Kingdom of Shadows Page #2

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[dog barking]

- I'm being slow.

- Yeah, I gotta clean

this cloth too.

I first met Don,

he was kind of skinny

at that point.

He's kind of ruggedly handsome,

I think.

You didn't eat those potatoes.

When we started going out,

I learned he was

a marijuana smuggler,

planeloads of it.

He was pretty forthcoming

about the different methods

that they used

to bring stuff back and forth.

He was an outlaw back then.

' [grunts]

I had struggled trying to

make a living in agriculture.

Not here to hurt you.

There is virtually no farmer

that owns land

through conventional means

that isn't in debt

to the bank and slave to 'em.

I owed the production credit

association $800,000

at 14% interest.

It was a struggle.

So I decided to try to go to

Mexico and buy some marijuana.

I walked across the river

and loaded it

into the back of a Suburban,

and I successfully smuggled

my first load.

It was terribly amateurish,

but I got away with it.

I took that load

to a man in Plainview, Texas,

and I sold all of it

in a matter of hours.

One big sack, about 600 a pound.

To me at the time,

that was a lot of money.

So it just became

part of the routine.

About every two weeks do a load.

I would get up, go down

to the river real early.

There was less surveillance,

and most people are about

halfway asleep at that time.

You know,

they don't notice things.

That's when I would come out

and then drive to the city,

drop stuff off,

pick up money

from the previous load,

and head home

and go back to work.

I was not an employee

of anybody down there.

I dealt with rival factions,

and that's very much against

the norm of what goes on today.

You would not be allowed

to do that today.

I'd been buried down

into the organization so far

that I didn't even have

a clue where I...

You know, where I fit

in this thing.

And there was a multinational,

international business going on,

and I was just

a little cog in the wheel.

- Rough justice in

the Mexican City of Monterrey.

The two corpses found hanging

were, according to local media,

members of 21 drugs cartel.

- I actually spent some time

in the Middle East.

You get danger pay.

You get armored vehicles.

You would get escorts.

You know, and it's considered

a danger post,

but I actually felt safer

in the Middle East

than I did in Monterrey.

I was assigned

to the U.S. consulate

in Monterrey.

We were investigating

high-level members

of the Gulf Cartel

and high-level members

of the Zetas.

The difference between the Zetas

and your traditional cartels

is that the Zetas,

they don't follow

any sort of rules.

The majority of the

high-ranking cartel members,

they grew up in the drug game.

Their father was

a cartel member.

Their grandfather

was a cartel member.

All these individuals

know the rules.

You don't kill anybody

unless you're absolutely sure

that they're either

a source, a snitch,

or they're a rival cartel

that needs to be taken care of.

You would never see just mass

killings of innocent people.

It was targeted.

- I've called it a game changer

when the Zetas got

into the dope game.

The Zetas were

a group of military

that were specially trained

to go after the cartels,

ultimately as a group

defected from the military

and offered their services

to the Gulf Cartel.

You give them

a little bit of power,

you know, you give them

unlimited weapons,

and they're military.

If you hit the military,

what do they do?

They strike back,

and so a lot of these guys,

they have that mentality

where, you know,

we don't care who you are.

You know,

we're gonna go after you.

These guys don't have that-

those unwritten rules

engraved in their head.

[gunfire]

- Move!

- We could almost feel

the tension building.

They would try

to intimidate us, you know.

They would follow us.

They would do surveillance

on the consulate

to the point where they shot

at the consulate

and threw a grenade.

[gunfire]

Back in the day,

that was unheard of.

[exhales deeply]

- When I first involved

in the marijuana business,

nobody used weapons.

You loaned somebody a product,

and they came back and paid you.

There was no fear that these

guys were going to shoot you

or come steal your stuff.

And all of a sudden,

everybody is carrying a gun,

and you couldn't trust anybody.

The drug trade changed.

- This is you as a young man?

- Yeah, that's me.

- Man, I wouldn't

have recognized you.

You used to wear

tejano too, huh?

- Yeah.

Used to wear...

- You don't do that any more.

You gave up the-

- When my dad-l was gonna go

visit him in Big Spring.

- Man, he looks young there,

doesn't he?

- I first remember seeing

Don in Piedritas.

He stood out

because this is Mexico,

and all of a sudden you hear-

you see a gringo.

This is towards the end.

- Yeah.

- One of his last pictures.

When you're

in the drug business,

you can't trust anyone.

That's one of the main reasons

why you bring in family,

because you assume

that you can trust family.

My dad found that trust in Don.

It's something

that's beyond friendship.

- One day, he decided

to come look me up.

His name was Oscar Cabello.

He told me that

he could supply my needs.

[laughter]

- He was like a brother to me.

You look at somebody

occasionally,

and you just see somebody

that you connect with

right away.

He was not violent.

Didn't have to worry that

he was gonna come threaten me

or something like that.

And that was the beginning

of a fairly long relationship

that we shared.

- Oscar, he usually had

some really potent marijuana.

It was all packaged the same.

It was all high quality.

This stuff was major production.

Oscar pretty much

controlled the river

in the state of Coahuila.

He was a big player.

I talked to Oscar

about arranging a meeting

with his supplier,

and it turned out

that man was Amado Carrillo.

I asked Oscar, I said,

"Well, who's his boss?"

And Oscar said,

"He doesn't have a boss.

He is the boss."

I had a hard time

believing that, you know?

He was a young man,

a whole lot like myself,

kind of a rural background.

I learned later

that he is probably

the largest drug dealer

that ever lived.

At one time, he controlled

the majority of all the cocaine

coming into the United States.

We snorted some coke together

and bullshitted,

and then Amado and Oscar left.

A few hours later, there was

a real loud knock on the door.

They slammed it open, and

there was a group of commandos

with sub-machine guns.

Amado was probably testing us

to make sure we weren't agents.

And then they disappeared

as fast as they had come.

- Back in the day,

Amado Carrillo Fuentes

was in Juarez

right across the border.

The Juarez Cartel

was at its heyday.

[tense music]

There was times that we knew

that El Seor was in Socorro.

They would throw lavish parties

out in ranch houses

in the outskirts of Socorro.

And, you know, I remember

going to a couple of them,

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