The Last Line by Anthony Shaffer Read Free Book Online Page A

blue.
    â€œThis is how the Mexican cartels have carved things up so far, at least as far as we’ve been able to dope it out. Blue is Los Zetas. Yellow is Sinaloa.”
    The blue area stretched from the Texas border south along the Gulf Coast all the way to include the Yucatán, spreading inland as far as the Sierra Madre Oriental. The yellow region reached from the borders of New Mexico and Arizona south through central Mexico to Guadalajara, with a small, disconnected pocket down on the border with Guatemala. Other cartel-controlled areas were smaller and more isolated—the Tijuana Cartel in red, tucked in between the northern end of Baja California and San Diego; the Beltrán Leyva Cartel in orange, on the Pacific coast between Hermosillo and Mazatlán; La Familia Michoacana in green from Acapulco to Mexico City itself; the scattered remnants of the once-mighty Gulf Cartel, light blue patches around Matamoros and Tampico. Numerous other colors formed a scattered patchwork around individual cities: Los Negros, formerly part of Sinaloa; the tiny but powerful Juárez Cartel and its armed wing, La Línea; the Oaxaca Cartel; the South Pacific Cartel and the Knights Templar, both fragments of the disintegrating Beltrán Leyva Cartel. A number of photographs illustrated the map—cartel leaders and drug lords.
    â€œThe picture is always changing,” Larson said. “Shifting alliances, blood feuds, betrayals. Gangs go extinct. New gangs arise from the ashes. The Beltrán Leyva brothers used to be allies of Sinaloa, but since 2010 they’ve been cozy with Los Zetas. La Familia used to be part of the Gulf Cartel and allied with Los Zetas, but then they switched sides. We think they’re pretty much out of the picture, now, but an offshoot gang, Los Caballeros Templarios, the Knights Templar, is picking up the pieces now. They have an armed subgroup that calls itself La Resistencia, claims they’re ready to fight and die for social justice.”
    â€œSo they’re revolutionaries?” Procario asked. “Political?”
    â€œWhen you can buy and sell politicians, judges, police, and military personnel like candy,” Chavez pointed out, “they’re all fucking political.
    â€œThe two most powerful cartels are still Sinaloa and Los Zetas. Los Zetas started off as a gang of Mexican elite Special Forces, el Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzos Especiales. GAFE.” He pronounced the acronym to rhyme with “café.” “Superbly trained by U.S. Special Forces. Thirty of them deserted in ’99 to form a private mercenary army for the Gulf Cartel, but in 2010 they went freelance. Today they include GAFE deserters, corrupt federal, state, and local police officers, and Guatemalan Kaibiles.”
    Teller whistled softly. The Kaibiles were another elite Special Forces branch, trained in jungle warfare and counterinsurgency operations.
    â€œThe Zetas have pretty much taken over all of the old Gulf Cartel territory,” Larson said. “Their big nemesis has always been the Sinaloa Cartel.”
    â€œSinaloa is the really big, bad boy down there,” Chavez told them. “At least we think that’s the case. It got started all the way back in 1989, when the old Colombian cartels started falling apart. For a while, it was known as ‘the Federation,’ until the Beltrán Leyva Cartel broke away and set up shop for themselves. We estimate that Sinaloa alone has brought two hundred fifty tons of cocaine across into the United States between 1990 and 2012. God knows how much heroin and marijuana.”
    â€œWhat you’re saying,” Teller said, “is that all of these alliances and feuds down there keep changing the picture, and now you can’t even see what the picture is.”
    â€œExactly. The drug gangs started picking off our agents a couple of months ago. Right now, we have no active agents on the ground in Mexico, and