The Cartel (20 page)

“Okay,” Keller says. “Here’s what you do. You drop Contreras off. You go downtown. You walk across the Puente Nuevo into Brownsville. A DEA agent will be waiting for you on the other side.”

“You promise?”

“You have my word.”

Keller gets on the horn to Vera. Thirty minutes later, he’s sitting in the SEIDO office with him and Aguilar.

“What do you have to do with this?” Aguilar asks Keller.

“He helped me with the informant,” Vera says.

“That’s not—”

“You want Contreras or not?” Vera snaps.

“I should have been informed of this operation,” Aguilar says. “My God, gypsy fortune-tellers…what’s next?”

“What’s next is that we take Contreras,” Vera says, “and three top Zetas.”

Aguilar warns, “They won’t give up Contreras without a fight.”

“Good,” Vera says.

“I want him alive,” Aguilar says to Vera.

Keller gets on the phone to Tim Taylor. “I’m going to need an agent to pick up an informant on the New Bridge in Brownsville. And I’m going to need an S-visa for him.”

“What the hell, Keller? What are you doing in Matamoros?”

“The op is out of Mexico City.”

“What does it have to do with Barrera?”

“Nothing,” Keller says. “It has to do with Contreras.”

“Keller—”

“You want him or not?” Keller asks, echoing Vera.

“Of course we want him.”

“Then get an agent there tomorrow afternoon,” Keller says. “He’s picking up an Alejandro Sosa and putting him into protective custody. Then get the extradition papers going for Contreras.”

“Gee, is that all? Anything else?”

“Not right now.” He hangs up and turns back to Aguilar and Vera. “We’d better get going.”

“You’re not coming,” Aguilar says.

“Do you know the address of the safe house?” Keller asks.

“No.”

“Then I guess I’m coming.”

Vera laughs.

—

Matamoros makes cars.

Perched on the south bank of the Río Bravo where it flows into the Gulf, the city is home to over a hundred maquiladoras, many of which build parts for GM, Chrysler, Ford, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz.

Once the odd combination of a cow town and fishing village, Matamoros came of age during the American Civil War, when it became an alternate port from which to ship Confederate cotton after the North closed New Orleans. Now it has the feel of an industrial city, with factories, warehouses, pollution, and endless rows of trucks carrying its products across four bridges into Brownsville, Texas, just across the river.

Matamoros is the home of the Gulf cartel, and Osiel Contreras is throwing a party.

—

Ten o’clock in the morning, Ochoa thinks, and the boss is sound asleep, naked, wedged between two similarly unconscious and unclad thousand-dollar whores in a bedroom on the second floor of the safe house.

It was a hell of a fiesta.

The women were exceptional.

But he’s starting to worry more and more about Contreras. The boss is doing too much cocaine, his paranoia is becoming treacherous, and his ego has led to acts of terrible misjudgment.

The assault on the American DEA agents had come one second from what would have been a catastrophe. Even what did happen put the CDG on the radar in ways that just aren’t good.

Ochoa doesn’t like it—it’s bad for business, bad for his money. And Ochoa has come to like his money.

“Patrón, patrón.”
Contreras had ordered his plane to be ready by eleven. They have business in Nuevo Laredo.
“Patrón.”

Contreras opens one jaundiced eye.
“Chíngate.”

Okay, fuck me, Ochoa thinks, but—

Miguel Morales, whom they call Forty, comes up the stairs. A thick, squat man with a thick mustache and curly black hair, he’s pulled on his jeans but nothing else and he looks both hungover and fucked out.

And alarmed.

Which in turn alarms Ochoa, because Forty isn’t one to panic. He’s risen quickly in the Zeta ranks despite not being one of the original special-ops veterans. In fact, he’s half American, a
pocho
from Laredo, with no military experience but a long history with the Los Tejos gang along the border. He took to the military training like he was born to it and didn’t blink at the rougher stuff.

A story going around has it that Forty once tore the heart out of one of his living victims and ate it, saying that it gave him strength, and while Ochoa doesn’t really believe the story, he doesn’t really disbelieve it, either. So when Forty says, “There’s a problem”—there’s a problem.

He follows Forty to the window and looks out.

Police and soldiers are everywhere.

—

The Zetas fight.

For six hours, fifteen of them, surrounded, hold out against over three hundred AFI, SEIDO, and army troopers trying to storm the house.

Ochoa never goes into any building without working out fields of fire, and his disciplined men are laying it down. First they drive the
federales
from the door, then across the street, but that’s the best they can do.

The soldiers have armored cars, and after an initial burst of overexcited, incontinent fire, they’ve settled down and are picking their targets. They’ve fired tear-gas grenades through the shattered windows, and the helicopters have swept Zeta snipers off the roof.

If we could hold out until dark, Ochoa thinks, there’s a slim chance of getting Contreras out in the confusion, but we can’t hold until dark.

He looks at his watch.

It’s only 1:30 in the afternoon.

They already have one KIA and two wounded, and they’re running out of ammunition.

A bullhorn once again demands Contreras’s surrender.

—

Vera lowers the megaphone.

“It’s time to storm the house,” he says.

“Why?” Aguilar asks. “We have them surrounded. They’re not going anywhere.”

“It makes us look weak,” Vera says. “The longer they hold out, the worse it makes us look. I can hear the
corridos
already.”

“Let them sing,” Aguilar says. “We’ll have Contreras. Without him, these Zetas are nothing.”

He’s missing the point, Keller thinks. Vera
wants
bodies, the more the better. Contreras and his troops in handcuffs sends one message—Contreras and his troops in pools of their own blood sends another:

If you form an army, we don’t arrest you.

We kill you.

You want a war, you get a war.

“Strap your vest on,” Vera says. “Five more minutes and we go.”

“You should reconsider that,” Keller says.

Vera looks at him, surprised.

Same with Aguilar.

But for once, Keller thinks, the lawyer is right. Contreras is trapped, he can’t possibly escape. Those aren’t just narcos in that house, they’re highly trained elite soldiers.

“Whatever message you want to send,” Keller tells Vera, “it’s not worth a bloodbath. Which there will be if we storm the house.”

Vera stares at him.

“Make them surrender,” Keller presses. “Make them come out with their hands in the air. That’s the footage you want. Dead, they’re martyrs; alive, they’re bitches. That’s the song you want sung. That’s what makes some kid look at you and not them as the hero.”

“Quite a speech, Arturo,” Vera says. “But you still don’t understand Mexico. Five minutes.”

—

“They’re moving!” Forty yells.

Ochoa crawls back to the window and peers out. Forty is right—there’s movement behind the armored cars.

He recognizes the signs of an imminent assault.

“They’re coming,” Ochoa says.

Segura fingers the grenade around his neck. He’s a giant of a man, six-seven and built like a tree. He’s worn his “grenade necklace” ever since Ochoa can remember, since they served together in Chiapas. “If they get in, I let them get close and pull the pin. We go to the devil together.”

“It will be a good time,” Forty says. “All the best women are in hell.”

“Don’t be idiots,” Contreras says. “I’m going to surrender.”

“Not me,” Segura grunts. That’s why he wears the grenade.

“I didn’t say you, I said me,” Contreras snaps. Turning to Ochoa, he says, “Take your best men out the back. I’ll go to the front with my hands up, make a big show. You might have a chance in the excitement.”

“They’ll gun you down,” Ochoa says.

The AFI are murderers.

“Maybe not in front of the cameras,” Contreras says. “Ochoa, listen to me, this is the right decision.”

Ochoa knows that it is. Contreras can still run the organization from prison, but only if he still has an organization to run.

Which means the Zetas surviving.

Contreras says, “My brother will take over the day-to-day running of the organization.”

Despite the grimness of the situation, Ochoa almost has to laugh. The “little” brother is little only in the sense of “younger.” Héctor Contreras is known as “Gordo,” who is only impressive in that he manages to be obese despite an addiction to cocaine. The man has no self-discipline whatsoever, and therefore Ochoa has no respect whatsoever for him.

Gordo “running the operation” in reality means that I’ll be running the operation, Ochoa thinks. There are worse things.

“You know who’s behind this,” he says.

“Of course,” Contreras answers. “It was the right move.”

“Hell will wait,” Ochoa says.

—

Keller tightens his Kevlar vest.

Aguilar stares at him. “I wonder who you are sometimes.”

“You and me both, Luis.” He checks the load on the Sig Sauer, hoping not to use it, and wishes that Aguilar would stay behind the vehicles. I don’t care that much about you, Luis, he thinks, but I do like your wife and kids, and I don’t want the next time I see them to be at your funeral.

Keller feels that moment of calm he always has before going into a firefight. The fear subsides, the pins-and-needles pricking of anxiety goes away, and he feels this cool rush in his brain.

His only regret is that it’s not Barrera.

He gets his weight solidly under his feet and gets ready to push off.

Then the front door of the house opens.

Contreras steps out.

His hands high over his head.

At least two hundred weapons are trained on him.

So are a dozen news cameras.

“Me rindo!”
Contreras yells. “I surrender!”

Vera stares across the street for a moment. Then he yells, “Hold your fire! Don’t shoot!”

Keller hears a burst of fire, then an explosion from the back of the house. For a second it seems like everything is going to fall apart. Contreras drops to his knees, yelling, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

The gunfire stops.

Vera strides across the street. He grabs Contreras by the wrists, turns him, kicks him to the ground, and handcuffs him. “Osiel Contreras, you are under arrest!”

“Go fuck yourself,” Contreras says quietly. “You
and
your bosses.”

Canelas, Sinaloa

Eva Esparza is seventeen and beautiful.

Long, wavy black hair, brown doe eyes, high cheekbones, and a figure that is just beginning to fulfill its promise. She’s just a little taller than Adán, who holds her loosely in his arms as they dance to the music of Los Canelos de Durango, a band that Nacho had flown in for the occasion.

The occasion is a dance to raise support for his daughter’s candidacy for Miss Canelas, which she’ll probably win anyway by virtue of her beauty and charm, but Nacho isn’t taking any chances. He’s sponsored this dance and handed out gifts to the judges.

Adán wouldn’t be interested in a runner-up.

A king can only marry a queen.

Or, better, a princess.

Adán finds Nacho’s solicitude a little amusing. His ally has at least six families scattered across Sinaloa, Durango, Jalisco, and God knows where else, but Eva is clearly his favorite, Daddy’s little girl.

Holding her, smelling her hair and her perfume, Adán can see why. The girl is intoxicating, and he’s grateful that Nacho’s favorite daughter inherited his charm and not his looks.

When the subject first came up, Adán wasn’t exactly sanguine.

“We’re not getting any younger,” Nacho had said, at the end of a long discussion about the war in Tijuana.

Adán smelled a trap. “I don’t know, Nacho, you look younger than I’ve ever seen you. Maybe it’s the money.”

“Don’t let’s kid ourselves,” Nacho answered. “I take the Viagra, you know.”

Adán let the chance to exchange confidences pass. Erectile dysfunction was not an issue with Magda in his bed, although she was now in Colombia, setting up a cocaine pipeline.

“Still,” Nacho said, “I’m not making any more children.”

“Jesus, Nacho, get to the point,” Adán snapped.

“All right,” Nacho said. “What’s all this for, this empire building, if we don’t have anyone to leave it to?”

“You have a son.”

“You don’t.”

Adán got up from his desk chair and walked over to the window. “I had a child, Nacho.”

“I know.”

“The truth is,” Adán said, “I don’t know if I could live with that kind of heartbreak again.”

“Children are life, Adanito. You still have time.”

“I don’t think Magda would be interested.”

“It can’t be Magda,” Nacho said. “Don’t get me wrong, no offense, but she’s been around.”

“This from
you
?” Adán asks.

“It’s different with a woman and you know it,” Nacho said. “No, your wife has to be a virgin, of course, and the mother of your children must be from an important family.”

Then Adán got what Nacho was really driving at. “Are you suggesting—”

“Why not?” Nacho asked. “Think about it. An Esparza and a Barrera? Now
that
would be an
alianza de sangre.
”

Yes, it would be, Adán thought. It would lock Nacho in. I would not only get his undying loyalty, but, in a sense, the Tijuana plaza back with it. But…

“What about Diego?” he asked.

“Have you seen his eldest daughter?” Nacho asked. “She’ll have a heavier beard than he does!”

Adán laughed in spite of himself. Diego, always sensitive of his position, might feel threatened if I move closer to Esparza.