Revenge of the Assassin

Chapter 1

Six Weeks Ago, Mexico City, Mexico. Midnight.

The pounding from the front door of the high-rise condo seemed to resonate eerily with the tinny ringing of the phone in the kitchen. Captain Romero Cruz of the Federal Police flicked the hallway light as he pulled a bathrobe on. The phone stopped its insistent trilling as he shuffled down the entry hall and then peered blearily through the peephole. Satisfied there was no obvious threat, he fumbled with the deadbolt and then opened the door.

A man in the distinctive blue uniform of the Federales saluted, ignoring the disheveled hair of his superior officer. He shifted nervously as he stared into space at some neutral point a thousand miles beyond his commander’s shoulder. Cruz ignored the circumstances and gestured for him to speak up.

“Capitan. I’m sorry to intrude. But you wanted to be alerted as soon as we had confirmation on the Tijuana situation. We’ve been calling for half an hour, but there was no answer…”

“That’s fine. I’m sorry. I had the bedroom door closed, and this phone isn’t very loud. I must have slept through it. What’s the update?” Cruz asked, cinching the robe ties around his waist as he shook off his grogginess and became more alert. Unlike when he’d been younger, now that he was in his mid-forties it took a while for him to fire on all cylinders, especially since he’d only gotten to sleep two hours earlier.

“We received word that five hundred kilos arrived at the suspect warehouse this evening, to be transported tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. That means if we want to catch them red-handed-”

“I get it. Do we have sufficient assets there to go in on a frontal assault? And can they be ready in an hour?”

“Yes, sir. I already took the liberty of putting out the word.” He hesitated. “We have a jet standing by to get tactical leadership there by three in the morning, worst case,” the officer confirmed.

Cruz paused and considered the alternatives, and then nodded. “Then we go in. I’ll put on a pot of coffee and be ready to get to headquarters shortly. Have my car ready for me. I’ll run the operation from there.” Cruz studied the man’s face, hardened from years on the force and strained with fatigue. “It’s going to be a long one. What time did you come on duty today?”

“I got in at ten this morning, Capitan. I was going to quit by eight tonight, and then we started getting chatter from our sources, so I decided to stay on for a little while.”

“No good deed goes unpunished. Do we have any idea whose dope this is? Or do I even need to ask?”

“Sinaloa.”

“Ahhh. Well, let me take a shower and get ready, then. I’ll be downstairs in forty-five minutes. That’s all,” Cruz said, then waved off the officer’s parting salute.

Five hundred kilos of cocaine. Now that was worth getting out of bed for.

“Corazon? Who was that? Is everything okay?” a female voice called from the bedroom once the front door had slammed closed.

“It’s fine, mi amor. But I need to go into the office. I’m sorry. I’ll probably be getting back around the time you’re up for work,” he apologized as he moved into the bedroom. “It’s an emergency. Go back to sleep. I’ll be as quiet as possible,” he reassured the woman peering at him from the far side of the bed, beautiful even with no makeup and roused in the middle of the night. He padded over to her and gave her a fleeting kiss. “Close your eyes, Dinah. I need to get a uniform out of the closet.”

Six Weeks Ago, Tijuana, Mexico. 3:27 a.m.

Monday nights in Tijuana were usually calm, the weekend’s lunacy and tourist rush having ebbed, leaving the town worked, but marginally wealthier. The weather was chilly in late March, in the low sixties, with a light drizzle having clogged the poorly drained streets with refuse and murky runoff. The industrial row of warehouses along the border wall was a no-man’s land in the best of daylight hours, and approaching midnight, only the foolhardy, the desperate or the suicidal ventured into the menacing district.

Junkyards and body shops dotted the area’s mean streets, with decrepit buildings and darkened half-completed construction punctuating the rows of tin-roofed shacks and wrecking yards. An occasional car prowled along the unlit thoroughfares, bass-heavy reggaeton booming from the lowered chassis as the shady occupants crept about their nocturnal business. Near one of the larger gray cinderblock edifices, a pair of bony stray dogs rooted through bags of refuse dumped on the sidewalks for morning collection, their furtive movement ample evidence that, even for scavengers, danger was a constant.

One of the armed guards standing watch outside the ten-foot-high, broken-glass-topped walls of a compound at the end of the cul-de-sac flicked his cigarette at the mutts, causing them to bolt from their paltry find. He grinned to himself and wiped a sheen of moisture from his brow, then glanced over to the other two men lurking at the far end of the wall, also toting weapons and on the alert for any threats. The rain had stopped twenty minutes earlier but there was still a pall of humidity mixed with raw exhaust and the reek of overflowing sewage pipes that coated everything with a noxious film. The smell of the tobacco offered slim relief from the ever-present stench that was part of the duty of guarding the complex.

The gloom was shattered by the roar of heavy vehicles tearing up the street, then the guard was blinded by spotlights mounted on the turrets of the BTR-70s. He fumbled for his two-way radio while simultaneously raising his M-4 assault rifle and barely barked out a warning before he was cut down by a stream of silenced rounds from the leading truck. The other two sentries met with the same fate, though one managed to get off several bursts of sub-machine — gun fire before being hacked to pieces by the muffled shooters in the vehicles.

Within thirty seconds, the sidewalk in front of the wall was bristling with black-clad marines in full combat gear, augmented by Federal Police carrying Heckler amp; Koch UMP45 machine pistols with specially-fitted sound and flash suppressors. The leader of the squad made a curt hand gesture to his lieutenant, indicating the security camera mounted near the gate — a well-aimed volley from his weapon shattered the device.

An armored assault truck slammed through the steel-plated gates, and three dozen armed commandos followed it through. The percussive burp of machine guns strafed from the largest of the three warehouses as the defenders inside engaged their attackers. Several of the marines uttered cries, cut down as they ran, their body armor slim protection against the armor-piercing rounds spraying from the windows.

Three of the personnel carriers rolled into the yard and focused their gun turrets on the building, unleashing a devastating volley of lethal fire, the neon orange of tracer rounds illuminating the windows as they streaked to their targets. A federal police sergeant ran in a crouch under the cover of the shooting, and rolling to the side of one of the large, partially-open steel doors, he tossed a grenade inside before ducking away from the volley of shots that greeted his silhouette. A muffled explosion blew out the glass from the windows above his head, and he quickly threw in two more grenades, shielding himself by hugging the concrete foundation as the detonations hurled shrapnel throughout the interior.

The leader watched helplessly as another of his men had his throat torn out in a bloody spray by gunfire coming from the roof, and he ducked behind the relative safety of one of the BTR-70s as he barked commands into the radio. Thirty seconds later a helicopter shredded the air above the building with its rotors and rained destruction down upon the shooters on the roof.

One of the gunmen swiveled around at the sound of the approaching chopper and methodically fired three-round bursts at the craft’s silhouette, as he’d been trained to do when a marine himself only a few years earlier. He watched with satisfaction as his M-16’s fully-jacketed slugs punctured the front window and the pilot’s chest exploded in a red pulp. His glee was short-lived as the helicopter gunner directed his last salvo of large caliber rounds at him, cutting his torso in two before he could throw himself flat against the roof.

The chopper spun giddily in the night sky before plunging into the side of the neighboring building and exploding in an orange fireball that momentarily blinded the assault team. A second detonation erupted from the shattered hulk and a cloud of sooty smoke redolent of burning flesh belched into the dank breeze.

The leader fired through the haze at the few remaining defendants, and then held up three gloved fingers and murmured into his com line. The shooting gradually subsided, replaced by an uneasy silence. The blast from the copter crash and the booming of the turret guns still echoed in the team’s ears as they waited cautiously for direction. Seeing no further fire from the building, the leader made two hand signals. His men divided up and raced for the warehouse door that the advance man had pitched the grenades through.

After a few moments of hesitation, the men dropped night vision goggles into place and tore through the opening, weapons ready to cut down anything that moved. The bodies of their foes lay strewn around the floor near the windows, where the brutally effective onslaught from the BTR-70 main guns had cut any resistance short. The goggles illuminated the gloomy depths of the warehouse with a distinctive green glow, and it quickly became apparent that nothing remained alive to threaten them.

The leader crept into the area, and once satisfied that all danger was neutralized, he motioned to one of his men to hit the lights. The team members flipped their goggles up, and an officer at the entry threw the breaker into the on position.

The overhead bulbs flickered to life, revealing a tableau of carnage. Corpses littered the floor in pools of blood alongside pallets of cardboard boxes accumulated in haphazard piles. Studying the scene, the leader approached an ancient forklift that sat idle in a far corner, in front of a crudely-formed cinderblock room with a steel roll-up door. That had to be the elevator they’d been told about.

A sound caused him to whirl around. A man lay on the ground, his arm and half his torso blown off by a grenade, along with much of his face. His one good eye regarded the interloper as his breath gurgled in his chest, and then he groaned and lay still. The leader paused to consider the now lifeless carcass, and then returned his attention to the elevator. He gestured to his men, and three of them hurried to take position on either side, their weapons trained on the steel roll-up door.

On the leader’s nod, the tallest of his men pulled it up, revealing a shaft twelve feet square. He cautiously shone a flashlight into the depths; its beam reflected off a steel platform four stories below. Glancing around, the leader summoned a group of his men and conducted a hurried discussion. A sweating marine trotted out to the vehicles and returned with three bundles of rappelling line.

Five minutes later, six commandos stood deep in the earth below Tijuana, peering down a long tunnel with an elaborate rail car system. One of the soldiers activated the low voltage lighting that ran the length of the excavation and noted that it stretched on seemingly forever. Wood and cement blocks supported the walls and ceiling of the passageway, ten feet wide and seven feet high. The rails of the electric trolley gleamed in the light. It was obvious that the system had been in place for some time and was well used.

A storage room sat just adjacent to the shaft, and when the lock was cut off with a welding torch, five hundred and thirty kilos of cocaine sat neatly packaged in orange plastic, with a distinctive scorpion logo stamped on the outside of each bundle. The room was large enough to accommodate ten times that amount, and there was no question in any of the men’s minds that this was only a few days’ worth of shipments waiting to make their way to the other end of the passage — a small, decrepit warehouse on the U.S. side of the border that ostensibly sold used automobile parts.

Further examination revealed an advanced ventilation system and numerous battery chargers to keep the trolley rolling, an additional indication that the tunnel was regularly used to move large amounts of contraband into the U.S.. How long it had been in operation was anyone’s guess, but by the looks of some of the debris, it had been years, not months.

The next day’s newspapers on both sides of the border were quick to herald a victory for the anti-drug forces and skimmed over the casualties as well as the obvious fact that many thousands of tons of cocaine and heroin had been making their way across undetected. Nobody was ever connected to the U.S. warehouse, other than a pair of low-level brothers who claimed they only paid the property taxes and utilities and hadn’t been to the building in years. Their case was remanded into the system and would take over a year to be heard in the overcrowded courts. They would ultimately wind up spending less than six months behind bars, along with credit for time served, having no criminal records other than an unrelated burglary from a decade before.

Twelve marines and Federal Police were killed during the assault, including the helicopter crew — six more were wounded. A total of fourteen cartel gunmen died during the gun battle, with no survivors. Nobody claimed any of the cartel fighters’ corpses, which were buried in a mass grave with no ceremony.

One month later, two more tunnels were discovered and shut down. By the best estimates over twenty are in operation at any given time — an inevitable fact of life in an environment where a laborer who works to excavate the tunnel makes five to seven dollars a day, and a kilo of cocaine that costs two thousand dollars in Colombia wholesales for twenty-five to thirty on the U.S. side of the border.

One Week Ago, 80 miles west of Ixtapa, Mexico. 11:18 p.m.

Six-foot swells with frothing white crests surged relentlessly from the northwest, driven by a twenty knot wind. The cloudy night’s crescent moon scarcely illuminated the inky water’s surface, its roiling unbroken except for the battered steel hull of an aged seventy-five-foot shrimp boat lurching against the waves’ pounding.

El Cabrito had departed Mazatlan two weeks before and had plied her way down the Pacific coast at a dismally slow eight knots, under way twenty-four hours a day until she arrived in the warmer waters off the coast of Zihuatanejo. There, she’d worked the nets, accumulating what she could by way of catch as she waited for her true cargo to arrive.

Her gray paint was ravaged by sea salt; patches of rust bled through along the waterline, signaling that soon it would be time to haul her out and weld new steel plates where corrosion had taken its toll. The topsides were slick from the windy spray, and the crew was inside below decks, waiting for the signal that they were needed. The captain, Mario, a thirty year veteran of the coastal waters, puffed on a hand-rolled cigarette as he watched the waves moving in a steady procession, the red illumination of his primitive gauges and the ancient radar unit bathing the pilothouse in a warm glow.

The diesel engine chugged quietly, driving the old single screw with just enough power to make headway against the building seas. They were in position, the handheld GPS unit near the throttle confirmed that the waypoint marking the rendezvous spot had been reached. The instructions were to hold position — for days, if necessary — while they waited. It was usually easy duty, but the squall that was eighty miles southwest of them was beginning to cause problems. Reports of fifteen to twenty foot swells had come in a few minutes earlier over the radio from a cargo ship making its way north. It was just a matter of time until the six footers doubled in size, and then it would get rocky.

Comfort wasn’t the concern. Rather, it would be impossible to transfer their cargo in huge waves with the boat pitching uncontrollably. Under normal circumstances they’d have been in four to five foot, gently rolling swells, the undulations of the surface easily timed. But with confused conditions and a tropical depression looming further out in the Pacific, all bets were off. If their contact didn’t show up soon, it could be days before a handoff would be practicable again.

Mario scanned the ocean’s murky form, searching for a beacon, as he had every fifteen minutes since the black of night had fallen. The rolling didn’t make it any easier. Worst case, he had his second radio tuned to a frequency that was rarely used, and he hoped that the captain of the other vessel would avail himself of the channel discreetly. One never knew who could be listening, and in a high-stakes game, there was no such thing as being too careful.

His first mate, Julio, mounted the stairs from the crew quarters below, two cans of Tecate beer clenched in his left hand as he steadied himself with a series of practiced grips on the handrail. Mario took one gratefully from him, and they toasted.

“It looks like it’s going to get snotty soon,” Julio remarked, before savoring a mouthful of cold brew.

Mario peered into the blackness outside. “There’s a big one blowing from the west. I figure we have maybe three more hours before we need to break off and head inland some. If the storm turns towards us, we don’t want to be here in sixty knot winds if we can help it.”

“How late are they?”

“A day. Smart money says they’ll be here tonight. Sometimes shit happens en route.”

Julio nodded.

They watched in silence as the cresting water rushed to meet the bow of the boat, the steady throb of the diesel engine a reassuring constant.

The radio crackled to life, and after a few terse exchanges, Julio slid back down to the crew quarters to rouse the men. It was show time. Their rendezvous was on.

Out of the gloom, a long tubular form rose from the depths, two hundred yards from the bow. Mario throttled the engine up and the boat lurched forward towards the shape. Within a minute they had pulled alongside it, where two deckhands threw lines to the four men who had materialized on the top section of the darkened craft. After a short struggle, they quickly secured the two vessels together until they rose and fell as one. After a few hurried greetings between the crews, plastic-wrapped rectangular packages began making their way from the bowels of the newcomer to the men on El Cabrito’s deck, who passed them into the shrimp hold to be squirreled away under the catch.

The submarine had been crafted in the jungles of northern Colombia and had taken twelve days to make the journey to Mexican waters. Equipped with two nearly silent diesel engines that charged the battery-driven electric motor, the handmade fiberglass vessel could do fourteen knots and submerge comfortably to a depth of twenty-five feet. Forty yards in length, she was equipped with primitive climate control for the crew, was virtually invisible to radar, and carried twenty-five hundred kilos of pure cocaine, with a street value of seventy-five million dollars, uncut. Once it was adulterated, the precious cargo would bring more like a hundred million. Wholesale cost in Colombia had been a cool six million dollars. The sub had cost seven hundred thousand dollars to fabricate and equip, with the crew costing three million. All told, the trip was a ninety percent profit margin transaction, even after all costs were factored in.

The loading took four hours of fast movement. By the time the sub was empty, the seas had built to nine footers. The crew of the sub hurriedly placed explosive charges along the fiberglass hull of the craft, and once they were aboard the fishing boat, the captain depressed a transmitter, and the submarine’s waterline ruptured. The men stood on the back of the boat and watched as their conveyance sank beneath the waves, then quickly moved into the pilothouse and down into the ship’s bunk room. After almost two weeks submerged in cramped conditions they were ready for showers and drinking. It was the kind of trip you only made once or twice in a lifetime, and then you were done.

Mario checked the radar and noted that there were no other ships within twenty miles. With a grunt, he spun the wheel and pointed the struggling bow north, on a course that would get them closer to the less turbid shore within a few hours — if their luck held out. From there they’d be two days to Mazatlan, maybe three, where their cargo would be offloaded to other craft for the trip up the Sea of Cortez.

Commander Villanuevo watched the blip on his radar screen with interest. It had remained stationary for a full day, and now was moving in their direction at a snail’s pace. By his calculations, they’d be within striking distance in five hours at the current course, assuming that the Durango-class offshore patrol vessel Villanuevo captained stayed immobile.

That wasn’t the plan. His ship could easily hold twenty knots in any sea conditions, which would put them alongside El Cabrito in a little over three hours. Villanuevo barked a series of terse orders to his second in command and advised him to ready the men. They’d move on the boat at flat-out speed and call in the helicopter when the patrol boat was twenty miles away so the fishing boat didn’t have time to jettison its cargo or prepare in any way.

A team of ten marines were standing by at the military base outside Manzanillo, ready to board the chopper and move on El Cabrito. It could reach them in a little over two hours, which would work out perfectly. Villanuevo radioed the coordinates of the ship and told the assault team to scramble the helicopter. It would be airborne within half an hour and in a holding pattern over the destroyer by six a.m.. Once they were ready, he’d send the team in, and within a few minutes the little shrimper wouldn’t know what had hit it.

Villanuevo gave the signal and the patrol boat surged forward, impervious to the chop as it cut through the waves. At two hundred forty feet, with a crew of fifty-five and another twenty marines below decks, there were few vessels that could outrun or outfight the ARM Sonora. By his calculations, they could be boarding their target by seven a.m., with the mission hopefully concluded shortly thereafter.

They’d received the tip on the drug shipment a week before, with surprisingly detailed information. If it was even close to correct, this would be one of the biggest seizures in his career, and a major blow to the Sinaloa cartel, which was the purported trafficker of this particular load. The new administration wanted to send a message to the Mexican people that it wasn’t going to be business as usual, and this interception would be critical in establishing the tone of the next six years in office. Of course, the information had likely come from a competitive cartel looking to cause maximum discomfort to its competitor, but that wasn’t Villanuevo’s concern. His job was to stop the shipment, and that’s what he’d do. The politicians could fight over who got the credit.

Villanuevo checked his watch and pushed the button that activated the stopwatch function. If all played as he hoped, it would be a very bad morning indeed for the crew of El Cabrito.

Mario jolted awake from his brief slumber. His first mate was shaking his shoulder. Julio’s eyes were wide with a look he’d never seen during the sixteen years the man had been his second in command: terror. Mario quickly shook off the sleep stupor and bolted upright, to be faced with an image that was his worst nightmare.

A Sikorsky helicopter in full battle regalia bearing the colors of the Mexican Navy hovered a hundred yards away, the side panel open and a fifty caliber machine gun trained on the pilothouse. Inside, a group of grim-faced marines in assault gear were grouped behind the weapon.

Waiting.

Dawn had broken a few minutes earlier, but even in the dim light of the new day it was glaringly obvious to Mario that this was a full-scale disaster. The massive blades of the chopper churned the water below; its downdraft from the buffeting whipped the sea into an angry froth.

Mario throttled back to near idle. Keeping his eye on the aircraft, he barked at Julio, “What the…when did they show up?”

“They came out of nowhere. There was nothing on the radar, and then suddenly, there they were.”

Mario grimaced. “Shit. They must have been flying at a high altitude, which is why it didn’t pick them up.”

He was interrupted by an amplified voice from the copter.

“Put the engine in neutral and stop. Prepare to be boarded. Get your crew on deck where they can be seen,” the voice boomed across the water as the chopper closed the distance, now no more than sixty yards from the boat.

Julio glanced around wildly. “You think this is some kind of a drill or random inspection?” he asked, obviously panicked.

Mario shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Look at them. They’re geared up for a small war. No, I’d say we’ve been sold out.”

“Dammit,” Julio spat. “What do we do?”

“Look at the radar. See there?” His grubby finger jabbed at the screen. “That’s a huge ship, and it’s moving very fast.”

Mario had to make a quick decision. They had several automatic assault rifles on board, but they would be no match against the entire Mexican navy. His mind raced over alternatives, and then he shook his head again.

“We’re finished. Get the men on deck and tell them to keep their mouths shut. The last thing we want is a gunfight with the marines on the open sea,” Mario said.

“So we’re going to just give up?”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Mario seethed. “We’ve got a ship bearing down on us, and that chopper has enough firepower to blow us to Japan. Do you really feel like dying today? I don’t. We can always let our lawyers deal with the fallout from this.” He shook his head and sighed. “It’s better than the alternative…”

Julio took a deep breath and wordlessly descended the stairwell to where the crew was asleep after a mini-fiesta following the loading.

A few minutes later, the men filed onto the deck with their hands in the air or behind their heads, and watched as the distinctive outline of the warship moved towards them. The chopper held its position, fixing the boat with its full attention as it waited for the Sonora to get within range.

Mario caught movement in the pilothouse as he squinted at the horizon from the deck; upon seeing the source, he dropped his arms and began gesturing wildly with his hands. The crazy Colombian submarine captain had stayed below, and now peered through the doorway with an AK-47 pointed at the helicopter.

“Noooo-” Mario screamed, but it was too late.

The captain emptied the weapon at the chopper. Julio and Mario watched in horror as the slugs tore into the side of the aircraft, cutting down several of the armed marines. The fire was answered by the staccato high-speed chatter of the big fifty caliber gun as it issued forth a broadside of rounds that riddled the old pilothouse, annihilating the foolhardy submariner in a rain of lethal fury.

The last thing Mario saw before his world went black for good was the stream of tracers from the chopper shredding the deck around him, mangling his crew in a hail of death as the spooked marines opened up with everything they had. A few of his men tried to find cover from the slaughter, but there was nowhere to hide. It was finished in a matter of a few seconds, and when the shooting stopped, nothing remained but corpses.

When Villanuevo arrived on the Sonora twenty minutes later, the drifting boat was awash in blood, the slug-torn bodies of the hapless crew scattered across the deck. The marines rappelled from the helicopter and moved cautiously over the boat before descending to the lower compartments, wary of another attack. After a few minutes, the leader emerged from the pilothouse and shook his head.

“There’s nobody left alive.”

An hour later, Villanuevo radioed in one of the largest drug busts on the high seas in Mexican history — a triumph owed entirely to an anonymous tip from parties unknown.

In the end, El Cabrito was only one of many shipments that made its way from Colombia every month, and even though it was a large seizure, there were infinite amounts of both criminals and drugs from where it had originated. Submarines continued to be fabricated in the hidden depths of the guerrilla-controlled jungle, and men desperate to make one big score that would set them up for life remained eager to pilot them north to the largest drug market in the world. As it had been for decades, and as it would remain for generations to come.

Yesterday, Los Mochis, Mexico. 6:04 a.m.

The yard of the paint supply company’s storage facility was particularly well fortified, with gleaming new barbed wire and hurricane fencing to keep trespassers at bay. Several ill-tempered Rottweilers prowled the grounds, further dissuading potential thieves from picking it as a target. Four armed sentries sat positioned at the corners, where they remained every night until they were relieved at eight a.m., an hour before the yard opened for business.

It was still dark out, but the first orange rays of dawn were beginning to seep over the hills to the east of town, providing scant illumination of the road that led to the facility. At the far end of it, three military Humvees swung onto the pavement and raced towards the gates, followed by two trucks loaded with soldiers. The security men, alerted by the roar of the engines, hurriedly discussed their alternatives. They were there to protect the building — not take on the Mexican army. The head of the sentry detail told his men to stash their weapons where they wouldn’t be found, and one of the four ran to the far end of the yard where an old pickup truck sat on blocks, its engine long-ago dismantled for parts. He pushed the Kalashnikovs under the seat and was just moving back to the group when the vehicles pulled to a stop in front of the gate.

A Federal police officer wearing a bulletproof vest eyed the men dubiously from the safety of the lead truck’s cab, and satisfied that there was no imminent danger, he swung his door open and stepped onto the hard-packed dirt. He approached the obvious leader of the security guards and held out a piece of paper.

“Open the gates. I have a court order to search this bodega,” he announced perfunctorily.

The leader read the document, taking his time, and then nodded.

“I’ll be happy to, but I need to call the owners first and get their permission.”

The officer shook his head. “That’s not what the order says. It says you let us in, now, and shut up until I say it’s all right to call anyone,” the cop explained menacingly.

The leader’s eyes narrowed, and then he shrugged. “Suit yourself. But the owners are very powerful, and they won’t appreciate their property being trampled without any notice. I just work here, but I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.”

“Your concern is noted. Now open up.”

The leader glared at the cop and the soldiers, who had deployed from the trailing vehicles and now had their weapons trained on his men. He sighed, then fished in his pocket for the key to the massive padlock that held the gates closed.

Two hours later, eighteen tons of marijuana had been discovered in two shipping containers at the far end of the storage facility, along with ninety kilos of Mexican heroin and several crates of automatic weapons. The Federales clamped a lid on the bust until they could round up the owners, who were going to jail for a very long time. The guards were charged with being accessories, but the police knew that would be a tough charge to make stick, given that they’d cooperated and the seizure had taken place without bloodshed — an anomaly in the ongoing war against the cartels.

The following week, all four security men were found beheaded, stuffed in the back of an abandoned Chevrolet van on the outskirts of Hermosillo. The leader’s wife, sister, and three children were also found in the vehicle, beaten to death with a tire iron that still bore traces of their blood and hair on it, tossed casually on the floor of the passenger side of the cab. The local papers published lurid photos and made much of the grisly details, but within a few days the incident was forgotten, yet another in an endless parade of cartel violence that showed no signs of abating, regardless of the government’s rhetoric to the contrary.