Edmund Pickett

Following is the first part of my novel Borderline Case. The entire book is available for the Amazon.com electronic book, the Kindle

Chapter 1 

 

                                                              Sunday Morning, January 3

     Eric woke to the sounds of pigeons cooing on the ledge outside his hotel room window. The Mexico City traffic twenty-five stories below was barely audible. He slowly opened his eyes and saw the alarm clock on the bedside table. 5:30 a.m. It would get noisier down there in about ninety minutes. There was a new smell in the room, Celia’s perfume. Eric took a deep breath to savor the scent. If he could smell her, then the previous night was not all a dream. He rolled over to look at her but the other side of the bed was empty.

     “I tried not to wake you,” she said softly.

     She was already dressed and giving herself a final check in the mirror above the dresser.

     He had met her at a wedding six months before. His wife at the time, Andrea, a chilanga, or native of Mexico City, had taken him to the wedding of her rich cousin. The reception after the church service was a huge affair held in the fanciest salon de fiesta in the city, with 600 guests, dozens of bodyguards smoking cigarettes in the parking lot and a ten-piece cover band cranking out Latin dance classics along with the odd gringo hit, such as “My Way” and “YMCA.”

Celia had been talking to two of Andrea’s friends whom Eric already knew. They stopped briefly so Andrea could say hi to the two old friends and then she had felt obligated to say, “Eric, this is Celia.” That was it and then they had continued to their table.

     “You can close your mouth now,” said Andrea. “She’s taken and believe me, you do not ever want to piss off her boyfriend.”

     And he had thought that he had been playing it very nonchalant. Andrea was the jealous type though, and in this case she had been reading him right. No normal man could be nonchalant about Celia. After the wedding, he hadn’t seen her again, but her image had returned to him more than once.

      She gave a final minor adjustment to her hair, returned to the bed, leaned down and kissed him.

     “Gotta go.” She stepped back a foot and gave him a heart-stopping smile. There was no word about staying in touch. She had seen him at Pabellon Polanco, an upscale shopping mall in a fashionable neighborhood of Mexico City the night before and walked right over as if they had known each other for years. When he saw her walking toward him with that incredible smile, he actually glanced over his shoulder to see who this goddess could be looking at. But she stopped in front of him and said, “It’s Eric, right? We met at Estella Ramirez’ wedding.” Only then did her name come to him. Speech, however, did not come. He stood like an idiot, trying to think of something to say, but all he could do was look at her and marvel. He remembered that he had met her with Andrea. Should he mention the divorce? He was uncomfortably aware that time was rushing by. He tried to unglue his jaws.

     “I heard about you and Andrea. I’m sorry.”

     Still he couldn’t think of anything to say, so she filled in the silence by saying what everyone said when they heard about the divorce.

     “Ni modo.” What can you do?

     Actually, without wasting much time, they had found something to do and he had never gotten around to asking her if she was still “taken.” She didn’t act taken and that was all that mattered.

     She walked to the door and opened it and a guy in a black suit punched her in the face, knocking her to the floor. Eric jolted to a sitting position in the bed and then froze as the man in the black suit walked in, followed by two more guys holding pistols in their hands. The one who had done the punching sat down in the armchair across from the bed. He glanced at Celia who was sprawled motionless on the floor. He spoke in Spanish to the taller of the two gunmen.

     “Clean her up and get her out of here.”

     The man replaced his pistol in a cross-draw holster, buttoned his jacket, reached down, grabbed Celia by one arm, and lifted her to a vertical position. Her head was slack and there was blood on her face. He maneuvered her into the bathroom.

     The man in the armchair smiled.

“What is it you people say? The early bird catches the worm? We say the same thing in Spanish. It’s a good saying. Look at me. I got up early and I caught two worms.” He continued to smile in a very relaxed way. “You really put your foot in it, gringo.” He spoke English almost, but not quite, like a native. Eric could tell he had learned it as an adult, probably in California.

     “She’s with you?” Eric asked hoarsely. Suddenly his mouth was very dry.

     “That’s right.”

     “She didn’t tell me.”

     “And you know what, gringo? I believe you. Because I have noticed in the past that women lie. They’re horny bitches. At least the ones I like are. That’s why I think that men should take at least fifty percent of the responsibility. You need to verify that a bitch is free before you jump on her. You can’t count on them to tell the truth.”

      The splashing noises in the bathroom stopped and the tall gunman stepped out holding Celia by the arm. She was dazed but could stand. Her face was unrecognizable because of bruises and swelling. The man in the chair didn’t even look at her. He continued to stare at Eric with a wry smile, but he spoke in Spanish.

     “Take her to the bodega.”

     The tall man left, guiding Celia with a vice-like grip on her upper arm. The man in the chair spoke to the remaining gunman. “Get his shit together. Pack it up.” The gunman holstered his pistol and began gathering Eric’s things from around the room and tossing them into his suitcase.

     “As I said, gringo, you’re going to take half the blame here. It’s like in hunting: always be sure of your target before you pull the trigger. It’s the same with women.”

     “Here’s his wallet.“

     The guy picking up the room handed over Eric’s billfold. The man in the chair flipped it open, looked at the driver’s license briefly and then placed the wallet inside his coat. He looked at Eric, seemingly bored already with this unpleasant business.

      “Yes, you should have been more careful, but you proceeded recklessly because you were thinking with the wrong head. You fucked my girlfriend and that’s why Diego here is going to cut your nuts off.” The guy closing the suitcase looked at Eric and smiled. “And after that things will get worse. I don’t know the details. Diego improvises. And I may give him Celia to play with also. It could take you a long time to die.”

      Eric was beginning to feel very light-headed and it bothered him that he was nude, only partially covered by the sheet. And what the man in the chair was saying was absurdly unfair! Celia had spotted him the night before. She had put the move on him! She should take the blame, dammit!

     But then Eric remembered the blank look on her swollen face when she had been dragged into the hallway only a few minutes before and he didn’t want her to take any of the blame. He didn’t want Diego to touch her. Eric was having a hard time focusing. And who was this guy? Not that Eric wanted to know. He sensed that finding out the identity of the man in the chair would probably not be good news.

     “Who are you?” The question tumbled out of his mouth without thought and he knew he had made things worse. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head at his own stupidity.

     “Who am I? That’s a good question but it’s classified information. You don’t have the right security clearance to know who I am. I’m a criminal. A drug dealer. I’m a really evil person. I’m your worst nightmare, gringo.”

Chapter 2 

     Later that morning, in another part of Mexico City, Dr. Hilario Villareal  opened the door to his office and ushered in one of his nurses.   

     “Please have a seat, Ornela.”

     He waved at the patient’s chair and then sat down behind his desk. The tall woman in the nurse’s uniform sat down.

     “I don’t know how to say this…” he began.

     “Did I do something wrong?”

     “No. Not at all. Your work has been perfect, as I expected. No the problem is that, well… The fact is that, um, you’re too good looking.”

     “I don’t understand.”

     “This is hard for me. My wife stopped by the office yesterday…”

     “Yes, I met her. She seemed very nice.”

     “She is. A nice person, but unfortunately she is also jealous and well, suspicious, and she feels that you are a threat to her. Last night she informed me that from now on I can only employ ugly nurses.”

     There was a long pause while the doctor stared at his hands and Ornela stared at the wall.

     “So that’s it?”

     “I’m sorry. Very Sorry.”

     He stood, picked up an envelope lying on the desk and handed it to her.

     “I’m sorry, Ornela.”

     About what? she wondered. Sorry to be firing me or sorry to be married to a bitch?

     “It’s okay.” She turned and left the office.

     In the break room she took off the uniform, put it in the laundry hamper and put on jeans and a loose-fitting high-necked top. Subway clothes, chosen to avoid being noticed, not that it helped much.

     Before she left the building she opened the envelope and was surprised to see large peso bills. She counted them and realized that Dr. Villareal had paid her a month’s salary for one week’s work. At least he’s generous, she thought. A wimp, but not stingy.

     Once on the sidewalk she found a payphone and called Alfa.

     “I’ll be home early, cousin. I could pick up the kids at school.”

     “No, Ornela, you can’t. A guy from Immigration was just here and he had a cop with him. They asked for you by name. You can’t come back here. They could be watching the place.”

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3 

     Eric had a lot of time to think that day. Two more goons came to the hotel room and then they escorted him to a service elevator and out the maintenance exit of the hotel. Parked by the loading dock was a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows all around. They bound his ankles and wrists with plastic handcuffs, tied a rag over his eyes, threw him in behind the rear seat, and covered him with a blanket. Before they closed the door, he heard the man in black say, “Take him to the bodega.”

     He tried but couldn’t keep track of time. All he could hear was a CD the driver was playing, the greatest hits of Los Tigres del Norte. He really couldn’t stand the norteño or border style of accordion-based Mexican country music but now he became very attached to it because he knew that when it stopped things were going to get worse for him. He kept reliving everything that had happened to him since he had awakened that morning, trying to figure out where he could have done something different, but it had all happened too fast.

     The black SUV drove on and the Tigers of the North sang their greatest hits over and over. Occasionally the truck would stop for a while. Sometimes one of the front doors would open and close but the motor kept running. Then they would drive on and los Tigres would keep strumming. At some point Eric was aware that his personal darkness became more absolute. Even under a blanket and blindfolded, he could tell that the sun had gone down. Not long after that, he noticed that the Escalade had turned onto a gravel road. By then he had memorized every line of every song, even if he wasn’t sure what a lot of the words meant, and his chief worry was that he would piss in the back of the vehicle. That would surely infuriate his captors, but then they could hardly punish him worse than they had already promised.

***

     Eventually the gravel turned to dirt and then, a half hour later the truck stopped moving and the motor shut down. Suddenly the fear that had been sucking the breath out of him all day got much worse. He had been trying not to think about what they intended to do to him. They were going to castrate him and then torture him to death. Maybe Celia would suffer similar treatment. Would he have to watch what they did to her? They jerked him out of the SUV, removed the blindfold and cut the plastic ties around his ankles. He was standing in a circular driveway in front of a large two-story brick house with a red tile roof. There were other small sheds, corrals and outbuildings scattered around, illuminated by mercury lights on poles. One large steel framed building with corrugated siding looked like it might be a barn  or garage for large equipment.

     A guard came out of the house and frisked him, then used a small electronic wand to search him again. Then they led him inside the house, down a hallway and locked him in an unfinished room in a back corner of the building. There was an attached bathroom and he quickly enjoyed the most sensuous piss of his life. After that he paced back and forth in the small open space, but there was really nothing to do but lie down on the bed, where he tried and failed to sleep. His body was producing enough adrenaline for a combat platoon and his eyelids were stuck open. Finally, around 4 a.m., his mind finally shut down. It was almost twenty-four hours since he had been kidnapped.

Chapter 4 

     Ornela sat on a park bench and considered her options. She had arrived on a one-way ticket from Buenos Aires two months earlier, sure that she could find some kind of work, but she had been wrong. The hospitals were all unionized and foreigners were not welcome. She had found a job working for a doctor in private practice, but the day before her first payday the doctor had let her know that he expected sex on the side. She had quit and he had paid her nothing. She then found work with another doctor in private practice and the same thing happened. And after that it had happened again. And now, at her fourth job, she was fired for not being ugly enough.

     She felt stupid that she had not foreseen the problems, but who would have thought that in real life Mexican men would behave even worse than they do in soap operas?

     She knew that she could find a job in a convenience store or a market, but she would be paid half what a citizen would earn. That would be enough to pay her cousin Alsonsina for her food, but she would have nothing left to send to her mother in Argentina. She would be sleeping on the floor in her cousin’s small apartment for ever.

     She had really screwed up. Like many Argentines, she had always thought of Mexico as a rich country, a land of opportunity where smart, hard-working people could get ahead, but she had found the reality to be very different. Even after two months, she was still suffering culture shock. The city was so much dirtier than Buenos Aires. There were so many more beggars. Pollution and crime were worse.

     And the prejudice against people with Indian blood was even worse.

     She sat on the park bench for half an hour, but it took less time than that to make her decision. Finally she found a pay phone, called Alfa to set up a meeting for later that afternoon and then headed for an open air flea market where she spent an hour buying a used backpack and then decided to walk to Alfa’s place. It was six kilometers and a microbus would only cost three pesos, but she had the time and figured she could use the exercise. She was going to be walking quite a bit more than six kilometers pretty soon.

     She arrived at the church a few blocks from Alfa’s at six p.m. and found her cousin sitting in the back. They hugged and then sat down.

     “Ornela, you don’t have to do this. Something will turn up. What you’re doing is very dangerous.”

     “ Maybe. Maybe not. Did you bring my stuff?”

     “Yeah.”

     Alfonsina picked a plastic trash sack off the floor and placed it on the pew between them.

     “I didn’t want to bring your suitcase. I thought they might be watching.”

     “Good plan. I don’t need it anyway.”

     Ornela began going through the sack and transferring items of clothing into the backpack.

     “I’m not going to be able to take all this. I need to save room for food and water. Can I leave some of this with you?”

     “Of course, but I really wish you would reconsider. This is too scary. If you hang on for awhile the situation in Argentina might get better.”

     “It might, but I don’t have the money to buy a plane ticket to go back. Trust me, cousin. I’ve looked at it from every angle. Can’t go back, can’t stay. So, I have to keep moving.”

     A man sat down next to Alfa and whispered, “Good evening, ladies.” Then he kissed Alfa on the cheek. “Josefina is watching the kids.”

     Alfa’s husband was the head chef at a five star hotel in the zona rosada, the rich part of town, but he barely earned enough to keep his wife and two kids in a small three room apartment four kilometers from the nearest subway station. After seven years working at the hotel he had enough seniority to avoid night shifts, and considered himself lucky.

     “I’m glad you could get away. Gregorio, please talk some sense into Ornela.”

      Alfa’s husband rolled his eyes and smiled. “I’m not going to waste my time on a fool’s errand like that. If the professor has made up her mind, nobody is going to change it.”

     He handed Ornela a small piece of paper.

     “After Alfa told me what you’re planning I made a few phone calls. When you get to the border, call that guy. He’s got a good reputation. For $300 he can get you across, but that’s it; no transportation after that. It’s good that you’re Argentine. If you get caught they can’t send you back to Mexico. You can get a lawyer and then just disappear.”

     Ornela stared at the paper.

     “Thank you very much, Gregorio. I have heard bad stories about the coyotes. I wasn’t sure how I was going to find a good one. This will really help. Thanks.”

     “You’re welcome, but I really wish you’d stay and keep tutoring my kids so they turn out to be geniuses like you.”

     “Your kids are going to be fine. They’re on the right path.”

     “They’re going to miss you.”

     “And I’m going to miss them. Please explain why I had to sneak off like this.”

     Their goodbyes took awhile, but finally they were on the sidewalk outside the church.

     “If you don’t hear from me within two weeks… well, don’t worry. You will hear from me sooner than that.”

 

     Ornela walked the four kilometers to the subway station and then it was only four stops to Terminal de Autobus Norte. As big as a major airport in the United States, it is only one of four gigantic bus stations serving Mexico City. She walked through the building, past the ticket counters for dozens of bus lines, serving destinations all over northeast Mexico. Finally she found the one she needed.

     “One way, direct, to Laredo, please.”

     “Texas or Mexico?”

     “I’m sorry, what?”

     “Nuevo Laredo is in Mexico. Laredo, Texas is on the other side of the river.”

     “Nuevo Laredo, please.”

 

 

 

Chapter 5 

                                                                                 Monday, January 4

     The torture began with twenty-four hours of waiting. Every sound in the hallway made his chest tighten and he would feel dizzy. Once he heard what sounded like three people walking down the hallway toward his room. He was sure they were almost to his door but then the sounds changed direction and faded away. He broke into sobs, ran into the bathroom, puked into the toilet and then lay gasping on the tile floor. After that, he just sat in the only chair and stared at the wall.

     Sometimes he thought he could recall Celia’s face but her features kept dissolving in his mind. They brought him food but he couldn’t eat. He stayed in the chair, staring at the wall. He tried to breathe steadily but his fear and adrenaline kept his heartbeat racing. He tried not to think about what they said they were going to do to him but he couldn’t avoid it. Hours passed as he sat in the chair and tried to control his fear. He watched the shadow of the bars on the window move from one side of the room to the other, then fade and disappear with the darkness. Still, he couldn’t breathe normally and could not stop thinking about what they were going to do to him.

     The second morning he awoke fully clothed, sleeping on top of the blanket on the bed, but he couldn’t remember when he had moved from the chair to the bed. While he was thinking about that, the door opened to reveal a young guy with a Colt-style 1911 model .45 caliber pistol stuck in his belt. He stayed well out in the hall and motioned Eric to come with him. As Eric stepped into the hall the guard pointed to the center of the house. Eric led the way, walking slowly. The guard followed five steps behind, with one hand on the grip of his pistol.

     The man in the black suit was waiting in a large living room, sitting behind a large mahogany table. Diego and several others stood behind him.

     “First, we have some questions. What’s that?” He tossed a small object to the other side of the table. Eric stepped forward to look at it.

     “May I?” he asked.

     “Go ahead.”

     Eric picked up the device, which looked something like a cell phone. He pushed a button on the side and held it in for a few seconds. The display lit up and showed a message: “This Garmin ETrex belongs to Eric Kanaris”.

     “It’s my GPS receiver. You found it in my suitcase.”

     “What do you use it for?”

     “I use it in my work. I’m a land surveyor. In Spanish, topógrafo or agrimensór. This receives radio signals from satellites and gives the latitude and longitude of wherever I’m at. So I know my exact location.”

     “If you’re a topógrafo you should know where you are. Turn it off.”

     Eric turned it off and replaced it on the table.

     “I work in Alaska every summer. In very remote areas, hundreds of miles from the nearest road. If we need to call a helicopter, for instance, we give them our coordinates from that.”

     “And this?” The man slid a folded map across the table.

     Eric picked it up and unfolded it. “You got this out of my suitcase also. It’s a topographic map of an area I worked in last summer. Several points on this map are also stored on the GPS receiver.”

     “And these guys?” He slid over some photographs printed on a computer printer. Eric picked them up.

     “I see you found my camera also. These guys work for me in Alaska. These pictures were taken in October. The snow was just starting. A week later it got bad and we quit for the season.”

     “What race are they?”

     “One’s Eskimo. The other one’s Aleut.”

     The drug dealer looked at him for several seconds with no discernible expression on his face.

     “You ever get lost in those woods up there?”

     “No.”

     “Because of that.” He pointed at the GPS receiver.

     “Not just because of that. Those are cool toys, but I’ve been surveying since I was fifteen and we never had those when I started. I learned with just a map and a compass. I can find my way pretty well with just the sun. At night the stars are even better.”

     “You work at night?”

     “Not usually. But shit happens. A truck breaks down. Whatever. You have to walk ten miles in the dark.”

     “How far can you walk in a day?”

     “Depends on the terrain. The grade. How much I’m carrying. On level country twenty miles is doable. I think that’s thirty-two kilometers.”

     The man slid some more photos across the table. Eric glanced at them but didn’t pick them up.

     “I took those last November at Lookout Mountain, Georgia, at a school where they teach hang gliding. In Spanish it’s called aladelta.”

     “How long can you stay up in one of those?”

     “Guys who are good can stay up for hours. The most I managed was about five seconds.”

     “Five seconds?” The man laughed and his goons snickered along.

     “You don’t jump off a mountain the first day. It’s like learning to ski. You start off practicing on small hills and work your way up. I pulled a muscle in my leg on the third day and had to quit. I never got my license.”

     “I was beginning to think you were sort of smart, gringo, but I was wrong. Anybody who jumps off a mountain hanging from one of those things is fucking crazy.”

     “If you’re careful, it’s safe. If you take stupid risks, you die. I imagine it’s a bit like the drug business.”

     “No, in the drug business you take risks all the time. Still, it’s a good idea to take only the ones you have to.”

     Eric was starting to calm down. The smirk on Diego’s face was impossible to ignore, but answering questions was a good way to stall for time. It seemed that they’d been suspicious of the GPS receiver. Had this criminal suspected Eric of being an undercover cop or a spy for another drug cartel? If he were, then the meeting with Celia would not have been an accident. It would have been planned as a way to get close to her boyfriend. The man in black obviously had a finely tuned sense of paranoia. He would not have lasted very long otherwise. But the map, the pictures from Alaska, it all hung together; it was too complicated to be a cover story. At least Eric hoped they would think so. If they suspected him of being a cop his immediate future would be even worse, as impossible as that was to imagine.

     “Okay. I’m still going to kill you, but first you’re going to work for me for a while. For now you’re going to train some of my people.”

     “To do what?”

     “To not get lost. Last week some of them got lost and it cost me one hundred kilos of cocaine. You seem like a careful man. Train my mules so my coke makes it to San Antonio safely. Any questions?”

     “Lots. How many people? How much are they carrying? Where do we cross the river? How far do we have to walk? Do any of the mules speak English?”

     “I’m just setting up my operation in this area,” said the man in black. “For now I’m moving one hundred kilos per week. You can have as many mules as you want. We can drive to the river. You’ll pick the spot. We cross at night, naturally. On the other side, the Border Patrol only operates within a mile or so of the river, unless they’re in hot pursuit. The further you go before you transfer the coke to a vehicle, the less risk. We go every week of the year, except for the week of December Twelfth, the festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the summer it gets to forty-six, which in gringo degrees is one hundred and fifteen. None of the mules speak English.”

     Eric thought for a minute. “I’ll need an interpreter. My Spanish is not that good. Get me a chilango. I can barely understand norteño Spanish. Also, if you want me to do this right, I’m going to have to do some research. I’ll need at least a week. I could start teaching people how to use a compass tomorrow, but surveying and moving drugs past the Border Patrol are two different things. I’ll bet there’s a ton of material on the internet about the Border Patrol and how they work. There will be books I can order. That information could save time and money.”

     Eric paused for breath. He was winging it like crazy, trying to sound like he could smuggle dope better than any Mexican on the river. He was being given a reprieve! He began to feel dizzy with elation. He was not going to die today! And given enough time he should be able to figure out a way to escape from these guys. He plunged ahead.

     “And your people who got lost? Are they in jail? If any escaped, I want to talk to them. They have information I could use.”

     “Three of them made it back but you can’t talk to them because they’re dead. Look, these are all good ideas but you don’t have a week to get ready. We have a schedule. Customers to keep happy. If they can’t get their coke from us they’ll buy from somebody else. They’re addicts, you know? They can’t wait a week just because we fucked up and lost a shipment. Raimundo here,” he indicated one of the men behind him, “is taking a load over tonight. He used to smuggle people across a few years ago. You go with him. Get your feet wet, right? When you get back, we’ll talk.”

     He searched through the stack of papers in front of him and held up a picture of a good-looking blonde teenager.

     “Who’s this?”

     Eric didn’t say anything.

     “You don’t have to tell me who she is. Yesterday we did our own internet searching. On you. We know where your daughter lives with your ex-wife in Iowa. We know where she goes to school. We have a copy of your divorce decree from her mother.” He held up another photo. “We know where your sister lives and where she works. We know that every day she visits your mother, who’s in the Four Seasons Assisted Living Center. You do a good job for me and all those people will live long happy lives. You won’t, but they will.”

     There was no comment expected from Eric. The man picked up the GPS receiver and tossed it to Raimundo.

     “Destroy that.” Then he looked at Eric. “No one knows the location of this place and no one is going to.”

     He made a gesture of dismissal and Eric’s guard pointed to the door. Eric turned and started walking.

Chapter 6 

     The bus pulled out of the terminal at 7:20 p.m. but it was after nine before they finally arrived in open country and the driver picked up the speed to 90 kilometers per hour. It was called an express but there would be several short stops in major cities, such as Monterrey. Total travel time was predicted to be thirteen hours.

She wanted to review her plan, but she didn’t have one.  She was stepping off the edge of the world she knew. From the age of seven she had always had a plan. She had felt in charge of her life. Now she was at the mercy of outside forces and other people. Strangers. A cop. A doctor’s wife.

     No one had ever told her that she wasn’t ugly enough, but then no one had ever called her beautiful either. She had always assumed that she was equally unattractive to whites and Indians both, but since she had always avoided men, there was never any reason to be concerned about it. She knew how to think, how to study and how to work hard and that had always been more than enough to fill up her days.

     How strange, to become an economic refugee because of a lack of ugliness! She thought about Mrs. Villareal. The woman had seemed a bit nervous but had been friendly enough. She was pretty and very white, whiter in fact than her husband, but Ornela had noticed some kind of insecurity about her. Obviously her insecurity problem was worse than it had appeared, because the woman hadn’t just told her husband to fire Ornela, she had also called the Immigration office. And that too was curious. Ornela couldn’t imagine that officers of the Oficina de Migracion raced out to personally investigate every tip that was called in. If you came to the attention of the police for some other reason and they found out that you had no papers, you could theoretically be handed over to the Migracion, but that would happen only if you couldn’t scrape up a small bribe. Ornela had never heard of an officer of the Migracion tracking down a single illegal, and this guy had brought a policeman with him. The  obvious explanation seemed to be that Mrs. Villareal, or a friend of hers, knew someone who worked at Migracion and that she had offered the man a bribe if he would deport Ornela. Yes, she was a very insecure bitch.

     Ornela wondered for a moment what would have happened if the two men had arrested her. She would have lost all her money, that was a certainty, and things would probably have been a lot worse than that. She had heard plenty of stories about Mexican police, but then the police were generally despicable in her own country also. Well, she had evaded that horror. No need to dwell on it.

     At four a.m. Ornela woke up when the bus stopped in Monterrey. She got out to use the restroom, then walked a bit until the all aboard call. After that she couldn’t sleep, so she watched the sun coming up over the desert. As they approached Nuevo Laredo she looked ahead to try and see the river but it never came in sight. They passed through scattered slums, then the poorer parts of the city, then it was all two and three story buildings until they reached the terminal. She hoisted her backpack and found a payphone.

Chapter 7 

     In the hallway the guard turned right instead of left and they walked out the front door. A crew cab pickup was waiting. Eric tried to take a good look around in the daylight without being obvious. The black Escalade was parked nearby. He got a quick look at the license plate and tried to burn it into his memory. Raimundo came out the door and spoke to the guard.

     “Blindfold the dead man and put him in the back.”

     Eric looked quickly around in shock. Except for the guard and Raimundo there was no one else present. Raimundo laughed.

     “That’s right, gringo. You’ve got a new name: muerto caminando.” Dead Man Walking.

     Eric’s second blindfolded trip only lasted four hours, but a good part of it was on dirt and gravel roads. Around noon they stopped, and when the back door of the pickup opened, Eric got out. They were standing in the enclosed patio of a small farmhouse. Ten-foot high walls extended from the sides of the one story house and enclosed a graveled area that could be called a patio, a courtyard, or a parking lot. There was no way to know what might be on the other side of the walls. Raimundo walked over to one side of the patio where two men were playing dominoes at a table in the shade of a tall jacaranda tree. Eric could hear them trading friendly insults and he heard the name “muerto caminando” several times. Since no one seemed to be minding him, he walked into the house. There were only three rooms: a kitchen, a living room and in the back, a bedroom with some mattresses on the floor. On one wall was a framed painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patroness. There was a small barred window on the far wall and Eric walked over and looked out. According to the time of day and the angle of the sun, he was looking east.

     There was a small yard behind the house, haphazardly fenced with a combination of cactus, barbed wire and woven sticks. An old mongrel dog slept in a small patch of shade near the house. There was no grass, just dirt, lightly sprinkled with the purple petals of the jacaranda tree that towered over the old house. A few chickens criss-crossed the yard slowly, not even scratching, as if they knew there were no insects to be found. Beyond the ragged fence was the desert. About a mile further on a thick band of green ran from horizon to horizon, north to south. It was a wild guess, of course, but Eric was pretty sure that he was looking at the Rio Grande, or, as it is known in Mexico, El Rio Bravo.

Chapter 8 

      At 3:00 p.m. one of the domino players took a short cell phone call and sent Raimundo to open the gate. Eric had taken a chair out of the kitchen and was sitting in the shade against the wall, on the opposite side of the patio from the domino game.

As the gate swung open, three vehicles entered. First came a white van with tinted glass all around, then a Nissan sedan with Mexico City plates. It was a mid-priced model similar to most of the licensed taxis in the country. There were two men in it.

     The sight of the last vehicle made Eric’s stomach turn and he almost jumped out of his chair. It was a Mexican Army Humvee with four armed soldiers carrying assault rifles in the open back. Eric glanced at the domino players but they were concentrating on their game.

Raimundo closed the gate. No one started screaming or shooting. Eric slowly relaxed.

     He had heard, of course, that most cops on the Mexican side of the border were on the payroll of the drug cartels. A few months earlier, in response to the bloody war between drug gangs in Nuevo Laredo, the president of Mexico had sent the army into the city to take over. They began by firing half the police force and for a short time a few naïve foreigners thought that the gangs would be checked. Unfortunately, Mexican soldiers, even officers, are not well paid. Also, many of them have wives and children whom they would rather not see murdered. In other words, the Mexican Army was as powerless as Eric was to say “no.” The drug lords ruled by the doctrine of “o plomo o plata,” lead or silver. In other words, you take our bribe or we kill you and all your close relatives.

     Eric was getting the special deal: death only, no bribe offered.

     Raimundo walked to the van and opened the side door. Slowly six young men stepped out, blinking and stretching in the sunlight. None were older than twenty-five and a few looked about fifteen. They all wore baseball caps and carried knapsacks. A few had plastic grocery sacks with bottles of water. Obviously, these were the mules. If the previous crew had gotten lost, these kids could be first-timers.

     It wouldn’t have been hard for Raimundo to find recruits. An endless stream of young men just like these flowed into every bus station near the border every day of the year. The lucky ones arrived with the cell phone number of a trusted “coyote,” or people smuggler, who had previously ferried over a brother or cousin. Their fare, up to $3,000, was already half paid, and their friends or relatives would pay the rest when they were safely delivered to Chicago or Atlanta.

But the unlucky ones didn’t have friends working good jobs on the other side. They arrived at the main bus terminal in Nuevo Laredo in a dangerous state of ignorance. They carried their life savings on them, maybe three or four hundred dollars, they had to hire the cheapest coyotes, and they had no idea who could be trusted. Three hundred dollars was barely enough for a leaky inner tube and a ride to the river bank five miles outside of town, but they didn’t know that, and the coyotes prowling the bus station would promise them anything for the smallest sum. These unlucky ones, with their few dollars hidden in their socks, were known as “chickens,” because everyone knows how much coyotes love chickens. Many of the chickens were robbed and abandoned without ever getting close enough to smell the river. For those few chickens who happened to be women the dangers only began with robbery.

     Eric figured Raimundo could have put together this crew of scared kids in half an hour, simply by promising them a free trip across the river in return for carrying a little freight. They would consider themselves lucky to have saved their few hundred dollars but they were not taking into account that the penalties for drug smuggling are infinitely worse than for mere illegal entry.

     In fact, there is no penalty for illegal entry into the USA. In the Laredo area illegals are given a ride to the Puente Internacional #1, or bridge one, and dropped off at the westbound pedestrian-only lane. A day later, they try again. Few have to make a third attempt. Even well known coyotes are seldom prosecuted. The U.S. Attorneys are too busy; in fact they are snowed under with more serious cases, such as drug smuggling.

     A half hour before sundown Raimundo and the Nissan driver walked into the courtyard. The driver popped the trunk of the car and lifted out a large duffel bag, which he handed to Raimundo. He then hauled out another one the same size and they returned to the house. Fifteen minutes later the Nissan Driver and his passenger came out of the house, got in the car and left. As the gate was closing behind them Raimundo stepped out of the house and called to the mules.

     “Come inside. We’re ready.”

     The young men followed him into the house and Eric fell in behind. As they entered the card room the mules froze and Eric had to walk around them to see what the surprise was. Raimundo was standing behind a table flanked by the two domino players, who were now holding AK-47 assault rifles, known in Mexico as “cuernos de chivo” or goat horns, because of the curved magazine that sticks down underneath the barrel. On the table in front of him was a pile of flat plastic-wrapped packages, each about the size of a large hardback book. Also on the table was a digital laboratory scale.

     “Okay,” said Raimundo, “in return for that low, low price we’re charging to take you across, you’re going to carry some mail for us. Hand me your backpacks.”

The mules didn’t move for a second. They seemed frozen, with sick, embarrassed looks on their faces, and Eric could see that until that very moment they had not known about this part of the deal. They were clearly unhappy about their promotion from chicken to mule. They looked from Raimundo to the cuernos de chivo and then the one closest to the table thrust out his backpack and Raimundo put in six of the blue bricks. The others lined up and received their loads.

     “Let’s go.”

     Raimundo picked a backpack off a chair and led the way into the kitchen. The guards followed the mules and Eric brought up the rear. As he walked out the back door into the yard he could hear los Tigres del Norte singing from a radio in the living room.

     They crossed the corral, stepped over a low spot in the stone wall and headed off into the brush. It was now sundown. Eric glanced behind and caught a glimpse of orange clouds under the stars and the black silhouette of the jacaranda tree rising like smoke out of the farmhouse. One of the guards waved his rifle at Eric.

     “Keep moving.”

     They walked single file through sparse mesquite trees about six feet high. The pale light of the three quarter moon illuminated the branches at shoulder level but closer to the ground many small cacti hid in the uneven shadows. Eric’s boots were back in his suitcase at the bodega and he had no pack or water. He knew he would be spending a lot of time the following day pulling cactus needles out of his ankles.

     After about a hundred yards they came to a small draw. The brush became thicker and a little higher but there was a stock trail along the bottom heading east. They stopped briefly and one of the guards moved up toward the front of the line. Without knowing why, Eric followed him. They walked past the mules and came to where Raimundo was standing by the side of the trail.

     “Take the point,” Raimundo said to the guard and the man walked ahead. “What the fuck are you doing?” Raimundo glared at Eric.

     “I’m supposed to be learning something. I want to see what’s going on.”

     “Follow Marco. As long as you can see his ass you’re doing great.”

     They started off again. Eric stayed about fifteen feet behind Marco. He could hear the others tramping behind. He was trying to walk quietly and avoid scraping the mesquite branches on both sides of the trail but no one else seemed concerned about the racket they were making.

     Eric wanted to ask some questions about what the plan was, but he knew that saying anything to Raimundo would only provoke more jokes at his expense. Eric was supposed to be learning something but Raimundo obviously saw it as a turf war and he wasn’t about to help a gringo take over a job he wanted himself. This made no sense because he knew Eric was a walking dead man who would be gone as soon as he had passed on some nighttime navigation skills. It would be much more sensible for Raimundo to learn as much from Eric as he could. Then he would be the obvious choice to become vice-president of mule operations when Eric was dead. But clearly Raimundo wasn’t looking at it that way.

     Eric knew that two things were getting in the way of common sense: machismo, the exaggerated male pride of Mexican men, and gringo hatred, that toxic mixture of real history, lies, conspiracy theories, truth and the perfectly normal envy felt by citizens of small poor countries toward those who have the dumb luck to be born in big, rich countries. Eric had come to believe that no Mexican, however friendly, educated, or sophisticated, is completely free of gringo hatred. He knew there was nothing he could do about it.

     As they drew closer to the river the ravine deepened and the vegetation thickened but the trail had been well packed down by cattle and they had no trouble keeping to a fast walk. Eric knew it would be ridiculously easy to escape from these amateurs. He also knew it was pointless. He would be lost in the dark. He could walk east until he found a road and hitchhike to a town, but then what? The drug smuggler’s killers would already be hunting his family. He could call his sister and brother and his ex and tell them to disappear and create new identities. Right. They would all argue or laugh at him. Even if they believed him, how could they all find new jobs using fake names? It was hopeless. Eric knew that he was trapped. His chains were the people he loved, and the only way he could protect them all was to keep on taking orders. In fact, if he wanted to stay alive, he would have to do more than follow orders. He would have to become so useful to his captors that they would consider him too valuable to kill.

     Eric suddenly dropped to his knees and threw up his hand.

     “What the fuck?” Raimundo stopped right behind him. Eric motioned him to get down.

     “Over there.” Eric pointed off the right side of the trail. “Something moved over there.”

     Raimundo stared into the darkness. “There’s nothing there. Keep moving.”

     Eric didn’t move. Then they heard the woman crying.

     “Marco! Omar!” Raimundo shouted. He drew a pistol. Marco came thumping and thrashing back down the trail and Omar pushed his way forward.

     “Somebody’s in there. Don’t shoot unless they start it.”

     The two guards spread out and moved cautiously in the direction Raimundo was pointing, gun muzzles straight ahead. After about twenty feet Marco stopped and relaxed.

     “Malditos mojados,” he said disgustedly. Goddamn wetbacks. He kicked at someone on the ground. “Move it!” He kicked some more and three people stood up and walked toward the trail: a middle-aged couple, obviously country people, and a boy about ten years old. They were terrified and they were carrying their shoes and socks. The man was buttoning up his shirt.

     “What the fuck are you up to old man? Screwing in the cactus?”

     “No, sir. We just got robbed. A coyote made us take off our clothes to search for our money, but we had already given most of it to him, so he got mad and beat us. We were only trying to get to the other side.” The man looked at the ground. His wife stood close behind him crying softly. Or maybe she was saying prayers.

     “You’re lucky I don’t want to make noise or I’d shoot you right now.” Raimundo glared at them for a few moments and then holstered his pistol with a show of weariness. He turned to Marco.

     “Keep moving.”

     They started out again, as before, at the same pace. Eric couldn’t believe it. They now knew that there was at least one coyote in the area, that he was violent and probably armed, yet they were walking down the middle of a trail and making noise that could be heard fifty yards away. Apparently Raimundo thought that two AK-47s made them impervious to ambush. Eric wondered if Marco or Omar could hit anything with their rifles, even in daylight. He wondered also what their cargo was worth. Six guys, each carrying what looked like about fifteen kilos. What was it worth? He had no idea, but it was worth stealing.

     They thrashed onward. The trail widened out and became barely visible as they entered the floodplain of the river. The mesquite bushes became more like trees and they began passing stands of willow and cottonwood.

     Up ahead a man was cursing and branches were breaking. Marco sprinted ahead and Eric followed close behind. As they ran into a small clearing they found a fight in progress. A fat man with no shirt on was holding a woman by one wrist, while with the other hand she was clawing his face. He was trying to grab her free hand but she was too fast. Then she kneed him in the groin. He went down, letting go of her hand. She turned to run but stopped dead when she saw Marco five feet away, pointing his gun at her head.

     Raimundo and the mules entered the clearing and stopped. The man with no shirt on staggered to his feet, coughing. When he saw the guns he involuntarily took a step back, brushing grass off his chest. His eyes darted back and forth, as he tried to size up the situation.

     “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said, with dignity. From behind he grabbed one of the woman’s arms. She tried to shake loose but he seemed to have a stronger grip now that he had reinforcements. Her eyes remained fixed on the gun barrel in front of her.

     “This Inca bitch was refusing to pay the full price to get to the other side. And now the price just went up.”

     “Do you know whose land you are on?” asked Raimundo calmly.

     “Not exactly. I could have got gotten a little bit lost.”

     “Well, there’s a fine for trespassing.”

     “Of course, sir. How much?”

     “Whatever you’ve got. Hand it over. We’re in a hurry.”

     The man betrayed no sign of disappointment. Obviously, his plan was to be agreeable and maybe live another day. He cheerfully handed over his wallet.

     ”Search him.”

     Omar handed his rifle to Marco, gave the coyote a quick pat down and came up with a small pistol from a pants pocket. Raimundo took it and threw it into the brush.

     “Get out of here. If I catch you here again you’re dead.”

     “Of course. Thank you, sir.” The fat man grabbed the woman by her hair and jerked her to her knees. “Would you like to sample the bitch before I kill her? She has too much Indian blood in her, I know, but hey, they’re all good looking in the dark, right?” He twisted her head to the side and smiled as if offering a discount on a used truck.

     “I said get lost. Don’t make any noise and don’t leave any corpses on my land.”

     “I understand. Thank you, and sorry about the trespassing.” He bent down and growled into the woman’s ear. “Got that, bitch? No noise.” He stepped back a few feet, dragging her by the hair. She did not fight him, but Eric did not see submission in her eyes. She looked slowly from Raimundo to the rifle Marco was still pointing at her. She was not through fighting. She was just waiting for the odds to improve.

     “Let’s go.” Raimundo turned away from the coyote and his chicken. Marco took off and the rest fell in behind.

Chapter 9 

     Eric began to think he could now smell the river. Cattle had thinned out the brush and there were more tall broadleaf trees. They stepped over several small streams that meandered through the gravely soil. Finally they stopped in front of a tall thicket that seemed to be made of bamboo and Raimundo unslung his pack.

    “What now?” asked Eric.

    “You wait here,” said Raimundo, removing some odd-looking binoculars from his pack. He and Marco then slipped through a small gap in the bamboo and disappeared. The mules stood around awkwardly. A few pulled out water bottles and drank. Omar slung his rifle on his shoulder and lit a cigarette. Eric walked over to him.

     “What’s up?”

     Omar took a drag and stared away into the darkness. He wasn’t going to answer immediately. That would be demeaning. He was not a tourist guide, and after all, he had the gun. He could talk or not talk as he saw fit.

     Eric stood at ease and stared into the same patch of dark shadows. He understood that he was being put in his place. He waited calmly, staring into the dark. After a few minutes Omar sighed and stubbed out the cigarette.

     “They’re looking to see if the patrols are on the other side.”

     “Ah, I see.” Eric wanted to appear grateful for any information. “Those looked like some kind of special binoculars.”

     “Yeah, that’s some high dollar military shit. You can see in the dark.”

     “Cool.” Eric slouched at ease, seemingly enjoying the evening breeze.

     “They’ll watch for at least half an hour, forty-five minutes.”

     “That’s good. They’re being careful.”

     “Yeah,” said Omar. “They’ve done this a few times.”

     Eric started to stroll away. “Well, I’m feeling a little restless. I think I’ll go take a jump on that Indian bitch if she’s still alive.”

     “Hey, Raimundo said to wait.”

     “I am waiting. You said we have a half hour.” He mimed a few hip thrusts and grinned. “This is gonna take ten minutes.” Eric turned and kept walking. He knew Omar couldn’t shoot and he couldn’t abandon the mules. Eric lengthened his stride, listening for any sound behind him. Nothing.

     When the trail turned around some brush he began to run. He thought they had walked less than a quarter of a mile since leaving the coyote and the woman but he wasn’t sure. He had no idea if he could actually see the trail. It would be very easy to miss the spot where they had been. He jogged along, trying to look down at the trail and still avoid the tree branches.

     He stopped, thinking he must have gone too far. He stood still, breathing hard, listening. He thought he heard some faint movement off to the side of the trail and ran toward the sound. After about twenty yards he entered a clearing and saw them struggling on the ground. The fat man, now nude, was on top of the woman. He was using his hands to pin down her arms. She was struggling and panting but couldn’t get out from under his weight. He was mumbling and thrusting.

Eric ran up beside them and kicked the fat man in the head. Since he was still moving forward when he kicked, his whole weight was behind the blow. The fat man rolled over twice and came to rest face down in some cactus. Eric gasped for breath, his hands on his knees, staring at the motionless figure.

     The woman sat up, coughing. Eric helped her to her feet but then looked away. She was nude and her long black hair stuck out in a tangled mess of leaves and sticks. Eric walked closer to the coyote and looked down. He was not sure what to do next. After a few minutes he sensed the woman walk up behind him.

     “He’s dead,” she said calmly.

     He turned to look at her. She had replaced her clothes but her hair was still a wild mess.

     “Trust me. Necks don’t bend like that.”

     “Really?” Eric was impressed with how calm she was. “How do you know?”

     The woman knelt and put two fingers on the side of the coyote’s neck. After awhile she stood. “He’s dead. I’m not surprised, the way you kicked him from the side like that.”

     “Yeah, I guess.” Eric looked at her, then at the dead man. He wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew he had to rejoin Raimundo’s crew pretty soon.

     “Thank you,” she said. “He really was going to kill me.”

     Eric was still confused and couldn’t think of anything to say.

     “Where are your friends?” she asked.

     “They’re not my friends. But, uh… I have to get back to them anyway.” He started to turn away but didn’t move.

     “Can you tell me where I am?”

     “Huh?”

     “I don’t know where we are. A coyote brought me and some others in the back of a truck. We couldn’t see anything. We were getting along okay and then that scum robbed us.” She pointed at the dead man.

     “It happens a lot,” said Eric. “The robbers know the usual places where people cross the river, so they ambush them. A lot of the time they’re partners with the coyotes.”

     “So, could you tell me where we are?”

     “I don’t know,” said Eric. “I arrived here blindfolded. So I don’t know where we are either.”

     They were standing close enough that he could see her confusion. She had no reply. Eric looked down again at the dead man. Everything had happened too fast. He hadn’t actually made a decision to find her. They were just taking a break and he was talking to Omar and he couldn’t stand the idea that not very far away in the darkness some fat scumbag was going to kill an innocent woman. He had been running to find her before he realized what he was doing. Now, only seconds later, he had killed a man.

     “Well, it doesn’t matter where we are,” he said. “We’re both going the same way. You might as well come along.”

     He turned and began jogging, hoping he could now retrace his path to where Raimundo and the mules were waiting. He could hear her following close behind.

Chapter 10 

When he saw the mules standing in front of the bamboo thicket Eric slowed to a walk and then forced himself to slow down even more. He couldn’t see Raimundo, so obviously the operation was still on hold. He slowed to a stroll as Omar stepped toward him.

“You’re lucky Raimundo didn’t—” He broke off when he saw the woman. “What the fuck?” He swung his rifle toward her. Eric stepped between them.

“She’s with me.”

“No she’s not. Raimundo didn’t say—”

“Look, it’s not your call, is it?”

Eric took a step forward and pushed the rifle barrel aside. Omar stared at him but couldn’t think of anything to say. Eric walked calmly to the edge of the group of mules. The mules edged cautiously away. Eric and the woman stood silently for what seemed like a long time.

“Thanks again.”

“You’re not safe yet.”

“No, but things are looking better.”

Eric couldn’t think of anything to say. He didn’t want to stare at her because she was obviously uncomfortable, but it was hard not to look at her. She would stare at the ground with her arms clasped under her breasts , then look away into the dark, and make a futile attempt to brush the weeds and dirt out of her hair. She was tall, maybe five-ten, and seemed taller because of her very erect posture. Her facial features didn’t look Spanish, but not really Indian either and in the dark he could not judge her skin color. She was simply exotic, the first member he had seen of an unknown race.

“My name’s Ornela.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m Eric. Uh, how are you, I mean how do you feel?”

“Horrible, but I’ll live. Don’t worry about it. I’m in better shape than that guy–” She made a vague gesture to indicate the way they had come. She didn’t want to name the man who had raped her. Eric didn’t really want to think about him either.

“Yeah.” Eric wondered what Raimundo’s reaction would be when he returned and found his crew enlarged. The silence was painful.

“Why did that guy call you an Inca?”

“Because I’m from South America. Argentina, actually. Can’t you tell?”

“How would I know?”

“We have a very pretty obvious accent.”

“I can’t tell different accents. My Spanish is pretty basic.”

She said nothing. Eric suddenly realized that in fact they had spoken nothing but Spanish since he had kicked the man off her. He knew he must have made dozens of grammatical errors, yet at the time he hadn’t stopped to think about every damned verb tense and preposition. He had just talked. He had known long before, but only intellectually, that the best way, probably the only way to learn a language is to just jump in and start talking. But he had always been too self-conscious, too afraid of sounding stupid. And then Andrea’s friends all spoke English fairly well. So he kept taking classes in Spanish but falling back on English, and never really learning anything.

Raimundo stepped out of the bamboo and Omar jumped to his side, whispering and pointing his rifle toward Eric. Raimundo advanced, snarling curses in Spanish, literally declaring Eric to be the bastard son of a pubic hair goat moron.

“We ready yet?” Eric asked cheerfully.

“Yeah, but she’s not coming. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“She’s with me.”

“Not if I shoot her right now.” He drew his pistol.

“Then you’ll have to shoot me too because I ain’t crossing without her. How you going to explain that to your boss, huh?”

“You can have an accident, fuckhead.”

“I don’t think your boss gives bonuses to people who use accidents to excuse their bad decisions. I think his main concern is that all his dope gets to San Antonio safely. You pull that off, you’re a hero. Number two, he also wants me to survive this trip. Yeah, he’s going to kill me eventually. If you’re a good boy maybe he’ll let you kill me when the time comes. But for now he wants me alive. If I die too soon you’re in deep shit. The one thing he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about is whether we take an extra mojada along with us. But I do. So how much time are we going to waste talking about it?”

Raimundo glared at Eric and then at Ornela. Then he holstered his pistol.

“You’re going to die a lot sooner than you think, gringo.”

He turned and went back to where Omar was standing. Omar then put down his rifle and started digging into his backpack. He removed a bunch of deflated automobile inner tubes and a small foot pump and began filling the tubes. When each of the mules had an inflated tube Raimundo led the way into the bamboo. Eric and Ornela were left alone.

“I guess it’s time to go.”

They followed a narrow trail through about fifty feet of mixed willow and bamboo until they came to the water’s edge. Overhanging branches made it impossible to see the far bank. Marco and the mules were standing in ankle deep water close to the bank. Raimundo was standing up to his waist in the water about twenty yards downstream, watching the mules very carefully. Slowly Marco walked into deeper water, headed for the far bank. The current was not at all strong, maybe three miles per hour. One by one, the mules followed him. All they had to do was hold on to their tubes and kick toward the guy in front of them. They all seemed to have it figured out.

Omar was squatting on the bank, scanning the far side of the river with the night vision binoculars. Eric moved to his side and sat down.

“Let me have a look.”

Omar held the binoculars away and looked skeptically at Eric.

“You know I’m taking this operation over, right?”

Omar still looked unsure.

“Hey, tonight I’m just an observer, but starting tomorrow I’m the boss.”

Eric took the binoculars and raised them to his eyes. The far bank of the river came into focus, in grainy green and gray colors. Marco was already climbing on to the bank. The mules were standing up in the shallows.

“Here, check this out.” Omar took the binoculars. “If you push this button you get high power. You can see farther.”

Eric pushed the button and instantly he could see farther.

“It uses more battery power, though.”

Eric pushed the switch again to lower the power.

“Are we still clear?” Raimundo’s voice spoke out of a small walkie-talkie clipped to Omar’s backpack strap.

“Yeah, we’re still clear.”

“Okay. Move it.”

Omar unclipped the radio, placed it and the binoculars in a plastic bag, stuffed it into his backpack, and stepped into the river.

Eric looked at Ornela.

“Can you swim?”

She shook her head for no.

“No problem. This water’s easy and I’m a lifeguard.”

He stepped into the water, reached up and took her hand. She eased herself off the bank and he led her into the deeper water.

“You look at me and put your hands on my shoulders.”

She did as directed and he began kicking toward the other side. He began a slow breaststroke, aiming upriver so the current would carry them to the spot where the others were landing. At first her eyes were wide and her fingers dug into his shoulders, but gradually she began to relax. He could feel her body beneath him as the river pushed them together and then apart.

“You’re doing great.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said quickly, trying not to swallow any water. When he felt her back hitting the bottom he stood and they climbed out. Omar was just disappearing into the bamboo. They climbed out and followed.

The group continued to follow a stock trail along the bottom of a draw, moving at a fast walk, bunched up, following Marco. Eric was amazed at their speed and the noise they were making. Raimundo’s method of dope smuggling seemed to depend mainly on luck, but then he hadn’t shared any details of his plan. Maybe there were scouts out in the brush, keeping an eye out for the Border Patrol. Maybe he had bought off someone. It happened. Not nearly as much on the gringo side, but it happened.

After about two miles, they left the draw and started following a fence line that headed straight east. Eric thought he heard Ornela stumble behind him and turned to check on her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

They stopped for a moment. She didn’t sound winded.

“If there’s a problem, let me know.”

“I’m fine. So far gringolandia is treating me better than the other side.”

He laughed, impressed by her even temper. She had just barely survived a near-death experience, she was walking through a foreign country in the dark, accompanied by violent criminals, her soggy shoes were full of cactus needles and she was looking on the bright side of things. Eric wondered if her entire journey from Argentina had been as bad as the last few miles. How long had it taken her to get this far? He wondered how bad her life had been in her homeland to force her to leave.

About 3 a.m. the draw they were following entered a thirty-six inch steel culvert. A gravel road crossed over the culvert and disappeared into the brush on a north-south line.

Raimundo halted and made a short call on his walkie-talkie. A few minutes later an old pickup with headlights off coasted to a stop on the culvert. Eric noticed that when it stopped the brake lights did not come on, and when the driver jumped out, neither did the interior lights. The driver ran to the back, dropped the tailgate, slid out a long steel ramp and then jumped into the bed where he lifted up a motorcycle and began to roll it down the ramp. Eric did a quick head count and knew what was coming next.

“Backpacks! Right here!” Raimundo was at the rear of the truck, motioning to the mules. They ran to him and handed over the packs, which they seemed to be glad to get rid of. Raimundo tossed them into the back of the pickup.

“Come on.” Eric spoke softly to Ornela as he took her hand and led her around the front of the truck. Raimundo mounted the motorcycle and flipped the starter.

“Back off!” Marco and Omar raised their rifles toward the mules, who began backing away frantically. When they were thirty yards away from the truck the driver jumped behind the wheel and Marco and Omar ran to the passenger side, only to find Ornela in the middle and Eric riding shotgun. Marco grabbed the door handle and cursed when he found it locked. Eric smiled at him and pointed to the back of the truck. Marco was still cursing when Raimundo rode up next to him.

“Get in the back, idiot!” The two gunmen jumped in the bed of the truck as Raimundo rode ahead. The motorcycle also ran without lights.

“Radio check.”

The driver picked up a walkie-talkie on the dashboard. “Loud and clear,” he said and then followed the motorcycle. The trail through the brush was barely visible in the moonlight, but the driver seemed to know the way.

Thirty minutes later the motorcycle turned right onto a two-lane blacktop and turned on its’ headlights. The truck stopped at the edge of the asphalt and waited. After ten minutes the radio squawked. Under a lot of static they could hear Raimundo.

“Go.”

The truck turned on to the highway, turned on its’ lights and headed south. After a few minutes they passed a sign that read, “Laredo 52 miles.”

Eric revised his opinion of Raimundo’s plan. It was cunning but in a stupid way. Cheating the mules was stupid because he had just created six enemies for a profit of maybe $1800. True, if caught by the Border Patrol, they wouldn’t willingly talk about what they had just done, but they had information and they could identify him. Of course, Raimundo considered himself in the clear now. If stopped he’d get a free ride to Bridge #1. The cocaine was in the pickup ten miles behind him. The people in danger now were the driver, Omar, Marco, and of course Ornela and Eric. One nice touch was that they were heading south to Laredo. The obvious move would be to head straight north to San Antonio. Once there, the interstate highways to Dallas or Denver would be open. But in the middle of the night the chances of getting stopped were much higher. It would be better to lie up in Laredo and then blend in with the rush after sunrise. They might run into a random checkpoint by staying close to the border, but Raimundo could warn them in time by radio.

No one spoke in the cab of the truck. After half an hour Ornela’s head began to droop. When her chin touched her chest she woke up with a start and looked around quickly.

“It’s okay. Still got half an hour to go,” Eric said quietly. “Take a break.”

She seemed unsure of herself and tried to watch the road. Eric put his hand on her forehead and gently pushed her head onto his shoulder.

“Rest.”

After a few minutes he felt her body go limp against him. When they saw the first convenience store on the outskirts of Laredo Eric told the driver to stop and they pulled into the parking lot. He picked the radio off the dash and pushed the talk button.

“Raimundo.”

After a minute, he answered. “What now?”

“I’m getting out. I’ll be standing outside the bus station in Nuevo Laredo tomorrow at 3 p.m. If nobody shows I’ll come back the next day at noon. Tell your boss I’m going to do some research.”

Eric put down the radio and turned to the driver.

“You heard the message I just gave to Raimundo. I know he is going to try to fuck me over. Make sure the boss gets the message and you will get a raise. Or you can keep working for that jerk and taking all the risks.”

He got out of the pickup and helped Ornela step down, and then went to the back of the truck.

“Get in front.”

Marco and Omar climbed out, leaving their AK-47s concealed under a pile of backpacks. Eric opened the door for them and as they were getting in he gave them the same message he had given the driver. They said nothing but looked him over carefully. Was this gringo crazy? Suicidal? What? Was he really going to be the new boss? And how exactly had he taken the tall good-looking half-breed from the coyote?

As the driver pulled out of the lot they began discussing the message Eric had given them. They didn’t know if they would have a chance to deliver it or not, but more important was the question of whether they should even try. Obviously Raimundo was going to try to kill the gringo. He had no choice, the way the white guy had talked to him. They didn’t want to pick which dog they would back in this fight. Raimundo was a real bad dude, they all knew that, but the gringo had some big balls on him and he stayed real cool. For a walking dead man that was impressive. Maybe the question was how much longer he had to live, but who knew? They couldn’t just ask.

They couldn’t decide which way to bet, so they started guessing what the gringo and his new bitch would do first when they found themselves a motel room.

Chapter 11 

Eric called a taxi from a pay phone in the parking lot. Then they stood next to the building and waited. He wanted to talk but was once again tongue-tied. Ornela had gone silent and was avoiding his eyes. Obviously she was leaving the decisions to him. When the cab came he helped her into the back and then slid in beside her.

“We need to get to a hospital. Can you take us to the nearest emergency room?”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “There could be cops. I don’t have any papers.”

“You need to see a doctor. Period. No discussion. If there are cops there we’ll wait until they leave. I’ll handle it. Nobody’s going to send you back.”

She stared into his eyes. He accepted her gaze as calmly as he could. He saw no fear in her eyes. Apparently nothing could scare her. After a moment she made her decision. She put her hands in her lap looked straight ahead.

“I believe you,” she said.

The sky was just beginning to turn pink in the east as they pulled into the hospital parking lot. When they got out of the cab she stayed close, looking around cautiously. Thankfully, there were no police cars in sight. They walked slowly toward the tunnel of harsh, unnatural light spilling out of the ambulance entrance.

They entered, blinking in the glare and walked up to the reception desk.

“My wife needs to see a doctor. She was just raped.”

Ornela put her hand over her mouth and looked down. The nurse regarded them evenly for a few seconds. She seemed rather skeptical of the tall white guy and his cowering brown-skinned companion. She had obviously heard a lot of stories.

“Dear?” Eric looked down at Ornela but she was staring at the floor, clutching his arm. He lifted her chin with his hand.

“Dear, you need to talk to the nurse. She wants to help. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

Ornela looked fearfully at the nurse, who finally relaxed her shoulders. She seemed to have decided that Eric was not part of the problem. She spoke in Spanish.

“He’s right. You’re safe here.”

Hearing the words in her own language seemed to make a difference. Coming from a foreigner, from someone in an official position, it made her feel that she would be treated fairly. She relaxed and began to cry. Finally.

“It’s true. What happened.” She looked at Eric and then at the nurse. “And he saved me.”

“Well, we’ll get someone to look at you right away.” The nurse reached for the telephone.

“If you’re thinking of notifying the police, there’s no need.” Eric leaned forward and spoke softly but definitely. “The rape happened in Mexico and the perpetrator was a cop. She’s not going to be filing any complaint and even if she did you and I both know there would be no investigation, just more problems for her. She needs medical care, that’s all.” The nurse looked at Ornela, who nodded vigorous assent, then looked down again. The nurse picked up the phone and punched a key on the console.

“Wheelchair to the front desk.”

After they wheeled her away Eric stood uncertainly by the desk.

“We probably have the bastard’s DNA on file.”

“What?”

“The rapist. Your wife is not the first victim of the Nuevo Laredo police department we’ve seen in here.”

The nurse, a tiny Hispanic woman of maybe fifty looked at Eric with a mixture of pity and weary disgust, then sat down.

“I’ll need some information. Name of responsible party?”

“Well, we don’t know his name.”

“No, I mean, who will be paying the bill?”

“Oh, me. Sorry.”

“And your full name?”

“Eric Augustus Kanaris.”

“Will this be insurance or cash?”

“Cash.”

“Patient’s name?”

“Ornela.”

“And that would be Kanaris also?”

“What? Oh, yes, of course, her last name…  Say, could I give you the rest of that in a bit? I really need to sit down for a minute.”

“Of course. Do you need to see a doctor yourself?”

“No. I’m just pretty stressed out. I think my brain is just shutting down. Now that the worst is over… You know.”

He found a chair in the waiting area and sank into it gratefully. He realized he’d been awake nearly twenty-four hours. There was only one other person in the waiting room, a tattooed, pierced teenager curled up in a chair, lost in her earphones. Four nurses walked in the front door, chatting and laughing, carrying purses and convenience store cups of coffee. Obviously, the shift change.

***

“Excuse me, are you Eric?”

Eric awoke to find himself slumped awkwardly in a chair that was painfully small. A middle-aged Hispanic man in a white coat was shaking his knee. According to his nametag he was Dr. Benavides.

“Could I talk to you about your wife?”

Eric sat up, stretching and blinking. The sun was two hours into the morning sky and bright sunlight poured into the waiting room. There were now a dozen other people nearby watching TV or reading magazines.

 “Sure.” He sat up straight, then stood. “Is she going to be alright?”

“I think so. There’s no major physical trauma. Some bruises. We’re running tests but we already started antibiotics. She’ll need follow up for possible STDs.”

“Of course.” Eric wasn’t sure what to say.

“Mind if I get some information from you?”

“No problem.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Uh, couple of months…”

“How would you describe your relationship?”

“I’m not sure how this is relevant.”

“Maybe it isn’t. But according to my examination, as of yesterday your wife was a virgin.”

Eric could only stare at the doctor.

“It’s okay. We don’t work for the Border Patrol. She’s not your wife, but we don’t care. She’s very grateful to you. Actually she seems to be more worried about you than she is about herself.”

“Really? Can I see her?”

“Sure, if she’s still awake. I gave her Demerol.”

***

She was awake, but her smile was a bit on the goofy side.

“I love what you did with your hair.”

“They gave me a shower. I mean the nurse helped me have a shower.” Her voice was a little slow, her intonation flattened by the medication.

“So how are these gringos treating you?”

“No complaints. Everyone is really nice. Does everyone in this country speak Castellano?” She referred to the language as they do in Argentina.

“In most places, no, but we’re right on the border here. I’m sure it’s very useful to know both languages.”

“They’ve been very nice. Not like where I come from… I mean in hospitals, to women who…” Her voice faded away.

Eric understood what she was getting at. He could believe that in Argentina rape victims were not treated respectfully, not by the police and probably not by doctors either. He changed the subject.

“Well, you’re looking a whole lot better than when we came in here.”

“As good as I can anyway.”

“Hey, don’t do that. You get rid of that hospital gown and put on some Saturday night dancing clothes, you’re going to turn some heads.”

She began to cry.

“What?”

“You don’t have to tell lies. It just ruins all the good things you did.”

“Can’t I give you a simple compliment?”

“Not if it’s a lie.”

“Why do you put yourself down? I’m not the first guy to tell you you’re good looking.”

“The first one who’s sober.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well I don’t believe you’ve ever dated an Indian.”

“I don’t know any.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be arguing. You’re just trying to be nice. I really appreciate it.”

“I’ve got two words for you: Eva Mendes.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Okay. Rosario Dawson.”

“Never heard of her either. Who are they?”

“Well, in my opinion they both look more Indian or African than you do, and second, they are two of the sexiest actresses in the movies right now. You could steal guys from both of them.”

“Then gringos must be really crazy.”

“Stop it. Maybe we’re just not as racist as Argentines.”

“I hope not.”

She gave him a weak smile and he could tell that she was fading.

“I think you need to sleep.”

“Yes. Thanks again. Very much. Be careful.”

“I hope your new life in gringolandia is better than your wildest dreams.”

He didn’t know how to leave. Finally he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Then he stumbled out of the room. At the front desk he saw Dr. Benavides talking to the nurse.

“Could I have a word, doctor?”

They stepped toward the windows.

“Doctor, I have to go and it would be better for her, for you, for everybody actually if I was never here. I don’t want anyone else to suffer because of my problems. Okay?”

“I take it you’re in a dangerous business?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t need to know about that. Last night, anyway, you did a good deed.”

“Thanks. I hope it doesn’t come around and bite me on the ass. I really stuck my neck out by getting involved.”

“I think I understand. We never saw you. She walked in here by herself.”

“Right. And you’ll explain to the nurse about the chart and everything?”

“No problem.”

Eric pulled out his wallet and took out all the cash he had, a little over a thousand dollars, and handed it over.

“This is to pay her bill. Anything left over, just give it to her. I’ll send some more in a few days, if I can. May I send it to you?”

“Of course. I’ll see that it gets to her. And we might be able to help her out a little bit… She’s obviously well-educated, her English is good—”

“She speaks English?”

“Slowly, but fairly well.”

“That’s great. And she’s tough, too. Really tough.”

Eric turned to go, but stopped.

“I didn’t really say goodbye to her. She’s kind of drugged up and she really needed to sleep. Could you tell her—”

“I think she understands. She knows you have to leave.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“We never saw you.”

“Right.”

***

Eric walked into the parking lot, which was starting to fill up with cars. A city bus pulled into the lot, stopped at a shelter on the far side and dropped off a dozen people, male and female, brown-skinned, in various pastel uniforms: cooks, janitors, different kinds of aides. Eric ran to the shelter.

“Do you go downtown?”

“Sure.”

Eric jumped on the bus. He needed a motel, a shower, some clean clothes, a toothbrush and an internet computer. He had a lot of research to get started on. He figured he had about twenty-four hours to make himself indispensable to his new boss.

Chapter 12 

Ornela awoke around noon, when she heard someone enter the room.

“Did you have a good rest?” a nurse asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Great. We just got your clothes back.”

She handed Ornela a small bundle wrapped in plastic.

“You washed my clothes? Really?”

“Well, the doctor has released you, but we don’t want you walking out of here in dirty clothes, do we? But if you’d rather not wear these, we have some other options.” She lifted half a dozen coat hangers off a chair. Ornela could see slacks, blouses, and a suit jacket.

“But I don’t have any money.”

“Actually, you do. Your friend left you some. But the clothes are free. The nurses donate them for women who–, well, women in your situation. You’re taller than average, but I think we’ve got a few things that would work for you.”

***

Eric sat at the single internet computer in the lobby of a cheap motel on San Bernardo Avenue. He was happy to discover that there is a U.S. Attorney and a Federal District Court in Laredo. According to Mapsearch.com the courthouse was only ten blocks from his motel.

He started a new Google search: drug smuggling + prosecution + Laredo and in 0.87 seconds he had the results. It took him another hour sifting through them to find the case he was looking for. He also searched for Walmart, a gun store, and the phone number of a taxi. But his first stop would be at the nearest Starbucks.

***

Ornela was combing her hair in the mirror in the bathroom of her hospital room when she heard a knock on the hall door.

“Pase.” Then she remembered that she should use English. “Enter, please.”

Doctor Benavides entered.

“Hey, you’re a brand new woman.”

“Thank you, sir. The nurses, they presented me with this clothings.”

She stood awkwardly, trying to think in English. She had chosen some black wool slacks and a simple white blouse. They both fit her well but she knew the effect was ruined by her feet. The nurses didn’t have any shoes in her size, so she was wearing the sneakers she had worn on arrival.

“Please sit down. We need to get some data for your chart. Your friend had to leave, but he left you this.” The doctor handed over an envelope with the flap unsealed. Ornela could see a small sheaf of hundred dollar bills inside. She was too stunned to speak. She took a deep breath, set the envelope on the dresser and then sat down on the bed.

“He said it was better for everyone if he disappeared.”

She nodded her head but said nothing.

“Okay. We need to start a new chart.”

He removed a green file folder from his clipboard, tossed it on the dresser, and opened a blank one. She gave him her name, Ornela Bartolo Ochoa, age twenty-seven, and then her medical history, which, thankfully, had been uneventful until twelve hours ago. He told her that she was being released but emphasized that she should call him in twenty-four hours, even though it would take longer for some of the tests to come back.

“The nurse at the front desk has your medication and also the address of a shelter run by a church group. You can stay there for a few days while we make sure you’re going to be alright. Any questions?”

“No. Thank you very much. Everybody is very nice for me.”

“At the shelter they can help you with your immigration status. It’ll be easy since you’re OTM.”

“What is that?”

“It stands for Other Than Mexican. That’s how the Immigration Service will classify you. If you were Mexican and you ran into the Border Patrol they would send you back to Mexico the same day. But for people “other than Mexican” it’s too expensive to fly them all home, so they take your name and give you an appointment to see an Immigration Service judge and then you’re free. Your appointment could be a year from now. Most OTMs never show up for their appointments but that’s up to you.”

Ornela shook her head in amazement. “I heard somebody say something about that in Mexico but I didn’t believe it. You hear so many fairy tales, like my cousin made it to the U.S. and three months later he bought a car.“

“Well, this fairy tale is real. The government is talking about changing the policy, but if they do it won’t apply to you. So you’re in luck. Well, I mean your luck is getting better. You have some money. You’ll be able to work.

“Really?”

“Sure. I can tell you’re educated. That will help. How far did you go in school?”

“I have a degree.”

“Then you’re in good shape. You speak English, you have education. You’ll be fine. What’s your degree in?”

“Medicina interna. I mean, internal medicine.”

Chapter 13 

 

At 2:45 p.m. Thursday Eric was standing in front of the bus station in Nuevo Laredo, trying not to look like a gringo. That wasn’t really possible, since he was six inches to a foot taller than most of the people there, not to mention blond, but he tried to be completely relaxed and hoped that would make him somewhat inconspicuous.

At three o’clock on the dot, he saw the same pickup he had ridden in the day before pull into the drop-off lane. He stepped to the curb and had his hand on the door before the truck came to a complete stop. He tossed his backpack onto the seat and slid in beside it.

“Where’s your new girlfriend?” The driver winked at him.

“Headed for Chicago. Least that’s what she said.” Eric figured it was plausible. After L.A., Chicago has the largest number of illegal Mexican immigrants in the U.S., maybe a million. But then, who knows?

“Was she grateful?”

“Oh yeah.” Eric smiled, leaned his head back and closed his eyes as if completely worn out.

“I knew it!” The driver laughed and slapped the wheel. “I could tell she was a hot one.” He then proceeded to make ribald comments in incomprehensible norteño Spanish. Eric had no idea what he was saying but the general idea was clear from the hand gestures and body language. Eric laughed and played along. He knew that having a reputation as a mujeriego, or skirt chaser, wouldn’t hurt with these guys.

They drove for ten minutes, dropping steadily through the economic levels of Nuevo Laredo. First they left paved streets, then plaster, then paint. They were not yet in the neighborhoods of cardboard houses but were getting close when the driver told Eric to get down on the floor mat. Eric got down on his knees and put his head down. Five minutes later they turned off the street and stopped. The door opened and Eric stepped out into an auto-repair shop. The driver led him to an old van, put a hood over his head and told him to get in the van and lie down. After he got in they covered him with a blanket, then the van left the shop.

After what seemed like half an hour of city driving they got on a highway, then half an hour later switched to dirt and gravel roads. Eric tried to figure out where they were going but it was no use.

He was beginning to realize that he really hated not knowing where he was. He had become a land surveyor by accident, because of a summer job in high school, but after thirteen years of working outdoors he had come to appreciate good maps and had become very good at using them. Without thinking about it he had also become attached to the idea of knowing where he was, in detail. Latitude, longitude, time zones, azimuths and declinations—it was all interesting to him. He had come to enjoy knowing exactly what “X” he was standing on. Now all he knew was that he was lost somewhere in drugland.

Finally the van stopped moving. Eric heard footsteps, doors opened; unseen hands grabbed his legs and jerked him outside. The hood came off and he found himself outside the house he had been taken to first, the one they called “the bodega.” A guard covered him with an AK-47 while another frisked him with an electronic wand.

“Adentro.” The young thug who had led him out of the house before was now pointing inside.

***

The boss was waiting in the study as before, sitting behind the same table, with Raimundo standing close behind him, smirking. There were two armed guards behind them and two more behind Eric.

“So did you learn a few things about moving product across the river?” The man in black leaned back in his chair and spoke calmly in English.

“I learned how not to do it.”

“Really. And you think you can do better?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s hear your plan.”

“I’ll tell you when everybody else leaves.”

“You don’t trust these guys.”

“No.”

“I do.”

“Then you can tell them whatever you want to after I tell you. I figure the fewer people who know how I’m going to work, the better my chances. I’m not going to use any of them, so I don’t think they need to know.”

“You’ve already got a team picked out?”

“No, but these guys won’t be on it.”

“Why not?”

“For your own security, I think we should discuss it one on one.”

The man in the chair thought for a moment, then spoke to the guards behind Eric.

“Give him a chair. Leave us.”

One of the guards pulled a chair over to where Eric was standing. He then placed Eric’s knapsack on the table and followed the others out. Eric sat. He was five feet from the table.

“So. What’s on your mind?”

“Quite a bit, but first I was wondering if you have a name, other than ‘boss.’”

“Juan. Actually Juan the Third. All the leaders in this organization are Juan. We figured out that being well known is not a good career move in this business, so we’re all Juan. One through five. Like a pizza store. Five Guys Named Juan. But you can stick with ‘boss.’”

“Okay, boss. I’ve read in the newspapers that there are two cartels working in Laredo. Which one are we with?”

“You don’t need to know that. It won’t affect you. Why don’t you tell me about the wetback?”

“Actually we took seven wetbacks across. Didn’t Raimundo tell you?”

“He only mentioned the woman.”

“For mules, Raimundo decided to go cheap. He pocketed whatever money you gave him to hire mules. Instead he went to the bus station and picked up six chickens, charged them money to take them across and then forced them to carry the coke. He probably made $1800 on the deal, but he forgot to tell you about that part, right? And then, he left them stranded in the brush on the other side of the river. I would guess that the Border Patrol found them. They probably won’t talk, but who knows? If they get in trouble in the U.S., they might want to make a deal.”

“They don’t know anything.”

“They got a good look at your associate who delivered the coke to the safe house, and they also saw his car. I remember the license plate; maybe one of them was paying attention too.”

Juan Number Three sat back in his chair and looked slowly around the room, his jaw muscles flexing. He was obviously trying to calm down before speaking. Eric jumped in. He had an impression to make and wanted to control the conversation.

“You said Raimundo used to smuggle people over. How long ago was that?”

“Three, four years.”

“In the last two years the Border Patrol in Texas has added three hundred agents. What worked four years ago might not work today. If your dope made it to San Antonio it was pure luck. We were stumbling through the cactus making enough noise to wake up the cops in Dallas. If Raimundo had scouts out ahead of us I never saw them. Look in the backpack.”

Juan reached out and pulled Eric’s backpack toward him.

“Check out the binoculars.”

Juan pulled them out.

“I just bought those for $500 in Laredo. They’re old military stuff. Raimundo’s crew had a pair just like that last night, to watch out for the Border Patrol. I took a look through them and Raimundo’s guy told me to use the high power switch. You can see farther, but there’s a small problem. That switch turns on an infrared spotlight on top of the binoculars. That’s why you can see farther. But if anybody else is out there using night vision gear, such as the Border Patrol, you just gave away your position. There are better and newer night visions scopes that use thermal imaging. They don’t emit any radiation so they are much more secure. You can see a person or a vehicle even through brush. They cost $5000 each and I’m going to need at least four of them, plus radios, GPS receivers, vehicles… The list is in the pack.”

Juan emptied the contents of the knapsack onto the table.

“Those are samples of what I need. Six more radios like that one, four more GPS receivers like that. I bought that stuff with my own money. The receipt is in there.”

“You think I’m going to pay you back?”

“You’re not going to kill me as long as I’m making you money, and I plan on doing that for a long time. In the meanwhile, my daughter needs stuff that doesn’t come free. Contact lenses, Nikes, college tuition…  If I’m worrying about her my efficiency as a drug smuggler could go down.”

“You think I should pay you?”

“Yeah. It’s all about family. Even gringos care about family. I’m not going to live long enough to spend money, but if I know I can leave some to my daughter then I can concentrate so much better on the job.”

“You got balls, gringo. You fuck my girlfriend and then you expect me to put you on salary.”

“Not salary. Percentage.”

Juan Number Three threw back his head and laughed.

“You’re crazy as hell, motherfucker.”

“Actually, I prefer the name Juan, or John and I’m not crazy. I might be the most rational guy you’ve got working for you.”

“John, huh?”

“Yeah. I figure it’s not a good idea to have a high profile in this business.”

“That’s pretty smart of you, John.”

Juan looked down at the contents of the backpack. He lifted up a thick sheaf of computer paper.

“What is U.S.A. versus Gonzales Monteros?”

“That’s the transcript, the word for word record of the last big drug smuggling trial in Laredo. It cost me a dollar per page from the court stenographer. Perfectly legal to buy. It’s a public record. That’s going to tell me how the opposition works.”

“The DEA.”

“Correct. They have badges but they are career federal employees. They carry guns but basically they are bureaucrats. They have lots of paperwork and they have procedures they have to follow, so they are predictable. Anyone who’s predictable can be beaten. I haven’t read that transcript yet but it’s going to tell me how they put a case together. What evidence they need and how they go after it. Then I’ll design procedures so they fail.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

“Since I left here the last time I haven’t thought about anything else.”

“Last night about midnight you were thinking about something else.”

“Yeah, I guess I did take a short break.”

“So what’s the story?”

“It was a spur of the moment deal. She looked hot and I thought if I’m going to die soon I don’t want to die a virgin.”

“Right, and from now on you’re never going to let pleasure interfere with business.”

“No way, boss.”

“Good. So, why don’t you want to use anybody I’ve got here?”

“Well, Raimundo doesn’t know what he’s doing and he hates my ass because you’re giving me the job he wants.”

“And the others?”

“They’re idiots.”

“You don’t know them.”

Eric bent over and rolled up his left pant leg to the knee, revealing several strips of white surgical tape on his shin.

“If they let me bring a knife in here they’re fucking morons.”

Juan pulled a pistol from within his jacket and pointed it at Eric. “Slowly, John.”

With one hand Eric peeled back the tape and carefully, using only two fingers, he lifted up what appeared to be a stiletto made of white plastic. Slowly he stood, leaned forward and dropped it on the table. Juan picked it up and examined it closely, still keeping the pistol pointed at Eric.

“I bought that in the same store in Laredo where I got the other stuff. It’s sharp as steel but it’s made of a high-tech ceramic. Since it’s not metal regular detectors don’t pick it up. That battery powered search wand your guys use might be okay for nightclub bouncers but I think you need something better.

Juan set the knife back on the table. “And you have a plan for finding better employees?”

“I’m working on it. When’s the next shipment?”

“Five days.”

“Okay. I’ll be ready. We’ll need somewhere in the country to train. A place we won’t use for anything else.”

“We’ve got several places.”

“I asked for an interpreter.”

“She’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Okay. I should make a quick trip to the other side to pick up the radios and binoculars. I can’t train people until I get the right equipment. I’ll need about $30,000 for everything. The budget is with the list.”

Juan picked out a single sheet of paper.

“Someone will have to meet me on the other side with the money. I don’t want to get stopped at the border carrying that much cash.”

“What else?”

“Right now, nothing. I really need to get some sleep. There’s a voided check there, which has my bank account numbers. So you can deposit money in my account.”

“We’ll talk about that later. After you prove you can do what you say.”

Juan picked up the pistol and brought the butt down hard on the table. The door behind Eric banged open and he heard the guards running into the room behind him. He knew guns were pointed at the back of his head but he forced himself to sit perfectly still.

“Raimundo. I thought your job was to smuggle dope across the other night.” Juan spoke very quietly. Raimundo walked to the front of the table.

“We did. We delivered it to Aurelio in San Antonio.”

“I don’t remember telling you to sell tickets to a bunch of chickens. How much did you make?”

There was a slight pause, but Raimundo knew it was pointless to lie.

“$300 each.”

“So. $1800 total. That’s my money. Let’s have it.”

“It’s at my place. I’ll get it.”

“Too late.”

The pistol jerked in Juan’s hand, light flashed from the barrel and the explosion echoed in the room. Raimundo fell to the floor, clutching his groin, screaming and thrashing in his own blood.

“Take him to the garden.” Juan gestured to two of the guards. They grabbed Raimundo and dragged him out of the room.

Eric realized that he had his hands over his ears. He replaced them on the arms of the chair. The sound of the gunshot in the tiled room had been deafening.

“So, Julio. Check this out.” Juan held up the ceramic knife. The young guard who had searched Eric stepped up to the table and took the knife. He held it awkwardly in front of him, not knowing what to do with it.

“The gringo brought that in here, taped to his leg.” Juan rose and walked around the table. “It’s plastic, but he says it’s as sharp as steel.” He took the knife from the guard. “What do you think, Julio? Do you think it’s as sharp as steel?” The young man looked at the floor and said nothing.

“Well, let’s find out.”

Juan shoved the knife into Julio’s stomach and jerked it back and forth. Then he stepped to the side. Julio collapsed on the floor but made no sound. Juan held up the knife and looked at it with a broad smile.

“I’ll be a sonofabitch. It is as sharp as steel.” He dropped the knife on the table and turned to the remaining guard. He made a throwaway gesture and the man dragged the lifeless Julio out of the room. When the door closed Juan walked back around the desk and sat down.

“Take a look out the window.”

Eric stood and walked past the table to the far wall, where two large barred windows looked out on an enclosed garden. Two guards were tying Raimundo to a ‘T’ shaped metal frame made of pipe set in concrete. It looked like a clothesline pole. The crosspiece was about shoulder height and the guards stretched out his arms and tied them to the pipe. A large wet bloodstain started at his crotch and ran down both legs. His head rolled back and forth and his lips were moving, but whether he was screaming or begging, cursing or crying, Eric couldn’t tell. No sounds from the garden penetrated the thick glass of the windows.

“It’s a type of crucifixion.”

Eric turned away from the window and looked toward the table. Juan had turned his chair around and was calmly looking at Eric.

“I put that bullet exactly where I wanted to. Very painful but not fatal. It’s going to take him a long time to die. What he’s really worried about are the ants. The ants are always the worst part. He’s seen it before, but I guess he didn’t really get the message.”

“I get it. Loud and clear.”

Eric walked slowly toward the door.

 

Chapter 14 

This time they had given Eric a better room on the second floor. He had a bigger bed, a table with chairs, a small sofa and a TV. Eric had moved the table from the center of the room to the wall so he could look out the small barred window while he ate his oatmeal and fruit. He was pretty sure he was the first guest who had ever asked for ‘avena con frutas’ for breakfast, but the maid had come up with it, as well as coffee and orange juice.

Obviously, he had risen in status. Temporarily, he told himself. This is only temporary. And even if I do a wonderful job of smuggling drugs for Señor Juan el Tercero, one day when I least expect it he will turn me over to Diego, who ‘improvises’ with his victims.

So Eric had an escape plan which was very simple. Drag it out as long as possible by making a lot of money for Juan Numero Tres while at the same time looking for a way to kill him. Simple.

Of course the planning was complicated just a bit by the added requirement that Eric wanted to survive the death of his new boss. Killing Juan and then catching a hundred slugs from his bodyguards was not an acceptable result. In other words, the plan was a little sketchy so far. Sketchy, as in non-existent.

There was the problem of the guards. Then there was the fact that Eric couldn’t attack Juan or arrange for someone else to attack him without knowing his location. Presumably he moved around a lot and surely he had numerous houses, apartments or hideouts. Eric didn’t even know the location of the one he was sitting in at that moment.

It was obviously one of Juan’s important facilities. It could not be an accident that they called it “the bodega,” which in Spanish can mean vault, storeroom or warehouse. They could have called it the ranch house or the brown house but they didn’t and Eric had a pretty good idea of what they were storing there, probably in the large metal building that looked like a tractor garage.

So goal number one would have to be to find out the precise location of the bodega. Soon Eric would have six new GPS receivers, but smuggling one into the bodega did not seem like a real solid plan. In fact, it seemed like a good way to get a date with Diego.

Eric stared out the window as he finished his breakfast. From the second floor he could see over the garden wall, clear to the horizon, and he tried to memorize the terrain. Based on the time of day and the angle of shadows he could calculate the azimuth to a small village about five miles away, and in the distance there were some bluffs rising out of the plain. The bodega itself was on a hill, maybe two hundred feet above the low ground in the distance and Eric could get a good idea of the drainage for miles around. With a contour map of the area, say a 1:24,000 scale United States Geological Survey map, it would be ridiculously easy to stick a pin in the exact hill where he was now sipping coffee. But those maps only cover thirty-six square miles and Eric didn’t know where he was within 250,000 square miles. And of course the USGS doesn’t publish maps of Mexico.

From his window he couldn’t see all of the garden. The cross, thankfully, was out of sight. In his mind he could see the ants colonizing Raimundo and that was more than enough. He hoped Juan had no plans to show him the spectacle again.

***

After another ride with a hood over his head, Eric found himself walking east over the International bridge to Laredo. He hailed the first taxi he saw after coming out of the customs line. Since there are numerous intercity bus lines with terminals in Laredo he asked the taxi driver where he could get the quickest bus to San Antonio. Six blocks later he was boarding a bus due to leave in ten minutes. Nine minutes later the driver got on, followed by a Border Patrol agent who asked several of the darker skinned passengers for ID. He barely looked at the documents given to him; after all, every border town has a thriving counterfeit document industry. Instead he looked closely into the eyes of each person and made small talk. He passed Eric with nothing more than a polite “Good Morning,” a blatant instance of racial profiling that didn’t seem to bother any of the other passengers, and went to the rear of the bus to check the restroom. No hidden mojados.

Eric settled into his seat and removed the transcript of U.S. versus Gonzales Monteros from his knapsack. It was a two-hour trip each way to San Antonio and he wanted to read as much as possible.

***

The clerk at the Tactical Superstore didn’t blink when Eric said he needed four thermal night vision scopes and six GPS receivers. He handed Eric a demo unit night scope along with an instruction pamphlet and left to get boxed units from the stockroom. Eric looked around the store, which obviously catered to law enforcement, hunters, hikers, and most likely drug smugglers. There was a large gun section with hundreds of rifles, shotguns and handguns. There were also large sections devoted to knives, optics, very hi-tech bows and arrows, kayaks and a large clothing section with hundreds of camouflage choices from bandannas to boots. Although there were few customers in the store it seemed crowded, due to the mannequins sprinkled everywhere, dressed and armed as hunters and SWAT officers.

The clerk returned and put the boxes on the counter.

“How will you be paying?”

“Cash okay?”

“Of course.”

Eric began counting out $23,000 in hundreds. “You sell a lot of these?”

“The night scopes? Well, we don’t sell a lot. They’re top of the line and priced accordingly. I have a customer who used that very model in Afghanistan.”

“Tell me, what else do you sell to gentlemen who can afford binoculars like these?”

“Well, you also need to be able to see in the daytime and we’ve got fantastic optical binoculars by Steiner, Swarovski, Leica… The new Leupolds are getting rave reviews and they all cost less than half of what you just paid.”

***

Eric was picking at a room service breakfast while trying to finish U.S. versus Gonzales Monteros when he heard a knock on the motel room door. He had returned to Laredo late the previous day, walked over the bridge and checked into a motel, as directed by Juan #3. He was expecting a phone call sometime during the day but not a visit, and not this early. Being in Nuevo Laredo was always scary, even as a tourist, but now that he was actually working for a drug gang he was even more nervous. He didn’t think that anyone yet knew what he was doing, other than Juan, but how the hell could you know for sure? The problem was that he had no weapon. If the caller outside the door was hostile there was nothing he could do about it. He opened the door.

“Are you John?”

A woman of about twenty-five stood in the hallway. She was of medium height, dressed conservatively in designer jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. She had medium length black hair, a medium amount of makeup and Eric thought she was attractive in a medium sort of way. From her accent and lighter skin color he figured she was middle class and educated.

“That’s me. John the First. And you are?”

“Claudia. Your interpreter. Juan sent me.”

He led her in and they sat in the only two chairs.

“What did Juan tell you about the job?”

“You’re going to train the mules and I translate.”

“That’s basically it, but I’m pretty new to this business. I can walk across the desert at night without getting lost, but I’ve never smuggled anything before, so if you have any ideas I’d like to hear them.”

“Okay.”

“Have you done any drug smuggling before?”

“No.”

“So you’re new to this business too?”

“No, it’s just that I haven’t carried drugs. I’m a courier.”

“You carry messages?”

“Not exactly.” Claudia looked uneasily at the walls and then back to Eric. She was worried about microphones. She rubbed a thumb and forefinger together, to indicate money.

Now Eric understood that her appearance was not accidental. The drug business, like all business, involves two-way transactions. The drugs go north and then the money has to come back to Mexico. Since banks keep records the cartels need money mules to move the cash from Boston or Chicago to Mexico. It’s not against the law to have large amounts of cash, but if the couriers get stopped and searched their names go into the Customs watch list and their usefulness is over. Since they have to pass through a lot of airports they try to be as invisible as possible. They can’t be too tall or too short, too beautiful or too ugly. They need to look like anyone and wear the same clothes as everybody else. Eric realized that with a subtle makeover Claudia would be much more attractive. But she had already had a subtle makeover to look average. She was trained to be anonymous. And to beware of surveillance.

“Okay. Well why don’t we go somewhere and have breakfast?”

She seemed relieved at the suggestion. Was it the possible microphones she was worried about, or was it being in Eric’s hotel room? When they were in the elevator, Eric stood to face her.

“What else did Juan tell you to do?”

Claudia looked at the floor. “You know what he told me to do.”

“Well, we can skip that part of your assignment. If he asks, tell him we did it once and that I’m no better than average.”

She looked up quickly and smiled. “Of course.”

“And if he asks me I’ll tell him you’re a tigress.”

“Don’t overdo it. I don’t want him getting ideas.”

“And other than that just tell him that I talk constantly about how I want to be a great drug smuggler so he won’t hurt my daughter.”

“Right.”

***

After talking for several hours in a small café a block away from the motel they returned to wait for instructions. This time Claudia didn’t seem to be nervous to be in the room. Eric was still tired and soon fell asleep on the bed. He awoke when the phone rang, to see Claudia already answering it.

“A pickup is coming for us downstairs.”

There was a new driver in a different vehicle, a pickup about five years old. Eric was carrying a duffel bag filled with his purchases from the day before. He set it in back. This time there was no hood, no blindfolds. They headed north out of Nuevo Laredo on Highway #2, which parallels the Rio Grande, all the way to Piedras Negras, a hundred miles to the north. After forty-five minutes they turned west. Once off the highway they entered an older Mexico. It was the northern desert, perhaps the poorest area of the country. There were no crops, just endless scrubland, occasionally a windmill, even less often a skinny cow. They passed through several small villages. The first village was poor, but the houses were mostly of cement. The second village was entirely adobe. An hour after leaving the highway they came to a locked gate in a barbed wire fence. The driver handed Eric a key.

“Leave it open.”

Eric got out and opened the gate, then they drove on. After a mile they came to a group of adobe buildings. It appeared to be an abandoned homestead. There had never been any farming, but there was an old corral, and a broken windmill with a stock tank nearby full of dust. There was nothing much else. Anything moveable of the slightest value had been carried off long ago. No one but coyotes of the four-legged variety had been here in a long time. The driver parked the truck and turned off the engine.

“Now we wait.”

Eric got out and walked through the buildings. The windows were all broken or completely missing, the doors long gone. The largest building had three rooms, all empty. On the positive side, the roof appeared to be sound.

“I hope you can train the mules very fast.” Claudia had followed Eric inside. She was looking around skeptically” “I hope we don’t have to spend much time here.”

“We’ll have to start a list for supplies.”

They walked back outside in time to see a rooster trail of dust coming from the direction of the gate. Soon they could see a black Cadillac Escalade. Eric closed his eyes briefly and tried to remember the license plate number. As the truck pulled to a stop next to the pickup he was pleased to see that he had remembered the number correctly. He still didn’t know how the information was going to help him. Juan el Tercero stepped out.

“What do you think of your new school?”

“It will work.”

“You’ve got about ten square kilometers here. There are a lot of fences around here but most of them are falling apart. If you stay inside the good fences you’re okay. Even if you wander off, your neighbors won’t bother you. They don’t want to know and don’t want to get involved.”

“Sounds good.”

“Your next shipment is Friday, one week from today.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“You’re very confident. That’s good. Why don’t you fill me in on your plan so I will feel confident also.”

“No problem. Let’s go inside.” Eric led the way toward the main building. Juan’s driver and a guard who had come with them started to follow.

“Not them.” Eric stopped and indicated the two men who were following. Juan turned to the men.

“Stay here.”

Eric led the way inside, followed by Juan and Claudia.

“You don’t trust anybody, do you?” Juan grinned.

“Just you, boss. The fewer people who know, the better. I haven’t even started my operation and already there’s three guys standing outside who know where my school is and that bothers me. I’ll probably find some other place after a week or two because of that. Anyway, first things first.

“I need eight people and I want to get people who don’t look like drug guys and don’t think like drug guys. In other words, I don’t want twenty-year old guys with tattoos, whose big dream in life is to drive a new pickup, carry a gun, sleep until noon every day and go to the whorehouse every night. Those guys stick out in a crowd and they start wars that are bad for business. I want middle-aged people, married people, men and women who look just like the average chicken trying to get to the other side of the river. I don’t want people who live in Nuevo Laredo. I want to get people in Monterrey. It’s bigger, more anonymous. Easier to remain inconspicuous. So it’s three hours from the border. Who cares? We do it once a week.”

“Anyway, my plan is for Claudia to advertise in Monterrey for retail store managers, computer technicians, whatever. She interviews them in a motel room. Hundreds will show up. We look for people with a high school diploma who are married, who have bills to pay and no job. There are thousands of people like that who would kill for a job that pays $400 per month. So we go over the applications and pick the ones we like. Claudia visits them at home and makes the pitch. $800 per month to play mojado with a backpack. I don’t think many will say no. If they do, no problem. They know nothing about us. Most will accept and then we have employees who aren’t drunks, who have some brains, and who don’t do drugs. People who can follow orders. They will never know in advance when or where we are going to cross. They will never know the location of any of your facilities, not even this one. On the day we are going to move a load they get a call from Claudia, which she will make from a payphone. They meet a van somewhere, get a blindfold and after the driver knows he’s not being followed, they meet me and the coke, near the border. I’m the only one who knows where we are going to cross until we get out of the van. On this side of the river we carry guns because there are plenty of people who would love to steal our dope. On the other side we do not carry guns. There aren’t as many robbers over there for one thing but mainly I don’t want to run the risk that one of our people would shoot a cop. Gringos go absolutely berserk if anybody shoots a cop. Everybody with a badge would be coming after us. You said it’s not a good idea to have a high profile. Shooting a cop would get us on the Ten Most Wanted list. Once we’re on the other side, we avoid the trails and we’ll avoid the sensors. We have scouts with the thermal binoculars and encrypted radios. We don’t try to shift the stuff to a vehicle too soon. In fact we take two days per trip. Cross the river, walk all night, then sleep during the day and walk all the next night. We’ll get way past the secondary checkpoints before we have to get near a highway. When we’re in place I make a call on an encrypted radio. One vehicle takes the dope, another one takes the mules back to Laredo and they walk across the bridge.”

Eric ran out of breath and paused. He hadn’t expected Juan to be silent for so long. He was trying to remember what else he wanted to say.

“I’ll need to get a place in Monterrey.”

“Of course. So, on Thursday be in the Starbucks at the Sonora Mall in Monterrey at 3 p.m. We’ll set up the handoff for the next day.”

Juan turned and walked out of the building. When they reached the Escalade Juan took a briefcase from the driver and handed it to Eric.

“That’s the rest of your expense money. And that’s your truck,” he said, pointing to the pickup Eric had arrived in. The driver stepped up and handed Eric the keys.

“Oh, and one last thing.” He reached inside his jacket and handed Eric a folded sheet of paper. Eric unfolded it and saw that it was a piece of computer paper with two photos printed on it. In the top picture his daughter and his ex-wife were getting out of her car in the parking lot of the Presbyterian Church in Bettenburg, Iowa. The lower picture showed Karina and two of her friends leaving the middle school, where she was in the seventh grade.

“You haven’t called her since the 26^th and you only spoke for twelve minutes. Was she was on the way to choir practice? You need to stay in better touch with your daughter, John.”

Eric knew Juan was looking for signs of weakness or anger and he was determined not to oblige him.

“By the way, I don’t think John is a good name. Too gringo. Too high-profile. I need a Spanish name. Like, say, Raúl.”

Juan smiled. The gringo could stand his ground.

“Grow a mustache. Then you’ll be a Raúl.” Juan then climbed into the front seat of the Cadillac. His guard and driver followed, along with the driver who had come with Eric and Claudia. They turned around and headed for the gate. Eric stood quietly looking at the pictures, then folded the paper and looked at the dust trail fading away in the east. Claudia said nothing. Eric turned and walked toward the pickup.

“I assume you know how to get back to town.” Claudia smiled tentatively.

“I have no idea how to get back to Nuevo Laredo,” said Eric. “We could follow their dust.” He stopped at the back of the pickup, dropped the tailgate and slid the duffel bag toward him. “But I hate eating somebody else’s dust. Besides, my electronic buddy knows where Nuevo Laredo is.” He unzipped the bag and removed a small GPS receiver. “I recorded the trip out here.” He pushed a button to store the current location and then entered the description ‘escuela,’ or school.

Chapter 15 

The trip to Nuevo Laredo took an hour and a half and then it was three more hours to Monterrey. Eric let Claudia drive while he tried to plan the next six days down to the minute. He watched the cactus and mesquite roll by but didn’t really see anything other than the notes he was scribbling on a yellow pad.

After booking two rooms at opposite ends of a large motel on the outskirts of Monterrey they went car shopping. At the second lot they bought a five-year-old full sized van. Paying $2,000 cash in US greenbacks didn’t even cause a raised eyebrow. By then it was late afternoon so Claudia returned to the motel to call employment agencies and set up appointments for the following day. Eric drove the pickup to Walmart and bought folding cots, cheap sleeping bags, twenty five liter bottles of water, a video camera and whatever else he thought they might need to survive at the school for three days.

He then returned to the motel where Claudia reported that she had scheduled thirty interviews for the next day. Then they drove to Walmart to buy food. She filled two carts with tortillas, cheese and large cans of mysterious mixtures, then they added cheap utensils and plates.

Back at the motel they went over the plan for the next day one more time. Claudia seemed to be losing interest and had already forgotten some of the details he had emphasized on the trip from the school. Eric realized that he was raising his voice and then noticed that she was yawning. He looked at his watch and was surprised to see that it was eleven p.m.

He left her to get some sleep and went back to his room. He undressed and got into bed but continued to think about the schedule for the next week. Tomorrow, Saturday, Claudia would hire the mules. Sunday through Wednesday they would train. Not nearly enough time. Eric had trained dozens of people who were new to surveying and it took weeks before they were worth shit, and that was for jobs that took place in the daylight, where there was no need to carry guns or evade the cops. Well, he would just have to prioritize. What was the minimum they needed to learn before the first trip? And then on Friday he would meet Juan to set the pickup for the cocaine.

At one a.m. he gave up on trying to sleep. He got out of bed and turned the lights on. He knew better than to turn on the TV. No matter how bad it was it would not make him sleepy. He opened the duffel bag and saw the piece of paper that Juan had given him earlier that morning. He unfolded it and sat on the bed, staring at the pictures of his daughter.

He wondered if she really liked Iowa. She had been born and raised in Wyoming, but after the divorce her mother had accepted a teaching job in Iowa. He had objected to the move, telling his ex that it would be too hard on Karina to lose all of her friends right after the divorce but he had been overruled. As the non-custodial parent his opinion carried no weight. After that he had followed the money to Alaska, where surveyors were unionized and earned three times what they did in Wyoming, and in two and a half years he had only seen his daughter three times. The quick and quickly ended marriage to Andrea in Mexico City had of course made it harder to visit Karina.

That psycho asshole Juan Numero Tres was right; he wasn’t doing a very good job of staying in touch with his daughter. Eric put the paper back in the duffel bag and began aimlessly walking around the room. As he passed the window he pulled back the curtain slightly to check on the pickup in the parking lot outside. Everything looked okay. After fifteen more minutes of pacing he got dressed, woke up Claudia to get the keys to the van and transferred all the food to the pickup. He figured he had nothing to do until Claudia finished the interviews so he might as well deliver the supplies to the school.

He drove carefully out of the motel lot, reminded himself that he was not doing anything illegal (yet) and found the highway to Nuevo Laredo. Four hours later, as the sun was rising in a pale orange sky, he stopped in front of his new school. He pulled a cot and sleeping bag out of the back of the truck and carried them inside. He managed to sleep four hours, then unloaded all the supplies and drove back to Monterrey, arriving at six p.m. Claudia had just finished interviewing thirty-five people so they ate room service chicken while she showed him videos of the eight people she had picked. He agreed with her choices and she left to find a payphone to call them and arrange pickup points for early the next morning.

Eric returned to his room and read the instructions for the new GPS receivers and the encrypted radios. Then he realized that he had the coordinates for the school stored on the GPS receiver in the duffel bag. He also had a new laptop computer and a set of CDs with all the topographic maps of west Texas which he needed to get up and running. After downloading the topos for west Texas north of Laredo into the laptop he plugged the GPS receiver into the USB port and transferred the coordinates of the school. He adjusted the zoom level until the Rio Grande ran up the middle of the screen. At the bottom of the screen were the twin cities of Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, straddling the river. At the top of the screen were Piedras Negras and Eagle River, also covering both banks. The right half of the screen was a maze of black contour lines marking every ten-foot change in elevation along with green and blue colors for vegetation, black for roads, cities, and everything else visible on the ground on the American side. The left half of the screen was blank, except for an ‘X’ marking the location of the school. The National Geographic maps stopped at the border. Eric wasn’t too worried about that; it was the gringo side that worried him.

He put the cursor on Laredo and clicked for an inverse to the school. The program immediately calculated the bearing and distance: 73 miles at an azimuth of 312.3658 degrees or basically northwest. He clicked on the river and found the distance from the school: more or less thirty miles, but that didn’t really matter. He knew it took an hour to drive from the school to the highway and at that point he could go north or south. Eric had ridden the bus from Nuevo Laredo to Piedras Negras once, and he knew there were few villages or farms, just scrubland basically for a hundred miles, and the river was in sight the whole way, probably never more than three miles distant. For now, he would have to assume he could start anywhere on the Mexican side.

What mattered was the east bank of the river. Ideally he would explore the east side on foot to find the best routes. He could pretend to be a lost hunter and walk wherever he wanted, storing the best possibilities on the GPS receiver, but there was no time for that. He would have to do his scouting on the laptop. He had never met anyone who could read USGS topos better than he could but now he was going to find out just how good he really was. He had to pick the perfect spot. He put the cursor on the river fifty miles north of Laredo and zoomed in until the scale matched the printed maps he had carried in his shirt pocket for years. He knew what he was looking for, but then he also wanted to find a spot that wouldn’t be obvious to the average mojado. Or the average Border Patrol agent.

On the gringo side the highway did not parallel the river but ran between a number of small towns forty or fifty miles inside the border. There would be a drag road of soft dirt close to the river and the Border Patrol would smooth the dirt on that one every twenty-four hours. In the old days they had hung steel bars from the back bumpers of trucks and dragged them down the trail, hence the name, drag road. Nowadays they usually used a road grader. The idea was that the wetbacks would have to leave footprints in the drag road and the agents could track them down. Border Patrol public relations people love to tell tall tales about the legendary trackers who have worked for the agency over the years, men who could track an ant over concrete, but Eric had learned on the internet that tracking was no longer taught to new agents at the Border Patrol Academy. They were taught the evils of sexual harassment and the values of diversity, but not tracking. If they were really dedicated they might get an older agent to teach them, but it rarely happened.

Eric zoomed in closer and started scanning every foot of the east bank of the river, slowly working his way north. After an hour he had covered ten miles of river and found two possibilities. He put the cursor back where he had started and began to work south. He fell asleep sitting on the bed with pillows propped behind his back, and didn’t move until the alarm woke him at six. He got up and looked out the window and saw Claudia leaving in the van to go pick up the mules. It was still early on a Sunday morning; the streets were quiet and Eric could hear pigeons cooing on the roof. He remembered the morning in the hotel room in Mexico City with Celia. He had heard pigeons then also, about one minute before his life changed completely. That had been a Sunday morning too. Exactly one week ago.

Chapter 16 

Tom Clark spent the morning evading surveillance in Monterrey. By noon he had changed cars and taxis a dozen times, changed hats and sunglasses half a dozen times, gone out the back door of two stores and sat for long periods in two parks, carefully scanning all traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. He was a senior DEA agent stationed in Laredo with clearance to work in Mexico and he went through this routine about once per month, in order to protect his best source, a captain in the Nuevo Laredo police department. He assumed that the captain took equal precautions, since he had survived their meetings for ten years.

Clark reached the restaurant, if it deserved the name, at noon and began to read the local paper and watch a soccer game on TV. Since his grandparents had emigrated to the US from Mexico, and he himself had not spoken English until he entered first grade, there was nothing in his appearance or speech to mark him as a foreigner.

At one p.m. Captain Delgado arrived, and after the usual abrazo, or welcoming hug, slid into the opposite side of the booth. They exchanged pleasantries about family, the weather, soccer, ordered beer and food, and eventually got around to business.

“I hear you guys had some fireworks last night,” said Clark.

“Yeah. Three guys were ambushed coming out of the Gata Salvaje. Two shooters. Almost a hundred rounds fired.”

“Who died?”

“Lefty’s guys. I’m not sure how high up in the organization they were, but the Gata Salvaje is a fairly expensive house, so they weren’t mules. Mid-level, I think.”

“I hope they enjoyed it. Their last time at the Wild Cat.”

“Yeah, one would hope.”

“Any idea what they did wrong?”

“I heard that they knew about a load of coke that got busted last week about forty miles north of town.”

“That was Lefty’s coke?”

“He says no, but Nestor’s guys say it wasn’t theirs either. You get anything on it?

“We caught four mules and fifty kilos, but nobody’s talking, as usual, and they’re looking at real hard time. I figured you’d know who they were working for.”

“I should, but nobody knows nothing. It’s weird.”

“And if these three dead guys were merely suspected of ratting out that load you would expect them to disappear and turn up six months from now in a gravel pit. Cuernos de chivo in the red-light district is bad for business, bad for the city’s image.”

“True, but nobody gives a shit about the city’s image anymore. They should, because bad headlines eventually bring down too much heat, but all they’re worried about is the tax. If they don’t know whose load it was, they don’t know if anybody paid the tax on it. They figure maybe you guys bust one load in ten, so maybe there were nine loads that got through, or more. Somebody’s doing good business and they’re not sharing the wealth. The army thinks Lefty’s holding out on them and the Feds think Nestor is shorting them. Nobody trusts anybody.”

“Hell of a mess,” Clark said with a grin.

“Fucking democracy. One thing you can say about the PRI, they knew how to run the drug business.”

Clark smiled, but made no comment. He had heard the captain’s views on politics before. It was a fact that during the seventy-year long dictatorship of the PRI, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the drug business had been a lot more orderly. In every major border city one guy had the plaza, meaning the franchise, he ran the show. He hustled his own dope but the territory was also open to others, as long as they paid a tax of ten percent or more. The guy with the plaza got very, very rich, but he had to pass along huge sums to the federal police, the army and the local cops. It was a simple, effective system. A local cop could live better than a lawyer and the brother of the president could end up with half a billion dollars in Swiss banks. Now and then one of the plaza holders would get out of control and have to be taken care of, but that was not really a problem.

Sometimes the big guy would get a swelled head and want to play the role of patrón. He would hire songwriters to compose ballads about him, or build hospitals or soccer fields in his native village. He might start using his own product and become unreliable in business. The DEA would ask questions and the government would have to do something. The offending guy would become a public scapegoat, forced to go to jail for awhile. Of course he would have his own wing of the prison, his own chef, his own women, and he would continue to run his operation by phone. But the government could say, “We are fighting the drug lords.” It was a beautiful system but then the Mexicans woke up and demanded free elections and a free press. The dictatorship ended and the dust hadn’t settled yet. The current president’s party only had thirty percent in the congress and he couldn’t control the bureaucracy. For example, in Nuevo Laredo the army chose Lefty Galindo from Juárez to have the plaza and the Ministry of Justice and national police chose Nestor Alvarado from Matamoros. The end result was bodies in the street and bad, bad headlines. Fucking democracy.

“So is there a new guy operating here or not?” asked Clark.

“Believe me, you are not the only one who wants to know. If there’s a new unauthorized organization here, they are stupid pinche cabrones because we will find them.”

“Is there a reward?”

“Two. Both sides are offering a reward. If they didn’t they would be admitting it’s their operation.”

“Well, I hope you’re the one who collects both rewards. If there is in fact such a rogue organization of lunatics.”

“Most likely somebody who works for Lefty or Nestor got greedy and now they’ll stop.”

“But we still don’t know who whacked Lefty’s guys in front of the Gata Salvaje.”

“Not for sure, but I know who’s gonna pay. Lefty’s gotta take out some of Nestor’s guys. He has no choice.”

“And he has to do it publicly.”

“Of course.” The captain finished his beer and set it on the table with a disgusted sneer. “It’s fucking anarchy is what it is.”

“Well, it keeps things interesting.”

They talked about other smugglers and other operations for a half hour. Delgado revealed as much as he needed to and no more. Finally, Clark slid an envelope across the table and stood. “Thanks for keeping me posted.”

“No problem. Give my regards to Uncle Sam.”

The monthly payment from the DEA wasn’t much, but it was many times what the captain made from the police department. He also worked for Lefty and Nestor both, so his total income was roughly forty times his official salary. It was a dangerous high wire act, but he had developed expensive tastes over the years. In fact, he owned the Gata Salvaje, and it wasn’t his most expensive whorehouse.

Chapter 17 

By the time they reached the school it was 10:30 a.m. Eric gathered everyone outside the main building. Claudia had chosen five men and three women, ages 20 to 35. Four of the men were married, three had kids. Two of the women had children but neither had a husband. Presumably the kids were with grandma. All eight had a high school diploma and four had some college. They gathered outside the main building.

“I’m Raul, your boss,” Eric began. “Claudia has already explained the rules, but I’m going to go over them one more time. We never use real names. Don’t give anyone in this group your real name, or address, or phone number. Never have any contact with each other off the job. Only Claudia knows how to get in touch with you. This is for your own protection. If one of us gets arrested, he can’t rat out anyone else.”

They then introduced themselves with their chosen aliases and Eric gave them all a new GPS receiver. First they inserted batteries and watched the display search for available satellites. Then Eric talked them through the process of storing their current location and labeling it as ‘escuela’ or school. He spoke clearly and paused every three or four sentences so Claudia could translate. He asked her to speak a little slower than normal so he could listen to her version and hopefully improve his Spanish.

They were smart and eager to learn, but then when your kids are hungry, you try harder. Eric was uncomfortably aware that if he screwed up and they all got arrested, these people he had hired could serve ten years in jail. Their children would grow up on the street and he would be the one ultimately responsible. What happened to him or to Karina would be a small part of a much larger tragedy.

But he had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, so next they learned how to navigate to points previously stored on their receivers, then how to exchange locations with another receiver using the one-touch radio feature of the Garmin Rhino series. At 2 p.m. he called a break for lunch and a siesta. After dark they repeated the morning lessons by starlight.

***

Lefty Galindo had been mad about the chaos in Nuevo Laredo for a long time. He had owned the plaza in Juárez for years and he was not accustomed to anyone challenging him. He thought he was the obvious choice to get the plaza in Nuevo Laredo also, and he thought he had paid enough money to enough politicians to get it. Yet still that goddamned Nestor Alvarado and the Gulf Cartel were fighting him. There was the problem of the anonymous loads going across, not paying the tax, and now the problem of three of his people getting gunned down in the street. He knew it was time to send a stronger message, so he ordered his enforcer in Nuevo Laredo to go after a mara. He knew this would get the attention of Nestor Alvarado.

The maras salvatruchas were the enforcers for Nestor. A gang originally from El Salvador, they had spread all over Mexico and the southwest US. They are psychotically violent and therefore very useful for spreading terror. Their downside is that they are in fact psychotics, and therefore sometimes hard to control. And, they are not exactly useful for covert operations, since they are addicted to elaborate and very distinctive tattoos, often covering large areas of their bodies, including necks and faces. If you know the code, the tattoos reveal the wearer’s status in the gang, his hometown, and criminal specialties.

Bartolomeo Huerta, ex-lieutenant of the Mexican Army Special Forces, Lefty’s enforcer in Nuevo Laredo, knew the code. As soon as he got the assignment from Lefty, he told one of his current mistresses to call some of her former colleagues in the zona de tolerancia, the zone where certain things are tolerated, or red-light district, and ask if they were servicing any maras regularly.

An hour after Carmen called her friends she reported that one of her amigas who worked at the Cave of Venus had a regular with just the kind of tattoo the ex-lieutenant was looking for.

Chapter 18 

Eric, now known as Raul, saw the two sets of headlights turn off Highway #2 at the same time he heard Claudia’s voice on his radio.

“How’s it look?”

“We’re clear,” he said. He watched the vehicles crawl down the dirt road to where he stood by the van. In front, Claudia drove the pickup. Following her was a sedan with four men inside.

He had arrived at the spot half an hour after sunset, not really knowing what he would find. First he had chosen where he wanted to cross the river using the U.S. topographic maps, then he had switched to Google Earth photos of the Mexican side to pick the nearest approach, an empty intersection of two dirt roads, 3.5 miles from the river.

Two guys got out of the sedan, carrying AK-47s. The other two opened the trunk, removed two large duffel bags and set them on the tailgate of the pickup. Eric walked over to the group and Claudia introduced him to Hector, the leader of the transporters.

“Where are your mules?” was Hector’s first comment.

“They’re providing security for us right now,” said Eric. On arriving he had fanned the mules out in a quarter mile circle and they had since been scanning the area with their night vision scopes. He spoke into the microphone of his radio. “Come on in.” Then to Hector he said, “They’re coming. Don’t shoot them.”

As the mules arrived Claudia loaded them with six or seven kilos each, depending on their size. Since they all had six liters of water and some food their total load was around 30 pounds. Not excessive, but they had a long way to go.

“Okay, Hector, we’re ready to go. How do you want to arrange your men?”

“Two in front, me in back, one stays with the vehicles.”

“Sounds good. Julian is our point man. How about he leads, then your two guys, then the rest of us?”

Julian stepped away from the group and raised his GPS receiver, which he had already turned on.

“We got six satellites, boss. Looking good.”

He headed off into the brush, followed by two of Hector’s men, with their rifles hanging by slings in front of their chests, safeties off. Eric and Claudia followed and the others fell in behind.

Eric had chosen Julian to lead because, of all the mules, he loved using the GPS the most and was also tall, healthy and energetic. During breaks at the school he had asked Claudia to translate the entire Garmin users manual. He delighted in using every function of the device. He used it as an alarm clock, to find the time of sunset, moonrise, and high tide in Singapore. He also seemed to be a natural leader of the group, ready with a joke when needed and always eager to try the next technique.

He led off and the others followed. Eric’s plan was to move forward in an arrow formation, with Julian as the point, Lety and Maria as the barbs, slightly behind Julian and fifty yards to the left and right, and the others in a line in the middle, also at fifty yard intervals. Maintaining such a complicated formation with such large gaps between people in the dark would normally be impossible, but with GPS, it was no problem. Everyone on the crew just followed the icons on the small displays, navigating from the points Eric had downloaded into their receivers before they left the school. They had practiced for four days, morning and night, and they knew what to do. They didn’t need to use trails and they were so spread out that the Border Patrol would never see more than one at a time. Since they all had radios with headset microphones and earpieces they could give each other instant warning while not making any noise. And, with the one touch function for sending their locations to each other they could change direction at anytime. All they had to do was use their thermal scopes and not make noise.

Moving quietly is of course easier if you move slowly but that would not get them to the rendezvous point Eric had chosen, which was forty-two miles away. The Border Patrol though, only operates within a mile or two of the river. Eric figured they would move very carefully for two miles and then walk like hell until sunrise.

***

El Alacrán, the Scorpion, did not visit his girlfriend at the Cave of Venus until Friday night, but he made up for lost time by staying with her for almost four hours. When he left, at 3 a.m., his driver was waiting across the street. He stood next to a Ford Excursion, leaning back against the hood, smoking a cigarette and glaring at the few pedestrians who walked by. Most of them, once they were close enough to see the tattoos, sobered up in a hurry. They quickly looked down and squeezed themselves against the wall as they passed.

The Scorpion was not sober, having drunk a bottle of cheap brandy and smoked three crack cigarettes in the last four hours, but he stood unsteadily on the sidewalk and looked up and down the street before getting into the back seat of the Ford, which pulled away from the curb and headed west. When it reached the first intersection, it turned right. There was little traffic other than a motorcycle going the same way, which turned off after two blocks.

The rider of the motorcycle then reported by radio to the next vehicle in the surveillance team, a taxi, which followed the Ford for six blocks. Three blocks away, ex-lieutenant Huerta listened to the radio traffic of his men. With five different vehicles switching off it’s pretty easy to avoid being spotted. Within forty-five minutes they knew the Scorpion’s address.

***

The countryside was similar to what Eric had passed through on his first trip, scattered mesquite and cactus, but the going was more complicated because they were not following trails. The straight-line distance from the vehicles to the river crossing point Eric had chosen was 3.5 miles, but he had plotted a course that avoided draws, clearings and hilltops. The route distance was 4.6 miles with ten turns, or waypoints. The moon wouldn’t rise until 1:40 a.m., which Eric figured was about perfect. If it took them two hours to reach the river they could be on the other side by midnight. They would have another hour and a half of darkness to get away from the Border Patrol and then the moon would come up to make it easier to walk fast.

Eric was happy with the crew. They kept formation well and made very little noise. Even Hector and the guards were doing okay. There was still the occasional stumble, the surprise encounter with cactus, but no cursing and no smoking. Though there was no moon yet, a billion stars shone in the clear dry desert air, and it was fairly easy to see.

Every fifteen minutes Julian stopped and everyone scanned their immediate area with their thermal scope. They saw a few cattle, moving slowly away from them in the brush, their shapes distorted and floating like white mirages in the green viewers. During one stop Eric saw a coyote sitting on his haunches a hundred yards away. Near him was a rectangular object, which glowed faintly. Eric was wondering what it was when the coyote walked over and stuck his snout into it, took a drink and then walked away. The object was a stock tank and the water inside was glowing from the heat of the sun which it had absorbed during the day.

When they passed waypoint five Eric looked to his left and picked up the faint image of a small farmhouse, which he knew from the aerial photos was 700 yards away. One corner of the building was brighter than the rest, indicating the heat from a kitchen. Nearby was a pickup, recently driven, to judge by the warm glow coming from the engine compartment.

Slowly, quietly, they worked their way through the brush. When they passed waypoint eight a family of coyotes began howling somewhere to the north.

Then they were in the river bottom. The trees were taller but the underbrush had been thinned by flooding and it was easier to walk faster. By 11:30 p.m. Julian had reached waypoint ten, which was one hundred yards short of the river. The mules closed on him, dropped their packs and spread out, scanning 360 degrees with their scopes, while Julian, Lety and Maria slowly crept toward the water. In ten minutes all three were in concealed positions on the riverbank, searching the far side. Lety and Julian reported nothing but Maria, two hundred yards south of the line, had a hotspot she couldn’t identify. Eric doubted that it was a Border Patrol agent. Most likely it was a sleeping cow, possibly a scout for some other smugglers, but he needed to know. He walked to one of the mules.

“Okay, Rigoberto. Close on Maria.”

Rigo sprinted off in the darkness, following his GPS receiver to Maria’s position. He arrived stumbling through the brush, cracking twigs, stubbing his toe, cursing and finally jumping into the shallow water next to the bank. Then he leaned forward, staring at the other side. He began to walk into the river, then stopped and walked back, then turned and stared again at the opposite side of the river as if he just couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to cross. He began walking south, climbing in and out of the water as necessary, all the time staring intently across the river.

“Okay, it’s human.” Lety came over the radio. “He just stood up. He has some kind of binoculars and he’s looking south. Now he’s moving slowly downstream. I’d say it’s Border Patrol and he’s following Rigo.”

Eric spoke quietly to Claudia, who translated to Maria. “Keep moving him south. Break off at 12:30.”

Eric gathered the mules, loaded up the packs and moved two hundred yards north to Lety’s position. Julian took her place and she moved further north. Antonio, the oldest of the mules, took inner tubes and a pump from his pack and began inflating the tubes. At 12:45 Maria and Rigoberto arrived, still giggling about his dumb wetback performance. Eric then told Claudia to remove the coke from Antonio’s pack and distribute it among the others.

“Alright, we’re on our own now,” Eric said to Hector. “You guys can go back now. Antonio will guide you to your car.”

Hector put out his hand to Eric. “Good luck on the other side.” Then he and the two guards followed Antonio into the shadows.

They had lost an hour because of the Border Patrol but Eric figured they could still be across by 1 a.m., forty minutes before moonrise. He took a handheld scanner out of his pack and plugged his earphones into it. He had been surprised, but pleased, to learn on the internet that the Border Patrol, unlike your average narcotrafficante, cannot afford encrypted radios. Their transmissions are not scrambled and the frequencies for each sector can be found on the internet. He set the frequency for the nearest BP station, at Carrizo Springs, turned up the volume and gave Claudia a nod. She spoke into her mic.

“Go ahead, point.”

Julian pushed through the last twenty feet of brush and slid off the bank into the water. He was nude, having already placed his clothes in a plastic bag inside his backpack. He pushed his inner tube ahead of him and began kicking toward the far bank. Once there he climbed out, got dressed and moved a hundred yards farther into the brush. Eric was about to give the word for Lety and Maria to cross when the Carrizo Springs dispatcher spoke into Eric’s ear.

“Unit 173, we have one hit on sensor 294.”

Eric was not sure if this was bad news or not. Somewhere in the one hundred and twenty miles of the Del Rio sector a person or animal had walked within ten feet of a buried seismic sensor. These battery-powered devices had one-foot long antennas that stuck above ground but the wires were small and impossible to spot, even in the daytime. Technical units from the US Army had installed thousands of them all along the river and then turned the system over to the Border Patrol. They worked, but they had limitations. They couldn’t distinguish between cattle and people, for instance, and could not tell in which direction a suspected intruder was moving. They were planted near trails leading away from the river, usually just above the high water mark.

Possibly Julian had just walked within ten feet of sensor 294. Or, equally likely, sensor 294 was fifty miles away and a cow had just wandered by. If Julian had in fact just tripped sensor 294, then agent 173 was the guy they had just decoyed to the south, but Eric figured that they could be across and gone before he returned. He gave the word and everyone moved to the river. Some were nude, some partially, but they were ready with inner tubes and backpacks and were on the far side getting dressed in less than five minutes. Julian led out as usual, but Eric kept Maria in the rear until everyone was a half mile away from the water, just in case the Border Patrolman returned. She rejoined them at their first rest break, having seen nothing. Then they picked up the pace and walked like hell for four hours.

 As the sky started to turn pink in the east, Eric began to look for a place to hole up for the day. He had picked a likely spot on the topo maps but they were two miles short and he knew they wouldn’t make it. They needed as much concealment as possible, but in the half-light before dawn it was hard to tell what the area would look like during the day. Spotting what looked like a clump of thicker brush off to the side of their route, Eric called a halt. When everyone reached him, he led them to the spot and they cached everything they didn’t want to be arrested with, everything that would not be found in the pack of a typical mojado. Once the pile was complete they covered it with grass and broken branches. When they were done the cache appeared to be well hidden, but it was impossible to tell in the dark. Claudia then led everyone back to the stopping point and Eric slowly followed, brushing out their tracks with a mesquite branch.

Then Julian led the way for another half mile. When they found a good brushy area on the side of a slight hill Eric called a halt. Everyone stripped off the dark clothes they were wearing and removed from their packs shirts and pants in shades of light grey or tan. After a drink and a snack they all found the softest spot they could in the sand and laid down. They had walked sixteen miles and most were soon asleep.

Eric walked to the top of the rise and looked east. He knew they were three quarters of a mile from an oil field service road, but he didn’t see any wells or tanks anywhere nearby. He made a wide, slow circle around the sleeping mules, stopping often and using the night vision scope. As the sky continued to lighten, he switched to his new pair of Leupold daylight binoculars. Since everyone was too tired to stay alert, he had decided against posting sentries. He figured that as long as they were not near anything that anyone would want to check on, they would not be disturbed. It took an hour to finish his circle but he finally concluded they were well hidden in a patch of brush no one would have any reason to visit. Sitting still during the daylight hours was going to be nerve-wracking, but Eric knew that moving during the day was simply too dangerous. He remembered reading an article about the school where the U.S. Air Force trains pilots in how to survive if they have to bail out in enemy territory. The absolute first rule is never move during the day.

Which makes sense. A lone person walking across a desert will be noticed immediately at half a mile. If he sits down and doesn’t move, he turns into a rock until you come within a hundred yards. If he sits down behind a sagebrush you’ll step on him before you see him.

Eric picked a spot of sand that didn’t seem to have ants or cactus and sat down. He couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he lay down and put his pack over his face for shade.

There was a chance they would be discovered, but they were not holding any drugs. If they were arrested, the mexicanos would receive a free ride to Bridge #1. Eric would have some explaining to do, but he had a story. He worked on it as he fell asleep.

“You see, officer I’m just tagging along with these people. I met them in the bus station in Nuevo Laredo and they said I could come along. I didn’t want to cross at a regular port of entry because I think maybe my ex put out a warrant for me on back child support. I mean like I don’t know if she did for sure but the bitch has been threatening to, and I don’t owe her a fucking nickel, man…”

Chapter 19 

At 10 a.m., when the cops arrived, the Scorpion was still asleep in the master bedroom on the second floor. His driver was in the front room downstairs and saw Captain Delgado and two other Nuevo Laredo city police officers get out of an unmarked car and walk to the front door. The driver had seen Delgado more than once at Nestor Alvarado’s compound outside the city, so he opened the door before they knocked and received a knife in the eye from the officer standing next to Delgado, actually ex-lieutenant Huerta, who immediately released the knife and jumped past Delgado into the house, followed closely by the other officer. Delgado closed the door as the body of the driver fell to the floor, and then he moved to the window to watch the street outside. Huerta and the other man quickly searched the ground floor of the house, capturing two maras and two women. When they went upstairs, they found the Scorpion, sleeping alone. The whole operation had taken less than ten minutes. The five bound and gagged captives were dragged into the living room.

“Okay, I’m out of here,” said the captain. He wanted to get the hell away as fast as possible. If Nestor ever found out he had taken part in this particular raid he would die painfully, but only after watching the torture and murder of his wife and children.

“Don’t you want to see what we do to them?” Ex-lieutenant Huerta laughed.

“No, I’ll wait for the DVD.” The captain pulled a black ski mask out of his pocket, put it on and left. Only after he had driven ten blocks, and knew he hadn’t been followed, did he take it off. On the way back to his office he stopped off at a hole-in-the-wall internet shop and logged on to his offshore bank. He wanted to verify that he had been paid for the morning’s work. He was happy to see that he had; there was a very recent deposit of $100,000. He never got tired of seeing his balance grow, but on days like today he wasn’t sure it was worth the risk. But then, you don’t take Lefty’s money for ten years and then say no to him.

***

The second night they walked sixteen miles. Two hours before sunrise they came to a gravel road that ran northeast and Eric decided it would make a good pickup spot. They were only a mile from Texas secondary road 83, which runs from Laredo to Catarina. He gathered the mules in a draw fifty yards from the road, where they unloaded packs, and then sent Julian and Rigo to the highway to wait for the transporters. One hour before sunup they would start driving south from Catarina. They would keep driving until Rigo called them on the radio.

While they were waiting Eric paid the mules for their first week of work, $200 each. He felt horrible to see how grateful they were for such a small sum. Considering what they had risked, two hundred dollars was not worth a handful of sand.

The vehicles arrived, a pickup for the mules, driven by Isaac, and a sedan for the cocaine. The pickup left first, providing scout service, and the sedan followed ten minutes later, with fifty kilos of coke in the trunk.

Eric and Claudia remained at the pickup site, guarding all the electronic gear. Actually they didn’t do a very good job as guards, since they both fell asleep in less than five minutes. An hour and a half later, Isaac returned alone to get them.

Riding south to Laredo, Eric looked at the countryside with new eyes. He was noticing dirt roads that were probably not on maps, isolated oil wells, stock tanks, areas where the mesquite was thickest… Anything that might be useful to know in the future.

He felt like high-fiving himself. He had pulled it off and he was in the clear. If they got stopped now, they had no problems. He and Isaac were US citizens, Claudia had a green card, and they were dope-free. They had $50,000 worth of radios, night scopes and GPS receivers on them, but there’s no law against that. Besides, the electronics were all in a box in the bed of the pickup, covered by a layer of groceries.

He had pulled it off. The score was one big one for Raul and zip for the gringos. Eric and Karina would live another week.

***

The first bus driver to go past the bodies didn’t see them, as the sun was rising directly ahead and he had to concentrate very hard to see, shielding his eyes with one hand.

The passengers, though, spotted the three corpses hanging from the streetlights and began chattering and shrieking so loudly the driver thought someone had had a heart attack. He immediately pulled to the curb and shut off the engine.

But no one was stretched on the floor of the bus, struggling to breathe. The passengers were all staring out the left side windows. On the other side of the road, three nude men, grotesquely tattooed over half their bodies, were hanging from the streetlights. One of the passengers slid down a window and snapped a picture with his cell phone. Immediately two others did the same. Then one of the passengers ran off the bus and went halfway across the street to get a close-up. As he lifted his cell phone to compose the picture, he suddenly jumped as if shocked. He took a few hesitant steps further, staring at a dark shape on the sidewalk. Suddenly he turned and ran back to the bus.

“More bodies! Women! Let’s get the fuck out of here.” The driver didn’t argue.

***

Eric told Isaac to pull in to a cheap motel on the outskirts of Laredo, where he rented a room. He and Claudia took turns in the shower and then changed into clean clothes.

They were eating breakfast in the motel coffee shop when a TV on the wall interrupted a regular program with a picture of the three hanging maras. There were electronic blurs strategically placed to conceal the dead men’s sexual organs.

The same scene, without the blurs, would be all over the internet in less than twenty-four hours and the millions who downloaded it would see clearly that the dead men, in fact, had no sexual organs.

***

Later that afternoon, after walking over the bridge, Eric and Claudia met the van, and after another trip with hoods on Eric and Claudia arrived at the bodega. Eric noted that the search at the front door was much more professional than before.

Juan Numero Tres was waiting in the study.

“Not bad, Raul. You did pretty good your first time.”

“When do we do it again?”

“One week from today.”

“We’ll be ready.”

“I’m sure you will. So, how did your plan work?”

“Very good. There was a little bit of luck involved because I didn’t have time to check out the ground in advance. You can’t always count on the maps. I’ll probably spend the next three days scouting by myself. Maybe I’ll take my point man, Julian. Then I’ll get everybody back to the school for a few days training right before the next trip.”

“How did your crew work out?”

“Very well. They’re smart and they work hard. I think they deserve a raise. Two hundred bucks a week is chicken feed.”

“I’ll think about it. Anything else?”

“I’d like to get an apartment in Monterrey. I’ll only be there a couple of days per week but I need a base.”

“Do it. Get me the address.”

“Why do you need to know? You have my email address. When I’m not in the bush I can check it twice a day.”

“Maybe I want to know because I’m your fucking boss.”

“I can relate to that. I’m just operating in high security mode. The general rule is, if someone doesn’t need to know something, don’t tell them. That’s the way I handle the mules. They don’t know shit, so they can’t hurt us.”

“That’s a good way to work. Keep working that way. And when you get an apartment, get me the address. I’ll make sure nobody else knows. By the way, the housekeeper has a suitcase and some other shit of yours. Take it.”

“Right.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. The three guys who got strung up in Nuevo Laredo. Were they our guys or were they the competition?”

“Interesting question. But I can’t see that you need to know the answer in order to do your job. How ’bout you concentrate on moving product to the other side and I’ll worry about all that other shit?”

“Got it.”

“Okay. That’s all.”

Eric and Claudia got up to leave.

“No Claudia, you stay.”

She sat back down. Eric leaned forward and put a slip of paper on the table.

“Here’s another deposit slip for my bank account. In case you lost the other one.”

“I put it in your file. The matter is still under consideration.”

“I proved I can do what I say.”

“Not exactly. You just admitted that there was some luck involved in this last trip. If you depend on luck, you’re not a professional.”

Eric left and was escorted by a maid to the same second floor room he had had before. He didn’t know how long Claudia stayed with Juan.

Chapter 20 

Over the next two days Eric and Julian walked thirty miles of riverbank on the Mexican side. It felt strange to be on the river during the day, but it was very useful. Terrain features he would never see at night, which were not visible on the Google aerial photos, were startlingly obvious. He stored points in his GPS receiver and took notes on a hand held voice recorder. He would have liked to use binoculars for scouting the other side but figured it would be too suspicious. He tried to look harmless by wearing what he thought was a Mexican rancher outfit: jeans, long-sleeved print shirt, straw cowboy hat and sunglasses. He had told Julian to dress as a poor campesino, or ranch hand.

At the end of each day they would walk west to the highway and hitch hike to Hidalgo, pop. 10,000, the only town between Nuevo Laredo and Piedras Negras, and call Isaac from a pay phone. Temperatures were in the high eighties and they were exhausted at the end of the day.

“So, more of the same tomorrow?”

They were sitting in a small café in Hidalgo, waiting for Isaac. Eric was finishing his second diet coke and Julian was on his second beer.

“No, we’ll head back to Monterrey. Tomorrow is a day off for you. Thursday we’ll go to the school for some training.”

“And then?”

“It’s not good to ask questions.”

“Sorry.” Julian took another sip of beer. “Well, I’m glad we’ve got tomorrow off. I think I’ll go to the Hermanos Jaguares concert.”

“What kind of music do they play?”

“Songs about us, man. Narco-corridos, songs about drug smugglers. But they also do cumbias, some tropical…”

“You like that music?”

“Not really, but it’ll be a great place to pick up chicks. Lots of parties later. All the chicks who work in the assembly plants like to go dancing, and they don’t mind going somewhere else afterward…”

Eric wondered, since Julian was married and had a kid, where he would take a girl afterward, but then he remembered trying to rent a hotel room for a week once in Mexico City and being turned away because the rooms only rented by the hour. He was surprised, because it was a nice looking hotel in a good part of town. Later he learned that there are similar hotels all over Latin America to serve all the single adults still living with their parents, and in Mexico, all the married men who have the morals of street dogs, a surprisingly large group.

“You should come, man. Those chicks would fall all over you. A tall, blond gringo. Oh shit, you could nail half a dozen. Really, man. You could use a social life. I can tell; you’re too much of a workaholic.”

They had another round of diet coke and beer, and Julian started to explain to Eric how the CIA had been controlling Mexican politics for a hundred years. Eric wanted to explain that the CIA had only been in existence fifty years, but he had had similar conversations with Andrea’s friends, and he knew it was no use. Julian, like most Mexicans, was capable of believing any bizarre conspiracy theory, as long as it made the gringos look bad. Of course, half the conspiracies he believed in so fervently contradicted the other half, and they all assumed that the U.S. operated exactly the way Latin American countries operate. The simple fact is that when the press is controlled by a dictatorship, as it was in Mexico for seventy years, rumors and legends always take the place of facts.

Eric was glad that Isaac arrived before they had time to order another round. He didn’t want to hear the real story of how the CIA invented AIDS or how the moon landing was faked.

***

When they reached Nuevo Laredo, they dropped Julian off at the bus station and then Isaac drove Eric to Bridge #1. He walked across to the American side and then continued a few more blocks to the public library on San Bernardo. He signed up for a computer and located a Mail Boxes, Etc. office and a storage company. He needed an address so he could order books online, and he wanted a storage closet just because he thought it might come in handy. The errands took only an hour and he then took a cab to the river. He was twenty feet from the turnstile on the pedestrian lane of Bridge #1 when he stopped and backtracked the three blocks to the bus station. He found a payphone, removed Dr. Benavides’ business card from his wallet and dialed the cell phone number.

“Bueno.” The doctor answered in the Mexican fashion.

“Doctor Benavides. I’m a friend of Ornela’s. You forgot me.”

“Yes, I did.”

“How is she?”

“I can’t tell you. Medical confidentiality.”

“What?”

“Actually I can’t tell you because she made me promise not to. She wants you to call her so she can pay back the money you gave her.”

“I’m not going to call her because it’s not safe. And I don’t need the money.”

“Yes, she figured you would say that. So I’m supposed to give you an email address. You can email her and she’ll tell you how she’s doing.”

“I don’t need any details of her medical condition. I just want to know if she’s going to be okay.”

“I’m sure she’ll tell you if you email her. Look, mainly she just wants to pay you back.”

“I don’t want the money.”

“It may not be important to you, but it’s very important to her to pay her debts. You should give her that opportunity. And she already has a job. She’ll be able to pay you eventually. And she says the email address is very safe. She created it on a public computer and it’s only for you to use and she will only check it on public machines. So that’s got to be safe, right?”

“I don’t believe this.”

“You don’t know her that well, do you?” The doctor sounded amused.

“I met her about three hours before you did.”

“She’s a very determined person. If she wants to pay you back that money I’m betting that you’re going to get the money.” Eric could hear the doctor laughing. “Look, here’s the address: ornelathewetback@hotmail.com.”

“You’re kidding. Ornela the wetback at hotmail?

“Clever, huh? You’ve already got it memorized, right? But you have to spell Ornela backwards, which is ‘alenro.’”

“So it’s alenro the wetback at hotmail.”

“That’s it. Anyway, it bothers her that she owes you. Get in touch.”

“Maybe. Well, thanks. Sorry to bother you.”

“De nada.”

As he walked back to the bridge, Eric wondered why he was still thinking about her, why he had wanted to help her in the first place. It occurred to him that he was acting like the drug lords who build basketball courts in their home villages or pay for an operation so their blind third cousin can see. Was he trying to even up the scales, to compensate for the evil he was committing as a drug smuggler? He didn’t know. As he walked over the river, he wondered what kind of job she had found.

He was in Nuevo Laredo by five, and was sound asleep in a hotel in Monterrey by 9 p.m.

 

 

 

 

 

***

The next morning he read the real estate section of the paper while eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The process turned out to be simpler than he had expected. At 9 a.m. he called an agency and by 11 he had looked at three places and signed a lease on a two bedroom furnished apartment with a private courtyard in a gated subdivision for $350 per month, utilities included. Internet by cable only added $10 per month.

He then took a cab to the Sonora Mall to buy cleaning supplies, towels, sheets, food, etc. for the apartment. In the supermarket he noticed a Ticketmaster booth. On the wall behind the counter was a giant poster advertising the Hermanos Jaguares concert. Without knowing why, he walked over and bought a ticket. He didn’t know if he wanted to go or not. He knew he wouldn’t like the music and he had no intention of trying to pick up women, but he didn’t like the idea of spending the night alone in his new apartment, and it felt good to plan something that had nothing to do with Juan #3. He doubted that he would go.

***

They were taking a siesta at the school the following day when Antonio came to Eric’s cot to tell him a vehicle was approaching. Eric hadn’t been asleep, just lying down with his eyes closed, planning the exercises for the night session.

He got up and went outside to watch the dust trail approaching. Most of the others came out also. The approaching vehicle looked unfamiliar. Eric turned to the mules.

“Go back inside. We don’t know who this is. They don’t need to see you and you don’t need to see them.”

A few minutes later a new Dodge crew cab pickup pulled up and stopped a few feet away. Eric didn’t recognize the truck or the driver, but Isaac was riding shotgun.

“Hey Raul, Juan needs to talk to you. Hop in.”

“I’ve got everybody here. We’re training.”

“So give ‘em a break. We’ll bring you back later. Maybe you should change clothes. I think this might be a social occasion.”

“Give me a sec.”

Eric walked into the main building, where the mules were standing around nervously or sitting on cots.

“Claudia. I’ve got a conference with Juan. It’s getting late so I’ll just go back to Monterrey afterwards. Get with Julian and work out something to practice on tonight. You’re in charge. Send me an email tomorrow morning.”

He grabbed a small carry on bag from under his cot, which held his city clothes, and returned to the truck, where Isaac indicated that he should get in the back seat.

Isaac didn’t introduce the driver and didn’t make any of his usual jokes. Eric changed his clothes in silence. Forty-five minutes later, when they were approaching Nuevo Laredo, Isaac turned and handed Eric a black hood.

“You know the drill, amigo.” Eric put the hood over his head and lay down on the floor.

When they pulled him out and took the hood off Eric found himself in a large courtyard surrounded on three sides by high walls and on the fourth by a three-story building. Also in the courtyard were four other late model cars and trucks, a fountain, various trees, flowerbeds, birdcages, and a marble statue that looked almost Greek. There was plenty of room left over to play soccer, if anyone wanted to.

“Let’s go inside.”

Isaac led the way into the main salon on the ground floor. Juan El Tercero was sitting on a large leather sofa talking to an older man who sat nearby in a recliner. Bottles of tequila and brandy sat on the coffee table in front of them. There were maybe twenty other people in the room, all standing, apparently half of them bodyguards and the other half whores. A couple of uniformed maids circulated, distributing snacks and drinks. When Juan saw Eric he rose and his guest followed suit, after removing the puta who was sitting on his lap.

“Hola, Raul. Como estas?”

“Muy bien.”

“I’d like you to meet my boss, Juan Segundo.”

Eric shook hands with the older man. Juan #2 stood straight and looked Eric in the eye without blinking. He was darker skinned than Juan #3 and had more Indian features, along with some small scars on his right cheek.

“This chilango here,” the old man indicated Juan #3, “tells me you’re the gringo who refuses to get caught.”

“Whatever he says. I guess that’s me.”

“Join us,” said the old man. “Juanito here has found some good tequila.”

Eric took the seat indicated, next to the old man. He couldn’t place the man’s accent, but it was definitely rural, probably from the mountains.

“Try the añejo, it’s good.”

“I’m sure it is. Thank you, but I don’t drink.”

The old man snapped his fingers. It wasn’t that loud but all the bodyguards jumped. A maid came scurrying over. Juan #2 pointed to Eric.

“What can I get you, señor?”

“Diet coke with ice.” She hurried away.

“Juanito said that you’re strictly business. You don’t even drink, huh?”

“I don’t snort the product either.”

“That’s good too. Some of our people, they overindulge, and then they get to be unreliable.” The old man took a sip of his tequila. “Juanito says you’re a topógrafo. Where have you worked?”

“All over the western United States. Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming. Also Alaska.”

“What kind of terrain?”

“Deserts, mountains, swamps, everything.”

The old man narrowed his eyes for a moment and then spoke carefully.

“For some time we have sent most of our stuff across the bridges, in vehicles. We wait until they don’t have a dog on duty and then we send it across. You get big loads. It’s quick. But now we have heard that the gringos have ordered more dogs, so we are looking at other options. In the past using mules was not as reliable, but Juanito says you have a good system. Very high tech.”

“I’m happy with it so far, and I’m adding new techniques to stay ahead of the game.”

“Juanito says your security is very good also. You don’t even tell him all your plans.” The old man laughed.

“Well, I figure why not spare him the details? As long as I deliver the dope…”

“That’s what we pay you for.”

“Actually, I don’t know if this is the right time to bring this up, but I’m not being paid.”

Juan Segundo narrowed his eyes and swiveled his head to look at Juan #3.

“I didn’t know if he could do what he said, so I used him on a trial basis.” Juan #3 spoke lazily, as if bored by such a detail.

“He delivered fifty kilos. Sounds like he knows what he’s doing.”

The old man turned to Eric.

“It’s a very simple deal. We pay a thousand per kilo delivered to San Antonio, or Laredo if you prefer. You deliver, we pay. You fail—”

“I’ve seen two guys pay the penalty for failure already.”

“Well, then. We understand each other. But let’s stop fucking around with piddly-shit loads. Next time take a hundred kilos.”

“Okay. I’ll have to hire a few more mules.”

“That’s your business.” He looked at Juan #3. “Questions?” Juanito shook his head.

“Good. Then let’s enjoy the party. Pick a girl. Juanito assures me they are clean and skillful.”

“Actually I should probably get back. All my people are out in the desert waiting for me. We train at night.”

“Are you a fucking Green Beret or what?”

“No, I just figure you can’t be too well prepared. After all, I’m playing for pretty high stakes.”

“We all are, my friend. The tables could turn on any one of us at any time. That’s why you should never turn down a piece of ass. It could be your last time. If you can’t take ten minutes to fuck one of these babes I’m going to think you’re a faggot.”

Eric laughed. “No, I like women, but I’m just a crazy gringo. We like our women skinny, you know.”

The old man laughed. “Holy shit. In my day, we only used our relatives, or at the very least guys from our home village in the sierras. That was our security plan and it worked well. Now we hire gringos who don’t drink and prefer skinny women.” He looked at Juan #3 in mock disbelief. “Ni modo.” What can you do?

“As long as he delivers the dope…” Juan #3 raised his glass to make a toast.

“That’s right. Strictly business. Okay, go back to your crew in the desert. Juanito, don’t forget to pay Raul his fifty thousand for last week.”

“Will do.”

Eric returned to the courtyard. Isaac gave him the hood and he took his place once more on the floor in the backseat of the Dodge.

As they drove from the house, Eric wondered how much of a hurry he needed to be in. Was half an hour really that critical? He thought about the girls at the party. They were a little big in the butt, which Mexican men seem to prefer, but there was nothing wrong with the rest of them. And, they were alleged to be skillful.

He reminded himself that he could be dead in a week.

He had never had sex with a whore in his life and didn’t intend to; he just didn’t see the appeal, but then again, he could be dead in a week. Did that make a difference?

He was glad of one thing. He knew that even if he asked, the driver would not take him back to the party.

Chapter 21 

Eric asked to be dropped at the bus station in Nuevo Laredo, and caught an express to Monterrey. He arrived at 9 p.m. and had dinner at a restaurant near the station. It felt like a late meal to him, but he was still ahead of the dinner crowd. He was happy that his Spanish was getting better rapidly, but he wondered if his stomach would ever be able to switch from gringo time to tiempo Mexicano.

He took a cab home, checked email, took a shower, but didn’t feel like going to bed. For some reason he wanted orange juice. He decided to get dressed and go to the convenience store two blocks away.

Perhaps because the weather was cool and windy, he ended up getting two packages of Ramen noodle soup. The girl behind the counter, ringing up the sale, seemed to be giving him a second glance. Then he remembered her.

“I saw you last night at the Hermanos Jaguares concert.”

She smiled for just a fraction of a second but then quickly looked down as she counted out his change.

“Why would I pay money to listen to that crap?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the girl you were with forced you to go with her.”

“Do you use this line on all the Mexican girls? Does it work?”

“It’s not a line. I saw you. And you saw me. In fact you checked me out a couple of times.”

“In your dreams.”

“I’m not dreaming. You wore black high heels, black slacks, and a low cut red top that looks pretty good on you.”

She looked down and pretended to rearrange items on the counter, but he could tell she was smiling.

“So, why were you checking me out?”

“Maybe I was wondering if you were a gringo or not.”

“Wasn’t it obvious?”

“Nah. Not really. There are a lot of tall guys from Guadalajara who are pretty light skinned…”

“But now you know.”

“Well, the way you speak Spanish you could be from Tibet.”

“You know, if you keep insulting me you’re going to miss out on your big chance to snag a rich gringo husband.”

“Not too many rich guys eat Ramen noodles. Besides I don’t want a husband because I’m a lesbian.”

At that moment, an elderly woman dressed entirely in black, with a shopping bag on one arm, entered the store. When she heard the word ‘lesbian,’ she took a step backwards, crossed herself and said, “God forbid.”

“She’s joking, señora. I’m sure she’s joking. Tell us you’re joking.”

The girl behind the counter tried without much success to stifle her giggles.

On the way back to his apartment, Eric resolved to shop elsewhere. The worst thing he could do would be to get involved with someone.

***

Eric’s second trip across the river was more stressful than the first, and having to add more mules at the last minute was only part of the problem.

To begin with, when Claudia and Hector arrived at the rendezvous point they were an hour late. Hector and his guards were drunk, and he didn’t even bother to offer an excuse. Claudia got the mules loaded in a hurry and they set out in no time, but of course Hector and his drunken buddies couldn’t be rushed. They made noise and they walked at half speed. Eric was furious, but they had the guns.

They arrived at the riverbank two hours late. Eric sent the drunks back to the vehicles, guided by Antonio, and finally began to relax. By 2 a.m. they were over the river and had moved inland about a half mile. Eric heard miscellaneous chatter on the Border Patrol frequency, but nothing he could associate with himself. He had picked the crossing carefully to avoid sensors and trails and it seemed to have paid off, until he heard Lety’s voice in his earpiece.

“Patrullas! Two of them between me and Julian. I don’t know if they’ve seen us yet.”

All the mules froze and slowly lowered themselves to one knee.

“What are they doing, north?” Claudia huddled close to Eric and spoke as softly as possible.

“One is just looking around, but the other one is looking straight toward where Julian is, I think. They’re not moving, though.”

Eric needed to make a decision fast but he needed more information. Sitting tight and waiting seemed safe but there were two Border Patrol agents on the front edge of his crew. He had no idea why they had picked that particular spot for their vigil, but he had no time to worry about that now. They could screw him several different ways depending on what they chose to do.

“Okay, Lety. You’re now a decoy. Dump your load. Five and six, now you’re decoys too. Dump your loads and close on Lety. She’s number two.”

All three mules confirmed.

“Okay, Claudia. Store two, five, and six.”

“Got it. Two, five, and six.” Using the one touch function Claudia stored the current locations of the three mules. At the same time, the mules were dumping their large packs on the ground and removing smaller knapsacks from within. They put their radios and night vision scopes in the big packs and then followed their GPS receivers to Lety’s position one hundred yards left of the main line.

“They’re here.”

“Okay, Lety. Head northwest.” Eric whispered into the microphone. “Make some noise.” Claudia and Eric looked at each other anxiously, but there was nothing more for them to do but wait.

One hundred yards away, Lety and the two mules started walking away from the group, carrying nothing that would mark them as anything but typical mojados. They made just enough noise to be heard.

Five minutes later Eric heard shouts.

“Okay, we have some action.” Julian was whispering. “I saw them when they got up and started after Lety, but then they turned on their flashlights and now I can’t see anything.”

That’s the disadvantage of night vision gear. It’s great in the dark but when someone turns on the light, you’re blinded.

“I hear shouting. Running. More shouting.”

“Okay, Julian. Close on me.”

When Julian arrived, Eric led him and Claudia to Lety’s pack. They distributed all her gear among them and then returned to the line. It took ten minutes to pick up the packs left by five and six and redistribute their loads and then Eric took Julian’s GPS receiver. He deleted their next waypoint and then used the point-in-direction function to create a new waypoint half a mile to the northeast. As Julian led off in the new direction, they could hear more shouts in the darkness off to the left. Lety was obviously giving them a hell of a distraction. The crew was now smaller by three, they were all carrying five extra kilos and they had lost twenty minutes, but they were back on their way.

The two Border Patrol agents would be happy with their three mojados and never know that a hundred kilos of cocaine had walked within a few hundred yards of them in the night.

At 6 a.m. they stashed their loads, then walked another half mile, and curled up to sleep for the day. They had only gone ten miles beyond the river but the dope was safe. Eric did his usual security sweep of the area and then lay down himself.

They weren’t safe yet. Still one more day. But if all went according to plan Eric would have one hundred thousand dollars in the bank. A hell of a lot more than he had ever seen before. A hell of a lot more.

Wait a minute. He was going to get 50k for the previous week. So he would have $150,000, plus the $5,500 he had had to begin with. In only one more day Karina was going to have a fairly respectable inheritance.

***

After handing off the coke and the mules as before, Eric and Claudia waited and then rode to Laredo once again with Isaac. Eric asked to be dropped off at a different cheap motel. Before getting out of the truck, he spoke to Claudia.

“Everybody gets three days off except Julian and the new guys. Take them to the school tomorrow. He’s got three days to get them up to speed. I’ll see you at the school on Thursday.”

***

 

Eric stood in the shower a long time. He wanted to get all traces of the Rio Grande off his body. It is said to be the most polluted river in North America, but he didn’t care about that. It was the swampy smell he didn’t like, and it took a while to get off. He savored the steam and the smell of the soap and thought about the old man at the party.

He was maybe sixty years old, a hard bastard used to giving orders. Why had he wanted to see Eric? Their conversation was very short but it must have been important, some kind of audition. If so, Eric had passed. The old man had accepted Eric and doubled the amount of coke he was to carry. And Juan #3 must have felt sure of Eric to promote the meeting.

It seemed that Eric’s execution had been indefinitely postponed. As long as he kept moving the product he was probably safe. The one thing they wouldn’t let him do was quit. Especially now that he had seen the scarred face of Juan Segundo.

Eric wished he could recognize the different accents of Mexican Spanish better, so he could tell where the old man was from. A village in the mountains, he had said. He was a campesino who had come a long way. Eric remembered the old man referring to Juan #3 as “this chilango,” emphasizing the difference between himself and a city slicker from the capital. There was mock scorn in the voice and probably a well-hidden sense of inferiority. So why were they working together?

Eric had read that drug lords in Mexico normally did hire only guys from their home village, at least for their top people. Yet this old montañero had an educated guy from the federal district running a major operation. Maybe business was so good he had run out of home boys…  Eric took it for granted that Juan #3 had proved his loyalty, efficiency and ruthlessness many times over.

After he left the motel Eric took a cab to Mail Boxes, Etc. to pick up his mail, and then to the bus station, where he bought a ticket to San Antonio, Texas, three hours north. During the trip he started one of the new books he had just received: The DEA Drug Investigators Manual.

In San Antonio he got a motel and a newspaper, checked the classifieds, and made some phone calls. He ran some errands and was going to go to bed early, but decided to check out the river walk he had heard about. There were no tourist boats on the water at eleven p.m. but couples were strolling the promenades on both sides of the river. It was very nice. There were many happy, relaxed people enjoying the shade trees and sidewalk cafes.  

It was a pretty, pleasant scene. Eric walked to one of the cafes, took a table close to the water and sat down long enough to drink a beer but he didn’t relax. On his way back to the hotel he passed an internet store, and since he wasn’t sleepy, he went in.

He created a new email address, supersmugglerdude @gmail.com and sent an email to Ornela the wetback.

“Dear Ms. Alenro, You do not need to pay me back the money. If you must, give it to charity. I hope you are well and that your new life in gringolandia exceeds your wildest dreams. Sincerely, John Doe.”

Chapter 22 

Eric was at the Tactical Superstore when it opened and went straight to the gun department.

“I bought this from a classified ad yesterday. It looks functional to me, but I need you to verify that. Then I need some accessories.”

The clerk removed the rifle from the cardboard box Eric had placed on the counter. He pulled back the bolt, inserted a small battery powered light into the chamber and then stared down the barrel.

“Well, you’ve got yourself a Czech made SKS semi-auto with very little wear in the barrel. A high quality piece. I’d be very surprised if it doesn’t work fine. What kind of accessories?”

“Folding stock. Night vision scope. Laser. Flash hider.”

“Lucky for you, we have a lot of aftermarket accessories for this model.”

“I knew you did. When can I have it back?”

“Probably by the end of next week.”

“And what would it cost me to have it done by tomorrow morning? I’d be happy to pay your gunsmith double time. You too.” Eric handed the man two hundred dollar bills. “I don’t need receipts.”

“I’d say we could do that.”

“Great.”

“What else can I help you with?”

“What else do I need?”

“Well, I don’t know what business you’re in—”

“But you know what I’ve bought from you.”

“True.”

“And you’re not dumb. Use your best judgment. What else have you got here that I might really need?”

The clerk looked skeptically at Eric for awhile and then leaned forward and put his elbows on the counter.

“You’re pretty well equipped,” he said quietly. “I think you’ve got a handle on your operation. But there’s always the question of who’s watching your six o’clock. A guy thinks he knows who’s on his side, and then the sides change without any warning.”

“I’ve heard that can happen,” Eric said. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the counter also. He was wondering if he had said too much, but he wanted to know where this was going.

“I think I told you about a customer of ours who served in Afghanistan. He recommended the night scope you’re using. He’s also served in Latin America. I don’t know details. I’m guessing detached service. Maybe solo work. We got to know each other over a few years, had some drinks. I was in the same branch of the military. One time he mentioned a colleague who got kidnapped in Columbia. Never seen again. He said the guy wasn’t wearing his paranoia gear. I said, “what?” but he wouldn’t explain. It took another year but finally he told me about their anti-kidnapping system. I haven’t told anybody else about this, because the more people who know about it, the less effective it would be.”

Eric was curious. He knew he was safe for a while, but he also knew that machos like Juan #3 never forget an insult, even if it’s imaginary. At some point, Juan would decide that Eric had taught the mules all they needed to know, and then, when he least expected it, Eric would find himself under guard, wearing a hood, and making his last trip to the bodega for a date with Diego.

“That could be worthwhile to know…” Eric said.

“It’s pretty slick. First, he says you just have to be paranoid all the time. Never relax. His motto is: Paranoia is my friend. But he also carries three guns, because if you do get caught off guard, naturally they’ll frisk you, but they’ll usually stop after they find the first two guns. Who would be paranoid enough to have three, right? So he has a .40 caliber in a belt holster, a five-shot .38 snubby in an ankle holster, and then…” the clerk walked over to a shelf and returned with a circular elastic band about six inches wide. “This goes around your chest, under your shirt. The small pocket in the front carries this.” He held up a very small pistol. “This is a five–shot .32 auto and it rides flat against your sternum. As long as you wear a loose fitting shirt, it’s unnoticeable. Then you have two of these.” He held up two ceramic knives like the one Eric had bought previously. “One taped to your forearm, and one taped to your shin. But, the real heart of the system is this: a third knife, smaller than the others, and a handcuff key. These you tape to your tailbone. Nobody ever frisks there. So if they handcuff or tie your hands behind your back, you just wait until nobody’s looking and grab the key or the knife, whichever you need.”

Eric was impressed. He looked at the small knife and the key. “But what if this key doesn’t fit the lock on the handcuffs?”

“Handcuffs aren’t like padlocks. They all have the same key.”

“I’ll be damned. You convinced me. I’ll take one of everything.”

“Very good. Do you prefer a particular brand, as far as the pistols? I recommend the Kahr alloy frame in .40 caliber, and the titanium Smith in .38.”

Eric chose the pistols and holsters, paid for it all and was about to leave.

“Thanks for everything. But I’m curious. You said you haven’t told anyone else about that ’system.’ Why did you tell me?”

“Good question. I don’t know. Lots of our customers, well, let’s just say they make the hair on the back of my neck tingle. I don’t like the idea that they’re running around loose. I hope they get caught. You, I get a different vibe.”

“Glad to hear it. By the way, I’m also looking for a consultant on surveillance, computer security, that sort of thing. Do you know any names?”

***

Later that night, Eric sat on the bed in the motel and dialed nine for an outside line.

“Hi there, sweetie.”

“Dad! It’s you! Wow, I was going to turn off my phone in about ten minutes. I’m glad you called. How are you? Where are you?”

“I’m in San Antonio, Texas, and I’m fine.”

“Why are you there? I thought you were in Mexico.”

“Well I am, but I came here to do some shopping.”

“So where in Mexico are you going to be?”

“I haven’t decided. Anywhere but Mexico City.”

“Still no good news there, huh?”

“No. I had lunch with Andrea. We were civil. I guess we’re still friends, but that’s over. So I don’t know where I’m headed.”

“When will you head for Alaska?”

“May 1^st I guess. Same as usual. Not sure. So how is school going?”

He was not surprised to learn that the seventh grade can be hell. She seemed to be surviving.

***

Tuesday morning Eric picked up the rifle at 9 a.m. With the folding stock, it fit easily in a small cardboard box. The pistols, holsters, a thousand rounds of ammunition, and cleaning kit were in two other boxes. Eric realized that Isaac was going to ferry the load across the border and he didn’t want anyone to know about the pistols and knives.

“Have you got a locking box that the small stuff can fit into?”

“Of course, and the store is throwing in some paper targets and a hundred foam ear plugs,” said the clerk.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Our pleasure. Remember: Paranoia is my friend.”

“I’ll remember.”

When his bus pulled into Laredo three hours later, Eric was two thirds of the way through the DEA Investigators Manual. When he walked out of the terminal he saw Isaac double parked on the other side of Santa Maria Avenue. Eric waited for a gap in the traffic and then crossed to the truck, carefully putting his packages in the back.

Eric got in on the passenger side. “I’ve got some illegal stuff back there I need you to drive across.”

“No problem.”

“There are guns in there, and ammo.”

“It’ll cost you twenty bucks for the customs guy.”

Eric handed over a twenty-dollar bill. “That’s it? Twenty bucks for a rifle?”

“Well, he’s not going to see the guns. They’re going to be under the seat. What he’s going to see will be shopping bags full of cheap shit from Wal-Mart, except I forgot the receipts, so darn, I’ll have to give him my last twenty. Damn!”

“Whatever you say.” They had already traveled the six blocks from the Greyhound terminal to Bridge #1. “Hasta luego.” Eric got out, walked over the river, caught a cab to the bus station, and bought a ticket to Monterrey.

Chapter 23 

During the three hour trip Eric kept plugging away at the DEA manual. He found that it was a good way to keep up his paranoia level. There was a lot of good information that would help him spot informants, but he had already established a rule for avoiding rats: never hire anyone who comes to you. That’s why he had told Claudia to impersonate a business recruiter to find mules. Of course the longer you operate with the same people, the greater the chance that one of them will get busted and turn on you.

When he arrived in Monterrey he walked away from the bus station, making random turns, for a half hour, then caught a cab to his apartment. He ate some fast food and then sat down and continued to read the book. He finished at 9 p.m., feeling very paranoid. Reading about court cases, rules of evidence and maximum sentences was very depressing.

He put the book on the coffee table and walked to the kitchen. But really, the DEA was not his worst problem. It was the other cartel, the one he wasn’t working for. He really wished he knew which cartel Juan #3 was paying tax to and which one was the enemy. He was not sure how he would change his procedures, but surely it would help to know? On the other hand, if you assume that everyone is the enemy then you will never take chances. “Paranoia is my friend,” he said as he opened the refrigerator. He wasn’t really hungry, but it was 10 p.m., and staring in the fridge was something to do. He had bought groceries at the Gigante supermarket the day he had moved in and was still well stocked, but he wasn’t hungry for anything in the apartment.

He wasn’t sleepy, didn’t own a TV, and didn’t want to read anymore, so he decided to take a walk. After leaving the guardhouse at the entrance to his subdivision, he turned left, figuring that he would follow a more or less rectangular course one mile square and be back in an hour. He oriented himself to the stars and set off.

The streets were fairly quiet, with occasional groups of young men drinking beer in front of small convenience stores, and in dark doorways, teenagers necking.

Several times Eric used counter-surveillance techniques to make sure he wasn’t being followed, using the reflection in store windows to watch his back, or ducking into a doorway and then suddenly stepping back out a few moments later, looking the way he had come.

“So, you couldn’t stay away, huh?”

It was the girl he had spoken to the week before. Approaching the store from a different direction, he hadn’t recognized it. He had just stepped in for another chance to check the street behind him.

“Need some more ramen noodles?”

“No, no. Still good on noodles. Need milk, actually.” Eric pulled a one-liter box of ultra-pasteurized milk off the shelf.

“Anything else?”

“I’m thinking.” He looked absentmindedly at the other shelves.

“Some people make a list before they leave home.”

“That’s what I’ve been missing.”

“What’s that?”

“Nobody has insulted me this week.”

“Really? You’re a pretty easy target.”

“I know I talk funny. What else?”

“Oh… the shoes, the haircut…”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yeah. I’ve actually been going easy on you.”

“Would you consider giving me fashion advice?”

“You’d have to feed me.”

It was half an hour before she could close the store, so Eric waited for her in a three-table taco joint two doors down the street, drinking real coke—all they had—and watching soccer on TV. Actually, he stared at the screen and tried to think rationally about what he was doing. Of course he knew it was no accident that he had returned to the store. He hadn’t consciously planned it, but he had wanted to see her again and he knew that some subconscious part of his brain, the trained land surveyor part, had remembered the location of her store.

Eric could work in the mountains or the desert all day, cross a dozen hills or streams and still, at the end of the day, return by a completely different route to the truck or the helicopter landing zone without needing to look at the map. It was a skill that had saved his life more than once, but he thought that tonight he should have gone the other way. He knew it was a bad idea to get involved. The smart thing to do would be to leave now and not look back.

He was still sitting there twenty minutes later when she walked in and sat down next to him.

“All done?”

“Yeah. All locked up. I’m Leonora, by the way.”

“I’m Eric.”

“Of course you are.”

“What do you mean, of course?”

“Because Eric is such a perfect gringo name.”

“I’m beginning to think you’re a racist.”

“No, just a realist. We come from different planets. You just don’t know it.”

“I’ll have to think about that. You want to see a menu?”

“You’re not feeding me in this dump, rich guy.”

“Uh, maybe I exaggerated a little bit about the rich part.”

“So just tell lies like all the other guys do and put it on your credit card. Tonight you’re rich.”

They walked for a few blocks and ended up in a real restaurant, the kind with waiters and tablecloths and air conditioning. Leonora chose steak and shrimp but Eric noticed that on a counter between the dining room and kitchen there was a vertical spit with a huge hunk of ham and pineapple turning slowly in front of a small flame, so he ordered tacos al pastor.

He learned that she was from Michoacan in central Mexico and was working two jobs to save money to attend college in Monterrey. Six days per week she worked in a jewelry store and two nights per week she worked in the convenience store, which was owned by a second cousin, with whom she was also living. She thought that in six months she would be able to start school.

She didn’t ask him any questions, and he was content to listen to her funny stories about friends and weird customers. As they were leaving she said, “We never did get around to my fashion advice for you.”

Which meant that it was Eric’s move. All he had to do was follow her lead. He knew where it would lead and he knew he shouldn’t go there.

He stopped walking and looked at her.

“This was very nice, but really, we shouldn’t continue…”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in a dangerous business. Dangerous for me and dangerous for anyone around me. I’m not a good bet for the long run.”

“So what? In the long run we’re all dead.”

“Who said that?”

“Some famous gringo, no doubt. But he stole it from me. Why not let me make my own choices?”

Eric couldn’t think of anything to say so he started walking. Not walking away from her, just walking to think. The difference between the two is that before he started walking he held out his arm to her, and she took it. After a couple of blocks he said, “So what is your choice?”

“Let’s go home.”

Chapter 24 

The next morning Leonora left for the jewelry store at 8 a.m. Shortly afterwards Eric left and spent forty-five minutes taking a series of cabs to random locations while checking for tails. At 9:30 he was sitting in a restaurant on the east side of Monterrey, not far off the highway to Nuevo Laredo. At 10 on the dot a pickup with a full-size camper shell and Texas plates pulled into the parking lot. Eric put money on the table, walked out and got in on the passenger side as soon as the truck came to a stop.

“Your boss said you are used to working for clients who are very security conscious.”

“That’s right.”

“Then you won’t mind letting me drive.”

“No problem.”

The driver got out and walked around to the passenger side while Eric slid behind the wheel.

“And you won’t mind wearing this.” Eric handed the man a black hood. He put it on and knelt on the floorboard.

After another half hour of evasive driving Eric pulled into his subdivision and backed into the carport of his apartment. It was just possible to help his passenger out of the truck and into the apartment without being in sight of the other apartments. Once inside, Eric removed the hood.

“I want coverage in every room. Over there is my computer and internet connection. Well, you saw the photos. The walls are solid masonry.”

The technician walked into each room, checking sightlines and tapping on walls with his knuckles.

“It should work the way I planned it. I’ll need the two tool chests in the back of the truck, plus the bookshelf and the two pictures.”

Eric went outside to the truck and brought in the requested items. The bookshelf was six feet high by three feet wide and nicely made of oak. The two large picture frames contained generic oil paintings of western landscapes.

“Okay, the bookshelf goes here.” Eric helped him move the shelf to a corner of the living room. “There are actually three video cameras built into this thing, plus batteries, motion sensors and the Bluetooth interface. This unit alone will cover the living room and part of the dining room.”

“How long will the batteries last?”

“Five to seven days. When they’re low, you’ll get a signal on your computer. Then you plug this in here—” He plugged a small transformer into a wall socket and extended two wires with clips to the bookshelf. “—and you clip these like this.” He connected the clips to two of the brass corner fittings on the bookshelf. “Takes about four hours to charge. Then you must remember to put away the charger. Otherwise, anyone who sees it will know this is no ordinary bookshelf.”

“Right.”

“Now I’ll hang the pictures. One at the end of the hall and one in the bedroom. They work the same way. It’s a bit of a hassle recharging them, but there are no wires and the system is undetectable. While I’m doing that, why don’t you get the large cardboard box out of the truck? You can open it.”

Eric brought in the large box, marked ‘window air conditioner,’ opened it up and removed what was in fact a window-mount air conditioner.

“That actually works as an air conditioner. It’s going to replace the one you have.” The technician was smiling at Eric, who was clearly baffled. “We’re going to switch them because this one has some extra room inside the case and that’s where I put the hard drive that receives and stores the video from all seven cameras. I’ve never done this before, but I was looking at the pictures you sent me and it just popped into my head. The beauty of it is that air conditioners are always connected to power so you don’t need batteries here. Of course, without Bluetooth none of this would be possible.”

“Impressive.”

“Now I’ll load the software into your computer.”

Eric had expected that the work would take all day but the technician was ready to leave by noon and an hour of his time had been spent teaching Eric how to use the software.

After driving the technician back to the highway, Eric took a cab back to the apartment. He got lost on the internet researching drug prosecutions in West Texas and was surprised when Leonora arrived at 7 p.m.

When he opened the door she was paying a cab driver. On the sidewalk were half a dozen grocery sacks. She came over and kissed him.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said.

“You invited me.”

“Yes, and I also explained why it’s a bad idea.”

“But it’s my choice.”

“And I won’t try to talk you out of it again.”

“Good. Can you wait an hour for dinner? You fed me last night, so tonight I’m cooking.”

“Sure.”

Eric pretended to continue with his internet research, but actually he watched her move about the kitchen. Along with food, she had brought an apron and several pans and utensils. She hummed to herself and was soon chopping vegetables while oil simmered in a skillet.

Eric sat back in the chair and wondered how he could make the moment last. He also knew that he was falling into a bad habit that had gotten him burned more than once before, getting involved on short notice with women who, in hindsight, were obviously not right for him. He was only thirty-two, but he had two impulsive, and failed, marriages to his credit and there were more than a few other bad hookups he should have seen coming, which thankfully had self-destructed before he was completely entangled.

 

 He knew he should feel stupid for falling into the same trap again, but he didn’t. He felt good. Being with Leonora reminded him that there was still a world beyond drug smuggling. He did some adding in his head and realized that it had been twenty-four days since Juan #3 had pushed through the door of his hotel room in Mexico City.

They were halfway through the soup when Eric’s computer beeped, signaling an instant message. He walked to the machine and entered a password.

“I have to go. I have a meeting. I should be back in a couple of hours, but I don’t know for sure. I need to show you our new security system.”

He led her toward the front door to the apartment.

“If you push in on the bottom of the light switch housing like this, you can see a small green light come on in this small hole. Press the bottom of the plate again and the little light goes out. When it’s on, there are cameras that will record everything that happens in the apartment. So we turn it on when we leave and turn it off when we get back. There’s no alarm. It’s just so I’ll know if anyone comes in here when we’re gone.”

She looked at the switch, then at him, then at the switch again. Was she having second thoughts about what she had gotten herself into?

“Okay. I understand. Be careful.”

She embraced and kissed him, but didn’t try to delay him. As he left, though, he sensed that she was about to cry. Was it because she was worried about him? Or was she regretting her stupidity in getting involved with someone she barely knew?

***

 

An hour later, after the usual cab and blindfolded truck rides, Eric stepped into the courtyard of a small two-story house. High walls and solid gates blocked all view of the outside world, so there was no chance of guessing the location. Based on the elapsed time, they were in another suburb of Monterrey. In one corner of the patio, Juan #3 was sitting at a large wrought-iron glass-topped table, which was covered with tequila bottles and a laptop computer. A half dozen bodyguards were spread out and an older man was laying sliced meat on a nearby grill.

As Eric took a seat at the table, a maid brought him a tall diet coke and a glass with ice.

“So you ran into some Border Patrols this time.”

“We were ready for them.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“No luck was involved.”

Juan Numero Tres laughed. “You are proud of yourself, señor Raul. That’s good. Now you want to know why there’s only $106,000 in your bank account.”

“I was going to ask.”

“You’ve earned $150,000, but now that we’ve spun you off as an independent contractor you pay your own expenses, same as all the other independents we use. You bought $44,000 worth of equipment, which is now paid for. From now on, most of what we pay you will be profit, less whatever you pay your people. If you want to be generous and give them a raise, go ahead. It’s your money.”

“How about Claudia? Does she work for me or you?”

“She’s working for you full time, so you pay her.”

“Do you pay her extra for reporting on me?”

“I’m sure you have nothing to hide. Everything I hear about you is good.”

“What about Isaac?”

“I use him more than you do. But you can borrow him occasionally. That is a nice weapon he brought across for you.”

“Yeah. I decided that from now on I’d like to provide my own security on this side of the river.”

“Yes, I heard that my guys were drinking on the job. They’ve been disciplined.”

“I’m sorry I missed the ceremony.”

Juan laughed, then snapped his fingers. One of the guards brought Eric the cardboard box with the rifle and the lockbox with the other items.

“So, can you shoot that thing?”

“I’m from Wyoming, also known as the Cowboy State. Very few people, lots of deer, antelope, elk. I’ve been hunting since I was six. Nobody is going to steal your dope from me.”

“I believe you.”

“The price of failure is still the same, right?”

“As always. So, Friday night as usual, 100 kilos?”

“Let’s go with 120 kilos, since I have to pay my own help.”

“Okay.”

“Claudia will meet your guys in Hidalgo at sundown. They’ll head north. Somewhere in the next one hundred miles they’ll get a call on the radio.”

“Perfecto. You’re welcome to join us for some barbecue, but I assume you have people running marathons in the desert or something.”

“Yeah. Gotta go check on ‘em.”

***

Eric returned to his subdivision at midnight. As he got out of the cab, he realized that Juan had not asked him for his new address. When he entered the apartment he found Leonora cleaning the inside of the refrigerator. She dropped the sponge and ran to meet him at the door.

“That refrigerator was clean when I moved in here last week.”

“So? It’s cleaner now.”

“Why aren’t you in bed? It’s late.”

“Shut up, stupid gringo. Why would I go to bed alone?”

Chapter 25 

The next morning after Leonora left for work, Eric turned on the security system, walked to the nearest bus stop and took an express downtown. He had to kill time drinking coffee until the stores began to open, then he bought and activated a cheap cell phone. The minor problem of no identification was solved with a $10 tip and he returned home with a new phone number registered to Maria Guadalupe Sanchez, in other words, Jane Doe.

After turning off the alarm system he put all the cash he had on hand, about $7,000, into an envelope, sealed it and put it in the middle of the kitchen table. He set the cell phone next to it and wrote a note:

“I will be gone for about four days. If you don’t hear from me in a week, open the envelope, then move out quickly. Do not leave a forwarding address. Do not make any calls on the cell phone and don’t give the number to anyone. Keep it with you so I can call you.

“Remember to turn on the security system when you leave and turn it off when you return. I will be thinking of you constantly and will return as soon as possible.”

“Love, Eric.”

They hadn’t actually discussed whether she was going to move in with him, but he had given her a key to the apartment. He didn’t know why he trusted her that far, but he did, and he was hoping she would want to move in with him. From the few things she had said, he gathered that she was living in close quarters with a roommate.

He then took off his clothes and got out his paranoia gear. He taped knives to one leg and one arm, taped the key and knife to his tailbone, and then put on his hiking pants and boots. Next, he put on the elastic chest band with the .32, then a large size shirt in dark camo, followed by the ankle holster with the snub-nosed .38 and the cross draw belt holster with the .40 Kahr. He left the shirt out of the pants and he had to admit that nothing was obvious, and all together it weighed very little. He knew it wouldn’t slow him down. “Paranoia is my friend,” he repeated to himself.

He then threw some clean clothes in his carry on bag, turned on the security system and walked to the bus stop one more time. He rode a local to the outskirts of town and when he got off near a windblown, trash covered soccer field, Claudia was waiting.

On the way out of the city she gave him the report on the new mules, who were now fully trained. There was still a shortage of radios and night scopes for the new people, but they could work in pairs for one trip. Eric realized he should have bought that stuff when he got the guns. Well, he could pick it up in a few days. It would cost money, his money, but it had to be done. He was glad he had raised the load to 120 kilos.

Eric fell asleep several times before they reached Laredo. When he was awake he thought of Leonora and felt like a jerk for the way he had abandoned her without a word. But he had always hated goodbyes. Now that each one could be the last, he hated them even more. He knew they would have to talk more about his job. He had no idea what he should, or could, tell her, but she obviously deserved to know more. What he wanted to tell her was the exact day and hour when he would be free. He wanted to tell her the day when they could start leading a normal life, but he still had no idea when that day would come, if ever.

When they arrived at the school at 3 p.m. most of the students were still taking a siesta but Julian met them in front.

“What’s the news, boss?”

“Well, for starters, you’re all getting a raise, to $250 per week.”

“Alright!”

“We’re also hauling 120 kilos next time.”

“No problem.”

 Since everyone else was sleeping, Eric decided to murder some targets. He took his new tools and started walking toward a ravine a half mile from the school. Julian and Claudia followed. After placing targets on the side of the hill, he removed the rifle from the box, extended the folding stock and then handed it to Claudia. He opened the locked box, removed two empty magazines and several boxes of ammunition. He showed Julian how to insert the cartridges into the mags and soon both were full. He broke open a package of foam earplugs, put one in each ear, and offered the rest to Julian and Claudia. They declined. Then he clipped a mag into the rifle and got down in a prone position.

He found a target in the scope and slowly squeezed off three shots. He couldn’t see any bullet holes in the scope so he got up and walked to the target.

“I’ll be damned.” There were three holes touching each other in the center of the black. Eric was surprised. Normally, when a gunsmith installs a scope on a rifle he uses an optical device to set the scope coaxial to the bore. It’s never perfect, but it’s the best you can do in a shop. It’s usually accurate to within a foot and a half at a hundred yards. The customer then takes the rifle to a shooting range and makes the final adjustments after firing. The gunsmith at the Tactical Superstore had made a trip to the range himself and dialed in the scope perfectly. Amazing, the kind of service you can get for an extra hundred bucks, no receipt.

“That’s pretty good shooting, boss.”

“I agree. Want to try it?”

They did, and both elected to use earplugs. They both did well prone, but Claudia did better offhand. She stood perfectly still and shot one bull’s eye after another at fifty yards. Julian was too excited and kept jerking the trigger, even though the rifle had very little recoil. After the sun went down, Eric tried the laser sight and the night vision scope. He wasn’t surprised to find that they were both zeroed perfectly.

When they returned to the school the mules were all awake and finishing a snack. Eric told them they were getting a raise and then divided the group into teams, called contrabandistas (smugglers) and patrullas (Border Patrol). For the rest of the night and all the following day they ran operations against each other.

Chapter 26 

Friday afternoon they loaded into three vehicles. Claudia left in one to go meet the transporters in Hidalgo, Eric and the others left for the rendezvous point, which only he knew.

It was his fourth trip over the river, his third as leader. He thought he was ready for anything the Border Patrol could throw at him, but if they even tried, he never noticed it. They encountered no robbers on the Mexican side of the river and no Border Patrolmen on the east side. They crossed sixty-five miles north of Laredo, walked fifteen miles the first night and twenty-three the second night, sighting on a blinking red light on top of a radio tower in Catarina, Texas. An hour before sunrise they made radio contact with Isaac. After the mules and the coke left in two separate vehicles, Claudia used her new Blackberry to send an encrypted email to a new employee, a taxi driver in Laredo. Eric had decided to use Isaac as little as possible, on general security principles. In half an hour the cab arrived, with two new hard-shell Samsonite suitcases for the electronic gear.

When they reached Laredo, Eric got out at a different cheap motel on San Bernardo while Claudia and Samuel continued on to Bridge #1, where she would cross on foot. Samuel would wait until a friend of his was on duty in the Mexican customs station. The negotiated rate: fifty dollars U.S., and the suitcases would not be opened.

As soon as he was in his room, Eric took a phone card from his wallet and punched in the numbers to call Mexico.

“Eric?”

“Is this Maria Guadalupe Sanchez?”

“Of course it is, you fool. You’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m tired and I really stink, but I’m okay.”

“I can clean you up, but I can’t help you with the tiredness. In fact, I plan to make it worse.”

“I guess I’d better sleep here then.”

“No, you had better not. You said you would return as soon as possible. So get moving this way. Where are you, or can you say?”

“I’m in Laredo.”

“If you get on a bus right now you’ll get home in time to sleep for a few hours before I get off work.”

“Okay, whatever you say. By the way, tell your employers that you are going to be sick for about three days. We’re taking a trip.”

“Are you going to tell me where?”

“You’ll need a bikini.”

***

After taking a shower, Eric took a cab to the Mall del Norte, had breakfast at Luby’s Cafeteria, and then walked across the parking lot to Bank of America and withdrew thirty thousand dollars cash. Then he checked out the travelers section at Sears, where he found a concealment wallet to hide the cash inside the waistband of his pants.

Later, crossing Bridge #1 on foot, he was worried that he would be searched, but as he approached the customs area the light flashed green for him. The customs officers were busy making sure that returning mexicanos paid the duties on their sacks full of purchases from Wal-Mart.

***

 

After leaving the bus station in Monterrey, Eric found a travel agent and bought two round trip airline tickets leaving that evening at 9 p.m.

When Leonora arrived at six, he was already packed and eating a sandwich, which, as it turned out, he never finished. She was very glad to see him and was still proving it an hour later when he said they had to get to the airport. She insisted that she hadn’t decided yet what to take.

“That’s easy,” said Eric. “Take your purse and a toothbrush. Forget the clothes.”

“I’m going to wear what I’ve got on for three days?”

“No, dear. At the moment you have nothing on. But when we get where we are going you can buy a dozen new outfits, okay?”

“A dozen?”

“Okay, two dozen. Look, we’re a lot richer than we were a week ago. Just get your gorgeous butt moving.”

***

When they changed planes in Mexico City Leonora could see their destination on the display behind the counter at the gate. She then knew that this trip was primarily for business. The Cayman Islands and other countries with strict banking secrecy laws and low taxes are referred to in Spanish as “fiscal paradises,” and they are well used by Mexico’s politicians, movie stars, and drug smugglers. If Eric was now rich, then of course he would need someplace to keep his money invisible.

They arrived in George Town at 8 a.m. Eric had made a hotel reservation online, and he had the names of three banks. After checking in, they had breakfast on the balcony of their room, overlooking the ocean.

“I have some business to take care of this morning.” Eric handed Leonora an envelope containing six thousand dollars. “Do you think you can spend all this money and meet me back here around noon?”

“I suppose. What do we need? Milk? Ramen noodles? Toilet paper?”

“And a bikini.”

***

The first bank Eric tried was more than willing to help. They explained that they had strict procedures to prevent money laundering or any other illegal use of their country’s financial hospitality. They would of course have to verify his identity and legal history. Eric thought it was polite of them to say ‘legal history’ rather than ‘criminal record.’ He handed over his passport and then enjoyed coffee and croissants with a vice president of the bank while their computers gave him an internet frisk.

He had prepared a plausible cover story to make their job easier. Their job, of course, besides holding his money, was to look the other way and pretend that he was not a criminal like all their other customers. From this perspective, Eric was a dream client. First, he had no criminal record. Second, his job as an international land surveying consultant with contracts in Iraq explained why he would sometimes be paid by wire transfers from Cyprus. Eric was not really an international land surveying consultant, but he had worked jobs in Alaska and Russia with guys who had been shot at and arrested in Kazakhstan and other third world hellholes, so he had numerous hair-raising stories with which to amuse the vice president.

After the second cup of coffee, an underling reported to the VP that Eric’s credentials were in order and Eric explained that he would like to set up two joint accounts: one for himself and Karina, and one for himself and Leonora. He opened each account with $10,000.

He figured he would have to pay taxes on the $106,000 that Juan had already paid him, since there was a record of it at Bank of America, but all future payments would be deposited 50/50 in the two new accounts. If he didn’t survive the drug business, Karina and Leonora would be taken care of. Juan now owed him another $120,000 but was holding the payment until Eric could set up the new accounts.

Which meant that in a few days Leonora would be set to inherit $70,000. Karina would have that much also in the Caymans account, plus she was listed as joint owner of Eric’s BOA account, which stood at $76,000 after yesterday’s withdrawal. So, in other words, if Eric died in the next few days, his daughter would inherit twice as much as Leonora. Well, going to college in the U.S. costs more. They would both be able to get an education. And in a week, if Eric and his crew could evade the Patrullas Fronterizas one more time, there would be another $120,000 flying into Eric’s accounts from Cyprus on invisible electronic wings.

Actually, Eric had decided that the crew could carry more dope. The ten mules were probably maxed out at 12 kilos, or 26.4 pounds of cocaine each. Now that summer was near, they would need to carry two gallons of water each, which put another 16 pounds on their backs. That added up to forty pounds and was more than enough. Any more and their speed and mobility would be compromised. But, Eric and Claudia had not been carrying any product. He figured they could easily carry five kilos each. The extra would cover his expenses and then some.

He knew that was the limit for now. He didn’t want to expand the crew any farther. Twelve people is a large team to move undetected across forty miles. But there was always the option of adding a second crew. Eric thought that Julian could run a crew for sure. He was smart and seemed ambitious. And then Eric’s income would double, to $240,000 per week, minus change for wages and expenses.

Call it 220k per week. Pretty damned close to a million dollars a month. Wow…

Well, why not? It was possible. Juan #3 could certainly supply the coke, and the addicts of gringolandia would be happy to hand over the bucks.

***

When Eric returned to the hotel Leonora was just arriving with a taxi full of packages. He started to help her unload them, but a bellhop appeared with a cart and soon had the boxes and sacks on the way to their room.

In the elevator she couldn’t stop talking about her purchases. Her eyes shone and she bounced on the balls of her feet. Eric wanted her to be this happy forever.

“But I don’t want to see the silk blouse,” he said. “And I don’t want to see the linen pants. I only want to see the bikini.”

“Oops. I forgot that.”

“Well, then. I guess we’ll just have to find a nude beach.”

But there was a boutique in the lobby that was willing to sell her a few square inches of nylon for only $200. She put it on in the dressing room and they walked out the back door of the hotel onto Seven Mile Beach, which the Cayman Islands tourist commission declares to be the most beautiful beach in the world.

After a long swim, they found a table on the beach with an umbrella and ordered lobster and margaritas. When the waiter cleared away the plates and brought the espresso, Eric said, “I guess I owe you some explanations.”

“Not really. You said you’re in a dangerous business. The less I know, the better, right?”

“True. In general. But there are some things I can tell you. I should have already.”

“We’ve only known each other a week. We haven’t really had much time for talking.”

“Yeah. I’m kind of impulsive sometimes.”

“Do you have regrets about your impulses?”

“I have in the past. I don’t now. I don’t have any regrets about us at all.”

“Good. Me neither.”

“But I want to explain some things. I didn’t choose to become a drug smuggler. They forced me to. I have a thirteen-year-old daughter. They threatened to kill her, also my sister and brother. So I have to work for them.”

“You have a daughter?”

“Yes. I’m divorced.”

“Where is she?”

“In Iowa. With her mother. And if I stop working for them, or even if I get caught, they’ll kill her and all the others, and me too. I don’t know from one week to the next if I’m going to live or die. That’s why I said I’m not a good bet for the long run.”

“So you just have to keep doing it until they kill you?”

“Or until I figure out a way to kill the guy who’s threatening me.”

“Are you capable of doing that?”

“To save my daughter, yes, I could kill him, but how I’m going to arrange that, I don’t know. He has guards and moves around a lot. At this point I don’t even have the beginning of a plan.”

They stared at the sea in silence for a while. She reached across the table and took his hand.

“If there’s a way to get yourself free, I think you’ll find it.”

“I hope so,” said Eric.

He wanted to tell her about the bank account, but it was too awkward. As she had said, they had only known each other a week. She wasn’t even living with him, not yet, although they both seemed to understand that she would. He knew that talking about money would have to wait. He felt good, though, knowing that even if he died in a week, Leonora would be able to go to a university. She could study whatever she wanted and wouldn’t have to work while doing it.

 They walked on the beach for a long time. It was a beautiful evening, and Eric had to admit that Seven Mile Beach might be the most beautiful beach in the world. Their visit to the Caymans could have been almost like a honeymoon, except for the specter of Juan #3, hovering somewhere on the edge of consciousness.

Chapter 27 

They didn’t talk about Eric’s business for the next two days, and they managed to enjoy themselves the way people who are in love do, when they have a beach and money and a hotel room. They caught an afternoon flight to Mexico City on Wednesday and were back in Monterrey by 8 p.m. As he was unpacking, Eric plugged in his laptop. He had checked email at the hotel and there was nothing, but now, ten minutes after he turned on the computer, it beeped with an instant message from Juan #3. At least he waited until we got back, thought Eric. Having heard the beep, Leonora knew what to expect. She kissed him at the door and he walked to the bus stop. His assignment was to meet Isaac at a restaurant downtown, and as soon as he got there Isaac walked with him to a parking lot and opened the back door of a crew cab pickup.

Three hours later, when they hauled him out and removed the blindfold, he was surprised to find himself at the bodega once again. He had now met Juan at four separate locations. After a thorough frisk, he was allowed to find his own way to the study. He dropped a paper on the table.

“Here’s the bank account information. They have no problem with wire transfers from Cyprus.” Eric only gave Juan the number of Karina’s account. He could transfer half the money to Leonora’s account himself online. He didn’t want Juan ever to suspect that there was someone new he could threaten.

“That’s good. The money will be there in twenty-four hours. How did you like the Caymans?”

“It’s overrun with drug smugglers.”

“Yeah. They ruin a place for sure.”

“I just heard on the news that ten soldiers got blown up at a party on a military base,” said Eric. “Survivors were executed.”

“Yeah, that was Nestor’s guys did that, and I have to say I’m impressed. Taking on the army like that, that takes some balls. But, the army backs Lefty, so…  It’s Nestor’s retaliation for the three guys on the streetlights.”

“It seems to be getting hotter in Nuevo Laredo. It’d be real nice to know which side of this war I’m on… I mean if somebody in uniform pulls us over to the side of Highway #2 when we’re on our way to the river and he finds our radios and guns and shit, and he asks who are we paying tax to, what do I do?”

“You’ll have to shoot him.”

“I what?!”

“We don’t pay tax to anybody, so if someone stops you, you better shoot first, because it won’t matter if they’re working for Juarez or the Gulf, they’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”

“They’re at war and we’re in the middle?”

“It gets better. I started the war.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No way. This has all been carefully planned by the five guys named Juan. We want the plaza in Nuevo Laredo, so we need to weaken both of the other cartels which also want it, namely Juarez and the Gulf. We want to make them look stupid, cause a shitload of bad publicity, and force the feds and the army to quit fucking around and agree on who should have the plaza. Namely us. And the first part of the plan is going very well. I can’t wait to see Lefty’s next move. It’s got to be big.”

“And you started this war?”

“Yeah, and you were part of it.”

“How?”

“In the beginning we just wanted to create suspicion between the two cartels and their sponsors, namely the army and the feds. So, we sent a load across on purpose to get caught. We tipped off the DEA to our own load! They got caught and nobody knew who they worked for. The army thought Lefty was sending over loads and not giving them their share and the feds thought Nestor was shorting them. It was beautiful. Then you and Raimundo screwed it up.”

“We did.”

“Yeah. You were supposed to get caught also. I knew Raimundo was a fuckup and I figured twenty years in jail was a better punishment for you than turning you over to Diego. I was still mad about the Celia thing, you know. We tipped off the DEA about you guys too, but they didn’t get you. I don’t know why.”

“Pure luck, I’m sure. That was why Juan #2 said to me, ’so you’re the gringo who refuses to get caught.’”

“Exactly. Claudia was really the one who convinced us that you had your shit together as a drug smuggler, and she was right. So we decided to use you in part two of the plan. Part one was to get Lefty and Nestor fighting with each other and their sponsors. We started that off by whacking three of Lefty’s guys coming out of a whorehouse. He blamed Nestor of course and the shootouts between them just keep getting better and better.”

“And part two?”

“That’s for us to make a whole lot of money smuggling coke. If we want the plaza we have to do more than make the other guys look stupid. We have to offer the army and the feds more money than they’re making now. This will require serious money. So, think about starting another crew.”

“I have been.”

“Good. It will take about 5,000 kilos per month to fully fund this operation.”

“Five fucking thousand kilos of cocaine per month??”

“At least. To pay all the bribes and make real money ourselves. You can’t believe how many goddamned cops and politicians and soldiers we have to pay off.”

“That would take me forty trips per month.”

“Well, we’re not expecting you to move even half of it. We have other people already on board using the bridges and we’ll add more. But you’ve proven yourself and you can haul as much of it as you want.”

“As long as my success rate stays at 100 percent.”

“Correct.”

“And as long as I don’t try to retire.”

“I can think of five guys named Juan who would veto that.”

“Is there a part three of your plan?”

“Of course. That’s when we go after their money. This war is fine as far as it goes. It makes them look bad and raises the political heat but it doesn’t really hurt them. They lose a few foot soldiers, so what? They can hire more for practically nothing because they’re still making money, lots of it. We’re gonna have to attack their smuggling hard, so they lose big profits. When they fail to pay the army or the feds on time, then the guys in uniform will be willing to listen to our proposal.”

“How’s that part of the plan coming along?”

“We’re still gathering information. When the time comes, you will be involved.”

“What’s it pay?”

“It will pay as well or better than what you’re doing now and it will involve a lot less walking.”

***

As Eric was riding away from the bodega, it occurred to him that he and Juan had spoken entirely in Spanish. He couldn’t remember when they had stopped using English. After half an hour on the backseat floorboard, the driver pulled into a truck stop on Highway 85 and told Eric he could sit up and remove the hood.

“We’re two hours from Monterrey. No need to wear that the whole way.”

***

Eric got out of the truck on the east side of town and took a cab home. The driver tried to enter Eric’s subdivision but the guard shack was empty, so the bar could not be raised. Eric paid the fare and walked to his apartment.

Only to find the door ajar.

He stood frozen in front of the apartment with his keys in his right hand, staring at his front door, which was standing about two feet open. Then he noticed that the small green light was glowing on the bottom of the light switch. That meant that Leonora had armed the system before leaving and failed to close the door hard enough behind her. He felt a huge wave of relief wash over him and he took a step forward, then froze again. Or, she had forgotten to turn the system off when she returned, in which case…

He didn’t know what the green light meant and didn’t want to know. He wanted the door to be shut. But it wasn’t, so he stepped closer, listening, but there was nothing to hear. He reached in and pushed the bottom of the light switch. The green light went out. He looked at his watch. 3:30 a.m. Eric felt really stupid, not being armed. He had left his guns and paranoia gear in the apartment when he had left to go see Juan because he knew they would search him very thoroughly at the bodega. Now, he wished he had a shotgun. His rifle was locked in the van, which Claudia was driving.

He reached forward and pushed the door slowly open. The guard who should have been in the gatehouse was lying on the living room floor in a pool of blood.

Eric ran into the apartment screaming, “Leonora!”

     He found what was left of her in the bedroom.