Hunting El Chapo: Taking down the world’s most-wanted drug-lord. Douglas Century

       NOTES

       ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

       PROLOGUE: EL NIÑO DE LA TUNA

      PHOENIX, ARIZONA

       May 30, 2009

      I FIRST HEARD THE legend of Chapo Guzmán just after midnight inside Mariscos Navolato, a dimly lit Mexican joint on North 67th Avenue in the Maryvale section of West Phoenix. My partner in the DEA Narcotic Task Force, Diego Contreras, was shouting a translation of a song into my ear:

       Cuando nació preguntó la partera Le dijo como le van a poner? Por apellido él será Guzmán Loera Y se llamará Joaquín

      “When he was born, the midwife asked, ‘What are they gonna name the kid?’ ” Diego yelled, his breath hot and sharp with the shot of Don Julio he’d just downed. “The last name’s Guzmán Loera, and they’re gonna call him Joaquín . . .”

      Diego and I had been working as partners in the Phoenix Task Force since early 2007, and two years later we were like brothers. I was the only white guy inside Mariscos Navolato that May night, and I could feel every set of eyes looking me up and down, but sitting shoulder to shoulder with Diego, I felt at ease.

      Diego had introduced me to Mexican culture in Phoenix as soon as we met. We’d eat birria out of plastic bowls in the cozy kitchen of some señora’s home that doubled as a makeshift restaurant and order mango raspados from a vendor pushing a cart across the street, all while listening to every narcocorrido¹ Diego had in his CD collection. Though I clearly wasn’t from Mexico, Diego nevertheless told me I was slowly morphing into a güero—a light-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed Mexican—and soon no one would take me for a gringo.

      The norteño was blaring—Los Jaguares de Culiacán, a fourpiece band on tour in the Southwest, straight from the violent capital of the state of Sinaloa. The polka-like oompa-loompa of the tuba and accordion held a strange and contagious allure. I had a passing knowledge of Spanish, but Diego was teaching me a whole new language: the slang of the barrios, of the narcos, of “war zones” like Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, and Culiacán. What made these narcocorridos so badass, Diego explained, wasn’t the rollicking tuba, accordion, and guitar—it was the passionate storytelling and ruthless gunman attitude embodied in the lyrics.

      A dark-haired waitress in skintight white jeans and heels brought us a bucket filled with cold bottles of La Cerveza del Pacifico. I grabbed one out of the ice and peeled back the damp corner of the canary-yellow label. Pacifico: the pride of Mazatlán. I laughed to myself: we were in the heart of West Phoenix, but it felt as if we’d somehow slipped over the border and eight hundred miles south to Sinaloa. The bar was swarming with traffickers—Diego and I estimated that three-quarters of the crowd was mixed up somehow in the cocaine-weed-and-meth trade.

      The middle-aged traffickers were easy to spot in their cowboy hats and alligator boots—some also worked as legit cattle ranchers. Then there were narco juniors—the new generation—who looked like typical Arizona college kids in Lacoste shirts and designer jeans, though most were flashing watches no typical twenty-year old could afford.

      Around the fringes of the dance floor, I spotted a few men who looked as if they’d taken a life, cartel enforcers with steel in their eyes. And scattered throughout the bar were dozens of honest, hardworking citizens—house painters, secretaries, landscapers, chefs, nurses—who simply loved the sound of these live drug balladeers from Sinaloa.

      Diego and I had spent the entire day on a mind- numbing surveillance, and after ten hours without food, I quickly gulped down that first Pacifico, letting out a long exhale as I felt the beer hit the pit of my stomach.

      “Mis hijos son mi alegría también mi tristeza,” Diego shouted, nearly busting my eardrum. “My sons are my joy—also my sadness. “Edgar, te voy a extrañar,” Diego sang, in unison with the Jaguares’ bandleader. “Edgar, I’m gonna miss you.”

      I glanced at Diego, looking for an explanation.

      “Edgar, one of Chapo’s kids, was gunned down in a parking lot in Culiacán,” Diego said. “He was the favorite son, the heir apparent. When Edgar was murdered, Chapo went ballistic. That pinche cabrón fucked up a lot of people...”

      It was astonishing how Diego owned the room. Not with his size—he was no more than five foot five—but with his confidence and charm. I noticed one of the dancers flirting with him, even while she was whirling around with her cowboy-boot-wearing partner. Diego wasn’t a typical T-shirt-and-baggy-jeans narcotics cop—he’d often dress in a pressed collared shirt whether he was at home or working the streets.

      Diego commanded respect immediately whenever he spoke—especially in Spanish. He was born on the outskirts of Mexico City, came to Tucson with his family when he was a kid, and then moved to Phoenix and became a patrolman with the Mesa Police Department in 2001. Like me, he earned a reputation for being an aggressive street cop. Diego was so skilled at conducting drug investigations that he’d been promoted to detective in 2006. One year later, he was hand-selected by his chief for an elite assignment to the DEA Phoenix Narcotic Task Force Team 3. And that was when I met him.

      From the moment Diego and I partnered up, it was clear that our strengths complemented one another. Diego had an innate street sense. He was always working someone: a confidential informant, a crook—even his friends. He often juggled four cell phones at a time. The undercover role—front and center, doing all the talking—was where Diego thrived. While I loved working the street, I’d always find myself in the shadows, as I was that night, sitting at our table, taking mental note of every detail, studying and memorizing every face. I didn’t want the spotlight; my work behind the scenes would speak for itself.

      Diego and I had just started targeting a Phoenix-based crew of narco juniors suspected of distributing Sinaloa Cartel cocaine, meth, and large shipments of cajeta—high-grade Mexican marijuana—by the tractor-trailer-load throughout the Southwest.

      Though we weren’t planning to engage the targets that night, Diego was dressed just like a narco junior, in a black Calvin Klein button-down shirt, untucked over midnight-blue jeans, and a black-faced Movado watch and black leather Puma sneakers. I looked more like a college kid from California, in my black Hurley ball cap, plain gray T-shirt, and matching Diesel shoes.

      My sons are my joy and my sadness, I repeated to myself silently. This most popular of the current narcocorridos—Roberto Tapia’s “El Niño de La Tuna”—packed a lot of emotional punch in its lyrics. I could see the passion in the eyes of the crowd, singing along word for word. It seemed to me that they viewed El Chapo as some mix of Robin Hood and Al Capone.

      I looked over and nodded at Diego as if I understood fully, but I really had no clue yet.

      I was a young special agent from Kansas who’d grown up on a red-meat diet of Metallica, Tim McGraw, and George Strait, and it was a lot to take in that first night with Diego in Mariscos Navolato.

      Up on the five flat-screen TVs, a big Mexican Primera División soccer match was on—Mérida was up 1–0 against Querétaro, apparently, though it meant little to me. The CD jukebox was filled with banda and ranchera, the walls covered in posters for Modelo, Tecate, Dos Equis, and Pacifico, homemade flan, upcoming norteño concerts, and handwritten signs about the mariscos specialties like almeja Reyna, a favorite clam dish from Sinaloa.

      “El Chapo”? Was “Shorty” supposed to be a menacing-sounding nickname? How could some semiliterate kid from the tiny town of La Tuna, in the mountains of the Sierra Madre—who’d supported his family by selling oranges on the street—now be celebrated as the most famous drug lord of all time? Was Chapo really—as the urban legends and corridos