Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

The received wisdom is that the Mexican drug trade was destroyed back in the Operation Condor days. The official reports say so, the DEA says so, the State Department says so, and the attorney general says so-and none of the aforementioned needs Art Keller to create fantasies about Mexican drug “cartels.”

Art knows what they say about him. That he’s becoming a genuine pain in the ass, firing off monthly memos, trying to create a Federacion from a gaggle of Sinaloan hillbillies who were chased out of the mountains nine years ago. Bugging everyone with a bunch of Frito Banditos who are running a little marijuana and maybe a little heroin, when what he needs to realize is that there’s a freaking crack epidemic ripping through the streets ofAmerica, and the cocaine is coming fromColombia, not goddamnMexico.

They even sent Tim Taylor over fromMexico City to tell him to shut the fuck up. The man in charge of the whole DEA operation inMexico gathered Art, Ernie Hidalgo and Shag Wallace in the back room of the DEA office inGuadalajara and said, “We’re not where the action is. You guys need to face that instead of inventing-”

“We’re not inventing anything,” Art said.

“Where’s the proof?”

“We’re working on it.”

“No,”Taylor said. “You’re not working on it. There is nothing for you to work on. The attorney general of theUnited States has announced to Congress-”

“I read the speech.”

“-that the Mexican drug problem is all but over. Are you trying to make the AG look like an asshole?”

“I think he can manage that without any help from me.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him you said that, Arthur,”Taylor said. “You are not, I repeat not, to go running aroundMexico chasing snow that doesn’t exist. Do we have an understanding here?”

“Sure,” said Art. “If anyone tries to sell me Mexican cocaine, I should just say no.”

Now, three months later, he’s watching nonexistent federales loading nonexistent cocaine into nonexistent trucks that will deliver the cocaine to nonexistent members of the nonexistent Federacion.

It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences, Art thinks as he watches the federales. Operation Condor was intended to cut the Sinaloan cancer out ofMexico, but what it did instead was spread it through the entire body. And you have to give the Sinaloans credit-their response to their little diaspora was pure genius. Somewhere along the line they figured out that their real product isn’t drugs, it’s the two-thousand-mile border they share with the United States, and their ability to move contraband across it. Land can be burned, crops can be poisoned, people can be displaced, but that border-that border isn’t going anywhere. A product that might be worth a few cents one inch on their side of the border is worth thousands just one inch on the other side.

The product-DEA, State, and Mexican government notwithstanding-is cocaine.

The Federacion made a very simple and profitable deal with the Medellin andCali cartels: The Colombians pay $1,000 for every kilo of cocaine the Mexicans can safely deliver to them inside theUnited States. So, basically, the Federacion got out of the drug-growing business and into the transportation business. The Mexicans take delivery of the coke from the Colombians, transport it to staging areas along the border, move it across into safe houses in the States and then give it back to the Colombians and get their thousand bucks per kilo. The Colombians move it to their labs and process it into crack, and the shit is on the streets weeks-sometimes just days-after leavingColombia.

Not throughFlorida -the DEA has been pounding those routes like a rented mule-but through the neglected Mexican “back door.”

The Federacion, Art thinks-when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.

But how? he wonders. Even he has to admit there are some problems with his theory. How do you fly a plane under the radar fromColombia toGuadalajara, across a Central American terrain that is swarming not only with DEA but, thanks to the presence of the Communist Sandinista regime inNicaragua, with CIA as well? Spy satellites, AWACS-none of them is picking up these flights.

And then there’s the fuel problem. A DC-4, like the one he’s looking at right now, doesn’t have the fuel capacity to make that flight in one shot. It would have to stop and refuel. But where? It doesn’t seem possible, as his bosses have cheerfully pointed out to him.

Yeah, well, it may not be possible, Art thinks. But the plane is sitting there, fat with cocaine. Just as real as the crack epidemic that’s causing so much pain in the American ghettos. So I know you’re doing it, Art thinks, looking at the plane. I just don’t know how you’re doing it.

But I’m going find out.

And then I’m going to prove it.

“What’s this?” Ernie asks.

A black Mercedes pulls up to the office shack. Some federales trot up and open the back door of the car and a tall, thin man in a black suit gets out. Art can see the glow from a cigar as the man walks through the cordon of federales into the office.

“I wonder if that’s him,” Ernie asks.

“Who?”

“The mythical M-1 himself,” Ernie says.

“M-1” is the Mexican sobriquet for the nonexistent head of the non-existent Federacion.

The intelligence that Art has managed to gather over the past year is that M-1’s Federacion, like Caesar’s Gaul, is divided into three parts: the Gulf States, Sonora, and Baja. Together they cover the border with the United States. Each of these three territories is run by a Sinaloan who was forced out of the home province by Operation Condor, and Art has managed to put a name to all three.

The Gulf: Garcia Abrego.

Sonora: Chalino Guzman, aka El Verde, “The Green.”

Baja: Guero Mendez.

At the top of this triangle, based in Guadalajara: M-1.

But they can’t put a name or a face to him.

But you can, can’t you, Art? he asks himself. You know in your gut who’s the patron of the Federacion. You helped put him in office.

Art peers through his night scope into the little office, focuses on the man who now sits down behind a desk. He wears a conservative black business suit, a white button-down shirt open at the neck, no tie. His black hair, flicked with a little silver, is combed straight back. His thin, dark face sports a pencil mustache, and he smokes a thin, brown cigar.

“Look at them,” Ernie is saying. “They’re acting like this is a papal visit. I mean, I haven’t seen this guy before, have you?”

“No,” Art says, setting the binoculars down, “I haven’t.”

Not for nine years, anyway.

But Tio hasn’t changed much.

Althea’s asleep when Art gets home to their rented house in the Tlaquepaque district, a leafy suburb of single-family homes, boutiques and trendy restaurants.

Why shouldn’t she be asleep, Art thinks. It’s three o’clock in the morning. He’s spent the last two hours in the charade of tailing M-1 to find out his identity. Well, it was skillfully done, anyway, Art thinks. He and Ernie had laid way off the black Mercedes as it pulled out onto the highway that led back into downtown Guadalajara. They tailed the car through the old Centro Historico district and past the Cross of Squares-Plaza de Armas, Plaza de la Liberacion, Plaza de la Rotonda de los Hombres and Plaza Tapatia-that has the cathedral at its center. Then into the modern business district and back out toward the suburbs, where the black Mercedes finally pulled off at a car dealership.

German imports. Luxury cars.

They’d stayed a block away and waited while Tio let himself into the office, then came out a few minutes later with a set of keys and got into a new Mercedes 510-no driver this time, no guards. They followed him out to the wealthy garden district, where Tio pulled into a driveway, got out of the car and went into his house.