Moore gave him a lopsided grin and left it at that.
Within fifteen minutes they reached Zúñiga’s gates and rolled up the driveway to turn into the four-car garage. Moore was led into the living room, which Zúñiga had had professionally decorated in a southwestern theme. Crosses, quivers of arrows, multicolored geckos, and pieces of sandstone art hung near an impressive gas fireplace whose flames illuminated the granite mantel. Across the broad room lay Navajo-patterned rugs, and pigskin-covered furniture was arranged around the hearth.
Dante Corrales was seated on one sofa, wearing a black silk shirt, his arm bound in a sling. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had trouble getting to his feet as Moore approached.
Zúñiga loitered behind the sofa, a beer in hand. He sighed deeply and said, “Señor Howard, I’ve just had a big dinner, and I’m already beginning to fall asleep. So let’s get down to business.”
“Who is this guy?” asked Corrales.
“He is a business associate,” Zúñiga snapped.
Corrales’s frown grew more sharp. “No, no, no. I told you why I’m here and what we’re going to do together — just the two of us, no one else.”
“Dante, if you’re as valuable as you say, then I’m selling you to him.” Zúñiga began to chuckle.
“Selling me? What the hell?”
Moore held up a palm. “Relax. We’re all here to help each other.”
Moore’s smartphone began to vibrate. He winced and decided to ignore the call.
And then, before anyone else could speak, gunfire boomed from somewhere outside, drawing their gazes toward the bay windows along the front of the house.
Samad, Talwar, and Niazi each had a basket in hand as they strolled through the aisles of the store, trying to keep their reactions in check. The other shoppers at the Dollar Tree paid little attention to them. They were dressed like Mexican migrant workers, in jeans, flannel shirts, and ball caps. They spoke Spanish to one another, and repeatedly Talwar shouldered up to Samad and expressed his disbelief over the prices: “One dollar? For everything? Just one dollar?”
He held up a container of jalapeño cheese spread, along with a bag of Burger King Onion Rings.
Niazi snorted, then eyed him emphatically. “One dollar.” He gestured with his bag of beef jerky, which included “50 % Free” and said, “See? One dollar. And more free.”
Talwar lingered there in the aisle, his eyes welling with tears. “Everything in America is amazing. Everyone has so much. You can buy this stuff cheap. They don’t know what it’s like for us. Even water is a luxury. They have no idea. Why have they been given these gifts and we have not?”
Samad squinted through a deep breath. He’d known his men would react this way, because they had never been out of their country. What they’d seen of Mexico was not unlike the slums of the Middle East. But this part of America was radically different. During the drive through Los Angeles, they had cruised up Rodeo Drive, with its designer shops — Chanel, Christian Dior, Gucci, Jimmy Choo, and Valentino, among the dozens of others — and they had witnessed a culture of covetousness that for his men must have been mind-boggling. They’d stared openmouthed at the mansions — palaces, really — and Samad had appreciated the irony of how those with money resided in the highlands while those less fortunate lived below in the valley. The cars, the clothes, the fast food, and the advertising were extremely attractive to them, while he found it all utterly repellent — because he’d seen it all before in Dubai during his college days and understood that beneath the veneer of wealth were people who were, more often than not, morally bankrupt.
Wealth was not something that good Muslims should love, but rather they should love Allah and manage their wealth according to the injunctions of Allah and use their wealth as a means to worship Him.
Samad hardened his voice. “Talwar, do not put your worth in material things. This is not what Allah would have for us. We are here for a purpose. We are the instruments of Allah’s will. All of this is only a distraction.”
After a moment to consider that, Talwar nodded. “I can’t help but envy them. To be born into this …to be born and not have to struggle your entire life.”
“This is what’s made them weak, what’s killed their god and poisoned their hearts and minds — and stomachs, for that matter. But for now, if you want to sample their junk food and drink their soda, then go ahead. Why not? It will not corrupt our souls. But you will not lose sight of our mission, and you will not envy these people. Their souls are black.”
His men nodded and continued down the aisles. Samad poised before some bags of plastic action figures, forty-eight-count, with brown, green, and black soldiers in various poses. He marveled over how the Americans portrayed their forces to their children, immortalizing them in plastic. One soldier held a rocket launcher on his shoulder, and Samad could only snicker over the irony. He decided to buy them. One dollar.
When their baskets were full of junk food and toiletries and whatever else struck their fancy, they got into their Hyundai Accent and drove back toward Studio City, where they had been put up in a second-story apartment on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Rahmani’s team here in Los Angeles — four men who’d been in the United States for the past five years — had welcomed them with open arms. They had laughed and eaten and discussed the group’s escape from Mexico during that first night in the city. It was Rahmani’s American friend, Gallagher, the one he had recruited from the CIA, who had orchestrated the pickup in Calexico and had arranged for the vehicles to be painted, the escape team to be dressed like local police. It was a sophisticated maneuver that had afforded them secure passage to the Calexico airport. From there, they said their good-byes to the rest of the group. And it was then that Samad had begun to inform his lieutenants about the larger plan, growing more comfortable in the fact that at this point, they might not be captured and questioned. Rahmani had been adamant about telling the teams only at the very last minute exactly what was happening — in case any of them were captured. They’d be instructed not to be taken alive …
There were supposed to be eighteen of them in all, six teams of three men each. But that fool Ahmad Leghari had not made it beyond Paris, leaving them with one team of only two members. Leghari would be replaced as soon as that pair reached their destination city of San Antonio.
Six teams. Six missile launchers.
“What are the targets?” Talwar had kept asking, since he was the one who had received extensive training in the operation and firing of MPADs (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems). He’d been taken under the Pakistani Army’s wing, along with five other men, and ushered out to the semidesert region near Muzaffargarh, where he’d spent two weeks firing practice missiles at fixed targets. Rahmani had paid the Army handsomely for that instruction.
“So are we going to shoot federal buildings? Schools?” Talwar added.
As they had climbed into their single-prop Cessna, about to fly up to Palm Springs with a pilot who was, of course, working for Rahmani, Samad had grinned and said, “Oh, Talwar, our plan is a little more ambitious than that.”
Now as they continued back toward the apartment in Studio City, Samad went over the details in his head. He’d memorized the timetable, and his pulse became erratic the more he thought about the days to come …
Moore rushed to the front window and drew back the blinds. Zúñiga had powerful, motion-activated floodlights mounted outside the house, and in all that glare that pushed back the twilight came two white pickup trucks barreling toward the front gates. The trucks were painted with the livery and logos of the Juárez police, but the pairs of men seated in each of the flatbeds were dressed in plainclothes, and one guy in each truck held a weapon that caused Moore to gasp: an M249 light machine gun capable of belching out 750 to 1,000 rounds per minute. Those M249s, still referred to by many as Squad Automatic Weapons, were reserved for military operations. How these “cops” had acquired such weapons was a question Moore summarily dismissed, because they were directing fire on two more black trucks giving chase, and those vehicles belonged to the Mexican Federal Police. Why the hell would the local cops be firing on the Feds?