Ballistic

Cullen nodded slowly and sliced off two more wedges of lime.

“Eddie led a team of eight men. His unit took orders directly from the attorney general in Mexico City, who’d been authorized by the president to eliminate the top cartel chiefs of Mexico.”

“Eliminate?”

Cullen nodded.

“A sanctioned hit squad?”

“Exactly.”

Court did not blink an eye. “Go on.”

“Eddie and his men were good. They assassinated the leaders of four of the top six cartels in the Mexican interior in the past six months. Daniel de la Rocha would have been number five.”

“But the entire team was wiped out in the process.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I don’t understand why he blew up the yacht.”

Cullen shook his head. “Me, either. There’s a lot that I don’t get. Of course Eddie never told me about operational details, just chitchat here and there.”

Court sipped his drink. “What’s with all the support for this de la Rocha shithead?”

Cullen waved his arm in a wide circle. “Not just around here. Everywhere. There are movies, books, and songs about him. He’s a celebrity, a rock star. His father was a bit of a legend, too. He ran the Porfidio de la Rocha cartel in the eighties and nineties, worked directly with the Colombians to move their product to the U.S. But Daniel took no favors from his dad; instead he joined the military and then the GAFES, the Grupo Aeromovil de Fuerzas Especiales, an elite army paratrooper assault unit. He trained in the U.S. at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, and at the School of the Americas. He left the army when his father was killed by the government in ’99. Daniel went to prison himself for a couple of years; when he came out, he surrounded himself with former military colleagues, men from his commando unit. They are a really tight group, all fixed up like a cross between businessmen and paramilitaries. They all have the same haircuts, wear the same suits, they keep themselves in shape, and they always travel together in a convoy like a military operation. The press started calling them Los Trajes Negros. The Black Suits.

“Since getting out of prison, de la Rocha has stayed officially clean; he owns a domestic airline that ferries commuters from the big towns on the coast to little towns and villages all over the Sierra Madres. He has a bunch of other businesses, too. Orchards, farms, logging mills. All completely aboveboard. He claims that’s where his money comes from, and he’s apparently bought off enough government employees to where no one is scrutinizing his balance sheet.”

“But you’re a hundred percent sure he’s dealing cocaine?”

The older man finished a sip of tequila before shaking his head. “DLR deals with some coke, some heroin, some pot, but that’s not where the bulk of his money comes from. The Black Suits run the second largest foco cartel in the world.”

“Foco?”

“Crystal meth. Most Mexican cartels don’t specialize in a certain drug, rather they control a territory or a distribution route. There they will deal in anything, pot, coke, meth, kidnapping victims, even pirated DVDs. But de la Rocha has his own business model, combining both manufacturing and distribution. He supposedly has these massive crystal meth processing plants—they’re called super laboratories—somewhere up in the Sierra Madres. But no one knows where they are, and even if they were found, I doubt they could be directly tied back to de la Rocha.”

“I still don’t get the love for this guy around here.”

Court could tell that Cullen had warmed up to him to some degree. The older man’s tone did not contain any of its earlier reticence. “Most of the narcos are ghosts, but not Daniel. He takes control of his image like a movie star, doesn’t fit any mold for a cartelero. He’s only thirty-nine. He’s got six kids, doesn’t cheat on his wife, dresses like the Prince of Wales, and supports half the legit charities in the nation. Here in Nayarit, down in Jalisco, and over in Michoacan, the state police have been accused of protecting him. It’s a safe bet that the accusations are valid.”

Court sipped his drink and looked up at the bright stars.

Cullen leaned forward. “Don’t think of Daniel de la Rocha as a drug dealer. Think of him as Robin Hood. He provides for the needy, protects the helpless; he supports more legitimate causes down here than anybody else.”

“So the locals don’t care about what these drugs do?”

“Nobody but nobody in Mexico gives a damn that millions of drug addicts in the United States want a product. Nobody here feels sorry for them for fucking up their lives. They hate the murder that the carteleros bring down here, sure. Who wouldn’t? But the average Jose on the street knows the last way to go against the narcos is by supporting the cops or the government in the war. The corruption down here is massive. Pervasive. Anyone with a brain knows there are only two ways to protect yourself and your family. Either stay the hell out of the way, or join the cartels. Well, guess what, ace? Joining the cartels pays a lot more than sitting on the sidelines. Plus, it’s a lot safer.”

As Court had suspected, Cullen was an opinionated old cuss. “Cops, judges, soldiers, mayors . . . you can’t trust anyone here. A lot of guys start out with the best of intentions. But the narcos give them a choice. Plata o plomo.”

“Silver or lead,” Court muttered.

“A better translation would be money or bullets. The narco will give you one or the other, take your pick.”

Court nodded then pointed to the police standing around the back garden. “These cops here. The guys and girls with the batons. They seem like they think Eddie was a good guy.”

Cullen waved a hand through the air, rendering them irrelevant to the conversation. “Municipales. San Blas cops. Yeah, they like the family. Ernesto, Eddie’s dad, has lived here forever. But the cops down in Puerto Vallarta? Rotten to the core. The state police? Can’t trust them. Ditto large swaths of the federales. Even the army stationed around these parts is crooked. I don’t even know what to think of Eddie’s own unit, the special operations group. It seems a bit fishy that all of de la Rocha’s regional competition has been wiped out in the last few months, with one exception.”

“Who’s the exception?”

“Fellow up north in the Sierra Madres named Constantino Madrigal Bustamante. They call him el Vaquero, ‘the Cowboy.’ He’s an even bigger son of a bitch than de la Rocha. Some people are saying Eddie’s police commando unit was secretly working for the Madrigal Cartel. Taking out all the competition.”

Court’s eyebrows furrowed. “If there was a list of shitheads to go kill, how do we know Madrigal wasn’t just the last guy on the list?”

Cullen smiled ruefully. “Mexicans don’t think that way. There is a lot of conspiracy theory in play down here.”

Court had heard this before. He was no stranger to Latin American culture.

“So, Captain, who are the good guys?”

Cullen considered the question for a long moment, like it was an impenetrable mathematical puzzle. “I know Eddie was a good guy. I don’t believe the Madrigal conspiracy for one second. Some of the other federales are good, no question.”

“How do I know a federale when I see one?”

“You can tell them apart from the local cop; they wear black uniforms, body armor, and ski masks. Their cars and motorcycles and helicopters and armored cars say PF, Policia Federal.”

This was the type of intel that Gentry had picked up in the thirty or so other areas of operation in which he’d worked or traveled in his career, both as an asset of the CIA and as a private hit man. “So . . . the good guys wear the masks around here. I’ll have to get my head around that.”

“Yes, but so do a lot of the bad guys.”

“Perfect.”

Court looked at four local cops hanging out on the patio, leaning against their beat-up mountain bikes. Laura