Kirk Russell - Redback

‘ Kerry Anderson is going to call you,’ Sheryl said. ‘I talked to him this morning.’

Marquez was with Sheryl at a coffee place in Sausalito that he liked. Wardens worked from home and he came down here sometimes in the afternoons with a file, mostly in the winter when they tended to have fewer operations running. Everything lit up again in early March when the stripers and sturgeon started jumping on the Sacramento River and the bear came out of hibernation and deer herds congregated around the new grass. Most of this morning he had been on the phone with his team. Most of that conversation was about Brad, but he also gave them assignments.

‘OK, why is he calling?’

‘That’s the weird part, stranger even than Anderson. He says he has recent information on a phone intercept in Mexico where Stoval was talking about you. Maybe you know this, maybe you don’t, but Anderson’s role changed after 9/11. He does more analysis and shares more and that goes out to several agencies. He straddles several of the agencies. Anything they think is terrorism related they share and Anderson is pretty good at cooking that up. As you know, he’ll talk to anybody about Stoval. He’d talk to you if he was sitting next to you on a bus. I’ve never met anybody so obsessed with one person. Can you imagine what it would be like to be married to Anderson?’

‘He’s not married.’

‘Talking to him you’d think the only analysis he works on is Stoval.’

‘Where are you going with this?’

‘You are so patient, John. You’ve never changed. Where I’m going is Anderson called me yesterday fishing for anything I know about this Stoval task force that Ted Desault is heading. Talk about a blast from the past. Ted Desault – there’s a name I hoped I’d never hear again.’

‘Desault wants to meet with me. He wants to make me an offer. He called me just before Brad got killed.’

‘No kidding?’

Marquez nodded. They were sitting outside in wicker chairs in the coffeehouse garden less than a hundred yards from the bay. There were gulls, boats, tourists, and a chill wind this afternoon. He thought about Desault’s call and why he still hadn’t called Desault back. Now it hit them both at the same time and Sheryl said it aloud.

‘Stoval knows an offer is going to be made to you. That’s it, isn’t it? Is that scary, or what? He’s hooked into Desault’s task force. What kind of offer did Desault make you?’

‘I haven’t heard it yet.’

Marquez looked at a gull wheeling out over the water and Sheryl talked quietly about Stoval and the regeneration of the Salazar Cartel.

‘He’s still there. He still bankrolls short term loans for drug smugglers and we think he’s more involved in the new Salazar operation. And he doesn’t use the same contract killers to make sure he gets paid back. He does what the cartels do, he uses the Zetas.’

‘What’s anybody’s guess about his net worth now?’

‘Anderson says one point seven billion.’

‘He’s done well.’

‘Yeah, a lot better than you and me.’

‘What are you talking about? You’ve had a great career.’

‘You know what, John, the Group Five days were the best. When it was just our squad and we were working the Salazars and nobody else, that was great. Remember how close we all were? I hit a real low point after you left and after I moved back to California.’

‘When you married Phelps.’

‘Yeah, that two and a half years of marriage was the absolute rock bottom of the ocean.’

Marquez rarely thought about Pete Phelps, the ATF officer who’d been in Baja when they were there. He no longer felt any animosity toward Phelps, which was saying something.

‘I never told you I caught him in bed with my neighbor,’ Sheryl said. ‘I almost shot him, and I still think the only reason I didn’t is that it would have been one more mess of his to clean up.’ She sighed. ‘I have something else to confess. It’s why I drove over here. It’s why I didn’t want to talk on the phone. Stoval mentioning your name isn’t a surprise to the Feds, or at least this is what Anderson told me and should tell you. They know there’s a leak and they’re playing a cat and mouse game with it.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘OK, well, it’s possible Desault doesn’t know that Stoval mentioned your name in a phone intercept. Anderson knows because he’s lead analyst. He told me because he knows I’ll tell you, but it’s possible no one on the Stoval task force knows because the Bureau is frantic to find the leak. They have the same problem we had back in the Group Five days and I don’t know exactly what Anderson is going to tell you, but you shouldn’t go anywhere near the FBI task force. Stoval hasn’t forgotten that you went after him all those years ago. There’s probably nothing he’d like more than you coming after him again. These many years later and he’s keying off on your name. Maybe I’m getting older and less brave, but of all of them over all the years, Stoval scares me the most.’

‘I owe Desault a call.’

‘Don’t do it, John. I really mean it, don’t do it.’

Marquez googled Zetas and came up with a Dallas News story.

American youths did Mexican drug cartel’s dirty work Court records describe how Zetas gave money, instructions to hit men 09:32 A.M. CST on Saturday, November 10, 2007 By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News dmclemore@dallasnews. com LAREDO – Rosalio Reta killed his first man at age 13. He didn’t like it much, he told police. The guy was tied up and kneeling. Mr Reta just had to pick up a pistol and shoot him in the head. Rosalio Reta ‘He told us that wasn’t his style. There was no challenge,’ said Webb County Assistant District Attorney Jesus Guillen, who successfully prosecuted Mr Reta for murder. ‘He preferred to run surveillance on a victim, pick the right moment and surprise him. Like he was playing Grand Theft Auto.’ By July 28, 2006 – one day after his 17th birthday – when Laredo police charged him with the contract killing of Noe Flores in Laredo, Mr Reta had been involved with 30 murders, Mexican and Texas investigators believed. All were on behalf of the Zetas, the ruthless enforcement arm of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel drug smuggling operation. His trial last summer for the Flores killing offered tantalizing glimpses into the shadowy workings of the Zetas and the inroads of cartel violence into this border city. Court records revealed a portrait of a group of young American killers who were well-paid to do one thing: kill people the Zeta leadership in Nuevo Laredo wanted dead. And they highlighted a group of young killers who followed orders from Mexican drug lords with ruthless efficiency while often behaving like teens with poor impulse control. Mr Reta sought his own extradition for the murder. He called a DEA agent and Laredo homicide Detective Roberto Garcia from a prison in Mexico, saying he wanted to stand trial in Texas for two homicides. He told US investigators he feared reprisals from the Zetas over a botched hit in Monterrey – a grenade attack on one of the city’s nightclubs that killed four and injured 25. He was supposed to kill only one person, police said, but had missed the target. Laredo police had already identified Mr Reta as one of three people responsible for the Flores killing. Their investigation had linked him to one of three three-member scicarias, or hit man cells, the Zetas had set up in Laredo. They believed Mr Reta was responsible for at least five killings in the city – either as a shooter or organizer. After he was charged in Laredo, Mr Reta gave a statement to Detective Garcia, detailing the Flores killing and his role in it. Mr Reta told police he drove on the night of Jan. 8, 2006, when his three-man cell hit Mr Flores in a Laredo residential neighborhood. He described how one of his cell members, Gabriel Cordona, walked up to Mr Flores and calmly fired eight bullets into his body – three of them into his head. And he told how the third member, Jessie Hernandez, panicked and began firing while in the car, shooting out the rear window. But the wrong guy got killed. Mr Flores had no criminal history and was just visiting a family birthday party. The Zeta commander for Nuevo Laredo – Miguel TrevinMorales, a fugitive wanted on five state warrants for murder, kidnapping, and organized crime – was believed to have ordered a hit on Mike Lopez, Mr Flores’ step-brother. Mr Trevinwas angry at Mr Lopez for dating a woman he was interested in. A month after the Flores murder, on Feb. 26, 2007, another group of Zeta gunmen killed Mr Lopez, according to Laredo police. Cells on retainer Much of the specifics of the inner workings of Zeta operations in Laredo came out during testimony of prosecution witness David Martinez, a former Zeta gunman serving a federal sentence for weapons violations. He provided details on how the cartel set up three cells, composed of three people each, who were on retainer at $500 a week, just to wait for instructions. Sometimes they were called on to buy cars for gang use. Other times, to perform killings.