We backed away from Angelo’s body, then Jesús’s phone lit up like a Christmas tree, and he stopped as suddenly as if he’d walked into a wall.
“Wait,” he said, scrolling through a torrent of texts. Then, “Shit.”
“We gotta keep moving, sí?” said one of his men, a guy with a jutting jaw and a body like a six-foot-five brick. “Get out of sight of the norteamericanos.”
“We lost plan A and now plan B.” Jesús shook his head. “We got nowhere to go at the moment.”
“I see doors,” said the Brick. “I see windows.”
“Won’t work. They got guys everywhere.” Jesús typed with furious speed, then jerked his chin toward me. “Make sure they can’t get a sight on her.”
Jesús’s men closed ranks around me, and the bar stink of beer and cigarettes filled my nostrils. The men put me in mind, appropriately enough, of alley cats—scruffy and lean, tough in their jeans and T-shirts, their faces in fighting mode and their eyes signaling all systems go. The reek of testosterone could make a girl’s eyes water.
But the men were no longer a merry band of revelers. They’d been silenced by Angelo’s broken body. Death does that.
I looked past the shaved heads and bushy beards toward the blocky shapes of the SUVs guarding each end of the alley. The drivers had cut the headlights, but the faint hum of idling engines rumbled against the bricks. When I squinted, I could make out shadowy figures sitting in the cabs. Waiting, I presumed, for Jesús’s men to get over their shock at the body and move on, leaving me alone with Angelo.
Years ago, in Iraq, Doug Ayers told me that after a hunter lays eyes on his target, his next move is to choke off all routes by which that target can flee. When the man in the hotel failed to do whatever it was he was supposed to do—kill or capture me—they’d set a trap by closing off the alley. They undoubtedly had another man inside the hotel by now, and God knew where else.
Guys everywhere, Jesús had said.
As soon as I was alone and out of the public eye, they’d spring their trap.
High overhead, the last shimmer of sun lit the tops of the buildings. Down here, the dark encroached in a relentless tide.
I swallowed my panic. “Jesús?”
He was hunched over the bright glow of his phone.
“Madre de Dios,” he murmured. A glance at me. “Who the fuck are these people?”
I took the question as rhetorical and said nothing.
He kept texting. “When you called, I thought you had un problemita. A little trouble. But this is a shit storm.”
Twenty feet away, a fire escape dangled. “I’ll go up and over.”
“No.”
“I’ll move fast. You’ll have my back.”
“They’ve got men on the rooftops, too.”
“Then they don’t want me dead.”
He glanced up at me, the lower half of his face blue white in the reflected radiance of his phone. “Cierto. They would have already put a round in your head. However, they may care less about my men.”
To the south, the singsong wail of the ambulance had grown steadily louder. Now the siren shut off as the vehicle arrived at the mouth of the alley. Lights strobed against the deepening night, a rotating throb of red that pulsed like a heartbeat. I squinted, trying to see past the lights.
“They’re blocking the ambulance,” said the Brick.
“Once they let it pass,” I said, “I’ll slip inside while they’re busy with Angelo.”
“It’s not an ambulance,” Jesús said. “It’s the policía. Your enemies have made themselves some very good friends. My source says those pendejos are moving into the area now, too.”
The BIC Lighter panic I’d been trying to damp down now burst forth, an acetylene torch that shot flame up my spine. Around me, the men cursed. I couldn’t tell if their anger was directed toward me or the police.
“I’ll turn myself over,” I said. “I’m an American. A cop. They won’t hurt me.”
Jesús barked a laugh. “Your badge means nothing here. No. We got this. First, you become one of us.” He whipped off his black ball cap with its stitched anchor and carbines emblem and plunked it on my head. “La chianga instead of an American. Hide your hair.” He shrugged out of his denim jacket and tossed it to me. “And your skin. Then voilà, una chianga.”
I yanked on the jacket and stuffed my blonde braid beneath the cap. In the heat, sweat didn’t so much trickle down my skin as materialize from every pore.
The Brick said, “What are they waiting for?”
“For us to move along and leave Sydney here like a pollito for slaughter.” Jesús wiped sweat from his hairline. “We leave, and she is no more.”
The Brick’s jaw worked like he had a wad of chewing tobacco. “So what are we waiting for?”
“An open sesame from Ali Baba would be nice. But for now, just keep standing around with your dicks in your hands. And say your prayers.”
“We wait much longer, we won’t have any dicks,” growled one of the other men.
“Sí,” said a third. “The policía, they’ll spike our balls to the wall with a nail gun. And that’ll just be the warm-up.”
A man appeared at the hotel window, a radio to his mouth while he scanned the alley. I recognized the gorilla shoulders and the arrogance—it was the man I’d stunned. He had a bruise on his forehead from hitting the floor and an expression like he’d swallowed piss.
I needed to work on my knot-tying skills.
To the south, the SUV’s headlights blazed to life. Ditto to the north. Tires rumbled against the rough pavement.
“We gotta go,” the Brick said.
“I know.” Jesús held his phone like it was a rosary.
“Jesús,” I croaked. The word was both name and prayer.
“I know!” His phone buzzed with another text; he glanced at it, then pointed toward the tattoo shop. “Okay, drop your dicks and haul ass!”
Seconds later, we crowded into the tiny anteroom of the tattoo parlor I’d noticed earlier. One of the Marines closed and locked the door behind us. Doing so wasn’t a simple act. He rammed home four separate dead bolts. When he finished with those, he dropped a heavy wooden bar across the door. The door itself looked like two inches of solid wood.
“The hell?” I asked Jesús.
“Safe house.”
A woman stood behind an immense desk, guarding a hallway that led toward the back. She looked fiftyish, her thick black hair scraped into a ponytail, her drab blouse buttoned tight across ample cleavage, the cuffs shoved up above her dimpled elbows. A plain gold cross hung on a chain that all but disappeared in the fleshy creases of her neck.
“That everyone?” she asked in Spanish.
Jesús nodded. “Sí.”
She tucked a plastic notebook under her arm and picked up an overstuffed messenger bag. “This way.”
We moved after her, falling into pairs in the narrow hallway.
“I’d already left when I got your call,” the woman said to Jesús. “Had to come back. But we got everyone out.”
“Gracias, Señora Torres.”
“Now, though, hay policía out back, along with more americanos. It’s not good.”
“That’s why we—”
“I know.” Torres shot me a glare over her shoulder. “She is worth it?”
“She is a Marine.”
Pounding erupted behind us—someone hammering on the front door.
“Vámonos,” said Torres. Let’s go.
At the end of the hall, Torres made a sharp right down another hallway, then unlocked a door and waved us into a ten-by-fifteen room. A large, heavy desk—twin to the one up front—sat on a rug in the middle of the room. A quick glance around showed shelves stocked with water bottles, packets of food, flashlights, and sleeping bags. On the floor, cardboard boxes overflowed with clothes.
Not just a safe house. A way station. But from where to where? The trains the migrants hitched to ride north were miles from here.
From up front, the pounding grew harder. How long before they brought in a battering ram or an ax?
Torres closed and locked the door. Another series of bolts and a drop bar.
“Más rápido,” she said.
Jesús and the Marines lifted the desk and set it against the door, then tossed aside the rug. Just visible in the wooden planks was the outline of a trapdoor. Jesús grabbed a crowbar from a shelf and pried at a corner until the door came loose. He and another Marine lifted it and set it aside. A whiff of cool earth wafted into the room. But underlying the sweet, loamy smell came a nauseating stench of sweat and urine and feces.
I recalled a news report I’d read, that some sections of the military were in the hands of the cartels. “Jesús?”
“Migrants, Sydney.” His eyes met mine. “Not prisoners. Thirty minutes ago, we had five men and women in here. Headlamps are in that box to your right—pass them around. Señora Torres, you have a chain and padlock so you can bolt the trapdoor from the inside?”
“Sí.”
The Brick gave a low whistle and jerked a thumb toward the front of the building.
“Listen,” he whispered.
We froze. The pounding had stopped. In the ominous silence, the building groaned like an arthritic old man. Pipes ticked overhead, and somewhere water dripped.
There came a boom like thunder, and the entire building shuddered.
“They’ve blown the front door,” said the Brick.
Jesús shoved me toward the trapdoor. “Go!”
More thunder rumbled, closer than the first.
“And the back,” the Brick added.
I flicked on my headlamp, took a quick look down at a cramped tunnel, and, holding tight to my duffel, dropped through the opening. I landed in a pile of dirt.
Jesús dropped beside me. “Run!”
I stumbled forward a few steps and stopped. The tunnel disappeared into darkness. My headlamp picked out plywood walls, a trampled dirt floor, and a ceiling five inches above my head. The hair lifted on the back of my neck.
I don’t do tunnels well, not since a month earlier when Clyde and I had been forced to walk through one I thought would collapse at any moment.
Jesús touched my shoulder. “Run, Sydney. You stay, maybe we all die.”
I ran.
The tunnel wound like a serpent, slithering forward, then partially doubling back on itself as it curled around an obstacle. Sometimes it sloped down before it leveled off and then, each time, climbed again. My headlamp caught scenes flickering past, like pages from a tragic flip-book.
A hollowed-out space with packed-down earth and a foul plastic bucket.
A doll of twigs and cloth, dropped on the path.
A pair of sneakers, shoelaces gone, the toes worn open.
A cross.
Behind me, the infantería came, silent save for the rustle of denim and the pumping of their lungs.
Seven minutes in, a third shuddering boom shook the tunnel. I lost my footing and pitched forward onto the ground. Jesús fell beside me. I closed my eyes and mouth, burying my face in the crook of my arm as dirt broke loose from the ceiling. Thick clouds of dust boiled around us.
Jesús’s voice came ragged in my ear. “They’ve blown the door to the room. Now there’s just the trapdoor.”
From behind came harsh coughing.
“Christ,” someone said. “How much explosive those guys using?”
“You okay?” Jesús asked me.
I raised my head. Blinked. The whites of Jesús’s eyes stood out in the dirt and sweat on his face.
I found his cap and the headlamp where they had fallen. “Can they figure out where the tunnel emerges?”
“No.” He shrugged. “Still, prayer might not hurt.”
We hauled ourselves to our feet and kept running.
Another fifteen minutes, and the tunnel dead-ended. A ladder led up into the gloom. We clustered at the base, and Jesús pulled out his phone.
“Why haven’t they blown the trapdoor?” someone asked.
“God is smiling on us,” said the Brick.
Someone laughed. “You should be a comedian.”
Jesús said, “The door above leads to La Merced. Miguel has been monitoring the police scanner. There’s nothing about us and our girl. Carlos?”
“Here,” answered the Brick.
“Once we’re in the market, you and Juan stay with Señora Torres. Make sure she has no trouble getting home. Jorge and Eduardo, you come with me and Sydney. Miguel has a car waiting for us outside, near the tianguis. The rest of you, separate and start walking as soon as you reach open air. Browse. Act casual. Buy some flowers for your girlfriends so you have something in your hands. Text or call if you see anything, but don’t take more than ten minutes before you hit a subway and disappear. As soon as they figure where this tunnel comes out, we’re blown.”
A fourth boom.
“Here they come,” he said.
La Merced was Mexico City’s largest traditional food market. Angelo and I had planned to meet there the next day for lunch. After Angelo suggested the place, I’d scoped it out on Google Maps. Located on the eastern edge of the city’s central zone, the place stretched across several city blocks. For anyone in the business of transporting migrants, La Merced was the perfect place to hand them along; they would be invisible among the throngs of tourists and locals crowding the immense sprawl of buildings and stalls and tianguis—the illegal markets on the streets and sidewalks. Nearby subway lines offered multiple escape routes.
I followed Jesús up the ladder, then waited while he slid the door aside and peered out.
“All clear.” He braced his hands and hoisted himself out of the tunnel, then turned back to haul me up. “Hurry, hurry.”
We surfaced like panicked rabbits from a warren. The tunnel emerged in a medium-size enclosed stall almost entirely filled with wooden crates. When we were all out of the tunnel, Jesús and two of the Marines dropped the door back in place and shoved two large boxes over the opening. The cords on their necks and the muscles of their arms bulged, and I gave Jesús a quizzical look when he finished.
“Car-engine blocks,” he said. His teeth were bright in his dirty face. “That will slow them down. They won’t dare blow up the door while they’re standing right under it.”
A rolling metal service door covered the stall’s entrance. The Brick—Carlos—eased the door up six inches, and Jesús took a mirror on a long handle and scoped the area outside.
“We’re good.”
I shoved my headlamp in a pocket of my utility pants, and Jesús adjusted the cap he’d given me. My braid had come loose, and I pushed it back under. I tugged the jacket closed; the stagnant air hugged like an unwelcome embrace.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.”
We emerged in an alley behind a row of chili merchants. The aromas of jalapeños and poblanos and serranos sizzled in the warm night air. Two of the Marines, Jorge and Eduardo, I presumed, took positions on either side of Jesús and me. The Brick took Señora Torres by the arm. But before she went with him, she turned to me and said in heavily accented English, “I hope Jesús is right. I hope you are worth it. That tunnel, we will never be able to use it again.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I offered my hand. “Thank you for my life.”
She took it and squeezed my fingers. “Your life is God’s gift. Use it well.”
As Jesús had ordered, we joined the throngs surging along the market’s asphalt paths, filthy warriors in a dirty war, and scattered to the four winds.
CHAPTER 3
Here in America, we can mostly stay above the fray. War, refugees, epidemics. Secret police, despots, assassinations. These are vague terrors outside our borders. We pity the victims, but we don’t identify with them.
Then a child falls sick or we get a diagnosis of cancer. And suddenly we are in the thick of it.
The story of the victim becomes our own.
—Sy
dney Parnell. Personal Journal.
The four of us reached the car, a beat-up Nissan sedan, in under ten minutes. The driver had pulled the sedan up tight against the curb near a cantina, on a side road lined with fruit stalls. I’d spotted two cops on our walk here, but they appeared to be taking only a mild interest in the people jostling around them. Maybe they hadn’t gotten the word. Or maybe the Alpha had only managed to bribe a few members of the policía.
Jesús opened the back door, and the driver gestured for us to hurry. Jorge jumped in the front, and I followed Eduardo into the back seat. Jesús got in after me. We squeezed together in the close quarters.
The driver wrinkled his nose. “You guys been sweating a little, huh?”
“Fuck you,” Eduardo said.
The driver laughed. “Still nothing on the scanner. I think we’re in the clear.”
Jesús gestured toward the front. “Sydney, meet our driver, Miguel. Miguel, Sydney.”
Miguel reached a hand over the seat back, and we shook. “So you’re the cause of all the trouble,” he said.
“I’m afraid so.” I glanced past Jesús out the passenger window. A man in pressed jeans and an oxford shirt had just emerged from between two rows of stalls and now paused outside the cantina, scanning the crowd. He was too well dressed for a tourist. And he carried a radio.
“Jesús,” I said.
He followed my gaze. “Time to move.”
“Roger that.” Miguel turned the wheel and eased the car into the lane, tapping his horn at the shoppers spilling across the street. A few minutes later, he merged into traffic on the Avenida Circunvalación, heading north.
“A friend has arranged a room for you at a small hotel,” Jesús said. “You’ll be safe there. The hotel is located in a tourist area—lots of güeritas like you. You’ll blend right in. At least”—his glance took in my face, my bloody, filthy clothing—“after you shower and get rid of those clothes.”
I nodded my thanks.
As Miguel drove, he alternated his speed from slow to fast and back again, following a circuitous route that spiraled outward from the city center. He took a great many turns and sometimes circled back, while Jorge in the passenger seat kept an eye on the side mirror.
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