Hunting El Chapo

by Andrew Hogan

I stared hard at Brady and we topped off our Scotches.

  Nada más que decir.

  Nothing more to say.

  Brady had a newborn son he’d left his wife alone to deal with; I felt like shit for promising my son I’d be there for the birthday fiesta in DF . . .

  I scrolled through the tunes on my iPhone. I felt like blasting “Enter Sandman,” or anything by Metallica or Nirvana. Even some crazy narcocorrido by Los Tigres del Norte, something hard and thumping, cranked to max volume to numb the mixture of exhaustion and sadness.

  But all the marines were knocked out—I could hear a couple of them snoring—so I opted for “Cool Jazz for Warm Nights” and took a huge slug of Johnnie Red.

  Brady let out a laugh as the soft jazz sounds floated through the barracks; the place reeked of sweaty battle fatigues and musty boots. The 1957 song “Everything Happens to Me,” by saxophonist Warne Marsh, was playing when a message came in from Joe, back in El Paso.

  “We’re back live,” Brady said. “Attaboy, Joey! Keep ’em coming.”

  The first message in was from Chapo, now becoming increasingly impatient, asking Lic-F for a status report. He was rattled.

  Los bolas del agua donde kedaron

  no saves??

  “The group of marines—where are they at now? Do you know?”

  MY PHONE STARTED BUZZING. The time read 12:34 a.m.

  It was Nico. No greeting—he sounded intense, out of breath.

  “What’s Naris’s number?”

  I quickly rattled off the digits to Naris’s BlackBerry, which I had committed to memory.

  I suspected why Nico needed them—but asked anyway.

  “Why?”

  Nico laughed. “I got the motherfucker right in front of me.”

  “Really? You got Naris?” I said, grinning, glancing at Brady.

  Brady almost knocked over his plastic cup of Johnnie Walker.

  “Yup,” Nico said. “Dude with the big nose is standing right here—six feet away from me.”

  “Okay, where’s he telling you Patas is at?” I asked.

  Patas Cortas—Spanish for “Short Legs”—was our open-air code name for Chapo during the capture op.

  “He’s saying he’s at the Three,” Nico said.

  Only moments earlier, Brady and I had intercepted a message from Chapo that we were in the process of deciphering:

  Naris si cnl bas ten pranito ala birra y le llebes ala 5 y traes aguas. Seme olbido el cuete ai esta en el 3 en la cautiba atras me lo traes

  “Naris, go in the morning and pick up the birria and the keys and bring them to the Five. And bring some water. Don’t forget the gun. It’s there at the Three in the back of the [Chevy] Captiva. Bring the pistol to me.”

  I knew that Naris was lying; there was no way Chapo was still at Location 3—I knew for a fact that that safe house was now empty.

  I told Nico what I’d just read:

  “He’s bullshitting you. Patas isn’t at the fuckin’ Three. No one is at Location Three. It’s empty. He’s at the Five.”

  I could hear Nico telling SEMAR that Naris was lying to them. Then he hung up. A couple of minutes later, Nico called back.

  “Naris changed his tune,” Nico said. “You’re right. He’s saying Patas is at the Five.”

  “Send every marine you have to the Five,” I said.

  Lion’s Den

  LA PISCINA.

  I remembered that earlier that day Chapo had sent Naris over to “El 5” to meet with his pool-cleaning guy.

  I called Nico immediately.

  “La Piscina,” I said.

  “What pool?”

  “Patas has referred to the Five as La Piscina before. The house you’re looking for has a swimming pool. I’m almost positive. I’ll send you the coords of the area. Naris was just there this morning. Condor’s pinging off the same tower right near there.”

  “Okay,” Nico replied. “We’re going to the Five. Naris is on board.”

  The door of the command center flew open.

  “Vámanos!” Admiral Garra shouted, his eyes still tight, as if he’d just been woken from a deep sleep. “Vámanos!” he shouted again. “Levantamos a Naris.”

  I was pleased to know that Garra had been tracking the events through his own marines on the ground just like Brady and I had been getting updates from Nico.

  Hearing the whine of the turbine on the MI-17 helicopter outside was like a straight shot of adrenaline. Brady and I scrambled up a short flight of stairs to grab our few belongings, the remaining phones, and the laptop bag.

  “Don’t forget the vests!” Brady said, looking back from the narrow doorway.

  From the cold tile floor, I scooped up the two old bulletproof vests we’d scrounged in Mazatlán. I tossed one to Brady, who caught it mid-stride.

  Hopping down three stairs at a time, I exited the command center, taking a deep breath of salty ocean air. Running out onto the helo pad, I tried throwing on my vest but realized that I’d grabbed one that seemed designed for a small child. I couldn’t get the straps loose, and I ripped the thing over my head in a frenzy.

  With the MI-17 blades whooping a few feet above, I looked at Brady.

  “This is it,” I yelled over the noise of the chop. “He’s fucked!”

  We hardly looked like US federal agents now. Under the tan-and-black vests, both of us were again wearing the SEMAR-issued camouflage BDUs we’d put back on after we arrived at Topolobampo.

  I made my way through the huge hole in the rear of the MI-17 and took a seat on the hard steel bench directly behind the right-side gunner. Brady took the seat next to me.

  Admiral Garra’s demeanor was calm—almost too calm, I thought. I’d been studying the admiral over the past weeks, trying to determine what made him tick. A seasoned SEMAR commander with decades of experience fighting Mexico’s narco wars, Garra was like a grizzled bird of prey: always calm, even when it was time to pounce.

  Without a note of excitement—as if we were just going to pick up some street-level dope dealer and not a billionaire kingpin who had evaded capture since 2001—Garra shouted over the roaring engine, “When we arrive, we’ll put him in this helo and bring him back here for the interrogation.”

  “What we need right now are some guns,” Brady yelled.

  Yes—we both needed weapons.

  I looked around the cabin to see if there were any extra rifles lying around. This was turning into a full-blown military operation, but Brady and I had fallen into Sinaloa so fast that we’d never had a chance to fully prepare. We’d given Nico and Leroy back the M4 carbines before they headed south into Culiacán.

  Three full days now without sleep. The helicopter lifted off the pad, angling southbound along the Sinaloa coast, headed for the birthplace and stronghold of the world’s most powerful drug cartel.

  The night sky now glowed brighter than the cabin of the MI-17. The marines donned their tactical gear and loaded their weapons, including a Mark 19 grenade launcher hanging off the rear deck and two M134 miniguns punched through the ports on each side of the bird.

  Then everything went strangely still. No one spoke.

  The gunner nearest me held a green tactical light between his teeth as he checked his Facebook page on his cell phone. Here we were, about to capture the world’s most wanted drug lord, and this guy was nonchalantly checking social media postings as if he were sitting on his couch back home. On my BlackBerry, I quickly updated my group supervisor back in Mexico. DEA management knew only that something big was heating up, but I hadn’t shared all the details. Anytime US government personnel were embedded with a host nation’s military, there was potential for a political firestorm; not every manager at the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security Investigations was pleased that Brady and I had left La Paz and ventured over into Sinaloa.

  In a few minutes, we’d be putting boots on the ground in Culiacán. Setting foot in this city was a life-and-death proposition for US federal
agents and SEMAR forces alike. For a few moments I thought about what to write. The fewer details the bosses knew at this point, the better, so I opted for two words.

  “En route.”

  I closed my eyes, my mind still racing as I tried to focus on the sound of the helo cutting through the ocean air.

  Why hadn’t we heard anything about what was happening on the ground?

  Brady and I kept checking our BlackBerrys every few minutes, then we’d look to the admiral for an update.

  Garra said nothing.

  We were forty minutes into the ride, and still no one had heard a peep. If anyone was to be notified of a capture, it would surely be Garra. His SEMAR entry team would be first through the door and the first men to make contact with Chapo.

  Maybe the marines already had him in custody and for safety reasons weren’t advising command over the radio?

  Brady’s face, as always, was locked in his ruddy-cheeked scowl. Admiral Garra’s remained inscrutable.

  The MI-17 angled away from the coastline. I could make out the hazy glow of the city lights in the distance as we whipped past small homes and larger ranches.

  “Quince minutos,” one of the crew members shouted from the cockpit.

  Fifteen minutes away. Just then, the red indicator light began to flash in the upper right corner of my BlackBerry. It was a message from Nico, with the SEMAR entry team at Location Five:

  “Place is a fortress,” Nico wrote. “Cameras everywhere.”

  The pilot began to cut figure eights over the city. I looked down at the streets below, deserted except for the frenzy of SEMAR’s rápida pickup trucks, machine guns mounted in each bed and loaded with marines, crisscrossing the blocks as if they were beginning a search mission.

  I could see a Black Hawk helicopter conducting a search over a different grid of the city, parallel to us. I looked to Brady and shook my head.

  “Where the hell is he?” I said aloud, staring deep into a residential neighborhood below, as if I expected to see Patas Cortas jogging down the desolate street in his tracksuit. All I wanted was to get on the ground and start hunting. We were worthless in the air.

  The old Russian aircraft banked hard right before making its quick descent into an empty city lot.

  As we got closer to the ground, I suddenly began to lose my orientation—I hated the sensation. I’d always prided myself on my intuitive sense of direction. When I was in college, I often rode to the bar in the trunk of my friend’s car because there were too many girls in the seats. Locked inside the dark trunk, I called out every single turn and every street name, until we got to the bar, never once losing my bearings.

  But now I had no clue where we were touching down or what section of Culiacán we were in. Even with a full moon, I couldn’t even tell north from south.

  We jumped out the back of the helo just as it was landing. The marines exited rapidly and disappeared into the tall grass of the abandoned lot. Brady and I found ourselves alone now, unable to hear each other over the rotor chop, squinting as the dust and grit whipped around us. We quickly lost sight of all the marines; we even lost Garra. Brady and I had planned to stay glued to the admiral’s shoulder throughout the capture operation.

  I pulled my iPhone from my pocket and tried checking Google Maps to pinpoint our exact location. No luck. The Black Hawk was now attempting to land in the same tiny lot, and the blur of swirling dust made it nearly impossible to see.

  “Jesus,” Brady said, squinting. He’d spotted some of the marines jumping into rápidas off in the distance about two hundred yards away. “Let’s go, Drew.”

  We began to sprint across the uneven lot, over chunks of broken concrete and weeds, as the Black Hawk landed. From the corner of my eye, I saw marines bursting out of the sides of the helicopter, covering their flanks with rifles drawn.

  Brady was leading the way, with me right behind, humping my laptop bag.

  I heard Brady yell, “This is a turning into a shit show.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No rifles. No radio. And if those trucks take off without us, we are fucked . . .”

  WE WERE TWENTY YARDS away when the rápidas sped off. We began to chase them down, sprinting until we reached a gap in the chain-link fence that led to the street. But we were too late. The rápidas were long gone.

  Out of breath, we rounded the corner and entered the empty street.

  We could no longer see the taillights of the trucks, nor hear the roar of the helicopters behind us. All we could hear was our boots on the pavement and our rapid breathing.

  I turned from side to side, trying to determine in which direction we were headed—but the pavement, trees, and buildings suddenly all blurred together in shades of brown and gray.

  My gaze narrowed. I spotted a black silhouette about a hundred yards away.

  I instinctively reached for my thigh holster to pull my pistol, but my hand just slapped my leg. No holster. No gun. The silhouette was getting closer. Was that the barrel of a rifle?

  Then Brady shouted, “He’s a friendly!”

  As we got closer, I saw that it was a very young marine, posted up alone. He was slight, with a narrow pointed nose and brown eyes, his helmet far too big for his head. To me he looked like a twelve-year-old boy dressed up as a soldier. Brady and I jogged up to meet him.

  “A dónde van?” Brady yelled. Where had all the rápidas gone?

  The young marine shrugged. He seemed just as lost as we were, but we decided to follow him anyway. At least the kid was carrying a rifle. As we walked down the block, Brady asked in Spanish, “You have a radio?”

  The young marine shook his head no. Brady was now staring hard at me.

  We were exposed, and weaponless. There was no way to disguise our gringo faces; we didn’t even have military hats or helmets.

  And unlike in Mexico City, here in Culiacán no one could possibly mistake us for locals.

  This is a fucking setup, I thought.

  Chapo had paid off the military; we were stranded, without guns or radios, in the heart of Culiacán, about to be kidnapped. The video of us being tortured and killed would be uploaded on YouTube before sunrise . . .

  “Dude, we need to get back to the helo,” I said. “Now.”

  But was the MI-17 even there? Brady and I abandoned the teenaged marine and started sprinting. We knew that if the helo took off we would be completely stranded, weaponless, and stuck in the middle of the lion’s den.

  SUDDENLY ANOTHER CONVOY of rápidas appeared, rounding the corner.

  “Fuck it,” Brady said. “Let’s roll with them.”

  We ran toward the trucks, and a couple of the marines in the back were waving us on, so Brady and I jumped aboard. We squeezed into a double cab already holding six armed marines. I had no idea who these SEMAR guys were or where we were being taken. They were grittier than the ones I’d seen at the base in Topolobampo. I was pressed tight against a skinny kid with a dark complexion; he was smoking a cigarette, his helmet half-cocked to the side. Most of the others were wearing black balaclavas to hide their faces.

  After driving for a few minutes, we parked in the center of a residential block, a typical middle-class neighborhood. As I jumped out of the truck, I looked up and down the intersection and could see more rápidas and marines posted on every corner. My nerves began to calm. Two marines handed Brady and me black balaclavas to cover our faces.

  “Las cámaras,” one of the marines explained.

  The safe house had surveillance cameras inside and out, and everyone’s faces needed to be covered before entry.

  Brady and I walked up to a modern beige two-story house tucked between two other homes the same size. I was so disoriented, I still wasn’t sure where our rápida had just dropped us off. Was this the block radius I’d been studying so hard on my Google Map? Were we even at Location Five? Neither Nico nor Leroy was anywhere in sight.

  Brady and I walked cautiously through the open garage of the house, passing a black Mercedes four-do
or sedan, then stared at the badly damaged front door of the house. One of the panels of the door was missing, and the jamb was completely torn up in a twisted chunk of metal. The door had been reinforced with six inches of steel—SEMAR had clearly taken a long time to batter its way in.

  I STEPPED THROUGH the entryway. The kitchen, directly in front, was furnished simply: white plastic table and folding chairs. Then I took the first immediate right through the living room and entered the ground-floor bedroom. Girls’ clothes were scattered throughout the room. Lingerie, blouses, sweatpants, used towels, and open pill bottles littered the bed and the floor.

  Brady and I slowly entered the adjacent bathroom.

  It was dark and quiet, and far more humid than the rest of the house. I tried to flick the wall light switch; it was broken. Brady and I used the flashlights on our iPhones as we advanced.

  There it was—unmistakable in the dim bluish glow.

  “Dammit,” I said.

  Kava’s handiwork.

  “Look at this fuckin’ thing,” Brady said as we inched forward.

  The large white bathtub, rigged on hydraulics, was propped up at a forty-five-degree angle. As we crept closer to the tub, an overpowering smell of mold filled my nostrils.

  We gazed into a sophisticated man-made hole beneath the tub. A narrow vertical ladder led down to a tunnel that extended in the direction of the street, approximately ten feet under the house.

  Brady descended the ladder first and made his way to the bottom. I was right on his heels.

  The moldy air was so thick and hot that it was now hard to breathe through the face masks. Stooping, we both walked the length of the tunnel. It was extremely well constructed, rigged with fluorescent lighting and wood shoring. We continued until we reached a small steel door with an industrial-size circular handle.

  Brady cranked the steel handle counterclockwise, revealing yet another dark tunnel. Trickles of sewage were running along the floor, and the five-foot ceiling caused us both to crouch down into a duck walk.

  “Shit,” Brady said softly.

  We stared into the darkness.