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

the truth of El Chapo, I kept my eyes glued to the narco juniors sitting at a table near the far end of the bar. One had a fresh military-style haircut, two others fauxhawks, the fourth sporting an Arizona State University ball cap. Diego and I knew they were likely armed.

      If the narco juniors went out to their cars, we’d have to follow.

      Diego tossed two $20 bills on the table, winked at the waitress, and rose from his seat. Now the crew shifted in their seats, one getting to his feet, fixing the brim on his cap, pivoting on the sole of his Air Jordans like a point-guard.

      Diego downed the last gulp of his Pacifico and gestured for me to do the same. The band was blaring louder now; Diego laughed, along with the entire bar, hitting the crescendo of the song:

       I may be short, but I’m brave...

      And I began to grin, too, as I slid my chair back and stood up. The hypnotic rhythm took hold; I found myself singing with as much gusto as any of these cowboy-hat-clad traffickers: “Yo soy El Chapo Guzmán!”

       BREAKOUT

      GUADALAJARA, MEXICO

       May 24, 1993

      THE SUDDEN BURST OF AK-47 gunfire pierced the calm of a perfect spring afternoon, unleashing panic in the parking lot of the Guadalajara Airport. Seated in the passenger seat of his white Grand Marquis, Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, the Archbishop of Guadalajara, was struck fourteen times as he arrived to meet the flight of the papal nuncio. The sixty-six-year-old cardinal slumped toward the center of the vehicle, blood running down his forehead. He had died instantly. The Grand Marquis was riddled with more than thirty bullets, and his driver was among six others dead.

      Who would possibly target the archbishop—one of Mexico’s most beloved Catholic leaders—for a brazen daylight hit? The truth appeared to be altogether more prosaic: it was reported that Cardinal Posadas had been caught up in a shooting war between the Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels, feuding for months over the lucrative “plaza”—drug smuggling route—into Southern California. Posadas had been mistaken for the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. “El Chapo,” who was due to arrive at the airport parking lot in a similar white sedan at around the same time.

      News footage of the Wild West–style shoot-out flashed instantly around the world as authorities and journalists scrambled to make sense of the carnage. “Helicopters buzzed overhead as police confiscated about 20 bullet-riddled automobiles, including one that contained grenades and high-powered automatic weapons,” reported the Los Angeles Times on its front page. The daylight assassination of Cardinal Posadas rocked Mexican society to its core; President Carlos Salinas de Gortari arrived immediately to pay his condolences and calm the nation’s nerves.

      The airport shoot-out would prove to be a turning point in modern Latin American history: for the first time, the Mexican public truly took note of the savage nature of the nation’s drug cartels. Most Mexicans had never heard of the diminutive Sinaloa capo whose alias made him sound more comical than lethal.

      After Posada’s assassination, crude drawings of Chapo’s face were splashed on front pages of newspapers and magazines all across Latin America. His name appeared on TV nightly—wanted for murder and drug trafficking.

      Realizing he was no longer safe even in his native Sierra Madre backcountry, or in the neighboring state of Durango, Guzmán reportedly fled to Jalisco, where he owned a ranch, then to a hotel in Mexico City, where he met with several Sinaloa Cartel lieutenants, handing over tens of millions in US currency to provide for his family while he was on the lam.

      In disguise, using a passport with the name Jorge Ramos Pérez, Chapo traveled to the south of Mexico and crossed the border into Guatemala on June 4, 1993. His plan apparently was to move stealthily, with his girlfriend and several bodyguards, then settle in El Salvador until the heat died down. It was later reported that Chapo had paid handsomely for his escape, bribing one Guatemalan military officer with $1.2 million to guarantee his safe passage south of the Mexican border.

      IN MAY 1993, around the time of the Posada murder, I was fifteen hundred miles away, in my hometown of Pattonville, Kansas, diagramming an intricate pass play to my younger brother. We were Sweetness and the Punky QB—complete with regulation blue-and-orange Bears jerseys—huddling up in the front yard against a team made up of my cousins and neighbors. My sister and her friends were dressed up as cheerleaders, with homemade pompoms, shouting from the sidelines.

      My brother, Brandt, always played the Walter Payton role. I was Jim McMahon, and I was a fanatic—everyone teased me about it. Even for front-yard games, I’d have to have all the details just right, down to the white headband with the name ROZELLE, which I’d lettered with a black Magic Marker, just like the one McMahon had worn in the run-up to the 1985 Super Bowl.

      None of us weighed more than a hundred pounds, but we took those front- yard games seriously, as if we really were Payton, McMahon, Singletary, Dent, and the rest of the Monsters of the Midway. In Pattonville—a town of three thousand people, fifty-two miles outside Kansas City—there wasn’t much else to do besides play football and hunt. My father was a firefighter and lifelong waterfowl hunter. He’d taken me on my first duck hunt at age eight and bought me my first shotgun—a Remington 870 youth model—when I turned ten.

      Everyone expected I’d become a firefighter, too—my greatgrandfather, my grandfather, and three uncles had all been firemen. I’d spend hours at the fire station following my dad around, trying on his soot-stained leather fire helmet and climbing in and out of the trucks in the bay. In fifth grade, I brought home a school paper and showed my mom:

      “Someday I’m going to be . . . a fireman, a policeman, or a spy detective.”

      But as long as I could remember, I’d really been dead set on becoming one thing: a cop. And not just any cop—a Kansas State Trooper.

      I loved the State Troopers’ crisp French-blue uniforms and navy felt campaign hats, and the powerful Chevrolets they got to drive. For years I had an obsession with drawing police cars. It wasn’t just a hobby, either—I’d sit alone in my bedroom, working in a feverish state. I had to have all the correct colored pens and markers lined up, drawing and shading the patrol cars in precise detail: correct light bar, insignia, markings, wheels—the whole works had to be spot-on, down to the exact radio antennas. I’d have to start over even if the slightest detail looked off. I drew Ford Crown Vics and Explorers, but my favorite was the Chevy Caprice with the Corvette LT1 engine and blacked- out wheels. I’d often dream while coloring, picturing myself behind the wheel of a roaring Caprice, barreling down US Route 36 in hot pursuit of a robbery suspect...

      Fall was my favorite time of year. Duck hunting with my dad and brother. And football. Those front-yard dreams now playing out under the bright stadium lights. Our varsity team would spend Thursday nights in a barn or some backwoods campsite, sitting around a fire and listening to that week’s motivational speaker, everyone’s orange helmets, with the black tiger paws on the sides, glowing in the flickering light.

      Life in Pattonville revolved around those Friday-night games. All along the town’s roads you’d see orange-and-black banners, and everyone would come and watch the Tigers play. I had my own pregame ritual, blasting a dose of Metallica in my headphones:

       Hush little baby, don’t say a word And never mind that noise you heard

      After high school, I was convinced that I’d live in the same town where my parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and dozens of cousins lived. I had no desire to go anyplace else. I never could have imagined leaving Pattonville. I never could have imagined a life in a smog- cloaked city of more than 26 million, built on top of the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán...

      Mexico? If