Chapter 15
It was 6 a.m., just moments before “go” time.
On the way to the raid, Santini loaded up the CD player with one of the thrash metal disks that he always kept stashed in his government car. Listening to some amped-up music before an operation—cranked up loud—had become a ritual for him. It helped get him into the right frame of mind. Today, he opted for Megadeth.
Days like this were why Santini had gotten into law enforcement in the first place—to avoid a desk job and pursue something that involved some adrenaline. He and his team of around ten HSI agents, along with their partners from the Richmond Police Department Swat Team, were prepared to raid a small, two-story, wood frame house painted yellow, with a peaked roof and small portico at the front.
Although the sun had just begun its ascent over the low hills to the east, the blue-collar neighborhood had not yet stirred awake. The target property was on a residential road that ran through a quarter-mile-wide strip of land between Interstate 80 to the east and Interstate 580 to the west, with the waters of the Richmond Inner Harbor just beyond.
A six-foot-high, solid-picket fence surrounded the yard and a busted-up, concrete driveway led from the paved street to the front of the house, with three disabled cars parked to one side. Opposite the driveway from the junk cars sat an obviously lived-in camping trailer.
Inside the residence, based on information provided by Casper, Santini expected to find the 12-guage, pump-action shotgun that Pelon had purchased from Negro a few weeks prior in Reno. According to Casper, the clique intended to use the shotgun against the Norteños in the Mission.
A federal warrant was issued to search for Pelon on the property, based on violations of Re-entry after Deportation and Alien in Possession of a Firearm statutes. Both Pelon and another homie named Cholito who lived in the trailer were already on ICE’s “fugitive alien” list, even prior to the revelation about their recent illegal gun purchases from Negro.
With a little digging, Santini discovered that after trying for a short time the previous year to obtain legal residency status in the United States, Pelon had just given up on the whole process and failed to appear for hearings. That led to a judge ordering Pelon’s deportation. Cholito, for his part, had been deported three times already and was a convicted aggravated felon. He faced a minimum five years in federal lockup.
In drawing up plans for the raid, Santini, who was still a little pissed about what he considered the FBI’s condescending attitude toward his investigation, purposely positioned an accompanying pair of Bureau agents at the far outside perimeter. There they would basically be relegated to the position of observers, just watching the real action unfold. In the world of macho cops, it was akin to sitting on the bench for the Bureau boys, while the “first-stringers” hogged all the glory. Santini had only invited the two FBI agents to appease his upper management, anyway.
“Breach!” came the order over the radio.
One of the biggest and strongest HSI agents led the charge into the gate of the wooden fence surrounding the house, but it didn’t want to open. He struggled for a moment with the gate’s mechanism, unable to spring it free. In a fit of adrenaline, the beefy agent began to kick and punch at the wooden gate like a crazy man, quickly reducing it to a splintered mess and making a hole big enough for the entry team to squeeze through in a mad rush. The RPD SWAT team sprinted to the main house on the property and quickly smashed down its front door.
Inside the home’s kitchen, an enraged pit bull let out a vicious stream of growling and barking, as a woman attempted to restrain the dog on its leash. Seeing the SWAT team invading the home, the dog backed up and shook its body violently, slipping the collar, prompting one of the cops to shoot it in the head with a single round from his AR-15 assault rifle.
The terrified woman holding a now-empty collar reached her hands to her ears at the sound of the gun blast and turned away from the animal, whose rib cage rose and fell with its last, reflexive breath, blood oozing from its head wound onto the checkered linoleum floor.
Upstairs, surrounded by the heavily armed team, Pelon raised his hands in surrender and was taken into custody without incident. In a bedroom the search team found a shotgun that matched the description Casper had provided of the weapon Pelon purchased from Negro, along with a couple boxes of 12-gauge ammo. The gun had a pistol grip and sawed-off stock, and its serial number had been ground away with a metal file—a federal crime, carrying a significant penalty.
In the trailer outside, the HSI team found a loaded, .38 caliber pistol concealed in a sock and stored inside a closet. They also discovered a variety of gang indicia including MS-13 drawings, photos, jail letters, and a list of phone numbers with associated gang-member names.
On the street outside the property, alarmed and curious neighbors watched as Santini walked across the yard and into the house. He entered the hallway to the kitchen where the dead pit bull lay, its tongue hanging out sideways in a congealing pool of blood.
The media arrived moments later and were just in time to observe the tactical unit drag the dog’s carcass out to the driveway and wrap it in some sheets. Film of the raid made the local TV news by midmorning, causing Santini concern that 20th Street would either disperse or transition to an inactive state while the “heat” dissipated. Negro and the others might suspect Pelon and Cholito showed up on HSI’s radar as a result of their recent gun purchases. More likely, however, they assumed the raid was due to their previously outstanding warrants.
There was no reason for Santini not to continue working the gun-seizing operation up the chain of the gang’s trafficking network all the way to Negro, and he intended to keep pressing. He was also planning a different line of attack on another important source of cash for the gang—stolen cars. All his preparations for a complex new sting had taken months, and now the trap was ready to set.