Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas

2006

Keller watches the girl writhe on the pole in a pathetic parody of lust.

He’s sitting by himself at a cantina in La Zona—the “Zone of Tolerance,” more commonly known as Boy’s Town—a walled-in section of bars, strip clubs, and brothels frequented mostly by teenagers and college kids coming over the bridges from Laredo, Texas, just across the Rio Grande.

Los dos Laredos, Keller thinks.

The Two Laredos.

One in Mexico, the other just across the river in Texas.

Collectively the two cities form the busiest inland port in the hemisphere. Something like 70 percent of all Mexican exports to the United States pass through Nuevo Laredo into its sister city across the border.

That includes dope.

Lots of dope.

Keller sits and watches the girl tiredly do a routine that is almost prophylactic in itself. She’s young and thin, her eyes vacant even as they try to stare down men into slipping money under her ill-fitting yellow G-string, her motions more robotic than erotic.

The girl is on autopilot and Keller bets that she’s high.

The joint is almost impossibly depressing. Drunk American college kids, sad middle-aged men, sadder bargirls and whores, and, of course, narcos. Not top guys, but low- and midlevel traffickers and wannabes, most of them dressed in full norteño narco-cowboy gear.

Keller takes another sip of beer. This bar, like most of them in La Zona, serves only beer and tequila, and he chose a bottle of Indio.

These are bad and brooding days for Art Keller.

Adán Barrera’s trail is colder than a bill collector’s heart.

After the Atizapán shootout, Barrera went off the radar. No cell phone or Internet traffic, no discernible movement, no “Adán sightings” that used to light up the phone boards like Times Square at sunset. Keller can’t get a solid lead, just rumors, some of which say that Barrera has retired from the pista secreta and is content to live out his life in peace and seclusion.

Keller doesn’t buy it.

If Barrera is quiet, he has a reason, and the reason is always bad. Adán’s not playing bridge, going on Carnival cruises, or working on his golf swing. If he’s lying low, it’s because he’s about to make a move.

The question is where.

Barrera needs a piece of the border.

A plaza.

Keller thinks it’s going to be the Gulf.

The CDG, the Cartel del Golfo, aren’t Sinaloans so don’t qualify for the “we are family” love-fest. The cartel’s boss, Osiel Contreras, is a Matamoros homeboy who lacks the Culiacán pedigree that is the usual prerequisite for narco-royalty. So he’s fair game. Especially when Adán figures that he put Contreras on the Gulf throne anyway, by dropping a dime on his predecessor.

Barrera views Contreras as a placeholder.

Contreras doesn’t.

He sees himself as the next patrón.

His power is growing—the CDG recently expanded from its Matamoros and Reynosa bases to threaten Nuevo Laredo, absorbing the Soto family that used to run the east side. And Contreras has his own private army—the Zetas—trained by us, Keller thinks with chagrin.

At Fort Benning.

To combat drug trafficking.

So now Contreras’s CDG has the whole state of Tamaulipas, effectively making him the predominant narco in the country.

But it’s the same old story, Keller thinks, as a new girl—this one older, even more tired, if that’s possible—takes her rotation on the pole. Sources say that Contreras has started to use his own product, is snorting piles of cocaine, and that it’s fueling his paranoia.

And his rage.

It recently caused him to seriously fuck up.

Two DEA agents in Matamoros had an informant in their car. Contreras had some of his men surround their Ford Bronco, then he got out of his own vehicle and, gold-plated AK-47 in hand and golden-gripped Colt pistol tucked into his waistband, swaggered up to the trapped DEA men and demanded that they turn the informant over to him.

When they refused, Contreras said he would kill them.

DEA agents in Mexico aren’t allowed to carry weapons, so these guys were helpless.

They toughed it out, though, and said that they wouldn’t surrender the man, seeing as how they were going to die anyway. The agent’s exact words to Contreras have already become agency lore. “Tomorrow and the next day and the rest of your life, you’ll regret anything stupid you do now. You’re fixing to make three hundred million enemies.”

Everyone still remembered the massive manhunt launched after Ernie Hidalgo’s murder. They especially recalled that Keller’s obsessive quest for revenge brought down the Barreras.

Contreras remembered that, too, and backed off.

Washington overreacted, putting Contreras near the top of the Most Wanted list, just below bin Laden, and placing a $2 million reward on his head. Then they bought armored Suburbans for each of the eight DEA offices in Mexico. The vehicles were a gesture, the reward symbolic—no one in his right mind would try to collect on it.

But Osiel Contreras has leapfrogged Adán Barrera as target número uno. Indictments on multiple counts of trafficking have been handed down on both sides of the border. All that remains is to arrest the man.

But they simply can’t lay their hands on Contreras, even though he’s reported to be operating openly in Tamaulipas. His arrogance is galling, the reason for it humiliating, especially to Vera and Aguilar:

Contreras owns the police.

Municipal police in Matamoros, Reynosa, and Nuevo Laredo, police chiefs in a hundred smaller towns and villages, and state police in Tamaulipas are on the CDG payroll.

The problem is intractable—you can’t just fire three-quarters of the police force. Traffic would come to a halt, public order would be compromised, robberies, rapes, and murders would go uninvestigated.

Vera and Aguilar tried to effect the necessary change from above, Vera appointing new AFI commanders from Mexico City, Aguilar sending in teams of trusted SEIDO agents.

They met with a hostile reception from the local police, who considered them “outsiders,” ignorant of local conditions, men sent to disrupt their normal operations, including the cozy relationship with the CDG.

And the Zetas’ military discipline and reputation for torture have made seizures difficult, informers impossible, and the CDG impenetrable.

They’ve effectively stunted the campaign to bring down Osiel Contreras.

But Gerardo Vera and Luis Aguilar—“Batman and Robin”—are shredding the Tijuana cartel.

Every week brings a new seizure or a major arrest. A tunnel found under the border at Otay Mesa, three thousand pounds of marijuana seized, key players captured. Every seizure and prisoner is paraded in front of the media, and each arrest yields intelligence that so far have led to the arrests of over one thousand members of the Tijuana cartel.

Whom the AFI can’t capture, they kill.

They gun down one of Solorzano’s lieutenants in a firefight in Mazatlán. A firefight in Rosarito takes down his chief of security.

Vera’s new AFI is a collective Dirty Harry—the narcos have to decide if they feel lucky—and Vera isn’t shy about voicing his philosophy to the public. “They surrender or they die. That’s their only choice. Los malosos—the bad guys—are not going to run Mexico.”

The media love it. Every arrest and seizure makes headlines in the American newspapers, especially in California. One went as far as to chirp, BATMAN AND ROBIN CLEAN UP THE MEXICAN GOTHAM.

Add to that the fact that Nacho Esparza has launched his own campaign against Solorzano. Adán’s former partner has reportedly sent his son, Ignacio Junior, to run the war to retake Adán’s old plaza.

But Keller is convinced that Barrera is about to make a move on the Gulf; he said so at one of the increasingly infrequent meetings of the Barrera Coordinating Committee and saw both Aguilar and Vera roll their eyes.