With nothing to do while they waited their turn to be inspected by their platoon leader, the men designated Group D, for "Distrito Federal," shuffled, yawned, and stretched as they stood in the ranks. From across the dilapidated hangar, Guajardo occasionally glanced up from the maps and diagrams laid out before him on a rickety table, watching the inspection with the same detached interest as the men undergoing it displayed.
As of yet, only the captain who was serving as their platoon leader knew where they were going and what their objective was. Even the majority of the helicopter crewmen who would be moving Group D as well as three other groups, did not know where they would be going.
Looking back down at his charts, maps, and diagrams, Guajardo wondered if his intricate scheme of deceptions and precautions had been necessary or effective. At times, during the planning process, even he had experienced difficulty remembering what was deception and what was actual. The need for tight security was not imaginary, since the target was one of the most effective and cunning criminals in Mexico. Referred to as El Dueno, or "the Manager," Senior Hector Alaman had created an empire that spread across the entire Caribbean and included in its ranks politicians, police officials, judges, and officers in the armed forces of every country in the region, including the United States.
Alamein did not directly involve himself in the growing, transporting, or marketing of drugs. Instead, he provided services to those who did.
These services included planning, coordinating, and orchestrating all aspects of the business for his clients. With a vast data base that tracked the demand and flow of drugs like those of any commodities market, Alaman and his advisors could provide information to both growers and shippers as to what product would be most profitable and where the best price could be had. Additionally, for a little extra, Alaman's banking associates provided the growers and shippers with a wide variety of financial services for moving and investing profits and business expenses from their illegal marketplace into legitimate banks, institutions, and markets. He even provided insurance policies, either long-term, which were quite expensive, or for single events, such as a shipment. Alaman's insurance, which was nothing more than an elaborate system of bribes, allowed his clients to operate their business free of official interference.
The network of contacts and "employees" needed to ensure that operations and shipments were not interfered with was created through a variety of methods that ranged from simple bribery to terrorism. Using an intelligence network that provided timely and accurate information on threats and potential threats to the industry from any quarter, Alaman and the members of his ' 'Action department'' sought to neutralize them.
When possible, the people who generated the threats were encouraged not only to change their minds, but were actively recruited by Alaman. When they could not be swayed, they were eliminated in a manner that would serve as a warning to anyone wishing to follow in their footsteps. Guajardo himself had experienced Alaman's power.
Alaman ran these operations from a villa located in the state of Tamaulipas, where Guajardo served as the military zone commander. Under Guajardo's very eyes, and those of the police and the government of the state, Alaman had built a fortress twenty-two kilometers southwest of Ciudad Victoria. The fortress, named Chinampas, was manned by a staff of experts and advisors in every imaginable field, most of whom had PhDs and years of practical experience in banking, trade, intelligence, transportation, law enforcement, and other disciplines needed to make the drug industry profitable, efficient, and safe. This staff, supported by a computer and communications system that put the one possessed by the Mexican Army to shame, lacked nothing, especially security. Protection was provided by a garrison of fifty well-trained mercenaries recruited from the best agencies, armed with the best weapons money could buy, and backed up by a security system similar to that used to protect Israel's nuclear-weapons depots. Chinampas, with walls that could resist a direct hit by a 105mm tank cannon, represented a formidable challenge to anyone who might consider testing its defenses.
Not that anyone ever thought that such an event would become a reality. Chinampas's best defenses came from the benevolent, well-paid, and well-tended judiciary at both state and national level. It would have been bad enough, in Guajardo's eyes, had government and state officials simply been unwilling to consider initiating an investigation of Alaman and his operations. Guajardo could have accepted the excuse that perhaps the government and police officials being bribed didn't fully understand what Alaman was about. The openness, however, with which Alaman associated with and entertained those officials made such a defense unsupportable.
Even before Chinampas was finished, Guajardo had watched a parade of officials whisked away to Alaman's paradise for weekends and vacations. Tending to every need, legal and illegal, of local, state, and national government and police officials provided Alaman security that most men in the shadow world of the international drug trade could only dream of.
Only a man of Guajardo's temper and conviction could conceive of such a mission. The destruction of Chinampas, however, had become more than a task for the professional soldier; it had become a quest. When the existence of Chinampas came to Guajardo's attention, he had conducted an unauthorized reconnaissance of the site accompanied by one of his trusted captains. Though it had still been under construction during his first visit, Guajardo had understood its potential. He saw it as a tumor that had to be removed before it grew and killed the state which he was responsible for. Foolishly, Guajardo had gone to the governor of Tamaulipas with his findings and a recommendation that the growing fortress be destroyed immediately. The governor reacted with a controlled sincerity that Guajardo naively believed. Thanking him for his concern, the governor dismissed Guajardo, assuring him that appropriate steps would be taken.
For a month, Guajardo had heard nothing more on the subject. Then, one morning, he had discovered what those steps were. Opening the front door of his home to leave for work, he found the naked body of the captain who had accompanied him on the unauthorized recon of Chinampas nailed, upside down, to his front door. The severity of the corruption that permeated the government was hammered home when the head of the state's police force came into Guajardo's office the next day and personally advised the colonel to leave Chinampas alone. At first, Guajardo could not understand why the captain, and not he, the man who had led the recon and recommended action against Chinampas, had been murdered.
The answer was provided by a friend at the funeral of the captain.
Guajardo, a senior and well-respected member of the Army, was more valuable to Alaman if, through a simple demonstration of power, Guajardo could be won over to Alaman's side. Failing that, Alaman's action would serve to frighten Guajardo into inaction.
The shock of the incident and the reasoning behind it were slow to wear off. When it did, however, anger and hatred, not fear and complacency, replaced the shock. It was then, even before Guajardo knew of Molina's plans to conduct a coup, that Guajardo dedicated himself to purging his homeland of those who made it a prostitute to be exploited by the highest bidder. While the reasons he had given the American TV correspondent for joining the Council of 13 were real, they paled in comparison to his goal of crushing Chinampas, and all who lived there. The coup, even the murder of his president, were merely chores that needed to be tended to before Guajardo could pursue his quest of striking Alaman down, avenging his pride and freeing Mexico of men like him in the process.
Conviction and good intentions, however, would not reduce Chinampas.