“All right, listen,” Crocker said, thinking ahead. “I want you to show what you’ve got to my ordnance guy, Mancini. So he can get a sense of what’s available. While you’re doing that, I’ll go upstairs to find out what’s going on.”
Nieves, who was so big and wide he filled a third of the narrow galley kitchen, warned, “No one except for us agents is allowed up there.”
“I have a Level-Seven security clearance,” Crocker said.
“I’ve got to check with Lane first.”
“Screw that.”
Chapter Nine
If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
– Mario Andretti
Crocker climbed the wooden steps two at a time up to the second floor, entered the open door to his right, and saw Lane standing with his back to him speaking on an encrypted phone-which he indentified immediately from the configuration of the instrument and the key on top.
Lane, seeing Crocker, waved him away and snapped his fingers at Karen Steele, who was leaning on the edge of a metal desk talking to a guy with buzz-cut dark hair, who Crocker assumed was Bob Marion.
“Sorry, guy,” she said, hurrying over to Crocker and holding up a hand to push him back, “you’re not allowed in here.”
“The hell I’m not. I need to talk to Lane,” Crocker answered, shoving her hand off his chest.
“You can’t!”
Crocker quickly glanced at the clock on the wall. Another fifteen minutes had passed. He said, “Lane, if we’re going to launch this mission tonight, we need to start making plans.”
Lane covered the receiver and shouted, “I know that. Don’t you think I fucking know that?”
“Then hurry up. I want to rescue these women while they’re still alive.”
He knew enough not to take it personally. Tempers frayed sometimes when type A personalities were keyed up and on edge. The important thing was that they were all fighting for the same cause and had a lot at stake.
Fight in people was a positive, not a negative, Crocker reminded himself. It produced good results when directed intelligently, which was what he hoped was going to happen now, as they all sat in the living room-he, Davis, Mancini, Akil, Suárez, Lane, Nieves, Karen Steele, and the wiry guy with the smirk on his face and buzz cut whom he still hadn’t been introduced to but assumed was Bob Marion-listening to the sheriff of Yavapai County, Arizona, describe how a tip phoned into Crime Stoppers led them to an airstrip outside Flagstaff and a flight piloted by a man named Joss Clemson that terminated in Guadalajara.
Karen Steele explained that from the beginning she and other cartel specialists had suspected Los Zetas, in part because of the group’s global ambitions and diversity. Los Zetas, unlike the other leading cartels, were involved in satellite businesses, including the theft of petroleum from the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, software and product piracy, prostitution, human smuggling, extortion, money laundering, assassination for hire, auto theft, and robbery. A July 25, 2011, White House executive order named them a transnational crime threat to U.S. national security.
Sheriff Higgins cut in to add that the cartel had become a major crime threat in over a thousand cities and towns in the United States. He related how a colleague of his, who was the police chief of Champaign, Illinois, had recently arrested three Zetas members in connection with a murder in a downtown garage. Subsequent to that, the chief started receiving calls on his cell and home phones warning him to release the men and threatening his wife and children.
“They knew the address of his wife’s place of work and where his boys went to school,” said Sheriff Higgins. “They’re scared of no one.”
Next, Steele explained that Los Zetas had evolved from a local Mafia to a quasipolitical organization with international ambitions. They had created alliances with other national criminal groups like Los Kaibiles in Guatemala, as well as the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba, and were known to cooperate with terrorists like Hezbollah.
“If they’re such a threat, why haven’t we been more aggressive in going after them?” Mancini asked.
“They make a lot of money,” Lane answered.
“What does that mean?”
“Their money-laundering activities provide a huge stream of income for major U.S. banks.”
Crocker’s stomach started to turn. The unethical activities of U.S. financial companies and banks, and the fact that they often operated against the interests of the U.S. government and the American people, formed a subject that he didn’t understand that well, but he knew enough to know it stank. Massive greed of that sort disgusted him.
Steele introduced the man with the short black hair. He was Bob Marion, a former CIA analyst who now worked as a high-level security consultant for several large multinational companies. His specialty, he said, was the Mexican cartels and their financial activities.
As coffee was served, Marion explained that since a number of Zetas leaders had been killed and arrested in 2011 and 2012, including two of its founders, Heriberto Lazcano, a.k.a. El Bronce, and Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, a.k.a. Z-40, some individual cell leaders had become more ambitious and started to advance their own agendas.
One of these, a man named Ivan Jouma, was particularly pernicious, and even articulated a pseudoideological and quasimythical justification for his group’s existence. “He orders extreme, symbolic violence to deal with his enemies,” Marion remarked. “And projects a Robin Hood-type image to the poor by donating food and medical care and funding and building schools.”
“In other words, he’s building a popular following,” Lane interjected.
“He’s extremely active right now,” Bob Marion continued, “and looking for ways to add to his growing legend. He’s also the man who we believe kidnapped Lisa and Olivia Clark and is holding them hostage.”
“Why?”
“To bolster his image as a Mexican nationalist and folk figure with a quality that’s known as duende.”
“What’s duende?” Crocker asked.
“The ability to attract people through personal magnetism.”
Crocker didn’t give a shit about his charm. “Tell me about his background.”
“His father was a Syrian immigrant and small landowner. His mother, a Sonoran Indian from the west coast. He was raised by his mother’s family and recruited into the Mexican Army’s elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales-GAFE-at the age of nineteen. We know that he was a member of a GAFE unit that received urban warfare training from our Special Forces. He deserted with Lieutenant Osiel Cárdenas Guillén in 1999 to provide security for the Gulf cartel. And split from the Gulf cartel in 2010 to join Los Zetas. For the last three years, he’s been running his own cell within that organization, and is considered aggressive and ambitious.”
Crocker had helped train a group of Mexican paratroopers at Fort Bragg in the mid-nineties. “You have a photo?” he asked.
“Here are two, before and after he was shot in the face during a shootout with the Gulf cartel in late 2010,” Marion answered, sliding them in front of him. “As you can see, he underwent some extensive plastic surgery.”
Crocker first studied the newer picture, which reminded him of a Mexican Mickey Rourke because of the wise-guy sneer and long, stringy hair. The contrast between it and the older photo was considerable. The hungry expression in the eyes and mouth struck him. “Ivan, right?”
“Ivan Jouma, known to most people as El Chacal.”
“I think I might have trained this guy in a fast-roping, rappelling, and climbing course at Fort Bragg, around 1996.”
“That’s possible.”
“Where is he now?” Crocker asked, remembering a charming, hard-charging young man who seemed much more alert than the others, played the guitar and sang, and told stories about his uncle, who he claimed was a sorcerer.