57

Soon it was time to move.

Energized by their success thus far, Zaid Farooq crossed through the rental villa and headed out to the van. He climbed into the front passenger seat as Youssef slid behind the wheel. Glancing behind him, Farooq nodded to his five comrades sitting in the back with all their crates of weapons and ammunition and the missiles. He took a swig of black coffee from the mug waiting in the cup holder for him, then told Youssef he was ready.

The drive from the hills outside Monterrey to the border was about 220 kilometers and took two and a half hours. When they arrived at a sprawling cattle ranch not far from Hacienda San José de Miravalle, the sun was up, but the roads were still quiet. Several armed guards met them at the gate and radioed back to the office for clearance before letting them enter and directing them to a barn a kilometer up the road. There they were met by more heavily armed Mexicans who exchanged prearranged code words with Youssef and told him to park the van inside the barn.

Zaid Farooq was in no mood to chitchat. Nor were the men they had come to see. They exchanged no greetings. No names. No conversation of any kind. Instead, Youssef and Farooq presented the Mexicans with a steel box containing one million American dollars in unmarked twenty-dollar bills. The ringleader—a thirtysomething mafioso with slicked-back hair and wearing a thousand-dollar suit—checked the money while his men stood guard in the lingering stench of fresh manure, their fingers on the triggers of their American-made submachine guns.

Satisfied, the leader asked one question in English. “What’s in the crates?” he inquired, pointing to the back of the open van.

“None of your business,” Farooq replied in Spanish.

The man smiled for the first time, revealing three gold teeth. Then he erupted in laughter and slapped the Algerian on the back. “Very good, compadre, very good!” he bellowed, then checked his watch. “Vámonos—ándale—there is no time to spare.”

He snapped his fingers, and one of his men rushed to his side. He whispered in the young man’s ear, then motioned for several others to lift the steel box into the trunk of his Range Rover. A moment later, he and his men drove off. Farooq’s men wasted no time unloading the crates. After they did, Tariq Youssef gave his fellow deputy commander a bear hug and a kiss on both cheeks.

“May Allah be with you, habibi,” he said.

“And you, habibi,” Farooq replied, flush with nervous energy and determined to get moving. “God willing, we shall welcome the rest of you soon.”

With that, Youssef climbed into the van, backed it out of the barn, and headed back to the villa.

Farooq watched the trail of dust dissipate. Then he turned and motioned for his men to grab the crates and load them into the bed of a large cattle truck. When they were finished, they climbed in the truck and covered themselves with blankets and bales of hay. Farooq joined them, and soon their lone guide, a lanky young man who could not be older than his late teens, was driving them into Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican border town nestled along the Rio Grande River.

There were no cattle in the truck, but evidence of them was everywhere. The odor was overpowering, and several of the men vomited. The rising heat did not help matters. But when the truck finally came to a stop, the rear gate was opened, and Farooq and his men found themselves inside the loading dock of a slaughterhouse.

The driver motioned for the six Arabs to follow him into a massive walk-in refrigerator. They ducked between bloody sides of beef hanging from hooks to reach the back of the cooler and pushed away several large crates, revealing a hatch door. The boy unlocked the padlock with a key hanging around his neck, then opened the hatch and scurried down a long metal ladder. It took some time to lower the crates of weapons and missiles through the opening, but eventually they all made it into the dimly lit and brutally humid tunnel. The boy closed the hatch above him and silently motioned for them all to follow.

Farooq hunched down and began the journey, finding it surreal to think that after so many months of planning and preparations, he and his men and their precious cargo were finally on their way. If all went according to schedule, in a few hours—working their way through a tunnel not yet detected by the Americans, a tunnel that would take them underneath the Rio Grande—they would be in Laredo, Texas. They would, for the first time in any of their lives, finally be in the United States of America. The Great Satan. And closer than ever to delivering the lethal strike for which they had all been chosen.