The Cartel: A Novel

by Don Winslow

  Keller took it as a given.

  “Because all Mexicans are corrupt,” Aguilar huffed.

  Keller shrugged.

  —

  Aguilar went home that night too late for dinner but in time to help his daughters with their homework. After the girls went to bed, Lucinda set a plate of lamb birria, one of his favorites, at the table.

  “How is the North American?” she asked, sitting next to him.

  “Like all North Americans,” Aguilar answered. “He thinks he knows everything.”

  “I didn’t know you were a bigot, Luis.”

  “I prefer to call myself parochial.”

  “You should invite him over for dinner.”

  “I spend enough time with him,” Aguilar answered. “Besides, I wouldn’t inflict him on you.”

  His new job had been hard on his wife. A school principal, she wasn’t used to the bodyguard who now took her to work and back, or to the guards who patrolled the house. The girls were easier with it—their young minds less set in their ways, and, besides, they thought it was kind of “cool,” and any numbers of their fellow students at their private schools had bodyguards.

  Some were the children of government officials. Others, Aguilar knew with chagrin, were doubtless buchones—the sons and daughters of narcos. Never mind, he thought now, you can’t blame the child for the sins of the father.

  “How’s the lamb?” Lucinda asked.

  “Excellent, thank you.”

  “More wine?”

  “Why are you buttering me up?”

  “I’m sure,” Lucinda said, “that he’s not so horrible.”

  “I didn’t say he was horrible,” Aguilar answered. “I just said that he was North American.”

  He finished his dinner and his wine, played two moves in a chess match against himself, and then went upstairs to bed.

  Lucinda was waiting up for him.

  —

  The next morning they started fresh.

  “Let’s work,” Aguilar said, “on the assumption that the Tapias, acting in concert with Nacho Esparza, took Barrera out of Puente Grande.”

  “Fair enough,” Keller agreed.

  “What is the operational corollary of that assumption?” Aguilar asked.

  “We hit them,” Vera said. “Make it too expensive for them to hide him.”

  They went at it hard.

  Using SEIDO intelligence and information that Keller provided from DEA intelligence packages, they raided properties that Tapia or Esparza owned in Sinaloa, Durango, and Nayarit. They tracked down and questioned dozens of the two men’s associates. They busted growers, dealers, shippers, and money launderers.

  They turned up the heat, busting a shipment of Diego Tapia’s cocaine, then a freighter full of the precursor chemicals that Esparza needed to cook his meth.

  They made their agenda clear. The AFI troopers would throw the arrested men to the ground and scream, “Where is Adán Barrera?!” Then they turned them over to the SEIDO agents, who asked, over and over again, “Where is Adán Barrera?”

  No one told them anything.

  The raids netted drugs, weapons, computers, cell phones, but no solid leads as to Barrera’s whereabouts.

  Aguilar threw it right back on Keller.

  “You’re the Barrera expert,” he said with no effort to disguise his sarcasm. “Perhaps you’d gift us with your expertise to find him.”

  Keller picked up the glove.

  When he first arrived in Mexico City he checked in to his official housing near the embassy, but then went out and found a furnished apartment on the second floor of an art deco building on Avenida Vicente Suárez in Colonia Condesa, within walking distance of the embassy but not close enough to be an American diplomatic ghetto. The bohemian neighborhood was all sidewalk cafés, bars, nightclubs, and bookstores.

  A native Spanish speaker, Keller blended in easily. He moved his few things into the Condesa apartment and rarely went back to the official housing. The apartment was well stocked—his Sig Sauer, a 12-gauge Mossberg Tacstar 590 shotgun strapped under the bed, and a U.S. Navy Ka-Bar combat knife taped to the toilet water tank. I might be bait, he thought, but that doesn’t mean I have to be a sitting duck.

  After weeks of the futile search for Barrera, Keller burrowed himself into the Condesa apartment and went to work. Barrera had escaped from Puente Grande, so Keller started there, poring over the thousands of pages of transcript from the guards who had been arrested and interrogated.

  If he didn’t know better, the accounts were almost the stuff of fiction—Barrera’s well-stocked luxury cell, the “movie nights,” the imported prostitutes, Los Bateadores. Keller read about the former beauty queen Magda Beltrán, the family Christmas party, the riot the night of the escape. It was fascinating but shed no light as to where Barrera might be.

  Keller started over, reading, rereading, and reading again the stories about Barrera’s time in Puente Grande.

  Then it hit him—a passing mention to a rumored attempt on Barrera’s life that had happened, if it happened at all, on the volleyball court. The would-be assassin’s body was later found with a neat bullet hole in the back of the head.

  Keller phoned Aguilar. “Can you pull the file of a former prisoner, now deceased, Juan Cabray?”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “I need it to employ my expertise.”

  “Well then, by all means.”

  Keller went to the SEIDO offices to pick up the file.

  Cabray was a career criminal who had worked for the old Sonora cartel and was apparently good with a knife. Not good enough, though, Keller thought. He set aside the question of who had ordered a hit on Barrera to consider Cabray.

  Assume the story is true, Keller thought. Cabray took a stab, as it were, at Barrera and missed. Barrera’s people executed him. Looking at the photo of Cabray’s corpse, the bullet wound was clear, but Keller was more impressed by what he didn’t see.

  Signs of torture.

  They would have worked on Cabray pretty good to find out who hired him, but the photo showed no bruises, no broken bones, no burn marks.

  Cabray cooperated.

  Keller dug deeper into his file and found out that Juan Cabray was from Los Elijos, in Durango state. He logged on to the computer and quickly got satellite images of the little village, tucked in a valley among remote mountains.

  Durango was part of the so-called Golden Triangle, the mountainous intersection of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua that made up the prime opium and marijuana areas in Mexico.

  It was in the heart of the Sinaloa cartel stronghold.

  Keller convened a meeting of the Barrera Coordinating Committee and requested permission to ask for a U.S. satellite run over Los Elijos. It was a delicate suggestion, the Mexicans reluctant to accept foreign satellite surveillance over their country.

  “It’s absurd,” Aguilar said. “Why would Barrera think of hiding in the village of a man who tried to kill him, moreover a man whom he ordered killed?”

  “Just humor me,” Keller said.

  “Your expertise?” Aguilar asked.

  “We’re not making progress anywhere else,” Vera said, shrugging. “Why not?”

  “We can just send a plane over,” Aguilar said.

  “It has to be high-altitude,” Keller said, “not a low flyover. I don’t want to spook him. Let me ask for a satellite run.”

  Aguilar snorted but gave the necessary permission, Keller got on the horn to Taylor, and the satellite run was okayed.

  Two days later, Keller was back at SEIDO with the photos laid out on the conference room table. He pointed to a small circle, a larger square, and a yet larger rectangle.

  “This could be a new well,” he says. “This…I don’t know, maybe a school? The third shape, maybe a clinic. In any case, it’s all new construction.”

  “What’s your point?” Aguilar asked.

  “This is a poor village. Suddenly there’s all kinds of new construction on t
hings that they need?”

  “We have social development programs all over Mexico,” Aguilar said.

  “Can we find out—quietly—if there have been any in Los Elijos?” Keller asked. “Because if there haven’t, I have an idea as to who’s funded these projects.”

  “Let me guess—Adán Barrera,” Aguilar said. “Oh, please.”

  “Where are you from?” Keller asked.

  Aguilar looked surprised, but answered, “Mexico City.”

  Keller turned to Vera. “You?”

  “Same.”

  “I spent years in the Triangle,” Keller said. “I know the people, I know how they think, I know the culture. I’ve known Adán Barrera since he was twenty years old.”

  “So?”

  “So the people of Los Elijos will think that Juan Cabray acted honorably,” Keller said. “They’ll further think that Adán Barrera responded nobly. Go from the supposition that, before he died, Cabray accepted Barrera as his patrón. Barrera has acted the role of patrón in the village—a well, a school, a clinic. They’d shelter him.”

  “I think you’re reaching,” Aguilar said.

  “Do you have a better idea?” Keller asked.

  Aguilar made some discreet calls and found that neither the federal nor state governments had development projects in Los Elijos. Likewise, there were no church or NGO activities there that he could discern.

  Vera made the decision—AFI would launch a surprise dawn raid on Los Elijos.

  Further satellite intel narrowed Barrera’s most likely location down to the largest house in the village, at the end of a dirt road, a single-story limestone structure with a tiled roof and a low wall around the periphery.

  “I hope that the beauty queen is with him,” Vera said. “I would like to lay eyes on that specimen.”

  Keller looked at the satellite photos of the house in Los Elijos and said, “I’m going on the raid.”

  “We cannot run the risk of a North American agent being killed on Mexican soil,” Aguilar said, although Keller suspected that what he really meant was that they couldn’t run the risk of a North American agent killing a Mexican citizen on Mexican soil. Barrera’s capture would be an exclusively Mexican operation, Aguilar asserted. No mention would be made of the DEA intelligence.

  Advise and assist, Keller thought. “If anything happens to me, just bury me in the mountains.”

  “As tempting as that sounds,” Aguilar said, “I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

  “It was my intel that made this possible,” Keller agued.

  “How is that relevant?”

  “Collegiality,” Vera answered. “We owe him the courtesy as comrades-in-arms.”

  “If you’re willing to take the responsibility,” Aguilar huffed.

  They were on a military flight to El Salto, Durango, that afternoon, and from there the AFI troopers got into trucks and SUVs and headed for the mountains. After driving all night, they arrived at the ridge above Los Elijos.

  Now Keller sits shivering beside Aguilar.

  Vera is in another vehicle with five of his troopers. The tactical plan is simple. At first light, Vera will give the word over the radio and the eight vehicles will race down the road into the village but drive straight through and then surround the large house at the end of the road and go in.

  Hopefully, Barrera will be inside. If not, if he’s somewhere else in the village, they’ll have him isolated in the countryside and then can run him down.

  That’s the plan, anyway.

  Aguilar’s not buying it.

  “This whole idea that Barrera has found sanctuary in Cabray’s village is a romantic conceit,” he said on the tortuous drive through the mountains, which aggravated his stomach as well as his psyche. Now he chews an antacid and looks down at the village.

  With nothing else to do but wait, they actually start to talk, if only to break the tension and monotony. Keller learns things about the taciturn lawyer that he hadn’t known, or maybe, he considers, never bothered to find out.

  Aguilar has a wife and two teenage daughters, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate and thought it overrated, he’s an ex-smoker, a devout Catholic, and almost as devout a fan of the Águilas de América fútbol team.

  “You?” Aguilar asks.

  “Soccer? No.”

  “Family, I meant.”

  “Divorced,” Keller answers. “Two kids—boy and a girl—grown up now.”

  “This job,” Aguilar says, “is hard on family life. The hours, the secrecy…”

  Keller knows that this is Aguilar trying to be kind and to find common ground. It’s almost friendly, so he responds, “They say that DEA issues you a gun and a badge, not a wife and kids.”

  “I couldn’t live without my family,” Aguilar says, and then quickly adds, “I’m sorry, that was unkind, and I didn’t mean it to be.”

  “No, I get it.”

  They’re quiet for a while and then Aguilar ventures, “I’ve heard the stories about you and Barrera.”

  “Well, there are a lot of them.”

  “I think,” Aguilar says, “that it is important to distinguish between revenge and justice.”

  Just when I was beginning to like you, Keller thinks, you have to get sanctimonious on me. “Have you ever been in a firefight before?”

  “No,” Aguilar answers. “Nor am I likely to now.”

  “I just wondered if you were nervous,” Keller says. “It’s understandable.”

  “All my previous combats have been in court,” Aguilar says. “But, no, I’m not nervous. I’m merely irritated at this monumental waste of time and resources, neither of which we have to spare.”

  “Okay.”

  Aguilar glances at the Sig Sauer. “You are not to discharge that weapon, except in the most extreme exigency of self-defense.”

  “Where did you learn your English?” Keller asks.

  “Harvard.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “I know.”

  Aguilar might not be nervous, Keller thinks, but I am. Barrera is in that village. I know it for a reason that Aguilar would contemptuously dismiss—I can just feel it. I’ve been hunting Adán Barrera in one form or another for over thirty years—we’re connected by the psychic hip—and I can feel him there.

  In twenty minutes, thirty minutes, this could be over. And then what? Keller wonders. What do you do with your life then?

  You’re getting ahead of yourself.

  First get Barrera.

  Keller nervously fingers the trigger.

  Then there’s crackle of the radio signal open and he hears Vera order, “Stand by.”

  “Are you ready?” Aguilar asks.

  Fuckin’ A, Keller thinks.

  —

  Vera gives the signal and the car lurches ahead and pitches down the steep grade. The AFI driver makes no concession to the sharp curves and sudden edges that could send the vehicle somersaulting hundreds of feet down.

  But they make it into the village and race down the main and only street. A few early risers stare at them in shock and Keller hears one or two raise the alarm “Juras! Juras!”

  Police! Police!

  But it’s too late, Keller thinks as the car speeds past the new well, the new school, the new clinic, and races toward the house at the end of the road. If you’re here, Adán—and you are here—we’ve got you.

  The car comes to a stop in front of the house while other vehicles circle it like Indians in a bad western and then form a circle. The AFI troopers in their dark blue uniforms and baseball caps spill from the cars with American-made AR-15s and .45 pistols, bulletproof vests and heavy back combat boots.

  With Vera in the lead, they storm the house.

  Keller jumps out of the car and trots toward the back door. Aguilar keeps up with him, looking awkward with a .38 in his hand. Keller goes through the door, his Sig Sauer out in front of him.

  It’s the kitchen, and a
terrified cook raises his hands over his head.

  “Where is Adán Barrera?!” Keller shouts. “Where is the señor?!”

  “No sé.”

  “But he was here, wasn’t he?” Keller presses. “When did he leave?”

  “No sé.”

  “Was a woman with him?” Aguilar asks.

  “No sé.”

  “What was her name, ‘no sé’?” Vera walks in, pulls his pistol, and jams it against the cook’s cheek. “Do you know now?”

  “He’s terrified,” Aguilar says. “Leave him alone.”

  “I’ll put you and your whole family in jail,” Vera growls at the cook as he pushes him away.

  “There is no criminal statute that I’m aware of that prohibits making black bean soup,” Aguilar says, looking at the stove. “What do you think—that Barrera told his cook where he was going?”

  Keller goes through the house.

  The bedrooms, the bathrooms, the sitting room, anywhere. He looks under beds, in closets. In one bedroom he thinks he smells the scent of expensive perfume. The AFI troopers rip up bathtubs and floor tiles, looking for tunnels.

  There isn’t one.

  They sweep the house for cell phones and computers and find nothing. Walking back to the vehicles, Aguilar mutters to Keller, “I told you so.”

  As they drive back through the village, Keller sees that the troopers are going through each house, tossing the people out into the road, smashing windows and furniture.

  He gets out of the car.

  “I’ll burn this shithole to the ground!” Vera yells, his face flushed with fury.

  The same mistakes, Keller thinks. Vietnam in the ’60s, Sinaloa in the ’70s, we make the same dumbass mistakes. No wonder these people shelter the narcos—Barrera builds schools and we wreck houses.

  The troopers are lining people up against the stone wall of the little cemetery, dishing out slaps and kicks as they interrogate the villagers and demand to know where El Señor is.

  Keller walks up to Vera. “Don’t do this.”

  “Mind your own business.”