That Rojas’s son was fraternizing with a known cartel member did “seem” to link Rojas to the cartel, but that evidence was, at the moment, purely circumstantial.
Yet something about that bothered Moore. A lot. Their joint task force had already received intelligence that identified Dante Corrales as a cartel member. This intelligence had been gathered well before the joint task force’s formation. It was reasonable to assume that the Agency had kept their electronic and human eyes on Corrales since first identifying him as a player. Moore would have to check the file to see how long ago that had occurred — because if Rojas was involved, then it was reasonable to assume that this wasn’t the first time Corrales had been around the family, in which case the Agency would have more clearly identified Rojas as more than a “person of interest.”
Or maybe this was the first time Corrales had been seen with the family? Moore still had a difficult time believing that. So what was happening now? Where were they going? Moore leaned on Sanchez, and the writer called Corrales, who’d said he couldn’t work on the screenplay for a week because he’d be in San Cristóbal de las Casas on a babysitting job.
Bingo.
Moore called Towers with a plan. Rojas made only rare public appearances and was otherwise never seen. Moore had a plan to draw him out, and when he finished going over it, Towers gave him the blessing.
An hour later, Moore was sitting in the backseat of Luis Torres’s Range Rover. The fat man was at the wheel, with DEA agent Fitzpatrick riding beside him.
“You guys need to fly down there and kidnap the son and his girlfriend. You’ll have some great leverage if you can do that. We’ll draw out Rojas, and I’ll take care of the rest. You bring this plan to Zúñiga and see what he says. And tell him he needs to start returning my calls.”
“He doesn’t trust you, Mr. Howard. And I doubt he’ll start trusting you anytime soon.”
“I’ve got intelligence photos of them leaving on the chopper. I’ve got an informant who personally spoke to Corrales and confirmed they’ll be there for a week. You go down there, you kill Corrales and the other bodyguards, you kidnap the kid, and you’ve got Rojas by the balls. Which part are you failing to understand? I’m going to help you take out your main rival. Your enemy is my enemy. How many other ways do you want me to spell it out?”
“You could be setting us up, getting us to go down there so you and your little overseas group can take us out. Maybe you work for Rojas.”
“Dude, if we wanted you dead, there’d already be weeds on your grave. Don’t be fools. You need to do this. Tell Zúñiga this is the plan.”
“I think he’s right,” said Fitzpatrick, trying not to make his endorsement too obvious. “Let’s look at what he’s got, and then Señor Zúñiga can make a decision.”
“Don’t waste too much time.” Moore opened the back door and got out. “You need to be on an airplane today.”
Moore walked across the alley to his rental car, climbed in, and drove off.
Miguel Rojas’s little vacation with his girlfriend was an excellent lead and opportunity, and Moore had already shared the news with FBI Agent Ansara, who was working with his new mule/informant to penetrate one of the Juárez Cartel’s primary smuggling routes.
Fellow CIA operative Vega was still keeping a close eye on inspector Alberto Gómez, the legendary veteran of the Federal Police who’d been dirty since his rookie year. However, Vega had shared some troubling news. Gómez, along with several other inspectors, was trying to “expose corruption” by setting up another inspector to take a fall, thus pointing the spotlight elsewhere. Vega suspected that he knew he was being watched, so this ploy was his answer.
ATF agent Whittaker reported that a large shipment of guns might be coming down from Minnesota very soon. Cartel members up there were amassing what he contended was their largest cache to date.
Fitzpatrick called later on in the day to confirm that Zúñiga was still mulling over the intel photos and plan, but he also said that the Sinaloa Cartel had just picked up some information from a spotter about a sizable shipment coming up from the south, and their spotter believed that this group of mules would use one of the cartel’s smaller tunnels that ran for about 130 feet under a concrete-lined section of the Rio Grande near Juárez and the Bridge of the Americas.
Moore sent a message to Fitzpatrick: Tell the Sinaloa boys to stay away from the tunnel and go after Miguel Rojas. Moore would personally intercept that shipment and deliver it to Zúñiga as a clear sign of his willingness to help. That Moore would take out one set of drug smugglers to help another was the price they paid in order to catch the biggest fish of all. He’d done likewise in at least four different countries and no longer questioned the moral or ethical implications of his actions. It was the only way to fight an asymmetric enemy with no rules. He contacted Ansara and told him to have a Border Patrol force waiting at the predesignated storm drain in El Paso. Ansara was on it and would be ready with the net.
Moore was a bit surprised that JTF leader Towers himself met him in a parking lot about three blocks away from the drainage ditch. Moore’s watch read nearly 1:08 a.m., and according to Towers, the mules would arrive within fifteen minutes in a white cargo van.
“They’re not only moving drugs,” Towers said, “but women and children. Big-time coyotes employed by the cartel. These guys might have a deal with a group of snakeheads in China — because the young girls we saw were all Asian. They bring them over here as sex slaves.”
“Damn, it’s just keeps getting uglier. Drugs, human trafficking …”
“Just stick to the plan.”
“I will. So what brings you to this beautiful part of town?” Moore figured he’d pose the question, since the assumption had been that Towers would remain back in San Diego.
“I’m a field officer. They knew that when they hired me. Did they think they could get me to sit behind a desk the whole time? Hell, no …”
“I hear you.”
“All right, then, buddy, let’s get you ready.”
Moore grinned and began to suit up in nondescript black fatigues, Kevlar vest, and balaclava. He was wearing nearly the same clothes as the two guards the Juárez Cartel had posted at the tunnel entrance.
His inventory included two Glock 21 .45-caliber pistols with attached wet/dry suppressors whose inside chambers had already been greased up to get the ultimate sound attenuation. He also grabbed a couple of smoke grenades and a couple of flash bangs, in case the group was not as “cooperative” as they could be. He slipped on an earpiece with attached boom mike, and took off running across the parking lot, with Towers’s voice in his ear: “Next left and the ditch will be straight ahead. Good cover along the south-side wall. Once you get in past the big grating, your two buddies will be just inside.”
An automotive junkyard’s chain-link fence lined the left side of the street, with a row of ramshackle buildings collapsing to the right, all of them unoccupied — abandoned machine and tool shops, judging from the faded placards above their doors. Even the graffiti that slashed across some of the crumbling walls looked washed out. It was difficult to see much more detail, since the streetlights that towered overhead were all dark, their bulbs either shot out or burned out. Flickering light came from the block next door, and Moore wasn’t sure of its source.
He reached the meter-high concrete wall along the south side of the ditch and kept tight, shifting hunched over until he found the two main grating plates lying on the opposite side of the ditch, about ten meters away: the main entrance to the storm drains and smaller tunnel inside. It’d been a considerably dry season, with only a few shallow puddles dotting the ground and a carpet of weeds spreading up to the grating. He grimaced over a faint sewage smell that he hoped would not get stronger once he crossed the ditch.