hand.
Antonio Sebastiani de Medina.
“I’m Karen Vail,” she said. “This is Hector DeSantos.”
Sebastian’s gaze flicked between them. “You’re Robby’s girlfriend,” he said softly.
“Do you know what happened to Robby?”
Sebastian sucked in a healthy dose of air. “I know what happened, yeah. But—”
“Tell me.”
Sebastian’s gaze moved around the room, then came to rest on the ceiling, as if the answers were printed on high. “We were undercover. I’d gained the trust of Cesar Guevara, a lieutenant in the Cortez cartel. Things were going good. Robby was a godsend because the agent I was working with had an accident and I was afraid that’d fuck up everything we’d worked for.” He looked at Vail. “But he took a liking to Robby right away. Robby’s a natural UC. He’s got a sixth sense for it. Guevara’s not an easy mark.”
Vail scrunched her lips into a frown. “I noticed.”
“But the asshole bought it. Robby got him talking, and he started taking us inside his operation, how they operated. And I thought we were finally going to blow it all wide open.” He stared off at the table a moment. “Then it all went to hell. Somehow our cover got blown. I don’t know how,” he said with a shake of his head. “We were so careful.”
Vail cleared her throat, then took a seat at the table opposite Sebastian. DeSantos remained in the back of the room, beside Yardley. “I’m afraid that might’ve been my fault.” She proceeded to explain what had happened, then sat back, her eyes in her lap. Embarrassed. “I’m deeply sorry. Obviously this isn’t what I wanted to happen.”
Sebastian chewed on that a long moment, then said, “Jesus Christ, of all our goddamn luck.” He sucked in some air, took a swig of Powerade, made a show of swallowing it. Then he set the bottle down harder than necessary.
Vail figured he was considering if he was going to go off on her and stop answering her questions. No doubt wondering how this FBI agent had destroyed months of high-risk, hard-won work.
But instead, Sebastian waved a hand. “Wasn’t your fault, Karen. Just the way it went down, is all. Besides, how can I get angry at you? Robby thinks you’re the best thing that ever happened to him.”
“Do you think—” Vail had to choke back the emotion threatening to tighten her throat. “Is it possible he’s still alive?”
Sebastian looked away. He seemed to follow the IV tube from his hand up to the bag hanging from the stand. He answered without looking at her. “Years ago, a friend of mine once told me that anything’s possible. So, yeah, I guess it’s possible.”
DeSantos walked up to the table and took a seat beside Vail. “Sebastian. We know this was an op that’s been in process since ’06. What’s the objective?”
“What do you know about Cesar Guevara?”
“CFO of Superior Mobile Bottling,” Vail said. “Superior does mobile bottling for the greater wine country in northern California. Big operation.”
“Guevara is more than the CFO,” Sebastian said. “And Superior is more than a mobile bottling company. They’ve become a major arm of the cartel.”
“Brilliant operation, actually. It wasn’t until a few days ago that we got a handle on what they were doing. Guevara outlined everything for Robby and me.” He leaned both forearms on the table, seemingly infused with a renewed sense of energy. “That bottling deal. Yeah, it’s a business, and yeah, they make good money on it. But its real purpose is to function as a front for a major smuggling operation. They need contracts with area wineries to keep their bullshit business running, which gives them the cover to do what they’re really in business to do: bring huge amounts of illicit drugs into the U.S. from Mexico.”
“Using the rigs?” Vail asked.
“Yeah, but there’s more to it than that. A lot more.” Sebastian took a long gulp of Powerade. “There are a few aspects to it. First, you got the corks.”
A shiver sparked across Vail’s spine.
“Right. They truck in tons of them across the border. Only about a quarter of them are legitimate. The rest are hollowed out, then Fentanyl powder is compacted into the core. Fentanyl’s unusual for Mexico, because they typically only move coke, meth, heroin, and their cash crop, marijuana.”
“How much Fentanyl can they possibly fit in a cork?” Vail asked. “Hardly seems worth it.”
Sebastian shook his head slowly, either disgusted at her ignorance or annoyed that she interrupted him. “Fentanyl powder is extremely potent. One gram can be cut into a thousand units, or tablets, or whatever. That’s a thousand-fold return on your money. But these corks don’t hold one gram, they hold about
Vail tilted her head. “Isn’t that detectable?”
“They seal off the cork, which is a chemically treated silicone shell, to help keep the drug scent from being detected by CBP dogs at checkpoints.”
“And,” DeSantos said, “NAFTA opened the door to allow Mexican trucks to cross the border into the U.S. It got worse last year because of the treaty Mexico strong-armed us into signing.”
“What treaty?” Vail asked.
“There was pressure to allow Mexican truckers to travel on U.S. roads,” DeSantos said. “It became a huge trade issue, and the Mexican government made a big deal out of it. U.S. unions didn’t want Mexican trucks transporting product that could be transported by union drivers. Others thought Mexican trucks weren’t inspected as often and posed a safety danger to American drivers.”
“I remember reading something about that.”
“They negotiated a compromise,” DeSantos continued. “They carried out an experimental project with a small number of Mexican trucks traveling on U.S. freeways. They found that Mexican truckers got into fewer accidents than their American counterparts. The findings were challenged because it was such a small sample size and because those Mexican trucks went through more rigorous inspections than normal since they knew they’d be part of this study. But because of political pressure, they expanded the program.”
“And because of that,” Yardley said with a tinge of hardness, “the volume of Mexican trucks on U.S. freeways increased exponentially. Customs and Border Protection can’t possibly inspect all of them. Guevara capitalized on that. And he took steps just in case.”
“Like hiding the drugs inside the synthetic corks,” Vail said.
Sebastian took another gulp of Powerade. “Yes. But that’s not all. It wasn’t just about the corks. These cartels, they’re flush with money and time and imagination. They worked on ways of maximizing what they were doing while still taking advantage of the front of being a mobile bottler. And they came up with liquid cocaine.”
Vail leaned forward. “
“That’s what they transport in the wine bottles. Cocaine hydrochloride is soluble in alcohol or water. Cortez uses alcohol because it’s easy to recover the drugs. You heat it to 50 degrees Celsius, or just let it sit out in the sun. The alcohol evaporates, leaving the coke.”
Vail shook her head. “Damn.”
“Damn effective is what it is,” Sebastian said. “There are about eight thousand grams of coke in a case of wine. And if you’ve got a semi full of cases, that’s a huge amount of contraband being moved around without being threatened or even challenged.”
“Brilliant,” Vail said. “They can move the cocaine around the country under the cover of shipping cases of wine, and short of opening the bottles and testing the liquid, we’d never be able to detect the drugs.”
“Exactly. Even the random screening they do at certain border ports of entry can’t pick it up. We generally use fluoroscopy, and fluoroscopy can’t detect liquids containing illicit drugs. And if it’s sealed inside a bottle, drug- sniffing dogs can’t pick it up, either. So we’ve experimented with CT scans—computerized X-ray tomography—to measure the mean opacity of what’s inside the bottles. Differences in the opacity of dissolved drugs can be detected without having to open the wine and destroy the product if it’s legit.
