War Without Borders

MEXICAN CARTELS LURE AMERICAN TEENS AS KILLERS

LAREDO, Tex. -- When he was finally caught, Rosalio Reta told
detectives here that he had felt a thrill each time he killed. It was
like being Superman or James Bond, he said.

Gabriela Maldonado, whose son Gabriel Cardona became an assassin for a
Mexican drug cartel as a teenager.

"I like what I do," he told the police in a videotaped confession. "I
don't deny it."

Mr. Reta was 13 when he was recruited by the Zetas, the infamous
assassins of the Gulf Cartel, law enforcement officials say. He was
one of a group of American teenagers from the impoverished streets of
Laredo who was lured into the drug wars across the Rio Grande in
Mexico with promises of high pay, fancy cars and sexy women.

After a short apprenticeship, the young men lived in an expensive
house in Texas, available to kill whenever called on. The Gulf Cartel
was engaged in a turf war with the Sinaloa Cartel over the Interstate
35 corridor, the north-south highway that connects Laredo to Dallas
and beyond, and is, according to law enforcement officials, one of the
most important arteries for drug smuggling in the Americas.

The young men all paid a heavy price. Jesus Gonzalez III was beaten
and knifed to death in a Mexican jail at 23. Mr. Reta, now 19, and his
boyhood friend, Gabriel Cardona, 22, are serving what amounts to life
sentences in prisons in the United States.

Other young Americans in their circle who the police say worked for
the Zetas have also ended up in prison, have fled into hiding in
Mexico or have disappeared in the permanent way that people wrapped up
in the Mexican drug trade tend to go missing.

In the minds of many Americans, the Rio Grande divides Mexico, a
corrupt land where drug cartels often seem to have the upper hand,
from the United States, a nation of law and order, where the
authorities try to keep criminal gangs in check.

But the reality on the border is much more complex. The Mexican drug
cartels recruit young men from both countries and operate their
smuggling and murder-for-hire rings on both sides of the divide,
though under slightly different rules of engagement.

That complexity was reflected in the short but bloody careers of Mr.
Reta, Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Cardona, who are linked to crimes in both
countries, according to trial transcripts, court documents and
interviews with detectives and family members.

While working as hired guns in 2005 and 2006, the three Americans
lived in a house rented by their employers on Hibiscus Street in
Laredo, according to testimony at Mr. Reta's trial. Another crew of
three assassins, all from Mexico, were also camped out there, awaiting
orders, law enforcement officials said.

The Mexican government has been trying to crack down on the drug
cartels, an effort that has left more than 10,000 Mexicans dead in the
last 18 months. Some deaths are the result of shootouts between the
cartels and the authorities, with both sides heavily armed. But the
assassinations of drug dealers involved in turf battles and of police
officers and army personnel who get in the way -- the kind of work Mr.
Reta, Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Cardona did -- also accounts for thousands
of bodies.

The two teams of assassins took direction from Lucio Quintero, or El
Viejon, a capo in the Zetas across the river, trial records show. They
received $500 a week as a retainer and $10,000 to $50,000 for each
assassination, and the triggerman was given two kilos of cocaine.

Detective Roberto A. Garcia Jr. of the Laredo Police Department said
they all worked for Miguel Trevino, the leader of the Zetas in Nuevo
Laredo, the Mexican city across the river from Laredo, who goes by the
name El Cuarenta, which means Forty. (Many Zetas identify themselves
by a number.)

In addition to their retainers, the assassins received perks. At one
point, Mr. Reta was given a new $70,000 Mercedes, for a job well done.
Family members described how the young men would go to parties hosted
by cartel capos. To keep up morale, the drug leaders would raffle off
automobiles, firearms and even dates with attractive women, the family
members said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

'They Just Seduce You'

Most of the American youths were recruited in a discotheque, the
Eclipse, on the main square of Nuevo Laredo just across one of two
bridges that connect the two towns. It is a darkened dive where
teenagers go to drink, dance and flirt while reggaeton thunders. But
cartel members lurk there, too, watching for possible recruits, the
police say.

"The cartels -- they just seduce you," said Detective Garcia, who with
his partner in the Laredo Police Department, Carlos Adan, broke up the
ring. "They wave that power, that cash, the cars, the easy money. And
these kids all have that romantic notion they are going to live forever."

Detective Garcia described Mr. Cardona as the ringleader of the
American cell of assassins, a savvy, brash young man who orchestrated
at least five murders in Laredo of people connected to the Sinaloa
Cartel.

In a deal with prosecutors, Mr. Cardona eventually pleaded guilty to
kidnapping two American teenagers -- one of whom had drug-gang
connections -- in March 2006 at a Mexican nightclub, taking them to a
cartel safe house and stabbing them to death with a broken bottle.
Investigators say he had collected the victims' blood in a glass and
toasted La Santa Muerte, a personification of death worshiped by some
Mexicans. A federal judge sentenced Mr. Cardona to life in prison in
March.

His mother, Gabriela Maldonado, a home health worker, said Mr. Cardona
had grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father, but had done well in
school through eighth grade, when his father abandoned the family.

Then Mr. Cardona began to skip classes and hang out with drug users on
Lincoln Street. Soon he was sent to juvenile prison for aggravated
assault, and after that he moved out of the house. Overnight, it
seemed, he appeared to have a lot of cash and showed up in different
cars, his mother said. At first, he told his mother he was "a
soldier," then later he said he had become "a commander."

"He was so intelligent -- I don't know what happened to him," she said.
"He always said when he was young that he wanted to be a lawyer."

If Mr. Cardona was the brains of the group, Mr. Reta was the keenest
to become a professional assassin, Detective Garcia said. In July
2006, Mr. Reta told detectives in a videotaped confession that he had
participated in at least 30 killings in Mexico, a statement that the
authorities there could not confirm.

Mr. Reta told Detective Garcia that he was 13 the first time he killed
a man. He said he was asked to prove his loyalty by doing it in front
of Mr. Trevino, and he told the detective that he had used a .38 Super
pistol to shoot the man as he was being held down in a chair at a safe
house in the state of Tamaulipas.

After that, killing became addictive, Mr. Reta told Detective Garcia,
and he compared the feeling to the allure of candy to a small child.
"There were others to do it, but I would volunteer," Mr. Reta said in
the taped interview with the police. "It was like a James Bond game."

"Anyone can do it, but not everyone wants to," he added. "Some are
weak in the mind and cannot carry it in their conscience. Others sleep
as peacefully as fish."

Mr. Reta also told the police that he had attended a training camp in
Mexico for six months, where he learned to shoot assault rifles and
engage in hand-to-hand combat. One of his instructors, he said, was an
Israeli mercenary. Mr. Reta was also proud of his marksmanship.

"If I cannot hit you in the forehead from a distance," he boasted in
his interview with the police, "I will kneel down in front of you and
put my forehead against the muzzle of your gun. I will look you in the
eyes while you kill me."

No Longer a Good Boy

Family members say Mr. Reta grew up with nine brothers and sisters,
living in a tiny wood house, propped up on cinder blocks, in a yard
devoid of grass. His father worked construction; his mother was a
hairdresser. Before the age of 12, he was a well-mannered boy,
respectful of his elders, who did tolerably well in school and spent
most afternoons playing ball in a nearby park.

But puberty changed him. Mr. Reta ran away from home, living for a
time at a girlfriend's house. He also began to get in trouble with the
law. He was picked up for marijuana possession and spent a year in a
juvenile prison for firing a gun in public. He also became fascinated
with commandos and dreamed of joining the Navy Seals, a person
familiar with his life said.

On frequent trips to Mexico, he was also becoming involved with the
Zetas, a family member said, speaking on the condition of anonymity
for fear of reprisals from drug dealers. On trips home, Mr. Reta
described killings in Mexico that he had witnessed and, in some cases,
participated in. "He sounded so excited when he talked about all these
things he was doing," the family member said.

Now Mr. Reta lives in a cramped cell at the Robertson Unit, a state
prison in Abilene, Tex. Despondent over being sentenced to 70 years
for two killings in Laredo, he paid a fellow prisoner to tattoo flames
and horn shapes on his face, giving him a demonic look.

As he talks, his countenance shifts back and forth, from the deadpan
of a street tough with emotionless eyes to the oddly innocent laugh
and smile of a 19-year-old boy for whom everything is a lark. His
voice is soft and melodic, even when his words are menacing.

Mr. Reta declined to comment on his career as an assassin in Mexico,
though he neither denied nor recanted his previous statements to the
Laredo police. He did say he was innocent of taking part in one of the
two killings he was convicted of in the United States and predicted
his name would be cleared on appeal. "Not everything they say about me
is true," he said.

Speaking of his upbringing, he said that to him and his friends,
growing up in ramshackle houses on dirt lots, the narcotics
traffickers were heroes. The poorest counties in America lie along the
Rio Grande, and Mr. Reta recalled stealing gummy bears from a local
candy shop with Mr. Cardona when they were children.

"You know, here, all the little kids that are young, they say, 'I want
to be a firefighter when I grow up,' " Mr. Reta said, "Well down
there, they say, 'When I grow up, I want to be a Zeta.' "

"You know, it's the money, cars, houses, girls," he said, pausing,
"and you know that ain't going to last a lifetime, that it's going to
end."

A Botched Assassination

It is unclear precisely how many killings in Mexico Mr. Reta had a
role in. The Mexican authorities arrested him on charges that he was
one of four men, led by a former commander of the Nuevo Laredo
municipal police, who in May 2006 attacked El Punto Vivo Bar in
Monterrey with grenades and rifles, killing 4 and injuring 25.

Afraid a rival gang would murder him in a Mexican jail, Mr. Reta
called Detective Garcia and a Drug Enforcement Administration agent,
Chris Diaz, shortly after his arrest pleading to be extradited to the
United States, where he was wanted for the murder of Noe Flores in
January 2006.

Though he claimed he did not shoot Mr. Flores, he admitted to the
police that he had driven the getaway car. Mr. Cardona did the
shooting, he said, after Mr. Gonzalez got cold feet, sat in the
backseat and watched the killing take place in the front yard of a
house.

That confession was eventually excluded from the evidence against him,
forcing a second trial, at which he was convicted on other evidence,
including his fingerprints found on a cigarette case in the getaway
car. His lawyer has appealed the conviction.

According to testimony at Mr. Reta's second trial, the crew botched
the assassination. The group had intended to kill Miguel Flores, but
shot his brother instead. A woman working for the cartel had spotted
the Floreses at a Laredo bar and called Mr. Trevino, who in turn
telephoned the assassins.

Mr. Flores was not the three assassins' first victim on American soil,
the authorities say. The same crew, prosecutors say, shot and killed
Moises Garcia, a reputed drug dealer and member of the Mexican Mafia
prison gang, outside the Torta-Mex restaurant on Dec. 8, 2005, while
his wife and child looked on. In March, Mr. Reta pleaded guilty to
being the triggerman in that killing and was sentenced to 30 years.

Detective Garcia said Mr. Reta's phone call from a Mexican jail was
not the first time he had called. While investigating the Flores
killing, Detective Garcia used evidence found in the getaway car to
track down a tattoo artist who could identify Mr. Reta, Mr. Cardona
and Mr. Garcia. Frightened, the tattoo artist tipped off the
teenagers, who fled to Nuevo Laredo.

Mr. Reta then called Detective Garcia's cellphone, getting the number
from the calling card the detective had left with the tattoo artist.

"He said 'You better stop the investigation into these murders,' "
Detective Garcia recalled. "He threatened me and my family."