The function of a sicario is to do away with a person immediately. Whether by a bullet or a knife or a blow, so quick and clean that the person feels nothing.
If you are going to kill someone in a car, for example, when a sicario is a professional, he does not do it like any imitation sicario. Here is the car and the target is driving and you have to kill him. An imitator shoots up the whole car . . . bam bam bam bam bam . . . spitting bullets all over the place. When a real sicario works and has a target and the target is driving, he makes a tight circle with the bullets right here through the car door where it will hit the target near his heart, or here through the windshield where it will hit the target in the head. This is the work of a sicario. The rest are imitators.
A real sicario has no need to make the person suffer. Because the person is already suffering from the first moment that he knows he is being followed. There is something that he feels, even if the target has nerves of steel, even if he is very strong, he feels it and he suffers.
Among the jobs that have been done, there are various ways of targeting the objective in the car. You might have a car stop in front and one behind—there is always a car behind that helps to avoid crossfire. One car pulls up alongside the target car to shoot. Several other cars will trap the objective in his car so that he cannot escape. Once the target is shot, the various cars leave the scene all going in different directions. There are ways of doing it so that there is no crossfire.
There are difficult moments when the order is to . . . well, there can be some mistakes, and sometimes one of your close companions ends up being the target. This is very difficult because the order comes to do away with one of our own. You can never ask why. The only one who knows why is the person who gives the order, and that is the boss. And the boss never makes a mistake. And if he makes a mistake, it is possible that the order will come again. That is, the order will be given to do away with anyone who might know that the original order might have been in error. These moments were very difficult for me. And if the order comes and you are ordered to kill a person who is your own companion.... Many times there are mistakes....
But during your trajectory through life, there comes a moment when you hit a roadblock, you reach your limit. And so when the day came and I hit my limit, I suddenly stopped drinking, I stopped smoking, and I stopped consuming drugs. I said to myself: “No more.” This day was a lot of fun for the person above me, my boss at the time.
He says, “You want some perico, some cocaine?”
“No thank you.”
“How about a drink?”
“No thanks, sir.”
“Cigarette?”
“No thank you, sir.”
He was shocked and started laughing at me. “What’s happening with you?”
“No more for me.”
“Will you be able to handle the work sober?”
“I am the one who does the work, not the cocaine, the alcohol, or the cigarettes.”
But I knew that in my life something was causing me to change. And that to always be drugged or drunk did not allow me to think clearly or completely about what I needed to do. When I began to take this step and when they started making fun of me, I started to feel persecuted by my own companions and coworkers. It was difficult to see how when I moved from one hotel to another ... because I never lived in the safe houses. Just like this motel room, the safe houses were only to be used for a time to do a job, and then they would be abandoned. The only time I stayed in a safe house was if I had to stay to take care of somebody who had been beaten up or to carry out an interrogation.
When I found that I needed to move about from place to place, I knew the techniques for doing that. I had helped many of my companions and coworkers and trained them in how to follow people and keep them under surveillance. So when this happened to me, when I tried to get away, it was less than two days before I realized that I was being followed and followed and followed. And then the day came that I decided to confront the person who was in charge of me.