Today in a conference room at his suite in the InterContinental, Dale Herbers had convened one of those meetings. It was a breakfast gathering of high-ranking local law enforcement officials as well as the department heads of several U.S. agencies based at the embassy. The point of today’s confab was to run down, again, the list of known potential threats in the area, and to make sure all organizations had the same level of confidence that the threats were at a manageable level.
From the outset, the Secret Service knew that Mexico was going to be a security challenge. There had been credible threats from the Maldonado cartel after their leader, Antonio Maldonado, was gunned down six months earlier, and while virtually all analysts in D.C. agreed there was little chance his brother Santiago Maldonado would be able to execute an attack on the President in Mexico City, the analysts weren’t able to say with confidence that someone affiliated with the organization wouldn’t try something against SWORDSMAN — the Secret Service’s code name for President Ryan.
Herbers kicked off the meeting after introductions. “Okay. Since Antonio Maldonado was killed, his brother Santiago has been blaming the U.S. Whether or not the U.S. was involved in the raid in Acapulco doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Santiago is telling his minions that we were involved, and his minions have weapons. It’s been our assessment in D.C. that the threats we’ve gotten are more aspirational in nature than credible in nature, and we’ve been in touch with your various agencies and departments over the past few weeks to make sure you all agree.
“Now we’re five days out from the visit, and I wanted to get one final chance for us to all sit down and talk about any concerns we may have about this threat and any other out there.
“So… do we expect an attack by followers of the Maldonados?”
He turned to a sixty-five-year-old Mexican with a thick mustache and thicker eyeglasses. He was the head of the División de Inteligencia de la Policía Federal. The Federal Police’s Department of Intelligence.
The man shook his head without reservation. “No. They control large parts of Guerrero state, but that is far away from the capital. The other cartels keep them out of the Distrito Federal for the most part.” He shrugged. “Sure, we’ve arrested known Maldonado men in the capital, but that was before the shootout in Acapulco. Once Antonio Maldonado was taken off of the chessboard, the group has become much more violent, but very much less organized.”
Herbers took this all in. It tracked, more or less, with what others had been saying about the organization previously, but he wanted to make sure nothing new had happened.
The local director of the Drug Enforcement Administration was seated across the table from Herbers. “Raúl? What say you?”
The silver-haired Hispanic American nodded. “I agree. Once Antonio died, Maldonado members posted dozens of threats against SWORDSMAN on social media sites. Federal Police, along with us, raided a safe house in Iguala about two months after the Acapulco shootout, and found a DVD. On it was a video of men with RPGs saying they would kill Jack Ryan when he came to Mexico. We assume it was going to be uploaded to YouTube or something. Still, that was months back. Nothing like that recently.”
Herbers had seen the video. Things like that never failed to get the attention of the Secret Service.
Herbers said, “One thing bothers me, though. These guys used to be all over Twitter screaming threats about SWORDSMAN, making videos and such. But now as the date of his arrival nears, we aren’t hearing the same amount of chatter. Does that concern anyone?”
The director of the Secret Service office here in Mexico City said, “I considered that. Wondered if maybe they were going radio silent because they had something cooking. But ultimately I determined it’s just like the others say. These guys are in such disarray right now, they couldn’t put together a real threat. Obviously I’m all for fortifying the motorcade and SWORDSMAN’s appearances to condition-red levels, but I don’t see Maldonado’s people orchestrating an attack.”
Herbers gave the matter one last prod. He turned to the embassy FBI agent-in-charge. “Any chance they could be coordinating with another group? Russians? Cubans, North Koreans? Any other bad actor who’s got POTUS in their sights?”
The AIC didn’t discount the possibility out of hand, but he clearly doubted it. “We have seen transactional relationships between all sorts of different groups and Maldonado. He gets guns from Russia, meth from North Korea, he sells to organized crime in the States. But something on a scale of a presidential assassination? I think that’s a bridge too far.”
“Fair enough,” said Herbers. He had a dozen more items on his agenda, and every one of them seemed just as important at the time.
41
Adel Zarif had been pestering his Mexican contacts for days about the bomb-making materials he needed, but Emilio and the others had just pled ignorance, claiming some men would arrive from the West and talk to him soon enough.
With five days before the President’s arrival in Mexico, the Iranian had reached the point where he was considering contacting the North Koreans directly to complain about the situation. He had a contact number for a team of RGB men here in Mexico, with instructions to call as soon as the operation was complete, but he thought he might have to call it to raise his concerns about the lack of activity.
Things were getting dire, but Emilio’s continued promises had persuaded Zarif to wait.
Finally, with just four days left, Emilio sat Zarif down on the couch in the living room of his tiny safe-house apartment.
He said, “I’ve been asked to get a list of everything you want.”
Zarif cocked his head. “I don’t know what is available to me.”
“Everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“We have access to Base Aérea Militar Numero Siete. It’s an Army facility in the state of Guerrero. We can obtain anything that they have in their weapons stores. If what you need is small enough to fit in the trunk of a car, we can have it for you by tomorrow.”
Zarif was astonished. He was worried he’d have to make his weapon out of fertilizer and gasoline. At the very high end he’d hoped they would have access to some TNT. But Emilio was promising him ready-made military ordnance.
It didn’t get any better than that.
Zarif thought it over, trying to determine what would work best for the task at hand. The President would be traveling in his limousine, and the limo used by the U.S. President was legendary, and that was a problem for Zarif for two reasons. One, if it was as good as the legend, then it would take a massive charge, or else an extremely well-made device, to penetrate it.
And two, the legend was just that, a legend. There were very few specific details known about the vehicle itself. The weight, the thickness of the steel, the types of other materials used, and the locations of the most and least vulnerable parts — it was all officially unknown. Zarif was an engineer, he could do a lot with good data, but in his research on the vehicle itself he had discovered little more than conjecture, rumor, hyperbole, and wild guesses.
Legend.
The way to combat this unknown was to build the bomb as large and as precise as he could reasonably make it.
He thought about what the base would have. Instantly he decided he would construct the weapon out of artillery shells. As far as Zarif knew, every modern military had a 105-millimeter howitzer in its arsenal. Their shells made incredibly effective IEDs; he’d used them hundreds of times in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Syria.