The Border

by Don Winslow

  “Dennison isn’t going to win,” O’Brien says. “His wall isn’t going to get built. Leave it alone, let the silly season pass. Why pick a fight with this asshole?”

  Because, Keller thinks, among other things, Dennison’s son-in-law is neck deep in drug money.

  Terra has gone to the well at least three times before, borrowing millions from HBMX for building projects in Hamburg, London and Kiev. Claiborne was the syndication broker on the first two. The Kiev deal went through Sberbank, a Russian institution now under US sanction.

  HBMX has its own problems. In 2012, its US affiliate was fined $2 billion for “failure to stop criminals using its banking systems to launder money.” The investigation was a slow burn; over a five-year period HBMX in Mexico sent more than $15 billion in cash or suspicious bulk traveler’s checks to its US branches. The bank was also sanctioned for “a resistance to closing accounts linked to suspicious activity”—it had over seventeen thousand unreviewed SARs.

  No wonder, Keller thinks, it’s a “lender of last resort.”

  But now Claiborne reports that Lerner is desperate.

  He hasn’t found a replacement for the Deutsche Bank money, the clock is running down on his balloon payment for Park Tower, and the building is hemorrhaging cash.

  “Jason wants me to go to Russia,” Claiborne told Hidalgo, “or Mexico.”

  Either way it’s dirty money, Keller thinks, but he doesn’t care if Claiborne goes to Russia. He cares very much if he goes to Mexico.

  Things are going on down there.

  The biggest development is the rapid rise of Tito Ascensión and the New Jalisco cartel. The CJN has aggressively moved into heroin and fentanyl, challenging Sinaloa’s dominance. Ascensión’s organization is moving product through the Baja crossings, has a strong presence in not only Jalisco, but also in Michoacán and Guerrero. It’s also challenging the Zetas in Veracruz.

  The battle isn’t just about drug exports. Mexico now has a strong domestic drug market and the competition for local corners has turned cities like Tijuana, La Paz and a dozen others into battlegrounds. The killing has reached peaks not seen since the “bad old days” of 2010 and 2011.

  The foreign and domestic sales are inextricably connected—the cartels pay their soldiers by giving them domestic turf—so the domestic markets pay for the manpower they need to control the border crossings.

  It isn’t just drugs—the local gangs that ally themselves with one or the other cartel make a lot of their money through extortion, forcing payoffs from bars, restaurants, hotels, virtually any businesses inside their territories.

  It’s a relatively new development—the old, dominant Sinaloa cartel never allowed extortion on the belief that it would alienate an otherwise neutral citizenry and force the government to take action.

  The CJN has no such scruples. It’s extorting businesses right in Mexico City, under the federal government’s nose, and daring the ruling PRI party to do something about it.

  The Mexican government has tried.

  Back in January, the federales tried to capture Ascensión but botched it. They did, however, arrest his son, Rubén.

  Ascensión retaliated, ambushing a convoy of federales in Ocotlán with machine guns and rockets launchers and killing five of them.

  The government struck back, hitting Ascensión’s ranch in rural Jalisco in a predawn raid.

  Two French-made, Mexican air force EC-725 Caracals—“Super Cougars”—swooped in low over the trees. Pairs of 7.62 mm machine guns peeked out the left and right front windows, and each craft was loaded with twenty federales or elite army paratroopers with orders to kill or capture Tito Ascensión.

  The idea was to catch him sleeping at one of his many ranches and put him to sleep for good.

  Except Tito was wide awake.

  On a burn phone in the reinforced bedroom of the hacienda, he watched the choppers come and waited until the lead helicopter started to hover and he saw the paratroopers start to rappel down on a rope like lollipops on a stick.

  And just as helpless, dangling in the air.

  Five armored trucks, hidden under camouflage netting, roared out of the trees. His household guard—also elites, trained by former Israeli special forces, wore uniforms, and each truck was stenciled cjn special forces high command.

  They opened fire with AKs.

  Lollipops dropped from the sky.

  A CJN gunman fired a rocket at the second helicopter, hitting it in the rear rotor. The chopper spun, crashed to the ground and burst into flames.

  The “surprise” raid was over.

  Nine soldiers were dead, others hideously burned.

  Over the next two days, CJN gunmen ran riot all over Jalisco, hijacking and burning cars and buses, torching gas stations and even banks, even in the resort town of Puerto Vallarta. The government had to send in ten thousand troops, at enormous expense, to restore a vestige of order.

  Three weeks later a group of federales spotted a convoy of cars with armed men leaving a ranch in Michoacán near the Jalisco border. They’d had intelligence that Tito Ascensión was possibly hiding at Rancho del Sol, so they tried to pull the cars over.

  The men in the cars opened fire and raced back to the ranch.

  The federales called in reinforcements.

  First forty more federales, then sixty more, then a Black Hawk helicopter poured more than two thousand rounds into the ranch buildings, killing six CJN gunmen and capturing three.

  Two of the CJN dead were Jalisco state police officers.

  One federal was killed.

  But Tito Ascensión was not among the dead or the captured.

  Mexico City decided it just wouldn’t do.

  They needed a victory.

  Better headlines.

  The federales drove around the area and picked up thirty-three more suspects, men who were known or reputed to be on CJN’s payroll. They brought them to the ranch and shot them in the back of the head. Then they scattered the bodies around the ranch, placed assault rifles and rocket launchers in their hands and announced that they killed forty-two CJN gunmen in the course of a vicious, three-hour firefight.

  It got headlines, all right.

  The Mexican media—including Ana—jumped on it, and mostly published stories that the “gun battle” was a sham and that the federales had basically executed forty-two men who probably had no connection to the CJN.

  “Forty-nine in Tristeza,” Ana wrote, “now forty-two in Jalisco. Is the federal government simply murdering its opponents?”

  Or is the government simply murdering Sinaloa’s opponents? Keller thinks. There’s a precedent, and he was involved in it, providing US intelligence to Orduña and the FES to take down the Zetas, Adán Barrera’s enemies.

  And there is no question that Sinaloa and CJN are at war.

  All DEA’s sources report that Ascensión blames Sinaloa for the attacks on him and his son’s imprisonment. The consensus is that he was behind the failed assassination attempt on Ricardo Núñez, although a minority believes that it was Iván Esparza.

  That seems unlikely, Keller thinks, given the reports that Núñez reversed his previous decision and granted the Baja plaza back to the Esparzas. If true, it was the smart move, even if it alienated Elena Sánchez and drove her into Ascensión’s arms, as it were. Núñez needs the Esparzas’ manpower to fight his war against Ascensión.

  But it has thrown Baja into absolute chaos, a multisided war as the reunited Núñez and Esparza forces fight it out with the rebel Sánchez organization and its CJN ally. So far, none of the leaders have gone at each other directly—since the attack on Núñez—but are fighting it out on the street level, slaughtering each other’s corner dealers and shakedown thugs.

  The “street” is suffering.

  Dealers, soldiers, bar owners barely know from day to day who’s in control, who they’re supposed to pay, to whom they owe their loyalties. Any mistake is lethal, and they’re blind pawns in a game of 3-D chess, and t
hey’re getting knocked off the board with increasing frequency.

  And brutality.

  Bodies are hung from bridges and overpasses, burned, decapitated, chopped up and the pieces strewn along the sidewalks. One Sinaloa operative—the chief of the Núñez armed forces, a psychotic little number named La Fósfora—has taken to spray-painting the corpses green, proclaiming it Sinaloa’s color, and that “Baja is green.”

  What Baja is, Keller thinks, is an abattoir.

  If it were just the only one.

  Sinaloa and CJN are also fighting for port cities, not only for the drug sales and extortion but for the critical ability to control the shipping from China that provides both fentanyl and the base chemical for methamphetamine.

  But port cities also tend to be resort towns, and now famous vacation destinations like Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas have experienced heretofore unheard-of violence, driving away critical tourist dollars.

  The more prosaic ports like Lázaro Cárdenas, Manzanillo, Veracruz and Altamira have become battlegrounds, Veracruz in a three-way fight between Sinaloa, CJN and the Zetas. In Acapulco, the Sinaloa versus CJN struggle is complicated by the presence of Damien Tapia and the old remnants of the Eddie Ruiz organization.

  Only two supercartels exist now, Keller thinks—Sinaloa and CJN. But there are a handful of second-tier organizations: the “New Tijuana” cartel headed by the Sánchez family; the Zetas, who are resurgent in Tamaulipas and parts of Chihuahua; and Guerreros Unidos, who seem to be allied with the old Tapia organization under Damien Tapia. Then there are the remnants of the Knights Templar and Familia Michoacán. Those are the major players, but there are now more than eighty identifiable DTOs in Mexico.

  If Keller had to handicap it, he’d pick CJN, albeit narrowly. They’ve made large gains in heroin profits, and Tito is the more experienced war leader. There’s no question that Núñez is personally weakened, still recovering from his wounds, and that the Núñez wing is being led by his son, Ric. On the other hand, Mini-Ric seems to be growing in the role, he has an alliance with Iván Esparza, who is a strong wartime leader, and Ascensión is somewhat constrained in his actions because his son is in federal custody. But if pushed, Keller would have to say that CJN is the most powerful cartel in Mexico now.

  Which is a tectonic shift in the power structure.

  But the Mexican federal government is going after Tito hammer-and-tongs, so he hasn’t leveraged his new power into political influence.

  Mexico City is still hanging on to Ricardo Núñez and Sinaloa.

  John Dennison is running for president.

  And his son-in-law is digging for drug money.

  He’s one of Los Hijos, Keller thinks.

  The party is in full swing.

  For Oviedo’s birthday, Iván has taken over a whole restaurant in Puerto Vallarta and invited all Los Hijos and their wives.

  No segunderas allowed.

  Girlfriends and mistresses are for the after party, which Ric knows will be a drug- and booze-fueled orgy, but the dinner at the posh restaurant is a pretty grown-up affair—the guys all cleaned up, the wives dressed to the nines. All in black, as per the invitation, because the restaurant is all white—white walls, white furniture, white tablecloths.

  Elegant, adult.

  The food is also very adult—beef tartare, shrimp aguachile to start, then pork shoulder, seafood ravioli and duck ragout, polished off with chocolate crème brûlée and banana bread pudding.

  Ric sips on a cucumber martini—new one on him—and talks with his wife, also a relatively new one on him but it’s something he’s been doing more and more, spending most of his nights at home with Karin and the baby.

  The weird thing, even Ric has to admit, is that his father’s wounding, and the long recovery, has forced Ric to become the guy people think he is, that his father wants him to be. And he starts to enjoy it, discovers that when he stops the partying, the boozing, the drugging, that he likes taking care of the business—the strategizing, the allocation of resources and personnel, even fighting the war against Elena and Tito.

  Ric and Iván sit down regularly to coordinate their activities vis-à-vis the Cartel Baja Nuevo Generación, the CBNG. It’s complicated—street dealers on some corners had to be shifted from Núñez to Esparza and vice versa; likewise, their respective gunmen, spies and cops have to be given clear divisions of responsibilities and territories so they’re not tripping over each other’s feet.

  It’s detailed, painstaking work, the kind of thing Ric would have run away from just a few months ago but now diligently tackles. They pore over Google Maps, discuss reports from halcones, even standardize the money they pay to police so that the cops don’t try to play one against the other.

  “The New Baja Generation Cartel,” Ric had said at one of their meetings, “is just Luis’s way of letting everyone know that he’s in charge now.”

  “It’s going to take more than that,” Iván said. “Everyone knows that Mami still calls the shots. Luis is an engineer. What does he know about running an organization or fighting a war?”

  What do we know?, Ric thought, but he didn’t say it. We’re all new to this, even Iván. None of us were serious about this shit until recently, and now it’s all on-the-job-training. Luis might not know dick about fighting a war, but Tito Ascensión knows plenty; Tito’s forgotten more than we ever knew.

  Iván asked about Damien. “How are you doing on the great Young Wolf hunt?”

  “Nothing,” Ric said. “You?”

  “The kid has disappeared,” Iván said. “Probably a good idea. That was fucked up, what he did.”

  “No question, but . . .”

  “But?” Iván asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ric said, “was it really that bad? End of the day, no one that matters got hurt.”

  “That’s not the point,” Iván said. “He disrespected us.”

  “He attacked Elena,” Ric said. “The woman we’re at war with right now?”

  Like, maybe we should be allies with Damien?

  “Doesn’t matter,” Iván said. “He attacked Adán Barrera’s mother. Your godfather’s mother. We let someone get away with that, we might as well just bend over and let everyone fuck us up the ass. No, Damien’s gotta go.”

  “Okay, but there’s ‘going’ and there’s ‘going,’” Ric said. “You know what I mean?”

  “He has to go hard, Ric.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ric . . .”

  “I heard you,” Ric said. It was worth a shot. He changed the subject. “Hey, speaking of disrespect, did you see where that fucking yanqui said he’d kick our asses?”

  “Who?” Iván asked. “Dennison? The one running for president? The one who’s going to build this wall?”

  “He said if he gets elected, he’s going to ‘kick the Sinaloa cartel’s collective ass,’” Ric said. “He put it out on Twitter.”

  Iván got that Iván look on his face, the one that usually meant trouble. “Let’s fuck with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Guy likes to tweet, right?” Iván took out his phone. “So let’s tweet.”

  “This isn’t smart.”

  “Oh, come on,” Iván said. “We’ve been too good lately. All work and no play. We need to have a little fun, too.”

  He typed into his phone and showed it to Ric.

  If you keep pissing us off, we’re going to make you eat your words, you Ronald McDonald, Cheeto-headed, fat bastard. —the Sinaloa Cartel

  “Jesus Christ, Iván, don’t hit send.”

  “Too late, just did,” Iván said. “He’ll piss his pants.”

  “I think I just pissed mine,” Ric said.

  But he was laughing.

  Iván was laughing, too. “We’re the fucking Sinaloa cartel, ’mano! We got more money than this guy, we got more men than this guy, more guns than this guy, more brains, bigger balls! We’ll see who kicks whose ass. Fuck him. ¡Los Hijos siempre!�
�

  Los Hijos forever, Ric thought.

  He left the meeting and went back to looking for Damien where he wasn’t. Which didn’t mean, however, that he knew where Damien was.

  Belinda kept doing Belinda.

  Her people found out that the head of operations for the CBNG hung out at a palenque in Ensenada.

  The man liked his cockfighting.

  She hit it and killed four CBs but the guy got away.

  Not for long.

  Two weeks later, he was going home from a meeting at four in the morning on Highway 1 when La Fósfora and her people pulled up alongside his Navigator on motorcycles and ventilated it, him, the driver and his bodyguard.

  Belinda and Gaby dismounted and spray-painted the bodies green.

  “I’ve decided that’s our color,” Belinda explained. “Sinaloa in Baja is green. I’m calling it the ‘green sky.’ It’s optics.”

  “Optics.”

  “Optics are important,” Belinda said. “I watch CNN.”

  Optics are important but so are words, which explained why she also left a placard on the bodies that read: The sky is green, CB motherfuckers. We are here and we will always be here —Sinaloa in Baja.

  A month later, she found another CB operative at a strip club in TJ’s Zona Río and left his (green) pieces in a black plastic bag with the message: Just another reminder that we’re still here and will always be here. You don’t even exist. The sky will always be green, even for strippers and CB/Jalisco dollies.

  “What do you have against strippers?” Ric asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I like strippers. I like strippers a lot. But if they’re going to strip, they’re going to strip for us, not those CB traitors and their Jalisco buddies.”

  “Yeah, but ‘dollies’?”

  Belinda looked concerned. “You think that’s sexist? Because I’m a feminist, I’m all about women’s empowerment. I mean, I’m the first female head of security for a major cartel, right? And I don’t want people thinking—”

  “No, you’re good.”

  “You still on your search-and-avoid mission?” she asked.

  “We really can’t find Damien,” Ric said. “What we hear is that he’s buried deep somewhere in Guerrero.”