by Don Winslow
Two thousand rifles equals two thousand kilos of cocaine, Art thinks. God only knows how many kilos you get passed through for the rocket launchers, which are capable of shooting down helicopters.
Next they find six truckloads of M-2 rifles, converted M-1s, the standard army carbine. The difference between the original and the M-2 is that the latter can be flipped to full automatic by a single switch. He also finds a few LAWS, the American version of the KPG-2, not as effective against choppers but very good against armored vehicles. All of them perfect weapons for a guerrilla war.
And worth thousands of kilos of coke.
It’s the largest arms bust in history.
But he’s not done.
All of this is worthless if it doesn’t lead to the demise of Adán Barrera.
Whatever the cost.
If Adán slips the noose, the only chance of finding him again is through Nora. You have a plan in place to extract her, but plans have a way of going wrong.
She wanted to go back in, he tells himself. You gave her the option of calling it quits and she made up her own mind. She’s an adult, she can make her own choices.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Nora drives the new Lexus down the highway to the first exit, pulls into a gas station, goes into the ladies’ room and throws up. When her stomach is empty, she gets back in the car and drives to the Santa Ana train station, dumps the car in the parking lot, goes inside to a phone booth, shuts the door and calls Adán.
The crying is no problem. The tears come easily as she chokes back sobs and says, “Something went wrong . . . I don’t know . . . He was going to kill me . . . I . . .”
“Come back.”
“The police are probably looking for me.”
“It’s too soon,” he says. Dump the car, get on the train, go to San Ysidro, walk across the pedestrian bridge.
“Adán, I’m scared.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “Go to the city place. Wait there. I’ll be in touch.”
She knows what he means. It’s a code they worked out a long time ago, for just such an emergency as this. The city place is a condo they keep in Colonia Hipódromo in Tijuana.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you, too.”
She gets on the next southbound train to San Diego.
Plans have a way of going wrong.
In this case, the mechanics back in Costa Mesa are working on the tricked-out little Toyota Camry to get it ready for another run and they find something interesting jammed between the seat and the headrest on the passenger side.
Some sort of electronic device.
The crew chief makes a phone call.
Nora gets off the train in San Diego and grabs the trolley down to San Ysidro, gets off, climbs the steps to the pedestrian bridge and walks across the border.
Chapter Twelve
Slipping into Darkness
Slippin’ into darkness,
When I heard my mother say . . .
“You been slippin’ into darkness, oh, oh, oh
Pretty soon you’re going to pay.”
—War, “Slippin’ Into Darkness”
Tijuana, 1997
Nora Hayden’s in the wind.
That’s the simple, brutal truth that Art’s trying to deal with.
Ernie Hidalgo all over again.
Source Chupar redux.
These are the scariest times in the life of any person who handles undercovers. The missed check-in, the non-signal, the silence.
It’s the silence that will make your stomach churn, your teeth grind, your jaws clench, the silence that will slowly extinguish the low flame of false hope. The dead silence as you launch one radar ping after another into the dark, into the depth and then wait for that returning ping. And wait and wait and get only silence.
She was supposed to have gone to the condo in Colonia Hipódromo to meet Adán. But she never showed up, and neither did The Lord of the Skies. Antonio Ramos did, in force—two platoons of his special troopers in armored cars sealed off the entire block and hit the condo like it was Normandy Beach.
Only it was empty.
No Adán Barrera, no Nora.
Now Ramos is tearing Baja to pieces looking for the Barrera brothers.
He’s been waiting for this call for years. Convinced by John Hobbs that Adán Barrera is dealing arms to left-wing insurgents in Chiapas and elsewhere, Mexico City has taken the leash off Ramos, and he goes at it like a pit bull on steroids. A week into the operation, he’s hit seven safe houses already, all in the exclusive neighborhoods of Colonia Chapultepec, Colonia Hipódromo and Colonia Cacho.
For an entire week Ramos’ troopers storm through Tijuana’s wealthy neighborhoods in armored trucks and Humvees, and they’re none too gentle about it, blowing off expensive doors with explosive charges, ransacking homes, blocking traffic and disrupting businesses for hours. It’s almost as if Ramos wants to alienate the city’s elite, who, indeed, are torn between blaming Ramos or the Barreras for all the trouble.
Which, of course, has been a centerpiece of Adán Barrera’s long-term strategy for years—to become so enmeshed with the Baja upper crust that an attack on him is an attack on them. And they do scream to Mexico City that Ramos is out of control, over the top, that he’s trampling on their civil rights.
Ramos doesn’t care if Tijuana’s upper crust hates his guts. He hates them, too, thinks that they sold whatever souls they had to the Barrera brothers—taking them into society, into their homes, allowing their sons and nephews to dabble in the drug trade—in exchange for cheap thrills by association and quick, easy money. They acted, Ramos thinks, like a gaggle of narco-groupies, treating the Barrera scum like celebrities, rock musicians, movie stars.
And he tells them so, when they come to complain.
Look, Ramos tells the city fathers, the narcotraficantes murdered a Catholic cardinal and you welcomed them home. They gunned down federales on the streets in rush hour and you protected them. They murdered your own chief of police and you did nothing about it. So don’t come to me and complain—you brought this on yourselves.
Ramos gets on television and calls the city out.
He looks straight into the camera and announces that within fourteen days he’s going to have Adán and Raúl Barrera behind bars and their organization on the old ash heap of history. He stands beside stacks of captured weapons and piles of seized drugs and names names—Adán, Raúl and Fabián—and goes on to name the scions of several prominent Tijuana families as Juniors and promises to put them in jail as well.
Then he announces that he’s fired five dozen Baja federales for lacking the “moral qualifications” to be policemen, saying, “It is a shame on the nation that in Baja, many of the police officers are not the enemies of the Barrera cartel, but their servants.”
I’m not going away, he says. I’m taking on the Barreras—who will stand with me?
Well, not too many people.
One young prosecutor, a state investigator and Ramos’ own men—and that’s about it.
Art understands why the people of Tijuana aren’t flocking to Ramos’ banner.
They’re scared.
And why shouldn’t they be?
Two months ago, a Baja cop who exposed the names of crooked cops in the state police was found by the side of the road in a canvas bag. Every bone in his body had been broken—one of Raúl Barrera’s trademark executions. Just three weeks ago, another prosecutor who had been investigating the Barreras was shot to death as he took his morning jog on the track of the city university. The gunmen had yet to be apprehended. And the warden of Tijuana’s prison was killed in a drive-by shooting as he went out onto his porch to get his morning newspaper. The word on the street is that he had offended a Barrera associate who is incarcerated in his facility.
No, the Barreras might be on the run right now, but that doesn’t mean their reign of terror is over, and people aren’t going to stick their necks out until t
hey see the two Barrera brothers on slabs.
The fact is, Art thinks a week into the operation, that we haven’t produced. The people of Baja know that we took a swing at the Barreras’ heads and missed.
Raúl is still at large.
Adán is still at large.
And Nora?
Well, the fact that Adán didn’t walk into the trap in Colonia Hipódromo probably means that her cover was blown. Art still holds on to hope, but as the days go by in silence, he has to acknowledge the probability that he will have to search for her decomposed body.
So Art’s not in a good mood when he goes into the interview room in the federal lockup in downtown San Diego to have a chat with Fabián Martínez, aka El Tiburón.
The little punk doesn’t look so stylish now in his federal orange jumpsuit, handcuffed and in ankle bracelets. But he retains his smirk as he’s led in and plopped into a folding chair across the metal table from Art.
“You went to Catholic school, didn’t you?” Art begins.
“Augustine,” Fabián answers. “Right here in San Dog.”
“So you know the difference between purgatory and hell,” Art says.
“Refresh my memory.”
“Sure,” Art says. “Basically, they’re both painful. But your time in purgatory eventually ends, whereas hell lasts forever. I’m here to offer you the choice between hell and purgatory.”
“I’m listening.”
Art lays it out for him. How the weapons charge alone gets him thirty-to-life in federal prison, not to mention the drug trafficking charges, each of which carries fifteen-to-life. So that’s hell. On the other hand, if Fabián becomes a government witness, he spends a few years painfully testifying against his old friends, followed by a short stretch in prison, then a new name and a new life. And that’s purgatory.
“In the first place,” Fabián answers, “I didn’t know anything about those guns. I was there to pick up produce. In the second place, what trafficking charges? How did drugs get into this?”
“I have a witness,” Art says, “that puts you at the center of a major narcotics network, Fabián. In fact, I kind of like you for 'kingpin status,’ unless you have someone else in mind.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Hey,” Art says, “if you want to pay thirty-to-life to see that card, call me. But basically, you’re in a bidding war with my other witness, and whoever gives me a better shot at Barrera wins.”
“I want a lawyer.”
Good, Art thinks, and I want you to have one. But he says, “No, you don’t, Fabián. A lawyer is just going to tell you to shut up and land you in prison for the rest of your life.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“So no deal?”
“No deal.”
Art says, “I need to read you your rights.”
“You already read them,” Fabián says, slumping in his chair. He’s bored now; he wants to go back to his cell and read magazines.
“Oh, that was on the weapons charge,” Art says. “I have to do it all over again on the murder thing.”
Fabián sits straight up. “What murder thing?”
“I’m arresting you for the murder of Juan Parada,” Art says. “We’ve had a sealed indictment since ’94. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”
“You don’t have jurisdiction,” Fabián says, “on a killing that happened in Mexico.”
Art leans over the table. “Parada’s parents were wetbacks. He was born outside Laredo, Texas, so he’s an American citizen, just like you. And that gives me jurisdiction. Hey, maybe we’ll try you in Texas—the governor there really likes to hand out lethal injections. See you in court, asshole.”
Now go talk to your lawyer.
Walk right into the shit.
If Adán had driven to his rendezvous with Nora in Colonia Hipódromo, the police would probably have nabbed him.
But he walked.
The cops would never expect Adán Barrera to be on foot, so when he saw the police vehicles start to pour into the neighborhood, he simply turned around and walked out. Strolled down the sidewalk, right past the roadblocks that had been set up in the streets.
It hasn’t been that easy since.
He’s been chased out of two more safe houses, getting warnings from Raúl just in time, and now he’s in a safe house in the Río district, wondering when the storm troopers are going to come smashing in there. And the worst part is the communications—or the lack of them. Most of his cell phones aren’t encrypted, so he is reluctant to use them. And the ones that are might have been compromised, so even if the police couldn’t decipher what he was saying, they could still get a fix on his location just through the signal. So he doesn’t know who’s been arrested, what houses have been hit, what was found in those houses. He doesn’t know who is conducting the raids, how long they are going to last, where they are going to hit, whether they know where he is.
What really concerns Adán is that the raids came without warning.
Not a word, not a whisper, from his well-paid friends in Mexico City.
And that scares him because if the PRI politicians have turned on him, they must be very scared. And they must know that if they strike at the Barrera head, they don’t dare miss, which makes them dangerous.
They have to take me down, he thought.
They have to kill me.
So he’s taking protective measures. First, he distributes most of his cell phones to his men, who disperse throughout the city and the state with the instructions to make calls and then dump the phones. (Sure enough, Ramos starts getting reports that Adán Barrera is in Hipódromo, Chapultepec, Rosarito, Ensenada, Tecate, even across the border in San Diego, Chula Vista, Otay Mesa.)
Raúl goes to Radio Shack, buys more phones and starts working them, reaching out and touching cops on the payroll—Baja federales, Baja State Police, Tijuana municipal cops.
The news isn’t good. The state and local cops who do answer their phones don’t know shit—nobody’s told them anything, but the one thing they can say is that this is a federal effort, it’s got nothing to do with them. And the local federales?
“Off the hook,” Raúl tells Adán.
Now they’ve moved again—getting out of the “safe” house in the Río district just ten minutes before the police hit it. They’re in a condo in Colonia Cacho, hoping to be able to hole up there for at least a few hours until they can find out what the fuck is going on. But the local police aren’t going to be any help.
“They’re not answering their phones,” Raúl says.
“Get them at home,” Adán snaps.
“They’re not answering there, either.”
Adán grabs a new phone and dials long-distance.
To Mexico City.
Nobody’s home. None of his connections in PRI are available to take a phone call, but if he’d like to leave a number, they’d be happy to return . . .
It’s the gun deal, Adán thinks. Fucking Art Keller has put together the guns and FARC, and used it to make Mexico City react. He feels like he wants to throw up. There were only four people in Mexico who knew about the arrangement with Tirofio—me, Raúl, Fabián . . .
And Nora.
Nora is missing.
She never showed up at Colonia Hipódromo.
But the police did.
She got there before me, he thinks. She got swept up in the raid and the police have her on ice somewhere.
Raúl gets hold of a laptop and then forces one of their resident computer geeks to come to this safe house, and the geek manages to get out encrypted e-mail messages to their network of computers. An encryption of the geek’s own design—he was paid in the high six figures—so dense that even the DEA hasn’t been able to crack it. This is what it’s come to, Adán thinks, launching electronic messages into space. So they sit and watch for armored cars rolling up the street as they sit and watch the computer screen for messages. Within an hour Raúl manages to summon a few
sicarios and a couple of clean work cars that can’t be connected to the cartel. He also sets up a series of watching and listening posts to monitor the whereabouts of the police.
When the sun sets, Adán, dressed as a laborer, gets into the back of an ’83 Dodge Dart with Raúl. In the front are a heavily armed driver and another sicario. The car makes its way through the hazardous maze that Tijuana has become, the scouts and listening posts electronically clearing paths until Adán finally makes his way out of the city and to Rancho las Bardas.