S even or eight cars and pickups were pulled over and a small crowd had gathered near a concrete power pole. He slowed to a stop and as he got out of the jeep he watched a man turn a young boy’s head away so he couldn’t see what the crowd was looking at. He worked his way in, asking as he did what vehicles anyone had seen coming out the hacienda road. Then he got a view.
Ramon Green and a young judicial police officer were chained back to back against the pole, heads bowed in death, intestines pulled out, flung like rope in the dirt. He knew what he was seeing, but still had to touch Green to be sure. He took Green’s wedding ring off and knelt there. Brian Hidalgo wasn’t found until the next morning. Many regular federales were part of the search and it was federales who told Marquez Viguerra was decapitated, his head left on a stake along the highway shoulder, and federales who drove Marquez miles out a road following a dry creek to an abandoned adobe house. Inside the house they showed him Hidalgo’s body, and then he sat for a long time outside on a rock near the dry creek.
Later in the afternoon, a Mex Fed contemporary of Viguerra told Marquez, ‘I’ve seen these kinds of wounds before. This is a man who works for the one you asked about. They brought your agent here to question him. This man who does this is not a Mexican. This is not something that a Mexican would do. You need to understand that.’
Marquez spent days getting debriefed by agents in the El Paso Field Office. Holsten and Boyer flew out. He spent hours with Holsten reconstructing the events, then handed over his badge
and flew home to LA.
Three days later, Marquez broke the lease on his apartment and crossed back into Mexico and began to hunt Stoval and the man who worked for him whose name he’d learned was Kline. He communicated half a dozen times with Kerry Anderson, who helped him and passed on information. He didn’t talk with anyone else other than Sheryl. In August he picked up a message from her telling him she had applied for a transfer to headquarters in Virginia and it looked like she was going. He didn’t call her back but he wished her luck.
Near Guadalajara he picked up a lead on Stoval’s man and followed that south to Mexico City, and when that went nowhere he went much farther south into jungle villages where he heard this Kline was often seen. He searched for six weeks before backing away from the jungle. Late one afternoon, sitting with a beer outside a bar along a dirt road, he was approached by an American who did not identify himself but told Marquez he needed to hide or fly home.
‘Why is that?’
‘Because the men you’re looking for are looking for you. Come here, let me show you something.’ He led Marquez to the cracked side mirror of a pickup truck and turned the mirror so Marquez could see himself. ‘Look at yourself.’
Marquez turned away instead and from behind him the man said, ‘I’m your only friend here and I’m warning you, don’t stay here tonight. They know you’re in the area. Questions are getting asked about you, not just here but in the States. Information is being traded. You’re being branded a rogue so your government can disown you. Stoval has a contact within the CIA that he provides information about the Salinas government in return for information he needs. He knows you’re no longer with the DEA and one of his men extracted personal information about you from one of the DEA agents killed here. Are you hearing me?’
‘Yeah, I’m listening.’
‘They’re hunting you. They’re asking more questions.’ The man tapped his chest. ‘If I found you, believe they can.’
‘Who asked you to find me?’
‘I’ll give you his initials. KA. Does that make sense?’ Marquez nodded and the man offered his hand. ‘Fly home, Marquez.’