by Reece Hirsch
When the story was done, the trucker said, “You’re talking about that blackout in New York two years ago, aren’t you?”
“I’m just telling a story,” Chris said. “The details are attorney-client privileged.”
“And you really prevented a meltdown at that reactor?”
“Well, that wasn’t me. That was just a character in the story I’m telling. And there was also Zoey, remember?”
Kyle turned to Ian and asked, “So you’re Zoey, right?”
“Ha-ha, very funny. Zoey’s his girlfriend.”
The trucker shrugged. “Well, pardon me, but you are kind of fine boned. So where’s Zoey?”
“She’s on the run like we are, but she’s safe. Or safer than we are.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” he said.
“Have we earned our keep?” Chris asked.
“Yep. And then some.”
As the truck rolled south on I-5, Ian dozed off, drooling on himself with his forehead pressed against the window. Kyle put a CD in the player, and they listened to Jason Isbell’s Southeastern as he downed coffee from a thermos and Diet Dr Pepper to stay awake. The endless flats of the Central Valley eventually gave way to the steep, winding grade through the Grapevine in the mountains north of Los Angeles. The semi weaved back and forth between slower vehicles that struggled with the steep road, the cab and its trailer doing a hula as Kyle navigated the traffic. It made Chris nervous to feel the long truck bending at the cabin joint to round a curve, but he took comfort from the fact that Kyle seemed unfazed. On the continuum of things he had to be afraid of, he figured that Kyle’s driving barely made the low end.
They passed Pyramid Lake just in time to see the sun come up over the mountains, slow and hazy as a hangover, and by early afternoon they were in San Diego County, only an hour or so from the border.
“End of the line for me is just outside of San Diego. Distribution center. You might want to hop off before we get there, because there’s not much around.”
“You know much about getting across the border?”
“Sure, just drive right through the border checkpoint and show your driver’s license. But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”
“No.”
Kyle stopped just beyond the gates of the distribution center. He didn’t want his bosses seeing that he had taken on riders.
Before they climbed down from the cab, Kyle said, “Walk on through the open gate and come around to the loading dock in back. There are some guys who work out there who probably know a little something about getting across the border. I’ll tell ’em it’s okay to speak to you.”
“Thanks, Kyle,” Chris said. “I’m still not sure why you agreed to let us ride with you, but we’re glad you did.”
Kyle kicked the truck into gear. “Like I said, I hate being bored. And you two were definitely not boring. Good luck.”
The gate to the distribution center opened, and Kyle’s truck lumbered through. Chris and Ian followed on foot behind it and walked quickly to the rear of the building.
When they reached the loading dock, Kyle was already standing in the bay, talking to a couple of the workers. They looked up and watched as Chris and Ian approached. Kyle nodded at them and disappeared inside the warehouse.
When they reached the loading bay, Chris said to the two men that Kyle had been talking to, “I guess you know why we’re here.”
A man in jeans and a sweat-stained San Antonio Spurs T-shirt said, “Nice shirts.”
“We’re looking to get across the border without being noticed. Can you help us?”
“Well, it’s a little unusual, jefe. You’re goin’ against the traffic, if you know what I mean.”
“I guess what we’re looking for is a coyote.”
“Yeah, pretty much. And I know where to find one, but there’s a finder’s fee.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred bucks.”
“For two hundred dollars we’d want more than an address. We’d want you to take us there.”
“Nah, see, the price for that is three hundred dollars.”
“Deal.”
“I’ll need the two hundred up front, and then you can wait for us over there behind the trucks until my shift is done. Forty-five minutes.”
Chris peeled off the bills and handed them over.
The man counted them. “Who’s looking for you?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“What I don’t want is to be aiding and abetting something here.”
“Do we have a deal or not? I’m not paying you any more than three hundred.”
The man fixed a hard stare on Chris and Ian, but it was more like he was trying it out as an experiment just to see how they would react.
Ian looked away, but Chris kept staring back at the man.
“Okay, I’ll take you there.” He looked at the worker who was standing next to him in a short-sleeve shirt darkened by sweat stains. “I mean, look at these güeros. How bad could they be, huh?”
“Nah, they don’t look bad at all,” said the other man. He had a medium, sinewy build but looked stronger and more dangerous than any pumped-up gym rat. “I’d ask for another hundred if I was you. They look like they could pay.”
The first man seemed to consider this for a moment, then shook his head. “No. A deal’s a deal. They’re going to need their money for the coyote.”
Chris and Ian lay down in a patch of grass behind a truck at the rear of the parking lot and waited for the shift to end. Chris watched a squirrel tightrope along a telephone line like a Wallenda. Ian immediately fell sound asleep curled up on a patch of grass.
Chris envied Ian his ability to check out, but someone needed to stay awake. He hadn’t slept properly since the Guthrie Hotel, and he longed to have his consciousness wiped clean as an Etch A Sketch for a few hours. He knew it was possible that the men might return and decide that it was easier to simply rob them and take all of their money.
He heard footsteps in the parking lot and saw the man in the Spurs shirt returning alone.
“Come on, let’s go.”
The man led them to a Ford pickup truck that was half pale sunbaked blue and half primer coat.
They drove through downtown San Diego’s thicket of office towers and stopped on the fringes of Otay Mesa. They pulled into the parking lot of a bar made of red-painted cinder blocks called El Cholo. The sun had just sunk below the horizon. A bare tree stood out black against the indigo sky, which made it look as if darkness were seeping upward through tendrils from the earth below.
There were about twenty men inside and no women. The jukebox was playing some band that sounded like Metallica in Spanish, singing a song of death and rage. Chris went through the door first, and he felt forty eyes turn upon him—and not in a friendly “Hey, Norm” kind of way. Ian came through the door after Chris in his matching patriotic American eagle T-shirt, which just made Chris feel even more like chum in the water. Their guide in the Spurs shirt entered the bar last, and Chris could feel the group’s malevolent gaze ease a bit.
The bar was small, dark, and loud. The brightest illumination came from a Modelo beer sign on the rear wall.
Spurs parked Chris and Ian at a table in the back in a futile effort to make them less conspicuous. He went to the long wooden bar, which was edged with a ripped and scratched bumper of faux leather, and ordered three Tecates. Spurs placed two of the beers in front of them and took his over to a table at the opposite corner of the room, which was occupied by a small, drunk-looking man staring intently at the bottle of tequila in front of him as if he expected it to explain what it had done to him.
Spurs spoke to the man for a while, and they began glancing over at Chris and Ian.
At first the drunk man shook his head, but Spurs kept talking. Spurs rubbed his thumb and index finger together in the air, apparently indicating the money they’d be willing to pay to cross over. Finally, the drunk man seemed to relent,
partly to get Spurs to remove himself. The man waved Spurs away with a broad gesture, and he returned to their table.
“How’d it go?” Chris asked.
“He’s going to take you.”
“How much, though?” Ian asked.
“Three thousand dollars.”
Chris had it, but it would severely deplete their cash.
“How much of that goes to you?”
“That’s none of your business, mano.”
“Is the price negotiable?”
“No, and trying would be a very bad idea.”
“When do we go?” Ian asked.
“Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. You can meet him behind the McDonald’s in Otay Mesa on Roll Drive.”
“He looks like he’s going to be pretty hungover tomorrow morning,” Chris said. “How do we know he’s going to show?”
“You bring three thousand dollars, and he’ll be there. And let me give you a little piece of advice, jefe. If you try to tell him how to do his job the way you’re telling me, you ain’t gonna make it past the parking lot.”
Spurs left them and took a seat at the bar.
“I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink,” Ian said. “Shot of tequila to settle the nerves, you know?”
“I don’t disagree, but I don’t think this is the place. I’m not feeling very welcome.”
Ian eyed a table of men who looked like the farm team for the Cali drug cartel, who were staring at them and drinking, staring at them and drinking, working themselves up to something that Chris and Ian were not going to like.
Chris and Ian rose and left the bar quickly before anyone could attempt to stop them.
“How much have you got left after you pay the three thousand?” Ian asked.
“Only about six hundred,” Chris said.
Ian opened up his wallet. “And I’ve got another ninety dollars.”
“I think we’d better save our cash and not spring for a hotel.”
“What does that leave us?”
“Let’s walk awhile and see,” Chris said.
They followed the highway for several miles until they reached a small subdivision of duplexes optimistically called Oceanbreeze Place. The duplexes were set off by themselves in the middle of an expanse of parched brown grass, with not a glimmer of ocean in sight. Any breeze from the ocean would have to travel over miles of strip malls and scrub brush to get there.
The development seemed to have been abandoned in midconstruction, a victim of the housing crisis that had never been reclaimed. Chris found a duplex unit that had a roof and three walls, with one unfinished wall open to the elements. They climbed inside and found a dirt foundation and some insulation that would do for bedding.
Chris tried to get a little bit of sleep before the sun came up.
“You think we can trust that coyote?”
“No, but I can’t think of a better way to get across the border. We can’t stay here in the US without being picked up by the agency. And I don’t think we can sneak across the border on our own.”
Ian lifted a bottle of vodka out of the brown paper shopping bag that he was using to carry his belongings.
“Where did you get that?” Chris asked.
“I ducked into a liquor store while you were in that gas station bathroom.”
“They probably have security camera footage of you.”
“Calculated risk,” Ian said. “I needed this. I don’t think I could sleep without it, and I need to sleep.”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Chris said.
Ian methodically slugged down about a third of the vodka in less than fifteen minutes and, sure enough, was snoring five minutes later.
It took Chris a while longer. He stared out at the night sky, which looked like a box of stars through the frame of the open wall. He worried that Ian was coming apart like a worn tire. How much longer could he run? Chris knew from firsthand experience that people who drank to banish anxiety or depression tended to keep drinking because those illnesses were like vultures—you could momentarily brush them back, but they wasted little time in returning to pick at the carcass. Although he remembered his wife, Tana, more than fondly, there had been a few years lost to that cycle of disastrous self-medication.
Chris wondered where Zoey was and if she was safe. He wondered if this was what the rest of their lives would consist of, the running and the pursuit. He wondered if there would come a point when he would be too tired to run anymore. Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he smelled the tang of sea salt in the air.
After a while he drifted off into a restless sleep, lying flat on his back because it was the position that was least uncomfortable.
He awoke to the buzzing of an insect. It was still dark, and his eyes opened just a slit, looking to make sure it wasn’t a mosquito dining on him.
Then his eyes found the source of the buzzing.
It was a teardrop-shaped device, about four inches long, with a tiny helicopter-like prop, and it was hovering about eight feet directly over his head. The device had an oddly shiny black surface at one end.
That would be the camera.
Chris kept his eyes narrowed and checked himself from drawing a sharp breath to register his discovery. He resisted his first instinct to stand up and swat the device, smashing it into the wall, deciding it was best to not give anything away.
The minidrone descended, drawing a bit closer. Chris could see his face reflected and distended in the lens’s obsidian eye. Chris tried not to breathe, and then he realized that would be even more suspicious, so he tried to replicate the deep, easy breaths of REM sleep.
The device hovered for an endless moment. He wondered whether the agents were just outside the house operating the drone, making sure that they weren’t awake and armed before they moved in.
The minidrone rose toward the ceiling and then darted out of the house through the open wall. As soon as it was out of sight, Chris sat up, knowing that some immediate action was required, but not sure what it should be. Once again he envied Ian his sleeping obliviousness. He would need to tell him.
Before he could do anything, Chris’s cell phone rang.
A near impossibility, because it was a burner phone and no one had the number.
The caller ID was blocked.
Chris pressed the button and slowly raised the phone to his ear.
23
Damian Hull stood before his crew in the living room of their hideout in Loja. He stared at them silently like a presenter about to tap the microphone to get everyone’s attention.
Finally, after Serge put down his gaming console, Damian said, “I know what you’re all thinking: Why steal from the Sinaloa Cartel? Am I right?”
After their conversation at the market, Zoey recognized a lack of enthusiasm in Damian that he was trying to disguise with energetic salesmanship. She had spoken to him about finding a way to tank the plan, but Damian believed that Roland would be monitoring every step of the process.
“That’s right,” Zoey said, “but I’d rephrase that. Why the fuck would you want to steal from the Sinaloa Cartel? It’s a suicide mission.” Zoey knew she didn’t have to convince Damian, so her comments were actually directed to the rest of the crew—and Roland in particular.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Damian said.
“Because they have cubic butt tons of money?” Zoey offered.
“You’re salty today, aren’t you?”
“I get that way when someone has an idea that might get me killed.”
“To your earlier comment,” Damian said, trying to get back on track, “when they asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he said, ‘Because that’s where the money is.’ Well, today the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the places where the money is. It may be the most cash rich organization in the world. And no one can leave that much money in currency. It’s too unwieldy. It needs laundering.”
“So you’ve found where they’re stashing their money?”
Zoey asked.
“Better than that. We’ve found one of their moneymen. Roland has identified a man who appears to be the chief accountant for the cartel. His name is Guillermo Chacon. We’ve linked him to a string of cash-heavy businesses: restaurants, bars, car washes—about fifteen in all.”
“Car washes?” Maria snorted. “I thought you said this was going to be a huge score.”
“But that’s the thing,” Damian said patiently. “When you see the balances in those company’s accounts, they don’t match up at all to the size of the businesses. Those fifteen accounts currently total—help me out, Roland—”
“Five hundred and fifty million dollars,” Roland said, as close to grinning as he was going to get. “Give or take.”
“Isn’t it pretty obvious to Mexican law enforcement that those businesses are fronts?” Zoey asked.
“I’m sure it is,” Damian said, “but the cartel has long paid the Mexican authorities good money not to have to hide its operations.”
Maria, who had been slouched on the corner of the couch, sat up. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well, Guillermo was cautious about security, so we’ve been unable to get him to bite at our attempts at phishing exploits. Never got him to click an attachment.”
“So how do you get to him?” Zoey asked.
“Through his fifteen-year-old daughter,” Roland said. “She has her own computer, and we know her email address. We’re gonna get her to click an attachment and then hop over to Guillermo’s computer through blue snarfing.” Blue snarfing was a technique for infecting computers linked to a common Wi-Fi connection. “Once we’ve captured Guillermo’s computer, we’ll snag his user names and passwords for all of those business accounts.”
“How do you know you can get the daughter to go for it?” asked Zoey. “The kid probably knows more about how to avoid viruses than Guillermo.”
Damian smiled. “That’s where you come in. You were always known for your design skills in crafting phishing exploits. You’re going to dazzle us.”
“And what if I say no?”
“We can just pick up where we left off,” Roland offered.
Zoey let the silence hang in the air for a moment while they all stared at her.