Three years passed. Morales was no longer viewed as the lucky son-in–law who married his way into Aztec Cartel. In the beginning, whenever he went on kill raids with trained mercenaries, they would address him only as “son-in-law,” or a more demeaning “sonny boy,” but their attitude about him soon changed. From the very beginning, he volunteered to go on dangerous missions against those peripheral outlaws who broke away from, or refused to join, the Cartel. In one venture, he was stabbed in hand-to-hand fighting and still managed to kill three men, slashing one man’s throat with the ring that Jeb gave to him many years before. Once, he protected one of the men by jumping in front of him and taking a bullet in his shoulder. After that incident, as a medic was extracting the bullet from his wound, one of the mercenaries handed him a beer and said, “Nice work, Hector.” The other men lifted their beer bottles as a way of saluting him.
Word spread throughout the Cartel that Morales was fearless, and showed little compunction about killing when necessary. The inherent personality disorder that he once wondered about blossomed and became an important part of his persona. A sociopathic personality was no longer an undesirable characteristic considering his line of work, but a necessary component of it.
Typical of many entry-level employees in most large corporations, Morales also spent much of his first two years as a trainee. On a regular basis, he spent time with each of the operational directors of the Cartel, reviewed all daily organizational reports, and took part, along with Isabella, in key committee meetings. Killing missions was just another facet of his training. While Chula realized that these missions were dangerous, he knew that they were necessary for Morales to gain credibility and respect within the Cartel.
As he entered his fourth year in the Cartel, the head of logistics, a department responsible for shipments of illegal drugs to the United States, died. Morales volunteered to take his place. While Chula was reluctant at first, because of Morales’ age and inexperience, Isabella argued his case and convinced her father to give him a chance. “And you know,” she said, “I’ll be working behind the scenes with him every step of the way.” This last piece of information convinced Chula to lobby with the various directors of the Cartel to appoint Morales to the position. Though some voiced reservations similar to those of Chula, the Directors appointed Morales on a trial basis.
The transportation of drugs across the border was complex and difficult. While the use of Chula’s cattle had been enormously successful, it accounted for only about twenty percent of all drugs sold by the Cartel. Years after Trump’s presidency, ironically under a Democratic administration, an imposing and virtually impenetrable wall now ran along the Mexican border, with well-guarded entries into the country. Surveillance techniques by the Americans were ultra-sophisticated and challenging. Certain old standbys, for example trucks with hidden compartments, human “mules,” and drones, were no longer an option for illicit drug transportation. All of the Cartel’s drug tunnels were destroyed by earth penetrating bombs. The Mexican-American efforts negatively impacted drug entry into the country and reduced the Cartel’s gross revenues for the first time in ten years.
At Morales’ urging, Chula agreed to let him create a “Technology Section” to address this growing problem. Morales planned to use the best engineers and scientists he could find to develop superior counter technologies. Working with two former employees of the DEA’s technology section, Morales and Isabella, evaluated the technologies used by various drug enforcement and police agencies in the United States including unpublished data that they found through the United States’ Freedom of Information Act. They augmented their research with information gleaned from DEA and FBI data banks hacked by Aztec’s professional hackers, some of whom were formerly with the Russian APT29 or Cozy Bear, the group that had penetrated important United States agencies decades earlier.
Using this information, Morales and Isabella prepared a 200-page report, including overviews of each method Aztec used to transport goods into the United States, their respective interdiction rates, financial implications flowing from each interdiction, trend analysis, successes and failures. When Morales and Isabella working in tandem presented their findings via a PowerPoint to the principal players in the Cartel, they received high praise. Morales heard several people say “remarkable.” Morales’ trial run was over; he was the recognized head of logistics.
Morales sometimes joked, “Running a criminal enterprise is easy; marriage is hard.” It was a bit of an exaggeration by Morales. In his case, saying “marriage is strange” was more accurate. While their marriage was unconventional in the conjugal sense, in all other respects, except for the illegal context in which they operated, it was a normal marriage. They adapted quickly and easily to their separate bedroom lifestyle and fell into a marital routine. Morales, while not a Lothario, needed to have sex on a more or less regular basis. In the beginning he would travel weekly to Mexico City, to spend afternoons with a beautiful and intelligent woman, Sasha, the young widow of a former director who had died of cancer.
His visits to Sasha, however, became less frequent as the Cartel became the center of his life. The memories he had of Rebecca dimmed and on those rare occasions when he thought of her, prompted by a place he had passed on the ranch, he would shake his head at his immaturity. Rebecca’s only presence in his life was the small photo of them, the selfie taken at the pool their summer together on the ranch. Gone was the scarf she left at the hacienda. It was the last relic of Rebecca he had in his possession. Ridding himself of the scarf was not a symbolic gesture, but reflective of a decision that both Rebecca and her artifacts were no longer important to him. The ghost of Rebecca was exorcized from him, not by another woman, but by work. He would look occasionally at the photo and feel a tinge of regret, but not for lost love but the loss of his youth and for that indelible perfect moment with Rebecca when he was 16 and happy.
A number of months into their marriage, Isabella said to Morales, “You know, your parents and my parents are dropping hints about us having children.”
“Tell me about it. It’s the subject of conversation every time I speak to them.”
“Hector, to be honest with you, while I’m up to going through the whole in-vitro process, I’m afraid. I don’t want a child who looks like me.”
“I fully understand, Isabella. You know, I would have also gone along with the process and given you carte blanche on the choice of an appropriate surrogate, but in reality, I don’t want to have children.” His remark surprised and relieved her. Two weeks later, Isabella heard a knock on her bedroom door. Morales had set a carton on the floor. It held two of the cutest puppies Isabella ever saw. She was laughing and asked, “What are they?
“They are Rottweilers. These will be our children.” Morales thought she heard him, but wasn’t sure since Isabella was already too busy cuddling and kissing them.