I
[ONE]
Highway 95
80 Kilometers North of Acapulco de Juárez
Guerrero State, Mexico
1110 11 April 2007
“Oh, shit! The fucking Federales!” the driver of the off-white Suburban said when he saw the roadblock ahead.
“Our esteemed associates in the unceasing war against drugs,” the man sitting beside him said. “Try to remember you’re a diplomat.”
The driver of the car was Chief Warrant Officer (3) Daniel Salazar, Special Forces, U.S. Army. The man sitting beside him was Lieutenant Colonel James D. Ferris, also U.S. Army Special Forces. The two men in the back of the white Suburban were Antonio Martinez and Eduardo Torres, both of whom were special agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Lieutenant Colonel Ferris was an assistant military attaché of the United States embassy and Mr. Salazar was an administrative officer of the Office of the Military Attaché of the embassy. Both held diplomatic passports, and had been issued by the Mexican government a carnet—a plastic card the size of a driver’s license—further verifying this status. Martinez and Torres did not have diplomatic status but had been issued a carnet identifying them as DEA agents working in Mexico with the blessing of the Mexican government.
Everyone was in civilian clothing. Ferris and Salazar were armed. Both carried Colt Model 1911A1 .45 ACP semiautomatic pistols in high-rise holsters concealed by their loose cotton shirts. They were also armed with fully automatic 5.56mm AR-15A3 Tactical Carbines, now resting on the Suburban’s third row of seats.
The Mexican government didn’t like at all the fact that Americans were running around Mexico armed with pistols and what were actually submachine guns. But the laws of diplomacy are immutable. Diplomats are not subject to the laws of the country to which they are accredited.
Martinez and Torres were not armed. The theory was that because the DEA agents were working closely with Mexican law-enforcement authorities, including and usually the Policía Federal, these agencies would provide them with all the protection they needed.
The subject of weapons had been a bone of contention between Lieutenant Colonel Ferris and the Honorable J. Howard McCann, whom President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen had six weeks before appointed as his ambassador plenipotentiary to the Mexican Republic.
Sympathetic to the feelings of the Mexicans, Ambassador McCann had told the military attaché—Colonel Foster B. Lewis, MI—to make sure that Lieutenant Colonel Ferris was made aware that he agreed with the Mexican position that American diplomats should not go about armed absent a clear situation in which they might be in genuine danger.
When Colonel Lewis had a chat with Lieutenant Colonel Ferris about this, Ferris replied in a somewhat blunt manner perhaps to be expected of a Special Forces officer.
“Fuck him. I have no intention of getting blown away by some drug lord’s banditos without a fight.”
“Colonel, you have been informed of the ambassador’s desires.”
“Colonel, if you order me not to be armed, I will of course obey. I will also get on the horn to General McNab and request immediate relief.”
Colonel Lewis’s military superior was Major General Amos Watts, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s commander. Lieutenant Colonel Ferris’s immediate military superior was Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, the Special Operations Command (SPECOPSCOM) commander.
When Lewis reported the substance of his conversation with Ferris to Ambassador McCann, the ambassador considered the political ramifications of the impasse, the most important of these being that General McNab and Secretary of State Natalie Cohen were, if not friends, then mutual admirers.
It had been the secretary’s idea—rather than a proposal from one of her subordinates—to have Army Special Forces personnel sent to Mexico to train the Mexican military and police forces so that they could better wage their war against the drug cartels.
Ambassador McCann’s predecessor had protested the idea as best he could and had been overruled. The secretary was in love with her own idea.
Ambassador McCann’s predecessor had reported the substance of that conversation to McCann during the turnover.
“She told me that she had learned from General McNab that the primary role of Special Operations—despite all the publicity that Delta Force and Gray Fox get—is the training of indigenous forces to fight their own battles, and their success in doing so is judged by the amount of fighting the trainers have to do themselves, with no fighting at all being a perfect score. She said that seemed to her exactly what the situation in Mexico required.
“She also told me that she had prevailed upon General McNab to send her the best trainers he could, and that he had—‘reluctantly, we’re friends’—agreed to do so. So that’s what Ferris and his people are doing here—they’re on loan to the State Department for ten months. Ferris has been down here three.”
Ambassador McCann had told Colonel Lewis, “I’ll give this matter due consideration and make a decision about it later.”
Although Colonel Lewis considered himself a loyal subordinate of Ambassador McCann, he could not help himself from thinking that that was the sort of response one could expect from a career diplomat: Never decide today that which can be put off until tomorrow—or even later.
Whenever Lieutenant Colonel Ferris knew that he and Danny Salazar would be traveling through what he privately thought of as “Indian Territory,” accompanied by members of the DEA, or sometimes the FBI—the latter known as “legal attachés” and with the legal attaché afraid to defy Ambassador McCann, they also went unarmed—Ferris elected to arm himself and Danny with AR-15A3s in addition to their .45s. He had done so today when he headed for Acapulco.
He reasoned that if they were bushwhacked by drug scum, and the DEA or FBI guys happened to pick up the .45s that he and Danny happened to drop while grabbing their A3s, and that extra firepower kept everybody alive, he would hear nothing from Ambassador McCann.
The roadblock on the highway ahead consisted of six black-uniformed Federales operating out of a Ford F-250 6.4L diesel crew cab truck, which Colonel Ferris suspected had been paid for by U.S. taxpayers.