“Then, Ricardo, what is this story, what is so important that someone would be targeting reporters, killing them, to keep the story from being told?”
“In just a few words, Jack, there are factions in the Mexican government that are behind Los Zetas. It is part of a conspiracy by people high in the government to take control of the drug trade, they created Los Zetas as part of a false flag operation and will utilize it in an attempt to destabilize the United States, through drugs, crime and terrorism.”
“Is there a name that can be connected to this ‘conspiracy’, Ricardo, is there a string that can be pulled?”
“Well, Jack, there is only one name in Noel’s notes that is out of the ordinary, that man’s name is Coronel Roberto Valdez, of the GAFE, Alto Mando. He works directly for the President, in the Alto Mando and as a member of the President’s personal guard, the GRIP (grupo de reaccion inmediata y potente, G.R.I.P.).
We now that Valdez was at Falcon Lake, after the murder of David Hartley. Valdez was with the current leader of Los Zetas when they both went through the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning. That was back in the 1990’s, before Lazcano had deserted the GAFE. Coronel Valdez seems to be the lynch pin, but there are only rumors, no real evidence. Noel said he had an informant that was willing to speak, anonymously, but now …”
That’s when Jan Keulen spoke up,
“It seems clear that there are powerful political players involved with these crime syndicates, and with the huge financial rewards available to those in the illegal drug business, at a minimum it is easy to understand the dangers of exposing them and their activities.”
“I have brought the files that I got from Noel’s mother,” Ricardo told me, “there is a lot of interesting information there, but nothing that is conclusive, nothing that could be printed with confidence. To tell you the truth, Jack, I am hesitant to move forward on this myself, the stakes are just too high, and I am no longer a reporter. I just feel awful about the whole thing, we should do something, but what? I do not wish, no desire, to commit suicide.”
Which accurately vocalized, I thought, the obvious lack of motivation on Ricardo’s part to move forward with the story. The initial murder of Noel López and now, with the assassination of Velasco and his family just the night before, it had taken all the wind out of his sails.
“Let me tell you what, Ricardo, I will be here in Laredo for the next couple of days, leave me the file, let me familiarize myself with the information and we will see what there is to see. If there is some way to tie the data points together, to connect the dots, maybe I’ll see it.”
So that ended my meeting with the ‘Press Protection’ services of the Sheikh of Araby, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. I was left with couple of spiral notebooks, dozens of loose sheets of paper and a flash drive, all of which I took to my room. I decided to spend the rest of the day there at the la Quinta, there was enough material to keep me busy for hours and there was a nice workout area right off the main lobby, if I spent the day there, there would be no need to get a rental car at least until tomorrow.
In the morning there was still no real reason to rent a car, I had decided to go into Mexico and see the sites of some of the street fighting; it turned out to be kind of a waste of time. I hired a taxi and the driver took me to the various locales around Nuevo Laredo where there were bullet scarred buildings on some of the streets, but nothing much else was to be gleaned from the tour.
I spent much of the afternoon back at the La Quinta, the telephone was a useful tool, I contacted some friends in Mexico City and some people up in DC. There was a real need to get some more information on the background of this Colonel Valdez and Los Zetas.
The basic story was well known, in 1998 some men from the GAFE, Mexico’s Special Forces, had been assigned to assist the Federal police and eradicate the Gulf Cartel, which operated primarily out of Veracruz, Mexico. Of the three GAFE soldiers that Los Zetas was built around, only Heriberto Lazcano still survived. He had spent eight years in the Mexican Army and had even gone through the School of the America’s, now at Fort Benning.
He had received the full complement of Special Forces training in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism tactics. Schooled in sniper techniques; as well as jungle, mountain, desert, naval, and urban warfare tactics, Lazcano had learned how to use explosive demolitions, high-caliber rifles and grenade-launchers. Heriberto Lazcano was a well-trained combat soldier.
According to my sources in Mexico City, Lazcano had spent a lot of time with the Israeli personnel that had established a military training center in Guatemala. The Israeli were there in association with the Kaibil Special Forces command. The Kaibil would later provide Lazcano with the most radical of the Zetas enforcers.
Lazcano was of above average height, at five foot eleven inches he towered over most of the people surrounding him, providing a physiological advantage to be sure. He was said to be smart, aggressive and sadistic. For much of his eight years in the Mexican military he had been a subordinate of Roberto Valdez.
Instead of eradicating the Gulf Cartel, the GAFE operators deserted and then had joined it. Lazcano and his compatriot, Arturo Guzmán Decena and were able to convince thirty fellow Army veterans, comrades in arms, to follow them in deserting the Army and joining forces with the leader of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. Things went ‘smoothly’ until Cárdenas Guillén was arrested in Mexico, then extradited to the United States back in 2007.
By 2010 anarchy was reigning all along the border, Lazcano was down to just a dozen of the original thirty-one GAFE Commandos, the others having been killed or incarcerated. To fill the ranks of his now independent cartel, Lazcano continued recruiting from the Mexican military, as well as from the Kaibil Commando of Guatemala, and even resorted to recruiting common criminals off the street.
One of those common thugs was named Miguel Treviño Morales, who by 2011 had risen in the ranks, becoming the number two man in the Los Zetas Cartel. It was reported, to me, that there was some discord within the ranks of Los Zetas and that a power struggle between Lazcano and Trevino was underway. I was told by two sources in Mexico City that Trevino was the more ‘radical’ of the two men, had a greater propensity for violence, and was even more sadistic than Lazcano.
Between the two of them, there was over ten million dollars being offered in bounties, by the US and Mexican governments, for their apprehension. The size of those bounties, well I must say,
they whetted my interest. There was nothing of worth to be gained by speaking to my contacts in the DC; they were far behind the curve. There was one local Texas cop that I knew that might be able to help me out, Chief Bob Ironside, of Mission, Texas. Mission is a small town, a suburb of McAllen, Texas right there on the river. Bob had been dealing with the contrabandistas for years, so he got a call.
Bob Ironside had been a cop in Mission, Texas for 23 years, he told he was ready to retire; all he had to do was find his replacement. I certainly did not volunteer for the job, instead asking him if he had any leads on Lazcano.
There was laughter echoing in my ear, as he told me that the Mexican Marines thought they had Lazcano and one of his Plaza Chiefs, Ivan Velazquez Caballero aka "El 50" or “El Taliban”, dead to rights. The two of them were going to attend a funeral for a dead Zeta, Centeno Madrid, known as “Comandante Ardilla” or “Comandante Centeno”. The story was that Madrid had been the Los Zetas boss in the Fresnillo plaza, before he got shot to pieces by the Mexican Marines. Madrid had also been a personal friend and trusted confidant of Heriberto Lazcano. Lazcano and ‘El 50’ were guaranteed to be there, to show their respect, that was the intel.
When the Mexican Marines moved in there was quite a fire fight, and after the smoke cleared there were twenty- two dead Zetas. It turned out that neither Lazcano nor Madrid were amongst the dead, they had not gone to the funeral. The best intel that Mexican Military Intelligence, S-2, could muster failed to pass the acid test.
Bob told me of a fire fight the Texas Rangers, Game Wardens and the local Sheriff Deputies had recently had with a smuggling operation over to the west of Mission, in Abrams, Texas. Complete with Zodiac boats and sniper fire from across the river, the North Americans had fired over three hundred rounds in the altercation. There were no known casualties.
Bob asked if I was aware that he Mexican Army had just taken up positions on the south side of the river, that they had moved in 2,800 soldiers and had replaced the civilian police officers in twenty-two cities and towns across northern part of the state of Tamaulipas, including the cities of of Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Matamoros and some of the smaller border towns. That in the cities of Tampico and even in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria, the military had taken that same course of action. He thought that their presence could be a game changer, as far as disrupting his intelligence sources, but doubted the Mexican Army would stem the flow of drugs or people that crossed the river.
Bob went on to tell me that the Mexican Army was establishing three new permanent battalion-strength army bases along the river. The first would be in Ciudad Mier, which is just a little way upriver from Mission; another battalion would be stationed in San Fernando and the third would be stationed in Ciudad Mante. I thanked him for his time, he asked me to keep an eye out for a young and aggressive, smart and bi-lingual Police Chief prospect. I promised him I would.
Still trying to catch a lead on Lazcano, I thought of Ricardo, he was well connected with the reporters in Veracruz and Nueva Laredo. Even if he was afraid to go forward, he would know who to see, who had the knowledge, even if they would not put what they knew into print. I called him and we spoke, he said he’d be back in the area in two days, but he texted an e-mail address of a reliable source, someone that represented Anonymous in Nuevo Laredo. Her webcaster handle was NenaDLaredo (GirlFromLaredo). I sent her a message referencing Ricardo’s confidence in her reporting skills.
He also texted me the number of Ricardo Reyes Alvarez, the police chief of Ciudad Isla, a city in Veracruz, the message was that he was expecting my call and would give me as much as an hour to discuss the Los Zetas phenomenon.
I was about to contact Chief Reyes when the phone buzzed, the area code of the incoming number, 301, which is in DC. It was a call back from another of the referrals I gotten from Congressman Harry Mitchell’s office. I knew Harry from when he was the Mayor of Tempe, lots of folk had problems with Harry back in the day, but I never did, probably because I never really expected much from him. The call was from the FBI, the Deputy Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigation Division, a fella named David Cardona, was on the line. I was being pleasantly surprised by the response that I was getting, by referencing Harry, I’d have to buy him lunch or donate a dollar to his next campaign.
Assistant Director Cardona was willing to discuss a FBI sting that had involved Customs & Border Patrol agents with ties to the Gulf Cartel,
“Amazingly these people sell their ethics for small dollar figures. There’s always a pattern. The bribes start off small, they work their way up and it’s just a constant flow. They become addicted to the illegal revenue flow of the constant bribes coming in.”
He went on to tell me that during 2010 there had been over forty-one hundred complaints against CBP agents and that the Inspector General at the DHS had opened eight hundred and seventy investigations that related to the activities of Customs and Border Patrol employees. There were few people on the border that could be trusted, just on the basis of their job description or title. Director Cardona chuckled at my ‘Trust but Verify’ line, the one that I have co-opted from Ronald Reagan. I have found that it fits a variety of social situations, quite admirably.
I was able to get through to Chief Reyes and set an appointment for the next afternoon, I would meet him at a carwash, in Ciudad Isla, at 18:00hrs, he gave me the address. The next outside contact I had was with Ricardo’s contact, NenaDLaredo, she had blind texted my phone with a number. When I called the number it was answered almost immediately, the crux of the conversation, we could meet in the morning, in Nuevo Laredo. My thinking was I would meet with Nena and get still back to the airport in Laredo in time to fly the 900 miles down to Veracruz, and still be able to make my appointment with the Chief. It should all move like clockwork, even on Mexican time.
The next morning I was at the café that NenaDLareo had suggested we meet at, she was an attractive young woman; appearing to be in her late twenties, with long blondish hair and black rimmed glasses. She had been working the stories that the print and broadcast media were avoiding, specifically she was targeting Los Zetas, which was the dominant cartel in Nuevo Laredo.
Trying to gauge her motivation I asked her why she had become involved in battling Los Zetas. The answer was plain spoken and chilling. Her sister had been the secretary of Manuel Farfan Carriola, who after retiring from the Army as a brigadier general, had come home to be the Police Chief in Nuevo Laredo. He had held that job for thirty-three days, when, while leaving the police headquarters he was attacked by gunmen, killing him, his body guard and Nena’s sister. That had happened just last February, she was out for revenge, utilizing the tools she knew how to use she was going to make Los Zetas pay.
As part of that fight she had taken up the Anonymous banner and told me of her latest efforts in that regard. She explained that Anonymous was turning its’ attention towards the bus company and Mexico’s federal government. Telling me that neither of those institutions were doing anything to halt the kidnapping of bus passengers on Mexico’s highways, claiming that thousands of people had been kidnapped, killed or forced to work against their will. That an all-too common scenario was that armed men would stop and board passenger buses at highway roadblocks set up by the Zetas.
“They get on the bus, take the men for ransom or to integrate them into their criminal organization,” NenaDLaredo said. “The women are raped and then kidnapped to work in brothels. The evidence is everywhere."
She told me that Central American immigrants and even Mexican nationals headed to the United States had been taken. That was the back story to the mass graves that had been discovered just 90 miles south of the Rio Grande Valley in San Fernando, back in April. She said that the kidnappings had always gone unreported until it was too late for authorities to respond, effectively.
“The bus companies do not report it to the authorities because then they have to report it to the insurance companies,” Nena told me. “Can you imagine if every bus company reported every claim in a nation that is in a state of civil war to the insurance companies? Their premiums would go sky high!"
She said that Anonymous was planning to target the bus company and government websites in August, that the final list of the targets has not been decided upon, but that the group would release its demands later that week. but was mostly interested in focusing attention to the issue and for the government to provide greater security for travelers on the highways.
"Yes, the guilty ones here are the bus companies but when the families of the raped and the kidnapped cry out, and they do cry out for justice to the government and here is where the government does not jump fast enough,” NenaDLaredo said.
She told me that the bus company, Tranpaís, claimed that the buses were safe, and that their use of modern GPS and communications devices allowed for drivers to stay in touch with their dispatchers all along their routes.
She scoffed at that, saying that the reality of the situation could be seen easily enough, that the American Consulate of Matamoros had issued a warning against traveling by bus in Tamaulipas due to the reported hijackings that had involved American citizens, just that past April.
After that meeting I felt like I was no closer to Lazcano or Miguel Treviño than I had been, and no closer to the truth about Colonel Roberto Valdez, either.
Going into Mexico, through the border crossing in Laredo, had meant no guns allowed, so all I was only carrying my cane. I had trained with Dave McN
eill, up in Reno, Nevada and had gotten most of his Goju-Shorei cane fighting system down. I did not have all the katas in my repertoire, but I was more than comfortable utilizing the cane in defensive combat. Mine is hickory, with a ‘birds head’ carved into the handle of the crook.
The cane is really a great piece of gear to carry, almost no one recognizes its capabilities, in fact twice it has lulled opponents into thinking I was either infirm or crippled. As Sun Tzu said,
“All warfare is based on deception.”
Their preconceptions, they had been good for me, bad for them.
In the plane I had a pair of Colt 1911 pistols, .45 caliber. Many consider this handgun to be an antique in this age of polymeric plastics, but in my mind it is a combat proven weapon that fires a formidable round. Even so, I would be smuggling them when I flew into Mexico and I didn’t think that carrying them to meet a police chief was a sensible course of action. Foolish me.
A buddy of mine, Bill Jack Gentry, has a lot of hours flying around the interior of Mexico, his home base is in Mississippi but he fancies himself as a tree top flyer. I had called him the night before and he knew of a landing strip right outside of Ciudad Isla, on a ranchero of a friend of his. Bill Jack made arrangements for me to land there and for transportation while I was on the ground. He said my new used Cessna would be safe at the ranchero, that the rancher, Raul Villalobos, was a legitimate businessan but respected by the local crime bosses.