“Doesn’t sound like a winning strategy.”
“It isn’t. Not by a long shot.”
Crocker had a practical question: “How do you tell the difference between the police and the army?”
“The army guys look like soldiers.”
“Meaning?”
“They dress in uniforms, act more professional, and generally don’t stick their hands out asking for bribes.”
Crocker nodded. “Good to know.”
As they inched up to the roadblock, Nieves continued. “The Sinaloa cartel is a family-based enterprise run by a guy named Chapo Guzmán. You might have heard of him. He’s also known as Shorty. The little bastard’s in his late fifties and grew up poor on a little cattle ranch near the U.S. border. Today he’s considered the most powerful drug trafficker on the planet, with a net worth of over a billion. Forbes magazine has him at forty-one in their list of the most powerful people in the world.”
Soldiers armed with automatic weapons and wearing black masks over their faces signaled Carlos to stop and roll down the window. He obliged with an easy smile, flashed an FBI badge, then engaged two of the soldiers in conversation. Though Crocker spoke some Spanish, the men talked too fast for him to understand.
After the soldiers waved them through, he turned to Nieves and asked, “What was that about?”
“It’s a bad situation. Something like forty people were gunned down by guys with AKs this afternoon.”
“Where?” Crocker asked.
“Downtown.”
“Downtown Guadalajara?”
“Yeah.”
“Who did they attack?” Crocker asked.
“According to the soldiers, a bunch of random people-shopkeepers, a couple tourists, a retired professor feeding the pigeons in the park, students. My guess is it’s part of the Los Zetas campaign to scare the living shit out of everyone and gain respect.”
Crocker had read somewhere that Mexican officials estimated there had been as many as thirteen hundred beheadings and public hangings, and tens of thousands of other drug-related killings, in the past year.
Nieves veered off the highway at high speed and drove down modern tree-lined avenues with office buildings that displayed familiar names-Citibank, HSBC, American Express, IBM, General Motors, etc. The handsome city appeared prosperous and offered a few elegant vestiges of its colonial past.
“Usually these streets are crowded,” Nieves remarked. “People are staying inside.”
They passed a large country club and entered an upscale residential area filled with green parks and squares. Many of the houses were hidden behind high concrete walls. At the gates stood armed guards.
Nieves pointed at a newly constructed house and remarked, “The newer ones with palm trees belong to drug traffickers.”
“How do you know?” Crocker asked.
“Apparently, they’ve got a thing for palm trees,” he answered with a shrug. “Palm trees and diamonds. Diamonds around their necks, diamonds in their teeth, big diamonds in their girlfriends’ belly buttons. Beats the shit out of me. You ever try to make love to a babe with a diamond in her belly button?”
“Can’t say I have,” Crocker answered.
“Me, either. But it’s got to be uncomfortable, right?”
They stopped at a red light in a little commercial area with shops. Through the passenger window Crocker watched a group of young people sitting at an outdoor café laughing and acting like happy, normal-if somewhat privileged-teenagers.
He heard an approaching siren. Seconds later a black Ford pickup filled with men wearing black helmets and uniforms skidded through the intersection. Two of the men stood holding on to the roll bar with one hand and AR15 automatic rifles with the other.
“Who are they?” Crocker asked.
“The Federales,” Nieves answered. “Federal police.”
“They looked scared,” Crocker remarked.
Several blocks later, Nieves turned into a driveway with a tall blue gate, stopped, and honked. A very thin, weathered Mexican man with short gray hair and a crooked smile opened it from inside and nodded.
“That’s our man Ramón. He takes care of the pool and grounds.”
Chapter Eight
In Mexico, you have death very close.
– Gael García Bernal
The accommodations were a couple of notches higher than acceptable-an older-looking two-story structure with a garage built into it that sat under lush laurel trees. It reminded Crocker of the kind of vacation house you’d find on a lake in New Hampshire, with living room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.
Crocker tossed his kit on one of the beds and hurried downstairs to do a quick survey of the house-access through two doors, one at the front of the house, another side door that led to the garage. The lock on the garage door was broken. All of the windows had simple latches and were easy to punch in.
Security sucked, but they weren’t planning to stay long. The refrigerator was stocked with beer, sodas, milk, and eggs. He popped open a bottle of Bohemía, gulped it down, and looked out the front window to the more modern house that sat on the other side of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
They’d only been there ten minutes and he was already feeling antsy.
“What do we do now?” Mancini asked as he plopped down on the sofa, picked up a copy of Esquire someone had left behind, and opened it to a photo of a half-naked Lena Headey-one of the stars of Game of Thrones.
“Nieves said he’d come get us,” Crocker responded, understanding that as long as they lacked their own transportation and had no weapons, they were totally dependent on their FBI/DEA hosts.
“I guess that means we wait.”
Sitting at a desk across the room, Davis slipped a CD into his laptop. The theme from The Outer Limits played, followed by the deep voice of a narrator who said, “Through all legends of ancient peoples, Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Semitic, runs the saga of the Eternal Man, one who never dies, called by various names…The hero who strides through the centuries.”
Crocker waved at Davis to turn down the sound. The SEAL science fiction aficionado complied.
Glancing at his Suunto watch, which had adjusted automatically, Crocker saw that the local time was 1944. He opened the large envelope Nieves had given him and started to leaf through the classified FBI and CIA reports. On the first page of one, he read the highlighted sentences: “Mexican drug cartels have been in operation without much interruption from the Mexican and U.S. government for decades. Their networks are more extensive than any intelligence network in the world.”
The last sentence startled him, so he read it again. Then he saw that the wholesale value of illegal drugs from Mexico sold in the United States was estimated to be about $40 billion.
Crocker was about to repeat this staggering number to Mancini when he heard a knock at the door. Seconds later Nieves entered, carrying a yellow menu. “We’re ordering in,” he announced as if they were a bunch of guys about to watch a football game on TV. “If you’ve never had Oaxacan food, I recommend the chicken mole, which is a rich, spicy chocolate sauce.”
“Screw the mole,” Crocker groaned. “When are we gonna get moving?”
“Relax, dude. Lane’s working on something for you guys now.”
“Don’t call me dude,” Crocker responded, thinking that the best strategy might be to strike fast before the bad guys knew they were in the country. “We didn’t come here to fuck around.”
“I know that. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Crocker’s head was already spinning. Forty billion was more than eight times the entire CIA budget. Returning to the reports, he read about cartel attacks on parties and drug rehabilitation centers, the firebombing of a Monterrey casino that burned fifty-two people to death, the targeted killings of journalists and media workers, the shootings, kidnappings, and mass graves-seventy-two in Tamaulipas on the southern border, forty-nine in Monterrey, another forty in Nuevo Laredo.