Gloria Vega would begin her first day on the job as an inspector for the Federal Police in Juárez. Moore assumed she’d get an ear- and eyeful.
Ansara checked in to say he was already in Calexico, California, which bordered Mexicali in Mexico, and he was working with agents at the main checkpoints to identify mules and recruit one for their team.
ATF Agent Whittaker was back in Minnesota and on the job, already reconnoitering several storage rental facilities being used by the cartel to stash weapons.
The real estate lady was at her office and making phone calls, which analysts at Langley listened to and interpreted.
And Moore was ready to lie back down on the bed, sip some coffee, and take a little break until they came for him …
As he was grimacing over the coffee grounds on the bottom of his foam cup, he received a text message from a surprising source: Nek Wazir, the old man and informant from North Waziristan. The message unnerved Moore. It simply said: PLEASE CALL ME.
Moore had the man’s satellite phone number, and he immediately dialed, not giving a second thought to the time difference, which he estimated at more than ten hours, so Wazir was texting him at around eleven p.m. his time.
“Hello, Moore?” Wazir asked.
There weren’t many people who knew Moore’s real name, but given Wazir’s considerable skills and contacts, Moore had trusted him with that most sacred piece of information — in part as a way to seal their trust, and in part to tell the man that he wanted, truly wanted, to be his friend.
“Wazir, it’s me. I received your text. Do you have something for me?”
The old man hesitated, and Moore held his breath.
Moore spent the next hour on the phone with Slater and O’Hara, and it wasn’t until after he’d vented his anger and frustration to his bosses and took a long moment to stare out the window of his room that his eyes finally burned with tears.
The sons of bitches had killed poor Rana. He was just …just a smart boy who’d done a stupid thing: He’d agreed to work with Moore. And not for the money. The kid’s parents were already rich. He was an adventurer who’d wanted more out of life, and somehow, there was a bit of Moore in him, and now they were carrying his body down from the Bajaur tribal area, wrapped in old blankets. They’d cut and burned him for what little he knew. Wazir said he had probably lasted ten, fifteen hours at the most before he’d died. Rumors of the torturing had reached Wazir’s men, who’d gone up to the caves and had found the body. The Taliban had left Rana as a message to any other Pakistanis who chose the “wrong” path of justice.
Moore sat on the bed and let the tears flow. He cursed and cursed again. Then he rose, whirled, drew his Glock from its shoulder holster and aimed it at the window, imagining the heads of the Taliban who had captured Rana.
Then he holstered the pistol, caught his breath, and returned to the bed. Oh, hell, if it was time to feel sorry for himself, he might as well get through it now, before the guys tailing him came knocking.
He sent Leslie a text message, told her he missed her, told her to send him another picture of herself, that things weren’t going so well and he could use some cheering up. He waited a few minutes, but it was late over there, and she didn’t reply. He lay back on the bed and felt overwhelmed by that same feeling he’d had during BUD/S, that suffocating desire to surrender and accept defeat. He wished that Frank Carmichael were with him now, to convince him that Khodai’s death and the kid’s death meant something and that walking away was far worse than anything else he could do. Yet another voice inside, a voice that seemed far more reasonable, told him that he wasn’t getting any younger, that there were far less dangerous and lucrative ways to make money, as, say, a consultant for a private security firm or as a sales rep for one of the big military and police gear manufacturers, and that if he remained in his current position, he would never have a wife and a family. The job was always fun and exciting until someone you knew, someone you had fostered a deep relationship with, a relationship built on profound respect and trust, was tortured and murdered. Every time Moore let down his guard and allowed himself to truly feel for someone, that relationship would be wrenched away. Was this how he wanted to live the rest of his life?
Back in late 1994, Moore and Carmichael were in a bar in Little Creek, Virginia, celebrating the fact that they were about to become counterterrorism specialists with their new SEAL team. They were talking to another SEAL, nicknamed Captain Nemo, a gunner’s mate second class who was assigned to Task Unit BRAVO as the SEAL delivery vehicle pilot and Ordnance Engineering Department head. During a proof-of-concept full-mission rehearsal in which Nemo was piloting the SDV, one of his fellow operators had accidentally drowned. He’d refused to go into the details of the incident, but both Moore and Carmichael had heard about it before meeting the guy, who they learned was ready to leave the SEALs. He felt responsible for what had happened, even though the investigation had cleared him of any wrongdoing.
There they were, Moore and Carmichael, getting ready to embark on their careers as SEAL operators — and Nemo was putting a real damper on their celebration.
Again, good old Carmichael had stepped in with his words of wisdom: “There’s no way you can quit,” he’d told Nemo.
“Oh, yeah, why?”
“Because who else is going to do it?”
Nemo smirked. “You guys. The new guys, the ones who are too naive to realize that it’s just not worth it.”
“Listen to me, bro. That we’re here is a gift. We answered the call because deep down — and I want you to think about this — deep down we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we weren’t born to live ordinary lives. We knew that when we were kids. And we know it now. You can’t escape that feeling. You’ll have it for the rest of your life, whether you quit now or not. And if you quit, you’ll regret it. You’ll look around and think, I don’t belong here. I belong there.”
Moore stood up from the bed in his hotel room, whirled around, and muttered aloud, “I belong here, damn it.”
His phone beeped with a text message. He checked it. Leslie. He sighed.
14 A SANGRE FRÍA
Gloria Vega hopped into the passenger’s side of an F-150 4x4 with the words Policía Federal emblazoned across the doors. She wore full tactical gear, including a Kevlar vest, a balaclava pulled over her face, and a helmet secured tightly by its chinstrap. She carried two Glocks holstered at her hips and a Heckler & Koch MP5 nine-millimeter submachine gun whose barrel she held up near her shoulder. That a police inspector had to don this kind of gear and arm herself for bear would be a real eye-opener for some of the detectives back home, she thought. Those slackers could arrive at a crime scene in plainclothes with just a single sidearm, no vests, and doughnut powder staining their lips.
The graying man at the wheel, Alberto Gómez, was dressed similarly to Vega and had warned her that visiting the crime scenes “after the fact” could be as dangerous as the initial incidents themselves. Bodies were all too often used as bait to lure in police so the sicarios could blow them up, taking police with them. Sometimes, if the bodies weren’t booby-trapped, snipers would be posted along the rooftops, and again, the police would be set up for a mass killing.
And so the days of operating in plainclothes were over for the inspectors, Gómez had told her with a shrug. He’d scrutinized her with eyes so weary that she wondered why he hadn’t retired already.