You didn’t just walk up to a cartel leader’s front door, ring the bell, and ask if he’d like to cut a deal. You would never get that meeting. You had to “inspire” his curiosity first, make him become so curious, in fact, that he’d demand to see you. This was a game Moore had played many times with warlords in Afghanistan.
“Here, please share this with the owner.”
“Mr. Howard, I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any promises. I hope that no matter what happens, you’ll seriously consider this land. Like you said, it’s perfect for your new operation.”
She’d barely finished her sales pitch when automatic-weapons fire echoed in the distance. Another volley split the morning silence, followed by a police siren.
The real estate lady smiled guiltily. “This is, uh, okay, this is, you know, maybe the rougher part of town.”
“Yes, no problem,” Moore said, dismissing the gunfire with a wave of his hand. “My new operation will require a lot of security, I know that. I will also require a lot of help and good information — that’s why I would like to talk to the owner myself. Please let him know that.”
“I will. Thank you for looking at the properties, Mr. Howard. I’ll be in touch.”
He shook her hand, then headed back to his car, careful not to look in the direction of the men watching him. He took a seat, lowered the window, and just waited there, checking the most recent photos of the hotel’s exterior and the cars parked there. The men remained. He glanced back, saw that he couldn’t get a tag number, so he started his car and drove off, heading straight for his hotel. A billboard in Spanish touted greyhound racing at a track in the city, with legal betting on the races.
Many years ago Moore and his parents had made a trip to Las Vegas that his father had been dreaming about. The ride had seemed interminable to the ten-year-old Moore, and he’d spent most of his time playing in the backseat with his G.I. Joes and baseball cards. His mother relentlessly complained about the ride being too long and costing too much, while his father retorted with arguments about how it was worth the drive and that he had a system for winning and that numbers were his business. If she would just believe in him for a change, they might have some luck.
There’d been no luck. His father had lost big-time, and there hadn’t been any money for lunch because they needed to fill up the gas tank in order to drive back home. Moore had never been hungrier in his life, and it was then, he thought, sitting for hours in that hot car whose air conditioner had broken, that he began developing a deep hatred for numbers, for gambling, for anything that his father liked. Numbers had, of course, come in handy in his mathematics courses later in life, but back then, money and accounting represented evil obsessions that made his mother cry and made Moore’s stomach ache.
And whenever the teenage Moore watched the film versions of Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol, he always pictured his father in the role of Scrooge, counting his pennies. His adolescent rebellion, he knew now, was just his way to strike back at his father for not being the superhero Moore wanted him to be. He’d been such an imposing and opinionated man before the cancer had reduced him to a frail shell, then a bloated, drug-filled victim who’d passed away on Christmas Eve, a last laugh against a family who’d ridiculed him.
Moore wished he’d had a father who’d taught him how to be a man, who’d reveled in the pleasures of hunting and fishing and sports, not a pencil-pushing middle manager with a comb-over and a sagging gut. He wanted to love his father, but first he had to respect the man, and the more he reflected on the man’s life, the harder that became.
And so Moore had found not a father figure but a sense of brotherhood in the military. He’d become part of a storied organization whose very name inspired awe and fear in all those who heard it.
“Oh, what did you do in the military?”
“I was a Navy SEAL.”
“Holy shit, really?”
After BUD/S, Moore, along with Frank Carmichael, had been selected for SEAL Team 8 and sent to Little Creek, Virginia, to begin platoon training, what operators called “the real deal,” training for war. He’d spent twenty-four months moving from the workup phase to actual deployment and then to the stand-down phase. He was promoted to E-5 petty officer second class, and by 1996 had received three Letters of Commendation, enough for his CO to recommend him for a slot in Officer Candidate School. He spent twelve long weeks in OCS and graduated as an O-1 ensign. By 1998 he’d become a lieutenant (jg) O-2 with another Letter of Commendation and a Secretary of the Navy Commendation Medal. Because of his exceptional performance, he was deep-selected for early promotion, and in March 2000 became a lieutenant O-3.
Then, in September 2001, all hell broke loose. Moore’s SEAL team was sent to Afghanistan, where they were deployed on numerous Special Reconnaissance missions and earned a Presidential Unit Citation and the Navy Unit Commendation for operations against Taliban insurgents. In March of 2002, he participated in Operation Anaconda, an ultimately successful operation to remove Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains in Afghanistan.
Even Moore himself had difficulty believing that he’d matured so much from his days as a high school punk.
There were, of course, many punks to be found here in Juárez, Moore thought. He pulled into the hotel’s parking lot and snapped off some pictures of the tags of every other car in the lot. He forwarded them to Langley, then went inside and fixed himself a cup of coffee in the lobby while Ignacio watched him. Hammers, saws, and the shouting of construction workers resounded from outside.
“Did your business go okay, señor?” the man asked in English.
Moore answered in Spanish. “Yes, excellent. I’m looking at some very nice properties here in Juárez to expand my business.”
“Señor, that is a great thing. You can bring your clients here. We will take very good care of them. Too many people are afraid to come to Juárez, but we are a new place now. No more violence.”
“Very good.” Moore headed up to his room, which Ignacio had told him would be “cheap, cheap,” because the hotel was still being renovated. Moore had not realized how loud the racket would be since he’d left before the workers had begun their hammering and sawing.
Back in his room, he received all the information the Agency could find on the dark-haired woman, Maria Puentes-Hierra, twenty-two years old, born in Mexico City and girlfriend of Dante Corrales. They didn’t have much else on her, except that she’d spent about a year stripping at Club Monarch, one of the few remaining adult bars in the city. Most of the others had been either closed down by the Federal Police or burned by the Sinaloa Cartel. Monarch was run by the Juárez Cartel and was well protected by the police, who the report indicated were frequent patrons there. Moore assumed Corrales had met the young beauty while she was clutching a tacky metal pole and swimming in disco lights. Love had blossomed among watered-down drinks and cigarette smoke.
After finishing up with that report, Moore checked on the status of his fellow task force members.
Fitzpatrick had returned to the Sinaloa ranch house after his “vacation” in the United States. He and his “boss” Luis Torres were plotting an attack on the Juárez Cartel in retaliation for the explosion at the ranch house that had killed several of Zúñiga’s men and caused more than $10,000 in damage to his main gate and electronic security and surveillance system.