Authors: David Hagberg
Studying the map, McGarvey could see that the major problem they were faced with was the distance. If the Mexicans, and presumably a fair number of Cubans, were to cross the border west of El Paso, they would have a twenty-mile trek across the desert just to reach the Rio Grande, and another sixty to Holloman. Impossible without some sort of transportation. However, if they crossed the Rio Grande into Texas well southeast of El Paso, they could be on Fort Bliss in well under ten miles.
“What’s down here?” McGarvey asked, pointing to the area on the military reservation between the museums and study center and the National Cemetery.
Whitelaw studied the chart. “Desert, mostly scrubland.”
“Anything like a hill?”
“Lots of them, but no real mountains, unless you go farther east and north.”
McGarvey looked up. “All I need is a hill.”
Otto set up his laptop at one corner of the big table, powered it up, and got online.
Whitelaw watched him. “Sir, this is a secured area, you’re not authorized to use our Wi-Fi connection.”
“I’m connected via satellite with my own server in Washington,” Rencke said without looking up. “It’s a whole bunch more secure for some things, you know.”
“Anything yet?” McGarvey asked.
“No. But Page has his BlackBerry on, and I’ve located him at the White House. West Wing.”
“Good,” McGarvey said.
A Hummer with air force markings pulled up outside, and a lieutenant colonel in desert BDUs jumped out and strode into the hangar. He was an athletic-looking man with a long, narrow face, and he was mad as hell. His name tag read
ENDICOTT
.
Whitelaw saluted. “Colonel, these are the gentlemen from the CIA.”
Endicott returned the salute without looking at the captain. He glanced at the map and at Rencke and the laptop, and finally at McGarvey. “I suppose you’ll tell me what the hell you’re doing on my installation, and what sort of sheer bullshit you’re trying to pull off.”
McGarvey didn’t have the patience to put up with the man’s bluster. “Turns out, I probably won’t need your installation, Colonel. I’ll probably have to commandeer some Fort Bliss real estate on the Texas side.”
Endicott thought it out for a second, then turned to Rencke. “Turn that goddamned machine off, mister,” he ordered.
Rencke looked up with a mild expression. “Sorry, I can’t do that. The president will be wanting to talk to us shortly, and in any event, I think that General Gunther is about to land.”
At that moment, they all heard the sound of an incoming helicopter and a half a minute later, a UH-60 Blackhawk with army markings sharply flared and touched down just in front of the Hummer. Almost immediately, a one star also in desert BDUs jumped down from the open hatch and marched into the hangar, where Whitelaw and Endicott came to attention and saluted.
Gunther was a large man about forty-five years old with a pleasant look and slight smile. He could have been a younger brother to Colin Powell. “Kirk McGarvey?” he asked.
“Yes, General,” McGarvey said, and they shook hands.
“I gave you a briefing on a new satellite hardening system when you were the DCI, no reason for you to remember.” He glanced at the map. “So what brings you down here, you need something from Ron?”
“Actually from you, General,” McGarvey said. “I need to borrow one of your hills for a day or two, plus some earthmoving equipment and the crews who know what they’re doing, along with a video and audio system, and five hundred armed troops led by someone who knows what he’s doing when he’s under the gun, especially how to follow orders that might not seem to make a lot of sense.”
Gunther didn’t blink. “The hill, the earthmovers, and the audio/visual system are no problem. As for the rest, I’m going to need to get some orders. Damn specific orders.”
“Otto?” McGarvey said.
“Not yet, but he’s still in the West Wing, I’m guessing the Oval Office.”
Gunther and the other two officers were taken up short when Otto mentioned the Oval Office, and they were suddenly very interested.
“You’ll get your orders, General, but first let me explain what’s going to happen and why and how you can help,” McGarvey said.
“You have my attention, Mr. Director,” Gunther said.
“Everything I’m about to tell you is not strictly speaking classified yet, but I’m sure that when the president talks to you, it’ll be mentioned. At the very least, what I’m about to share with you is diplomatically highly sensitive, and totally crazy.”
“Ron mentioned something about some people coming across the Mexican border. But that will be handled by the CBP, not us.” CPB was the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service, which was an agency of Homeland Security.
“Not some people, more than a thousand—and very possibly a lot more,” McGarvey said. “Most of them will be ordinary Mexican citizens, but there’ll probably be some Cubans in the mix, and I want the confrontations to be kept to a minimum, and no arrests if possible unless I give the word.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gunther demanded. “What do these people want? Can’t be immigration status. We’ll round them up for you and ship their asses right back across the border.”
“You won’t have to do that, because within twenty-four hours, probably less, they’ll turn around and leave of their own accord. All I want you to do is contain them.”
“If they make it across.”
“They will because you’ll let them,” McGarvey said.
Otto turned the laptop around so that they could all see the image of President Langdon seated behind his desk in the Oval Office.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” McGarvey said. “Has Mr. Page briefed you on what I want to do with your help and why?”
“Yes, he has, and he’s here now with Frank Shapiro,” Langdon said. “I understand that you and Mr. Rencke are at Holloman. Who is with you at this moment?”
“General Gunther who runs Fort Bliss, along with Colonel Endicott who is the CO here and Holloman’s public affairs officer, Captain Whitelaw.”
“Can they all see and hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Gunther said, stepping into view so that the laptop’s camera could see him.
“Has Mr. McGarvey explained what he wants to do?”
“Yes, sir, and I think there is a very great possibility for any number of things to go wrong.”
Langdon didn’t hesitate. “I completely agree with you, nevertheless you and Colonel Endicott are going to give Mr. McGarvey every assistance within your power, short of starting a all-out shooting war. Do you understand?”
“Frankly no, Mr. President. But we will do as we’re ordered.”
“Good. And until you hear otherwise—from me personally—this mission is classified top secret.”
“What about the media, Mr. President?”
“That’ll be up to McGarvey, how close they’re allowed to come, but under no circumstances will they be briefed by your people.”
“Yes, sir,” Gunther said.
“Very well. Wherever you are, I want you to clear out for a minute or two. What I have to say next is for McGarvey’s ears only.”
SIXTY-NINE
The Cubana de Aviación Yakovlev-40 refueled at Mexico City’s International Airport at three in the afternoon local and made the eight hundred miles up to Ciudad Juárez’s Abraham González International Airport a little under two hours later.
María, dressed in jeans, Nikes, and a light New York Yankees jersey against what she figured would be a relatively cold desert evening, got up from her seat in the front row as most of the other thirty passengers who’d flown up from Havana with her and Fuentes shuffled past. They would be taken to a staging area closer to the border to wait for the word to pull out. The four who remained in their seats were DI field officers, handpicked by Ortega-Cowan, well trained, dedicated to the mission and the state, all of them expert shooters and hand-to-hand combat killers.
“No telling what that bastard McGarvey and his CIA pals will have waiting for you,” Ortega-Cowan had told her.
“You’re sending bodyguards to protect me?”
He’d shrugged and smiled, and she thought at that moment that she’d never trusted anyone less in her life. Power corrupted and absolute power corrupted absolutely, and he wanted the whole enchilada.
It was ballsy flying one of the VIP jets that her father, El Comandante, had used for diplomatic trips around the Caribbean and South and Central America, but again she’d agreed with Ortega-Cowan, who suggested that not only didn’t Raúl and his people suspect that she was back, they would never dream that she was flying out again on a supposedly government-sanctioned trip.
“Listen up,
compadres,
the mission will begin in the next eighteen hours or so, but I want you to remain alert because we could get orders to move out at a moment’s notice,” she told them.
Most of them were young, in their early to mid-twenties, and this afternoon they were dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, mostly jeans or khakis, dark jackets to cover the holstered or pocketed pistols, and sneakers or boots.
“We understand,
Coronel,
but can we finally be told our mission?” a young lieutenant by the name of Ruiz asked.
“We’re ready to kick ass, señora, just tell us whose and where,” someone else added, and they all laughed.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity,” she told them. If it came down to it, they would be her rearguard getting back across the border. “Two hints: We’re heading a few kilometers north of here, and the opposition’s headquarters is at a place called Langley just outside of Washington.”
“About time,” someone said.
María turned, and she and Fuentes went up the aisle to the main hatch where the pilot and copilot where waiting on the flight deck.
“You and my people will stay at the DoubleTree Hotel downtown,” María told them. “But be ready to return here within a one-hour notice.”
“How long do you contemplate our time on the ground will be?” the captain, a former air force major, asked.
“I don’t know,” María said, and she turned to the open hatch, but then came back, her tone softening. “I really don’t know. But I suspect it’ll be at least twenty-four hours, but very probably less than forty-eight. I just need you to look sharp twenty-four/seven.”
“Sí, Señora Coronel.”
A gray Hummer was waiting for them at the arrivals area outside, a driver and another man riding shotgun in front, but neither of them said a word when María and Fuentes climbed in the backseat. Nor did they speak or even look over their shoulders for the fifty-mile drive southwest, the last few miles of it on a dirt track to a palatial compound on the shores of Laguna Guzman, which was a fair-sized lake in the middle of the desert.
The place was well lit up from inside, and armed guards in pairs continuously patrolled the perimeter all the way out to five hundred yards. Infrared and motion detectors monitored every square inch of ground out to one mile, and active radar based at the five-thousand-foot paved runway a half mile to the west watched the sky out to fifty miles. The compound had its own cell phone tower, and two secure microwave links via satellite with advanced surveillance units hidden in the deserts, hills, and mountains of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Tens of millions of dollars had been invested for security here; money well spent, considering the multibillion-dollar-per-year return.
María had been here twice over the past six years, setting up the drug routes in Cuba, along with coastal waters and airspace for promises not of any significant money, but for intelligence the cartels’ various dealers and distributors across the border could supply about U.S. federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities as well as military installations along the southern tier of states.
It had been something of an uneasy truce, but neither the DI nor the cartels wanted to break it. The money and intel were simply too good.
They were passed through a tall iron gate in the razor wire–topped concrete walls only after they surrendered their weapons and were expertly patted down. Even the Hummer was searched with dogs for explosives and electronically for bugging devices.
Fuentes was impressed and he started to say something when they finally pulled up in front of the main house, but María squeezed his knee, and he bit it off. They got out of the car and walked up to the house, where a short, slightly built man in his mid-forties, with dark hair, thick eyebrows, and thin mustache was waiting for them.
“So good to see you again, señora,” he said, and they embraced. He was Juan Callardo, leader of the Los Zetas cartel, whose compound this was, and son of Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, the godfather of all Mexican drug lords.
“You’re looking fit, Juan,” she said.
“And you more beautiful than ever. And still devious.”
They laughed and María introduced Fuentes, to whom Gallardo only nodded before they were led inside to a windowless conference room in the center of the sprawling one-story Spanish hacienda-style house. Three other men, all of them dark and serious looking, were seated around an ornately carved stone conference table that had once served as an Aztec altar, bloodstains epoxied over but not removed.
Gallardo introduced them, only by single names and the cartels they represented: Muñoz-Torres of the Sinaloas, Gonzáles of the Beltrans Leyvas, and Sigfredo of the Cartel Golfo. Only Gallardo’s name was real, because María had dealt directly with him from the beginning. The others chose to remain anonymous.
María went to a sideboard and poured a small glass of what she took to be tequila from an unlabeled decanter. Ignoring the pitcher of water, plate of limes, and a small dish of sea salt, she knocked the drink back, smiled, poured another, and sat down at the table across from the others, with Fuentes on her right.
She sipped delicately this time. “Añejo, without a doubt,” she said, and she sipped again. “Herradura Suprema?”
Gallardo threw his head back and laughed loudly, while the others smiled. “Exactly right, of course,” he said. “I wish I had the same sensitivity and discerning tastes for your excellent rums.”