Samad could already feel the blade on his neck. “We all understand.”
Rahmani’s voice lifted as he quoted from the Qur’an: “Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him we shall bestow a vast reward.”
“Paradise awaits us,” Samad added with a vigorous nod. “And yet if we die and are martyred, only to be resurrected and martyred again, we will do it. This is why we love death.”
Rahmani narrowed his eyes even more. “This is why …Now, then, let’s eat, and I will discuss all of the details. The complexity and audacity of this mission will impress you, I’m sure. Within a few days, you will be on the road. And when the time comes, you will bring a message from Allah, the likes of which the Americans have never seen.”
“We won’t fail you,” said Samad.
Rahmani nodded slowly. “Do not fail Allah.”
Samad lowered his head. “We are his servants.”
Moore was en route to San Diego to meet with his new joint task force, and he was dreading the more than seventeen hours of travel time it would take to get there. As he sat at the gate, waiting for the first flight of his journey, he kept a wary eye on the travelers around him, mostly businesspeople, international journalists (he assumed), and a few families with small children, one of them decidedly British. Occasionally, he consulted his tablet computer, where all of his data was secured behind a double-encrypted password. Any attempt to access his computer without his thumbprint would summarily wipe the hard drive. He’d just pulled up some of the Agency’s most recent declassified reports on cartel activity along the border (he’d read the classified ones in a more private location). He was most interested in finding intel on Middle Eastern or Arabic links to that activity, but for the most part, the cases he reviewed were limited to warfare between rival cartels, most notably the Sinaloa and the Juárez cartels.
Mass graves had been turning up more frequently — some containing dozens of bodies. Beheadings and bodies hung from bridges were pointing to a rise in gruesome attacks by gangs of sicarios led by former Mexican Airborne Special Forces troopers. Government officials argued that the cartel wars illustrated the success of government policies, which were causing the drug traffickers to turn against one another. However, Moore had already concluded that the cartels had become so powerful that, in effect, they literally controlled some parts of the country and the violence was simply evidence of their gang law. Moore read one report written by a journalist who’d spent more than a year documenting cartel activity. In some of the more rural towns in the southeast portions of the country, the cartel was the only group the citizens could rely on to provide them with jobs and protection. This journalist published a half-dozen articles before he was shot seventeen times while waiting outside a shopping mall for his mother. Obviously the cartels did not like what he had to say.
Another report made a comparison between small towns in Mexico and those in Afghanistan. Moore had seen the Taliban engage in the same tactics and behavior as the cartels did. Both the Taliban and the drug cartels became much more trusted than the government and certainly more trusted than the foreign invaders. Both the Taliban and the cartels understood the power that drug trafficking brought them, and they used that power to enlist the aid of innocent civilians who were simply not supported or were even ignored by their government. For Moore, it was difficult to remain apolitical when you saw firsthand a government that was more corrupt than its enemies you were tasked with killing.
Still, the human atrocities committed by both groups helped Moore keep it all in perspective.
He flipped quickly through some of the crime-scene photos of Mexican Federal Police lying in blood pools, some brutally gunned down, others with their throats slit. He paused to stare at two dozen immigrants who’d had their heads chopped off, their headless bodies piled up inside an old shed, the heads now missing and nowhere to be found. One sicario was crucified outside his house, the cross set on fire so that his father and other family members could watch him burn.
The cartels’ brutality knew no bounds, and Moore had a sneaking suspicion that his bosses had bigger plans for him than they’d originally suggested. Everyone’s worst nightmare was for this violence to find its way across the border. It was only a matter of time.
He checked his phone and stared at the three e-mails from Leslie Hollander. The first was a request to let her know when he’d be back in Kabul. The second was a question about whether or not he’d received her e-mail.
The third was a question about why he was ignoring her, and said that if he replied she’d set up another session in which she would, as she carefully put it, fuck him until he was walking bowlegged like a cowboy.
Leslie worked in the press office of the public-affairs department of the U.S. Embassy, first assigned to the embassy in Islamabad and then to the one in Kabul. She was twenty-seven years old, very lean, with dark hair and glasses. At first glance, Moore had dismissed her as an uptight geek whose virginity would remain intact until some pale-faced overweight accountant (the male version of her) came along and wrested it from her after a two-hour argument in which the process of sex was analyzed and discussed, the position agreed on, the act both clinical and upsetting to both.
But, dear God, once the glasses and the blouse came off, Ms. Hollander revealed the remarkable contradiction between her appearance and what really lurked in her heart. Moore was overwhelmed by their sexual escapades when he could escape to the city for a weekend and stay with her; however, he already knew the ending of this movie, and the screenwriter had run out of ideas: Guy tells girl job is too important and he must break off their relationship. Guy has to leave town for work, doesn’t know when he’ll return. This will never work out.
Interestingly enough, he’d explained all of that to her during their first dinner together, that he needed her as a source of information and that if anything came out of that, then they could explore the possibilities, but his career at the moment prevented any long-term or serious relationship.
“Okay,” she’d said.
Moore had nearly choked on his beer.
“Do you think I’m a slut?”
“No.”
“Well, I am.”
He’d smirked. “No, you just know how to manipulate men.”
“How am I doing?”
“Very well, but you don’t have to work so hard.”
“Hey, man, look where we are. Not one of the top ten places to have fun, right? Not the happiest place on earth. So it’s up to us. We bring the fun.”
It was that positive attitude on life coupled with her sense of humor that made her seem much more mature and utterly attractive to Moore. But the credits were rolling. The popcorn bag was empty. The lights were coming on, and their good thing was over. Should he just tell her that in an e-mail, the way he had at least two women before her? He wasn’t sure. He felt like he owed her more than that. Some of them were quick flings. And a brief note had been enough. He always took the blame. Always said it wasn’t fair to them. He’d go a year without a relationship, even resort to paying for sex because the efficiency and convenience were exactly what a man like him needed. And then, once in a while, a Leslie would come along and make him second-guess everything.
He dialed her at work and held his breath as the phone rang.
“Hey, stud,” she said. “No satellite service? You see, I’m trying to let you off here. Feed you an excuse …”