A former assassin for a drug cartel, Rosalio Reta, 19, is serving a 70-year sentence. He first killed at 13. “I like what I do,” he confessed to police.

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

LAREDO, Texas - When he was finally caught, Rosalio Reta told detectives here that he had felt a thrill each time he killed. It was like being Superman or James Bond, he said.

“I like what I do,” he told the police in a taped confession. “I don’t deny it.”

Mr. Reta was 13 when he was recruited by the Zetas, the infamous assassins of the Gulf Cartel, law enforcement officials say. He was one of a group of American teenagers from impoverished Laredo who was lured into the drug wars across the Rio Grande in Mexico with promises of high pay, fancy cars and sexy women.

After a short apprenticeship, the young men lived in an expensive house in Texas, available to kill whenever called on. The Gulf Cartel was engaged in a turf war with the Sinaloa Cartel over the Interstate 35 corridor, the north-south highway that connects Laredo to Dallas and beyond, and is, according to law enforcement officials, one of the most important arteries for drug smuggling in the Americas.

The young men all paid a heavy price. Jesus Gonzalez III was beaten and knifed to death in a Mexican jail at 23. Mr. Reta, now 19, and his boyhood friend, Gabriel Cardona, 22, are serving what amount to life sentences in prisons in the United States.

Other young Americans in their circle who the police say worked for the Zetas have also ended up in prison, fled into hiding in Mexico or disappeared in the permanent way that people wrapped up in the Mexican drug trade tend to go missing.

In the minds of many Americans, the Rio Grande divides Mexico, a corrupt land where drug cartels often seem to have the upper hand, from the United States, a nation of law and order, where the authorities try to keep criminal gangs in check.

But the Mexican drug cartels recruit young men from both countries and operate their smuggling and murder-forhire rings on both sides of the divide.

That complexity was reflected in the short but bloody careers of Mr. Reta, Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Cardona, who are linked to crimes in both countries, according to trial transcripts, court documents and interviews with detectives and family members.

While working as hired guns in 2005 and 2006, the three Americans lived in a house rented by their employers on Hibiscus Street in Laredo, according to testimony at Mr. Reta’s trial. Another crew of three assassins, all from Mexico, were also there, awaiting orders, law enforcement officials said.

The Mexican government has been trying to crack down on the drug cartels, an effort that has left more than 10,000 Mexicans dead in the last 18 months. Some deaths are the result of shootouts between the cartels and the authorities.

But the assassinations of drug dealers involved in turf battles and of police officers and army personnel who get in the way - the kind of work Mr. Reta, Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Cardona did - also accounts for thousands of bodies.

The assassins took direction from Lucio Quintero, or El Viejon, a capo in the Zetas across the river, trial records show. They received $500 a week as a retainer and $10,000 to $50,000 for each assassination, and the triggerman was given two kilos of cocaine.

Detective Roberto A. Garcia Jr. of the Laredo Police Department said they all worked for Miguel Trevino, the leader of the Zetas in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican city across the river from Laredo, who goes by the name El Cuarenta, which means Forty. (Many Zetas identify themselves by a number.)

At one point, Mr. Reta was also given a new $70,000 Mercedes, for a job well done. Family members described how the young men would go to parties hosted by cartel capos. To keep up morale, the drug leaders would raffle off automobiles, firearms and even dates with attractive women, the family members said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“The cartels - they just seduce you,” said Detective Garcia, who with his partner in the Laredo Police Department, Carlos Adan, broke up the ring. “They wave that power, that cash, the cars, the easy money. And these kids all have that romantic notion they are going to live forever.”

Detective Garcia described Mr. Cardona as the ringleader of the American cell of assassins, a savvy, brash young man who orchestrated at least five murders in Laredo of people connected to the Sinaloa Cartel.

His mother, Gabriela Maldonado, a home health worker, said Mr. Cardona had grown up with an abusive, alcoholic father, but had done well in school through eighth grade, when his father abandoned the family.

“He was so intelligent - I don’t know what happened to him,” his mother said. “He always said when he was young that he wanted to be a lawyer.”

Mr. Reta told Detective Garcia that he was 13 the first time he killed a man. He said he was asked to prove his loyalty by doing it in front of Mr. Trevino. After that, killing became addictive, Mr. Reta told Detective Garcia, and he compared the feeling to the allure of candy to a small child. “There were others to do it, but I would volunteer,” he said in the interview with the police. “It was like a James Bond game.”

“Anyone can do it, but not everyone wants to,” Mr. Reta added. “Some are weak in the mind and cannot carry it in their conscience. Others sleep as peacefully as fish.”

Family members say Mr. Reta grew up with nine brothers and sisters, living in a tiny wood house. His father worked in construction; his mother was a hairdresser. Before the age of 12, he was a well-mannered boy who did tolerably well in school.

Now Mr. Reta lives in a cramped cell at the Robertson Unit, a state prison in Abilene, Texas. Despondent over being sentenced to 70 years for two killings in Laredo, he paid a fellow prisoner to tattoo flames and horn shapes on his face, giving him a demonic look.

Speaking of his upbringing, he said that to him and his friends, growing up in ramshackle houses on dirt lots, the narcotics traffickers were heroes.

“You know, here, all the little kids that are young, they say, ‘I want to be a firefighter when I grow up,’” Mr. Reta said, “Well, down there, they say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a Zeta.’

“You know, it’s the money, cars, houses, girls,” he said, pausing, “and you know that ain’t going to last a lifetime, that it’s going to end.”