For Whom the Bell Tolls

What Jordan found, was a little disconcerting. It took him almost three hours to beat down the multiple firewalls protecting that site. Jordan could breach any defense in depth. But he had never encountered one this robust before.

To his horror, he found that he had just hacked what could best be described as the U.S. data center for the Sinaloa cartel.

That might have gotten somebody less capable killed. But Jordan had hopped his spoofs through enough encrypted sites that the people he had cracked would never be able to trace back to him.

Jordan was pretty sure that the NIDS at the cracked site would be blaring alerts. And even though it was 05:30 he estimated that he had about 10 clear minutes. So he had to move fast.

He started a compressed search of their filesystem on every keyword he could think of involving bombs.

It didn't take him long to find the right file. A man known simply as "Captain" Morro was running an operation code named "Decapitar" from the very top of the Cartel. And the bomb was mixed up in that.

Jordan did an instant copy and then dumped out of the site. On the way out he dropped bread crumbs that led to the Chinese. That ought to give their security people something to chase for the next millennium.

It took another day to do the analytics. But what Jordan discovered was beyond belief.

Mexico City is perhaps the single most crucial city in the world. It is Mexico's largest as well as that country's political, cultural, educational and financial center. It is also the world's sixth largest. And as a single city, it boasts the fifth-largest economy in Latin America. So it has a disproportionate influence on the Mexican economic system.

Worse, Mexico City is located in a wide geographic bowl surrounded by mountains. So, besides wrecking the financial markets and cutting the head off the Mexican government the effect of a nuclear blast inside that bowl would instantly incinerate twenty-two million people.

Of course the Cartels would benefit from the resulting chaos – maybe even take over the entire Country. At least that was the plan.

Jordan whipped out his cell. And he dialed Golz with shaking fingers. He said, "We need a meeting Bernie. I've discovered something you won't believe."

Exactly two hours later he was sitting at the long conference table with Golz and three other people. Each face reflected a mixture of interest and concern.

There was Kharkov, an older Russian who had been one of Golz's main adversaries throughout the Great Game. His presence at the table was an homage to the triumph of capitalism over socialist idealism. He was now Bernie's partner.

The other two were the Company's primary field operatives - at least for all things Latino.

Pablo El Hefe, was some sort of former L.A. gang leader.

It wasn't clear how he came to be employed by the Organization. But if it involved Latinos he had deep connections. And he could get the job done. Plus, he had a reputation for being a stone cold killer.

He was big, fat and morose, with a moon face, shaved head, little piggy eyes and a four-day stubble on his cruel and stupid face.

If he had been an animal, he would have been a wild boar.

Jordan was six inches taller than Pablo. But the gangster was at least 50 pounds heavier. And Jordan had no illusions about what Pablo would do to him if the situation ever got around to ass kicking.

Pablo had some kind of booty relationship with the occupant of the other chair.

Pilar was more guapo than guapa. She was medium height. Her body was thick and her tits were huge. She had the tattoos, swarthy skin, abundant raven hair, slab face and high cheekbones of a classic barrio chola.

But she had kind dark eyes. Her role seemed to be to keep Pablo from self-destructing. And everybody knew that without her Pablo would have just been another 18th Street banger.

Golz said, "Tell us what you know for sure Bobby Lee."

Jordan outlined everything he had learned. He said, "An offshoot of the Sinaloa Cartel has acquired a Cold War hydrogen bomb. Sometime in the past week they transported it through Laredo, to Mexico City.

Then he looked intently at each of them and said, "They are planning on setting it off in the Alameda Central as soon as they can get it rigged. Their aim is to behead the Mexican government and then make hay out of the chaos."

Pablo said admiringly, "Gangsta!!"

Pilar said with more emotion than Jordan had ever heard from her, "Shut up cabron. My family lives there."

Golz actually blanched and said, "We need to get this information out to every Agency."

Kharkov looked shrewdly at the group. He was the deep thinker– a planner and schemer in the old Soviet model.

He said, "If we broadcast this to the intelligence community we are going to lose control of it. Worse it will get leaked for sure. Remember this is Mexico and a lot of their officials are in the pockets of the Cartels."

Then he looked shrewdly at the group and said, "More importantly, none of those agencies except DEA has any penetration. They won't know where to start and if they begin turning over rocks it might encourage them to detonate the bomb before we can do something about it."

He turned to Pablo and said, "How hard would it be for you to get in contact with those people?"

Pablo sneered and said, "Ain't no thang. We ran a lot of shit for those vatos back in the day."

Kharkov looked measuredly at him and said, "So you can get in touch with the right people if we send you down there?"

Pablo looked bored and said, "Like I said, ain'go."

Kharkov turned to Jordan and said, "If you are with him can you get the information we need? We can send in a Delta unit but we have to know the precise location and situation."

Jordan felt something he hadn't experienced since his days with Red Dawn. He couldn't believe how much he had missed being part of the action.

He said as calmly as he could, "That kind of exploit is really easy. I just need to know where to do the eavesdropping. If Pablo and Pilar can get me a target, I can get the information."

Kharkov nodded and said, "So we have a plan."

–––––––––––––––––-

Four days later, the three of them met in Mexico City. Pablo and Pilar had flown in the day after the meeting. While Jordan had driven in from the border crossing at Brownsville.

Pablo and Pilar were basically portraying what they were – LA barrio trash touching base with the local supplier community. That was an easy legend to document.

Jordan was playing a roving troubleshooter for Globecomm. Technical service calls were his normal legend.

He was purportedly there to do special maintenance on the Televisa satellite uplink hubs. That gave him the freedom to move around the area with a truck full of electronic gear - and not raise any suspicion.

Jordan was driving the classic big white Econoline van. It had the markings of a Globecomm Systems service truck and it had all of the gear that you would expect with a mobile satellite support operation.

Of course none of that technology had any purpose other than surveillance. And there was a whole lot of tactical shit buried in special containers under the floorboards.

Normally you would have to be insane to park a van loaded with high-tech gear in a hotel parking lot in Mexico City.

But 160 pounds of muscle, fangs and unconditional devotion was sleeping inside. So if a thief got in - Buster would make sure that they never got out.

The three of them had agreed to meet in the café of the Hotel Histórico Central, which is where they were all staying.

The plan was to have Jordan introduce himself. Anybody watching would think that Pablo was pimping his woman to some horny Anglo.

They all did tequila shots. Pablo was downing his. Jordan and Pilar were surreptitiously pouring theirs into their water glasses.

Jordan said, "How did it go so far? Did you make contact?"

Pilar said, "We spent our time renewing old acquaintances in Iztapalapa."

Jordan knew that place. It was a rat's nest of cheap housing outside the City center to the northeast. It was also a well-known supermarket for the drug trade.

He said, "Did you learn anything useful?"

Pilar said, "We got a lead on a big hacienda just east of Coatlinchan. It's at the base of Mt Tlaloc. The Cartels use it as a neutral meeting place. All the old grudges get left at the door."

She added, "We are planning on going out there. If they are going to pull any kind of shit one of the Cartel soldiers will brag about it. Particularly if it's while I am fucking him"

Jordan looked at Pilar's sturdy body and huge rack and thought to himself, "I bet he'll be singing like a little chickadee once that woman gets him between her legs."

Pablo looked bored. Apparently the two of them used that ploy all the time.

Pilar said, "There's a wall all the way around the place. But it backs up to the mountain and you can get line of sight from up there. It's only a kilometer away from the buildings."

Jordan could visualize it. The place was nestled in a valley at the foot of the mountains next to Coatlinchan. And of course the whole thing was on Google maps. There was a rough road up Mt. Tlaloc that would put him in a perfect position to infiltrate down through the scrub trees to the area right above the compound.

So the following night found Jordan sitting in a black ghillie suit. He probably didn't need that much concealment. But there were totally ruthless people down there. And he didn't want to take the slightest chance.

He had his Bluesniper rifle with him. And it's attached Gumstix board was loaded with malware. Gumstix works in conjunction with the rifle to give the sniper all of the computer functionality required to Bluebug any Bluetooth device within a two kilometer radius.

He had been using it since the early days in Kandahar.

Jordan was scanning the 2.4 Gigahertz spectrum looking for something interesting. He was a good 100 vertical yards from the wall and almost a quarter mile from the main house. But the Hyperlink 14.9 dBi Randome directional antenna that comprised the barrel of the rifle lit up his Gumstix with perhaps twenty open ports.

He aimed the barrel from one place to another until he had gotten a picture of the distribution of the devices.

Most of the phones were dispersed around the area surrounding the house. Those were guards. But there was a concentration of four high-end Android devices on the patio of the hacienda.

Jordan guessed that those were bosses - maybe in a meeting.

He had something really nasty mounted on the Gumstix. It was essentially a passive listening device that collected everything that was said near the phone it was embedded in.

Then it would surreptitiously "call home" at an appointed time using the smart-phone's internet connection.

It would transfer what it had recorded and then go back to passive listening.

The transfer was so cloaked in anonymizing measures that it was not possible to trace back to the recipient. And the only time the malware could be detected was during the short time it was burst transmitting.

Thus it was –in effect - invulnerable to any electronic countermeasures.

Jordan aimed and electronically dropped the bug on each of the four phones in the house. None of them had the security turned on so it was an easy exploit. He was just packing up his gear when all hell broke loose behind him at the van.

Buster's deep bark boomed across the desert landscape and there was some screaming. It was far enough away that nobody in the compound could hear it but it freaked Jordan out.

He grabbed his gear and scampered the 200 yards back to his van. The moon was out but the ghillie suit made him look like a black shadow moving across the desert terrain.

Jordan was in panic mode. Buster never did ANYTHING aggressive unless there was a threat.

There was a barely discernable path leading from the back of the compound and up the hill to the road that they were on. Maybe one of the guards had stumbled on them in the dark?

Jordan had a K-bar and a Glock strapped to his tac-gear. But he had never used either in anger. And Buster could threaten but he would never hurt anybody. Jordan had a thrill of anguish, What if they had to hurt somebody now?

When he got to the van Jordan discovered to his relief and puzzlement that the person Buster had cornered was no threat.

A female figure was cowering against a rock face next to the road. She was wailing pitifully hunched in a fetal position with her hands covering her face.

She was wearing a badly ripped and filthy dress that might have been white at some time. And she was dirty and covered in blood. She was absolutely terrified.

Buster was standing over her in a posture that said, "Don't move." The hair on his broad back was up and he looked like the hound from hell. As Jordan approached Buster turned his head and said conversationally, "She tried to break in Boss." That explained it.

Jordan said, "It's okay now buddy. You can stand-down. Good job." And he gave Buster a little pat between his battle-scarred ears. Buster relaxed and sat – pant-pant-slobber-slobber.

Jordan turned his attention to the woman. Her unearthly wailing was heart rending. Jordan still didn't know whether she was a threat, or not. He had learned in the sandbox that helpless women sometimes had bombs strapped to them.

He knelt down next to her and said as gently as possible, "it's okay. You're safe. I'm sorry about the dog but he thought you were breaking into our van. My name is Robert. What's yours?"

The woman continued to sob but at least she took her hands away from her face long enough to look questioningly at Jordan.

That look rocked him back on his heels. She had the face of an angel – faultless features aligned so symmetrically that even with the dirt and terror her transcendent beauty was hard to miss.

Her eyes, which were filled with wretchedness and pain, were huge, amber and almost feline. Her mouth was wide and sensual even though it was turned down in a caricature of the mask of misery.

Jordan spread his arms wide and said in his gentlest voice, "Please – we are not going to hurt you. We are here to help you."

Then he remembered he was wearing the ghillie suit which probably made the terrified woman think that she was about to be raped by Bigfoot.

He stood and shucked it off. Underneath he was wearing black tac-pants and a black t-shirt. He looked like his typical nerd self now.

He knelt down next to the woman - who had gone back to her original fetal position - and said, "Are you thirsty? Can I get you some water?"

The woman actually focused on him for a second and said in a pitiful voice, "Yes please. I'm dying of thirst."

The fact that she had said that in English surprised Jordan. He had just assumed that she was a local campasino Mexicana who had stumbled on his van by accident.

He rose and got a bottle of water out of the van.

Buster followed him back to the van, tail wagging, slobber-slobber-pant-pant. He climbed back up into his dog-bed. Then he cocked one leg and began grooming his unmentionables – his watch was completed.

Jordan got a liter bottle of agua potable and returned to the girl. She had stopped wailing and was solemnly contemplating him. He handed it to her and she grabbed it with both hands and began gulping it.

Jordan reached out and touched her arm saying, "Slow down – you'll make yourself sick."

The woman dropped the bottle, shrieked and scrambled backwards up the rock face. Jordan was so startled by the reaction that he fell back on the road.

She cowered there contemplating him with terror.

He stood and brushed his butt off. Then he spread his arms in a friendly entreaty and said, "Please don't be afraid. I would never hurt you. But there are some very bad men just down the mountain and I think we should get out of here before they find us."

At that, a look of sheer panic came into the woman's haunted eyes and she whimpered. Jordan guessed that she had originally come from down there and it wasn't pretty.

He said continuing his gentlest tone, "Please get in the van. I won't hurt you and I will drive you wherever you want to go. It's just that I am going to have to leave now. I promise that I will not touch you again – and I'm sorry"

The last part was said with actual remorse.

The woman hesitated for a couple of seconds. Then she rose tentatively and walked toward the van, making a wide circle around Jordan as she did it.

She opened the passenger side door and got in, shoving as far over toward the door as she could get.

Jordan picked up his Ghillie suit and bluesniping gear and put it in the back with Buster. Then he got into the driver's seat and started the van.

He had carefully planned the exfiltration on a path away from the compound. And in the dark, as he bounced over the practically non-existent road with no headlights, he was wondering what was sitting next to him and how she had gotten there.

He said as gently and conversationally as he could, "What's your name? Mine's Robert but everybody calls me Bobby Lee."

She gave him an almost normal look and said in a very soft voice, "Mary - My name is Mary." It was like she was affirming something to herself.

They drove along the path until they got to an actual paved road. It was two-lane blacktop but after what they had been on it felt like the Autobahn.

Jordan turned on the lights and proceeded at normal highway speeds. Then he looked over at his passenger.

She was crammed in the space between the seat and the door, with her arms around her drawn up knees. She was staring at him silently terrified.

Jordan remembered that look.

Back in 2003. He had been assigned to 2-70 Armor's RCT. He was SIGINT for the spearhead that was seizing the crossings over the Euphrates at Al Hillah. Up to that point the ride had been uneventful – if you didn't count the three day sandstorm.

But it was at that river crossing that they had run into the Medina Division of the Republican Guard. Those were elite troops and they were dug in.

What followed was more like a bar-room brawl after somebody shot out the lights. RPGs and Iraqi artillery seemed to come from everywhere. The noise was indescribable and for about three hours Jordan thought he was going to get his ticket punched – even though he and his gear were traveling at the rear of the column in an M3.

The urban fighting was so fierce that the 3rd ID tanks and infantry pulled back to let the air cover do their thing.

The F16s and A10s pretty-much fucked up whatever was left after the Apaches had finished. And the column started to roll up highway 8 again.

That night the 2-70s Headquarters Battalion was bivouacked in the area northeast of town. They were waiting to turn the place over to the Jarheads. Who were going to finish mopping up what was left of the defenders.

Jordan was sitting outside his Bradley enjoying the evening breeze when a 10th Mountain detail came by herding some Iraqi prisoners.

Those guys were regular Army. Not Republican Guard. They had been manning one of the batteries that had given the leading Abrams so much trouble. And as a result, they had been on the receiving end of an absolute firestorm of incoming ordinance.

Even from four miles away, Jordan could feel the continuous concussion and noise of the detonations. Being at ground zero of that shit-storm would be enough to shell-shock the walking dead.

One of the prisoners was perhaps 18. He drew Jordan's attention because he looked like he was totally empty inside.

Whatever he had been like the prior day, that afternoon had taught him that he was nothing. And that his life was nothing. That knowledge had blown away his immortal soul.