Hunt the Falcon (17 page)

“Well, you're not here. And I don't know what else to do, Tom.”

She was right. Changing his tactics, he said, “When I get back, I want to take you on a vacation.”

“I'd really like that,” Holly responded. “What do you have in mind?”

They had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro together, gone cave-diving in the Yucatán, trekked in Patagonia. A love of outdoor adventure was something they shared. “I thought we could go mountain biking and camping in Monument Valley,” Crocker said. The Navajo Tribal Park in Utah was not only breathtakingly beautiful, it also seemed to replenish his soul every time he visited.

“I think I'd prefer something a little more luxurious this time,” Holly replied. “Like skiing in Park City, or a beach somewhere.”

The vacation he had in mind was far from other people, in a place where he could clear his head. But he said, “Sure. Skiing could be fun.”

“Could be, Tom? You don't sound enthusiastic.”

“I am.”

She asked, “You want me to start making plans now?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?” She sounded disappointed.

“Soon.”

He slept soundly and woke in the morning refreshed. Melkasian filled them in on the latest intel as he drove them to the airport. The Iranians had spent the night at a motel in Chihuahua, about a five-hour drive south of the U.S. border.

The pilot of the Learjet 60XR had long gray hair that he wore in a ponytail. Mancini knew him from a mission they'd been on in Iraq, soon after the fall of Baghdad.

“A lot of shit has gone down since then,” the pilot reminded them.

Events moved quickly in the war against terror. Sometimes it seemed they were grappling with an octopus. You chopped off one tentacle and another sprung into action. Which made sense, given the fact that there were numerous Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups. Sunni groups included al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda Magreb operating in Northern Africa, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and Malaysia; Ansar al-Islam in Iraq; the GIA in Algeria; Asbat al-Ansar in Lebanon; Jundallah, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, all operating in Pakistan.

Shiite terrorist groups included the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestine Liberation Front, and others.

Some of them cooperated with one another. Others were rivals. Loyalties and leadership shifted.

It wasn't Crocker's job to keep track of the various Islamic terrorist organizations and their activities. Experts and analysts at CIA, NSA, NSC, Pentagon, Homeland Security, and FBI did that. Once they identified operatives and targets, Crocker and his men in Black Cell acted as the sharp end of the spear.

Outside the window of the Learjet, Crocker watched thin white clouds drift past like childhood dreams. He had spent many days and weeks as a boy playing good guys and bad guys in the woods behind his house in New England with sticks fashioned into rifles. The fact that he was now doing that for a living seemed preordained.

Looking at the sky and feeling the tight vibration of the plane as it cut through the atmosphere at 550 miles an hour, he experienced a moment of perfection, realizing that fate had put him in the right place, in a role he was suited for, and had surrounded him with men like himself whom he trusted and admired.

He knew exactly what they had to do: stop three Iranian men before they crossed into the States and disappeared, possibly only to be heard of again after they carried out their sinister mission, whatever that was. Only then would the Iranians have actual names and faces—like the al-Qaeda terrorists who killed more than three thousand innocent people on 9/11. Then their backgrounds would be discussed and their motivations speculated on in newspaper articles and on blogs.

Sitting back, he sipped from the plastic cup filled with ice water and listened to Tré beside him talk about Bushido—the ancient code of the samurai—which he said he had been studying and applying to his life. Tré named the eight virtues: rectitude or justice, courage, benevolence or mercy, politeness, honesty and sincerity, honor, loyalty, character and self-control.

Across the aisle, Mancini put down the book on naval warfare he was reading and asked, “According to Bushido, how does one determine the right course of action in a particular situation?”

“It teaches that a true samurai should behave according to an absolute moral standard, one that transcends logic,” Tré answered. “What is right is right, and what's wrong is wrong.”

“So the difference between good and bad and right and wrong are givens, not concepts subject to discussion or justification,” Crocker said.

“Correct.”

“Then how does one determine what's right and wrong?” Mancini asked, playing devil's advocate, which he liked to do.

“There are no set rules to determine that. A warrior should know the difference.”

Crocker could get on board with that.

T
hey landed
at an airstrip on the governor of Chihuahua's ranch a few miles south of Ciudad Juárez. Jim Randal, a young man with a bland, round face, met them wearing a Teflon vest under his tan safari shirt and surrounded by four armed guards. “Welcome to the most violent city in the world,” he said.

Crocker had heard horror stories about mass decapitations and the hundreds of women who went missing only to turn up dead and mutilated. Randal explained that since 2006 something like eleven thousand people had been killed in the city of a million as rival drug gangs fought for control of one of the most lucrative routes, a direct line to the U.S. black market for marijuana, cocaine, and meth.

Crocker's own brother had once been a cocaine addict, and Crocker had seen drugs ravage the lives of countless friends and other members of his family. He'd also participated in the so-called War on Drugs in countries like Colombia, Panama, and Bolivia, destroying coke labs in the jungle and helping arrest financiers and traffickers. To him it wasn't a war but an epidemic. The cure, he thought, lay in helping stem the desire for drugs, educating young people about the dangers of addiction, and providing treatment to users.

Their black SUV stopped at a house with a high white metal gate. Two of the armed Mexican guards got out and rang the buzzer. “Why are we stopping here?” Crocker asked.

“My boss wants to brief you,” Randal answered.

“Who's your boss?”

“Lyle Nesmith. A brilliant analyst and tactician.”

“We didn't come here to meet people.”

A maid wearing a white apron ushered them through a cool stucco house to a patio with flowering plants and a fountain. A buffet of enchiladas, fajitas, and tamales had been laid out on a long tiled table. A waiter asked what they wanted to drink.

Crocker was losing patience. “Where's Nesmith?”

“He's upstairs on a call,” Randal answered with a confident grin. “He's coming.”

Twenty minutes later the agent-in-charge greeted them, a short, fit, bald man with a graying goatee and round rimless glasses. “You missed them,” Nesmith said as he and Crocker sat down across from one another at one of the round metal tables.

“Missed who?” Crocker asked, almost spitting out the food in his mouth.

“The Iranians. I just learned that the Toyota Corolla they were driving tried to cross the border at the Ysleta International Bridge.”

“What?” Crocker rose to his feet.

“Don't worry, they were turned away by U.S. immigration agents who noticed that none of their names matched the name on the car's registration.”

“Why weren't they detained?” Crocker asked.

Nesmith calmly adjusted his glasses. “There was some sort of miscommunication between D.C. and here,” he said. “The ICE agents had the Iranian names on their detention list, not the Venezuelan names on their new passports.”

Crocker wanted to punch something. “What?”

“Calm down. I've got people out looking for them now. We'll find them.”

“How long ago did this happen?” Crocker asked. “I mean, exactly when did they try to cross the border?”

Nesmith looked at his silver Rolex. “Roughly an hour ago.”

“Fuck!” Crocker crossed to the far corner of the yard. Looking up at the broken glass on top of the high wall, he wondered what to do now and whom to call.

He was joined by Mancini and Tré. The latter said, “A samurai master once said: True patience means bearing the unbearable. If that helps.”

Mancini added, “And abused patience turns into fury.”

Crocker spent the time playing fetch with Nesmith's two black German shepherds—strong, sure-footed, beautiful dogs. An hour passed, during which the table on the patio was cleared and the blue sky clouded over.

Crocker saw Nesmith emerge from the house and walk toward him with Randal by his side. “See what they want,” he said, turning to Mancini.

Mancini crossed the yard, spoke to Nesmith, and returned. With his arms crossed against his chest, he said, “They found the silver Corolla.”

“Where?”

“Parked outside a motel in the southeast part of town.”

Crocker: “Are the three Iranians registered there?”

“Nesmith says they are.”

“Let's go.”

He wanted no part of Nesmith, Randal, or the four armed guards, except that he and his men needed weapons, hats, fake beards and mustaches. He also needed Randal to serve as their driver, since they didn't know their way around.

Nesmith argued that a raid like the one they were about to launch required clearances from the local police and backup, but Crocker insisted on keeping the circle small.

They set out midafternoon in a taxi they had rented for the day with Randal at the wheel, talking a mile a minute, informing them that they were entering an extremely dangerous part of town that was run by a branch of the powerful Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas.

“I don't give a fuck about any drug cartel,” Crocker retorted. “Press on.”

“You don't understand how pervasive their influence is,” Randal explained. “I'm talking everyone from beggars on the street to the Presidential Palace and everything in between. You see that old lady out there selling tortillas? She's probably one of their informers. As soon as we pass, she'll report on us. We're going to get stopped and questioned. You'll see.”

“Shut up and drive.”

Los Anillos Motel was an L-shaped dive at the end of a block lined with small assembly plants and warehouses. It looked like the kind of place where people came to hide or slit their wrists. There were a half dozen vehicles parked in the lot out front. One was a silver Corolla.

“That's it,” Mancini said.

Crocker, with his mustache dyed black and the brim of a straw hat pulled low over his forehead, got out with a 9mm Glock tucked under his black T-shirt. He looked around, stretched, then walked to the end of the motel, strolled past a little Pemex gas station, and circled around back.

On his return he leaned in the driver's window and spoke to Randal in a low voice. “Go to the desk and find out what room they're in. Call me on the radio. I want you to stay in the office and make sure the person there doesn't warn whoever might be in the room. As soon as you see us crash through the front door, hurry back to the car and start the engine.”

“Okay. I got it. I understand. What are you guys gonna do?”

“Go. Now!”

“First I've got to call Nesmith.”

“You do and I'll beat your head in,” Crocker said matter-of-factly.

Randal nodded, got out, and walked stiffly to the motel office. A few minutes later his voice came over the walkie-talkie held by Mancini in the backseat. “Room eleven.”

“Let's deploy,” Crocker said.

Mancini, wearing a New York Mets cap pulled down so low that only his dark eyes and thickly bearded face showed, waited for Crocker to again circle to the back. He counted three minutes on his watch, then rapped hard on the red door. No one answered. Ten seconds later he heard Crocker crash through the rear window.

Mancini kicked in the door and hurried in with Tré behind him. The only person they found was Crocker, holding his Glock and vigorously shaking his head. He mouthed the words “No one's here.”

The three men moved fast, checking the closets, bathroom, under the unmade double beds. They found no suitcases, only dirty towels, and a discarded newspaper and two empty water bottles in the trash. Crocker thought he saw an impression on the cover of a Spanish-language magazine on a night table near the phone. He stuck it in his back pocket and said, “Let's get out of here.”

They were back on the
carretera
in minutes. Randal thought they were being followed by a white van. Crocker watched it through the dust-covered side mirror and saw a woman at the wheel and a baby in a child seat behind her.

“We're clear,” he said. “Keep driving.”

Randal steered them to a six-story apartment building on a street behind the U.S. Consulate, pulled into the underground garage, and closed the iron gate.

“That was close,” he said, getting out.

Crocker: “No it wasn't.”

Upstairs, in the third-floor apartment that was their temporary base, Crocker used the old pencil-and-white-paper trick to lift an impression off the magazine cover. It was a name, “Cucho Valdez,” and a number, “7862.”

Randal didn't know what the number meant, but said the name belonged to a smuggler associated with the drug cartels who ran a silver and curio stall in the Mercado Juárez, on Avenida 16 de Septiembre in the center of town.

“Let's go talk to him.”

They piled back into the taxi and slowly nosed through rush hour traffic to the city center.

“What's the significance of the sixteenth of September?” Crocker asked.

“It's the day Mexico celebrates its independence from Spain,” Randal answered.

Mancini, who seemed knowledgeable about practically anything having to do with history, geography, weapons, foreign cultures, and technology, added, “It's actually the day Father Miguel Hidalgo rallied people to march on Mexico City. Kind of like our Fourth of July, which was the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, even though United States sovereignty wasn't formally recognized until the Treaty of Paris, ratified after the Revolutionary War.”

“Then what's up with Cinco de Mayo, May fifth?” Tré asked.

“Cinco de Mayo commemorates the day in 1862 when Mexico defeated the French Army in the Battle of Pueblo,” Mancini answered.

“What were the French doing here in the first place?” Tré wanted to know.

“Ostensibly to collect on debts owed to France, but really they used that as an excuse to try to establish a pro-French government that would extend France's interests through Central America.”

They parked in a lot across from a large two-story cement structure with a big red Coca-Cola sign on top. Randal handed a beggar kid a twenty-peso note to watch the car. Then he led the way into the building and a phantasmagoria of colors and smells—wildly colored blankets, wrestlers' masks, ceramic dolls, saints, red chilies, cheeses, silver trays. Rag-clad kids and cripples crowded around them and pleaded for dollars.

Randal shooed the beggars away and pushed through narrow aisles jammed with tourists and Mexicans. Crocker and his men followed.

“You want beautiful earrings for your señorita?” a young woman asked.

“You want the best Mexican sombrero decorated with real silver for good luck?” asked a boy with two missing front teeth.

“No, gracias.”

“You want a statue of Quetzalcoatl to put in your house?” asked an old lady with long gray braids.

“What would I want that for?” Tré asked back.

“To keep out evil spirits.”

Randal turned left into a stall that offered ponchos, jackets, and sweaters out front. A teenage girl with a large mole above her lip asked in English how she could be of help.

“We're looking for Cucho Valdez,” Randal said.

“Cucho is inside eating lunch.”

They had to lower their heads to get past vividly colored papier-mâché gourds, piñatas, and leather saddles. The walls were lined with display cases filled with silver coffee services, cups, trays, and jewelry. Cucho sat behind a glass counter that held carved silver lighters and antique pistols, chewing on a chicken leg.

He was a man of about thirty with dark skin, high cheekbones, and black hair that hung to his shoulders. Almost pretty in a rough-hewn way with sad, hangdog eyes. Seeing the four strangers, he said, “I love doing business with Americans.”

Randal asked, “Is there somewhere we can talk to you in private?”

“Why? You guys looking for something special?”

Crocker leaned forward and said, “We're real estate investors from Canada hoping to do a deal with three Venezuelans. They told us that you could tell us where to find them.”

Cucho didn't even blink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and asked, “You dudes with the DEA?”

“No. Not at all,” Randal answered.

“Sorry. I don't know any Venezuelans. Valdez is a common name here, and a lot of people are called Cucho. People call me that because they think I look depressed. But I'm not depressed, it's just the way my eyes are formed. I can't help it. I'm actually a very happy person. You've probably got me confused with someone else.” He wiped his hands on a piece of newspaper, picked up a lime-colored cell phone from the glass counter, and punched some numbers.

Randal said, “We're friends of the governor.”

Cucho didn't seem to care.

“Who are you calling?” Crocker asked.

“Randy Simmons. He works with the DEA,” Cucho answered.

“Why?”

“Maybe he can help you.”

Tré, without any prompting, removed a Glock from his waistband, pressed the barrel against Cucho's forehead, and said, “Put the phone away.”

Cucho stuck the phone in his shirt pocket and started to stand.

“Where do you think you're going?” said Tré. “Hold it right there.”

“Okay,” Cucho said, stopping in midcrouch with his hands raised over his head. “What's the problem here? I told you before, you got the wrong man.”

Tré, grinning: “There isn't a problem, except that you're acting weird.”

When Cucho stepped back, Crocker swung around behind the counter and grabbed him in a headlock. Tré vaulted the counter, gun still drawn. The three men stood in the crowded dark space.

Tré: “What do we do now?”

Crocker saw Randal on the other side of the counter, blocking the girl with the mole above her lip, who was trying to push past him. Pointing to a roll of tape on a shelf behind the counter, he said to Tré, “Wrap some of that over his mouth, then use it to secure his wrists and ankles.”