Hunting El Chapo: Taking down the world’s most-wanted drug-lord. Douglas Century

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СКАЧАТЬ his way through any business deal. But his confidence also came from meticulous preparation. We’d spent months creating our undercover legend: Diego would be playing the role of a senior executive, the director of operations for a US-based company—supposedly a covert criminal network—operating a ton-quantity drug-and-money transportation organization. Doña Guadalupe had already sold Diego to her people, including the head of a sophisticated money-brokerage-and-laundering cell led by Mercedes Chávez Villalobos and several of her associates, based in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Bogotá, Colombia.

      When Diego spoke with Mercedes, she had been aggressive, fast-talking, and extremely demanding. Diego told me she was a tough chilanga from Mexico City.

      After doing a quick international work-up on her, I discovered that there was a warrant out for Mercedes in Amsterdam, for laundering money back in 2008. And she had connections all around the world, country-hopping almost weekly. She was always looking for a better deal, for someone trustworthy who could move hundreds of millions of dollars quickly—and strictly on a handshake.

      “Do you really believe she’s sitting on all this money?” The night before the sit-down, I was staring at streams of data on my MacBook, and the dollar amounts were staggering. “She’s supposedly got a hundred million in Spain. Fifty mil in Canada. Ten mil in Australia. And some two hundred million in Mexico City?”

      “Look, I’m skeptical, too,” Diego said, “but what other options do we have? We need to play her out to see if she can deliver.”

      “What we need to know,” I said, “is who all of this money really belongs to.”

      “Agreed.”

      OUT ON THE HOTEL BALCONY, I gazed over the thin glass wall down at the city below. Mercedes was staying at one of the few luxury hotels in town that had been completely finished. So much of the Panama City skyline remained half-constructed: cranes and scaffolding and exposed girders. Brand-new buildings had been abandoned half-complete, while many of the finished ones were empty.

      Panama City was the money-laundering capital of the Western Hemisphere. Banks had sprouted up on every corner like cactus along the sidewalks of Phoenix. Citibank, Chase, RBC, Bank of Montreal . . . but also lesser-known Latin American ones: Balboa Bank & Trust, Banco General, Mercantil Bank, and Centro Comercial de Los Andes . . . There was plenty of legitimate banking business, but some, like HSBC, faced criminal prosecution for “willfully failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program” in connection with hundreds of millions of dollars of dirty drug money belonging to Mexican cartel bosses.⁴

      Over the months of phone-wooing, Mercedes had suggested meeting Diego face-to-face in Mexico City, but the DEA brass considered it too dangerous, and our Mexican police counterparts would never allow it. “El Canal” was perfect: Panama was known as a neutral zone for drug traffickers from all around the world to meet without threats of territorial disputes or violence. It was also geographically convenient if you wanted to meet Colombian or Mexican contacts. Many in the narco world felt at ease in this glitzy isthmus.

      Eventually we wandered back to our hotel rooms. I had at least an hour of writing ahead, typing up the sixes, without which this entire Panama City operation would have no evidentiary value.⁵

      As I slogged away on the reports, Diego sat on the edge of the bed, filling me in on the details from his recent phone conversations with Mercedes. But as the UC, Diego had to get his mind right—mingling with the locals, feeling the vibe of the city—so once he’d finished briefing me, he went down to the third-floor casino for another round of drinks. I sipped a fresh Balboa and continued banging away on the sixes. Fifteen minutes later, the hotel door opened.

      “It’s looking really good down there,” Diego said.

      “Meaning?”

      “Lot of hotties.” Diego smiled. “A few of them were checking me out—for real. One of them was eye-fucking me hard, brother.”

      “C’mon, dude, I gotta finish up this fuckin’ six,” I said, laughing, then Diego slid another Balboa across the desk. I took a deep breath and slapped my MacBook closed, and the two of us headed down to the third floor. Diego wasn’t exaggerating. As those elevator doors opened, the casino bar was swarming with some of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen—some in slit miniskirts, tube tops, stiletto heels, and tight jeans showcasing the work of some of the top Colombian plastic surgeons.

      It took a few minutes of Spanish small talk before I realized these women were all high-dollar Colombian prostitutes on “work visas” from Medellín, Cali, and Bogotá. Diego shrugged, and we decided to hang out with the girls anyway, dancing as a live band played, even though I had no idea what I was doing—the merengue steps were easy enough to fake, but with the sophisticated swirling salsa moves, I had to let my colombiana lead. Then we all hopped in a cab and headed out to one of the city’s hottest nightclubs. A few more drinks, a little more dancing. Then another club...

      Diego and I made it back to our rooms just in time to get three hours of sleep before the big meet. But Diego’s mind was right now: he was ready to negotiate with some of the Sinaloa Cartel’s most powerful money brokers. This became the typical pattern for our first night in any foreign country: we’d tear it up until nearly dawn, taking in the nightlife like the locals and getting a firsthand understanding of the streets, which would prove invaluable when we entered UC meetings.

      When I was on the verge of sleep, I caught a flash of an infamous face on my hotel room TV. In Spanish I heard that, for the first time, Forbes had listed Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as a billionaire, one of the richest and most powerful “businessmen” in the world.

      WE HAD SELECTED a popular high-end steakhouse called La Rosita—located just inside the front door of a luxury shopping mall—for the next day’s undercover meet with Mercedes Chávez Villalobos.

      The plan was this: Diego and Mercedes would sit at an outdoor table so I could keep my eyes on my partner throughout the meeting from inside the cab of a Toyota Hilux pickup, the G-ride that belonged to one of the DEA agents permanently stationed in Panama.

      Neither Diego nor I could carry: Panamanian law wouldn’t allow us to bring our handguns into the country. But Diego was armed with one high-tech gadget: a secret key-fob camera that looked like an ordinary car key remote but was capable of discreetly recording hours of audio and video.

      Diego was dressed in a well-tailored three-button dark gray suit, a white shirt, and a solid maroon tie pulled so tight it made the bottom of his neck puff out against his collar.

      “Kill it, baby,” I said, leaning over, hugging him. Diego nodded, mouth drawn tight as if he were already running scenarios in his head.

      I set up the G-ride in the busy parking lot as close as I could to watch Diego enter the restaurant, discreetly parked, but with a perfect line of sight to the terrace tables.

      But after two minutes, there was still no sign of Diego.

      Three minutes passed. Then five. Then seven. I still couldn’t see him on the terrace. I thumb-typed a text in our prearranged code, in case they checked his phone: innocuous Mexican slang for “What’s happening, dude?”

      “K onda, güey?”

      No reply from Diego.

      “K onda?”

      My leg began twitching nervously.

      I СКАЧАТЬ