Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel by Dan

Description: Wolf Boys by Dan Slater The story of two American teens recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and their pursuit by a Mexican-American detective who realizes the War on Drugs is unwinnable. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description The tale of two American teenagers recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and the Mexican American detective who realizes the War on Drugs is unstoppable. "A hell of a story...undeniably gripping." (The New York Times) In this astonishing story, journalist Dan Slater recounts the unforgettable odyssey of Gabriel Cardona. At first glance, Gabriel is the poster-boy American teenager: athletic, bright, handsome, and charismatic. But the ghettos of Laredo, Texas--his border town--are full of smugglers and gangsters and patrolled by one of the largest law-enforcement complexes in the world. It isnt long before Gabriel abandons his promising future for the allure of juvenile crime, which leads him across the river to Mexicos most dangerous drug cartel: Los Zetas. Friends from his childhood join him and eventually they catch the eye of the cartels leadership. As the cartel wars spill over the border, Gabriel and his crew are sent to the States to work. But in Texas, the teen hit men encounter a Mexican-born homicide detective determined to keep cartel violence out of his adopted country. Detective Robert Garcias pursuit of the boys puts him face-to-face with the urgent consequences and new security threats of a drug war he sees as unwinnable. In Wolf Boys, Slater takes readers on a harrowing, often brutal journey into the heart of the Mexican drug trade. Ultimately though, Wolf Boys is the intimate story of the lobos: teens turned into pawns for the cartels. A nonfiction thriller, it reads with the emotional clarity of a great novel, yet offers its revelations through extraordinary reporting. Author Biography A former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Dan Slater has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New York magazine, The Atlantic, GQ, and Fast Company. He is the author of Love in the Time of Algorithms. A graduate of Colgate University and Brooklyn Law School, he lives in New England. Review "...a modern-day masterpiece..."--Gangsters Inc."...exhaustively reported and frighteningly intimate..."-Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News"Wolf Boys is a wake-up call. A powerful narrative of crime and punishment based on astoundingly deep reporting about a topic we think we know. Dan Slater brings the realities of cartel violence and our War on Drugs to vivid and unsettling new light. Its a riveting piece of writing that unforgettably puts the reader in its characters shoes."--Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove"Wolf Boys should be required reading, especially for anyone who supports the blood-chilling, appalling trade in illegal drugs."--Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club"Wolf Boys gives you a snapshot, in real time, of what is actually happening on the border."--Jesus Torres, Asst. Chief of Police, Laredo Police Dept."Wolf Boys includes enough history to keep the Mexican drug trade in perspective, but it is Slaters storytelling that carries the day. Not a pretty story perhaps, yet it is an engrossing one. It raises more questions about the effects the "war on drugs" has on the United States youth than on the Mexican cartels it is meant to combat...With tenacity and flair, Dan Slater spins a captivating account of Texas teen assassins in Mexican cartels and the authorities who try to contain them."--Shelf Awareness"Wolf Boys is a rare book that reads like a thriller without aiming to be one. What Dan Slater does intend for it to be--and what he powerfully succeeds in creating--is an intimate, horrifying journey through a war we know is close and intractable, a war we willfully ignore with the faith that a river and a wall keeps its brutality at bay. With courageous detail and unforgettable characters, Slater will bring you not only to refute such faith, but to feel for the marginalized Americans on both sides of the conflict."--Jeff Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace"Wolf Boys reads like a fictional thriller reminiscent of Brian De Palmas Scarface, but depicts actual events. If anyone needs proof that were losing the war against drug cartels, here it is. Shocking. Eye-opening. A portrait of the evil that stalks our streets."--David Morrell, author of Murder as a Fine Art"[An] insanely riveting narrative."--Joel McHale"[A]s difficult to put down as it is to recover from."--Erica Rivera, Crave Online"A grisly yet compelling tale of impoverished Mexican-American youth molded into assassins... Slater adeptly develops a sprawling narrative regarding the "spillover" of cartel violence... In a milieu of well-developed characters on both sides of the law, Slater focuses on two strong personalities...Slater covers this difficult social landscape with an empathetic eye and careful prose, vividly rendering a border region of "extreme poverty and garish wealth...elaborate courtesy and low-barbarian violence." Engrossing and readable yet nightmarish vision of a hyperviolent and corporatized narcotics industry, seducing a new generation with minimal alternatives."--Kirkus"A hell of a story... undeniably gripping."--The New York Times Book Review"A solid and popular addition to every librarys true-crime shelf...Slaters careful and exhaustive research delivers a thoughtful portrait of the illicit drug trade...a riveting narrative."--Booklist, Starred Review"An extraordinary journey through a criminal underworld, Dan Slaters Wolf Boys shows the reality of the drug war that few law enforcement agents, let alone journalists and politicians, ever glimpse or understand."--Bryan Burrough, co-author of Barbarians at the Gate and author of Days of Rage"An extraordinary true story that reads like a thriller. Dan Slaters incredible research illuminates the terrifying descent of two American boys who could be any of our sons. Wolf Boys is not just a page-turner, but a riveting cautionary tale sure to spark national debate about parenting, the war on drugs, and the tenuous future of the American Dream."--Allison Leotta, author of The Last Good Girl"Dan Slaters account...gives it an intimately human face...It is a tribute to Slater that he can make us see Gabriel more like a child soldier caught in a military conflict than as a monstrous killer...While we know where all of this will end, Slater tells a skillful tale drawing Cardona and Garcias lives together, while bringing readers deeply into both sides of a borderland shaped by corruption and greed. Neither Gabriel Cardona nor Robert Garcia are pawns, but their choices are constrained by a world not entirely of their own making. Slaters triumph is in making us see that."--Washington Independent Review of Books"I was amazed and impressed by the authors research, courage, and style. I recommend it highly...Believe me, it will give you insight into another world and a totally different perspective."--Judith Zaffirini, Texas State Senator (D-Laredo)"One context in which we dont often hear about child soldiers is the drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet...some thirty thousand minors have been pressed into playing a role in the countrys ongoing criminal insurgency, and several thousand of them have been killed. Wolf Boys offers a bracingly intimate glimpse of how this insurgency looks from the point of view of the young killers on the front lines."--Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker"Raw, gut-wrenching, and deflating, journalist Slaters investigation into Mexican drug cartel activity will give readers pause... A must-read for fans of true crime and investigative journalism."--Library Journal"Slaters book has the same kind of feel, the same kind of first-hand psychological insight into the minds of those characters as the classic non-fiction novel In Cold Blood by Truman Capote....should be an eye-opener for parents, especially."--Randy Beamer, News 4 San Anontio"The truth is stranger than fiction and sometimes its much more harrowing. Wolf Boys is one of those times. Dan Slater has put together a riveting story that takes us on an unforgettable descent into the dark heart of the drug trade."--Michael Connelly"This is Beyond Breaking Bad for real... Slater knows how to tell a thrilling story in long form. This book, excerpted in Texas Monthly and banned in the Texas prison system, also illuminates the inner lives of the Laredo and Nuevo Laredo hoods far from the tourist traps and NAFTA highways."--Michael Barnes, Austin American-Statesman"This is not a political treatise filled with statistics and rhetoric. Its the story of two boys, born into a world of poverty and survivalism, who choose the wrong path to enrichment--an American story, written with tremendous energy and insight. Read this book."--T.J. English, author of Havana Nocturne"While few maintain clean hands, Slater expounds on the complexities tethered to each pass of currency. Thoroughly researched with stark details, Wolf Boys shines a glaring light on the atrocities of cartel life."--Associated Press Review Quote " Wolf Boys should be required reading, especially for anyone who supports the blood-chilling, appalling trade in illegal drugs."-- Chuck Palahniuk , author of Fight Club Excerpt from Book Wolf Boys 1 Youre Not from Here Robert Garcia was twenty-nine the first time he questioned success. Every accomplishment, it seemed, came with some deficit or drawback or innocence-eroding knowledge. You earned a scholarship but didnt feel college. You won the battle but lost the bonus. You fell in love, and faced a dishonorable discharge. The autumn of 1997 shouldve been the brightest season in Roberts promising career, but it arrived with sorrow. The yin and the yang, he called it. Two decades earlier, as a child of Norma and Robert Sr., Robert emigrated from Piedras Negras, Mexico, to the Texas border town of Eagle Pass--an international journey of one mile. Robert Sr., needing to support his family, had been working in the States as an illegal immigrant; once he demonstrated an income and showed that he was spending money in Texas, he gained a green card for the family, meaning that Norma, Robert Sr., Robert, and Roberts younger sister, Blanca, could come to the States as "resident aliens," not U.S. citizens. After they arrived, Norma gave birth to another daughter, Diana, and another son, Jesse. Robert, the oldest, started third grade in an American school. After school and on weekends, he and Robert Sr. picked cucumbers, onions, and cantaloupes on local farms. In spring and summer, Norma, a seamstress for Dickies, the work-wear manufacturer, stayed in Eagle Pass with the girls and Jesse while Robert and his father followed fellow migrants to Oregon and Montana for the sugar beet season. There, Robert attended migrant programs at local schools. Dark-skinned but ethnically ambiguous, he found northern communities mostly welcoming, with their food festivals and roadside stands where Indians sold tourist stuff. The verdant landscapes were a reprieve from the dusty flatiron of South Texas. America was a beautiful place. Back in Eagle Pass, land was cheap. There were no codes. People could build what they wanted. The Garcia family lived in a two-room hut while they built the home theyd live in forever. It was piecework. They saved up, then tiled the bathroom; saved more, then bought a tub. In winter they heated the place with brazas, coal fires in barrels, and in the mornings Robert went to school smelling like smoke. When would the house be finished? No one asked. Work drew them together. As other immigrants settled nearby, Robert Sr. built a one-man concession stand where he sold snacks and sodas to neighborhood kids. Robert Sr. brought his family to the States for a better way of life, but in his mind he would always be Mexican. He was proud to live next to other immigrants in Eagle Pass. By the time Reagan took office, their patch of dirt was becoming a bona fide suburb, sprouting neat rows of handmade houses. When neighbors needed assistance with an addition or a plumbing issue, they turned to "the Roberts" for help. Robert Sr. treated his oldest boy like a man, and Roberts siblings respected him as a kind of second father. Trim, bony, and bespectacled, he walked taller than his five feet, eight inches. In high school, he enrolled in ROTC and played bass clarinet in the marching band. He finished high school a semester early, took a fast-food job at Long John Silvers, and deliberated over whether he should capitalize on a college scholarship in design, or go in a different direction. At seventeen he seemed to know himself: hyperactive, confident. He had a talent for improvisation. He was respectful in a rank-conscious way, but didnt care what others said or advised. Introverted and impatient, he had his own way of doing things. He learned as much from his father as he did in school. He also felt the lure of service, a patriotic duty toward the adopted country that gave him and his family so much. Formal education, he decided, was not for him. So, in the summer of 1986--the same year a boy who would change Roberts life was born in Laredo, another Texas border town 140 miles southeast--Robert, much to the dismay of his non-English-speaking parents, passed up the scholarship and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Since hed enrolled in ROTC during high school, he arrived at basic training as a seventeen-year-old platoon leader, instructing men who were older. To compensate for the age difference, and his small size, he acted extra tough and earned the nickname Little Hitler. After basic training, he began to work as a watercraft engineer at Fort Eustis, Virginia, where he picked up a mentor, a sergeant major, who led him to work on military bases in Spain and England. On the bases, he played baseball and lifted weights. Little Hitler sported ropy arms. His neck, once nerd-thin, disappeared into his shoulders. In the Azores islands, on a small U.S. Navy installation off the coast of Portugal, Robert met Veronica, a blond gringa from Arizona. The daughter of a navy man, Ronnie was the only female mechanic at the base. She was tough. While fixing the hydraulic system on a tugboat one day, Robert snuck up and slapped her neck with grease-shaft oil. She wheeled around, called him an asshole. "Fuck off!" she said. One week later they conceived a son. Ronnie was twenty, already married to a soldier, and had a two-year-old son. Her parents never liked her husband. As far as they were concerned, he was a freeloader who drank excessively at the bar they owned in Arizona. They didnt like seeing their daughter be the breadwinner and the parent. And now here was Robert: didnt drink, didnt smoke, would do anything for her. But adultery in the military was a serious crime; at the discretion of a military court, it carried felony time and a dishonorable discharge. The chiefs read Ronnie and Robert their rights. They owned up to the affair. Ronnies husband flew to Portugal; furious, he stomped around the base, drank, got in fights, and broke windows at Ronnies house. No one liked her husband. So the chiefs held a meeting to arbitrate the love triangle, and let Robert and Ronnie walk away with reprimands. When the husband called Ronnies mother and said, "Your daughters a whore!" Ronnies father grabbed the phone and said: "You werent even born from a woman! Two freight trains bumped together and you fell out of a hobos ass!" From there, the separation went smoothly. In 1991, Roberts four-year military contract neared its end as the First Gulf War started. Robert saw other soldiers reenlisting and collecting $10,000 bonuses. He was willing to reenlist, until the U.S. government offered him citizenship instead of the bonus. Robert didnt care much about citizenship. Like his father, hed always think of himself as Mexican; and, besides, his resident-alien status entitled him to a U.S. passport. But he still took the denial of the bonus--and the offer of citizenship as a substitute for the money that other soldiers received--as an insult. How could he serve his country for four years and not get citizenship automatically? So he declined reenlistment, walked away with neither the bonus nor citizenship, and returned to Texas with Ronnie and the boys, where he got a job as a diesel mechanic in Laredo--a border town neither of them knew. IF IT WAS YOUR FIRST time, you drove south on Interstate 35, passed San Antonio, and expected to hit the border, but the highway kept plunging south. Texas hill country flattened out into a plain so fathomlessly vast, it gave you a feeling of driving down into the end of the earth. One hundred twenty miles later, and still in America, you reached the spindly neon signs of hotels and fast-food joints, gazed back north, and felt as if what youd just traveled through was a buffer, neither here nor there. To the west, several blocks off I-35, rows of warehouses colonized the area around the railroad track. To the east, upper-middle-class suburbs gave way to sprawling developments, ghettos, and sub-ghettos called colonias. Go two more miles south, and I-35 dumped out at the border crossing, 1,600 miles south of the interstates northern terminus in Duluth, Minnesota. Robert and Ronnie were small-town people. Sprawling Laredo, with its 125,000 residents, was a big city compared to a place like Eagle Pass, which had a population of fewer than 20,000. "Oh well," Ronnie sighed. "Well try it for a year or two." A few months later, while recovering from a work-related hand injury, Robert saw an ad for the Laredo Police Department. He enjoyed public service more than working for a company. But he had to be a U.S. citizen to be a cop. He didnt see any benefit to citizenship, aside from this policing career, and wasnt feeling especially patriotic after his snub by the military. He wondered: What would his father do? His father would shut up and do right by his family. Land the career, move forward. So Robert studied, took the test, and took the oath of U.S. citizenship. When he joined the force, the Laredo Police Department employed about two hundred officers. Cops purchased their own guns. Uniforms consisted of jeans and denim shirts, to which wives sewed PD patches. Each patrol covered an enormous area. Squad cars called for backup, and good luck with that. But aside from domestic spats and some armed robbery, the city saw little violence. Across the river, Nuevo Laredo, with its larger population of 200,000 people, wasnt much worse. Drug and immigrant smuggling were rampant. But a smugglers power came less from controlling territory with violence and intimidation than from the scope of his contacts in law enforcement Details ISBN1501126555 Author Dan Slater Short Title WOLF BOYS Pages 368 Publisher Simon & Schuster Language English ISBN-10 1501126555 ISBN-13 9781501126550 Format Paperback Year 2017 Publication Date 2017-09-12 Imprint Simon & Schuster Subtitle Two American Teenagers and Mexicos Most Dangerous Drug Cartel DEWEY B Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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