And the bugged safe house wasn't only a risk; it was frustrating, too. Hood understood that they didn't have enough evidence to arrest any of the four assassins. Most of their murders were committed across the border where ATF was essentially helpless. And the murders they were suspected of committing in the States were quiet and neat: no willing witnesses, no weapons left behind, no written warnings or mutilations or beheadings, just plenty of shots to the head and heart and that was that. Always.32 Automatic Colt Pistol rounds. Nobody heard. Nobody saw. Nobody knew anything. All this manpower and technology, and not an arrest made, thought Hood.

But the truth, and he knew it, was that ATF didn't want to roll up the Den and go to court just yet, because although the four young sicarios were only small-time killers, they were gold mines of information. Since this "safe house" had been activated four weeks ago, their conversations and phone calls had provided ATF hundreds of hours of talk and video, giving the Blowdown team a street-level view of the North Baja Cartel's blood-soaked battle for Southern California.

Behind Hood, three large, rolling whiteboards were backed against the far wall. Two of them were jammed with writing and one was beginning to fill-names, crimes, suspects, straw buyers, timelines, organizational charts, routes, possible tunnel locations, turf, family relations, feuds, debts-many grouped in circles and linked by solid lines or broken lines or some by strings of small question marks. Certainties were written in black. Suspicions were rendered in red, speculations in blue. It looked like graffiti. And all of it was gathered by ATF eavesdropping on the four baby-faced hit men. Blowdown wasn't after the likes of these boys. They were after the lieutenants and up, to the top of the food chain-the men who bought the guns and called the shots.