Everyone in Miguel’s escolta—his raiding party; literally, his escort—wielded an AR-15 assault rifle with a grenade-launcher attachment, four fragmentation grenades, and nine double-sided magazines; plus a .45-caliber handgun with four clips and a level-four bulletproof vest with two metal plates. Whatever confidence their equipment failed to inspire, it was hard to question a comandante who went first in raids, who never asked you to do something he wouldn’t. Miguel was la mera paipa, the true shit. They followed him anywhere.
At midday, when it rained, they found a place to rest. When the sun reemerged they resumed their chase and slaughter of the contras—Sinaloan soldiers and smugglers, in the state of Tamaulipas, who worked for men like La Barbie, the Beltrán-Leyva clan, and Chapo Guzmán himself. As the raiding party went from place to place, littering the earth with darkening bodies, Miguel took on the appearance of an automaton.
In the guiso that followed raids, the sucking flames of the oil drums swallowed humans whole. The manager of the guiso cut out the bottoms of oil drums and set the drums in foot-deep holes in the ground. Both ash and oil seeped into the ground during the two or three hours it took a corpse to burn properly. Sometimes the scorched corpses, their faces twisted in a charred rictus of woe, were removed early and set upon the earth. Soldados kicked the black busts idly, like nudging a pebble, and the remains collapsed in soft explosions of ash. The guiso manager then shoveled heaping piles of ash onto pickup beds—a convenient way to dispose of the bodies, dust to dust as the truck motored down the highway.
Wences Tovar, the triggerman on the Bruno Orozco murder, was now one of the newest additions to Miguel’s escolta. After Wences escaped the scene on Killam Industrial Boulevard, where Gabriel was caught and taken into custody, he fled across the border and lay up in a Nuevo Laredo hotel that later got raided by La Barbie’s men in retaliation for the Bruno Orozco hit. The murder of Orozco, a valuable Sinaloan employee, made Wences a target. But Wences fooled La Barbie’s people, left out a back entrance, and met Miguel at a gas station.
“You killed Orozco?” Miguel asked as he unwrapped a tube of Rolo chocolates.
“Yes, I did it.”
“Have you been to the camp yet?”
“No.”
Miguel threw his head back and looked down his nose at Wences approvingly. “You know what?”
“What?”
“You’re not a panochón”—a pussy.
Wences nodded, proud.
Miguel gave him ten thousand dollars. “What do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“What? Like food?”
Miguel and his men laughed.
Wences thought about it. “I don’t have a car,” he said.
“What kind do you want?”
“An Avalanche.”
Miguel handed Wences a phone number and told him to take a few days of franco. “Call this number at nine every morning and nine every night. Don’t miss a call. You’ll be told when to reincorporate.” He gave Wences the name of a hotel where the Company had a block of rooms reserved.
Later that evening, a pearl-white Avalanche appeared out front.
A week later, Wences incorporated with Miguel’s escolta. Each day was a new raid, often many raids, busting down houses and killing Sinaloans. Rolling up to the house Wences would register the smallest noises, and steel himself against waves of adrenaline. Then stomping boots blew by like an ancient war cry. They went in through the back or the front, or sometimes they laid down cover fire while a soldado snuck up to the house and tossed a piña—a grenade; literally, a pineapple—through a window.
They did as many as ten raids a day. They’d take whatever they could carry after the contras were killed or captured. The loot—some combination of drugs, cash, guns, and jewelry—was piled on a table and split among the escolta. After a house was secured, Miguel would approach the most restless contra first and ask questions. Who do you work for? What do you do? Do you know so-and-so? How about so-and-so? He wanted addresses and names. He scribbled every piece of intelligence in a small notebook. He was always looking for the next house to raid. As conversation dwindled, Miguel would put his right hand on his .38 Special, tilt his head back, arch his neck, and shake his left leg, front to back, as if keeping time. The shaking leg: That was how Wences knew someone was about to die. Then Miguel would go to the second-most-restless contra, ask questions, and poom. Miguel’s eyes circling for the next and the next and . . . poom. If the contra gave him what he wanted, the contra died quickly. If the contra held out, ears and eyes and limbs flew.
Each day, Miguel and other Company men logged newly gathered information at the Company’s central intelligence office in Nuevo Laredo, known as La Central, where Miguel’s binder of names, faces, locations, and other intelligence was constantly updated. He also got locations from his panteras, the female spies and lookouts. These ladies slept with the enemy, snapped photos, and wrote down addresses. His panteras were so valuable that when the Mexican federal police attempted to extradite one to the States, he waged open battle in the plaza to prevent it.
He was a farmer’s son and a man of routine. Except for classic films with Mario Moreno, the Mexican comic actor better known as “Catinflas,” Miguel didn’t care for movies. He said they made people unrealistic about life. In Proceso, the weekly newsmagazine, he followed politics and cartel news, but he spoke of neither. At night, when they weren’t working, he wore white crewneck T-shirts; jeans or clam-digger-style shorts; and Nikes or Reeboks. Once a month he rented a hotel and told his men to invite their families for the weekend. He abstained from marijuana and coke, only sniffed a bundle or tasted a brick to confirm quality when loads moved through the plaza.
Where they worked, in the livestock-rich environs of northeast Mexico, Miguel treated his crew to cabrito, roast baby goat in tacos—sending out for two hundred tacos at a time—and cabeza de vaca en barbacoa: a whole smoked cow’s head from which the rich cheek meat was torn, shredded, wrapped in tortilla, and garnished with cilantro and onion. When near Monterrey, he sent bodyguards there to fetch massive quantities of cabrito from a famous restaurant called El Rey. Unlike other capos, Miguel didn’t try to intimidate underlings with wealth. If a soldier, or a soldier’s wife or child, or even a weekend girl, needed something, Miguel met the number without question, or sent a Company doctor immediately.
On franco they absconded to Tampico and the Playa Miramar. On that cobalt-watered coast north of Veracruz, under the shade of thatched palapas, it was always platters of mariscos, seafood, and beer. Once, when Wences, oblivious to tradition, asked for a cheeseburger, Miguel cracked up and said, “Si no estás en Boorger Keeng, güey!” and redubbed the boy “Hamburguesa.”
On some weekends Miguel hunted for deer on his brother Fito’s ranch and played basketball with his men. He visited his two preteen daughters from his first marriage; his son, Miguel, from his second; and his current wife, Maribel, and their son (also Miguel) and daughter. On other weekends, his bodyguards accompanied him to La Molienda, the racetrack where horses sprinted a quarter mile in seventeen seconds.
The quarter horses . . .
Miguel studied top bloodlines: Mr. Jess Perry, First Down Dash, Walk-Thru Fire. He learned how to buy into syndicates—shares in a top horse’s future offspring. These shares were marketable commodities, liquidity being one hallmark of a good investment. He learned about “equine embryo transfers,” in which breeders transfer embryos from an aging mare into a younger womb, harvesting foals from the impeccable genetics of a dying mother. Miguel tracked auctions and horses on a BlackBerry, calculating each horse’s value by comparing how much he paid at auction to how much each horse earned at races and in breeding fees. Before auctions, the ponies went on the Internet. He examined pictures. Did it have an imperfection in its gait? Did its knees work properly?
An agent who worked for Miguel found front men to buy horses on Miguel’s behalf—in Mexico and the States. Bucking industry practice, Miguel changed the names of his horses, once he owned them, to the names of cars: Rolls-Royce, Corvette, Bugatti, Jaguar, Porsche Turbo, Mercedes Roadster. Often, he raced a horse, then sold it back to the front man. When a front man, once contracted, refused to continue as a cog in Miguel’s scheme, he would be eaten raw—killed—and a new front man would take his place.
The horse-racing hobby was a decent way to launder money. For one thing, expenses were endless. Boarding and feed. Trainers. Entry fees and private racing facilities. Bribes to jockeys and gatekeepers. There were so many ways to disappear cash! On most money-laundering schemes, if you paid “twenty cents on the dollar”—that is, pay twenty cents to launder one dollar, receiving eighty cents back in clean money—you did well. But here was a scheme where you could actually make money. For big races, a typical winner’s purse was $400,000, and Miguel could fix races in Mexico in half a dozen ways. For instance, he could put a jolting device in his jockey’s hand. Or, if he had a weak pony racing, he could pay to have the track packed extra hard to favor slower horses. Or he could pay gatekeepers $10,000 each to hold their gate for a millisecond longer while his pony shot out first.
Miguel’s collection of quarter horses grew to several hundred. He bought a new ranch in Coahuila and called it La Ilusión. The trainers and breeders he employed knew not to raise the dangers of an overcrowded pasture—disease, injuries, fighting. Those trainers and breeders did whatever Miguel asked; after all, they made names for themselves in the industry by working for people who owned the best horses. El Comandante knew his business, and condescension was the gravest disrespect.
On Sundays Miguel went to church with his mother in Valle Hermoso.