Hot-Wired Juana

As soon as Juana had confirmed Menendez would be in the compound that night, I gave the go-ahead.

At 2:00 AM, the armored vehicle would crash both gates and the second team would secure the guards and then join the first team in surrounding the house. There were four snipers on those teams and they were to take up positions behind the trees that surrounded the house, one on each of the four sides.

The boat teams would tie up at the boathouse, clear it, and then cut the lock off the gate there. They'd leave two officers to secure the boathouse. The others would work their way through the second fence and then clear the stable and other buildings before joining the other two teams.

To some, that may seem like a lot of men and a lot of firepower, but I was hoping it would be enough and had six Nashville PD cars standing by in case it wasn't. If Menendez could bring kilo after kilo of coke to Nashville, there probably wasn't much he couldn't bring to his compound. The TBI had once confiscated ten FAL FNC assault rifles and two FN Minimi light machine guns when they searched a warehouse that had served as a cartel distribution point. If Menendez had even half that much firepower and used it, the only way to overcome it was with a lot of very well-trained men with a lot of ammunition.

The next eight hours were hell. I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. If I'd still been a smoker, I'd have burned through at least a couple of packs. Looking at my watch was like watching the timer on a bomb and knowing it was going to explode when the timer counted down to zero. I was pretty sure the Special Ops teams weren't doing much sleeping either. In spite of what people think, Special Ops officers never get used to doing what they do. They're nervous up until the operation starts. Once it does, they rely on adrenaline and training to get them through.

At 1:58 AM, I saw the red lenses of the blackout lights on the armored vehicle coming down the road followed by the van. At 1:59, they made the turn from the road to the drive to the compound. Exactly one minute later, the light bars on both the armored vehicle and the van lit up the drive like it was daylight, and both vehicles spun their tires as they started down the drive. I put on my vest and stepped outside to see what happened.

It took the armored vehicle about fifteen seconds to crash the first gate. The van slowed enough to let two officers jump out the back and then accelerated to catch up to the armored vehicle. I heard two gunshots at the first gate, then the crash when the armored vehicle went through the second gate and then two gunshots followed by four more. Over the radio a few seconds later, I heard, "Team one at front door and team two in position. One bad guy down gate one, two bad guys down gate two. Send a bus."

That was the signal for the six cars from the Nashville PD and two EMT trucks to start for the compound. They'd been cruising the area trying to look like they were just on a routine patrol. When the first one turned into the drive, I flagged him down for a ride.

When I got out of the car and crouched down behind the door, I heard a half-dozen or so rifle shots coming from the area of the stable. A couple minutes later, the other two Special Ops teams from the lake came running up, half covering their advance while the other half ran between trees, outbuildings or vehicles.

There was sporadic gunfire coming from the house. Some was the loud barks of what were probably pistols and those were interspersed with the sharp crack of the civilian legal M4 carbines the Special Ops officers carried.

There was no radio chatter because the Special Ops teams work mainly by hand signals to avoid giving away their positions, so there was no way to tell what was going on inside the house. All I could do was let the Special Ops officers do their jobs and hope they remembered where I'd told Juana to go when she heard the door crash open.

It was all over in about ten minutes. I saw the first two Special Ops officers walk out the door and behind them were Juana and another young girl followed by two more officers. Both women were cuffed because I'd asked the Special Ops guys to do that so it would look like they'd been arrested with everybody else. I walked up to them and smiled at Sergeant Howard.

"Didn't take as long as I figured. Anybody left alive in there except for these two?"

Howard frowned.

"You're only gonna have two from the house to put on trial. One is still in there with a bullet in the leg. The other was hiding in a closet so he didn't get shot. This woman identified him as Carlos Menendez and he'll be out as soon as my guys finish getting him restrained. I think there's another at the first gate. I don't know about the boathouse and stable. I haven't touched base with the other two teams yet.

"We found these two where you said they'd be. They were both in the bathtub in the john. Should I take 'em to headquarters, or do you want to?"

About that time, two other officers exited the house with a man in cuffs and shackles between them. He wasn't what I expected at all. He looked older, maybe sixty, and he walked with a limp. The look on his face was one of defeat rather than the hatred I usually see when we bring in a suspect. I could understand that though. In the space of about fifteen minutes, we'd completely destroyed his entire world.

I watched as the officers put Menendez in a police car, then turned back to Sergeant Howard.

"I'll take them back to headquarters for questioning. Thanks for watching out for them."

I took both women to my car, took off their cuffs, and drove back to TBI headquarters. I didn't say anything to Juana until we were in an interrogation room except to apologize for the cuffs and ask if she and her sister were OK. She said yes, they were still scared, but they weren't hurt.

Once I had them in the interrogation room and brought them each a cup of coffee, I sat down and smiled.

"Juana, you did great. Is this Maria?"

Juana nodded.

I introduced myself to Maria, and noticed when she sipped her coffee her hands were shaking.

"Still scared, Maria?"

"A little. I'm glad to be out of that place though."

I chuckled.

"I'll bet you are."

I looked at Juana then.

"Juana, I need to ask some questions of you and Maria, but you're not being charged with anything. I just need as much as you can tell me about what went on in the house every day. Let's start with what you couldn't tell me before. Who killed Tez?"

Juana took a deep breath.

"It was Jose...Jose Vicario, but I don't think it matters now. When that policeman brought us out of the bathroom, I saw Jose on the floor. There was a lot of blood around him, so I think he was dead."

I asked her for the names of everybody she could think of who were on the compound. After I wrote down ten, she said that was everybody who lived there, but there had been a few more who came for a day or two. She didn't know their names but she said they always talked in Spanish.

The rest of what she and Maria told me I'd already pretty much figured out except for how she and Maria ended up there. Juana frowned.

"We were there because I was stupid. Our mother and father died when I was nineteen and Maria was fourteen. Our only relatives were in Mexico and I didn't want to go there because of all the problems with the cartels. I got a job in a restaurant on Nolensville Road because I speak Spanish and a lot of the customers were more comfortable with Spanish.

"One day, a man came in and ordered lunch. That man was Jose, and he asked me if I'd like to cook for his boss. He told me how much money I'd make and it was twice what I was making at the restaurant and he said I'd have a place to live for free.

"I told him I had a sister who was still in school and he said that was no problem for his boss. Maria could live with me and still go to school. He told me where to go for the interview.

"When I got there, to Mr. Menendez' house, he seemed like a really nice man. He showed me around the house and he showed me where we'd live. I said I'd be glad to work for him, and Maria and I moved into the house the next day. That's when everything changed.

"Jose was the one who ran everything, and once Maria and I were inside the house, he sat me down to explain what I was to do. I was supposed to cook all the meals and buy all the groceries and Maria was supposed to take care of the house. When I asked him how Maria could do that and still go to school, he just laughed at me and said Maria wouldn't be going back to school.

"I said I couldn't work there then and I started to leave. Jose grabbed me by the throat and said I couldn't leave and if I tried to, he'd take Maria to a house where the women were all prostitutes and she'd have to be one too. I couldn't let that happen to Maria, so we had to stay. Every time I went to buy groceries, he'd smile and say, "Don't be gone too long or Maria will get to feel what a real man does to a woman".

Like I said, most of what Juana told me I'd already figured out. I wasn't sure if the DA would need her and Maria to testify in court, but just in case, I'd arranged for them to be taken to a TBI safe house in Knoxville. They'd have two guards 24/7 until the trials were over. If they wanted it, I'd gotten authorization to place them in the federal witness protection program, but I wouldn't offer that unless one or both of them had to testify at any of the trials.

Juana said nobody in the house had suspected she was wearing a wire. Unless they had to testify, they probably weren't in any danger. When I'd asked all the questions I could think of, I turned Juana and Maria over to two TBI officers who took them to Knoxville.

I felt pretty good about how things had turned out. We had Menendez and four of his men in custody. It was likely at least one of them would talk, and that would let us tear down his organization at least down to the level of the street dealers.

It took three days to go through the compound and find everything that could be considered as evidence. There were no drugs in the house, but we pulled ten kilos of pure coke out of the stable and another three out of a large garage. What we found in the house was a dozen handguns, five AK-47's, and three select-fire M-4 rifles, the same rifles the US military issues. The serial numbers on the M-4's later led us to break up a cartel ring that was stealing M-4's from a military warehouse.

We also found a.22 Ruger revolver with a suppressor. Later, forensics matched it to the two bullets the coroner took from Tez' brain. With sub-sonic cartridges and the suppressor, it wouldn't have made enough noise to be heard over the chatter in the bar or the street noise. That's why nobody had heard any gunshots the night Tez was killed. Revolvers don't automatically eject fired cartridges and that's why we hadn't found any.

Menendez never cracked under interrogation, but the other four did when offered plea deals. From them, we learned that Jose was the enforcer for Menendez, and they all swore he was the one who offed Tez. Once the coroner had lifted Jose's prints from his cadaver, we sent them to the FBI for identification.

Jose turned out to be Manuel Aria, a Columbian national who'd been deported after he served three years in Texas for dealing in drugs, and deported two more times when he was caught trying to cross the border from Mexico. He was wanted in Texas for a murder he apparently committed when he slipped into the US the fourth time. When I called the captain of the police force in Houston and told him Jose was dead, he just said, "Well, shit. I was looking forward to seeing that asshole in court".

The four who had survived all had criminal backgrounds and all were illegals with ties to the cartel. The seven who were residing in the morgue awaiting claim by relatives were about the same -- they'd served prison time for drug offenses and then deported back to their country of origin. In the time since then, they'd slipped across the border again.

Even if the coroner could locate them I doubted any relatives would come forward and claim the bodies. They'd probably end up cremated and have their ashes buried in the Davidson County Cemetery under the name they were using at the time

The trials were all done after a year, and because of the massive amount of evidence and the testimony of the four survivors, Juana and Maria didn't have to testify. Menendez was convicted of multiple accounts of drug trafficking as well as murder for ordering the death of Tez. He received two life sentences with no possibility of parole and was transferred to the maximum security federal prison in Marion, Illinois. The others were convicted of various drug trafficking charges and were sentenced to a minimum of twenty years.

The compound was forfeited to the State of Tennessee, the buildings were all demolished, and the place is now part of the Tennessee State Park System. It will be open to the public when the Park Service is satisfied all the drugs and firearms are gone.

That's a prudent course of action to follow. During demolition of the house, the contractor discovered a false wall off the living room. The small room it formed was only accessible through the crawl space, and behind that false wall was another two kilos of coke and several more weapons.

The TBI and the Nashville PD were busy all the way through the trial and for several months afterward. The four guys who survived not only gave up Menendez, but they told us about his supply chain and his main distributors. When they were arrested, most of the distributors knew we had them cold, so they'd give us a name or two in exchange for a plea to a lesser offense. From then on, it was catch this guy, interrogate him until he gave up a name, then go catch that guy and repeat.

I saw Juana for what I thought would be the last time after all the trials were over. She and Maria had been released from the safe house and a TBI officer had brought her and Maria back to Nashville. Apparently, she'd asked to be dropped of at TBI headquarters.

Juana didn't look happy when she walked into my office carrying a small duffel bag and a purse. Maria didn't look very happy either. I asked Juana if something was bothering her and she nodded.

"Being in Knoxville was almost like being in prison, but I felt safe because there were men guarding us. I don't feel safe now. I'm still afraid that Mr. Menendez will send somebody to kill me."

I tried to explain that Menendez was over a hundred miles away and locked up tight, but Juana wasn't having any of that.

"You say he can't do anything, but you don't know how it was there. All he had to do was say he wanted something done and it got done. The reason was if you didn't do it, Jose would make you wish you had.

"There were other people too, people he called on his cell phone. They always talked in Spanish, but I heard him sometimes. Once, I heard him say, "Angelo needs to go swimming". Two days later, Jose told him somebody named Angelo had been found drowned in the river in El Paso.

"Don't you see? He didn't just run things in Nashville. He had people working for him all over. If he thought I had anything to do with his going to prison, he'd send somebody to kill me and take Maria to a prostitute house."

I explained that we had Menendez' cell phone and had informed all the police units that should be concerned as well as the FBI and DEA, and that those people were being tracked down right now. They'd be too concerned about getting away to come after her. Maria just shook her head.

"Can they get the ones in Mexico? I know some of them are there because I heard Jose say so. They go from Mexico to Texas and back any time they want to."

Well, I didn't have an answer for that. I knew the DEA had some connections with the Mexican police, but I also knew the cartels had infiltrated or bought off people in most levels of the Mexican government and police force. If the wrong person in Mexico got the information, the suspect would probably just be told to leave town until things settled down.

"Juana, what do you want me to do? You don't qualify for the witness protection program because you didn't testify at any of the trials."

She looked up at me then.

"Could we stay with you until I'm sure nobody is looking for us?"

For a while, all I could do was look at Juana and then at Maria because I didn't really know what to say. It was the first time in my career any person involved with any of my cases had asked for anything even remotely like what Juana had just asked me. I'd been asked for money several times, and even asked for a job reference once, but I'd never been asked by anybody to let them move in with me.

The cop in me was saying absolutely not. The other side, the side nobody ever sees when I'm on duty and seldom when I'm not, was remembering how hard I'd been on Juana before she agreed to wear a wire.

Like I said before, I was pretty cruel to her, but at the time, I thought I had to be. Now...well, I'd basically forced Juana to risk her life or at least that's how I saw it. If she'd said no, I'd just have pushed harder until she said yes. After several years of doing that, I've gotten pretty good at it.

I'd have told her I was going to arrest her for aiding and abetting and she'd get at least ten years in prison, and I'd have said I'd put Maria in a foster home until she was eighteen but after that, she'd be on her own. Then I'd have told her that girls raised in foster homes usually end up working as prostitutes and on drugs or pregnant and unmarried. None of that would have been true, but it's legal for me to lie out my ass when I interrogate a suspect. Only in court do I have to tell the truth.

I've never felt bad about pushing a suspect. I usually know they're guilty as hell or have information I need that they're holding back. Juana's case was different though. She wasn't a suspect. She was just a scared woman I was going to scare more and turn into a tool I'd use to catch Menendez.

I had a house with three bedrooms, so I had the space to do what she'd asked. Since Juana wasn't involved in any case I was working, there were no regulations that said she couldn't move in with me. It wouldn't be like we were living together anyway. It would be like I was renting her two rooms except I wouldn't ask her to pay rent.

I was still thinking when Juana said, "I can keep house for you and cook and anything else you want me to do. I just want to feel safe and get Maria back in school without worrying about her".

I was trying to talk myself out of saying yes more than trying to convince Juana I couldn't help her when I said I wouldn't be in my house most of the day and sometimes not for two days. I said I didn't know how I'd protect her if I wasn't there. Juana had an answer for that.

"Nobody would try to get me if I'm in a policeman's house. They know that would be stupid because the police would try extra hard to catch them."

I started to tell her we tried hard on every case, but I didn't because I knew what she said was true. Law enforcement officers do try their best on every case, but if one of their own is involved, there's a heightened sense of urgency to find the perp and put him in jail. Cops will work overtime to solve a case involving another officer, and since they'll do a lot of that work on their own time, they don't report it.

I'd run out of arguments, so I told Juana she'd have to wait in the lobby until my shift was over. At five, I put them in my car and started for my house. When I was waiting to pull into traffic, I told Juana we'd have to stop somewhere and get something to eat because I didn't have much at home. She said if I'd stop by a grocery store, she'd get something and fix dinner herself.