Against All Enemies

30 DEAR LADY

Gloria Vega was sitting in the unmarked sedan across the street from the hotel. Inspector Gómez was at the wheel. At Gómez’s request, they were dressed in civilian clothes but wearing their Kevlar vests. The desk clerk at the hotel, a man named Ignacio Hernández, had been found dead the night before, shot once, execution-style, in the forehead. The owner of the hotel, Mr. Dante Corrales, was nowhere to be found, and neither was his girlfriend. Gómez had contacted several other employees of the hotel, along with construction workers involved in a renovation project, and he and Vega were going to interview them today.

“You see them up there,” said Gómez, referring to the two men sitting on the hotel’s roof. “They’re spotters, but not the usual ones. These men I haven’t seen before.”

“Maybe Corrales killed his desk clerk and took off,” said Vega.

“Why would he do that?”

She shrugged. “He was stealing.”

“No. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“How do you know?”

He faced her and snapped. “Because I’ve been doing this for most of my life. Wait here until I come back for you.”

With a little snort, the old man levered himself out of the car, slammed the door shut, and ventured across the street, toward the hotel’s main entrance. Vega watched as the spotters marked his every move.

When would the hammer fall? Everything had to be carefully timed and planned, Towers kept telling her. In point of fact, she was running out of time, and being careful was a hell of a lot harder now. Could she survive another attempt on her life? Was any of this even worth it anymore?

She looked to the hotel.

The spotters were focused on something else.

She heard the engine first. Then a dark blue sedan came barreling around the corner with two men hanging out the passenger-side windows. They wore T-shirts, jeans, and balaclavas over their faces.

Vega bolted out of the car as their shotguns swung around, toward her. She was already returning fire as they opened up on her, their guns booming, buckshot ripping into the car.

But their shots were accompanied by two more, and her gaze flicked up to the rooftop of the hotel, where both the spotters were now holding rifles and firing at her.

A breath later, a needling pain woke in her neck, and two more needles pierced her shoulders as blood began pumping onto the pavement. Her hand went reflexively for her neck, which was now bathed in blood. She shuddered, wanted to scream, opened her mouth, but her vocal cords no longer worked. She collapsed behind the car as the other vehicle screeched to a halt, and Vega barely turned her head in that direction as one of the men approached her, lifted his shotgun, and fired point-blank into her face, which was already going numb.

It might’ve been a minute or two, or just a few seconds, she wasn’t sure, but she looked up with one good eye and through a haze of blood and saw Gómez leaning over her.

She should be dead already. She knew that. But her body was as stubborn as her spirit.

“I’m sorry, dear lady,” said Gómez. “I’m so sorry …” He reached into her pocket and fished out her cell phone. “I’ve been doing this for too long to let myself get caught. You know that. And I know they sent you to find a rat. It’s a terrible business. Terrible, terrible, terrible.”

He rose and turned back to another man. “Pablo? What are you doing here? Where’s Dante?”

“He’s safe. We had some trouble with the Guatemalans.”

“What can I do?”

“Dante sent me with a message: Leave Zúñiga alone. Don’t touch him.”

“Zúñiga? Are you crazy? He’s the one we need to kill.”

Vega tried to listen, wished she could contact Towers, and then her thoughts broke off from their constricted orbit and floated away to her dead parents. She wanted to see them, to see the light, but for the time being there was only a numbing darkness.

And from that void came a final exchange of voices.

“Dante is making a horrible mistake. Tell him I want to speak to him before he does anything.”

“I will, señor. I will.”

And now the cold set in, pushing back the numbness. She shivered violently. There it was now, a pinprick at first and then a glorious beam of light as hot and warm as the summer sun. This was not God, some argued, only a reaction of the brain. But Vega knew better. She knew …

Despite losing the satellite signal, Moore and Ansara went to the truck’s last known location at the gas station, and by the time they arrived, Moore had reacquired the satellite and confirmed that the truck had not moved. Sometimes they picked up a little luck in their travels, most times not.

A surprise phone call from ATF Agent Whittaker as they were nearing the station left Moore’s breath shallow.

“You’re looking for a silver Honda Odyssey van,” the man said. “Should be reaching your location pretty soon. They’ll pull out back behind the car wash, I think. Towers says we let ’em make the exchange.”

“Roger that,” said Moore. “And you’re sure those are the same weapons that SEAL smuggled out of the ’Stan?”

“Oh, I’m positive.”

“Jesus …”

“Yeah, well, he’ll be going down — because that’s only part of the shipment on that van. The rest of it is still up in Minnesota, and that’s the evidence I’ll be collecting. Glad they weren’t stupid enough to try to smuggle it all in one shipment. Their attempt to be smart works in my favor. We should have him and the weapons in custody by tonight.”

“Well, thanks for the heads-up,” said Moore, as Ansara pulled into the parking lot of a transmission shop next door to the station. They had a clear, unobstructed view of the truck, which had, in fact, parked out back behind the car wash.

Moore called up one of Whittaker’s reports on his smartphone and scanned the inventory list of items purportedly stolen and smuggled by that Navy SEAL:

Moore gave Ansara a description of the Honda, and the words had barely left his mouth when the van pulled into the station, its rear end sagging slightly from the weight of its cargo.

“You know, at least in Afghanistan the bad guys tried to act like bad guys,” Moore said. “They smuggled opium and weapons at night. They used the caves. They tried to remain out of sight …but these guys …damn …”

Ansara nodded and lifted his camera. “Act like you’re doing nothing wrong and no one will think you’re doing anything wrong. The thing is, they know we’re looking for them at night. They know we’ll raid their houses in the early morning, when everyone is supposed to be sleeping, so a lot of them do business in the early morning, sleep all afternoon, then stay up all night.”

Moore nodded. “You’ve seen that inventory list, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you know we can’t let those weapons get into Mexico.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on there, cowboy. The money trail’s more important than the guns — you know that.”

“I know, but I just can’t bear the thought of a gun that once belonged to a SEAL being in the hands of some cartel scumbag.”

“Maybe they’re all new guns,” said Ansara.

Moore snorted and began taking pictures himself as a collection of black Anvil cases was hauled from the van and into the back of the truck. The cartel truck’s driver handed a brown-paper shopping bag to the van’s driver, a tall, wiry guy with wispy black hair extending down to his shoulders. He looked more Native American than Mexican.

The exchange took no more than five minutes, with the men performing their loading operations smoothly, even routinely. The van drove off. The cartel guys climbed into the cab but waited a few moments. Moore zoomed in with his camera. The driver was on the phone.

Moore’s own phone vibrated. Towers. Just three words to make Moore’s heart sink: “Vega is dead.”

“How?”

Towers explained. Then added, “I just got word. After they shot her, they rigged her body with C-4. When EMS and the local police arrived, they detonated the charges. You believe that?”

“Who rigged her? Gómez or the cartel?”

“Not sure. We had a feed on the area but lost the signal when we switched from one satellite to another.”

Moore spoke through clenched teeth: “I’ll bet it was that fucker Gómez. He had her killed, and he set it up to look like the cartel.”

“She was our best link to him. I’ve got a few spotters of our own out there, and some pretty good civilian informants, but this is still a major setback.”

Moore closed his eyes. “She didn’t die for nothing. We’ll make sure of that.”

After he got off the phone with Towers, he and Ansara sat in silence, watching as the cartel truck left the station and got back on the road. They fell in behind them, allowed several cars to get in front, and continued on with a good satellite signal. A message from Langley indicated that they’d identified the cartel truck driver’s cell phone and had hacked into its operating system to turn on its GPS signal — so now they were tracking the truck via visual images from a satellite and by using the GPS signal emitted by the driver’s cell phone. According to the message, signal interruption should not happen again. Moore wasn’t buying that and was looking for any chance he could get to plant a good old-fashioned beacon on the truck, which they could track locally.

“And five are now three,” Moore said, breaking the silence in the cab.

“Yeah,” answered Ansara. “I’ve only lost two close buddies over the years. Even after all my time overseas. Only two. Both FBI agents. All my close buddies in the Army made it through — at least so far. How about you?”

“We don’t want to go there.”

“That many, huh?”

“It’s not a numbers game.”

“I know you were there with Fitzpatrick. And I agree. He was an ace. I hope you’re not blaming yourself.”

Moore sighed. “You think about how you could’ve set it up differently and how your buddy might still be alive. I sent him into the house to clear it. He got ambushed and died. I can let myself off the hook, or I can take responsibility for the orders I gave him.”

“Dude, if you go through life like that, you’ll be miserable.”

“Yup. I know …”

For a few seconds Moore closed his eyes and sat down at a table with Frank Carmichael at the head. Beside him were Rana, Colonel Khodai, and Fitzpatrick. Vega sauntered into the restaurant, which turned out to be the Italian place where they’d had Carmichael’s wake. The feisty woman tsked at them, as if to say they were fools for allowing themselves to be killed. Then she faced Moore. “You know what to do.”

He nodded.

About an hour later they reached Bakersfield, where they drove for a few minutes through the city and noted that the truck had pulled into the alley behind José Taco, a well-known Mexican restaurant, according to online reviews. On one side of the alley stood a row of businesses, including the restaurant, and on the other was a long brick wall cordoning off the business district from the six-story buildings of a low-rent apartment complex.

“Shit, this won’t be easy,” said Ansara, driving past the alley and heading farther down the cross street.

“We need to get out,” said Moore, gesturing to a line of empty parking spots to their right.

Ansara agreed, took them into a spot, and they both hustled out of the truck and sprinted toward the apartments.

“This way,” said Moore, running behind the first building and toward a bank of low-lying shrubs planted along the brick wall.

They turned the corner, and directly ahead, no more than thirty meters, was the truck, its rear door open, the men loading blocks of marijuana. Moore saw that if they edged up closer, remaining behind the bushes, they could reach two Dumpsters to the left whose black plastic lids hung open. From behind them they’d have a better view of the exchange.

Hunched over, he led them forward, up to the Dumpster, where they slipped around the side, and there, squatting in the shadows of some palm trees behind them, he began taking his pictures while Ansara did likewise from the other corner. The sour stench emanating from the trash left him with a tight grimace.

The other vehicle was a black BMW 650i two-door sport job whose trunk was being filled with bricks. The driver was a gray-haired Hispanic man in an expensive-looking suit and wearing gold cuff links. In Moore’s estimation, once you got into the world of cuff links, you could be into some serious money for clothes. The frame around the BMW’s tag indicated that the vehicle had come from a dealership in Santa Monica, and there was little doubt as to the destination of his newly acquired precious cargo. Again, he didn’t come in a big truck to pick up his drugs; rather, he took his expensive business machine and would carefully drive the speed limit all the way back to La-la Land so that his shipment could receive white-gloved distribution to Hollywood’s elite, who had the means, the access, and the desire to get higher than the hills on which they’d constructed their mansions.

The driver shook hands with the cartel guys, handed over two thick envelopes to the driver, then climbed into his car and whirred off. Moore and Ansara were prepared to leave when another car rumbled into the alley, sending them crouching even tighter against the Dumpster. The vehicle was a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, an older model, with a roll-lock cap and tinted windows. Two men climbed out dressed like wannabe Mexican gangsters, with baggy pants, and wallets affixed to chains that dangled from their hips. One guy, the fatter one and driver, shook hands with the cartel guys, and once again, more bricks were loaded into the back of their truck.

When they finished, the cartel guys got in their truck and pulled out. Moore and Ansara were waiting for the two guys in the Toyota to leave, but they just sat there in their idling vehicle. Then one climbed out, banged on the back door of the restaurant, and yelled something about their food taking too long. Moore almost laughed. They’d ordered takeout as part of the drug-buying operation.

The man who answered the door was not Mexican but Chinese, although he wore a José Taco apron. He shouted at the guy in broken English, told him to be patient, then slammed the door in his face.

As the thug whirled back toward his car, he looked over at the Dumpsters.

Moore froze.

“Oh, shit,” Ansara whispered.

The thug frowned, took another step toward them. He suddenly jogged to one side, spotted them.

His eyes bugged out.

He whirled around, screaming at the guy in the Toyota.

Moore had already shoved his camera back into a side pocket and had drawn his suppressed Glock.

He was on his feet as the guy looked over his shoulder and saw Moore sprinting toward him, with Ansara now right behind. The thug reached into his waistband and drew the pistol he’d stored there. He swung the gun back at Moore, who fired two rounds into the guy’s chest before the thug could fire.

The guy in the pickup, seeing what was happening outside, must have slid into the driver’s seat. The engine roared, and the truck began to pull away.

Shots rang out behind Moore — and that was Ansara, firing at the truck’s rear wheels, his aim pinpoint-accurate. The left tire popped and blew out, followed by the right, rubber flapping loudly now against the asphalt. The truck slowed enough for Moore to reach the back and make a flying leap onto the rear bumper. He latched a hand onto the tailgate and held on as the driver tried to steer them out of the alley on two flat tires.

Moore leaned out to the side and fired two rounds into the driver’s-side window, shattering it. He still couldn’t get a direct bead on the driver. In the mirror, he saw the guy bringing his cell phone to his ear.

With a curse, Moore fired a third round into the back window, but the shot must’ve missed the guy, who just ducked and kept on driving.

Now Moore leaned out even farther to his left, getting the angle he needed. He fired once more, a direct headshot, and the truck veered to the right and plowed into the brick wall, just as Moore jumped off, hit the ground, and fought to keep balance. Out of breath, and with Ansara on his heels, he rushed up to the cab and wrenched open the door. The driver leaned over and fell out of the truck. There, on the center console, was a heap of cocaine, a few joints, one of them still burning in the ashtray, and a few more bags of coke sitting inside the open glove compartment.

Moore reached down and grabbed the man’s cell phone, checking to see if he’d made that call. No, the call had never gone through. Thank God.

He didn’t realize he was just standing there, looking at all the drugs, until Ansara nudged him aside and said, “Whoa, look at that. But hey, come on, let’s go! We’ll have to call this in. I got the other guy’s cell. Moore? Are you listening to me?”

He faced Ansara, stared through him as though the man were on a movie screen, then blinked and said, “Yeah, come on!” They raced through the alley, and by the time they turned the corner and Moore stole a look back over his shoulder, the Chinese guy with the José Taco apron was coming outside, carrying two bags of takeout.

Within five minutes they were in the pickup, back on the road, and back on track, following the cartel truck, which Ansara predicted was heading down into Palmdale. Moore reported what had happened to Towers, who wasn’t happy, but at least the thugs hadn’t alerted the cartel guys. Local police were en route to the scene.