Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
“We never heard anything about the so-called corporate growing up,” Joel mused. “I remember gang wars, and we saw the name Blanco in the papers, but…”
Yeah, pretty much. Hector Alvarez had been the regio back then, an old friend of Luca.
“How many drug routes do you think they control?” Joel asked.
I scratched my jaw, still a bit sore from his punch last night. “I know they don’t have Florida anymore.” Technically, no single player had controlled that state since the ’80s and early ’90s. The black market in Florida today was oversaturated with freelancers, a handful of semi-major cartels, and small-scale hustlers with their own crews. “Last I heard, they shifted focus to Texas. That’s where you have the human trafficking too.”
Joel shook his head. “So another regio is in charge of Texas.”
I nodded. “That’s it for the US and Canada. As for Europe…” I blew out a breath. Europe was an ever-changing market. Crew and Ryan were ready to go, and we didn’t fucking know where to send them. We had too many options. “We’ve had reports of Blanco operations in the Netherlands before, but that area’s becoming too hot. They’ve cracked down hard on smuggling through their ports. Spain is another hot zone, though the route is still being used every day. We have a list of cities we might send Crew and Ryan—Barcelona, Antwerp, Hamburg, Valencia, Rotterdam, and Marseille. This is based partly on the role these cities play in the cocaine trade today and partly on Blanco history.”
Joel scrubbed his hands over his face, visibly exhausted and frustrated.
I knew the feeling.
That was just Europe—and only the coke trade. Blanco shipped heroin too.
I tilted my head, curious about something. “Do you ever confiscate anything other than coke?”
The Coast Guard was every smuggler’s nightmare because of the amount of drugs they seized.
“Meth and small amounts of heroin,” he answered. “For a while, we saw an upgoing trend in chemical compounds often used to create synthetic drugs, but I think the cartels realized it was easier to ship smaller volumes legally in the mail, as opposed to smuggling massive volumes illegally.”
Ah yeah, the wonders of US regulations, restrictions, and import laws.
“The heroin is interesting,” he said. “We have people on our cutters who take pictures of every package we confiscate, and then we send that off for analysis before disposing of the drugs. Bricks of coke rarely have many markings, but the heroin—man, you can find novels on there sometimes. Scribbling, dates, stamps. Every time the shipment changes hands, someone leaves a mark. So when I was in Florida, we’d be able to track shipments all the way from Afghanistan—and we saw how their routes changed in real time when the Balkans became too hot and they started shipping through Kenya.”
That was interesting. I did know Kenya had become a big part of the drug trade, but I hadn’t reflected on how it’d replaced the Balkans. That made sense, though. Cartels looked for countries with good infrastructure and poor leadership. The Balkan region consisted of stronger democracies today; their politicians weren’t as easy to corrupt.
Kenya, however…
“Your mind is spinning.”
I flicked my gaze to Joel, immediately ticked off. Great, he could still read me very well—what-the-fuck-ever.
“As soon as we get our phones back, I’m gonna reach out to Squeezy,” I said. “She’s frustrated because she doesn’t know where to search for Carillo men in Europe, but how often do people from Mexico travel to Kenya?”
He sat up a little straighter. “I wouldn’t put it at the top of their list for vacation destinations—or business, for that matter.”
Exactly. Squeezy could start going through passenger data. Because if Carillo was trying to establish a drug route, chances were he’d sent Delgado to strike deals in Kenya.
Fucking hell, Carillo wasn’t merely screwing over Vincente. He was leaving the entire cartel, wasn’t he? The man was going rogue and planned to bring as many members as he could with him.
“You mentioned the heroin you confiscated in Florida,” I said. “What about San Diego?”
Joel shrugged a little. “Like I said, small amounts. In fact, I don’t think there was anything at all last year.”
Because of meth taking over, I bet. “But it used to be primarily from the Golden Triangle, right?”
He inclined his head. “Laos and Myanmar.”
Right. And that entire region was changing. Growing opium poppy was illegal, less profitable, and difficult to conceal. You flew over the jungle and caught a field of red flowers from the sky, game over. Meth labs, however, different story. A single lab could crunch out thousands of pills every hour completely undetected.
“And the meth you confiscate,” I went on. “Less from Mexico and more from Southeast Asia, am I right?”
“Yeah. Mexico’s still the dominant player, but the influx from Myanmar is growing a fuck-ton, especially with those damn yaba pills.”