King of Swords

Chapter 7

Four men in a silver Dodge Durango with stolen plates approached the offices of Gustavo amp; Sons, importers and manufacturers of fine stone products. Anxiety filled the vehicle’s atmosphere with its distinctive buzz, as the men checked and rechecked their weapons — Kalashnikov AK-47s purchased in Guatemala, a residual of the Nicaraguan and El Salvadorian actions. Gun ownership in Mexico was illegal, with very few permits issued for hunting weapons, and yet the country abounded with automatic assault rifles. The cartels never seemed to have any issues getting their hands on guns, so the law was perplexing to many.

Juan Carlos Batista sat in the passenger seat with the air-conditioning blasting in his face, barely denting the perspiration that was a by-product of his preparation for battle, as he thought of it. This was far from his first armed assault, but he always felt a flutter of nerves in the moments before the shooting started. It was his variant of performance anxiety. But once bullets were flying, he was eerily cool and dispassionate. The four lines of cocaine he’d snorted in the parking lot seven minutes before had heightened his awareness, but done nothing to still the butterflies in his stomach.

Batista had come up the ranks of La Familia Michoacana before that cartel had dissolved into several others, including the Knights Templar cartel, in which he was a high ranking lieutenant, commanding dozens of enforcers in addition to hundreds of traffickers. The dissolution of La Familia had been a bloody one, and civilian casualties had been high. Many of the cartel’s foot soldiers had a propensity for shooting before they confirmed a target, and some of the more reckless had taken to tossing grenades into crowds where they suspected their targets were standing. It had been a troubling time until Santiago had asserted his authority as the new leader — a result of a grisly catalog of executions of his foes; other pretenders to the throne from La Familia Michoacana. During the most combative month, beheaded corpses left by the side of the road had been a daily occurrence — one of Santiago’s favored signature flourishes.

His demise had left a gap in the leadership, and that vacuum would be filled. Batista was a natural for the top position. He was as vicious as they came, had proved himself in battle time and time again, was a sociopath who killed without regret, and had good organizational skills. In cartel parlance, he was a born leader who was feared and respected by his subordinates. He had just turned twenty-nine.

Many cartel members never saw their thirties, so on his next birthday he was going to be an old man in that shadow world — a survivor that time had tested with every imaginable obstacle, all of which he’d overcome. He’d been shot twice and had come back to kill his assailants, so he had a reputation for being unusually tough. Most of the time when you shot a man, he stayed shot, but Batista seemed to have the angels on his side.

Batista had grown up watching American movies, and not surprisingly, his favorites had been Scarface and Goodfellas. In an obscene example of life imitating art, he’d aspired to being not only a rich and feared narcotraficante, but also to emulate the fictional characters in his favorite films. There was a part of him that believed real life was supposed to be as portrayed in those films, and so he’d created an environment where it was — to the detriment of society, as well as most of his rivals.

The narcotraficante lifestyle was so celebrated in some segments of popular culture that there were numerous songs glorifying the exploits of the cartels, and a whole generation had grown up believing that an existence involving routine murder was the new normal. Batista was one of them, and he’d long since lost count of how many lives he’d taken. It was just one of the things he did, until it was done to him. He didn’t dwell on things he couldn’t change, preferring to live in the moment. It wasn’t a highly evolved philosophy, he knew, but it worked for him.

The SUV pulled up to the side entrance of the warehouse that doubled as the Gustavo amp; Sons showrooms, and the men exchanged glances before pulling ski masks over their faces, on the off chance that anyone remained alive once they were through. They got out of the Durango and moved stealthily to the side exit, assault rifles held at the ready. Two of the men had been army soldiers before deserting, so they had gotten formal military training, which they’d used to ascend the ranks as enforcers and executioners.

Disputes were routinely resolved by the parties butchering each other, as well as their enemies’ families, so every cartel had its armed forces and its operational group. While the two could co-mingle, often the personnel chartered with the smuggling avoided the armed clashes, to the extent they could. The armed contingency lived, as did all armed organizations, to fight, and they did so with abandon, turning many of Mexico’s larger cities into shooting galleries. Internet sites in hot zones routinely posted safe routes for travelers to use to avoid armed encounters, and social media followed the skirmishes in real time, as did the police and cartel members.

It was a kind of economically-driven guerilla civil war memorialized on Twitter and Facebook. The summary brutality of the cartels was just a part of living in some Mexican cities, especially the large metropolitan areas near the border and key stops along the smuggling routes — Acapulco, Morelia, Culiacan, Monterrey, and a host of others. Even relatively safe areas like Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan saw violence, as the clashes expanded into secondary towns.

Batista swung the door open and quickly moved inside, his enforcers following him. The receptionist uttered a stifled scream and put her hands up, as did the two office workers. Batista considered her momentarily, then gestured for her to exit through the front door. She didn’t need to be asked twice, and the two clerks gratefully followed her out, running to their cars the moment they were clear of the building. One of Batista’s lieutenants nudged his arm and pointed up to the corner of the room, where a small security camera captured everything for posterity. That was a serious problem, because if anyone was watching real time they would now be forewarned.

They quickly discovered that was the case. A steel door at the back flew open, and a hail of gunfire followed. Batista’s men took cover behind the heavy wooden desks and returned fire, peppering the now-darkened warehouse beyond with slugs. They heard a man cry out in pain — then came a lull in the shooting — possibly due to magazines being changed. One of the ex-military men ran crouched towards the opening, and narrowly avoided being stitched with a new burst of fire. He took it in stride as he calmly extracted a hand grenade from his windbreaker and armed it, extracting the pin with his teeth. He waited silently for a few beats, then threw the metal orb through the door. The ensuing explosion deafened them all and cloaked the warehouse in a cloud of smoke.

Sensing their opportunity, Batista ran through the door, firing indiscriminately in all directions. Pausing when his weapon ran dry, he fished another banana clip from his pants pocket and jettisoned the empty one while scanning the area. Three men lay bleeding on the warehouse floor. But not his target.

He saw movement from the periphery and swung around just as a shotgun poked out of the upstairs offices behind him and fired, catching him full in the chest. Batista was knocked backwards as his soldiers sprayed a hail of lead into the upstairs suite. Rapid bursts of machine-gun fire returned the favor, and one of the ex-military men took a slug through the neck, dropping his weapon with a gurgle before crumpling to the floor near Batista. The two remaining men exchanged glances, and one pitched another grenade through the now shattered upstairs office windows, to be rewarded with a muffled detonation.

Shooting stopped, and the two cautiously ascended the stairs, listening for movement before kicking the door in. A burst of shooting spat out from inside; the front man flew off the landing, falling to the hard cement a story below with a wet thwack, bullet holes stitched across his chest. A pool of blood spread from behind his head, creating a halo effect to frame his now sightless eyes. The second man crouched by the side of the door and stuck his rifle into the room, firing blind. His weapon snicked empty, and he was fumbling with a spare magazine when the shotgun appeared from around the doorway and boomed, taking half his head off at point blank range.

An eerie silence began to permeate the space, still echoing with the residual energy of the gun battle. A bald man in his thirties with blood streaming down his face peered from the office, and seeing nothing but bodies, carefully moved around the corpse on the landing, probing it momentarily with his toe before descending the stairs, his SPAS-12 combat twelve gauge shotgun sweeping the warehouse for other assailants.

Satisfied he was alone, he strode over to the fallen ex-military Batista soldier and fired a round into his head, liquefying it. As the cordite from the shot cleared, he spotted Batista lying on the floor twenty feet away, his chest shredded from the double aught buckshot blast. Grinning, he sauntered over and sneered at his fallen rival, pausing to spit on his body before blowing his head off.

The round caught the bald man by surprise. He regarded Batista unbelievingly as he touched the smoking hole in his sternum, directly over his heart. Blood seeped through his fingers, and he held his hand over the wound in a futile attempt to halt the spurts of life from leaking out of his body. He fell to his knees still clutching his chest, until the light went out of his eyes and he slipped to the floor, gurgling a death rattle before finally lying still, a sightless stare of shocked disbelief frozen for posterity on his pallid face.

Batista sat up and rolled his head from side to side, massaging his neck with his left hand while he kept his gun trained on the dead man. He stayed like that for a few seconds, then slowly stood, testing his reflexes and balance. Satisfied he was intact, he slipped the Springfield XD(M).40 caliber assault pistol back into his shoulder holster, pausing to feel the depressions from the shotgun pellets in the Kevlar vest he wore under his sweatshirt. He blew out a sigh and made for the exit. The shrill warning cry of sirens keened in the distance, but he knew from experience that by the time the police made it to the building he’d be long gone.

He moved carefully through the now vacant offices, AK still ready for anything, but sensed and saw no one. For good measure he fired up at the camera, blowing it to pieces with a four shot burst, and watched with interest as the bulk of it hung by its cable for a few seconds before tumbling end over end and shattering on the floor. He smiled for the second time that day, and felt for the car keys in his pocket. Losing three good men was unfortunate, but he’d succeeding in taking out one of the primary contenders for the throne of the Templars. On balance, it had all been worth it.

The big HEMI V8 cranked over with a deep roar, and Batista pulled out of the parking area as neighboring business occupants nervously exited their buildings, panicked by the sound of the gunfight. He’d need to switch cars, and had provided for that by parking a Honda Accord three blocks away.

Batista had prevailed again. He’d need to call a meeting of his chiefs to fill them in on his latest exploit and secure some reliable replacements — never a problem, because the wages of a cartel enforcer exceeded those of the military by a factor of twenty. Every year, roughly ten percent of the Mexican army made that same calculation and deserted, many to go home, but others to sign up with the very adversaries they’d been fighting.

A matter of simple economics.

Just as everything ultimately was.

Cruz met Julio at a Starbucks near one of the big commercial malls downtown. They’d chosen the location because they were unlikely to be stumbled upon by one of Julio’s contacts. Cruz was wearing civilian clothes that he kept in his office; he looked unremarkable when out of uniform.

Ignacio joined them, and the update began.

“I have good news. I think I found a line on El Rey,” Julio announced.

Ignacio and Cruz exchanged glances and stared at him in disbelief.

“So soon? That’s incredible!” Cruz exclaimed.

Julio filled them in on his meeting, omitting the raucous night with the bartender. Julio looked worked after an all-nighter with her, but it had been worth it. They’d hit a few clubs after her shift and wound up back at his condo, where she’d demonstrated with gusto why Argentina was famous the world over for its exports. Julio looking like warmed over shit wasn’t an unusual occurrence; he often had a two day growth on his face and deep circles under his eyes — in keeping with his persona as a debauched criminal playboy.

“When are you going to hear something?” Ignacio asked.

“Any time. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I don’t want to push and seem too anxious. Baby steps on this one.”

“Did your boy, Felipe, give you any hints as to who the contact is?” Cruz asked.

“No. But he did underscore about a dozen times how fucked I would be if I couldn’t consummate. Apparently El Rey doesn’t approve of tire kickers,” Julio quipped.

“I’ll bet. So how would you propose we proceed once we’re in?” Cruz asked.

“I think you and I go in together to see him after we gel your hair differently and darken your skin a little, and you play the rich industrialist with the multi-million dollar grudge. We try to glean as much as possible, and if we can’t get a meeting with El Rey, we lean on the contact and stick him under the jail. A few nights in the Mexico City Jail can be startlingly effective for bringing clarity to confused folks who are on the fence as to whether to help law enforcement…” Julio said.

“All right, we’ll follow your lead. But the clock is ticking, and we’re stuck running in place right now. What about you, Nacho? Anything to report?” Cruz asked, turning to Ignacio.

“It’s weird. Every time I bring up El Rey’s name, even the desperate cases go cold — and these are guys who would sell their mother for a hit of crack. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The fucker has everyone terrified of him,” Ignacio reported.

“Let’s hope that Julio’s channel works, then. I’d stand down on any other overtures now that we’re in play — we don’t want to spook him, and it would seem a little odd if the streets were suddenly buzzing with clients anxious to throw a few million his way,” Cruz observed.

“Which introduces another potential issue. I think we need to make arrangements to be able to transfer a million dollars, minimum, via wire transfer from a clean account. If the contact delivers, the only way we’ll be able to contrive a meeting is if we’ve dropped some earnest money in his lap,” Julio said.

“I’ll get on it. Shouldn’t be too big a problem. Anything else?” Cruz asked.

“Anybody got a cigarette?” Julio asked.

“I’m trying to quit. Go home and get some sleep. You look like you went nine rounds with a gorilla and lost,” Cruz advised.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

~ ~ ~

Batista swaggered into the nightclub he owned at seven p.m., cocky after having cheated death again. His men were making their way in, and two of his main street operatives were already there, drinking Negro Modelo and smoking as they flirted with the cocktail waitresses, who were arriving in preparation for the night’s partying. Cruz had the club swept for surveillance weekly, and disliked cell phones for communications of any note, preferring in-person meetings to lay down the law. Mexican law enforcement was still light years behind the Americans, but they’d started intercepting cell calls, which had become a game-changer for communications.

Batista high-fived the two men, and then bumped fists in a classic Mexican street greeting. Both of the seated gangsters had garish tattoos running down their arms, and their style of dress emulated that of American rappers, with oversized pants and shirts, shaved heads, and flat-brimmed baseball caps perched precariously askance. These were veterans of the trade, having run their own operations on the streets for years. Both had killed multiple adversaries as a normal course of their business.

Three more of his crew wandered in over the next twenty minutes. The men retired to Batista’s sumptuous office at the back of the club. Most of the cartels were big in the club and bar scene, as well as in the hotel trade, such venues offered the perfect mechanisms to explain huge amounts of cash income. Tourist towns were full of massive nightclubs with nobody in them, but they still managed to take in millions of dollars every month. Tougher banking regulations intended to curb the illicit drug trade had little effect on the industry — there were always plenty of ways around the system for the big guys, just as in every country. The rules mainly served as an inconvenience, at best, for the small time hustlers. Just as the cartel wheelers and dealers had no problems buying tractors for their farms or Escalades and Benzes for their girlfriends, likewise, they had no issues laundering billions in cash every year. The economies of many neighboring countries depended on it, including the U.S., where in spite of protests to the contrary, billions still washed through the system every year — the Miami Federal Reserve saw more hundred dollar bills than any other bank in the world, indicating that either geriatric retirees from the East Coast had virtually infinite numbers of C-notes stuffed under their trailer-park mattresses, or the Mexican and South American connections were still flourishing.

Batista filled the assembled men in on the day’s events and ended with a renewed call for vigilance against attacks from his rivals, now reduced to two — Miguel ‘El Chavo’ Herrera and Paolo ‘Poncho’ Gallermo. Both were equally as dangerous as Batista, and it was not a question of whether they’d be coming for him, but rather a question of when and how. The chances that they’d want to reach some sort of an arrangement or division of power were non-existent, just as the likelihood of Batista compromising with them. That wasn’t how the business worked. You either fought, or died. Like dogs or roosters in a ring, all engagements ended in death. That was the life. And the egos involved prevented any intelligent conversation. Young macho males for whom killing was a daily occurrence, who made millions every month and who ruled with absolute power, were not willing candidates for building bridges or mending fences. Throw in all the free stimulants you could handle, and it was a recipe for bloodshed.

Never more so than in Mexico.