the door, while trying to get his arm high enough so he could fire at the young man he’d called a trusted friend.
Pablo got off the first round, but it struck Maria; then Corrales fired two shots as Pablo started around the car, trying to duck behind the trunk. One round caught him in the abdomen, the other in the arm. He slumped to the ground, groaning, lifting his pistol again, and Corrales squeezed off two more shots that drummed into Pablo’s chest. He staggered to the car, reached it, set Maria on the ground, and, weeping once more, he opened the back door and strained to drag his dead girlfriend into the backseat. Once he got her inside, he climbed into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. The sirens were wailing in the distance as he left rubber on the pavement and a cloud of exhaust fumes pouring over Pablo’s body.
Spotters from the Juarez Cartel were watching Corrales drive up the dirt road toward Zuniga’s house, and there wasn’t anything he could do about them. The two men had been posted in the small apartment complex where the turnoff toward the dirt road began, and he noted them on the rooftop. They, in turn, were being watched by Zuniga’s men, who were no doubt positioned along the fence perimeter, in a dirt parking lot beside a detached shed on the north side of the house.
With a dust trail clearly marking his path, Corrales roared up to Zuniga’s newly repaired front gates — the ones he’d blown up that night to send a message to his rival. He rushed out of the car, grabbed Maria, and carried her toward the gate, looking up into the security camera and screaming, “Zuniga! They killed my woman! They killed her! You have to talk to me. Please! You have to talk to me!”
He fell to his knees and began to sob into Maria’s bloody chest.
And then something thumped and motors began to whine. He looked up through the tears as the wrought- iron gates parted, and up ahead, far down the long paved driveway, came Zuniga himself, flanked by two guards.
35 REVELATIONS AND RESERVE
Moore was sitting in a cubicle he’d borrowed from one of the diversion investigators who was in a meeting. Moore had never been in this area of the building, where the special agents, chemists, pharmacologists, and program analysts had set up shop. Their mission was extensive, to coordinate operations with Homeland Security and the DEA’s own El Paso Intelligence Center. Computerized monitoring and tracking of the distribution of controlled substances was all in an effort to provide tactical intelligence to their partners. They even drafted and proposed congressional legislation from this location. It was an impressive collection of experts — an office bustling with round-the-clock activity because, as Moore had overheard one analyst say, “The cartels never sleep.”
And neither did the Taliban.
The pendant Moore had taken from Rueben’s hand had already been turned over to one of the Agency’s mobile labs, which had arrived thirty minutes prior. The techs inside the step van were using a new rapid DNA analysis platform that was fully automated; it had been developed by the Center for Applied NanoBioscience and Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. The techs were running the samples through multiple national databases, including the DEA’s and the FBI’s, as well as international lists such as Interpol’s (whose members included Pakistan and Afghanistan), so that within a few hours they’d have results — instead of the weeks or months sometimes required in the past. A new security consortium established through the European Commission’s Seventh Framework program (which, among many other things, bundled together all research related to European Union initiatives) was helping to fund the project, which could, in turn, lead to the creation of an even more accurate and comprehensive criminal database.
And therein resided the problem. DNA analysis would reveal his prints, Rueben’s, but he doubted that any of the terrorists that he suspected had passed through the tunnel would have samples on record. The techs said they could run an “ancestry test” developed by DNAPrint Genomics of Sarasota, Florida, that would examine tiny genetic markers on the DNA molecule that were often common among people of certain groups. If they had a good sample, they said, they could tell if a suspect’s heritage was Native American, Southeast Asian, sub-Saharan African, European, or even a mix of those. Traits such as skin pigmentation, eye color, hair color, facial geometry, and height could be predicted through analysis of DNA sequences.
Moore had argued with Towers, who’d told him that the pendant alone was not enough proof that terrorists had passed through and that perhaps Rueben had bought it from someone and had been using it as a good-luck charm. He’d been stabbed and perhaps held the pendant in his hand to try to ward off death. Towers had gone on to point out that lots of young Mexicans (and young Americans along the border, for that matter) had a keen fascination with terrorists and terrorism. Some mules had even shown up in jail with tattoos in Farsi on their forearms, though investigations to try to definitively link them to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and others repeatedly turned up empty. They were just kids who’d turned from
Moore had told him that if Ansara was still alive, he’d agree that terrorists had come through the tunnel. Ansara knew the kid. There was no fascination with Middle Eastern thugs. Somehow the kid had acquired the pendant, whose bail contained scratches, as though it had been hung from a chain and been wrenched from someone’s neck. That was Moore’s belief, and he called Deputy Director O’Hara at the Special Activities Division to share his thoughts. O’Hara said he’d take it as high as the President if Moore was that certain, but at the very least Homeland Security’s four mega-centers in Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Maryland (whose analysts were already monitoring the joint task force’s activities) had been alerted of the possible breach. The threat level for all domestic and international flights was already at orange/high, and O’Hara would argue to have the national threat level raised from yellow/elevated to orange as well.
Search teams from both the FBI and the CIA had already been deployed to find those police cars and vans. Meanwhile, Moore said he’d call his best contact in the tribal lands to see what the old man in North Waziristan knew.
He was about to do that when he received a text message from Leslie. She wanted to know why he hadn’t replied to several of her messages. He just sighed. If he chatted with her now, his depression would seep through, and he’d rather have no contact than bad contact at this point. He accessed his address book to find Nek Wazir’s number, which he had coded as nw33. The old man picked up after the third ring.
“Moore, it is good to hear your voice. And this is something, because I was going to call you tomorrow.”
“Well, then, I beat you to it. And I’m glad you’re still awake. It’s good to hear your voice, too.”
Indeed, it was. Something had happened between them. Wazir was not just another paid informant introduced to Moore by Rana; they now shared something — mutual grief over Rana’s murder, and a question that Moore had yet to answer:
Wazir hesitated, then said, “I wish I could bring good news.”
Moore tensed. “What is it?”
“I’ve received information about your man Gallagher, the one you said was missing.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
“Then they’ve got him. How much do they want?”
“No, Moore, you don’t understand.”
“I guess I don’t.”
“I’ll send you some pictures I received yesterday. They were taken about a week ago. They show your friend Gallagher up near the border. He is meeting with Rahmani.”
“I’ll have to check on that. He could be deep cover.”
“I don’t think so, Moore. I don’t have evidence. I only have the word of the men I pay, but they tell me they heard that the American, Gallagher, is the one who killed Rana. Again, I have no evidence. Only rumors. But if this
