Against All Enemies

28 INSOMNIO

The local police had thoroughly searched the hotel for Miguel and Sonia. They’d received digital pictures of the two, had printed them out, and had been questioning the hotel staff and guests. Dante Corrales had watched them from the car across the street, and he’d sent one of the four men who’d come with María into the hotel to learn more.

“Have you seen these missing tourists?” they’d demanded.

“No,” Corrales’s man had lied.

Pablo was now seated to his right, María to his left, and his arm and shoulder were still throbbing as he ordered the driver to pull away.

“Dante, if you won’t talk to Fernando, then I’m not sure what to do. They’ll hunt me down and kill me, too, along with those men.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Corrales lied. “Don’t worry. Fernando has never had contact with them, so I’ll take care of everything.”

“What are you going to do?” asked María.

“Just like I said. We’ll get the money from La Familia, and then we’ll call Salou. He has them. We’ll get them back, and all will be well.”

“How will you explain it to Castillo?”

“I’m thinking about that, but I’m sure he’s busy trying to figure out how he screwed up and let a shooter get so close to the boss.”

Abruptly, the driver, who’d been listening to an AM news station, turned back and said, “Big shooting up in San Juan Chamula. Whole bunch of bodies up there.”

“Do you think it’s them?” asked Pablo.

Corrales’s heart sank. He checked his watch. “We have time to find out.” He called out to the driver, “Take us up there. Now!”

The situation could not have become more confusing. When Corrales and his party arrived in the small town, they sent out another of the men, who returned with his report: It appeared military rebels had been killed. The police had cordoned off the area.

“I looked for Raúl, like you said,” his man reported. “They pulled out a decapitated body, and the pants were khaki-colored, like you said. I think it was Raúl.”

Corrales gritted his teeth and thumbed off his phone. Salou was not answering and might very well be among the dead. Had Castillo’s men arrived and attacked Salou? If so, then why hadn’t he called Corrales?

Now Corrales might need to call back La Familia, tell them he didn’t need the loan — which would piss them off even more than his original call had. He really did need to call Castillo, to at least get some closure on the situation.

But not now. Not yet. He still hadn’t thought of what he’d say …

“They’ll expect us to go to the airport,” he finally told the group. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t care if we drive all night. Head up north, up to Villahermosa. There’s another airport we’ve used in the past.”

“I’m scared, Dante,” said María. “I’m very scared. I just want to go back home.”

He wrapped his good arm around her and whispered, “I know, but I told you, this will all pass.”

Corrales’s phone rang. Incoming call from Castillo. He should take it, find out the truth, and answer Castillo’s questions with lies: They attacked, and I don’t know why. Instead, he hid the screen from María and ignored the call.

He closed his eyes and threw his head back on the seat. Those car fires outside the house up in Chamula had struck a chord, but now all Corrales wanted to do was sleep, sleep away all of his problems.

The phone rang again. Castillo. He turned it off.

So here they were, all because of a grave error: Corrales had assumed that Salou would be too intimidated to stand up to the all-powerful Juárez Cartel. Salou would allow himself to be ripped off and not retaliate for fear of a response. But Corrales was no veteran and had not accounted for the resolve of military men, a resolve he’d become excruciatingly familiar with now.

During the drive back down from Chamula, Miguel had argued with Sonia that they should go directly to the police, but she worried about those officers being in bed with the men who’d captured them. She said they should do what his father’s soldier had told them and head to the airport. Their cell phones had been confiscated by their kidnappers, and Miguel thought the least they should do was stop so that he could call his father.

But Sonia would have none of that. She was behind the wheel, racing down the narrow street, the headlights barely picking out their path until the small yellow sign on the side of the road finally indicated a left toward the San Cristóbal de las Casas Airport.

Once they reached the modest main terminal, only then did Sonia park and say, “Okay, we’ll call your father. I think we are okay now …”

Miguel raked his fingers through his hair and rubbed his tired eyes as they strode into the terminal and found a pay phone that accepted only phone cards. They swore and ran over to a small shop, where they were able to purchase a card for thirty pesos.

With an unsteady hand he reached his father’s personal voice mail. Of course the man wouldn’t pick up; he wouldn’t have recognized the number.

The message was frantic, fragmented, enough to allow his father to know he was still alive and that he and Sonia were unharmed. He had no idea what had happened to Corrales and the other two but was thankful his father’s men had arrived, although he wasn’t sure why they’d been left to escape on their own and had not been escorted.

When he hung up, he looked into Sonia’s eyes and shook his head in disbelief. “You are the strongest woman I know. Stronger than my mother was — and that’s saying a lot.”

“Do you mean to say you can’t believe how strong I am — even though I’m a woman?” She raised one brow.

He grinned. “No, what I mean to say is …thank you.” He leaned over and kissed her.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“How could you stay so calm? I thought I was going to pass out.”

“I didn’t think they’d kill us. We were worth too much to them, so I decided to be strong …for you.”

“But still …”

“Well, sometimes I just get more mad than scared.”

“I hope that someday you can teach me how to do that. I want to learn from you.”

She breathed deeply and glanced away, her lip trembling as though she was about to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Miguel glanced up at a flat-screen TV, where news footage showed a crowd scattering and the caption read: ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON JORGE ROJAS.

He gasped.

Jorge Rojas had built his main home in a world-renowned center for the study of Spanish. Cuernavaca was equally famous for its lush parks and gardens, its charming zocalo, or town center, with historic colonial architecture and numerous restaurants and street cafés, and its university, which attracted artists and intellectuals from all over the world. The Rojas mansion — all 7,800 square feet of it, based on sixteenth-century architectural designs — overlooked the town and was even more well decorated and audacious than his vacation residence in Acapulco, with library, home theater, game room, gym, and all the other amenities one would expect in a residence owned by a man of his stature. His wife had dubbed it La Casa de la Eterna Primavera and had decorated it, along with a team of designers. After she’d passed away, he had not changed a single thing. This place was his safe haven, his Shangri-la that he longed for every time he traveled. In Cuernavaca he was surrounded by his family and the memories of his dear wife, and there’d been months in the past when he’d worked from home and had rarely left its confines. The vacation home in Punta de Mita was a great place for parties and fund-raisers, but it never made him feel quite as warm.

Presently, he stood in the library, near one of the sliding ladders before a wall of more than two thousand books. He was in his silk robe and on his cell phone, listening to the message from his son. He’d been pacing the room for the past hour, beating a deep path in the burgundy carpet, and he’d been on and off the phone for nearly twice as long. He turned to Castillo and nearly fainted as he listened to his voice mail. A call had come in, a number he hadn’t recognized, while he’d been talking to one of his pilots who’d called regarding a maintenance issue with one of his aircraft. “They’re okay, thank God. They were rescued by our men.”

“That’s not possible,” said the one-eyed man. “Our team just got there.”

Rojas drew back his head and frowned. “Maybe my son is confused, but it doesn’t matter. Thank God he’s safe. Send the team to the airport right away. I’m calling him back now.”

“Yes, señor.”

But Castillo did not move. He just frowned deeply, trying to work something out.

“What’s wrong, Fernando?”

“I’ve lost contact with Dante and his team. I wonder if maybe they were able to help?”

“No, I think my son would’ve mentioned that. He said they hadn’t seen Dante and the team since they were in the town, when it all started.”

“Then something is not right here, señor. Miguel is a smart man. I don’t think he was confused.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to figure out what happened. Just get my boy and his girlfriend.”

Rojas turned his head as Alexsi appeared in the doorway, out of breath. “They found them?”

He nodded.

She ran to him, fell into his arms. “Thank God …”

Moore, Towers, and FBI agent Michael Ansara were seated at the conference table. Vega was still on the job and remaining close to Inspector Gómez, and they didn’t want to risk blowing her cover. Fitzpatrick’s death was carefully concealed from the media, and he was already being flown home to Chicago for burial. ATF Agent Whittaker was still in Minnesota but following up on a very disturbing piece of news: A U.S. military weapons cache had been purportedly smuggled out of Afghanistan and sold to cartel buyers outside of Minneapolis. Some of the initial evidence indicated that the cache had been moved and sold by — Moore had gasped — a U.S. Navy SEAL. He didn’t want to believe that, refused to acknowledge that one of his own brothers could be corrupted in that way. Ansara had just shrugged and said, “If they paid those guys what they’re really worth, they wouldn’t be tempted to do something like that.”

“It’s not about the pay,” said Moore.

Ansara nodded. “Just saying.”

“Don’t say. I just can’t believe it.”

Towers shrugged.

“So where are we at, boss?” Moore said, hoping to change the subject.

Towers glanced up from his notebook computer. “Our boy Corrales still hasn’t turned up. And after almost getting whacked, Rojas went back to his mansion in Cuernavaca. We’ve got boots on the ground and eyes in the sky watching the place.”

“Anything on the shooter?” Moore asked.

“Nothing yet, but the way it was carried out …I doubt it was a rival cartel hit. Just some random asshole wanting to kill a rich guy.”

“What about the son and our girl?”

“Sonia and Miguel were flown there by some of Rojas’s security guys, and they’re all still there, no change.”

“Any word from her?”

“Not yet. The Guatemalans took her surveillance watch and her phone, but she knows where the dead drops are and how to get word out to cover her tracks. She will.”

“So do we wait on her?” asked Moore. “Or what?”

Towers shook his head. “We’ve got some spotters up in Sequoia. The cartel’s getting ready to move one of their biggest harvests ever. You guys are going up there and following the distribution and money trails, which should take you right back into Mexico. I want to follow that trail all the way down to their sicarios making the deposits into the banks and/or laundering the money through Rojas’s businesses. This is a perfect opportunity for us to do that.”

“I’d love to pick up some credible witnesses along the way who can definitively, without question, pin this whole thing on Rojas.”

Towers grinned. “Dream on, buddy. Meanwhile, we need to attack this bastard from every angle — with Sonia, with the Sinaloas, with his ties to the Federal Police, and with following the money. And speaking of the Sinaloas—”

Moore snorted and cut him off. “I promised Zúñiga we would do something, but he just screamed at the top of his lungs, told me I’d pay for the deaths of his men, and that he was going to hunt me down till the day he dies.”

“That sounds about right,” said Towers, with a grin. “But we need to stay in touch with him.”

“I think he’ll keep taking my calls, probably more out of curiosity.” Moore’s voice began to crack. He’d been unable to sleep for the past two nights as a familiar face once more appeared in his mind’s eye. “I want you guys to know that Fitzpatrick was an ace out there. A fucking ace. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for him.”

The air in the room seemed to escape. And both Towers and Ansara took a second or two to reflect on that.

They always die. They always would. There wasn’t any easy way to get over it or past it. Moore was supposed to simply acknowledge that and move on. For the mission. For his country. He’d made the pledge, taken the oath.

“His family knew how dangerous his job was,” said Towers. “They didn’t take it well, but they weren’t surprised, either.” He slapped shut his laptop and rose. “All right, then, gentlemen. You guys need to get up north, ASAP.”

“You’re going to love this, Moore,” said Ansara. “They got the whole place rigged with booby traps and electronic surveillance. Should be a nice party.” He winked.

Moore sighed. “Couldn’t we just do a little wine tasting and call it a day?”

“Detour to Napa, huh?” asked Ansara. “I don’t think so.”

“Everything we’ve gathered so far is on this flash drive,” the man said to Samad, handing over the USB key with attached lanyard.

His name was Felipe. He was fifty years old and had been hired, according to him, two years ago to become a spotter for Mullah Omar Rahmani. Felipe was extremely well paid, had established a safe house in Mexicali, and had been informed that Samad and his group were coming. He worked with a crew of five other men, all loyal and sworn to secrecy, and he said that the intelligence they had gathered would be very useful. Because they were so well paid, they had been able to avoid the temptation of joining one of the cartels. In fact, when they encountered sicarios, many assumed they were part of some other group, and not, as Felipe referred to his men, “independent contractors.”

“Thank you for this, and for all of your other help,” said Samad, accepting the key and plugging it into the notebook computer sitting on the kitchen’s small bar. He climbed onto the stool and sat there, clicking open the files, which contained hundreds of photographs.

Felipe nodded and said, “Señor, we know what it is you plan to do.”

“Really?”

“I’ve been to the United States three times in my life. I’ve been banned for five years for trying to smuggle money out of the country. I haven’t seen my wife and daughters in all that time. I know you are going to cross. I will pay you anything if you will take me.”

Samad thought about that. It’d be very useful to have a local guide, someone expendable as well. “You’ve done enough already. I will take you. But only you.”

“Will you talk to Mullah Rahmani for me as well?”

“Of course.”

He gasped and cried, “Thank you, señor! Thank you!”

Samad nodded and refocused his attention on the computer screen.

They’d finally made it to Mexicali, despite the flat tire and their less-than-agreeable drivers. His men had marveled over how densely populated the city was and had found it ironic that there was, in fact, a small but bustling Chinatown district. In fact, one of Felipe’s men, Zhen, had been born and raised in Mexicali and was the descendant of Chinese immigrants who’d gone to work for the Colorado River Land Company, which had come to the area in the early twentieth century to build an extensive irrigation system in the valley. Samad knew this because Felipe was a man who loved to talk, to the point of utter annoyance.

Samad continued reviewing the photographs and reports while the rest of his men were eating, changing, and chatting within the small three-bedroom home. Yes, they were jammed into the house like canned fish, and Samad was determined that they wouldn’t spend more than a few days here. Felipe had already briefed him regarding his group’s findings: They were certain that the Juárez Cartel was involved in a major tunneling operation at a construction site for a new Z-Cells production plant. The photographs depicted five buildings in various stages of construction and a small warehouse within the facility that had already been finished. Interestingly enough, large quantities of soil had been moved out of the warehouse and loaded onto dump trucks. Moreover, Samad noted the presence of work crews coming and going at regular intervals and in shifts that kept teams working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And Samad knew that where there was a major tunneling operation, there was always a foreman and/or engineer who controlled the operation. Of all of the men who’d been photographed, one in particular stood out because he was older and better dressed than most of the crews and because, according to Felipe, he arrived in the morning and left in the evening, although his schedule had more recently changed, moving up his arrival time to the wee hours of the morning. He had never been followed home, though, and so Samad made that a priority.

Within an hour, Samad, Talwar, and Felipe were sitting in a beat-up Honda Civic driven by Felipe. They waited until the first crew left the warehouse. Their man did not yet leave. They waited until sunset, and then, finally, Samad spotted him, climbing into a black Kia as old and battered as their car. They followed him away from the site and south, past the city and toward the suburbs along the southeast corridor.

Within twenty minutes they’d located the man’s house and watched him park, and then, with a call made by Felipe, they had a man placed outside the residence to alert them when he thought that everyone had left in the morning.

“He will help us cross the border. He doesn’t know it yet, but he is a servant of Allah,” Samad said.

Talwar, who’d been working on his smartphone, looked up and said, “If the information is still good, this house belongs to Pedro Romero. I Googled him, and he was an engineer, but the company he worked for went out of business.”

“Construction has been very tough here,” said Felipe. “I know many good men who are out of work.”

“Well, he found a good job, didn’t he?” Samad said. “He’s our man. But we need to move very carefully. We need to make sure he is very cooperative, so we need to know everything about Señor Pedro Romero.”

Rojas lay in his bed, staring up at the crown molding that spanned the far wall, long lines of expensive hardwood extending off into the shadows. The ceiling fan whirred, the blades turning slowly, the moonlight coming in from the window cutting through those blades and casting a flickering shadow across his bedspread and across Alexsi’s cheek. She slept soundly beside him, and Rojas closed his eyes once more, then snapped them open and looked at the clock: 2:07 a.m.

His emotions had wreaked havoc with him during the past twenty-four hours. An assassination attempt, a kidnapping attempt of Miguel and his girlfriend …he decided he needed an immediate vacation from his real life.

With a shudder he rose, donned his robe, and, using his cell phone as a flashlight, ventured down the stairs in the cool darkness. He entered the kitchen, switched on a light, and crossed to one of three stainless-steel refrigerators to fetch some milk, which he planned to heat up and sip slowly, a regimen that often helped him sleep.

By the time he had the pot on the gas stove and had poured the milk, a tiny voice came from behind him. “Señor Rojas?”

He turned to find Sonia standing there, her black negligee covered mostly by her own silk robe. He had to blink because he thought he had imagined her.

“Señor Rojas, are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Sonia, I’m still half asleep, I guess. What are you doing up now?”

“I heard someone down here. Miguel took the pills like you said, and he is sleeping very well. I don’t like to take any medication, and now I can’t sleep. I keep seeing what they did to that man over and over.”

“I’m so sorry. Tomorrow I will make some calls and we can help you with some therapy.”

“Thank you, señor. I don’t know if there’s a way to forget that. They wiped his blood on my face.”

He nodded, pursed his lips, then blurted out, “Do you want some milk? I’m just heating it up.”

“That would be nice. Thank you.” She moved into the kitchen and slid effortlessly onto one of the stools. “I guess you couldn’t sleep, either, after what happened to you.”

“I’ve been expecting something like that for many years. That’s why I’ve taken so many precautions, but you never know how you’ll react when the day comes. You can never plan everything.”

“That’s very true.”

“Sonia, I love my boy very much. He’s all I have left in this world, and I can’t thank you enough. He’s told me how strong you were. He couldn’t believe it. But you know something? I could. When I first met you, I could see something powerful in your eyes, that same light I saw in my wife. You were very brave.”

She lowered her head and blushed.

He’d gone too far, he knew, and his tone was a little too alluring.

“I just wanted to thank you,” he suddenly added.

“I think the milk is boiling,” she said, lifting her chin at the stove.

He whirled and lowered the heat, but the milk foamed over the pot, and he cursed and brought it off the flame, the milk hissing and spitting.

“Señor Rojas, may I ask a very personal question?” she said, after he’d gotten the milk under control and had fetched two mugs from a cabinet.

“Sure, why not?”

“Are you entirely honest with your son?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does he know everything about you and your companies? I mean, would he be able to step into your shoes if something were to happen?”

“That’s a rather morbid question.”

“If we stay together, and we decide to get married, he would need to know everything.”

“Of course.”

She had trouble now meeting his gaze. “He just seems rather naive about some aspects right now.”

“And with good reason,” said Rojas, growing a little suspicious of her prying. “Some of my businesses are too petty for his concern. I have people running them and reporting weekly or monthly to me. When he’s ready, I will teach him everything.”

“Would you teach me everything, too?”

He hesitated. Indeed, she was a powerful woman, perhaps too powerful, and he had never allowed his dear wife to know even five percent of exactly what he did. “Of course I would,” he lied, handing her a mug of steaming milk. “I would expect you and Miguel to be the heirs — if you are one day married.”

“I don’t mean to sound like a gold digger, señor. I am just worried about Miguel. I know you want him to work at the bank this summer, but I am worried that he’ll hate it. And if he is miserable, we both will be miserable.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Teach him about how you operate your businesses. Let him be your right-hand man. He is your son, after all.”

Rojas thought about that. She was right. Miguel was the heir to his empire, and the boy knew so very little. Rojas could have been killed, and Miguel would hardly understand the enormity of his father’s world. But Rojas would never reveal the ugly truth of the cartel — not to Miguel, not to anyone, ever …

Suddenly, Alexsi appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on here?” she asked, staring accusingly at Sonia.

“Do you want some warm milk?” asked Rojas, ignoring her question. “I have some more.”

“All right.”

“I couldn’t sleep. Not after what’s happened,” said Sonia. “I heard Señor Rojas come down, and so I thought I’d join him.”

Alexsi’s expression softened. “I understand.”

Rojas stared at Alexsi. If she could read his mind, her bags would be packed within the hour.

And if Sonia could read his mind, she would be joining Alexsi in a taxicab that would take them very far away from his world.