Moore and Towers sat aboard the twin-engine jet, going over the PDF file that contained the floor plans of Rojas’s mansion in Cuernavaca. The home was nearly eight thousand square feet, comprising two stories with a multilevel garage, a full basement, and stonework to make it resemble a sixteenth-century storybook castle built on a hillside overlooking the town. The residence had been featured in a magazine article in which Rojas’s late wife, Sofia (whose name was uncannily similar to that of Sonia, their agent), had taken the editors on a grand tour of the home and accompanying gardens. She had dubbed the place La Casa de la Eterna Primavera.
The Agency had been surveying the house with human spotters since the perimeter was equipped with bug detection, and, in fact, Towers and Moore had a detailed report on the number of Rojas’s security personnel, their positions, and further analysis of the home’s electronic surveillance and security equipment. Rojas owned several security companies in Mexico and in the United States, so it was safe to assume he protected his home with the best that money could buy: hidden cameras that operated on backup power and whose software could be “trained” to set off alarms based on electronic analysis of “interesting” objects, such as the silhouettes of people, animals, or anything else you taught the system to detect. He also had motion and sound sensors, lasers, interior and exterior bug sweepers, all part of a virtual catalog of detection equipment monitored by a guard seated in a well-protected basement bunker. The article included photos of Rojas’s antique furniture and book collections, which the author stated were carefully protected within home vaults. Moore concluded that those vaults were located in the basement.
Towers had already picked out a rear sundeck on the second story in the southwest corner of the house. Perfect entry onto the second floor. He double-tapped on that spot on his iPad’s screen and placed a blue pushpin icon there.
“He’s got an exit here from the main driveway,” Moore said, pointing at the screen. “And if he gets desperate, he can come out through that ramp in the garage and try to crash through the brick wall here …and here …There’s this secondary garage here. He could have a vehicle waiting there.”
Towers looked at Moore. “If he gets outside, then we should both retire.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t say. That won’t happen on my watch.”
Moore smiled. “So, you never told me …How’d you get permission to come?”
“I didn’t. They think I’m back in San Diego.”
“You’re shitting me.”
He grinned. “I am. I’ve got a good boss. And he respects what I do. I’ve never lost so many people on one operation. I’m going to see this through to the end. Slater backed me up, too. He didn’t want you going in alone. Apparently, they like you.”
“I’m shocked.”
Towers cocked a brow. “I was, too. And by the way, the list Gómez gave us checked out. He’s named ten key players within the Federales, plus the assistant attorney general, and the minute we’re through with this operation, I’m pulling the trigger on that one. I don’t care if we have to arrest the entire force in Juárez. They’re all going down.”
“I’m with you, boss. At least now we’ll get to work with some real hard-core operators. These FES guys are awesome, and they throw a great party. I’m pretty happy we got an invitation.”
Moore was being coy, of course. Slater had relied on his own contacts and Moore’s experience as a Navy SEAL to hire the Fuerzas Especiales (FES), a special-operations unit of the Mexican Navy that was established in late 2001. Moore thought of them as Mexico’s version of Navy SEALs, and he had indeed spent four weeks training with them at Coronado not long after the group was formed. Their motto was simple: “Fuerza, espíritu, sabiduría”—force, spirit, wisdom. The group of nearly five hundred men grew out of the Marine Airborne Battalion of the 1990s. While their primary task was to carry out amphibious special operations, they were well trained to independently conduct nonconventional warfare in the air, sea, and land using all means available. They were experienced divers and parachutists, and were well versed in vertical descent, urban combat, and sniping. Like any good naval commandos, they also had a healthy interest in things that went boom. The group was divided into Pacific and Gulf units and participated in a fifty-three-week-long training program that left only the strong men standing. They’d already made significant contributions to the Mexican government’s war on drug traffickers through their well-planned and highly aggressive tactics, techniques, and procedures — the good old TTPs, as Moore knew them.
One of the FES’s more notable operations came on July 16, 2008, when they were operating off the southwest coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. FES teams rappelled from a helicopter onto the deck of a thirty-three-foot-long narco-submarine. They arrested four men and seized 5.8 tons of Colombian cocaine.
In a somewhat notorious cable leaked by U.S. diplomats, the Mexican Army was described as closed-minded, risk-averse, and much too territorial after agencies like the DEA and CIA attempted to work with them to combat drug runners; in contrast, Mexican Navy officers had been working with their U.S. counterparts for years and had already earned their trust. The level of cooperation between the Navy and the American agencies was unmatched. Understandably, the DEA had always been squeamish about working in conjunction with any Mexican force after the now famous kidnapping of one of their most successful agents, Enrique Camarena, who back in 1985 was abducted by corrupt police, tortured, then brutally murdered.
Captain Omar Luis Soto was Moore’s contact with the FES, and that was no accident, because they knew each other from Coronado. Soto was in his late thirties by now, with an easy grin, broad shoulders, and a nose that he referred to as “Mayan architecture.” While his stature was less than intimidating, his marksmanship made him the most memorable guy in the Mexican group. When asked how he was able to make so many kill shots with so many different weapons, he only smiled and said, “I want to live.” Moore had later learned that Soto’s passion was target shooting and he’d been honing his skills since childhood.
Moore thought it would be great to see the man again, though he wished it was under different circumstances. And to be clear, as Slater had put it, the United States had nothing to do with the raid on Jorge Rojas’s mansion. For its part, the FES was being paid very well to keep the entire operation under wraps so that the Mexican government was none the wiser.
As Slater had learned and Moore had suspected, Soto’s team was trembling with the desire for a raid and were thrilled to be working alongside two Americans with good intelligence.
Moore and Towers landed in Mexico City by mid-afternoon, rented a car, and drove out to a military installation between Conscripto and Zapadores Avenues and the Belt Freeway. It was the only military base Moore had ever seen with pink walls and black wrought-iron fencing. They showed their IDs to the guard at the main gate, who made a call and checked their names off a list, and then they were waved on through. They reached a single-story administration building where they’d been told they would meet up with Soto and the rest of his team. The conference room was being loaned to the Navy by the camp’s administrators, and Soto had apologized in advance for traffic and less-than-stellar accommodations.
A few seconds after Moore guided them into a parking space, the twin doors opened, and Soto appeared, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He grinned and shook Moore’s hand vigorously. “Good to see you again, Max!”