Rip Crew

by Sebastian Rotella

  Solomon’s breathing was labored. He said Abrihet had emigrated illegally two years earlier, going from Eritrea through Sudan, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico before she finally reached New York. Solomon was already in Italy. They did not communicate frequently. She was busy with work and studies, he with work and family. But she had called in July, sounding traumatized. Perry Blake had assaulted her; his security officers were hunting her. She said she would send her brother something important. The FedEx package arrived two days later.

  “Where did she obtain the pen drive she sent you?”

  “His office. I read the documents. I did research. Some things I did not understand, but I thought it was valuable, confidential information about bad activity. We could use it to protect her.”

  “Did you? Have you told anyone about the documents?”

  “Only you.”

  After reaching Tijuana, Abrihet had called and e-mailed. She wanted to join him in Italy to put as much distance as she could between herself and Perry Blake. Soon, however, she found out that it was too complicated and expensive to obtain a fraudulent passport good enough to get her to Europe. Brother and sister went over their options. They decided she should return to New York and go to the police.

  “Even if she was arrested at the border, at least she would be in custody in the United States, not a Mexican prison,” Solomon explained. “We could try to get a lawyer, refugee status.”

  Solomon scraped together five thousand dollars and wired it to Abrihet for the smuggling fee. After seeing press reports about the Tecate massacre, he couldn’t reach her for days. Finally, she called from the migrant shelter. She was even more traumatized.

  “Now it was very dangerous. We have avoided using the phone. The priests say the Mexican police and mafiosi are good at communications interception. She has access to a computer. I set up an account and we write draft e-mails to each other.”

  “A digital dead drop, like al-Qaeda,” Maio said. “Of course, you could just talk on WhatsApp or Signal. Full encryption. Not even the NSA can hear you.”

  Solomon’s attempt at a grin showed an appreciation for the nuances of tradecraft.

  “Yes, but she depends on the priests for access to communication. And what they let her use is the computer.”

  Solomon closed his eyes a moment. As if on cue, the doctor bustled in. A dispute ensued between her and the prosecutor, but Maio succeeded in wrangling more time. He pulled his chair close.

  “Capitano. You must help us contact your sister and see what we can organize to extricate her from this situation. Va bene?”

  Solomon turned to Méndez, who looked up from his notebook.

  “You can get her out?”

  “We will do everything in our power. We think she will be safe if we can bring her to the United States.”

  Solomon looked at Pescatore, still wary. “The Mexican police are helping the criminals who want to kill her.”

  “I know,” Pescatore said. “But there are good people down there too. Listen, Leo is from Tijuana. He was the chief of a police force. I’ve worked there myself. It’s not gonna be easy, but I think we’ve got as good a shot as anybody. And you know you can trust us.”

  “Yes,” Solomon said. “I do.”

  Chapter 14

  The Madrid airport, three days later.

  A gleaming terminal. A cascade of sunlight. Pescatore and Méndez sat at breakfast. On edge, all talked out, waiting for their flights.

  For Pescatore, from Madrid to Mexico City to Tijuana.

  For Méndez, from Madrid to Chicago to San Diego.

  Méndez was in a foul mood. Avoiding his eyes, Pescatore concentrated on cutting a potato omelet. Méndez had resisted arguments about the risks involved in his participating in the operation in Mexico. He had started to weaken after the phone conversations with Athos and Porthos, who rarely contradicted him but who had agreed with Pescatore’s concerns. Méndez had finally relented when Pescatore convinced him that his presence would endanger the others. And the success of the plan.

  Like it or not, you’re a public figure in Mexico, Licenciado, Pescatore had said the day before. Especially in Tijuana. Especially after you made a splash with the article and on TV and everything. Putting on a cap and sunglasses is not gonna do the trick. The minute you hit Mexican soil, it’d be like a ticking bomb. Forget about the bad guys a minute. What if some cop or flight attendant or reporter recognizes you? What if you’re a story by the time we land in TJ? This is a high-risk, long-shot op. It’s gotta be fast and clandestine.

  Shrugging in defeat, Méndez had quoted a line from The Harder They Come, a Jamaican reggae/gangster movie he had seen in his youth: “Every game I play, I lose.”

  Pescatore went to get espresso. Méndez opened his laptop. When Pescatore brought him the coffee, Méndez drained his cup in a gulp. Once again, the story he was writing had kept him up all night.

  “Making progress, Licenciado?”

  “I will have a rough draft when I land. Except for the material from Giancarlo Maio.”

  “He’ll send it to you when he files the court papers, right?”

  “I have no doubt he will keep his word.”

  The prosecutor’s strategy struck Méndez as bold, clever and creative, though stronger on style than substance. Maio had prepared a criminal complaint against Celestine Njoku, the surviving Nigerian gunman. The complaint laid out an ambitious theory of the case: Celestine’s crew had acted on the orders of unknown suspects affiliated with the Blake Acquisitions Group of the United States. The prosecutor had sketched out the chain of events that had brought Pescatore and Méndez to the cybercafé, arguing that the attack on them was part of a continuing criminal conspiracy. Maio would name the rip-crew chief known as El T as an investigative target along with Louis Krystak and Perry Blake, and he would ask the U.S. Justice Department to find and make them available for questioning. His charges relied heavily on circumstantial evidence: the testimony of Pescatore, Méndez and Solomon; the fact that Solomon had incriminating material about the Blake Group. But the smoking gun, a direct link between the Blakes and the attackers in Tecate or in Palazzo di Sabbia, was still missing.

  Would it convict them at this stage? Maio asked, pacing his office as if in front of a jury. No, signori. Is it a legal house of cards? Sì, signori. But there are certainly grounds to request further investigation by the Americans.

  Maio’s security team had driven Pescatore and Méndez to the Rome airport at a speed that defied any possibility of someone following unnoticed, then escorted them through VIP entrances directly to their flight to Madrid.

  A text message beeped on Pescatore’s phone.

  “Facundo has landed,” he said.

  “Now all they need is the fourth musketeer,” Méndez said morosely.

  Maio had placated the FBI attaché by sending him the statements Méndez and Pescatore had given. But the prosecutor had withheld Solomon’s testimony and the information about Abrihet’s whereabouts. Before the Italians could pull the trigger on the criminal complaint and unleash an international commotion, there was the problem of getting Abrihet out of harm’s way. With Solomon’s help, they had established contact with her by phone and e-mail, then dispatched Athos to guard her in her hideout. Although the American embassy in Mexico had relationships with trusted Mexican police units, the police forces in Baja were complicit in the Tecate massacre and had blocked the investigation. It seemed impossible to involve Mexican authorities without turncoats finding out. Better not to send Italian investigators or ask for help from U.S. agencies, which were unlikely to attempt a secret unilateral operation in Mexico for this case.

  “I’m glad Maio agreed to hold off while we take our shot,” Pescatore said. “Now we just have to figure out how to do it.”

  “What we need,” Méndez said, “is a private army.”

  A screen on the wall announced Pescatore’s flight. He slung his bag over his shoulder. Méndez stood up. He scratched his three-
day-old stubble. Looking in the mirror that morning, he had discovered that his beard had gone from salt and pepper to completely gray.

  I’ve aged five years in three weeks, he thought.

  “All right, then,” Pescatore said.

  “My people and I will be in position and waiting for you,” Méndez said.

  “We’ll be in touch as soon as we can.”

  “If the FBI approaches me when I arrive, I will invoke my status as a journalist. I have nothing to add to my statement to the Italians.”

  Pescatore and Méndez embraced. To Méndez’s surprise, Pescatore reached into his leather jacket and handed him two sealed envelopes. The names of women were written on them. Isabel, which wasn’t a surprise, and a Fatima Belhaj. Méndez assumed she was the Frenchwoman with whom—according to a passing comment from Isabel—Pescatore was romantically involved. Pescatore looked uncomfortable.

  “I hate to be all melodramatic, Leo, but if anything happens to me…”

  Méndez patted Pescatore’s shoulder. He felt as if he were sending a son off to war. A strong, resourceful, loyal son confronting huge odds. Méndez couldn’t believe he wouldn’t be joining Pescatore, Athos, and Porthos in this battle. Although he had accepted the decision, it broke his heart.

  “Of course, Valentine,” he said, forcing optimism into his voice. “Rest assured. But you are young, you have a bright future…Nadie muere en la víspera. Nobody dies before his time.”

  He said the words automatically. It was actually a statement that Carlos Menem, a roguish Argentine president, had made after surviving a helicopter crash in the 1990s. Although the president was not someone he admired, Méndez had liked the defiant self-assurance of the phrase. It had stuck with him. On the occasions he had come close to death—and there had been a number of them—he repeated the words to himself like a protective incantation.

  Nevertheless, it occurred to him that the mantra might be a double-edged sword. The Argentine president had a reputation for being mufa, or cursed, a man who had providential good fortune while spreading catastrophe among those around him. Méndez worried now that saying the words to Pescatore might end up bringing him bad luck.

  Not that Méndez was superstitious. But they were going to need all the help they could get.

  Chapter 15

  Facundo had told Pescatore to fly business class; he wanted him well rested.

  Pescatore let the Iberia crew pamper him. He drank a glass of Segura Viudas cava, ate a seafood and rice dish accompanied by a glass of Ribera del Duero, and finished with flan and Cardenal Mendoza cognac. If his last meal was to be airplane food, he had done it up right. Perusing the touchscreen music system, he found a recording of Astor Piazzolla, his father’s favorite tango composer; Pescatore had rediscovered his music while living in Buenos Aires. He put on the headphones, lowered the seat to full horizontal mode, and curled up under the blanket. The bandoneon and strings unspooled their lament. His thoughts drifted like clouds.

  Hard to believe it, but Pescatore was the driving force behind this gambit. After the bad news from Washington, he had appealed to Facundo to stick with the mission. Facundo agreed. He saw a positive angle in a new ally, an Italian prosecutor with a taste for high-profile cases. Like Pescatore, Facundo refused to abandon Abrihet. Ungentlemanly and unthinkable, he said. His biggest motivation, though, was basic. The enemy had tried to kill Pescatore. Facundo would gladly foot the bill—and swoop personally into harm’s way—to retaliate.

  Pescatore glided in and out of a shallow sleep. Isabel and Fatima floated through his dreams; faces, voices, erotic images. He had tried to call Fatima the day after she’d saved his bacon with Maio, but she was traveling. As for Isabel, they had talked only once—a short, stilted conversation. International calls were open season for intercepts, and Isabel was in batten-down-the-hatches defensive mode.

  In the notes to Isabel and Fatima, he had told each woman how much she meant to him, how lucky he was to have been in love with her. He was sorry time had run out before he could clear up any confusion or conflict. Although it was like writing from the grave, he was glad to have done it.

  Because he had guarded a border for a living, Pescatore always tensed up when he crossed one. He knew the balance of power: nonexistent for him, absolute—if narrow—for the gatekeepers. Standing in the immigration line in Mexico City, he wondered if the influence of the Blakes reached into airport border agencies. Méndez had said he doubted it. It was one thing to have powerful Mexican allies who could facilitate smuggling people and things. It was another to have the real-time capacity to identify and track Pescatore when he arrived. Still, you never knew.

  The immigration officer stamped the passport so fast that Pescatore felt ridiculous about his apprehensions. After a two-hour layover, he caught the flight to Tijuana. He landed at eight p.m.

  Ahora sí, cabrón, he told himself. Aguas. Now be paranoid.

  Not that the terminal was menacing. He saw Mexican families, an Asian business delegation, a sprinkling of tourists in shorts and sandals. He was received by a security officer named Davila who worked for Porthos’s company. They hurried out to the pickup area, where Facundo and Porthos waited by a Suburban. They were dressed in dark clothing. Their greetings were like a bloodless mauling by friendly bears.

  “Buona sera, muchacho,” Porthos said, giving him a swat on the back of the neck. “All that jet-setting in Italy, I thought you’d forgotten us humble peasants.”

  “It wasn’t that fancy, believe me. They fed us to death, though.”

  “Compensation for being ambushed,” Facundo rasped, sliding into the backseat next to Pescatore. “How is your ankle?”

  “Better, thanks. I’ve got it wrapped. We plan on doing some running?”

  “Don’t rule it out.”

  The U.S. border fence appeared as they sped away from the airport on the highway that paralleled the international line. Pescatore saw the rusty steel barrier in the night, the taller secondary fence of transparent metal mesh, the floodlights on masts. The glow seemed incredibly bright, an incandescence stoked by his memories and dreams and nightmares.

  Facundo reached back, lifted a blanket, and handed Pescatore an armored vest and a Beretta in a shoulder holster. Pescatore spotted automatic rifles under the blanket. He removed his leather jacket and strapped on the holster and vest.

  “How many guys?” he asked.

  “Fifteen including us,” Porthos said.

  “Not bad.”

  It turned out they did have access to a private army: the security force at Porthos’s factory. The team did internal investigations and executive protection. They were trained in countersurveillance and anti-kidnapping tactics. A few of the officers were veterans of the Diogenes Group, most were ex-cops, and all of them had been screened by Porthos and were fiercely loyal to him.

  The route curled south and west into urban sprawl. Davila did evasive maneuvers to ensure they weren’t being tailed. Pescatore spotted the concrete levee of the Tijuana River, and the towers of a high-rise hotel that had changed names over the years. Tijuana’s scruffy energy appealed to him, but his image of the city was forever shaped by the weeks he had spent undercover in its underworld. The memory reminded him of a song by Silvio Rodríguez, the verse about Death walking at his side so long that she had become his sister.

  Porthos turned around in the front seat with a big grin. He handed Pescatore two pieces of paper. The first was the sketch artist’s rendering of El T based on Chiclet’s description. The second was a Mexican mug shot of a U.S. citizen named Vincent Robles. They looked like twins.

  “You identified him!”

  “All credit to Athos. He thought about it, talked to the right friends and lowlifes, and there you have your man. We have already sent this to Licenciado Méndez, and he sent it to your Italian friend.”

  Robles was from Riverside, California, Porthos said. A pocho, or Mexican-American, he had served in the U.S. Army and earned combat decorations in Ir
aq. He did not appear to have a criminal record in the United States. During the past three years, the Mexican federal police had arrested him on a weapons-possession charge that had been mysteriously quashed, and the Baja state police had questioned him about drug-related murders that had stayed unsolved. As Chiclet had told them, Robles led a crew that specialized in robbing drugs and kidnapping migrants from smugglers.

  “It appears this cabrón moves back and forth across the border with ease,” Porthos said. “A heavyweight. Well connected. Gunmen at his disposal. But he keeps them at a distance.”

  “Was he a lieutenant in the army?”

  “A sergeant. But perhaps he aspired to be a lieutenant. They call him El Teniente as well as El T. You were right about that.”

  “If only we could get this photo to Chiclet for confirmation, damn it,” Pescatore said. His first instinct was to contact Isabel—impossible given the circumstances.

  “We have confirmation. Athos showed the photo to sources. They said Robles has been talking to people in the state and municipal police about helping him find the young lady, Señorita Anbessa. We think a guy from his crew infiltrated the migrant shelter posing as a deportee from Los Angeles, snooped around. And municipal police officers came by to ask questions. The priests were clever. They didn’t deny she had been there, but they said she had left for Mexico City.”

  They’re breathing down our necks, Pescatore thought. The rip crew might find her before we get there. Or find us instead.

  The prospect of going to the mat with Vincent “El T” Robles did not seem to faze Porthos and Facundo. Of course, Porthos had tangled with just about every species of animal the border could throw at you. Facundo had experienced combat in the Israeli army and clandestine action since then. Pescatore was no neophyte himself, but he didn’t see how they could be so upbeat.

  Clouds wreathed a low moon over the Pacific. The Suburban cruised along a clifftop coastal highway. The ride took about an hour.