Cartel Wives

by Mia Flores

  The girls hid me in a room in the back. It had been their dressing room, but right then it looked like a refugee camp.

  I was on the floor, hysterical, and I could hear men screaming, “Get down! Get down on the floor!” Then, a stripper put her arms around me and said, “Stop crying. Be quiet. If they hear you, they’ll come for you.”

  We sat in that room for five minutes. I think I was the only one with a top on. There was makeup scattered on the floor, bras and panties in piles in the corner, and sniffling, half-naked women everywhere. But we were all as quiet as we could be, with just a few whimpers every now and then. Right then I heard footsteps coming toward the back, and a voice called, “Where is she? Where is she?”

  My God, I thought, They’re coming for me.

  A man broke through the door, pointed right at me, and then picked me up from my stomach. My legs dangled off the floor, and I kicked and screamed with all my might, trying to get away from him while he yelled, “Shut the fuck up! I’ll kill everyone in here if you’re not quiet!” Then he dragged me toward the door, marched through the club, opened the exit to the outside, and threw me into the front seat of a waiting SUV. In the back were the two Chinese guys and one of their associates.

  I saw my chance. The window was cracked, and the car was running. I’m small, and I knew if I could get that window down just enough I could escape out of it. I pushed the button, bounded up, and threw my body toward the window. But the man grabbed my neck and pulled me to his lap.

  “Stop fucking moving,” he said.

  Someone in the back added, “Stop fucking moving or he’s going to hurt you.”

  Olivia

  Junior, Peter, and I could see Mia being dragged into the truck’s front seat. I watched her squirm around, then face the window. I saw a hand reach up to her neck, and then I saw her pull back and freeze up. That’s when Peter spoke up.

  “If I had a gun, I’d shoot her myself.”

  In Mexico, you never want a woman with you when shit’s going down. The things kidnappers do to women are inhumane: they torture, rape, and sodomize them. Knowing this, I realized, He doesn’t want to see her suffer.

  Then it hit me: What the fuck was going to happen to us?

  I had to do something.

  I’d left my purse in the club, but I still had my phone with me, in my back pocket. It was a Nextel flip phone with a walkie-talkie, and I slowly reached toward it, pressed the button that started up the two-way feature, and prayed that it would connect me to someone. I moved it below me so no one could see it, and then I began yelling at the kidnapper next to me, who was wearing a mask.

  “What do you want? How much do you fucking want? You want $10 million?”

  “I don’t want your fucking money!” the driver said. He was speaking English.

  I kept going. “Junior, tell them you got money. Tell them who you are.”

  “I said I don’t want your fucking money.” The kidnapper banged on the dashboard. “They fucked me. They should have paid me when they had the fucking chance.” He was wearing a mask, motioning toward Junior and Peter at this point. “The US is coming for you, and you’re spending the rest of your lives in prison.”

  I had my finger still pressed to the side of my phone. If I took it off, I knew it would beep, so I held my finger there like my life depended on it. I was thinking the whole time, Please. Please someone be listening to this.

  I had my hands hidden behind my back, clutching my phone, but my eyes were glued on the guy with the mask. I watched him move his hands toward his face, then pull off the mask. He faced us.

  Holy shit, I thought. It’s that customs agent from Mia’s wedding, the one who extorted us. Chapo and Mayo told Junior and Peter not to pay him, so he’s back for revenge.

  Mia

  I don’t even know how long we drove. Maybe twenty minutes? All I remember is thinking, I’m going to die. I’m going to die, as the car I was in pulled up to this little building on the outskirts of town.

  The kidnappers took me, the two Chinese guys, and their associate out of the car. They pushed us inside, slamming a steel door behind us. I noticed a poster on the wall with the AFI (Agencia Federal de Investigación, which is the equivalent of the FBI in Mexico) emblem on it. There were two ratty sofas shoved up against the wall, with Peter, Olivia, and Junior smooshed up altogether on one. They were handcuffed. This building didn’t seem like a place where government officials worked; it looked like a spot where you tortured someone.

  Someone threw me onto the sofa with Peter, Junior, and Olivia, and the three other men piled onto the other. A man with an AFI uniform on slapped handcuffs on me and Liv, then moved away and began talking to someone else, who was wearing a different type of uniform.

  Holy shit, I realized. It’s that customs agent from my wedding. The one who extorted us.

  Peter turned to me and started whispering. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this, Mia.”

  I told him to stop apologizing, but I couldn’t shut my brain off. I never got a chance to be a mother. I never got to say goodbye to my parents. I’d started crying so hard I could hardly breathe, but I still choked out, “Peter, be honest with me. Are we going to die?”

  My husband turned and looked me straight in the eyes. “No, we are not going to die.”

  Even with handcuffs on, in a room full of armed men who looked like they wanted to kill us, I believed him.

  Olivia

  I’d spent the entire car ride trying to negotiate to get us out of there, but when we’d been dragged inside and pushed onto those nasty couches, I decided to shut my mouth. These men were not playing, and I was out of my league. Mia and I were the only women in that room, and that was a position that no woman should ever be in.

  Finally, Junior started talking to the customs officer. “I’ll give you $1 million for each girl. They have nothing to do with this.”

  “I told you. I don’t want your fuckin’ money. I just want you.”

  I looked over at Junior. Tears were coming down his face, and right then, I knew we weren’t getting out of this one. Junior had always been my rock. He’d always kept me strong and made me feel protected, but he looked broken, and I felt helpless.

  “I’m sorry, Liv, you’re going to have to raise Brandon alone,” he said.

  “Stop, Junior. Don’t say that.”

  He looked down to the floor. “My poor baby. My poor girls. Please take care of them.”

  “Junior, you’re scaring me.”

  “I’m sorry for not listening to you about changing my life. All those years. I’m sorry for not giving you a normal life. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you another baby.”

  “Junior, you’re getting out of this. I love you. Be strong.”

  “You’re getting out of this. You and Mia. But I don’t know how the rest is going to play out.”

  Right then, I knew he was right. Despite all our near misses and all our last-chance saves, the danger we’d always faced was bound to catch up with us sooner or later. The moment of reckoning had come, and I thought to myself, Our beautiful family is about to fall apart, and there’s nothing I can do.

  Then suddenly, everything stopped.

  Mia

  The immigration officer’s phone had started ringing. He looked down at the caller ID screen and answered it. After some back and forth, lots of “Sí, señor. Sí, sí,” with him pacing around nervously, looking like he’d seen a ghost, he put the phone down and turned into an animal.

  “Who the fuck did you call? Who the fuck did you contact?” He was screaming, and veins were popping out of his neck. He started waving his gun around near Peter and Junior. Some spit shot out of his mouth, and his hands were shaking. I’d seen really irrational people act like this before, and it’s never good. This guy is scared out of his mind, I thought. And that’s worse than if he was just angry. The way he’s acting, he’s going to shoot one of us in the head.

  Olivia

  Peter a
nd Junior hadn’t called anyone. But I had, back in the SUV. I must have reached Adrian, and he heard me trying to negotiate a ransom. I’m sure he hung up and dialed up someone important, and whoever that was had just called the officer’s phone.

  Then I suddenly realized I still had my Nextel phone in my back pocket, and I squirmed a little further back on the couch, manipulating it and wedging it in the crack of my ass. I knew if the agent saw it, he would pop me right between the eyes.

  Mia

  Olivia and I had been handcuffed together the whole time. We were terrified, holding each other’s hands. It felt like hours, but during that whole, awful time, our relationship shifted. It was our turning point. We had always been sisters-in-law and family no matter what, but right then, we became sisters.

  I squeezed Olivia’s hand harder as the immigration officer paced furiously and waved his gun around. Then the AFI official in charge called Junior over to the phone.

  “It’s El Jefe, Arturo Beltrán,” he said. “He wants to talk with you.”

  Someone removed Junior’s handcuffs. Junior took the phone into another room, talked for about ten minutes, and returned, all business.

  “Take the shackles off the girls right now,” Junior said. “They’re free to go.”

  Olivia

  I had been red-faced and crying the whole time Junior was in the other room. Peter was apologizing to Mia, begging her to be brave. But the second Junior walked back into the room, and we heard that we were free to go, Peter snapped out of husband mode and into business mode. He looked at me.

  “Pay attention to every word I’m about to say, okay?”

  “Of course,” I said. “What is it?

  “When you get out of here, go to LA. But don’t let anyone find out. If they know we’re locked up, they’re not going to pay us. There’s $40 million out there, owed to us. Here are the wholesalers who are set to pay.” He started going through a list of names, asking me to repeat each one.

  “Slow down!” I said. “I got this, but slow down.”

  “Make sure you get that money. Your life depends on it.”

  I knew he was right. If we didn’t take care of this, it didn’t matter where Junior and Peter were. The cartels were going to want their fucking money, and if we didn’t get it to them, they’d decapitate our whole family for it.

  Then the officers took off our handcuffs and led us to the door. I turned around and looked at Junior. “Go. Just be careful,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I started crying hysterically again. “No! You’re lying to me. I’m never going to see you again. You cut a deal. You’re just trying to save us. I’m not leaving you!”

  Peter peeled me away from his brother, stared at me, serious, and said, “Go now before they change their minds.”

  Mia and I looked back in disbelief, like it was our last goodbye, and shuffled out the door, followed by the two Chinese guys and their associate. One of the officers handed me a set of keys, pushed us into the SUV that we’d driven to the club, and walked away.

  Then I started up the truck and began driving the five of us away from the scene of our own kidnapping.

  Mia

  The Chinese guys were so relieved. The whole time they’d been inside, they’d thought Junior and Peter had set them up. Unfortunately, their problems weren’t over because we had no clue how to get home.

  In 2008, nobody had GPS in Mexico, so Olivia had no idea where she was going. We were out of our minds, hysterical, and I wasn’t sure Olivia could see well enough to drive. She was swerving, saying things like, “I have to get back to Brandon. Brandon needs me.”

  I was so out of sorts that I didn’t know what to do or where to go, and I started yelling, “I don’t want to leave them! Go back!”

  “Hell, no,” she responded, finally in control of herself. “We’re going home.”

  Soon, though, we began seeing signs that we were leaving Puerto Vallarta, a place I’d been so terrified to go the day before. Yet here I was now, and what had happened was just as bad as I feared.

  “Get out a pen and paper,” Olivia said. “I need you to write down these names.”

  As she reeled off the list of wholesalers, I took notes. There were so many names I couldn’t figure out how she remembered, but she had. Minutes later, we drove into our beach house driveway in Los Ranchos. As soon as we got through security, the three guys jumped out of the car like their pants were on fire and ran into the house, and we followed behind them.

  We quickly realized we had a problem, though. The house was way too quiet. Adrian and Daniela were nowhere to be found, and wherever they’d gone, they’d taken Brandon with them.

  Olivia

  The beach house was huge, with rooms on the left side and an equal number of rooms on the right. The back was all windows and doors that opened out to the sea, and there was an upstairs, too. I ran through each of those rooms screaming my head off, “Brandon! Adrian! Where’s my baby?” But there was no one there.

  Adrian hadn’t been answering his phone as I’d been driving back home, and I was terrified. I walked into Brandon’s room, and his little bed was unmade. His stuffed animals were scattered around, and the blankie he always carried around was sitting on the bed, all balled up. In the corner of the room, there was his car seat.

  Shit, I thought. Not only did someone take him, but they took him without his car seat.

  Then, way down the hall, I heard one of our maids, who lived way back in another part of the house. She was just waking up as she stumbled toward me.

  “They’re gone,” she said, and my heart stopped. “They left in the middle of the night.”

  Mia

  I’d been pacing around the kitchen, looking for Peter and Junior’s papers and phones, when Olivia ran into the kitchen. She was totally out of breath when she said, “Adrian and Daniela left with Brandon.”

  “That’s great! They’re safe. Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. But they forgot to take his fucking car seat! He’s not safe without his car seat!”

  Of all the things to focus on right then, that car seat had apparently become the most important thing in the world to her. I tried to get her attention off of it. “What do we do? Do we go back to Guadalajara?” I was pretty much screaming at her because somebody had to make a decision, and it wasn’t going to be me. I hadn’t slept, I’d just been kidnapped, my husband was probably on a flight back to the United States, and I’d cried so much I could hardly see. But Olivia didn’t answer.

  “Let’s wait,” I finally said.

  Olivia calmed down just enough to respond, “You’re crazy. We have to get the fuck out of here.”

  But I’d made up my mind. “No,” I said. “I’m waiting for Peter.”

  Olivia

  There was no way I was staying in that house. No fucking way. We had to make sure the deposits in LA were safe, we had to get the hell out of Puerto Vallarta, and most of all I had to find my son.

  It took some time to convince her, but Mia finally agreed we should leave. We ran upstairs and started packing. We hadn’t planned to stay in Puerto Vallarta long, so we didn’t have much. I threw everything into one bag and could hear Mia doing the same. She’d started crying again, and every few seconds there would be a little whimper or sniff. After about ten minutes, they were getting less and less frequent, and soon there was more silence than tears.

  Then, suddenly, I heard what sounded like the Mexican army coming down our driveway. I became terrified all over again, and I thought, Someone’s coming to take our asses off to jail.

  Mia

  Oh my God, it was insane. I ran to the window in my room and saw pickup trucks and Hummers with armed men in the back, plus Suburbans and Jeeps, rolling down toward our house all in a line. There was car after car after car, windows all blacked out. I thought about heading downstairs, but I couldn’t move a muscle and couldn’t have run if I’d wanted to. Then it hit me. What the hell is going on? Whoever�
��s in those cars is going to kill us. You have to do something.

  I saw the door of the first pickup truck open up, and it was Peter. I sprinted down the stairs and out the door faster than I’d ever run in my life.

  Olivia

  In my mind it was Junior who jumped out of the car first, but they look so much alike and I was so out of my mind that, honestly, it could have been Peter. I was so happy to see both of them that it didn’t make a difference anyway.

  After we’d finished hugging and kissing, Junior motioned for us to go inside. When I say, “us,” I mean the horde of guys who’d just stepped out of the twenty vehicles that had driven toward our house. There were men everywhere.

  Our dining room had a table that seated about twenty people, and everyone filed in toward it. I immediately knew who was in charge; his name was Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, who everyone just called El Mencho. El Mencho’s now the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which is pretty much the most violent cartel in Mexico right now. He uses shoulder-held rocket launchers to shoot down military helicopters, and he actually once set part of Guadalajara on fire. But at the time, El Mencho ran the plaza in Vallarta. He was a semi-regular drug lord in 2008, even though everyone—from the police all the way up to federal agents—feared him because he was a total maniac.

  We all sat down at the dining room table and listened to Junior and Peter relate what had happened.

  Mia

  When Olivia had called Adrian on her Nextel from the blacked-out Suburban, she had no idea whether or not he’d answered. Luckily, he’d heard every demand, scream, and threat. He understood his marching orders, and he quickly sprang into action making phone calls.