“Hold it right there! Don’t move!” came a voice from behind him.
He thought of turning his head slightly to identify his assailant, but then again, he already knew. The Aztecas weren’t taking prisoners, so they wouldn’t have ordered him to halt. And that voice …familiar?
“Señor, I’m Federal Police, just like you,” Moore told the guy.
The rifle was removed from Moore’s hands, as was the pistol from his waistband. Moore didn’t raise his hands. He just whirled around, surprising the guy, because no one in his right mind would make a sudden move like that, not with a weapon on him. The guy was neither Federal Police nor an Azteca.
It was the young kid from the Range Rover, the one who’d said he’d hoped Zúñiga would let him live, the kid with the skull earring in his right lobe.
“You brought this on us,” cried the kid. “I saw him down there. My boss is dead because of you!”
In one fluid movement, Moore drove the heel of his hand up into the kid’s nose. An old myth persisted that you could kill a man this way. Nonsense. Moore had wanted only to stun the kid. Besides, his face was far too pretty for his own good, anyway. As the kid shifted back, about to scream, Moore wrenched back the rifle, then drove the stock into the kid’s head, knocking him to the roof. Sicario down for the count.
Moore rushed back to the drainpipe, shouldered the rifle via the sling, then climbed over the parapet. He was about halfway down the pipe when the straps buckled under his weight and the whole damned pipe pulled away from the wall. Only a six-foot drop but enough to stun his legs as he hit the ground. No time for delays, though, as more Feds were pulling into the driveway. He rolled, rose, and with the needles still rushing up and down his thighs, he bounded for the chopper, reached the bay door, and was hauled inside by Towers. Corrales was already there, his eyes narrowed in pain. One of the officers slid shut the bay door, and the chopper’s nose pitched forward as they took off.
Towers cupped his hand around Moore’s ear and said, “All I can say is, this kid had better be loaded with secrets.”
Moore nodded. With Zúñiga dead, the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations would be disrupted — at least for a while, and they’d be vulnerable to further attacks and to a takeover by the Juárez Cartel. If that happened, then the joint task force’s mission to dismantle the Juárez Cartel would have not only failed but would’ve caused Rojas’s criminal empire to grow even stronger.
37 TWO DESTINIES
It was nearly eleven p.m. by the time they made it back to the diversion control office and took Corrales into the conference room. He’d already received attention from a medic onboard the chopper, who repeatedly assured him that he hadn’t broken both of his legs and that his right ankle was only sprained. He still had full range of motion. Moore and Towers told him they would get him to a hospital if he insisted, but he needed to talk first.
Corrales had refused.
And so they had decided to simply take him back to the office for some persuading. During the ride over, Moore had told Corrales the bad news. He and Towers were gringos all right, big badass gringos from the United States government. Corrales had demanded to know what agency.
Moore had grinned darkly. “All of them.”
Now, as Corrales accepted a foam cup of coffee from Towers, he leaned forward on the table and rubbed his eyes. He uttered a string of curses, then said, “I want it in writing that I have total immunity. And I want a lawyer.”
“You don’t need a lawyer,” said Moore.
“I’m under arrest, right?”
Moore shook his head, and his tone turned grave. “You’re here because of what happened to María. We found the body back at Zúñiga’s place. What happened? Did Pablo kill her?”
“No, the other fucking bastards did. They killed my woman. They won’t survive that.”
“Who’s your boss?” asked Moore.
“Fernando Castillo.”
Towers nodded emphatically. “Rojas’s security guy. He’s got a patch. One eye.”
“They all like to pretend they are not part of the cartel. Los Caballeros. That’s bullshit!”
“So what were you giving Zúñiga?”
“I’ve got names and locations of suppliers and transporters from all around the world. People in Colombia, Pakistan …I got shit you stupid cops wouldn’t believe. I got bank account numbers, receipts, recordings of phone calls, e-mails; I got it all …”
“Well, we got it all on you, too, Corrales. We know what happened to your parents and when you joined the sicarios,” said Towers. “So it’s not only about María. It’s about revenge for them, too, huh?”
Corrales took another sip of his coffee, his breath growing shorter, then he slammed his fist on the table and cried, “They’re all going down! All of them! Every last one!”
“They killed Ignacio at the hotel, too,” said Moore. “He was a nice guy. I liked him.”
“Wait a minute. It’s you,” said Corrales, his eyes growing wider. “You’re the guy my boys lost. Your name’s Howard.”
Moore shrugged. “Small world.”
Corrales cursed and said, “Solar panels, my ass …”
“So where’s all this information you claim to have?” asked Towers.
“It’s all on a flash drive. And I’ve got two more copies in safe-deposit boxes. I’m not an idiot — so stop talking to me like I am.”
Moore tried to hold back a chuckle. “Then we need to hit the bank, huh?”
Corrales shook his head and reached down into his black silk shirt. He withdrew a wafer-thin flash drive that hung from a thick gold chain. The drive itself was gold-plated, made by “Super Talent,” 64 GB. “It’s all right here.”
Samad and Niazi were in the Hyundai Accent and following Talwar, who was driving a DirecTV satellite van given to them by Rahmani’s men in Los Angeles. They followed the blue signs and pulled into the seventy-nine-space lot, which was located five minutes from the Central Terminal Area and accessible from the north and east via La Tijera, Sepulveda, Manchester, and Century Boulevards. They had considered using long-term parking lot C directly south and still within their launch radius, but they’d learned that at least two LAPD officers on motorcycles checked the cars daily with the intent of finding vehicles without front license plates so they could issue tickets. The only security in the cell-phone waiting lot was the “airport puppy patrol,” as one of Rahmani’s men had told them. Those guys checked only for unattended vehicles. No worries there, my friends.
There’d also been some discussion about parking in Inglewood or Huntington Park, northeast of the airport, to avoid running any further security risks, but Samad had argued for the cell lot location, which would allow the team more time to acquire their target, as the plane would lift off, head out over the Pacific in a “Loop Five” departure as part of the airport’s noise abatement procedures, then return and be vectored along V-264, passing over their heads and on toward Inglewood and Huntington Park. It was clear to Rahmani and even American authorities that it was absolutely impossible to secure the ground beneath airplane flights, so the teams had free rein to select the best possible locations.
Samad got the chills every time he thought about it. The absolute brilliance and audacity of the jihad on September 11, 2001, would return to American soil as promised, only this time Allah’s wrath would fall on Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and San Antonio.