Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel (7 page)

13

MEXICO, CHIHUAHUA

Twenty-eight-year-old Mariana Mederos was a second-generation Mexican American working as a field agent for the CIA in the city of Chihuahua, the capital of Chihuahua State. She was five foot nine, with a runner’s physique, brown hair, and brown eyes. She’d been two hundred miles south of the border during the New Mexico Event. Awake at zero hour chatting with a contact over the internet, she heard the incongruous roll of distant thunder and felt the tremor in the earth a short time later. Her satellite phone rang soon afterward with a call from the Mexico station chief wanting to know if she could supply any intel as to what the hell had just happened. No one else within the agency was as close to ground zero, and there hadn’t been even the slightest jot of intelligence to indicate that a nuke had been in play.

Since those early hours after the explosion, life had moved pretty fast for Mariana, even if only in the communicative sense. Much of her work was done over the computer from the privacy of her apartment, where she kept in contact with her network of informants—common citizens on the CIA payroll. It didn’t cost a great deal to keep the information flowing in the drug-ravaged state, with its struggling economy.
As little as a thousand pesos a week (less than one hundred dollars) could be enough. The majority of the intel she collected was passed on to the DEA and the ICE, to be used in the war on drugs—a “war” that she believed the United States had been fighting with at least one hand behind its back, especially when she considered how much of the information she passed up the chain that was never acted upon.

After the New Mexico Event, however, the nature of her job took on a whole new aspect with an unprecedented sense of urgency. Suddenly she was the CIA’s go-to gal on the ground in the middle of a hot zone, and within only a few hours, she found herself entrusted with resources and information that were customarily reserved for personnel well above her pay grade. The “company” was coming to Chihuahua, and it would be her responsibility to establish arriving operatives in and around the city, introducing them to the appropriate contacts or state officials.

The Mexican government had given its tacit approval for this, but only at the intelligence level. The Policía Federal Ministerial, Mexico’s equivalent of the CIA, was agreeing to a limited influx of American intelligence personnel for one reason and one reason only: nuclear weapons scared the living hell out of everyone, and when it came to such a threat, it didn’t much matter whether or not you liked or trusted the CIA, because its people were the ones you unquestionably wanted on your team upon confirmation that the lunatic fringe had gotten their hands on the bomb.

This morning Mariana had agreed to meet with a contact in La Catedral de Chihuahua, a large, ornate Catholic church in the Plaza de Armas. This would be her first face-to-face with the contact Carolina Rodríguez, a woman from the northern part of the state who had sent her an email claiming to have detailed information about the explosion. She had asked that Mariana bring one thousand American dollars, apologizing for the size of the request, though promising that Mariana would find the information well worth it.

Seated at the back of the cathedral, pretending to be lost in prayer, Mariana considered the amount of Carolina’s demand, knowing that a thousand dollars was a great deal of money to the woman who supported three daughters by cleaning houses for less than ninety dollars a week. Mariana guessed the information she was bringing would either
be worth a great deal more than a thousand dollars or nothing at all, and she was leaning toward the latter, but this was the kind of lead that had eventually killed Bin Laden in 2011.

There were only twenty or thirty people in the cathedral this morning, scattered among the pews, some sitting and some on their knees, all of them lost in their own thoughts. A man in a black suit and dark sunglasses entered the pew behind her and sat down just off her right shoulder. She could feel him looking at her, realizing he’d probably sat there to stare, something not uncommon in her experience. Since he was too close for her to have a private conversation anyway, she decided to move.

“What’s wrong?” the man said in Spanish as she stood up to leave. “Am I not good enough to pray with?”

She looked at him, and he removed the glasses, his bulbous eyes unmistakable.

Fear surged in her veins. She cast a panicked look around, seeing that one of Castañeda’s men covered every exit.

“Please,” Castañeda said. “Sit. We have much to talk about, you and I.”

Having little choice, Mariana retook her seat. “What have you done with Señora Rodríguez?”

Castañeda smiled, placing a hand upon his breast. “I am Señora Rodríguez,” he said pleasantly, “and I remain at your service.”

Mariana felt like the biggest idiot of all time. One of her most reliable informants over the last nine months had been Castañeda himself, the very man whose movement she’d been attempting to track. He’d been leading her on a wild goose chase, feeding her intel that, while reliable, always led the DEA to only small shipments of drugs—never the coveted mother lode, and never anywhere close to Castañeda.

He saw the angry look on her face and chortled. “Don’t look that way,” he said, switching to English to reduce their chances of being understood by anyone coming close. “I’ve given you nothing but truthful information since we began our correspondence. You should be grateful.”

Mariana was remembering that she’d been put into contact with Señora Rodriguez through a man named Sergio, whom she had not heard from in some time. “And Sergio?” she asked quietly.

“Oh, I’m afraid Sergio is quite dead,” Castañeda said. “It’s interest
ing, don’t you think, that the DEA chose to act on only about a third of the information I sent to you? Why do you believe that is?”

Mariana felt her face grow hot. “Why are we having this meeting, Señor Castañeda?”

“I’ve already told you. I have information about the nuclear device that was detonated in Puerto Paloma.”

She stared at him, wondering how seriously to take what he was saying. He was known to toy with his victims before killing them. She put her arm over the back of the pew, turning to look at him more directly in an attempt to appear confident. “In that case, I’m listening.”

He became very serious, and she saw genuine concern on his face. “First, I’m going to need certain guarantees.”

She almost didn’t believe her eyes or her ears. Castañeda wasn’t just concerned, he was afraid of something, and he was coming to the CIA for help—coming to
her
, the woman who’d been hunting him all across the state of Chihuahua. “Guarantees? You’re the leader of a drug cartel, and your people have done horrible things on both sides of the border. I’m not sure what kinds of guarantees you think anyone would be willing to give you.”

He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees and keeping his voice low. “Listen to me. I am prepared to tell you precisely what kind of device was detonated, exactly how many kilotons, who made it, who detonated it, and exactly where he was when he detonated it . . . but not without guarantees.”

Mariana was hard pressed to conceal the excitement that began to simmer in her blood. She suddenly saw herself halfway to having her own office in Langley, the white Range Rover she’d been dreaming about, a house in Georgetown, out of the field and into the upper echelon—all for the price of a few guarantees. “What guarantees?” she asked, trying to appear doubtful.

“I had nothing to do with the bomb,” he said. “I’m a business man, not a terrorist.” She made a
pssh
sound at that. “I don’t want to be blamed for this explosion just because it happened in my territory in one of my tunnels. Do you understand?”

Did that slip about the tunnel?
she wondered.
Or was he throwing me a bone?

“Okay,” she said, “I don’t see a problem with that. If you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it.”

He looked at her, his half-lidded eyes taking on a menacing air for the first time. “What I am telling you is that I do not want to be hunted.”

“Excuse me, but you’re a drug lord; you’re already hunted. Nobody on either side of the Rio Grande is going to just forget about you.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I am not hunted the way you think I am hunted. I have friends who protect me: friends among the army and the police who warn me not to be in certain places when it is dangerous for me to be there. Do you understand?”

She drew a breath and sighed. “Of course. This is Mexico, after all.”

“So,” he continued, “these friends, these people who protect me, would be forced to turn their backs on me if I were labeled a nuclear terrorist. Some of them might even find it advantageous to betray certain of my secrets, which would undoubtedly lead to my capture. Is this making sense to you? Are you located high enough in your agency to guarantee that I will not be associated with this bomb; that I will not be labeled a nuclear terrorist?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Most of what you’re offering sounds to me like information we’d uncover on our own in due course.”

He sat back, extending his arms across the back of the pew. “Has your army isolated the isotopes yet? If they have, then you know it was a uranium bomb and not plutonium . . . and in time you will discover that it was probably enriched at the Soviet enrichment facility in the Urals.”

For Castañeda to know this level of detail meant the rest of his information might be reliable, because she herself had only been made privy to the isotope results a few hours earlier, and as yet there had been no public disclosure. If he was correct about the bomb being made with
Russian
uranium—which the army would not be able to determine right away—that was absolutely going to set a cat among the pigeons. Castañeda had already given her enough intel to ensure her superiors’ ongoing confidence—provided she was able to get out of the cathedral alive—but she really wanted that office in Langley, so she began to angle. “What I can guarantee is this,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re not blamed or associated with the bomb. It wouldn’t be advantageous for my government to blame the wrong person anyhow.”

“In other words, you have the authority to guarantee me nothing.”

“Look,” she said, “nobody would in a situation like this. Clearances have to be obtained. You were military. You know how it works.”

He leaned forward again, very close to her this time because there were people passing behind them. “What kinds of guarantees would your government have given for information that could have prevented 9/11?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He sat back and smiled. “Use your imagination.”

“The bomb already went off.”

“Did it?” he asked, the smile lingering as he got to his feet. “You can contact me at the usual email address if and when you are able to make the necessary guarantees.”

“Wait!” she said, experiencing a burst of inspiration. “If you really do have the kind of information that you’ve just implied, then . . . for a little extra, I can give you the guarantees you’re looking for.”

He sat back down. “Extra? What extra?”

“In exchange for being left alone—which is what you’re really asking for here, let’s be honest—you’re going to have to cool it with the violence on both sides of the border. Stop killing cops and civilians. Stick to battling your rival cartels. If you’ll make me that guarantee now, then I’m sure I can get the guarantees you’re asking for.”

He stared at her, a dubious frown creasing his face.

“Think about it,” she said. “If you offer this . . . oh, I don’t know, call it a
cease-fire;
cartels have offered that kind of treaty before—that would motivate my government to not only grant the guarantees you want, but to keep their word. And that should matter to you, Tony, because a guarantee isn’t any good unless there’s an incentive to stand behind it.”

Castañeda didn’t like to be called Tony, and he was sure she knew it. He sat looking at her, thinking that he’d like to fuck her; that she was very lucky he needed her help. Because under normal circumstances, a CIA operative as pretty as this one would have looked very good to him down on all fours with a leash around her neck.

“
Chechenos
,” he said. “The bombs were smuggled into Mexico by stinking, lying Chechen dogs.”

14

WASHINGTON, DC,
The Pentagon

General William Couture stalked into a heavily guarded conference room at the Pentagon dressed in his starched universal camouflage ACU, flanked by his aide-de-camp, an equally towering army major who looked as though he’d been chiseled from a block of granite and who wore a .45 caliber Glock 21 pistol slung beneath each arm. Rumor had it that he carried two weapons so he could toss one to the general in the event there was ever a need to defend themselves. Couture stood at the head of a long mahogany table lined with generals and admirals from all branches of the United States military. All seven of the Joint Chiefs were present, as were several other uniformed service chiefs.

Couture’s expression was stern, his merciless gaze set firmly.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a sonorous voice, “the secretary of defense has ordered us to Fast Pace.” This was the code phrase for DEFCON 2. “The president is aboard Air Force One, and the vice president has already been taken to a hardened location belowground. In addition, the United States Congress is being evacuated from the District of Columbia as we speak. Each member of Congress will return to his or her
home state, where they will remain until we are back to at least DEFCON 4.” DEFCON 5, code named Fade Out, was the most relaxed of the defense conditions.

Most of what Couture had just announced, the Joint Chiefs already knew. What they did not know was
why
the defense condition had been escalated again. The moment the army had verified a nuclear explosion in southern New Mexico, the US military had been ordered to DEFCON 3, but the last time the US had stood at DEFCON 2 was during the three-week Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks against Israel, only to be driven back into their own countries before a cease-fire was reached. DEFCON 2 was the last stage before nuclear war, and no one seated at the table had yet heard anything to merit an escalation of this magnitude.

“Within the hour,” Couture continued, “everyone in this room—myself included—will be airlifted to Edwards Air Force Base, where a command center is being prepared. All submarine captains are being alerted that a nuclear strike on the District of Columbia may be imminent.” Couture shifted his gaze to a pair of navy admirals. “These vessels are not—repeat,
not
—to assume Cocked Pistol status without a direct order from the president aboard Air Force One, where he will remain for the foreseeable future.” Cocked Pistol was the code name for DEFCON 1: clearance to use nuclear force.

“In addition, the Russian Federation and the Republic of China have been put on notice. There has been no provocative language, but the president has made it to clear to both nations that the United States will remain poised to defend itself
with
full military capacity
in the event that Washington, DC, is destroyed.”

By now the Joint Chiefs were exchanging pensive glances.

Couture pulled out his chair, taking a seat and lacing his fingers on the tabletop. “Now, here is the reason we are at Fast Pace, gentlemen: there is an active two-kiloton RA-115 loose within the United States, and we have no idea where it is.”

“Jesus,” muttered a buzz-cut Marine Corps general, clicking a pen and rocking back in his seat. “So they’re real.”

“What’s an RA-115?” asked the Coast Guard admiral seated next to him. “Never heard of it.”

“Until now,” the Marine said, “nothing more than a rumor—a Cold War legend.”

“It’s a Russian suitcase nuke,” Couture explained. “We’re pressing the Russians to provide us the necessary intel, but so far they’re vacillating. Regardless, CIA has determined—to within what they consider a ninety-five-percent certainty—that the New Mexico Event was the result of a belowground detonation of one of
two
of these damn things. From what CIA has pieced together, it looks like Chechen insurgents paid one of the Mexican cartels to let them cross through a tunnel under the border. The reason for the president’s immediate departure is that one of these Chechens is reported to have brought the other device into the country seventeen days ago.”

“Good God!” said the pallid-looking vice chairman, General John Pickett. “With a seventeen-day head start, it could be anywhere.” He had arrived at the Pentagon only a half hour earlier, having been in hospital for the last three days with an intestinal virus he’d picked up during a recent visit to Pakistan.

“What went wrong with the other bomb, General?” asked the Marine. “Does CIA have any idea why it went off?”

“It’s still open to conjecture at this point,” Couture replied. “We do know, however, that the ICE office in Albuquerque received an eleventh-hour tip about some kind of special shipment coming across the border. The call was received a couple of hours before the blast, and it’s beginning to look like the local ICE team out there may have made a late-night interdiction raid on the tunnel. The fact that thirteen ICE agents have gone missing seems to support the theory, and CIA is guessing that our Chechen friends must have detonated the bomb as a result.”

The Joint Chiefs began to talk among themselves.

Couture elevated his voice. “There’s no way we can sit on this, gentlemen. The president will address the nation from Air Force One within the hour. He’s going to lay it on the table. He’s going to announce that we suspect a nuclear weapon to be loose within the United States.”

“There’ll be mass exodus,” someone muttered. “DC and Manhattan will be a pair of ghost towns by this time tomorrow.”

“Not to mention LA,” someone else remarked. “Chicago.”

Couture rocked back in the chair. “Very possible. That’s why the president’s decided to declare martial law in each of the cities you’ve just mentioned. With luck and God willing, that will be the extent of it, though you can bet that all arms of local law enforcement will be stretched to the limit on a national level. This is exactly what we’ve been fearing, gentlemen. Our nuclear chickens have come home to roost.”