Wolf Boys

by Dan Slater

  Gabriel nodded. Surely there was more to running a plaza. But there would be time to learn.

  They reincorporated in Nuevo Laredo, where everyone was watching the video.

  LIKE ANY TRANSFORMATIONAL EVENT, A story about the video developed internally and filtered down through Company ranks. Five Zeta sicarios had gone to Acapulco with instructions to kill cops on the payroll of La Barbie and capture the plaza. They knew the rules: Don’t go clubbing, don’t go out at night, and never go out alone. Whether it was insubordination, or a youngster’s inability to resist the seaside resort’s nightlife, the traveling assassins went to a club, where their norteño looks marked them as outsiders in Acapulco’s insular narco-community.

  It was fifteen minutes before cops tipped off La Barbie: Los Zetas were in town to kill him. The next day, La Barbie’s men raided their safe house and rounded up three of the assassins. While escaping, the fourth assassin dropped his cell phone in the backyard. The fifth was in town, using a pay phone to call his sister, when La Barbie’s guys punched him in the stomach and hustled him into an SUV along with his wife and two-year-old stepdaughter, brought along to enjoy vacation. The escaped sicario drove through the night. When he delivered the news in Nuevo Laredo, Miguel Treviño called the lost cell phone, asked for La Barbie, and requested the return of his men: “I’ll pay whatever you want.”

  “Nah,” La Barbie said, “I have money.”

  “Okay, the plazas. Reynosa and Nuevo Laredo—Las que más quieres, las que por más peleas.” The ones you most want, the ones you fight for.

  La Barbie wasn’t dumb enough to fall for that one. “La guerra es guerra,” he said.

  “Then let the family go.”

  La Barbie kept the wife and stepdaughter overnight. The next morning, he made the girl a bowl of cereal with a banana, and let her play in the pool. “Your husband said to tell you that he loves you,” he told the new widow, and gave her a thousand pesos, about seventy bucks, to get home.

  In the DVD video that had now surfaced, months later, four men, three of them shirtless, sat on the floor, bruised and bleeding, against a backdrop of black garbage bags taped to the wall. La Barbie, standing behind the camera, asked the captives to identify themselves and describe their jobs.

  “I was in the army for eight years,” said the first. “I have the contacts in the military to find out about the patrols.” He explained that the Zetas were upset with the attorney general of Tamaulipas because he was taking bribes yet consenting to military operations against the Company. He also said Nuevo Laredo’s newly elected police chief would be killed for raising too much attention—referring to the police chief who was assassinated the prior June, hours after taking the oath.

  La Barbie moved on.

  “I was in GAFE,” said the second. “Now I’m a recruiter.” The Zetas recruited people even if they weren’t GAFE deserters, he said, and trained them in one of four camps—Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, Miguel Alemán, or Ciudad Mier.

  “I used to work as a hawk,” said the third, meaning a spotter, someone who lurked in the plaza and looked for contras. “Then they put me on the caravans, picking up people with Miguel. After capturing someone, Miguel or Meme Flores says whether or not to take the captive to the guiso.”

  “What’s the guiso?” La Barbie asked.

  “It’s when they grab someone, they get information about moving drugs or money, they get what they want, and then, after torturing him, they execute him. They take him to a ranch, they shoot him in the head, they throw him in a can, and they burn him with different fuels like diesel and gasoline.”

  La Barbie asked about a female radio reporter in Nuevo Laredo who’d recently turned up dead.

  “Lupita Escamilla was responsible for writing the news, and making sure things didn’t come out on the national level. But then she refused to continue working for them so they sent someone to kill her.”

  “And you, buddy?” La Barbie asked the fourth, a young man known as Pollo, whom Gabriel knew from childhood. But before Pollo could answer, a gun came into the camera frame and blew his head off. It was the first time Gabriel had seen a friend killed. The film cut off there, but presumably the others were shot the same way.

  The Company put a million dollars on La Barbie’s head. By most accounts, he had taken up residence in Acapulco, on Mexico’s south coast, but some believed that he visited family frequently in Laredo.

  Out of jail for one week, Meme’s words still ringing in his head, Gabriel—having returned to the roches after finding religion in jail over the summer—decided he would do whatever it took to succeed in the Company, kill La Barbie, and become the next American drug lord.

  IN SEPTEMBER, AROUND THE TIME Gabriel Cardona bailed out of jail, Angel Moreno’s opinion about the possibilities of opening an OCDETF investigation of Zeta leadership changed. Moreno took a routine plea meeting with a busted American drug smuggler from Dallas.

  Mario Alvarado’s pink stash house on Topaz Trail, in north Laredo, had been busted following a routine crime-stopper’s call. Alvarado had eighty pounds of weed stuffed in a couch, and a few kilos of coke hidden in a TV—personal-use quantities for a guy like Alvarado, but enough weight to warrant serious prison time. Looking to cut a deal, and reduce his sentence, the twenty-two-year-old Alvarado entertained Angel Moreno with an epic story of dealing directly with Zeta leadership for the past four years. Alvarado said he knew the Treviño brothers, Miguel and Omar, and their Zeta network personally. Alvarado said he hunted with them, did business with them; was even held hostage by them.

  Moreno thought back to his summer lunch meeting with Robert Garcia, and began to wonder: Could he use that Gabriel Cardona kid and Mario Alvarado—unconnected but for their common link to the Zetas—as the basis for an OCDETF investigation? In theory, yes. But to get an OCDETF case approved, he needed at least one other federal agency to sign on. There were many possibilities: FBI, ATF, DEA, ICE. Every agency had a strong presence in Laredo, and Moreno knew all the bosses. He made the rounds, trying to build support.

  The goal of an OCDETF investigation was to get big cartel bosses. But what did it mean for a drug lord to be “big”? The factors that formed the government’s perception of “bigness” were the same factors that formed the public’s perception: media coverage. The Treviños were not well known in the States, nor was Zeta leadership, composed, as it was, of obscure former special-force troops like Heriberto Lazcano and Efraín “Catorce” Teodoro Torres.

  La Barbie, on the other hand, had been beefing up his PR campaign. He published newspaper editorials in Mexico claiming to be a legitimate businessman and imploring the Mexican government to eliminate the Zetas, whom he called “delinquents.” Over the summer, Robert and Laredo PD had decided against publicizing the “Barbie Execution Video,” as it was now known. But they did share it with some people from federal agencies—such as FBI, the agency in charge of investigating missing persons—to make sure there was no confusion about the growing threat. A FBI agent leaked the video, which somehow wound up at a small newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, in the hands of reporters who didn’t know much about Mexican drug cartels and couldn’t translate the Spanish. The Washington State reporters ran an Internet search for “Zetas,” which turned up news stories by Alfredo Corchado, the Mexican-American journalist who ran the Mexico City bureau for the Dallas Morning News. They mailed the video to Corchado, who investigated the claims made in the video, wrote a story for the Dallas Morning News, and posted the video footage online. The Barbie Execution Video went viral, shown on a loop all over Mexican and American TV, and gave La Barbie a global reputation, erasing any doubts about what kind of business he was really involved in.

  From his Laredo upbringing and earlier trafficking cases, American authorities knew La Barbie. Miguel Treviño’s reputation was growing within Laredo law enforcement, as informants cycled through interview rooms and told stories about him, but many still believed he was a minor player. In reality, La Barb
ie was a successful smuggler and capable soldier, but a middling player, overall, in Mexico’s narco-hierarchy, no more or less important than Miguel. Yet the gruesome video, the articles, the Laredo pedigree, and the blond preppy appearance all helped make La Barbie the new symbol of the war—in the eyes of the public, and therefore in the eyes of American government. Washington, D.C., wanted La Barbie. The DEA had a source inside La Barbie’s circle; in fact, it turned out to be the same guy who gave Robert the video in the first place.

  And so the agency heads declined Angel Moreno’s OCDETF plan for the Zetas. Moreno had more power than the local agency bosses, but they had jurisdiction over their own offices. They respected Moreno. But some carried bitter memories of him undercutting their influence in the past—ordering around their agents, or going directly to their regional bosses in Houston. La Barbie, they said confidently, was the target.

  AFTER RECEIVING THE DVD OF the Barbie Execution Video and watching it several times, Alfredo Corchado, the Mexico City bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, travelled to Tamaulipas state to meet with José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a prosecutor who served as drug czar to President Vicente Fox. Vasconcelos, alleged in the video to be taking money from the Company, wasn’t eager to be interviewed by Corchado, and canceled three times. Corchado finally scored the interview, but only after asking President Fox’s administration to force Vasconcelos to meet with him.

  Vicente Fox, a former broccoli farmer and Coca-Cola executive, became president of Mexico in 2000. Despite promises of change, he’d taken what many considered a lax approach to pursuing drug lords. American law enforcement sent tips to the Fox administration regarding key criminals in Mexico. But the tips went nowhere, or were shared with the criminals themselves. Corchado had interviewed Fox many times, and believed that Fox was simply unwilling to acknowledge the growing cartel menace. Fox didn’t like how foreign coverage of cartels eclipsed the image of Mexico that he wanted to establish, that of a rising democracy.

  “Total lies,” said Vasconcelos when Corchado finally got in and forced him to watch the DVD, in which a Zeta hit man accused him of receiving bribes. “They will say any lies, especially when they’re being tortured. This is nothing new.” He told Corchado: “This isn’t a story for you. Why don’t you focus on tourism stories? They’re safer.”

  18

  All in the Gang

  In early October 2005, Gabriel was back in Laredo, sitting in Nydia’s Salon, when a short kid walked in. He wore sandals, black jeans, and a mesh muscle shirt. He sported whiskers—catinflas—and looked stoned, grifo. He’d grown an inch or two but still just barely exceeded five feet.

  “Nada que ver!” Gabriel shouted across the narrow salon. Ain’t much to look at!

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” Bart said.

  Prior to his own jail stint, Gabriel had been taking calls from his old friend Bart Reta, who was serving thirteen months in the Texas Youth Commission for an accumulation of charges, including marijuana possession and aggravated assault for the time he took a shotgun to seventh grade and beat it against the chest of a rival gang member.

  In the ghettos that Gabriel and Bart came from, violence and volatility were taken for granted. In Gabriel’s mind, a boy could be reckless, even cold, and still be “a good kid”—indeed, these were admirable qualities in the street. Gabriel thought of Bart as “a good kid,” however, because Bart was extraordinarily loyal. He took the rap for others, and never backed out of a criminal enterprise.

  Even Gabriel could see that Bart was odd, though. Bart not only disregarded the pain of others, he was incautious toward his own welfare. He thought everything was a joke. Getting arrested for aggravated assault, or drug possession—these setbacks caused him less anxiety than most people experience in rush-hour traffic. Taken away in cuffs, Bart always made his trademark sad puppy-dog face, then broke out laughing. “He could never be himself because he wanted to fit in,” was how Gabriel described his friend, and blamed it on “the short-man complex.” Behind the recklessness and the jokester façade, Bart carried the rage of a poor boy whose family couldn’t feed him, of a short boy referred to as the Midget by friends, of a younger boy, now sixteen, who assiduously cultivated the approval of his gang elders, regardless of risk, and no matter the cost.

  On the prison calls, during the months leading up to Bart’s release from TYC in July 2005, Gabriel and Bart exchanged gossip. Who was locked up. Who was out. Gabriel said he was dating a fresa from United High. Bart said he’d been reading mythology and poetry, and even wrote some of his own verse. He could put a lot of emotion into his poetry, he boasted, and alter his voice to sound like anybody. In TYC, inmates fought every day, he told Gabriel. Bart said he manipulated others into fighting each other. He bragged of joining a California gang called Sur 13.

  “Get off that viaje,” Gabriel said: Get off that trip. “Sur 13 might be big in Califas, but it ain’t shit in Texas.”

  This condescension was typical of their relationship; Gabriel pushed Bart’s buttons, degraded him. It was understood, between them, that Gabriel wanted the best for Bart, wanted to help him, so long as it was clear who was boss, who was “the shit in the hood.”

  “Oh yeah?” Bart said. “You got something better?”

  “Me and Wences have something big going,” Gabriel explained. “When you get out, maybe you can get a lick on it.”

  Now, in Nydia’s Salon, Gabriel told Nydia to put Bart’s haircut on his tab.

  Bart began going back and forth between the apartment Gabriel rented and Bart’s girlfriend’s house. Everyone knew Bart’s girlfriend had been seeing another guy while Bart was inside TYC, that she had gotten pregnant and had the other guy’s child. But in the hood it was taboo to live with a girl who already had babies, so, to avoid ridicule, Bart claimed the child was his.

  One afternoon, a few days after they saw each other in Nydia’s, Gabriel was driving around Lazteca when he spotted Bart riding a bike. He drove Bart to the Laredo mall, where they bought Lacoste and Versace shirts, Calvin Klein jeans, a belt, a watch, cologne, Polo boots, and a cell phone. Then Gabriel took Bart to Nuevo Laredo to meet some new people. Bart was an immediate hit with leadership, and Miguel decided to keep him in Mexico.

  Just as Meme Flores had recruited Gabriel into the Company, Gabriel too became a scouter of talent, albeit a particularly well-placed scout: He was American. And just as Bart now sought the approval of Gabriel, Gabriel wanted to please his own “fathers” in the Company. Delivering a young soldado like Bart was a good start toward his advancement.

  To understand what would drive Gabriel over the next six months, it was important to understand the difference between operating in Mexico versus operating in America. In Mexico, control came directly from the top of Company management. In Mexico, a comandante de mando, a low-level commander in charge of a small group, didn’t choose his own employees, and was therefore less accountable to the top. But for a comandante de mando in the States—the promotion Gabriel now enjoyed—the trust was, in his view, “magnified,” because he had no direct oversight, only far-flung bosses in Mexico. Gabriel took orders from Meme or Miguel. But in Texas, he recruited for his own mando, his team. Since he chose his partners and employees, he was more responsible for their actions than he would’ve been running a similar group in Mexico.

  He liked the power and the pressure, and he loved the respect from his homies in Lazteca. Particularly when Gabriel’s former boss came looking for work.

  THE PRIOR JUNE, WHEN GABRIEL was arrested for the Bruno Orozco hit, the DEA busted Richard Jasso’s drug warehouse in San Antonio. The trouble, for Richard, started when the DEA arrested Richard’s Cuban buyer in Miami and, unknown to Richard, turned the Cuban into an informant. The Cuban had been a trustworthy client; so, when the Cuban told Richard that he’d recently been ripped off and needed more cocaine to pay the debt that he owed to Richard, Richard agreed and loaded up 227 kilos. The Cuban, wearing a DEA wire, picked it up. When the
Cuban returned the following week with $6 million and an order for another four hundred kilos, Richard had been out partying the night before so he asked his brother-in-law to meet the Cuban at the warehouse. At the warehouse, Richard’s brother-in-law found an arresting team of DEA agents.

  Richard fled to Mexico, and his name came out in the ensuing indictment. Since he was supposed to be at the warehouse when it got busted, Richard’s Mexican supplier, a Sinaloa affiliate, posed questions. The loss of 627 kilos, more than $10 million in coke, fell on Richard. It didn’t help when his brother-in-law became a government snitch. But the supplier forgave Richard, then gave him $200,000 to open up a new line of transport, and started him off with two “look” shipments of fifty kilos each. Trying to cut costs, Richard hired inexperienced drivers, and both loads were seized. Richard’s prior successes now meant nothing.

  The supplier offered Richard one last option: move to Monterrey, handle business from there, and earn back the lost money. Richard mulled it. An unknown Mexican city? Constant supervision? Leaving his family? It might’ve been smart or it might’ve been stupid. He could make money or he could turn up dead. He decided to return to Texas, where he sold off some old trucking equipment and used his last $15,000 to buy a load of cut-rate weed, which he moved to San Antonio but couldn’t sell. He looked for transport work with people he’d partnered with in the past. But they knew he was hot. They knew about his brother-in-law, the snitch. They liked Richard, but they all claimed no longer to be working, and gave him their backs. In just a couple of tumultuous months, everything he built had vanished. He was twenty-one.

  In truth, the transport business was getting tougher for everyone. The battle for Nuevo Laredo had driven up cocaine prices by 25 percent at the border, as more blood than ever had to be shed to move a brick through Mexico. But prices in Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, and New York didn’t adjust much for market fluctuations at the border. Runners like Richard, the middlemen, took the biggest hit in a down economy.