Triple Crossing Read Online Free PDF Page A

There were internal investigations, angry headlines in Tijuana,
     diplomatic protests. The agents got heavy suspensions; one resigned. And their invasion had gone a couple of yards. At most.
     If Pescatore got caught, nothing short of crucifixion would satisfy the Mexicans this time.
    Dogs announced his flight back down the street, noisy escorts loping alongside. Horns blasted when he darted north through
     the traffic on Calle Internacional. The troop of migrants on the concrete median had not moved; a sun-darkened gnome in a
     straw hat shook his head at Pescatore. He heard a distant siren. Could the
judiciales
be coming for him already? The only way those bastards were getting his gun would be to pry it out of his cold dead hand.
    The fence looked much taller from this angle. He could not find the hole through which he had gone south. There were no apparent
     handholds, no hint at how people scaled the barrier so fast every day. He spotted a junked refrigerator propped against the
     metal. He clambered onto it, tossing his baton and flashlight over the fence into the darkness. He heard hoots, insults and
     whistles behind him: The lynch mob was gathering. The top of the fence scraped skin off his hands, dug into his armpit. He
     heard a tearing sound as his uniform shirt ripped on the metal edge. A bottle hurled from behind shattered next to him, showering
     glass.
    With a sob, he flopped over. He dangled one-handed for a few flesh-gouging seconds, then let go. He landed, sprawling face-first,
     in the United States of America.
    Border Patrol vehicles converged on him in the darkness. A helicopter swooped, circling low, the wind and sound magnifying his headache. He rolled to his feet, started to his right, changed direction. A semicircle of flashlights, headlights
     and spotlights impaled him. An amplified, distorted voice barked at him.
    Pescatore sagged back against the fence for a moment. Finally, he stepped forward, into the light. He raised his hands above
     his head.

2
    A S THE RADIO PLAYED the intermezzo from
Cavalleria Rusticana,
Méndez gazed north across the border.
    After the night’s fog and drizzle, the morning had brought a cold sun. The old maroon Crown Victoria crested the hill before
     Calle Internacional dipped east out of the canyons toward the Zona Norte and Zona Río. Leobardo Méndez, the commander of a
     Mexican law enforcement unit known as the Diogenes Group, sat in the backseat of the Crown Victoria. The butt of a pistol
     protruded from beneath a newspaper next to him. Méndez felt suspended over the panorama, everything clean and sharp and glistening
     below him.
    The road sloped between clumps of migrants and vendors along the fence on the left and palm trees on the right. Farther ahead,
     the river levee slanted across the border, the remnants of the night’s crowds and a few vendors grouped around the ashes of
     bonfires. Past the levee, a northbound network of ramps, lanes and bridges wound like a knot of snakes into the two dozen
     lanes of the San Ysidro crossing. The traffic was backed up for a mile from the concrete hulk of the U.S. inspection station:
     mainly Tijuana commuters bound for jobs in San Diego. The hill of the Colonia Libertad neighborhood, with its terraced streets
     and rows of tumbledown houses, rose beyond the port of entry.
    From his radio came the soundtrack: the wistful strings of the intermezzo.
    As the Crown Victoria started down the incline, Méndez spotted Tiburcio the Ragpicker on the U.S. side. Tiburcio advanced—blue
     cap, duffel bag, Quasimodo gait—across flatland near a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle north of the fence. Tiburcio was a sociological
     category unto himself: a self-employed transborder scavenger with a green card. He lived in Tijuana. He crossed legally into
     San Diego at dawn and scoured the terrain for valuable items left behind by the night’s influx of illegal immigrants.
    It was like an abandoned battlefield, like the desert after the