by David Spell
“You like that, amigo? The Nueva Generación Cartel just took everything you have.”
The LK member crumbled to the floor as Guerra motioned for his companions to head for the door. In the low-light of the crowded bar with blaring music, it took a couple of minutes for people to figure out what had happened. By then, Juan and his men had fled the scene.
A few weeks later, he had pummeled the thieving NG member, allowing Cortes to fire the fatal shot into his former lieutenant’s head. There was no question as to who was in charge of the Atlanta chapter of the cartel now. Most of the gang members, including their network of drug dealers and the pimps who ran their brothels, would follow anyone who paid them.
Juan and Pablo had left for Mexico Tuesday morning. Vincente had a guide waiting for them outside Brownsville on Wednesday night. He led the pair to a secluded area east of the city on the bank of the Rio Grande River where a man with a boat carried them across. The guide would store Guerra’s truck in Brownsville until he was ready to drive back to Atlanta.
Once they reached Mexican soil, Villarreal had two vehicles with several soldiers standing by to escort them to his ranch. Guerra and Cortes spent the night there, outside the city. The cartel leader left a message that he would meet with them sometime on Thursday.
Vincente’s three-SUV caravan arrived at the hacienda after lunch. The gangster had bought the spacious home on a hundred acres as one of his bases. Like all of his properties, it had been purchased by his lawyers, but registered in the name of a fictitious corporation so that it could not be linked back to him. There were no other houses within a couple of miles of the property, allowing Villarreal plenty of privacy.
The rearmost boundary of the ranch backed up to the Rio Grande River, a half a mile away, not far from the southernmost point of Texas. Vincente seldom had his couriers cross into the United States from there because it was too close to home, literally. Villarreal had taken to spending several nights a week at the quiet spread to get away from the bustle of the city.
Inside, the cartel leader found Guerra and Cortes talking with the wounded sicario, Damian Sanchez, in the large living room. Tall windows overlooked the covered deck and the swimming pool behind the residence. Sanchez had relocated from the warehouse to the ranch a few weeks earlier where he could continue his rehabilitation in a more conducive environment. The former Mexican SF soldier had to use a cane when he walked and had not been fitted with a prosthetic arm yet, but was quickly becoming stronger and more mobile.
Damian was already training himself to shoot left-handed. For the time being, he was dry-firing his empty Berretta pistol over and over, creating muscle memory so that his support hand could become his primary hand. He had also begun practicing drawing his weapon from a left-handed holster, determined to develop the same proficiency that he’d had with his right arm. Sanchez wasn’t sure how he was going to manipulate a long gun yet, but there was no doubt in his mind that he would eventually master a rifle, as well.
“Juan, good to see you, amigo,” Vincente smiled, shaking hands with his lieutenant. He pointed at Sanchez. “You see what a tough hombre Damien is! The gringos almost killed him, but here he is, training to fight another day.”
Sanchez nodded at Guerra. “Well, the gringos might have succeeded if Juan had not rushed in to get me out of there.”
Villarreal glanced at his cousin. “And Pablo, it sounds like we have a lot to talk about,” pointedly not shaking his hand.
Damien excused himself to walk outside, exercising to get his injured leg functioning normally again. As Guerra gave Villarreal an update on how he had found things in Atlanta, he could tell that El Jefe was getting angry. Vincente kept glancing over at Pablo, who stared at the floor. The ever-present bodyguard, Fernando ‘The Bull’ Ramos, sat in the corner, watching and listening.
After Juan had finished his briefing, Villarreal addressed his cousin.
“Pablo, what do you have to say for yourself?”
Cortes did not look up as he spoke. “Vincente, I’m sorry I failed you. I…I have no excuse.”
“Fernando, take Pablo outside for a little while. I want to speak with Juan alone.”
Cortes’ eyes grew large as the massive man stood, glaring at him. Pablo appeared to be frozen to his chair.
The Bull pointed at the back door. “Now, Pablo!” he growled.
The cartel leader saw the fear on his cousin’s face. “It’s OK. Fernando isn’t going to hurt you. I just need a few minutes with Juan.”
Pablo swallowed, climbing to his feet, knowing they would be discussing whether he lived or died.
“Sí, Primo. No problem.”
After the door closed behind them, Villarreal sighed. “Amigo, I should never have involved him. What do you think we should do?”
“No sé, Señor. That’s why I brought him here to you. I let him put the bullet into El Loco’s head after I had punished him for everyone to see. He’s your cousin, Señor. I don’t think Pablo was stealing, I just think he’s weak. El Loco took advantage of that weakness.”
“You think I was wrong to send Pablo to Atlanta in the first place?” Vincente asked, a hint of anger in his voice.
Guerra shrugged. “It’s not my place to judge your decisions, Señor. You asked me to go find out what was wrong in Atlanta and to fix it. I’m just giving you my report. Forgive me, El Jefe, but in my opinion, Pablo doesn’t deserve to die.”
“He failed, Juan! He failed me, he failed the cartel. You know the price for failure!”
Juan let the silence stretch out for a few before replying. “Maybe you can find some other place for him to work? Everybody isn’t a leader. Maybe there’s a job for him in the warehouse? Sure, he’ll be embarrassed, but a demotion is better than an execution.”
Villarreal stared at his friend for several moments before looking away. When he spoke again, his tone had softened.
“Do you think everyone else will think I’m weak because I let my cousin live?”
“No one has to know the whole story, Señor. That was the reason I let him pull the trigger on Hector. That way you can tell everyone he killed his thieving lieutenant.”
“That’s a good idea,” Vincente nodded appreciatively. “Pablo is the only son of my mother’s younger sister. It would break their hearts if he were to die. It would break my heart to kill him. Can you go call him and Fernando back in?”
Cortes was clearly relieved as Villarreal told him that he was going to be assigned to work in the warehouse. Like Juan had said earlier, a demotion was better than dead.
“Gracias, Vincente. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”
“Don’t let me down again, Pablo,” the cartel leader said, staring into his cousin’s eyes.
Looking over at his bodyguard, Villarreal told him to get the vehicles and waiting security team ready to go.
“Come on, amigos, let’s get back to the warehouse. Juan, are you going to visit your mother?”
“Sí, if that’s OK with you. Maybe just a few days and then I’ll start planning my trip back to Estados Unidos.”
“Of course. Take as long as you need. We’re working on a big shipment of meth and coke for our good customers in the US. Maybe you could escort the mules back across the border? I always like to send a few guns to make sure no banditos try to rob them.”
Juan nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
Five minutes later, the three-vehicle motorcade turned right out of the long driveway onto Highway 2 for the forty-minute drive back to Matamoros.
The gray Nissan Sentra pulled out of the Oxxo convenience store a mile down the road, falling in behind the cartel leader’s convoy. Raul ‘El Gordo' Gonzalez picked up the walkie-talkie and pushed the transmit button.
“I’m behind them now.”
“Sí. Muy bien. I’ll catch up to you in a few,” Hector Ruiz answered.
Gonzalez was a field agent for the CIA assigned to their office in Mexico City. Kevin Clark had called him Tuesday morn
ing asking for some help. Raul had heard that the colonel and Chuck McCain had both been fired from the Agency. The operative also knew that the Operations Directorate had been restructured. For the moment, anyway, the CIA personnel in Mexico were being left alone. Out of sight, out of mind, he thought.
El Gordo had worked with Clark and several of his people on a previous operation south of the border in which they had kidnapped a Saudi prince and smuggled him out of Mexico into the United States. After that mission, Raul had figured that his cover was blown and that he would be reassigned to another Latin American country. Instead, he had been ordered back to Mexico, continuing his intelligence-gathering work against the cartels.
El Gordo had known that he needed to change his appearance, though, just in case he ran into any of the gangsters he had dealt with previously. He had taken a month of vacation time in the US and hired a personal trainer. The trainer had shown him how to build muscle and increase his strength. The CIA agent had also consulted with a nutritionist, knowing he needed to change the way that he ate.
Now, almost two years later, Raul wasn’t called ‘El Gordo’ anymore. His once ample gut had shrunk substantially and he had added twenty pounds of muscle to his frame. He had also grown his hair out and added a goatee. He did not look like the same man.
Colonel Clark had impressed the agent as an excellent leader, a good spy, and a great operator. They had captured the prince without having to kill anyone, and successfully gotten him out of the country. Not many people could have pulled that off.
When the colonel had asked Gonzalez for help, he was glad to say ‘yes.’ Just the fact that Clark had confided in him about what he and some of his men were considering showed an incredible amount of trust. Raul had actually proposed an operation a few months earlier to the CIA to take out Villarreal and a few of his lieutenants. His boss had informed him that Director Sterling had placed a moratorium on ops against the cartels.
When Raul had gotten Clark’s call, he’d been thrilled. The agent didn’t tell anyone in the office what he was working on. He just informed his boss that he was gathering intelligence in Matamoros on the cartel’s drug operations. The only person that Gonzalez confided in was Hector Ruiz. Ruiz was an asset whom the agent had developed over the previous year.
Hector’s father, a police captain in Matamoros, had refused when a representative from the cartel had offered him a large envelope of cash to look the other way for a drug shipment heading to America. The next day, Villarreal and several of his sicarios had paid a visit to the police officer’s home. One of the neighbors had recognized the gangster from seeing him on the news.
Hector was a third-year law student at the Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, planning on becoming a prosecutor. When he returned home from class, what he found inside his residence redirected the trajectory of his life. His father had been tied to a chair and forced to watch as his wife had been raped repeatedly over the kitchen table. Her nude body was still draped across the table, blood pooling from where her throat had been cut. Captain Ruiz had been stabbed multiple times, but the final blow appeared to be the ice pick thrust into his ear up to the handle.
When his parents were murdered, everything changed for the young man. After the funerals, Hector had not bothered going back to class. Instead, he’d put his parents’ home on the market and jumped on a plane to Mexico City, presenting himself at the American Embassy. When asked what his business was at the embassy, he said that he was there to offer his services to the FBI, the DEA, or the CIA. When the unusual request reached the inner sanctum of the embassy, Raul had offered to speak with the visitor. He brought the well-dressed, educated young man inside. Gonzalez had identified himself as a political attaché, asking Ruiz what he wanted.
Tearfully, Hector had shared his story and his desire to strike back at the criminal organization which had taken his parents from him. Raul had been non-committal as he had shown the young would-be lawyer to the door, slipping him a business card with an email address and phone number on it. The American agent wished he could help but Director Sterling had limited the CIA’s role in Mexico to only gathering intelligence. Within a week, however, Gonzalez had started receiving emails and phone calls every few days.
The emails contained photos of the New Generation’s warehouse and pictures of Villarreal and his men, taken with a tele-photo lens. The pics of Vincente’s ranch, however, led to Raul visiting Hector in Matamoros. Raul was aware that the cartel conducted the bulk of their operations out of the warehouse in the middle of the city. With most of the police on the take, however, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Passing on information to a police officer on the cartel’s payroll was a sure way to end up dead.
The ranch was new intelligence, though. When Raul and Hector met in the lawyer’s small rented home on the western edge of the city, the young man explained how he had been conducting surveillance on the gang and following some of their vehicles when they left the warehouse. The CIA agent explained to him what the cartel would do if they ever caught him spying on them.
“Those bastards tortured and killed my parents. Somehow, I’m going to make them pay, with or without your help,” Ruiz had said.
Hector had detailed notes on where several of the gang members lived, where their fleet of vehicles made deliveries, and a number of pictures of Vincente’s ranch. He explained that he had scoped out the area, finding several places to hide his vehicle and sneak in on foot.
That was what he had done today, letting Raul know when the gangsters had left, snapping several long-range photos of the criminals. Now that Vincente was on the highway, the spy’s plan was to maintain his distance, seeing if the convoy was heading back to the warehouse. If Clark’s team was planning on following through with their crazy scheme of coming after Villarreal, he wanted to provide them with the best intel and support that he could.
Georgetown, Washington, D.C., Thursday, 2215 hours
Saleem yawned widely as he, Maxwell, and Amari sat in the CIA Director’s living room. Bashir’s entourage had grown exponentially, but he had insisted that only Roberts and his Secret Service Detail accompany him to a late dinner at his friend’s home. The driver had taken a roundabout route to Sterling’s home to make sure no nosy reporters tailed them.
For the last two hours, the presidential candidate, his running mate, and the campaign manager had discussed the upcoming Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. The convention would be returning to the Staples Center after a hiatus of over twenty years. Bashir had spent the entire day in DC meeting key congressional and senate leaders, one after the other.
Now that the Muslim-American was the de-facto Democratic nominee, everyone was lining up to get in his good graces. Many were posturing for a cabinet position, while others wanted to tout their pet projects to him. The support of these politicians was crucial, though, so Saleem had to smile, nod, and say all the right things.
“How’s your acceptance speech coming?” Sterling asked.
“Good, I hope. Amari brought on one of the top speech writers in Washington. I’ve met with him and given him some notes to let him know what I want to convey.”
“When do you want to discuss the foreign policy changes that you told me about?”
“We don’t need to worry too much about that right now,” Roberts answered for his boss. “After you’re announced as Saleem’s running-mate and you start getting bombarded with questions, it’ll be important that you both are on the same page. We’re putting together some talking points for you and we’ll even give you some coaching.”
“Coaching? I’ve been in politics long enough to know how to talk to the press!”
Amari shook his head. “This is another level now. Even from being in congress or heading up the CIA, the intensity and pressure are much greater. The reporters that you’ll be dealing with are the cream of the crop. There’s nothing they love better than to generate controversy. That’s why you’ll stay with the talking points. The las
t thing we need is for you to say something that contradicts Saleem.”
Sterling nodded, grudgingly. “That makes sense.”
“I think that’s enough for the night,” Bashir said, yawning again. “Amari, can you go let the Secret Service know that we’re ready to head back to the hotel?”
“Of course. Good night, Maxwell,” the campaign manager replied, standing, and exiting the front door to where the security detail waited.
“You OK, Saleem?” Sterling asked, noting the dark circles under the man’s eyes.
“Just tired, my friend. From here until the election, things don’t slow down. They only become more grueling. You’ll see soon enough. The convention is just a few weeks away. After you’re announced as my running mate, we hit the campaign trail together.”
“I’m looking forward to it. I’ll do anything I can to help you win.”
“Very good. We’ve come a long way from our days at Yale, huh? If we can get by Asher in a few months, you and I’ll be the two most powerful men in the world.”
“Are you worried about the President?” Sterling asked.
“He’s a formidable opponent and I’m looking forward to debating him. Of course, it would be good if we had some dirt on him, but I still think that we’ll win come November.”
“I’ve had a couple of trusted people take a look,” the CIA Director shook his head, “But he’s squeaky clean. Plus, if there was any dirt, it would’ve come out before his first term.”
“And what about your situation? I take it that Dunning woman has kept her mouth shut?”
“Yes. No problem at all. With her being paralyzed from the waist down and newly retired, she has enough to worry about at the moment.”
