Drivers in Mexicali, Mexico, wait to enter Calexico, Calif. The port of entry is a favorite of drug smugglers because there is less room there for customs inspectors to check cars as they approach.

A water tower on the Calexico side looms over the U.S.-Mexico border fence and a line of cars moving slowly toward the entry point.

A sidewalk shrine glows in front of the Compton home of Guadalupe "Lupita" Villalobos, a psychic used by Sinaloa cartel cocaine smuggler Gabriel Dieblas Roman.

The parking lot behind the Rosewood restaurant in Paramount, where Eligio "Pescado" Rios picked up SUVs full of cocaine and drove them to a nearby stash house.

The shadow of a small plane skims over the surface of the Racetrack, a dry lake bed in Death Valley National Park, where former cartel pilot John Ward would sometimes land during his drug-running career.

Fog hugs the landscape near Smoketown, Penn., whose airport pilot John Ward favored. After handing over his load of cocaine to an East Coast distributor for the Sinaloa cartel, he would fly home to California with millions in cash.

Small planes at the Smoketown airport.

Alleged Mexican drug kingpin Victor Emilio Cazares once lived in this small house in Bell.

Victor Emilio Cazares, reputed to be a top lieutenant in the Sinaloa drug cartel, built this estate near Culiacan, Mexico. The bell towers of the family church tower over the property.

Calexico, Calif.

( Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / August 26, 2009 )

Calexico Police Department Detective Mario Salinas looks toward the border crossing. The entry point is a major corridor through which the Sinaloa drug cartel smuggles drugs into the U.S. Iraq war veteran Roberto Daniel Lopez watched from an area near the park behind Salinas when he worked as a lookout for the cartel.