And it was all his fault.
As instructed by Rahmani, Samad had ordered the Anza MKIII (QW-2), which was considered the Chinese equivalent of the U.S. FIM-92E Stinger missile. Thank Allah he’d also received free shipping — even without an online coupon! His lieutenants had appreciated that joke, and in reality, it wasn’t too far from the truth. Their weapons deal had been finalized through an encrypted website and with electronic payment; moreover, their Chinese allies had been able to smuggle the weapons into Costa Rica via container ship without incident.
Samad and his entourage had left Colombia aboard a small cargo plane and been flown to Costa Rica by an ally who’d delivered them to a Taliban safe house in a canton called Uruca on the outskirts of the country’s capital. It was there, inside the small two-bedroom home that reeked of mothballs and bleach, that they took delivery of the man-portable surface-to-air missile launchers, six in all, packed in Anvil cases fitted with backpack-style harnesses for easier carrying. And it was there that Talwar and Niazi once more questioned the details of their mission.
“When can you tell us what will happen?” asked Niazi.
“When we arrive in the United States.”
“How will we do that without help from the Mexicans?” asked Talwar.
“When you build a plan, you must build three other plans, so as each falls you turn to the next.”
“And when you run out of plans?” asked Talwar.
Samad raised his brows. “You either succeed or die.”
“So what is your plan to get us into the United States?”
“Patience,” Samad told Talwar. “We have to get to Mexico first. And when we arrive there, you’ll see. We have friends who have been keeping a careful watch on the border. We are not alone. Mullah Rahmani has taken very good care of us.”
“Samad, I am worried about some of the others. They are very young and impressionable. I fear that once we reach America, some will leave when they see the kind of life they can have there — McDonald’s and Burger King and Walmart.”
“How can you doubt their faith now?”
Talwar shrugged. “It is one thing to have faith in the valley. It is another to have faith in the palace. I am here as a warrior, but I am concerned.”
Samad put a hand on his lieutenant’s shoulder. “We will shoot any man who deserts us. Do you understand?”
Talwar and Niazi nodded.
“Then we’ve nothing left to discuss. We have the missiles and launchers. Let’s get the trucks loaded and get back to the airport.”
They would lift off from Costa Rica and fly to a private airport with a dirt strip about one thousand miles south of Mexicali and literally in the middle of nowhere. Trucks and drivers were already waiting for them to complete the last leg of the journey northward, toward the border.
Samad’s excitement was beginning to mount. If they could just make that border crossing, the rest of his mission would unfold as precisely as Mullah Rahmani had described it to him. Years’ worth of planning and the dedication of many warriors of Allah would all come to fruition.
Samad could not feel more proud. He carried the will of Allah in his heart, and the fire of jihad in his hands. Those were all he needed.
It wasn’t until now that Moore had been able to get some digital pictures of all three of the “bodyguards” that Miguel and his girlfriend had following them. And when he’d sent back the photos to Towers, the results were impressive. Not only was Corrales a High-Value Target, but so was Pablo Gutierrez, who’d killed an FBI agent in Calexico. In fact, Agent Ansara from Moore’s own task force had followed a few leads on Pablo that had taken him up into the Sequoia National Forest. Consequently, they could now, as Towers had put it, nab two major scumbags with one stone.
“Three,” Moore had corrected. “Don’t forget about the big dog himself, Rojas …”
“Trust me. I haven’t forgotten about him,” Towers had said. “But let’s be patient.”
Tailing Miguel, his girl, and their three bodyguards was a bigger challenge than Moore had thought. They had, of course, packed clothes so they’d resemble tourists, with cameras dangling from their necks, but Torres had a physique and face you didn’t easily forget, and Moore had questioned him thoroughly: “Will Corrales know who you are if he sees you?”
“No, he won’t,” said the fat man. Neither he nor Fitzpatrick had ever had any direct contact with the man, but that didn’t mean Corrales hadn’t seen pictures of them. Corrales’s spotters seemed to be everywhere in Juarez.
With that in mind, Moore argued for Fitzpatrick and Torres to hold even farther back and not take any chances. Torres had protested, saying that Corrales had probably seen pictures of Moore, since he’d stayed in the hotel. While that might be true, Moore could blend in far easier than the others. He was wearing a floral-print shirt, a photographer’s vest, and an awestruck grin on his face: classic dumbass tourist. The vest did a nice job of hiding his pair of suppressed Glocks. Fitzpatrick and Torres would take out Corrales’s two puppies, but Moore was intent on nabbing Corrales himself. Once they dealt with those three, they would move on to Rojas’s son and his girl, and all of them would be flown to a safe house in Guadalajara. From there Zuniga would take over the negotiations with Rojas. While Torres had wanted the girl killed, Moore told him innocents would be left out of the equation. Period. Torres thought about it, figured an extra hostage wasn’t a bad idea.
With his own two accomplices sifting through the crowded street much farther back, Moore was shadowing Miguel and Sonia. They had stopped at one of the dozens of makeshift booths set up by native women to sell their wares: brightly colored belts and dresses, and children’s dolls made of wood. A few of the dolls surprised Moore, as they’d been fashioned to resemble soldiers with guns and wearing woolen balaclavas. That was an interesting message to send to the children in this city: Your heroes wear masks and carry guns …
Farther down the street lay the more densely packed booths of the market, where a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables were stacked neatly in pyramids and sold out of wicker baskets. There were more booths selling rice and fish, others featuring beef and chicken, and even one with a big banner advertising locally grown coffee beans, since the valley was one of Mexico’s premier areas for the crop.
Moore shifted to within a few feet of Miguel’s girlfriend, who was holding up a dress to the light and studying its rich yellow-and-red floral pattern. She was lean and athletic, wearing an oversized pair of black sunglasses.
“What do you think?” she asked her boyfriend.
Miguel glanced up from his smartphone. “Oh, Sonia, that’s much too loud for you. Keep looking.”
She shrugged and handed the dress back to the old lady who owned the booth.
“Men don’t know how to dress women,” said the old lady. “This one is perfect for you. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Sonia (Moore liked that name) smiled. “I agree, but he is a very strong-willed man.”
At that, Moore frowned. He would have told Sonia that the dress was beautiful and that she smelled so very sweet, and that she was so fresh and young and sexy that it was easy to forget that his friends wanted to kill her.
Well, he would have told her some of that.
“Come on, Sonia, let’s keep going,” said Miguel.
Moore pretended to look at a wallet on a table nearby. As they were about to leave, he glanced up, over the rim of his sunglasses, and there he was, the little son of a bitch, Dante Corrales, standing across the street in the alcove of a small building, staring at them, arms folded over his chest.
Moore had barely finished that thought when a hand wrapped around Corrales’s mouth, and suddenly two men were on him, dragging him back into the building. Moore immediately got on his cell phone to Fitzpatrick, and said, “A bunch of guys just grabbed Corrales.”
