“Frank, buddy, I owe you big-time.”
Carmichael choked up. “You owe me nothing.”
They burst out laughing, and the joy, the pure unadulterated joy that he’d actually made it, swelled in Moore’s heart and sent chills rushing up his back. He thought he might collapse as the world tipped on its axis, but that was only Carmichael helping him to his feet.
Later, Moore became class 198’s Honor Man because of his ability to inspire his classmates to keep on going when they were ready to quit. Carmichael had taught him how to do that, and when he told his swim buddy that it was he who should’ve been named Honor Man, Carmichael just smiled. “You’re the toughest guy here. Watching you got me through it.”
11 JOINT TASK FORCE JUÁREZ
By the time Moore exited the 15, drove down Balboa, and reached the DEA office on Viewridge Avenue, he was already twenty minutes late for the meeting. His hair hung in his eyes, and his beard still reached down to his clavicle — two years’ worth of growth that would soon come off, and thankfully so, as a few gray hairs had appeared near his chin. As he navigated down the long hall toward the conference room, he stole a quick look at his Dockers, the fabric now a relief map of wrinkles. That he’d spilled coffee down his shirt didn’t help. He’d blame that on the lady with the three kids who’d failed to note that the enormous cement truck in front of her was rapidly slowing. She’d braked hard, so had Moore, and his coffee obeyed the laws of physics. While his appearance did bother him, it wasn’t on the forefront of his mind.
A new e-mail from Leslie Hollander contained a cell phone picture of her terrific smile, and Moore had difficulty purging that image as he simply opened the door and barged into the room.
Heads turned to him.
He sighed. “Sorry I’m late. I’ve been in the boonies on piggyback tours. I’d forgotten about the traffic around here.”
A small group manned the sides along a conference table the length of an aircraft carrier. The table looked long enough to support a steel-deck picnic, touch-and-go landings, and maybe a couple of Harriers. Five individuals had clustered chairs near the head, and a man with a crew cut, his hair glistening like steel shavings under the fluorescent lights, turned away from a dry-erase board, where he’d been writing his name: Henry Towers.
“What do we have here?” asked Towers, using his marker to point out an empty chair. “Are you man? Or beast?”
Moore cracked a grin. The hair and beard did suggest that he’d spent the night in a refrigerator box. With a little grooming, though, Moore would be back to his old self, and it’d be nice to actually feel his cheeks again. He drew back his head. “Where’s Polk? They told me the NCS would be heading up this task force.”
“Polk’s out, I’m in,” snapped Towers. “You guys just got lucky, I guess.”
“And who are you?” Moore asked, shifting around the table, a portfolio in one hand, his coffee in the other.
Towers eyed him with a crooked grin. “Not much of a reader, are you?”
A lean Hispanic man who had to be Ansara (based on the picture and profile Moore had reviewed) turned to Moore and began laughing. “Relax, bro, he’s done this to all of us. He’s cool. Just trying to lighten the mood a little.”
“That’s right, I’m cool,” said Towers. “We need to loosen up around here — because what we’re about to do will be tense. Very tense.”
“What agency are you from?” Moore asked.
“BORTAC. You know what that is?”
Moore nodded. The U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) was the global special response team for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). BORTAC agents deployed in more than twenty-eight countries around the world to respond to terrorist threats of all types. Their weapons and gear were comparable to those of SEALs, Army Special Forces, Marine Corps Force Recon, and other special operations units. BORTAC teams worked alongside military units in Iraq and Afghanistan to help find, confiscate, and destroy opium and other drugs being smuggled across the border. They had earned an excellent reputation in the special operations community, and Moore had on several occasions shared intelligence with BORTAC operators who exhibited the highest level of professionalism.
The unit was founded in 1984, and within three years it was already engaged in counter-narcotics operations in South America during Operation Snowcap between 1987 and 1994. BORTAC agents were tasked with helping to disrupt the growing, processing, and smuggling of cocaine in a long list of countries, including Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Agents worked alongside the DEA and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Interdiction Assist Team.
In more recent years, BORTAC teams had taken on a broader array of responsibilities, to include Tactical Relief Operations (TRO) during hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. They provided personnel support, equipment assistance, and training to local law enforcement agencies.
Moore would later learn that Towers had more than twenty-five years with BORTAC. He’d been deployed in Los Angeles during the riots that had broken out in the wake of the Rodney King trial. He’d also participated in Operation Reunion, in which BORTAC raided a home in Miami, Florida, in order to safely return refugee Elián González to his father in Cuba. Following the World Trade Center attack, Towers was sent overseas to assist Army Special Forces personnel during some of the first attacks in Afghanistan. In 2002, he worked with the United States Secret Service to secure sports venues at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.
“I head up the San Diego sector,” Towers went on. “But the deputy commissioner wanted me to work with you gorillas for this operation. In my humble opinion, I’m uniquely suited for this job because our mission involves both exposing and dismantling the Juárez Drug Cartel and exposing their relationship with Middle Eastern terrorists, which I’ll remind you is Mr. Moore’s area of expertise.”
“Reporting for duty as ordered—sir,” Moore said with a mock scowl.
“Now you’re playing along,” Towers said with a genuine smile. “Welcome to Joint Task Force Juárez. And as a matter of fact, I’ve been asked to make you our field team leader.”
Moore chuckled under his breath. “What crazy drunk suggested that?”
“Your boss.”
That drew some laughs from the table.
“All right, team, in all seriousness, we’ve got a lot to cover here. I heard you guys love PowerPoint presentations, so I’ve got a few of them. Just give me a minute to load them up.”
Ansara groaned and turned to Moore. “Good to meet you. They didn’t put much in your file.”
“They never do. Just your friendly neighborhood spook is all I am.”
“And you were a Navy SEAL.”
“With a little help from my friends.”
“You’ve been doing some good work over in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not sure I’d last five minutes.”
Moore smiled. “Maybe ten.”
Ansara was a damned fine FBI agent with numerous successful operations under his belt. More recently, he’d been performing recon operations in Sequoia National Park, where the cartels were growing marijuana and where he’d been tracking the sicario who’d murdered one of his associates. He was, in Moore’s estimation, a bit too handsome for his own good, but his welcoming smile and tone suggested they’d become friends.
Seated beside him was Gloria Vega, a thirty-two-year-old CIA agent like Moore who would be embedded with the Mexican Federal Police. She was a broad-shouldered, no-nonsense Hispanic woman with black hair pulled tightly into a bun. According to a few of Moore’s colleagues, she was appreciated and feared because of her exacting nature and utter dedication to the job. She was a single woman and an only child whose parents had already died. The Agency was her life. Period. Her scrutinizing glance when Moore had entered was probably just the beginning of her interrogation of him. That the Federal Police were aiding and abetting the cartels in Mexico was old news; that an American CIA agent would be working alongside them would be as dangerous as it might be enlightening. The NCS had been working directly with Federal Police authorities to establish a relationship that would grant Vega full access while also protecting her identity. That sounded fine in theory; however, Ms. Vega was being dropped into a pit of rattlers, and Moore was glad he didn’t have her job.