Authors: Ross Sidor
“The price will
need to be re-negotiated.”
The Viper
anticipated the reaction of her men behind her. She knew Trujillo would be
getting an anxious trigger finger. She raised her hand in a gesture telling him
to hold it together. She thought she heard Trujillo scoff and mutter something
to Carlo Ibarra.
“What has
changed?”
“Haven’t you
heard? Nolan was arrested this morning. The gringos shot up half of
Buenaventura to get him. Our sources in Colombia tell us it all has something
to do with that plane that was shot down four days ago in Bogotá. Then you show
up here, wanting us to get you over the border. Rumor is you plan on doing more
planes in America. It’s a big risk for Arturo to get involved in some terrorism
bullshit against the
norteamericanos
.” Carlos paused to let his words
sink in. “I don’t know who you are or what’s so special about you, but the
price for a one-way trip to United States has just gone way up.”
The Viper was
seething. She struggled to contain her anger. She calculated her options,
ranging from trying to take out the Mexicans right here and now, to biding her
time in hopes of developing a tactical advantage, to swallowing her pride and
haggling with the cartel. She reminded herself of why she was here, kept the
end goal in sight.
“My cargo is
going nowhere. It stays here aboard my plane, with me, and I will send one of
my men to meet with Arturo. When a price and terms are negotiated and agreed, I
will give you the money here, and we will then proceed directly to the border. You
can stay out here with your guns pointed at the plane if you find it necessary.
I won’t try to sneak away.”
Carlos kept his
eyes on her, clearly taking offense to terms being dictated to him by this woman.
For the disrespect she showed to the cartel, he thought his men deserved having
a go at her, to put her in her place and remind her where she was. But he had
his orders. The woman wasn’t to be touched unless she made threatening moves.
Finally, Carlos stepped
out of earshot and made a call on his cell phone, while his men and the Viper’s
resumed the staring contest.
The call lasted
ninety seconds, and then Carlos returned to Arianna.
“He wasn’t
easily convinced, but Arturo agrees to these conditions.”
“When can we
speak with him?” the Viper asked.
“Tomorrow
afternoon. Arturo prefers to meet with you personally.”
“It’s not going
to happen.” The Viper was not about to turn herself over, alone, to the cartel.
“I’m going to send one of my people. He will speak for me.”
“Very well
then,” Carlos said. “We will drive your representative to the city to see
Arturo, and I will stay here with my crew. Your plane doesn’t refuel until
after our business is through here, whatever arrangement, if any, you and
Arturo reach.”
“Do as you
please, but if anyone approaches this plane unannounced or uninvited, they’re
dead.”
The Viper turned
around. Ibarra and Trujillo remained where they were until she’d climbed the
stairs. Then they followed her into the cabin.
Standing with
his back against the wall, off the side of the cabin door, Mirsad Sidran
lowered his rifle.
As she strode
past him, the Viper said, “We’re going to-”
“I heard
everything. Send one of the others to deal with the Mexicans. I’m staying here,
with you and the missiles.”
The Viper
smirked. “You want to keep an eye on me, too? At least you’re straightforward
about your intentions.”
“To protect my
country’s investment,” Sidran corrected her. “The Mexicans know what you’re
transporting. A cartel armed with SA-24 would be the most powerful in the
country. Or the weapons could fetch a high price on the black market. The
Mexicans are going to ask for significantly more money than you originally
agreed upon. They hold the advantage, and you have nothing to bargain with. You
need Arturo now more than he wants your money. After all, whatever you pay is
pittance compared to the cartel’s daily earnings. We’ll never enter the US
without their help, if they don’t stab you in the back.”
Before they’d
left Buenaventura, Trujillo had offered to kill Sidran. The Viper had
instructed Trujillo to leave him alone, assuming that Sidran sent a regular
coded message to his Iranian controller, letting him know he was alive and the
mission was on track.
“Money is not a
concern,” the Viper said.
“It should be,”
Sidran sneered. There was an edge to his voice now, and he leaned in closer to
the Viper. He felt like he dealt with a child. “In case you haven’t noticed, we
are now stranded here. The Mexicans will not let us out of their sight. There
is the possibility they will contact the Americans, and the Americans will
offer them more money for you than what we can pay. You can be certain that, as
we speak, the cartel is considering this option and weighing the risks and
rewards. They will do what is in their best business interests, whether that is
raising the price and honoring their agreement with you, or selling you to the
Americans.”
Ten hours later, under a late night sky
lined with stars, a DEA Learjet landed on the runway outside Tijuana International’s
Old Airport Terminal, the terminal reserved for government and military
flights, located opposite the airport’s larger and busier general aviation
section. The Learjet entered on a blocked flight plan since the cartels kept
watchers at the airport to keep track of inbound government flights.
Dismounting from
the Learjet, the night air felt cool and breezy; about 55° F. Avery knew that
tomorrow the temperature would rise some twenty degrees with the sun out in full
force.
They were met on
the tarmac by black Dodge Chargers of the Mexican Interior Secretariat’s
Federal Police, and two civilian Toyota Forerunners with tinted windows,
armored panels, and US Government diplomatic plates.
The armored
Forerunner was the vehicle of choice for DEA agents in Mexico, and it had
proven its durability. Two years ago, Mexican cops doing side gigs for the
cartel ambushed a DEA Forerunner on a highway after it left the American
Embassy. The SUV stopped 152 bullets. The agents inside remained completely
unscathed.
Avery and the
others were greeted by a Hispanic-American with a trim, athletic physique, wavy
black hair, relaxed demeanor, and an easy going smile. He already knew Slayton,
who introduced him as Special Agent Nick Contreras (DEA Ops Division; Office of
Diversion Control). Avery found Contreras at once affable, but knew from the
way he spoke and carried himself that he was a seasoned pro who knew his way around
this part of the world.
Contreras was
accompanied by Captain Hector Padilla from the Federal Police’s Anti-Drug
Division. Middle aged with short graying hair, a thick, sturdy build, serious
face and intense eyes, not as quick as Contreras to smile or engage in small
talk, Avery thought Padilla looked more like a hardened combat soldier than a
cop, and he wasn’t far off in that assessment.
Additional
Mexican police officers stood nearby, creating a perimeter. Their eyes were
alert, taking everything in, and their fingers rested along the trigger guards
of their MP5 submachine guns. They wore dark blue uniforms with body armor and
tactical helmets, plus black balaclava facemasks that left only their eyes
visible through narrow slits, and their names weren’t printed on their
uniforms, so that they or their families would not be identified and targeted
by the cartels.
Given that the
cartels had eyes and ears everywhere, it was best not to linger around, so
everyone quickly piled into the Forerunners and got underway.
Avery didn’t
know what Slayton had told Contreras, but it was apparent that Padilla was
skirting the normal rules. No one from customs had checked Avery’s or Aguilar’s
passports. There was no record of their entering the country, and Avery hoped
to keep it that way. Their gear wasn’t searched either, which was also just as
well since they’d brought assault rifles and full combat kit with them. Avery
and Aguilar were in the country totally covert, and that would make it easier
for them to do what they needed to do when they caught up with the Viper.
Avery trusted
Contreras and the DEA agents, but he had mixed feelings about Padilla’s
involvement. Aside from the widespread corruption that plagued Mexican police
forces, Avery knew he might have to do something that the Mexican cops might
not like.
This was Avery’s
first time to Mexico, but he’d read up on the country during the flight,
studying the CIA World Factbook entry and listening to Slayton’s firsthand
accounts of the ongoing drug wars being fought here.
Known
colloquially as TJ, Tijuana and the surrounding urban area comprise a large
modern metropolis seated in rugged mesas and canyons. The largest city on the
Baja California Peninsula and economically linked to San Diego, Tijuana is Mexico’s
industrial center, especially known for manufacturing most of the medical
equipment used in North American hospitals. Many American companies have
factories here, taking advantage of Mexicans who are happy to work overtime under
poor conditions for $8 a day. Despite the city’s importance to the Mexican and
American economies, poverty was still widespread, with most people living in
slums.
After a
2007-2010 high of gang violence between the Tijuana cartel and its Sinaloa
rival, rife with chainsaw massacres and gun battles in the streets, Americans
were slowly starting to visit the city again. Tijuana’s beaches and its small
downtown strip are popular tourist destinations, and the low drinking age
attracts droves of California kids on the weekends.
Over the past
decade, Mexico has become the new frontline of the drug wars. Throughout the
nineties, rampant poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and government
corruption and failure brought about the rise of the cartels. The current
conflict started in 2006, when President Calderon launched a massive operation
to arrest the heads of the cartels, and deployed the army to the country’s most
dangerous areas. Since then, the cartels, with their private armies and death
squads, battle each other and the federal government’s security forces on a
daily basis, unconcerned about the civilians who get in the way. For many
Mexicans, the cartels offered the only source of work and income.
Nearly 100,000
people, many of them civilians, have been killed since 2006. Another 30,000
have disappeared, most of them dead or sold into slavery. Mutilated,
dismembered, and burnt bodies of police officers, soldiers, undercover agents,
vigilante paramilitaries, and rival gang members, plus their family members,
regularly appear in piles on city streets or hanging from lamp posts or on the
sides of highways, or turn up buried in mass graves around the country.
Countless more
civilians are slaughtered across the United States and Central America as they
inadvertently enter the crosshairs of the rival street gangs and paramilitary
groups who thrive off trafficking and selling Mexican drugs. From Colombia’s
FARC and Peru’s Shining Path, to California and El Salvador’s MS-13, Mexican
cartel operations put cash, guns, and drugs in the hands of gangs and terrorist
groups across the Western Hemisphere.
Together, the
top Mexican drug lords earn up to $50 billion annually. Nearly all South
American cocaine in the United States first passes through Mexico, and much of
Americans’ recreational marijuana is grown in Mexico. American cities from Los
Angeles to Chicago and Indianapolis have seen a steady increase in gang
violence as the Mexican cartels expand their operations, buying and arming
allies, and eliminating competition in urban turf wars.
Avery personally
thought that combating drug cartels was a waste of resources. The drug lords
and gangs only profited because of America’s insatiable appetite for narcotics.
Half of Americans have used marijuana, a quarter of them have tried cocaine, and
most of them weren’t addicts or criminals living in the alleys of inner city
ghettos. They were college students, lawyers, artists, doctors, bored suburban
dwellers, and yuppies, weak individuals craving stimulation in one form or
another, and escape from their insecurities, empty lives, and loneliness; and they
were as responsible for the carnage and death in Colombia and Mexico as the
cartels and their killers. Washington could pour as much as money as it wanted
into counternarcotics operations, but it wouldn’t do much good as long as
American citizens demanded cocaine and marijuana.
The small convoy
drove south on a two-lane road, the Forerunners packed between the Federal
Police Chargers. Avery travelled in the same vehicle as Slayton, Contreras, and
Captain Padilla. He looked out his window, watching the flat land, a mix of
grass and dirt fields, passing by. Moon and star light shining through
Tijuana’s heavy pollution cast an orange glow to the sky, the result of the
city’s increasing industrialization. Traffic was light, consisting mostly of
eighteen wheelers making their way to or from the border on late night hauls.
Padilla took the
opportunity to quickly fill Avery and Slayton in on the Tijuana cartel.
Originally one
of the largest, most powerful cartels in the country, after the arrest of its
leaders, the TJ cartel is now essentially a loose coalition of smaller gangs
operating in the Tijuana cartel’s former territory in northwestern Mexico and
southern California. They maintain their influence and power through violence
and from the fact that they control a third of key Mexican smuggling routes
into the United States. When these gangs aren’t fighting the police or the
Sinaloa cartel, they’re fighting each other.
“Did you receive
the briefing packet I forwarded to your office earlier?” Slayton asked Contreras.
“Sure did. I
knew there was more to what went down in Buenaventura than the official story
and the bullshit in the media. We also received the alert earlier this week
from CIA and Homeland Security that the Viper—cute name, by the way—is looking
to get into the States to cause some havoc. She’s been our top priority the
past five days, putting nearly everything else on hold.”
Contreras didn’t
sound happy about this, but the fact that the Viper was already responsible for
the deaths of several DEA agents made him more willing and cooperative than he
otherwise would be putting his agents and informants to work for CIA.
“Well for once
Homeland Security’s not overreacting,” Slayton said. “I’ve been on this from
the beginning, and Moreno’s as dangerous as they come. This is our last chance
to interdict her and the missiles before they enter the US.”
“I’ll tell you
right now, I’ll do everything I can to help,” Contreras said. “I knew two of
those guys we lost in Buenaventura two days ago. Came up through the Academy
with them, and I worked with Foster in Honduras. They were good agents. They
had families, kids. They deserved a hell of a lot better.”
Slayton nodded
his agreement, feeling partly responsible for what happened in Buenaventura.
“Anyway,”
Contreras said. “I think we may already have a lead.”
Slayton smiled,
a look of relief on his face, and eagerness to move away from the topic of
Buenaventura, and he said to a stoic Avery, “I told you this guy gets shit
done.”
“Let’s not get
too excited yet,” Contreras said. “It’s just coincidence really, and it might
be nothing. We caught wind of something just before you landed. We’d investigate
it either way, but after the news about the Viper, well, maybe there’s a
connection.”
“What is it?”
“One of our
local informants alerted us to a meeting tomorrow with Arturo Silva. For those of
you who don’t know, Silva is Tijuana’s logistics coordinator with Colombia’s North
Valley Cartel, which, as I’m sure you already know, is allied with FARC. Silva’s
in charge of moving Colombian cocaine up north, and he’s real tight with Los
Zetas, making him no small player around here. We’ve been after him for a
while.”
“Who is he
meeting?” Slayton asked.
“We haven’t identified
the contact yet, but we know he, or maybe she, is a foreigner and was due to
arrive from Colombia earlier this afternoon. Doesn’t seem like a coincidence to
me that our investigations are intersecting here.”
“There are no
coincidences,” Avery observed, repeating the mantra ingrained into recruits at
CIA’s training program at the Farm. “Did your source say anything about the purpose
of the meeting?”
“They’re re-negotiating
the terms of some business deal.” Contreras shrugged. “Our informant doesn’t
know anymore than that, and it would look too suspicious, out of character, for
him to make inquiries, so he kept his mouth shut. But he got the impression it
involves moving something over the border, and he doesn’t believe it’s cocaine.
I’m inclined to agree.”
“Why’s that?”
Avery asked.
“Silva wouldn’t
personally get involved in negotiating a run of the mil coke deal. He has
people to do that sort of thing for him. His involvement means this is
something big.”
“Who’s your source?”
Avery asked.
“Drug smuggler
and thug for the TJ cartel turned confidential informant,” Contreras answered.
“Until he had a
change of heart and decided to switch sides?”
“Sure,”
Contreras said, catching the sarcasm, “plus a little coercion on our part. Not
to mention cash and cancellation of federal charges against him in the US. He’s
a total scumbag, but generally reliable, and he has good reason to keep us
happy. The prosecutor in DC is willing to offer him immunity from arrest and
prosecution if he continues to prove his worth, maybe even a new identity under
WITSEC, but we’ll talk about that after Arturo Silva and his friends are in
custody.”
Avery was well aware
that DEA, in order to catch the bigger fish, often had to work with the very
type of people they sought to take down. When a particular incident became
publicized, the media jumped at the chance to paint the DEA in a negative light
for collaborating with drug dealers and smugglers.
“Frankly,”
Contreras said, “when we’re through with him, I’d rather out him to his buddies
in TJ, let’em give him the full chainsaw treatment, but I guess it’s better for
business if we follow through on our end of the deal.”