The Cartel Read Online Free PDF Page B

being beaten with hoses, shocked with electric wires, or drenched with water and left to shiver, naked, on the bare concrete floor. Perhaps even worse is the isolation—no books, no magazines, nothing to write on. If the physical torture doesn’t destroy them, the mental torment usually takes their minds. By the time the evaluation is completed, they are usually, and accurately, classified as insane.
    The guard opens the door of a cell, Adán steps in, and the door closes behind him.
    The man sitting on the metal bench is huge—six foot eight, heavily muscled, with a full black beard. He looks at Adán, grins, and says, “I’m your welcoming committee.”
    Adán braces for what he knows is coming.
    The man gets up and wraps him in a crushing bear hug. “It’s good to see you, primo. ”
    “You, too, cousin.”
    Diego Tapia and Adán grew up together in the Sinaloan mountains, among the poppy fields, before the American war on drugs—a saner, quieter time. Diego was a young foot soldier—a sicario —when Adán’s uncle formed the original Federación.
    Adán’s physical opposite, Diego Tapia is broad-shouldered, whereas Adán is slight and a little stooped, especially after a year in an American jail cell. Adán looks like what he is—a businessman—and Diego looks like what he is, a wild, bearded mountain man who wouldn’t seem out of place in those old photos of Pancho Villa’s riders. He might as well have bandoliers crossed over his chest.
    “You didn’t have to come personally,” Adán says.
    “I won’t stay long,” Diego answers. “Nacho sends his regards. He’d be here, but…”
    “It’s not worth the risk,” Adán says. He understands, but it’s a bit annoying, seeing as his becoming an informer vastly increased Ignacio “Nacho” Esparza’s wealth and standing.

    The intelligence Adán provided the DEA created fissures in the rock of the Mexican drug trade, cracks that Diego and Nacho have seeped into like water, filling every vacancy created by the arrest of a rival.
    (North Americans never learn.)
    Now Diego and Nacho each have their own organizations. Collectively, as the so-called Sinaloa cartel, they control a huge portion of the trafficking business, shipping cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine through Juárez and the Gulf. They also managed Adán’s business for him in his absence, trafficking his product, maintaining his connections with police and politicians, collecting his debts.
    It was Nacho who negotiated Adán’s return to Mexico from the Mexican side, delivering large payments and larger assurances. Once that was arranged, Diego saw to it that most of the prison staff was already on Adán’s payroll by the time he arrived. The majority of them were eager for the money. For the reluctant, Diego simply came into the prison and showed them their home addresses and photos of their wives and children.
    Three guards still refused to take the money. Diego congratulated them for their integrity. Each was found the next morning sitting primly at his post with his throat cut.
    The rest accepted Adán’s largesse. A cook was paid $300 American a month, a senior guard as much as a thousand, the warden $50,000 above and beyond his annual salary.
    As for the men lining up to kill Adán, there were several of them, all beaten to death by other inmates wielding baseball bats. “Los Bateadores”—“the Batters”—Sinaloan employees of Diego, would be Adán’s private security squad inside Puente Grande .
    “How long do I have to be here?” Adán asks.
    Diego answers, “In here we can guarantee your safety. Out there…”
    He doesn’t need to finish—Adán understands. Out there are people who still want him dead. Certain people will have to go, certain politicians have yet to be bought, cañonazos —huge bribes—have to be paid.
    Adán knows he’ll be in Puente Grande for a while.
    —
    Adán’s new cell, on Block 2, Level 1-A, of CEFERESO II, is 635