Chapter 1
San Francisco
Walking through the Mission District, wearing a tracksuit top and a pair of jeans and running shoes, Michael Santini was a handsome man in his prime, built low to the ground, with a trim, powerful upper body from years of lifting weights and fitness training. Tattooed full sleeve on his right arm was a dragon, and under that a koi fish fighting against the current of a rushing waterfall. Considered in traditional Chinese culture the most powerful-swimming fish, koi represented strength of character. Rewarded for their perseverance here on Earth, in the afterlife they were transformed into dragons. On the back of Santini’s left shoulder, an inked scorpion (his astrological sign) coiled its stinger-tipped tail.
It was a chilly, Saturday morning with torrential rain coming down, and the special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) had ventured from his apartment for a desperately needed cup of coffee. Under the weather after a late night partying, without a rain jacket or umbrella, he ignored the downpour while stepping around the sidewalk’s flooded potholes. At the Java House on Valencia Street, he bought himself a steaming cup of joe.
He was headed home with the coffee when he suddenly spotted the red Nissan he had been hunting for over two weeks. It was parked at the curb halfway up a steep hill near the corner of 22nd and Fair Oaks Streets. Just a block from his house. The car belonged to “Jose,” the leader of a criminal counterfeit identification document production and distribution ring known as the Miceros, comprised mostly of native Mexicans. The Miceros were by definition a gang, but lacked a propensity for violence unless their counterfeit ID business was threatened. They maintained a presence on every corner of Mission Street, from the 8th Street BART station, down to Glen Park.
The batteries on a vehicle tracker Santini and a team of HSI agents surreptitiously attached to the car a few weeks back had recently gone dead before he could trace the vehicle to the location of the network’s main counterfeit ID production lab. He had been monitoring the movements of the vehicle for days with GPS-enabled software from his desktop computer and believed he had located the lab. He just needed evidence from the tracker data to lock down the probable cause for a warrant.
Santini shook his head and thought, A special agent is never—ever—off duty. He stood by the parked car in the heavy rain and scanned the streets to see if anyone was watching, then set down his coffee cup on the curb. From a crouched position, he dropped to the ground and slipped under the Nissan on his back. The tracker device was stuck to the undercarriage with a magnet and easily detached, but its long, wire antenna was strung the length of the frame, attached by technicians with a gooey, tarlike putty.
Lying on his back and struggling with the sticky mess, Santini’s hands became covered in black tar. A torrent of water running downhill through the street gutter gushed through his jeans and out the neck of his T-shirt. The rushing rainwater flowed in such volume it blew up his clothes like a water balloon, as he struggled to yank off the tracker and antenna. Finally, he was able to rip it off and stuff the mess of wires down his pants.
He crawled out from under the vehicle and stood up, checking to see if anyone spotted him. Satisfied no one had, he bent down and grabbed the cup of coffee, which stuck fast to the tarry mess all over his hands. Walking slowly back to the apartment, he turned the corner of his street, where he almost bumped right into a Latino man heading in the opposite direction, reading a rain-soaked newspaper as he went. It was Jose, the Miceros’ boss, owner of the Nissan. Another few seconds under the vehicle and Santini would have been caught red-handed.
When he arrived home, he glanced in the hallway mirror and couldn’t help but burst out laughing. He was drenched with rainwater and covered in tar, with a tracking device crammed into his pants. His soaked condition sparked memories of his time with the US Border Patrol, not so long ago . . .
When the rains from El Niño hit the Southern California desert, the two-mile-wide patrol zone north of the international boundary turned into a sea of mud. Even the agents’ four-wheel drive vehicles couldn’t tackle the slippery slopes and fields north of the fence when the deluge came. Under those conditions, the border patrol essentially ceded control of the zone to Mexico, while holding the line at the Otay Mesa Freeway.
When the patrol fell back, the population of Tijuana jumped the line into the United States like a swollen river cresting its banks. Santini and his fellow border agents were forced to hike on foot into the San Ysidro hillsides to stem the northward flow of humanity, but to little avail. Groups of sometimes hundreds of migrants sneaked across together and set up camp on the US side, waiting for darkness to fall so they could creep farther north and hitch rides with the smugglers who cruised Route 905.
The strenuous and seemingly futile work was offset by an enviable off-duty beach party life for Santini in San Diego. The sunny days were replete with booze and beautiful women, attracted to Santini’s cohort of border agents and naval officer buddies on shore leave. Then the 9/11 terrorist attack happened and life took on a more serious tone. Suddenly the southern border was viewed as more than just an out-of-control situation involving migrant Mexican and Central American laborers. If they could get across and into the country so easily, who else could? Bin Laden’s minions from the Middle East? Carrying what types of weapons of mass destruction?
He took a second glance at himself in the mirror, a ridiculous image. A lot of water had passed under the bridge between his days on the border and now, standing in a Mission District apartment, covered in tar. He chuckled to himself and headed for the kitchen, trading his cup of coffee for a can of beer.
Santini and his team soon reinstalled the tracker with fresh batteries and followed the red Nissan back to the Miceros’ main ID production lab, which was ensconced in an upscale apartment across from Dolores Park. Still, he didn’t have enough hard evidence for a search warrant. To acquire it, the agent’s assigned assistant US attorney advised him to take advantage of a recently enacted police power under the Patriot Act that permitted a surreptitious entry, or “sneak and peak” search, without a warrant.
He assembled a team for a sneak-and-peak visit to the lab, shielded by a squad of agents posing as home movers. A common investigative technique, ruses were used by feds for everything from fake phone calls to undercover purchases of illegal contraband. Santini believed the “moving company” ruse would ensure he wasn’t surprised by the Miceros while searching the lab. As night fell, the undercover agents arrived in a truck and unloaded moving equipment and containers into the apartment building’s hallway, creating obstacles to slow down the Miceros, in case they showed up unexpectedly while Santini was snooping around inside the apartment. The team spent an hour or so after the pre-operation brief, folding together various sizes of empty boxes and securing them with packing tape to complete the deception.
With the entrances and hallways to the building blocked and covered by agents, Santini and some of the team members pulled into the rear alleyway with a truck and extension ladder. They stood up the ladder atop the bed of a pickup truck and leaned it against the wall under a window to the Miceros’ apartment. With his partners steadying the ladder, Santini scrambled up the rungs and found the window unlocked, slid it open, and climbed inside.
The unit’s rooms were all dark and he was a little tense. His team had been keeping the apartment under regular surveillance, and they believed no one was inside now. But they couldn’t be 100 percent certain. Alone inside, he needed to clear the darkened rooms before focusing on whatever evidence there might be. With gun drawn, he switched on his flashlight and cleared the rooms, one by one. To his relief nobody was home. Free to survey the apartment, he discovered a trove of document-making equipment and supplies. It was all there, everything somebody needed to make convincing fake IDs: printers, laminators, the whole works. Santini was certain this lab was supplying dozens of Miceros the fake IDs they were peddling to the masses in the Mission District.
With warrants in hand, Santini and his team watched and waited until Jose and his primary lab technician were in the apartment together before paying another visit, this time to bust the men and their equipment in one swoop. They surrounded the apartment, ready to raid the lab, which had been spared damage from a recent fire that left gaping holes and charred rafters across a portion of the building’s roof.
When the team of agents made their move inside, the Miceros’ boss was standing in the hallway, presumably heading back out to check on his street operation. He saw the cops coming and bolted out of sight, prompting a frantic building-wide search. With his gun in hand, Santini raced upstairs after him to the top floor, which the fire had rendered a scorched mess, filled with the smell of smoked wood, scattered with burnt lumber and the debris of ruined apartment dwellings. Plenty of places to hide in the dark.
Wary his target might have a gun, Santini crept through the burnt mess, trying to stay covered, straining to see in the dark, listening for him. And there he was, the glint of his eyes peering out from a hiding place among the scorched debris.
“Levanta tus manos! Raise your hands!” Santini ordered him.
The raid ended without injury, and the documents lab was hauled away for evidence. Later that afternoon, before word was out to the larger contingent of street-dealing Miceros that the lab had been busted, Santini and his team of HSI agents swept a segment of Mission Street, arresting about fifteen of the counterfeit ID peddlers associated with the lab. The criminal network was diminished and Operation Card Shark was a success.
For his efforts, Santini gained a good deal of respect from his colleagues at both HSI and the US Attorney’s Office. Over a dozen crooks were put in federal prison for between five and fifteen years. He proved he had the crime fighting chops to take down bad guys, using federal resources to target not just street-level dealers, but the leadership structure as well.