“You’re saying this Denny Mondari drove the C-4 to the bomber’s shop?”
“No, I’d guess a neutral point is where it was off-loaded. Mondari went home after the first load. After the second he wasn’t needed anymore, so they took him out in the desert and put him down. They would have lost the body and the car carrying him, but the car got wedged between rocks and stuck in sand in a desert canyon. Mondari was killed for leading his cybercrooks into the Sinaloa manager’s e-mail. He was walking dead as soon as that was discovered. They just found a use for him first and let him think he was trading his way out. He came to us with the bomb-maker story because he was scared, but he couldn’t tell us the truth. He probably figured we were his only hope, or let’s say he knew that by the time he told me about seeing the fabricante de bombas e-mail.”
“You don’t think he was part of the plot?”
“No.”
“Do you have any proof?”
“I have little pieces. Do you know Mike Sulliver, a former detective here in Vegas?”
“I know of him. We worked with him on several cases. He was damned good.”
“He’s got a private investigative business now. He’d also heard rumors that the Sinaloa cartel had some talk with Mondari. Mondari talked to a casino-bartender friend when he was drunk and Sulliver got it from him.”
“You first said we should look at Mondari’s crew and then you said they’re likely dead.”
“My guess is dead, but what if they’re alive? If they’re alive, we need them.”
“All right, point taken, we’ll look for them. Now tell me why this drug cartel or any cartel would want to have anything to do with an attack on the US government? Last time it led to a whole lot of smoking coca fields. The CIA maintains the C-4 crossed the border in an 18-wheeler carrying cleaning products. Why don’t you believe that?”
“Because I read the report where the drug dogs got fooled and the C-4 was stolen out from under joint CIA-FBI surveillance. But I think the CIA got fooled.”
Saran chuckled and said, “Keep going.”
“The C-4 was never in that truck and when twenty-four-hour surveillance was set up on the warehouse, the teams were watching detergent. Meanwhile Sinaloa is telling AQAP and ISIS or a Lebanese businessman the NSA tapped into in Mexico City that they needed more money. They had spotted CIA spies and were going to bring it in a different way. But they also knew if the C-4 was used for terrorism, it would ultimately get traced back to them, so they took very careful steps. They made the CIA agents believe it had been delivered with the semitruck full of detergent.”
“We believed,” Saran said.
“There you go. We believed, and meanwhile it came in a different way and got used while we were still watching the warehouse. The cartel worried about what they should worry about, the US government tracing a delivery of explosives used for terrorism here back to their smuggling pipeline. They still made good, but at a much, much higher price. That’s my guess. Maybe some hard-core Wahhabi Saudi prince paid the difference.”
“Do you think the final delivery has been made?”
Had to think a moment about what I wanted to say there, then said, “I guess this is how I see it. Hurin may have gotten wind of a search under way and left. A San Diego County deputy and I were making rounds with a story of a serial murderer allegedly working from the Anza-Borrego. Deputy Nogales is someone we ought to be working more, by the way. He’s very good. It’s possible Hurin put it together and closed up shop. More likely, he knew we were closing in and hoped to kill us. He finished the bomb making and set the booby trap.”
That was about all the speculation in one sitting that several in the room could take. I saw people shift in their chairs. The agent who’d sparred with me about Beatty leaned back and folded his arms. But John Saran on the conference call couldn’t see that.
“Is all of this about the drone program or is it bigger?” Saran asked.
“You’re asking my opinion.”
“I am because you’re getting results. If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I want to know how you’re seeing this.”
“I see an enemy testing the viability of asymmetrical warfare inside the US.”
“Testing bringing the war to us?”
“Testing the viability.”
“And where do you think that probing goes next?”
“If the CIA is right, they still have enough C-4 for numerous smaller attacks, but we’re bringing more and more pressure to bear, and that’s got to figure into their thinking. They’ve shown us they’re sophisticated and have people here. They got the bomb into the rental car. Someone was ready when Nasik’s name showed up in the Hertz system. Maybe through a hacker. It suggests long-range planning. I’ve come around to believing in a sleeper cell and think that’s what we’re seeing.”