Triple Crossing

by Sebastian Rotella

  “Almost too good,” Méndez said. “Let’s hope your young Valentine isn’t luring us into an ambush.”

  “He’s not my young Valentine.”

  Méndez shrugged. He pointed his flashlight at the diagram Athos had spread on the dining room table. Athos had deployed an inner ring of officers, the arrest team, in the command post house and outside on foot and in vehicles. Another group was backup. There were two snipers on the roof of the command post.

  “How does it look?”

  “All right, considering our limitations,” Athos said drily, puffing on a cigarette. His black cap was turned backwards like a baseball catcher’s. A dagger in a leg scabbard complemented his usual outfit. “We’re not exactly the Delta Force. But we’ll fight with what we have.”

  At about 10 p.m., the surveillance team reported that Junior had left his home in his Mercedes with one security car.

  Athos joined Méndez and Puente at the window. He delivered orders into his radio. When the report came in that Junior had picked up Natasha, Méndez clapped Athos on the shoulder.

  Half an hour later, headlights rounded the hill and grew rapidly.

  “There’s your boy,” Isabel Puente whispered in English. “Buffalo Mendoza riding backup.”

  The Mercedes and the Buick Regal disappeared into the garage.

  During the next hour, Méndez, Athos and Puente drank bottled water, ate peanut M & Ms and talked in whispers. Méndez thought about writing a note to his family in case he was killed. Everything he composed in his head sounded melodramatic. He always agonized when he tried to write something personal to his wife. He thought back to his most recent conversation with Estela. They had wept together about Araceli. Then he had told her that there was no way he could go to Berkeley for the time being. Her tone turned cold. She told him that, now more than ever, it was time to drop everything and visit his family. While he still could.

  He was reaching into his jacket pocket for a notepad and a pen when Athos said it was time. They slipped out and crept across the street. Silhouettes moved around them as officers surrounded the house, taking aim from behind vehicles, trees, fences. Méndez, Athos, Puente and half a dozen agents crouched next to an intercom set in a low brick wall. Athos took a breath and pushed the buzzer.

  The deep voice that answered spoke with a pocho accent; Méndez thought it might be Buffalo Mendoza. “Who is this?”

  “The Diogenes Group,” Méndez said, feeling vaguely ridiculous. “We have an arrest warrant for Mr. Hugo Ruiz Caballero.”

  There was cursing, a mutter of voices, a long silence. Méndez was about to push the buzzer again when a new voice surprised him. It was snotty and unmistakable.

  “Méndez,” Junior said. “Trying to fuck me, as usual.”

  “Time to behave like an adult, Junior. You are surrounded. Surrender quietly.” As he spoke, Méndez felt his cell phone buzz on his hip.

  “I am the one who gives the orders, you idiot,” Junior responded. “If you don’t believe me, answer your phone. It’s important.”

  “For the sake of the young lady, stop playing the hard-ass and come out,” Méndez snapped. But his phone buzzed again, disconcerting him. He checked the number display: the Secretary.

  Aware of Athos staring at him, Méndez turned away from the intercom and answered his phone.

  “Méndez, have you taken leave of your senses?” The connection with the Secretary in Mexico City was faint but clear. “I have just received a call from the highest possible level”—Méndez calculated that could be only about six people in Mexico—“informing me that the Diogenes Group is arresting Junior Ruiz Caballero. That you have him surrounded. Have you completely lost your mind?”

  “I am doing my job, Mr. Secretary.”

  “I want you to withdraw immediately from that absolutely intolerable situation you have created. Before you cause another tragedy. I am giving you a direct order.”

  “Impossible,” Méndez said, with more resolve than he felt. He was aware of Athos muttering into his radio.

  The Secretary enunciated with frosty precision. “Think of your agents, if not yourself. Those who survive will go to jail, I assure you of that. Their lives will be ruined. All of them.”

  Méndez’s thin features twisted. Athos grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Licenciado,” Athos hissed, his breath all tobacco and coffee. “We are setting up a barricade at the end of the block. There’s a caravan coming up the hill. Fifteen vehicles full of federal police.”

  “Not state police?”

  “No, federal for sure. Armed for war. Twice as many as us. Someone tipped off Junior.” Athos’s voice was steely. “Do we hit the house or not?”

  “No…” Méndez broke off. He raised the phone, unable to look Athos in the eye, and said to the Secretary: “Why is a federal police contingent on its way here?”

  “They have orders from the attorney general to make you withdraw. They will open fire if you do not.”

  “And you endorsed that order.”

  “Calm down.”

  “You would allow them to fire on your own agents.”

  “Institutionality, Méndez. Institutionality above all things. Someday you will learn that.”

  “Someday I will tell you face-to-face exactly what I think of you and your fucking institutionality,” Méndez said. He hung up.

  Officers ran through the shadows to reinforce the barricade. Another vehicle sped downhill. The officers around the house remained in position.

  Puente was on one knee, holding her gun in both hands and pointed at the ground. She had dropped all pretense of respecting the rules against American agents carrying weapons south of the border. She stared at the house. Worrying about Pescatore, Méndez thought in spite of himself. Puente gave him a brief smile.

  “Leo,” she said. “It looks like the bad guys are winning.”

  “We have to get you out of here,” Méndez said.

  The federales would have a field day if they caught an armed U.S. agent with the Diogenes Group. He told her he would have an officer sneak her away, get her to San Diego or the U.S. consulate in Tijuana.

  She shook her head. “Negative, Licenciado. I’m in this all the way.”

  Resisting an urge to kiss her, Méndez hurried downhill. The three-car roadblock overlooked a steep section of the tree-lined street. At least the high ground gives us a good firing position, Méndez thought. He stood among his officers, watching the column of Suburbans and Jeep Cherokees climb the hill, the boxy shapes glinting in the glow of the streetlights. The caravan stopped about fifty feet away. Lights went on in houses.

  “Easy now,” Méndez told Athos. “We don’t shoot first.”

  Federal police officers spilled out of the vehicles. Most of them were youthful, trim and close-cropped, soldiers transferred from the army to the police as part of an anticorruption campaign. They fanned out in combat stances.

  A flashlight beam waved back and forth. Three men approached in the middle of the street. Méndez recognized the new Tijuana delegate in charge of the federal attorney general’s office. His name was Peralta.

  “Diogenes Group,” a voice called. “Licenciado Méndez?”

  “At your service,” Méndez said. He stepped forward. He and Athos walked toward Peralta. Toward the gun barrels pointing at them. Too many to count.

  As he walked, he flashed on a childhood memory. His father had once taken him to see an adventure movie: Khartoum. Charlton Heston was Gordon Pasha, the British general who holds Khartoum against Sudanese hordes. After a long siege, his troops are overrun. Gordon stands on a balcony above the invaders charging into his ruined fortress. He goes down a staircase into a sea of enemy guns and lances. He stops and gives them a smile. The mob grows quiet. Then the moment passes. Someone throws a spear that kills Gordon; the movie ends with his head on a pike.

  It was the first film Méndez had ever seen. The final scene had blazed itself into his memory. As a college student years later,
he had seen Khartoum again. He had been disappointed. He had been forced to conclude that the film was imperialist, wrongheaded and cheesy. Gordon was a colonial aggressor. Nonetheless, one impression did not change. Méndez had been fascinated once again by the way the soldier smiled at death, welcomed it, embraced it. A very Mexican attitude.

  As he advanced, the breeze caressed his face and ruffled the trees overhead.

  The federal police were nocturnal creatures. They waited for dark to conduct raids, escort drug shipments north, prowl the border preying on migrants and smugglers. So the chiefs flanking Peralta, a pair of gnarled warhorses, seemed alert and composed.

  Their boss, the top federal official in Baja, did not. Peralta’s hair was matted and puffed up unevenly in back, clearly the result of a recent and rude awakening. He wore a blue T-shirt under a wrinkled yellow dress shirt and a rumpled tweed jacket. He squinted painfully through gold-rimmed glasses that, like his attire, contrasted with his outsized jaw and the physique of a nightclub bouncer.

  “Licenciado Méndez, good morning,” Peralta said. He was in his thirties. He spoke with formal courthouse diction, but his voice trembled.

  Méndez felt morbid satisfaction. He’s shitting in his pants. He thinks I’m on a suicide mission and I’m going to take him down with me.

  “Licenciado,” Méndez said.

  “Lamentably, as you may know, we have been instructed to take charge of the people in the house,” Peralta said, swallowing. “I would appreciate your cooperation.”

  Méndez did not plan to make it easy for him. “I have an arrest warrant. In fact it was prepared by a federal prosecutor like yourself. I propose we arrest them together.”

  “Lamentably, those are not my orders.”

  “It’s the logical thing to do. We hold them until this gets resolved in Mexico City.”

  “No, sir. I was ordered to escort the young man wherever he needs to go. I hope you understand.”

  “Yes.” Méndez felt a shudder of rage. “Congratulations.”

  “For?”

  “You only arrived a month ago. And today you’ll make a million dollars.”

  Peralta’s head tilted as if he had been slapped. One of the chiefs dropped his hand toward his holster, grunting, “Enough of this crap.”

  Méndez reached across his body for the pistol in his belt, already imagining the sound and gore it would make if they shot each other at this distance. Athos’s rifle lowered to chest level. Metal echoed up and down the block as both sides racked ammunition clips to firing mode.

  “Gentlemen, please!” Peralta smothered the chief’s arm, preventing the gun from clearing the holster. Turning, he raised his hands wide in a restraining motion directed at the officers behind him. He remained that way a moment, silhouetted against headlights.

  Peralta turned sorrowfully back to Méndez. He said: “Are we really going to kill each other right here in the street?”

  “That’s in your hands.” Méndez had the gun at his side, pointing at Peralta’s belly.

  “You are outnumbered,” Peralta said. “I have no quarrel with you. I have no desire to be here, believe me. But I will carry out my orders.”

  Anything else would have driven Méndez over the edge. But Peralta, to the evident disdain of the chiefs accompanying him, had shown a shred of humanity. He actually seemed ashamed of being a lackey to criminals.

  Méndez knew he had lost. There was nothing left to do, unless he wanted to sacrifice dozens of lives for a gesture of defiance. He put his gun back in his belt.

  The prosecutor nodded several times with relief. His voice stayed soft.

  “Do I have your word that you will stand aside and let us proceed, Licenciado?”

  “Do your duty.”

  In the weak light, Méndez could not tell if Peralta’s eyes were sleepy or had tears in them. Méndez turned away. He heard the prosecutor say he was sorry.

  Trudging uphill, Méndez thought: That man is in the wrong line of work. Like me.

  15

  HE SAW ISABEL ONLY FOR A MOMENT, but he was sure she had seen him too.

  Pescatore was in the front passenger seat of the Buick Regal with his AK-47. Sniper drove. Ahead of them in the Mercedes were Momo, Buffalo, Junior and Junior’s gorgeous chick. Pescatore could see Natasha’s shiny golden-brown hair snuggled close to Junior’s curls in the back window. Either she was cowering or she had fallen asleep.

  The caravan rolled slowly uphill. Federal cops perched in the open doors of the moving vehicles. Federal cops on foot lined the street. They were bulky with weapons, flak vests and ammunition clips.

  The Diogenes officers were spectators on the sidewalks. Sniper bared fangs at them from behind the wheel. “That’s right, putos. Get back. We got a po-lice escort.”

  Pescatore spotted Isabel on the sidewalk. Ponytail, boots, the denim shirt and jeans she had worn that night at her apartment. The night he wished he had appreciated more, because he would never be that happy again. Isabel had her thumb against her teeth, which meant she was thinking hard or in a bad mood. Next to her were Méndez and the old comandante named Athos. Their glares tracked the Mercedes like lasers.

  Pescatore made eye contact with Isabel. Obviously she wasn’t going to wave at him, but he still didn’t like what he saw. Her face didn’t flicker. Hello and good-bye. As the Buick accelerated, she rested a hand on Méndez’s shoulder. A comforting gesture, easy and affectionate. Pescatore felt hollow to the core. He felt bereft of everything except the conviction that he had seen her for the last time. And his final memory would be of Isabel playing cuddly sidekick with Méndez.

  The caravan gathered speed. The Mercedes followed a Cherokee carrying the federal chiefs and their civilian boss. They topped the hill and descended into the pale brown expanse of Otay Mesa.

  Sniper mumbled something about the Diogenes pendejos following them.

  Pescatore thought about how close he had come to turning the AK-47 on Sniper during the frantic scene at the house when he had been expecting the Diogenes Group to bust through doors and windows like badass commandos.

  The caravan hit the asphalt at hot-pursuit speed. The few cars on the road got the hell out of the way. Pescatore looked back. A half-dozen Diogenes sedans—old and ratty compared with the federal fleet—trailed at a distance.

  The airport was more crowded than he had expected. Travelers gawked when the police battalion pulled up to the terminal with rifles sprouting out of the vehicle windows.

  Buffalo emerged from the Mercedes, eyebrows and mustache set in full glower. His shotgun was in plain view, the stock cupped in his elbow. A police badge was pinned to his belt. He hacked at the air impatiently; Sniper and Pescatore scrambled out. Buffalo leaned back into the Mercedes and consulted with Junior. Buffalo ordered them back into the Regal again.

  The police Cherokee led the way past gates, parking lots, guardhouses. Guards and guys with clipboards approached them, fell back like targets in a pinball machine. The caravan circled the terminal and drove directly onto the tarmac, bearing down on a section reserved for private aircraft.

  “Whose plane is that?” Pescatore asked.

  “Mr. Abbas.”

  Abbas seemed to be in charge of the operation. He escorted Junior aboard the plane immediately; Natasha remained in the Mercedes. In the doorway of the plane, Abbas huddled with Buffalo and a pilot. Ground personnel swarmed the Learjet, getting it ready. The federal police set up a perimeter. The Diogenes Group was nowhere in sight.

  “Hurry up, cabrón.” Sniper grimaced at Pescatore through the open driver’s door.

  Pescatore wrenched himself up out of the seat. He trotted to the plane. Buffalo stood at the top of the stairway leading to the entrance. Pescatore paused, one foot on the stairs, one still on the tarmac.

  “Whatsa matter, Valentín?”

  Pescatore opened his mouth. Here’s the problem: The last thing in the world I want to do is get on this plane. Because I’m actually an undercover U.S. operative,
you see. I’m the guy who almost got you busted just now. Frankly, I’m afraid you’re going to find out. And kill my ass.

  “Uh, nothing,” Pescatore said. “I just hope I don’t need a passport, ’cause I ain’t got mine with me.”

  “Hórale, güey. Where we’re going, only passport you need is that cuerno de chivo.”

  The takeoff over the Pacific revealed a panorama of the lights of San Diego to the north: the suburban lowlands, the ribbons of freeways, the rampart of the coastline and the glowing cluster of downtown domes and towers. Then they were into the clouds and away.

  Pescatore huddled against the window, pretending to doze. His mind was in threat-assessment mode. Overloaded. Clicking out of control. OK, the plane has two single-seat rows in the back half of the cabin. I’m in the front seat, right side. Buffalo’s in the front seat, left side. Sniper and Momo behind us. Junior and Abbas sitting at a bolted table in big executive swiveling seats. A flight attendant pouring orange juice. Two pilots. Destination unknown.

  Junior used his cell phone to bang out absentminded rhythms on the table. He was smoldering. Sweat had formed horseshoes under his armpits. A dark V spread down the front of his floppy blue shirt, which he wore with the tails out. He swiveled back and forth, a leg curled up under him. His free foot jiggled in a basketball shoe. He tossed his head back, turned and spat noisily. Disgusting, Pescatore thought. But Abbas did not protest about the carpet stain.

  We definitely scared the shit out of Junior, Pescatore thought, closing his eyes. Ever since his phone call to Isabel, he had felt sharp and clean and good about what he was doing. They had been a team again. They had communicated so well: wasting no words, all business, but he heard the pride in her voice. He had called the shots, guided her and Méndez toward the showdown. It had all fallen into place. When he entered the house in Colonia Postal, knowing that Isabel and the Mexicans were concealed outside, he experienced a rush that made his own survival seemed trivial. Time to throw down. One way or another, it was going to be over.