is true, then he is not your friend, and I worry about the damage he could do to you and the wrath he could bring upon this country.”
“I understand. Where’s Gallagher now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find him for me?”
“I will press my people harder.”
“Thank you. I’ll be waiting for the pictures.”
“Of course. If there’s nothing else?”
“Actually, there is. I was calling because I think we’ve had a breach. The Taliban might’ve moved through a tunnel from Mexico into the United States; they came from a city called Mexicali into California, a city called Calexico.”
“I am familiar with those cities.”
“I think one of them was wearing a pendant, the Hand of Fatima. I’ll send you a picture. I know this might not mean anything, but could you review the intel you have to see if any of the Taliban in your intel photographs is wearing the same pendant?”
Wazir chuckled under his breath. “Don’t look now, my friend, but your biases are showing. What if it was a party of Jews running late for a bris?”
“What am I missing here?”
“The Sephardic Jewish community calls that very same pendant the Hand of Miriam.”
“Aw, shit. Am I in over my head here?”
“Not as long as you have an
“I’ll take care of the compensation.”
“Thank you, Moore. Try to be safe. I will call you as soon as I know something.”
Moore thumbed off the connection, then immediately uploaded the picture of the pendant he’d taken with his smartphone. He sat there at the cubicle, trembling over the news about Gallagher. He waited for Wazir’s message that would contain the pictures of …a possible traitor.
Towers came rushing over. “We found the police cars!”
At the same time, Moore’s phone rang.
He recoiled at the number: Zuniga. He motioned for Towers to hang on, showed the caller ID screen to his boss, who nodded and waited, eyes widening.
Moore answered in Spanish. “
Moore’s phone beeped with an incoming message: Wazir’s e-mail. He winced and said, “Go ahead, senor.”
“Sitting in my living room right now is Mr. Dante Corrales. He tells me the cartel killed his woman and that he wants to join me. He says he has secrets about the cartel. He says he can help me undermine them and bring down Rojas. He says he has the evidence to do that.”
“Then he’s a very valuable asset — to both of us.”
“Ah, more so to you. I will deliver him to you under two conditions. In this economy, I think he’s worth about one million dollars. And I want the assurance that neither myself nor my people or organization will be touched.”
Moore held back his grin. No way in hell was the American government going to hand over $1 million to a Mexican drug cartel. At this point Moore would determine if Corrales was worth anything, and if he was, then other arrangements would be made to extract him from Zuniga, a thug who’d already been paid well enough.
“Senor, that’s a lot of money, and we don’t really know how useful Corrales will be, so here’s what I suggest: a meeting between the three of us. We need Corrales to prove his value to us, and I have several methods we can use to better vet him. If all goes well, I will arrange payment and take possession of the man. If we both agree that he is not as useful as we thought, then we might turn him over to the authorities and consider new plans to take down the Juarez Cartel. What happened in San Cristobal was nothing we could have anticipated. You need to believe that.”
“I’ll decide what I need to believe. And I want to remind you that we can’t turn over Corrales to the Federal Police. He has too many allies there.”
“We’ll turn him over to the Mexican Navy. I’ve heard they’re the only ones who can be trusted.”
Zuniga chuckled. “I’ve heard that, too. How soon can you be here?”
“By tonight. Let’s say eight p.m. I’ll meet you at the usual place for the transfer. Their spotters will still be watching us.”
“Very good, senor. I’ll have my people meet you there.”
Moore thumbed off the phone. “Corrales went to Zuniga. We might have a deal — and a key witness.”
“Excellent.”
“Let me finish before you tell me about the cars. Better yet, let me show you something.”
Moore opened up the message and enlarged one of the photographs taken with a long lens and clearly showing Gallagher sitting outside a tent in the hills of Waziristan beside Rahmani. Wazir’s people had gathered remarkable intel, all right, and the image sent chills through Moore, who’d known Gallagher for years and had even run a few joint operations with him, including their mission to take Colonel Khodai into their protection. Wazir had said that Rahmani’s people were responsible for murdering the colonel; consequently, Moore might’ve been set up from the beginning by his “buddy” Gallagher.
“The guy on the left is a colleague of mine. I need to send this to O’Hara. This guy might be dirty, and if that’s the case, he’s got access to our intel. Not sure how much he’s feeding them, but this is …” Moore gasped as the enormity finally hit him. “This is fucking huge.”
Towers swore to himself in disbelief. “Send those pics up the pipe, then we’ll talk about your meeting with Zuniga.”
“The cars?”
“We think they split up after leaving the house, but they all wound up heading south, got onto Second Street, then drove to the airport. We found all four vehicles inside a hangar on the southeast side. They’re not registered to Calexico police. They were all stolen and repainted professionally to resemble police vehicles. The paint was still tacky on a couple of them. Employees have no idea how the vehicles got there and didn’t see anyone. We’ll be hitting up all the auto-body and paint shops in the area.”
“Records of flights out?”
“We’ll get ’em, but the FAA only has docs on two-thirds of all small planes — and you know that if our boys flew out of there, it was on a plane whose registry we can’t track.”
“Right …”
“I want to believe you’re wrong. This is a bunch of mules with a good escape plan. They’ve stolen the drugs and are trying to sell them. It’s nothing more than that.”
“We’ll see what the DNA says.”
“I hope it’s negative.”
Moore snorted. “Otherwise we’ve let a group of terrorists slip right past us, and they’re now in the United States, which, in my humble opinion, is a slightly bigger problem than taking down Jorge Rojas.”
Towers leaned in closer to Moore. “May I remind you that you’re the counterterrorism expert. So I want to know, then, who the hell those bastards are and what they’re doing right now.”
“I’m already on it. And maybe our boy Corrales knows something.”
Towers’s phone rang. Moore listened in and heard enough: big shooting at a pharmacy in Juarez. Local police IDed one of the bodies as Pablo Gutierrez, the scumbag who murdered that FBI agent who was a friend of Ansara’s.
“So they got Pablo,” said Moore. “Who do you think did it?”
“I think his own people. They’re on the hunt for Corrales, and Pablo was with that gang of
