Stephen Randel - The Chupacabra

Over time, even using dummy buyers became more difficult. Increased pressure to stem the tide of guns illegally finding their way onto the streets caused U.S. authorities to increase the level of scrutiny regarding federal background checks and the amount of time it took to purchase guns. They also increased prosecution of unscrupulous gun dealers who skirted these requirements.

El Barquero had turned to other methods, including hiring partners to specialize in following and casing police vehicles, particularly unmarked ones. Numerous assault rifles were stolen from the trunks of unattended law enforcement vehicles parked in driveways while the officers were off duty. Even parked police cruisers on the street were targeted.

He also used some of his shadier contacts at gun stores to put him in contact with locals who were large gun collectors. He used the guise that he was interested in buying or selling rare and valuable firearms. Sometimes he was able to personally meet the collectors at local gun shows as well. After learning their identities, he would stake out their homes and break in during the night. He was good with alarms, and after subduing the homeowners in one way or another; he would pilfer their stores of weapons. The locks and hinges on their gun cases proved little challenge for the small amounts of shaped charges of high explosives he employed if the owner wouldn’t cooperate.

He had learned his trade as a senior officer of the Mexican army’s elite Special Forces Airmobile Group. He had been trained by some of the world’s best counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operatives. Over the years, the Padre had approached him numerous times, attempting to persuade him to leave the military and come work for the cartel. Despite the Padre’s repeated promises of wealth and power, El Barquero had always refused. Few people declined the Padre’s requests and lived. He was the exception. It wasn’t until his pregnant wife and unborn son were killed in a violent carjacking that he finally gave in. His world was empty. He had nothing left to live for.

But even invading homes was hit or miss, as antique guns were of little use to him. Occasionally, however, the robberies paid huge dividends. The number of private collectors who hoarded assault rifles, machine guns, and even large-caliber sniper rifles was amazing, particularly in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. He handled these jobs himself, as the risk of being caught was high if the alarm wasn’t handled properly, and hired agents couldn’t always be trusted to permanently silence a gun owner who would rather have his guns pried from his cold, dead hands than turn them over without incident.

Breaking into the homes of gun collectors led to breaking into gun stores, which had proven successful as well. He avoided stores in major metropolitan areas, tending to focus on small towns and cities where he felt his crime was easier to commit.

He even considered stealing guns from small-town police departments or out-of-the-way military facilities, but ultimately the plans proved to be too complicated for him to facilitate on his own. For a job like that, he needed someone on the inside. That was how he found Sanders.

Sanders had been a good man most of his life, until his wife left him for another man. She even took their two children with her. Over time, his drinking had progressed to the point where he was clearly going to lose his job. It was just a matter of time. Somewhere along the way, at his lowest point, he fell victim to the intoxicating grip of heroin. El Barquero had met him earlier that year in a small tavern in New Orleans a few blocks off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. Sitting at a table in the back of the dimly lit and empty bar, he bought Sanders a few rounds while he listened to the man’s woeful tale of losing his wife, his kids, his money, and now he faced the ever-growing prospect of his Louisiana National Guard unit being deployed to the Middle East by the end of the year. Noticing the track marks on his arm, it didn’t take long for El Barquero to ask him if he wanted to follow him back to his motel room, where he could help the sweating and shaking man get well. Sanders reluctantly agreed but began to have second thoughts as they drove toward the city limits. As Sanders entered the dark room on the second floor of the dingy motel, he worried that he had made his last mistake. Unfortunately for him, it was only the first mistake in his relationship with El Barquero. The enormous Mexican gave him some money and enough junk to keep him high. For the better part of the next twelve days, Sanders rarely removed the chain on the door except to let his new benefactor in to hand him some food or more of the heroin that numbed his body and washed away the pain in his head and in his heart.

El Barquero had paid the motel owner to not allow anyone in the room, maids or otherwise. After the twelfth day, which seemed more like twelve months to Sanders, El Barquero helped clean him up and took him back to Sanders’ small apartment. El Barquero explained that the rent had been paid and someone would come by to deliver the drugs on a regular basis. He was instructed to go back to his life and continue to serve in the National Guard. Sanders knew the big Mexican would want something someday; he just didn’t know what.

About four months later, that day finally came. Sanders met El Barquero in the same small tavern where he first made his acquaintance. El Barquero explained that he knew the deployment date for his unit was approaching and that while Sanders could hide his addiction from them while he was stateside, once he was shipped overseas he would be on his own. Sanders said he planned on disappearing before the deployment, but he’d need enough money and drugs to stay gone forever. El Barquero assured him this could be arranged through his employers and that a drug-induced, semi-conscious, leisurely early retirement in a small Mexican village on the Gulf Coast with sandy beaches, warm sea breezes, and pretty senoritas was easy enough to provide. Days lost in a comforting dreamlike state while swinging in a beachside hammock sounded to Sanders like the perfect way to drift through the rest of his life. The only catch was what he would have to do.

As preparations for his National Guard unit’s departure stepped up in pace, the arms, equipment, and munitions stores at their base were being rapidly expanded. Sanders had information on the inventory of equipment and access to the armory. The weapons cache didn’t just include assault rifles and ammunition; it was stocked with machine guns, grenades and grenade launchers, mortars, landmines, anti-tank weapons, night vision equipment, and military-grade body armor. It was all the sort of things that El Barquero’s employers desired for their battles with government authorities and rival cartels. This wouldn’t be just another shipment of pistols and shotguns to resupply their soldiers; this would be the shipment that would allow the cartel to expand its smuggling territory.

Sanders agreed with the plan, which delighted El Barquero, because Sanders didn’t really have a choice. El Barquero had already worked out the logistics for getting the merchandise into Mexico and informed his employers of his intentions. He didn’t want to have to kill Sanders for nothing.

When the time came to execute the plan, Sanders had prepared the falsified requisition documents and delivery orders for the munitions and acquired a large military truck for transportation. He had even coordinated a detachment of Guardsmen to assist in loading the vehicle.

After leaving the base with the shipment and nervously driving for several hours while imaging a roadblock of police at every bend in the road, he rendezvoused with El Barquero at an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the Louisiana swampland. Large portable canister lights illuminated the inside of the warehouse, while the two men used a small forklift to transfer the heavy wooden crates to the tractor-trailer El Barquero had supplied. Even with the lift, it took the men several hours to transfer all the weapons and supplies. The sun was just beginning to come up over the horizon, and Sanders was a sweating, nervous wreck. He knew that sooner rather than later, someone would notice the missing inventory and question his paperwork. And what if someone had spotted his truck barreling down the two-lane roads of the rural Louisiana backcountry? He knew he was in over his head, but there was no turning back. El Barquero had detailed the plan to him precisely up to this point, but nothing else. Where was the money? How would he get to Mexico? Most importantly, where was his fix? He desperately needed a fix. He had to be perfectly sober as he procured the weapons and truck from the armory, but that was hours ago. Now he was sick and he needed to shoot up.