Hunting El Chapo

by Andrew Hogan

  Sy pero no tyene pura kosyna mannan en la mana le pone mynysply

  I translated aloud.

  “‘Yes, but it doesn’t have a full kitchen. Tomorrow morning he’ll put in a mini . . . supply’? Mini-something—who the hell knows what he’s typing there? But you see the way he spells ‘kitchen,’ cocina?”

  “Yeah, ‘kosyna,’” Leroy said, nodding.

  With Chapo’s writing, I explained, there was a consistent substitution of y for i and k for c. Guzmán would write bien as byen and cuanto as kuanto. This wasn’t typical Spanish texting slang or shorthand; it was unique to Chapo. He typed virtually every word phonetically. And his messages were peppered with self-taught constructions. Even as elementary a word as caliente—Chapo spelled it kalyente. These were clear forensic tells—Chapo, not his secretary, was fat-fingering these messages.

  “So you’re positive he’s in the room with the device we’re locating,” Leroy said.

  I grabbed the one war trophy I’d been carrying and pulled the black hat down tight on my head.

  “Yep, I’m positive, El Roy. An hour ago, when this message was written—kitchen spelled like that—the BlackBerry was directly in Chapo’s hands.”

  The pizza had arrived, and everyone was grabbing slices, but I had no time to eat. My bosses back in Mexico City had arranged for us to use three of DEA’s armored Suburbans—this time brand-new ones, the best in our fleet. I left Nico in charge at the house.

  “When Tigre arrives,” I said, “get with him and come up with a plan for the takedown. Brady and I need to run into town and grab these rigs. When I get back, we’ll finalize everything for the capture.”

  “You got it,” Nico said.

  IT WAS 12:30 A.M. when Brady and I walked back into the house. Every single one of the young marines was fast asleep. Leroy and his guys were passed out on the couch and floor, too—there were no blankets or pillows, just a bunch of bodies sprawled out on the bare tile. Even Nico had crashed upstairs in one of the beds.

  “I know everyone’s tired,” I said to Brady, “but c’mon, for fuck’s sake . . .”

  Here we were, about to go grab the world’s most wanted man, and everyone was racked out?

  “Get up!” I said, shaking Nico. “How’d the meet go with Tigre?”

  Nico opened his eyes, still half-dazed.

  “The meet with Tigre,” I repeated. “What was his takedown plan?”

  “He never showed up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He never showed.”

  “Where the hell is he?”

  “He’s staying with a group of his guys at some shitty motel on the outskirts of town.”

  “Fuck!” I shouted. “If he has a plan, what good is it if we don’t know it? Get up, dude—we need to find him now.”

  Brady and Nico jumped into the Suburban, and after a twenty-minute drive I snaked the vehicle back through several winding alleys, screeching to a stop near the motel’s check-in office.

  “Look at this dump,” said Brady. “Red neon lights and garages.”

  This was the kind of place the locals took their hookers to for an hour or two. Each room even came equipped with a garage so you could discreetly hide your car for the duration of your stay.

  “What room is Tigre in?” I asked Nico.

  “Don’t know,” Nico said. “He’s not answering his phone.”

  “Let’s just start banging on the fucking doors.”

  I was already beginning to miss Captain Toro: now we were rolling with a cadre of very young marines—all in their twenties—full of energy and experience but lacking Toro’s coolheaded focus and leadership.

  We needed to communicate, coordinate, lay out a thorough takedown plan—one that allowed for any contingency or screwup. I felt like everyone was running a little on the wild side. This was too improvised.

  We all split up and started knocking on doors. We startled two shady-looking locals and woke up groups of groggy marines, sharing tiny rooms, trying to grab a couple of minutes of shut-eye.

  We found Tigre in the last room of the motel. We’d clearly woken him from a deep sleep, but he was awake enough to take us into the adjacent garage, where we could speak more privately.

  “Carnal,” I said. “If you have a plan, we don’t know it.”

  “Of course we have a plan,” Tigre said, shaking off the cobwebs. “We’ve done this many times before.”

  “Tigre, I’m worried about our manpower and perimeter,” I said. “And why is Chapo holed up at the Miramar? I’m sure he knows every floor plan, staircase, and exits to the street; we don’t know any of it. How many guys do you have?”

  “I’ve got forty marines here,” Tigre said. “We’ll flood the hotel and put a couple of rápidas on the perimeter—”

  “No, that’s not enough!” I cut him short. I realized that to Tigre this was just another hit, another door to smash. He and the other marines were almost numb to it now; they’d been doing these hits day after day in Culiacán, and predawn raids had become routine.

  “We need more men on the perimeter,” I said. Brady nodded in agreement. “And as many guys as you can get inside.”

  “We’ve got another brigade down the street,” Tigre said. “As soon as we get the green light, I’ll call them in.”

  “How many men?”

  “I’ll have another thirty marines in fifteen minutes. Then thirty more after that.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Sixty extra men should do it. And where are the helos? We’re gonna need air support in case he manages to escape the perimeter.”

  “The helos are two hours away,” Tigre said.

  “No, that’s not gonna work,” I said. “We need them closer.”

  “I’ll move them down to Culiacán. Once we give the green light, it will take them an hour to fly down.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Stage them there. We don’t want them any closer than that. The movements may spook him.”

  “Claro,” Tigre said.

  “Show me where you’re placing rápidas on the perimeter,” I said, pointing to the Google Earth view of the Hotel Miramar on Tigre’s iPad. Tigre said he had only three rápidas for the capture op.

  “Only three?” I asked. “How do you see us moving in?”

  “We’ll use your vehicles and fill them with my guys. We’ll ride right up to the front gate of the hotel and enter from there.”

  “Fine,” I said, finally exhaling a bit.

  “Meet back here at oh-five-hundred hours, ready to go,” Tigre said.

  IT WAS JUST AFTER 3 A.M. when we left Tigre and headed back to the rental house. Nico and Brady walked upstairs to rest.

  I was too wound up to sleep, and everyone had to be awake in an hour anyway. I sat down at the kitchen table and studied the block around the Hotel Miramar on my MacBook over and over. I didn’t want to leave a single detail of the op to chance. We’d have the front entrance covered, but I was still worried about Chapo slipping out a back or side door and into a vehicle on Avenida Cruz Lizarraga, behind the hotel.

  What if he’d worked something out long in advance with Kava? What if they’d constructed one of their hydraulic tunnel entrances in a room on the ground floor of the hotel? Or had some other way to access the sewer system directly from the hotel basement? A manhole or drain somewhere out in the street?

  I’d been wearing Chapo’s black hat so long that the brim was sweaty and sticky, and I could feel my forehead starting to break out. Finally I grabbed a slice of pizza and quickly typed an update for my group supervisor back at the embassy in Mexico City.

  2/22/14, 3:33:05 AM: ANDREW HOGAN TO GROUP SUPERVISOR XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX: 23.226827-106.427935 targ loc hitting door at 0530—he’s there

  I hit SEND, took a bite of pizza, and felt my anxiety slowly dissipate. I even managed to crack a smile at my reflection in the screen of the laptop, my sleepless eyes beneath Chapo’s crazy-ass black hat.

  My thoughts turned to Diego, probably fast asl
eep back in Phoenix. I knew my old partner would have given anything to be right there in Mazatlán, prepping to make the predawn capture raid on El Niño de la Tuna . . .

  Cuando nació preguntó la partera

  Le dijo como le van a poner?

  Por apellido él será Guzmán Loera

  Y se llamará Joaquín . . .

  I started to text him but stopped midsentence: no need to wake him.

  I looked down at the clock on my laptop. It was 4:00 a.m. sharp.

  “Despiértate!” I shouted, getting up from the kitchen table. “Despiértate!” I walked around the house, yelling for everyone to wake up, flipping on the lights and ripping off blankets.

  “It’s go time, guys! Up! Up! Get up!”

  PITCH-DARK: 4:58 A.M. I took a deep breath and jumped into the driver’s seat of the white Chevy Suburban, now loaded up with marines who were all armed with AR-15s—Tigre rode shotgun. I glanced in the rearview mirror at Brady, who was in the driver’s seat of another white Suburban, loaded up with his own crew of marines—together we formed the entry team, with Tigre and me leading the way down to the strip of hotels and condos on the Malecón, the thirteen-mile-long boardwalk of Mazatlán.

  We sat, waiting for the green light from Leroy, Nico, and their SEMAR crews. The phone-finding and security teams were looking for final confirmation that the Top-Tier BlackBerry was indeed still at the Hotel Miramar.

  Sitting in the idling Suburban, I typed out a quick message to my father back in Kansas.

  “Going in hot.”

  Just then, Tigre’s radio squelched. I heard the words we’d all been waiting for:

  Luz Verde.

  “Vamos,” Tigre said. I threw the Suburban into drive, ripped out of the parking lot, and took off down the desolate highway.

  No one in the rig said a word. All the marines were quiet, checking their guns, focused on the mission. En route, we were joined by three rápidas, and together we sped in a tight convoy down Mexican Federal Highway 15 into the heart of Mazatlán.

  In just under eight minutes the convoy was on the Malecón, but as I went to make a left turn onto Avenida del Mar, I was blocked by a squad car from the municipal police department: red-and-blues flashing, a cop in a long-sleeved white uniform shirt and navy cap behind the wheel, hand up, gesturing for me to stop.

  “Not a fucking chance,” I said to Tigre.

  I wheeled the Suburban up onto the curb and swung around the cop car, missing the front bumper by a couple of inches. Then I saw that there were more red-and-blue lights, at least five or six municipal police cars up and down the Malecón, blocking the street.

  Dirty fucking cops? They knew we were coming?

  Tigre betrayed no emotion. I grabbed the steering wheel tighter as I hammered the gas toward the entrance of the hotel, glancing down at the FN Herstal Five-Seven pistol tucked into my waistband.

  Could the operation be blown? If so, Bravo will be on the Malecón any second with an army of enforcers, ready for a gunfight. They’ ll have AKs, hand grenades, RPGs, and all I’ve got is this Belgian peashooter . . .

  I jockeyed the nose of the Suburban in front of the hotel’s gate. Surprisingly, the gate was wide open. I saw Brady jumping out of his own Chevy, running hard, disappearing around the back. I knew he was covering the hotel’s four-foot wall because he was also worried about Chapo escaping out the back door. Another Cabo San Lucas debacle wasn’t going to happen under Brady’s and my watch.

  Brady grabbed two young marines who were standing near, split them up, and positioned them to watch the wall and the parking garage exit. Once they were in position, Brady went into the lobby just as three marines were grabbing the watchman, searching for hotel room keys behind the desk. Tigre and his men had already made their way inside.

  I was standing out front near the pool, with a view of the front of the hotel, my FN Five-Seven aimed at the dark, empty lot to the south as I continued to scan the shadows.

  As much as I wanted to be inside smashing doors with Tigre, I knew I needed to make sure our perimeter was tight. I wasn’t going to rely on anyone else. Was it completely covered?

  Dammit—we need more guys posted back there . . .

  Just then, Leroy appeared, walking from the hotel out toward the street.

  What the hell is he doing? I said to myself. He should be inside by now, trying to pin a door.

  Leroy walked out onto the Malecón and pointed up toward the hotel.

  He looked at me, then back up toward the front of the hotel.

  “Fourth floor,” Leroy said. “I’m getting a strong signal on this north end.”

  Then he gestured with his hands and disappeared quickly back inside the Miramar lobby.

  Within minutes, a few lights were flickering on—room by room, floor by floor, the hotel was coming aglow.

  Good, we’re finally getting somewhere.

  I couldn’t take it any longer; too much time had passed. If Chapo was planning an escape, he had to be doing it at this very moment.

  I began jogging down the hotel ramp to the street—to physically run the perimeter myself, double-checking that enough marines had the sides and back covered—when I heard another loud squelch.

  Then Spanish chatter over the radio:

  “Ya tenemos el blanco!” I ran up the ramp to Nico, who was holding the radio tight to his ear. “They have the target in custody! They got him!” Nico said.

  Another radio squelch:

  “Dame un blindado!”

  “They need an armored vehicle right now!”

  I couldn’t hear anything after that echo—dame un blindado!—and then there was a piercing silence and I turned, running fast to my Suburban . . .

  Pistol in my right hand, I sprinted as fast as I’d ever run anywhere in my life.

  I threw the Suburban into drive and gunned it down the ramp into the Miramar’s underground parking garage. Three marines were on the ramp, waving me on.

  Vamos! Vamos! Vamos!

  It was too dark to see anything clearly underground, but knowing that the marines were about to extract Chapo, I immediately repositioned the Suburban, angling the Chevy precisely so it would be ready to exit quickly.

  Like clockwork, three more marines emerged, standing up a shirtless man who’d been splayed out on the floor. I could see only a dark silhouette and a brief flash of white skin. He had his hands cuffed behind his back, no blindfold on his face, as they yanked him up off the ground, leading him forward by the silver elevator doors.

  The prisoner was short and bare-chested, but I still couldn’t make out his face through the thick tinted bulletproof glass of the Suburban; the skin of the man’s chest grew increasing pale under the glare of more flashlights.

  I jumped out of the driver’s seat, still wearing that black hat and balaclava, and ran up to the prisoner.

  I stopped abruptly in front of him.

  We were face-to-face at last.

  I couldn’t resist:

  “What’s up, Chapo-o-o-o!?”

  How strange it must have been for this drug lord to see someone wearing one of his own black hats. Guzmán’s eyes bulged, then he hunched one shoulder, flinching, as if he thought he was going to be slugged.

  I stared at him, and Chapo held my gaze—just for a moment. There was no mistaking it now: I had my man. That usually fastidious hair—jet black—was greasy, messed up; there was the trademark thick black mustache, and skin so pale it was nearly translucent from all those years of living without daylight, stuck in his rat’s world of holes and tubes. Chapo had on black Adidas track pants—they were low-slung, just barely clinging to his hip bones, and they exposed a firm, if Buddha-like, potbelly.

  As the marines walked him toward the Suburban, I slapped him on the back—not hard, just an attaboy! whack like I once did to my brother, Brandt, after a touchdown, or with Diego after we’d closed some big UC deal.

  I pulled my hand back, wet with his sweat. Chapo’s back felt like it had been slathere
d with suntan oil. He probably hadn’t showered in days. I hopped into the driver’s seat of my Suburban while Chapo was pushed into the rear center seat, flanked by two marines. They’d periodically question him and he’d respond with an almost robotic-sounding “Está bien—está bien . . .”

  I turned suddenly: “Mira!”

  Chapo answered me calmly, deferentially:

  “Sí, señor?”

  I snapped three quick photos on my iPhone.

  I spun back around in the driver’s seat, transmission in park, foot revving the gas pedal, ready to rock.

  Only then did it strike me: we had no exit strategy. The past few weeks had been all about the hunt; we never fully planned for the contingency of having Chapo cuffed and in custody.

  Well, I’m going to have to drive this fucker 1,016 kilometers—some twelve straight hours—to Mexico City. Difficult—but doable . . .

  But then I got out of the Suburban, knowing that it was far too dangerous for any American agent: a vehicle carrying Chapo Guzmán would be a moving target anywhere in Mexico. One of the SEMAR officers would have to drive.

  I turned around, spotting Brady for the first time since we’d arrived at the front of the hotel. We hugged.

  “Un-fuckin’-believable!” Brady was shouting, tears welling up in his eyes.

  I had never seen him get truly emotional about anything. Brady’s usual scowl was now transformed into a broad smile.

  I WALKED WITH BRADY from the parking deck up to the street. He was saying something, but I couldn’t even hear him; I was still overcome.

  We stepped out onto the curb beneath the Miramar sign. The warm ocean breeze swept across my face and slowly began to break my trance. The leaves of the palms whipped in the wind overhead. I turned, bear-hugging Nico, and then Leroy. Both men, along with Leroy’s entire marshals team, had been instrumental in the hunt during these final weeks.

  I looked up into the dawn sky: the pitch-blackness lightening to a hue of dark blue. I took a long, deep breath, spinning around in the middle of the street, my vision only now coming into full focus.