CRIPPLING A CARTEL

The body count was rising.

The young gangster shot in the head near Lockhart. The dope dealer beaten to death at Bel-Air Motel. The late-night partier stabbed repeatedly outside Spirits nightclub.

Nearly a dozen slayings and attacks flared, then faded like a muzzle flash. The 1997-98 crimes remain unsolved, but all shared an unmistakable connection.

The suspects were tied to the state's most feared prison gang: the Texas Syndicate, which was growing into a major drug supplier in Austin.

Alarmed, investigators launched an assault on the gang, gathering a mountain of evidence gleaned from cameras, phone taps and stakeouts. A year later, prosecutors indicted 22 Texas Syndicate members and associates on drug charges.

Twenty of the men, facing overwhelming evidence, pleaded guilty in federal court. Two remain fugitives.

This week, 19 men will be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Austin. They face 10 years to life in prison.

The guilty pleas conclude thousands of hours of police work. Obsessive attention to detail. Undercover drug buys. Breakfast tacos and hamburgers in the car during stakeouts.

A year of solid work derailed a decades-old gang that used its violent reputation and drug connections to pump hundreds of pounds of narcotics into Austin.

On a warm fall night, Tejano music thumped at Tejas Ice House. Patrons crowded outside the blue and white beer joint on East Cesar Chavez Street, their modified pickups overflowing the jammed parking lot.

Austin police Detective Ralph De La Fuente and FBI Special Agent Stephen Hause cruised past the bar in their silver Nissan Sentra, searching for a familiar face.

There he was, as usual. The dark-haired guy wearing sunglasses at night. Flanked by friends, cell phone to his ear, the tall man lounged on an outdoor picnic table cluttered with beer bottles. One by one, partiers stopped to engage him.

His name was Hector Soto, the man who small-time drug dealers consistently fingered as one of the city's main drug dealers.

"If I wanted to score a kilo of cocaine today, where would I go?" Hause had asked a clean-cut, small-time pusher caught with an ounce of cocaine.

"Some guy named Soto," the man answered. "He's Texas Syndicate."

They'd heard it before, over and over. According to rumors, the gang had big plans for Austin, including a scheme to collect a 10 percent "tax" from every drug dealer in town, even those who didn't sell for the syndicate.

Investigators knew a little about Soto. Born in 1965. A Laredo native. No job. An Austin man who had avoided jail since a 1994-97 stint in state prison for marijuana possession and vehicle theft.

Soto wasn't a suspect in the spasm of violence that brought heat on the Texas Syndicate, but police realized that dismantling the drug ring would gut the gang.

It was October 1998. The hunt had begun, and Soto was the target.

A multiagency investigation was dubbed Operation Texas Style. The FBI led strategy. Austin police did the legwork. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice pulled prison records. U.S. attorneys cleared legal issues. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms filed weapons charges.

De La Fuente and Hause became the key investigators in a concentrated attack on a violent gang born decades earlier.

The Texas Syndicate emerged in the 1970s in California's Folsom Prison. Hispanic Texans, outnumbered by existing gangs, banded together for protection.

As Texas Syndicate's members trickled back into Lone Star State prisons, the gang earned a reputation as one of the state's most feared prison gangs.

Compared to other gangs, its numbers are small. The Mexican Mafia, a rival San Antonio gang, boasts about 1,800 documented members statewide. Texas Syndicate has about 900, but they compensate with extreme violence, said Fred Rhea, an investigator with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The gang's tentacles stretch beyond prison walls. When members are released, they are expected to sell drugs and send money back to jail.

Quitting is not an option.

"They consider it blood in, blood out," Rhea said. "Once you're in, you don't get out. You die before you get out."

Circling The Target

The ranch house on Middleham Place, with its pink brick and shrubbery, easily blends into its South Austin neighborhood. Despite the maroon burglar bars that cover the windows, Soto's rental house attracted little attention from passers-by.

But to investigators, it was a source of constant scrutiny.

Four-man surveillance teams trailed Soto around town in nondescript cars, maneuvering with long-tried tactics. Follow behind, but not too far. Drive ahead, but not too fast.

Under shady trees, down neighborhood streets, beside privacy fences, the undercover officers snapped pictures of Soto's house.

They scribbled down license plate numbers, noted times and dates of visitors.

They lived in cars cluttered with clothes, notebooks and balled-up food wrappers.

"It's easy to get burned out," said Sgt. Doug Dukes of the Austin Police Department, who coordinated the surveillance teams. "You really have to stay focused on the case. You spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen, and when it does, you have to be in a position to move."

Back in the office, De La Fuente and Hause waded through scores of prison records and interviews. They ran criminal checks and pulled Social Security numbers on anyone associated with Soto. Did they work? Pay taxes? Have gang connections?

By February 1999, investigators were monitoring Soto's telephone calls. With a surveillance tool similar to caller ID, they immediately saw whom Soto phoned -- and who called him.

With every call came hours of research.

"We had to verify who these guys were," De La Fuente said. "We don't want to put some guy in a file saying he's dealing dope when, in fact, all he is is the air conditioning man."

What investigators missed, a camera captured.

Hidden near Soto's house, shaded by trees and buildings, a video camera recorded 24 hours a day. It captured him washing his car or greeting friends. It also showed people moving suspicious packages from one car into the trunk of another.

Although dozens of people pored over the case, at its core was a seemingly odd couple: De La Fuente, an instantly chatty 50-year-old detective, and Hause, a 37-year-old with the standard-issue FBI reserve.

Put them in an interview room and they instinctively played good cop, bad cop. De La Fuente, a 25-year Austin Police Department veteran with a computer-like memory for gang history, aggressively pushed suspects. Hause, a former accountant turned FBI agent nine years ago, stayed cool and logical.

But the two were more alike than different.

Both jokers, both doggedly stubborn, they worked 12-hour days, often following suspects until 2 a.m. They plotted strategy over beers at happy hour, jotting notes on Ruby Tuesday bar napkins.

Tightening The Circle

De La Fuente, Hause and several investigators sat in an FBI office in July, eating pizza and scribbling notes as Soto's voice filled the room.

After nine months on the job, court-ordered wiretaps on Soto's home and cellular telephones had given investigators a direct link to the gang. At last they could put voices to long-watched faces.

Conversation was in slang Spanish, ripe with prison lingo and street talk. Sometimes they spoke English, but always in code.

Grass, carpet, avocado and lettuce meant marijuana.

White, girls, chunky and ice meant cocaine.

Receipts, invitations and paper meant money.

Occasionally, when the code became too convoluted for even the pushers to follow, Soto would cut through the confusion with a pointed question:

"You know what I'm talking about?"

"Oh, oh yeah," the dealer would answer. "OK."

"That's all Hector did all day long," Hause said. "Met with people about drugs and talked to people about drugs."

To gather evidence that the Texas Syndicate was selling narcotics, investigators orchestrated several controlled drug buys using drug dealers arrested during the operation.

Investigators eventually outlined a network they believed had funneled hundreds of pounds of marijuana and cocaine from South America to Austin by way of Mexico.

By this time, the violence that defined Texas Syndicate in previous years had diminished as the gang focused on selling drugs. Not inconsequentially, the investigation's tight focus on the syndicate often sent its most volatile members back to prison on parole violation charges.

For De La Fuente and Hause, the investigation became all-consuming. They jumped at every pager call, sometimes hopping into cars at midnight to follow Soto around town. They spent off-hours flipping through pictures and records.

"I would just see him in my dreams," De La Fuente said. "Nothing scary. Steve and I would be somewhere and Hector would be there. . . . It was always in the back of my head because I wanted to know every move he made."

But with obsession came the fear of blowing their cover. It was a worry that would follow them until Oct. 13 -- raid day.

With the 90-day limit on Soto's wiretaps about to expire and a year's worth of evidence amassed, it was time.

The Hammer Drops

On a cool, clear October morning around 7:30, 11 raid teams waited for the word.

They stood in parking lots and on side streets across South Austin, each team preparing to raid a house. Three simultaneous raids also were planned at the Laredo and Houston homes of Soto associates.

The teams had studied pictures, dossiers, maps and prison histories. More than 50 law officers had driven by the target homes and attended briefings. They would arrest gang members and confiscate anything related to their case: guns, drugs, records, computers, money, cars.

Back in a police office in Northeast Austin, De La Fuente, Hause and dozens of people bustled in a makeshift command center filled with tables, charts, bulletin boards, fax machines, telephones and radios. Minutes after the last raid team checked in, Hause picked up his radio.

"OK, let's hit it."

Twenty-five minutes of radio silence followed.

While officers in black SWAT team gear banged on doors, the command center waited and worried.

De La Fuente, who hadn't slept all night, sat by the radio and counted the minutes. Hause faxed additional pictures and license plate numbers to officers in Laredo and Houston. The room buzzed with strained murmurs.

Then a voice crackled over the radio. "Location number three. Three suspects in custody. All clear."

Word from the other raid teams trickled in. The arrests were made without incident, yet police confiscated only a few pounds of marijuana and a few ounces of cocaine.

Not that investigators were expecting much. Just days earlier, a gang associate had been arrested with nearly3 kilograms, or about 6 1/2 pounds, of cocaine, a take worth $45,000 to $54,000 on the street. That had caused Soto to shut off his phone and stop dealing, police say.

With so much evidence already gathered, investigators didn't worry about the lack of drugs.

And at 9:30 a.m., Hause and De La Fuente finally met the man they had obsessed about for nearly a year.

Confronting The Boss

Hector Soto walked into interview room No. 1 in cutoff jeans and handcuffs. A raid team had dragged him out of bed, his hair ruffled and his face unshaven.

Sitting at a small table, he glanced up to see large, color pictures of himself lining the walls: Soto outside a bar with friends. On a prison handball team. At the center of a Texas Syndicate organizational chart.

Sitting across from Soto, De La Fuente and Hause spoke for 30 minutes.

Because Soto refused to cooperate, there is no recorded or written documentation of that interview. But according to investigators, the meeting started with an introduction.

"How are you doing, sir? I'm Detective De La Fuente, this is Agent Steve Hause. You know why you are here?"

Soto nodded. "Yes."

"OK," De La Fuente said. "Let me take those handcuffs off you."

Soto rubbed his hands as the cuffs came off. Pale and swallowing hard, he wasn't talking -- but he wasn't aggressive.

For 30 minutes, the investigators dropped bits of information, a way to show just how closely they'd been watching Soto. Remember that day you and your son were at the lake on Jet Skis? Is Marty still mad at you for not putting oil in his truck? Did you ever fix that '64 Chevy?

Still, nothing. Soto shook his head, denied it all -- the drug dealing, the gang involvement -- and even made jokes.

"Man, dude, you never slept or what?"

"Yeah," De La Fuente answered, "but I was dreaming about you."

And then, after Soto was fingerprinted and photographed, U.S. marshals took him to jail.

A Measure Of Closure

Almost three months later, Soto stood before a federal court judge in Austin on Jan. 4 to plead guilty to drug conspiracy charges.

Along with the 19 associates who also pleaded guilty, the exact nature of Soto's plea agreement has not been made public. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Sievert, the case prosecutor, declined to comment because the men won't be sentenced until Thursday and Friday of this week.

Police believe the arrests hit the Texas Syndicate hard, ending its high-profile era of drug dealing. If gang members continue to operate, they are doing it quietly, De La Fuente said. Even Soto's hangout, the Tejas Ice House, closed shortly after the bust.

But police know that gangs -- and their drug dealing -- are far from gone.

"It works in cycles," De La Fuente said. "It'll stay in the heads of these little gangsters for a little while, then they'll fall off the wagon and start screwing up again."

In a city of roughly 650,000 people, 22 indictments can seem inconsequential. They're not, said ATF Agent Mike Dodd, who worked on the case.

With drug sales come burglaries, assaults, car thefts. And then there are associated crimes: tax fraud, welfare fraud and illegal guns. Cutting down on narcotics causes a trickle-down effect toward creating safer communities, Dodd said.

"It reduces all kinds of crimes. It cleans up neighborhoods. It's noticed by the city as a whole," he said.

After the arrests, Hause and De La Fuente spent months working with prosecutors on the case. Only lately has life returned to normal after an obsession that made them miss parties, vacations and family outings.

"Now it's fun," De La Fuente said. "If I'm not on duty or on call, I shut this pager off.

"I'm not curious about what's happening at Hector Soto's house anymore."

You may contact Andrea Ball at aball@statesman.com or 912-2506.