The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow
the coke charge. But by then it’s too late, because by that time your career is fucked, your marriage is fucked and you are fucked.”
“I’ll sue you for malicious prosecution,” Claiborne says. “I’ll destroy your career.”
“Here’s the bad news for you,” Mullen says. “I don’t care about my career. I’ve got kids dying on my watch. I only care about stopping the drugs. So sue me. I have a house in Long Island City, you can have it—the roof leaks, by the way, full disclosure.
“Now, here’s what’s going to happen—I’m going to have a DA up here in about thirty minutes. She can take your statement, which will be composed of a full and forthright confession, and write a memorandum of agreement for your cooperation, the details of which you will work out with Agent Hidalgo here. Or she can charge you with the full monty and we’ll all go to the precinct together and get this war started. But, son? I’m telling you this right now, and I beg you to believe me, I am not the guy you want to go to war with. Because I will fly the last kamikaze mission right into your ship. So you have a half hour to think about it.”
Hidalgo and Mullen step out into the hallway.
“I’m impressed,” Hidalgo says.
“Ahhhh,” Mullen says. “It’s an old routine. I have it down.”
“Do you know what we’re taking on here?”
Because Claiborne’s not entirely wrong. You start fucking with people who control billions of dollars, they fuck back. And a John Dennison could do a lot of fucking back.
“Your boss said he was willing to go the whole way,” Mullen says. “If that was bullshit, I need to know now, so I can kick this asshole.”
“I’ll call him.”
Mullen goes back in to babysit.
Hidalgo gets on the phone to Keller and fills him in. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Oh, yeah.
Keller is sure.
It’s time to start agitating.
Keller testifies in front of Ben O’Brien’s committee to brief them on his strategy for combatting the heroin epidemic. He started by dismissing the so-called kingpin strategy.
“As you know,” Keller says, “I was one of the chief supporters of the kingpin strategy—the focus on arresting or otherwise disposing of the cartel leaders. It roughly parallels our strategy in the war on terror. In coordination with the Mexican marines, we did an extraordinary job of it, lopping off the heads of the Gulf, Zeta, and Sinaloa cartels along with dozens of other plaza bosses and other high-ranking members. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked.”
He tells them that marijuana exports from Mexico are down by almost 40 percent, but satellite photos and other intelligence show that the Sinaloans are converting thousands of acres from marijuana to poppy cultivation.
“You just said that you decapitated the major cartels,” one of the senators says.
“Exactly,” Keller says. “And what was the result? An increase in drug exports into the United States. In modeling the war against terrorists, we’ve been following the wrong model. Terrorists are reluctant to take over the top spots of their dead comrades—but the profits from drug trafficking are so great that there is always someone willing to step up. So all we’ve really done is to create job vacancies worth killing for.”
The other major strategy of interdiction—the effort to prevent drugs from coming across the border—also hasn’t worked, he explains to them. The agency estimates that, at best, they seize about 15 percent of the illicit drugs coming across the border, even though, in their business plans, the cartels plan for a 30 percent loss.
“Why can’t we do better than that?” a senator asks.
“Because your predecessors passed NAFTA,” Keller says. “Three-quarters of the drugs come in on tractor-trailer trucks through legal crossings—San Diego, Laredo, El Paso—the busiest commercial crossings in the world. Thousands of trucks every day, and if we thoroughly searched every truck and car, we’d shut down commerce.”
“You’ve told us what doesn’t work,” O’Brien says. “So what will work?”
“For fifty years our primary effort has been stopping the flow of drugs from south to north,” Keller says. “My idea is to reverse that priority and focus on shutting down the flow of money from north to south. If money stops flowing south, the motivation to send drugs north will diminish. We can’t destroy the cartels in Mexico, but maybe we can starve them from the United States.”
“It sounds to me like you’re surrendering,” one says.
“No one is surrendering,” Keller says.
It’s a closed hearing but he wants to keep this on the broadest possible terms. He sure as hell doesn’t tell them about Agitator, because if you sneeze in DC someone on Wall Street says gesundheit. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the senators, but he doesn’t trust the senators. A campaign year is coming up, two of the guys sitting in front of him have set up “exploratory committees” and PACs, and they’re going to be looking for campaign contributions. And like me, Keller thinks, they’re going to go where the money is.
New York.
Blair has already tipped him that Denton Howard is crawling into bed with John Dennison.
“They had dinner together at one of Dennison’s golf clubs down in Florida,” Blair said.
Keller guesses he was on the menu.
Dennison, still flirting with running, tweeted, DEA boss wants to let drug dealers out of prison! A disgrace!
Well, Keller thinks, I do want to let some drug dealers out of prison. But he doesn’t need Howard talking out of school. After the hearing, he collars O’Brien in the hallway and tells him he wants Howard out.
“You can’t fire him,” O’Brien says.
“You can.”
“No, I can’t,” O’Brien says. “He’s a Tea Party favorite and I’m facing a revolt from the right in the next election. I can’t win the general if I lose in the primary. You’re stuck with him.”
“He’s stabbing me in the back.”
“No shit,” O’Brien says. “That’s what we do in this town. The best way for you to deal with it is to get results.”
The man is right, Keller thinks.
He goes back to the office and calls Hidalgo in.
“How are we doing with Claiborne?”
“He’s given us shit,” Hidalgo says. “‘This broker does coke, this hedge fund manager is heavy into tree …’”
“Not good enough,” Keller says. “Lean on him.”
“Will do.”
The “bottom-up” half of Agitator is going well—Cirello is climbing the ladder. But the “top-down” half is stalled—this cute piece of shit Claiborne thinks he can play them by giving them bits and pieces.
They need to bring him up short, make him produce.
No more free ride.
He pays the fare or he’s off the bus.
They meet on the Acela.
“What do you think we are, Chandler, assholes?” Hidalgo asks. “You think you can just blow us off and go on with your life?”
“I’m trying.”
“Not hard enough.”
“What do you want me to do?” Chandler asks.