by Mark Greaney
As they sat together in the back of the bus, Jerry spoke his first words in hours that were not complaints or curses. “Why did we do all that?”
“All what?”
“We’ve been jumping on and off vehicles for a dozen hours. My foot is killing me, dude. I need a doctor.”
“We burned our trail. There is no way the Black Suits are going to find us. They’ll look for your car and find it at the airport. They’ll think we wanted them to think we got on a plane, but they’ll be smart enough to see that you rented a car. They will find the rental there at the airport, and they might think we did, in fact, fly out of Mexico City, but if they are good, they’ll check with the taxi company and see that we tried to throw them off. Then if they are good and they are lucky, they might even find out about the Mustang stolen several miles from where the cab dropped us off, but I seriously doubt it.”
Pfleger rubbed his calf with a grimace as the swelling caused the nerves to flare up.
“Even if they managed every bit of that, they’d have to be more dialed in than the FBI to find the Mustang in Pachuca, and even if they did, there was no video security at the terminal there, and we paid in cash, so there is no chance in hell they will track us now.”
“But won’t they still guess that we are going to TJ?”
Gentry nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he said, as if it were obvious. “They’ll be all over Tijuana when we get there, scanning the border, ready to kill us all.”
“That’s great,” Pfleger said. “And then, even if they don’t, you are going to kill me when this is all over.”
“Not if you do what I say.”
“Bullshit. I saw what you did to the CIA guy, the guy who saved your ass. You fucking murdered him.”
Court shrugged. Smiled wearily. “It had to be done.”
“Right. You’ll say that about me in a couple of days.”
“Only if you try anything cute.” Gentry pulled a pair of zip ties from his pocket. He’d picked them up at a grocery store back in the capital. He made a two-link chain with them, with his left hand in one of the links and Jerry’s right hand in the other. He tightened the bindings. Court found a small sleeping blanket that the bus provided, and he tossed it over his and Jerry’s laps. To anyone looking it would appear as if the two men were holding hands. An old woman sitting across the aisle noticed their apparent public display of affection and clucked disapprovingly.
“So we are going to TJ even though we know they will be at the border, waiting for the Gamboas to cross?”
“Let me explain what is going to happen, Jerry. We are going to the border. To Tijuana. When we get there, Elena, Luz, and Diego are going to cross the border. You are going to set up their crossing from this side, and you and I are going to sit in some hotel room together, just sit there and look at each other, until I get a phone call from Elena telling me that they are safely in the United States. If I don’t get that call, if they don’t make it across, Jerry, you are going to die a very, very slow and very, very miserable death right there in that hotel room. You have one chance to arrange a fucking foolproof crossing for them, so you better start coming up with something quick.”
Jerry began shaking his head before Court finished talking. “I can’t ever be sure someone will make it over! Yeah, if we had the documents, I could just about promise. But with a midnight run there are too many variables. I always tell people I’ll get them over within two or three tries.”
“These people don’t have two or three tries. If they are caught and they go into the system, then de la Rocha can make them disappear. You get one shot at this.”
“I am telling you, I can’t promise anything!”
Court shrugged. He closed his eyes and tucked his head against the headrest. He pulled the blanket up high to his shoulders and said, “Well in that case, Jerry, you are going to die.”
FORTY-TWO
Diego Gamboa Fuentes sat on the park bench, three hundred yards from the border crossing into the United States. His eyes darted to everyone around over the age of ten. He was terrified of being seen by the wrong people, and he was certain the wrong people were crawling all over the place.
This was the third day he had sat here in this spot, and each day he became more and more certain that Jose and tía Laura were not going to appear, and more and more certain that the men walking around the park were working for the Black Suits. The air was only seventy degrees, but sweat dripped from Diego’s big dark sunglasses and from the scalp of his nearly shaved head.
He’d followed Joe’s instructions to alter his appearance, as had tía Elena and his abuela. They remained at the hotel, a few miles south of here, in hiding, because they just knew the Black Suits were close by.
They’d had a bit of luck the day before. Members of the Tijuana Cartel had spotted some new men in the area, thought them to be a rival cartel up here muscling in on their plaza, and they reacted accordingly, responding in the only way they ever responded to threats to their bottom line — they opened fire. No civilians had been hurt or killed, miraculously, but the daily machine-gun fire in the streets of TJ had picked up considerably since, as more guerreros for the Tijuana Cartel had been sent out to find and scare away the new visitors to this lucrative crossing point.
Diego and his family had heard the shooting, but they learned the reasons behind the cartel-on-cartel street battle the evening before on the news. They hoped this meant the TJ narcos were, although unwittingly, providing a level of protection for them, giving Los Trajes Negros a little something to worry about while up here in the north.
Diego did not want to come out today, to wait at the park for the three p.m. meeting time. He did not expect to see his aunt or the gringo, and he did not like leaving the hotel. He knew he would have to be the one, eventually, to leave cover and make contact with the local coyote to try and find some transportation over the border, but he was more than willing to wait a few days before attempting this. They had little money, no connections, and a palpable fear of the men of the Black Suits.
Getting over the border on their own was going to be tough.
A man walked past the bench; Diego had not even noticed him approach. His hair was razor short; Diego could tell even though the man wore a ball cap. His goatee and mustache were full but trimmed close to his face; his eyes were hidden behind mirrored lenses. He wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt and baggy jeans, the typical attire of a laborer, not the nicer clothes of a cartelero. But when he slowed in front of Diego, the young Mexican stiffened in fear.
“Follow me,” the man said softly in Spanish.
Diego recognized the accent. The voice.
It was Jose. The American.
He had changed his appearance so completely Diego hesitated, even when the man crossed the park, sat down on a small Vespa scooter, and turned back to him. The boy on the bench rose tentatively; he wondered how Joe had pulled up on the scooter and then crossed the park without Diego noticing. It was like he had just materialized out of thin air.
When Diego arrived at the Vespa, Joe started the engine, motioned for Diego to climb on back, and then they drove off down the street without a word between them.
* * *
Court returned the scooter to the shop where Jerry had rented it that afternoon, then took a taxi with Diego back to the hotel where Luz and Elena were staying. The two women were floored by the American’s change of appearance. They both agreed that, with the right clothes, he looked like he could actually be a member of Los Trajes Negros.
Like Diego, the women had made an attempt at a transformation. Luz had dyed her hair red; it did not look natural, but neither did it look out of place for a woman of her age. Elena Gamboa Gonzalez wore a white floral dress that looked new; she’d cut her hair short, into a bob not unlike her sister-in-law Laura’s. She wore big sunglasses and high heels.
But Elena was still pregnant. Court appreciated her going to the trouble to try and disguise herself, but he could not imagine the hit
men for the Black Suits ignoring a pregnant lady just because her hair was shorter than that of their target.
Diego and Court collected the two women and had a new taxi take them to a supermarket, where they all climbed into yet another cab that drove them south to a local transit bus stop. When the cab drove away, Gentry led the family up the street a hundred yards, then they turned left down a narrow callejón and arrived at a horridlooking hourly motel.
Sickly prostitutes stood out front, but Gentry led the Gamboas past them and then up a single flight of stairs in the back. He slipped his key in the lock of a tiny room with no windows.
Inside it was dark. Court had forbade talking on the trip through town, so as soon as he closed the door, Elena said, “Why are we here?”
As a response Court flipped on the light to the room. A single bed that sagged in the middle, a threadbare comforter, a backpack lying on top. With his eyes Gentry directed the families to look in the bathroom.
Jerry was tied with telephone cord and strapping tape to the plumbing in the tiny and filthy bathroom; his head on the shit-stained porcelain, and his wounded foot positioned high on the rim of the dingy bathtub.
“What took you so long?” he asked as Gentry looked in on him past the three Mexicans in the doorway.
Court addressed the Gamboas. “We’ve been compromised.”
“Where is Laura?” Elena asked.
He sighed. “The Black Suits have her.” He said it in Spanish so Luz and Diego would understand.
Luz cried out, sat down on the bed, and began to wail.
Elena herself cried. “How?”
“Thank this asshole right here.” He pointed towards the American tied to the toilet.
Elena looked at Pfleger, and Pfleger just turned away from her, gazed at a long centipede crawling across the grimy fake-tile flooring.
“What… what are we going to do now?” asked Diego.
“We’re going to get you all into the United States. And then I’ll go and get her back.”
“No! No, I am not leaving without Laura,” said Elena.
“Yes, you are. I need you and the family out of the way.”
“How are we going to get my tía back?” asked Diego.
Court sat on the bed next to Luz. He said, “I am going to make de la Rocha give her back. I am going to make de la Rocha’s life miserable, and I will not stop making his life miserable until he releases Laura. And then when he does… I take her, and I leave.”
“You will leave him alive?” asked Diego.
“My only objective is to save Lorita.”
“De la Rocha killed Eduardo,” said Elena.
“I know that, and I would love to make him pay. But I don’t expect that will be possible, so I am going to concentrate on rescuing Laura.”
Elena Gamboa stared long and hard at Court. He did not understand the look she was giving him at first, but slowly it dawned on him. He had said something, conveyed something, given off some sort of emotion about Laura that Elena recognized.
He turned away, but she came to him, took both of his hands, and squeezed them tightly. He kept his eyes on the wall, then down on Pfleger, who was writhing on the tile next to the toilet.
He heard Eddie’s wife sniff back tears. She understood that this was personal now; she had read into Court’s words and actions.
Elena must have recognized she was making him uncomfortable, so she turned away without speaking, sat with her mother-in-law, hugged her deeply; tears dripped down both of their faces. Luz looked up at the man she knew as Jose. “Thank you, Jose. Thank you so much.”
In Spanish he said, “I haven’t even started yet.”
* * *
Jerry had spent literally the entire twenty-four-hour bus ride and the next morning in Tijuana working on his plan to get the Gamboas into the United States. He hadn’t quite solidified his scheme before the American killer had taken Pfleger to rent a scooter, then returned him to the motel, tied him to the shitter, and left him alone for hours.
Heartless bastard.
The evening before, on the bus north, Jerry had arranged for a criminal contact in Tijuana to vouch for him to a veteran coyote. The cayote told him he was arranging for a large group of forty pot smugglers to cross into the U.S. near Tecate late in the evening in two days’ time. Jerry was told his group could tag along if they would haul packs of marijuana wrapped in hemp cord during the hike, and Jerry readily agreed. He was then given the exact time and place of the crossing.
Next he used an acquaintance in Nogales who owed him a favor. The man put him in touch with a drug ring working the plaza there. He was told of a tunnel that ran from Nogales over the border into Arizona, and the entire morning in Tijuana he worked his new mobile phone to make contact with the right people in the right places. Finally, after the Gamboas were collected and he was cut free from the toilet by the Gray Man, Jerry Pfleger completed the arrangements with more calls to Nogales and Tucson, and promises to everyone he spoke with.
Promises that were mostly lies.
The lies Jerry Pfleger had told in the past twenty-four hours would have a lot of people out to kill him, of this the American embassy officer had no doubt. His plan would fuck over some of the scummiest, most vengeful, and most dangerous men in northern Mexico, a region known for dangerous men. All these men knew his real name, knew his business associates, and knew where he worked. There would be no going back to business as usual when this ordeal was over.
But Jerry Pfleger was more terrified of the Gray Man. If he somehow survived this ordeal, he would deal with whatever came after. For now he had a job to do.
FORTY-THREE
Court, Jerry, and the Gamboas drove a stolen Ford Lobo truck east through the morning, arriving at Nogales before noon. There they checked into a motel that was hardly any better than the one they’d left in TJ.
They sat around all afternoon, ate, talked. The Gamboas prayed, and Court and Jerry picked at their raw and red wounds, waiting for nightfall.
Jerry’s plan was all about his own preservation. He would tip off the DEA at the last minute to the invasion of pot smugglers near Tecate, he would insinuate heroin was being smuggled along with the pot, and he would exaggerate the number of mules from forty to one hundred.
And he would hope like hell that this took any heat away from the Arizona side of the Nogales tunnel for the time the Gamboas needed to get over the border.
It was the best way to increase the Gamboas’ chances because the Gamboas’ fate was, to Jerry Pfleger, a matter of life or death.
* * *
At eight in the evening Court tied Jerry to the toilet in the bathroom, and he left the motel with the Gamboas. They drove the Lobo up to the border to International Street, made a right, and then drove down a little hill. On their left was the border fence, rusted tin and a few layers of chain link and barbed wire. On their right were some simple homes on the hill. The asphalt road ended, and they continued on gravel and dirt for fifty yards, then parked in front of a wooden shack.
One man stood outside. Even before Court climbed out from behind the wheel, he could tell the man had a gun under his lumberjack shirt.
This was the cayote. He’d be crossing with the family, meeting with their ride to Tucson. He would accompany them all the way there.
The cayote eyed the gringo, said nothing at all.
Court didn’t like this one damn bit. The lives of these three, four if you counted Eddie’s unborn son, all depended on the actions of this drug-running, piece-of-shit scumbag giving him the stink eye.
But neither Court nor the Gamboas had any other options. They had to trust Jerry. Not his honesty or fidelity. No, he wasn’t doing this for those reasons. He was doing it for self-preservation, so Court felt his motivation was sufficient.
The cayote motioned the Gamboas forward into the shack, and Court stood with them a moment in the darkness on the dirt road. “I will never be able to thank you,” Elena said to him. She sobbed.
> “Just make it over there. Look up some of Eddie’s old friends. Navy men, DEA guys. They are good people. They will help you. Have that baby.”
She smiled. “I will do that.”
She hugged him, tears filled her eyes. “Please save Laura. You are her only chance. And please be careful yourself,” she said.
She turned and headed for the shack. Court shook Diego’s hand next. “You are in charge; you understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your uncle Eddie went to the U.S. as a young man, and he made a success of himself. No matter how his life ended… he had a life.”
Diego nodded, looked into the starry sky. “I would be proud to live like my tío Eduardo.” He turned and disappeared into the shack.
Luz hugged Court a long time. She said a short prayer then crossed herself, turned, and walked away.
Court caught himself trying to understand the words she had said. To take solace in them. To feel empowered by her divine plea.
But he did not understand her. And he felt no different.
When the family was gone, Court turned around. He could see over the fence here, more or less. On the other side were a few warehouses; their lights were on but it was still and silent now. A road ran up a hill of scrubland; it was visible in the moon and starlight, a long piece of ribbon candy winding to the north, into the distant night.
That was America. Right there. So close he felt he could reach out and touch it.
Court had not seen his own country in five years. It was no longer home; it was likely the most dangerous country in the world for him.
Except, perhaps, for Mexico.
Still, he looked out over the undulating scrubland longingly, as if the dirt and sand and tumbleweed ahead of him was the land of milk and honey.
It was fucking beautiful.
He was jealous of the three Mexicans he had just sent over the border.
He loved his country, though powerful elements of his country did not love him back. He’d bled for that country. He’d killed for that country.