinaloas, why not use Los Buitres Justicieros? That’s what their most prolific hit team is calling themselves …the Avenging Vultures.”

“And we think at least a dozen of their members are now in Juarez,” said Fitzpatrick. “If you think the regular sicarios are hard-core, these guys are insane.”

“Sounds like a powder keg,” said Moore.

“Torres and Zuniga know these guys are in town, and they’re concerned,” said Fitzpatrick. “There’s talk of hitting the Juarez guys again, but Zuniga’s more concerned about securing a tunnel, and he’s unwilling to pay the Juarez Cartel for the rights to use one of theirs.”

“Why doesn’t he dig one of his own?” asked Vega.

Fitzpatrick snorted. “He’s tried. And every time Corrales and his boys come down and kill everyone. They have a lot more money than we do. They’ve got spotters everywhere. A huge network. Corrales has also paid off most of the engineers in town, so they’ll never work for Zuniga. That little bastard has got the whole place locked up.”

Towers pointed at the photograph. “All right, our problem is this. Corrales is, at this moment, the highest- ranking member of the cartel we’ve identified, and in this case old-school conventional wisdom holds true: If we can identify and take out the leader, in most cases the cartel will fall. These are complex and sophisticated operations, and they’re not run by dummies. I’d daresay it takes a freaking genius to pull off some of the stuff they do. Whoever our guy is, he’s masked himself awfully well, and his organization has become the single most aggressive cartel in Mexico.”