'Wolf Boys': The American teenagers turned cartel assassins

In 2009, a New York Times article caught Dan Slater's eye: "Mexican Cartels Lure American Teens as Killers".

Boys raised in border communities in Texas were being recruited by drug cartels when they were as young as 13, and turned into battle-tested assassins before they could legally drive or vote or drink.

"It was one of those stories you read and you don't forget," Slater told MPR News host Euan Kerr.

Slater couldn't shake it. While the newspaper story laid out the facts of their crimes, Slater found himself wanting to know more about their lives. His new book, "Wolf Boys," charts the journey of Gabriel Cardona, and his descent into the drug-fueled violence that engulfed Laredo, Tex.

Cardona, Slater said, was born straight into a smuggling hub. From his neighborhood, you could throw a stone into the Rio Grande or onto I-35.

"The city sees about 60,000 trucks move north a week. It's the smuggling port — it's what all the Mexican cartels want to control, and so that's why it's been such a site of spillover violence," he said.

As a kid, Cardona seem destined of big things, winning math and science awards and playing quarterback for his middle school football team. He read "Friday Night Lights," and he wanted a taste of that Texas football glory. But his freshman year of high school cracked his dreams. He was benched. Frustrated, he quit the team.

"He had a big ego. He walked off the team. He was 14, 15 years old," Slater said. "Once you no longer have something to occupy your time in Laredo as a youngster, things can get bad very quickly."

Within days, Cardona was spending time with street gangs. He escalated from selling drugs to smuggling weapons to stealing cars and selling them on the black market across the border.

"That was what got him introduced to Los Zetas — and before he knew it, he was in a training camp."

The Zetas is one of the most violent and most sophisticated cartels operating in Mexico, known for brutal acts of intimidation and retaliation, including beheadings. The chapter in "Wolf Boys" that describes the cartel's training camps was the most difficult to write, Slater said.

"The brutality is unbelievable," he said. Kidnapped rivals are brought into the camp for live target practice. "And the point of the training camps — from the perspective of the cartel bosses — is to weed out the boys who do not have it in their blood to take a human life."

The boys who kill on command are called frios — the cold ones.

"They become the prized young members, and they get shuttled off to the side and developed further," Slater said. "Those are the boys who will go on to make the most money."

Cardona was one of the boys.

Hopped up on prescription drugs, he began working as an assassin. The drugs "allowed him to do the things he did without feeling much," Slater said.

"Wolf Boys" charts Cardona's descent from there. Slater also profiles Detective Robert Garcia, who pursued the young Zetas assassins, and ultimately arrested Cardona. For the book, Slater interviewed both Garcia and Cardona, who is now nearly 30 and serving a life sentence.

Researching the book, Slater said, gave him a brutal perspective on the drug trade.

"It showed me that the drug war is not what it is advertised. It's not what we see in the paper," he said. "It's not about El Chapo Guzman, the boss of the Sinaloa cartel, it's not about Pablo Escobar. it's about young men and boys, slaughtering each other."

For the full interview with Dan Slater on "Wolf Boys," use the audio player above.

Dan Slater reads from "Wolf Boys

Dan Slater will read from his book at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis on Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. (More details.)

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