Samad had left one of his men down in the tunnel to be sure they weren’t being followed. The man called up to say everything was clear thus far.
His group stood in line, hands clasped behind their backs. They fidgeted nervously, but Samad had faith in their training and in their resolve.
The sirens grew louder, and Samad went to the window and finally spotted the two Calexico police cars, followed by a pair of police vans, lights flashing as they rolled up, and eight officers, weapons drawn, got out and stormed the house.
“Okay, everyone,” he began calmly. “We are all under arrest — in the name of Allah.”
The front door swung open, and in burst two officers, their beards closely cropped and their skin as dark as Samad’s. “All right, listen to me,” the cop said, once more in Pashto. “We wait another minute. Then we march outside with your hands clasped behind your back, as though you are handcuffed. We will take the bags.”
“Excellent,” said Samad. They were putting on a good show for any of the cartel’s spotters, who were most certainly watching the house. Of course, there could be others: enemies of the cartel that included rivals and federal authorities from both countries.
“Moving out now to the vans,” said the officer after two more of his colleagues had entered the home from the rear door.
Samad nodded, called down to his man still in the tunnel, then he and the others left with their hands held tightly behind their backs. They were escorted at gunpoint across the street and were helped into the waiting vans. His gaze scanned the rooflines and shrubs of the neighboring homes, and several people stood near their front doors to shake their heads at the “big arrest” on their street.
Next came the backpacks bulging with drugs, and then the six launchers. Within three minutes they were roaring away from the house, with Samad closing his eyes and balling his hands into fists. They’d made it. The jihad had returned to America.
33 HE MUST NEVER LEARN ABOUT THE CARTEL
Moore and Ansara parked their pickup truck around the corner from the tunnel house. Before they headed out, Moore received a call from Towers. “Big bust by local Calexico police at the house. Mules taken out, along with what spotters are saying was a huge shipment of drugs. This confirms Rueben’s reports. Still following up, but local police deny any involvement. Trying to track the vehicles, but they’ve all disappeared. Either the Calexico police are in bed with the cartel or this is some pretty damned elaborate shit to rip off those drugs.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Moore. “But we’re going in after these guys. Just keep everyone away from this place. I’ll call you back.”
He and Ansara stole their way around the rows of shrubs and arrived beside the house across the street from the target home. They crouched behind two palm trees. The cartel truck had been backed into the driveway, and one man remained in the cab while the other two had presumably gone inside.
They’d have to enter the house from the back to avoid detection by the guy in the truck. For now, Moore indicated to Ansara that they’d wait. He continually reminded himself that their job was to follow the guys, follow the money trail, not intercept them, even though he and Ansara were champing at the bit to do so, Ansara more so because they’d lost contact with his informant.
They waited five more minutes before the garage door finally opened and the two men appeared in the dim light of a single bulb. The guy who Moore recognized as the driver worked the lock on the truck’s back door. The man in the cab climbed out and joined the other two as they transferred the Anvil cases into the garage. Once the truck was unloaded, they tugged down the door.
How long should they wait? Those guys couldn’t move all of those weapons in one trip. Five minutes? Ten? It looked as though the blinds had been drawn on the windows.
Ansara signaled to Moore.
Fernando Castillo entered Senor Rojas’s home office, an intimidating monument to the man and his influence, which fell on Mexico like the weather. The people …the government …All they could really do was adapt to him and his decisions, as Castillo had, although he felt a fierce sense of loyalty to the man who had rescued him from poverty, given him a life of unimaginable wealth, and treated him with more dignity and respect than his own family had.
Castillo stole a glance up at the bookshelves rising more than twenty-five feet and spanning the entire forty- foot back wall. In their shadow rose Rojas’s gargantuan mahogany desk, atop which stood no less than four computers whose twenty-seven-inch flat screens formed a half-circle. The desk was, in effect, a cockpit of information flowing in to the man who was leaning back in the plush leather chair he’d bought in Paris and sipping on a glass of Montrachet. Along the left side of the room was a bank of LED TVs permanently tuned to cable financial networks from around the globe. Castillo had recently supervised the installation of those screens, and although that was hardly part of his job as security chief, Rojas had in recent years trusted him with many of his personal tasks and decisions, especially those concerning Miguel.
Rojas raked his fingers through his hair, then finally looked up from one of his screens.
“What can I do for you, Fernando?”
“Sorry to bother you, senor, but I wanted to discuss this in person. Dante’s body has still not been found, and the murder at the hotel failed to draw him out. And if you recall, Pablo is also missing, and so is Dante’s girlfriend, Maria.”
“Yes, I know, I know — what are you worried about? And why are you bothering me with these trivial details? I pay you very well to handle these things. Find him. He knows he failed to protect my son. He knows the consequences.”
“Yes, senor, but this is important, and you should know. We’ve had trouble at the new tunnel. Another shipment has been stolen.”
Rojas drew back his head and frowned. “We lost another one? Are you kidding me?”
“We lost everything. The mules, the police cars, the entire shipment.”
“Slow down. Police cars? What are you talking about?”
“Our spotters tell me it looked like a raid on the house by Calexico police, but no one ever saw the police vans arrive at the station. They disappeared while en route.”
“That’s ridiculous. They switched cars. Who was in charge of following them? I want him killed.”
Castillo sighed. “It gets worse. Pedro Romero, our chief engineer on the project? His family was killed, and we found him dead inside the house, along with another mule in the tunnel. The weapons shipment from Minnesota arrived there, and it was that team that found them. They’re getting the weapons through the tunnel right now, but the power was cut.”
Rojas rubbed the corners of his eyes, cursed under his breath, then asked, “What do you think?”
Castillo closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “When you got back from Colombia, you told me about your meeting with Samad and what he wanted.”
“No, that’s not possible,” Rojas said quickly. “I warned them, and they’d be fools to test us. Either Dante or Zuniga stole from us.”
“Senor, it’s very possible that this Samad used our tunnel to get into the United States.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Castillo grew more emphatic. “When the police carried out the backpacks, the spotters counted six extra bags. The spotters are sure they were not the usual packs — and I’m sure those packs weren’t stored in the house by anyone else. They had to come through the tunnel.”
“I’ll call Samad right now.”
