Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(12)

I followed Jesús up the ladder, then waited while he slid the door aside and peered out.

“All clear.” He braced his hands and hoisted himself out of the tunnel, then turned back to haul me up. “Hurry, hurry.”

We surfaced like panicked rabbits from a warren. The tunnel emerged in a medium-size enclosed stall almost entirely filled with wooden crates. When we were all out of the tunnel, Jesús and two of the Marines dropped the door back in place and shoved two large boxes over the opening. The cords on their necks and the muscles of their arms bulged, and I gave Jesús a quizzical look when he finished.

“Car-engine blocks,” he said. His teeth were bright in his dirty face. “That will slow them down. They won’t dare blow up the door while they’re standing right under it.”

A rolling metal service door covered the stall’s entrance. The Brick—Carlos—eased the door up six inches, and Jesús took a mirror on a long handle and scoped the area outside.

“We’re good.”

I shoved my headlamp in a pocket of my utility pants, and Jesús adjusted the cap he’d given me. My braid had come loose, and I pushed it back under. I tugged the jacket closed; the stagnant air hugged like an unwelcome embrace.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready.”

We emerged in an alley behind a row of chili merchants. The aromas of jalape?os and poblanos and serranos sizzled in the warm night air. Two of the Marines, Jorge and Eduardo, I presumed, took positions on either side of Jesús and me. The Brick took Se?ora Torres by the arm. But before she went with him, she turned to me and said in heavily accented English, “I hope Jesús is right. I hope you are worth it. That tunnel, we will never be able to use it again.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I offered my hand. “Thank you for my life.”

She took it and squeezed my fingers. “Your life is God’s gift. Use it well.”

As Jesús had ordered, we joined the throngs surging along the market’s asphalt paths, filthy warriors in a dirty war, and scattered to the four winds.





CHAPTER 3

Here in America, we can mostly stay above the fray. War, refugees, epidemics. Secret police, despots, assassinations. These are vague terrors outside our borders. We pity the victims, but we don’t identify with them.

Then a child falls sick or we get a diagnosis of cancer. And suddenly we are in the thick of it.

The story of the victim becomes our own.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal Journal.

The four of us reached the car, a beat-up Nissan sedan, in under ten minutes. The driver had pulled the sedan up tight against the curb near a cantina, on a side road lined with fruit stalls. I’d spotted two cops on our walk here, but they appeared to be taking only a mild interest in the people jostling around them. Maybe they hadn’t gotten the word. Or maybe the Alpha had only managed to bribe a few members of the policía.

Jesús opened the back door, and the driver gestured for us to hurry. Jorge jumped in the front, and I followed Eduardo into the back seat. Jesús got in after me. We squeezed together in the close quarters.

The driver wrinkled his nose. “You guys been sweating a little, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Eduardo said.

The driver laughed. “Still nothing on the scanner. I think we’re in the clear.”

Jesús gestured toward the front. “Sydney, meet our driver, Miguel. Miguel, Sydney.”

Miguel reached a hand over the seat back, and we shook. “So you’re the cause of all the trouble,” he said.

“I’m afraid so.” I glanced past Jesús out the passenger window. A man in pressed jeans and an oxford shirt had just emerged from between two rows of stalls and now paused outside the cantina, scanning the crowd. He was too well dressed for a tourist. And he carried a radio.

“Jesús,” I said.

He followed my gaze. “Time to move.”

“Roger that.” Miguel turned the wheel and eased the car into the lane, tapping his horn at the shoppers spilling across the street. A few minutes later, he merged into traffic on the Avenida Circunvalación, heading north.

“A friend has arranged a room for you at a small hotel,” Jesús said. “You’ll be safe there. The hotel is located in a tourist area—lots of güeritas like you. You’ll blend right in. At least”—his glance took in my face, my bloody, filthy clothing—“after you shower and get rid of those clothes.”

I nodded my thanks.

As Miguel drove, he alternated his speed from slow to fast and back again, following a circuitous route that spiraled outward from the city center. He took a great many turns and sometimes circled back, while Jorge in the passenger seat kept an eye on the side mirror.

“I used to drive for a security company,” Miguel said when our eyes met in the rearview mirror.

“Lucky for me,” I said. “Jesús, I’m sorry about the tunnel.”

“It happens. We shut it down, find another safe house, open it again in a year. It’s part of the work we do.”

“And what work is that, exactly?”

He gave me a wry smile. “Se?ora Torres and I are not traffickers. And we’re not polleros, either—not coyotes. Some of the migrants crossing Mexico from Guatemala and Honduras, they need to cool their heels for a bit. They’re waiting for family members, or they need money, or they’re just too tired or terrified to go on. So we hide them. From the policía who would give them to the cartels, and from the cartels who would traffic them. Torres trains them and gives them work. Some learn to do the tattooing. Others sew or work day crews. Then, when the money comes or the spouse comes or they recover their courage, we get them moving north again. They have to keep going. They’re running away from gangs or vendettas or abusive husbands. For them, to return home means death.”