Triple Crossing Read Online Free PDF Page B

border crossing. Sentries with AK-47s and sunglasses stepped back as an
     iron gate slid open. The compound was a former safe house that had been confiscated from a drug trafficker. It contained a
     drab two-story house, garage and a storage building. A Mexican flag flew in the courtyard.
    Méndez led the way into the box-shaped storage building, which had been converted into a command center, squad room and lockup.
     At thirty-nine, Méndez had gray tufts in his hair, angular features that tightened into a melancholy grimace. When he wore
     glasses, he looked professorial. When he wore contact lenses, like today, his face hardened. He was thin and tended to coil
     forward when he walked. He had a lupine profile. His attire was typical of Tijuana cops, reporters, academics and public officials
     all the way up to the governor: brown leather jacket, blue button-down shirt, and jeans.
    Opening the door for Méndez, Athos told him the unit had raided a safe house in Otay Mesa overnight and captured a Chinese
     smuggler with a group of non-Mexican migrants waiting to cross.
    “Eighteen Chinese, five Brazilians, two Ecuadorans,” Athos said. “And we caught a state policeman who worked with the smugglers.”
    “Wonderful. Another battle with the state police in the making.”
    “We found some interpreters at the Chinese place near Sanborns,” Athos said. “We are talking separately to the policeman and
     to the Chinese smuggler. A heavyweight gangster from the looks of him.”
    The squad room, where the unit held roll calls and meetings, was noisy and busy. Interpreters and plainclothes officers in
     black fatigue jackets, armed with legal pads, clustered around captured migrants. The migrants sat in chairs with arm-desks
     that made them look like disheveled college students. The prisoners regarded their questioners in a daze, as if watching another
     reel in a nightmare. The migrants’ clothes were frayed and soiled. Most of the Chinese had short, shapelessly cut hair. The
     Mexican officers rose or saluted Méndez as he passed.
    “Did you get them something to eat?” Méndez asked. The migrants had clearly realized he was in charge; he attempted a reassuring
     smile in their direction.
    “Chinese food.”
    “Good. Call the priests at the Scalabrini shelter, see if they can house these people until someone decides what to do with
     them. They have probably spent months cooped up in one miserable safe house or another. Is this batch from Fujian too? Headed
     for New York?”
    “Nobody’s saying much, but they definitely came through South America. Like the last group, and the one before them.”
    A hallway led past two small interrogation rooms. In the first, the Chinese smuggler sat with his hands cuffed in back. The
     interpreter sat opposite him, a slender Chinese youth in a waiter’s white shirt and black pants. His nervous smile suggested
     he would have much preferred to be waiting tables. No doubt his immigration status was also problematic. Méndez imagined the
     look on his face when Athos had marched into the Chinese restaurant frequented by the officers of the Diogenes Group and recruited
     him as an interpreter.
    “This is Mr. Chen, Licenciado,” Athos said with sarcastic formality, nodding at the prisoner. “He kept saying he wanted to
     talk to the boss. Mr. Chen, this is the boss.”
    Looking elaborately bored, Chen swiveled his head toward them. He had a tapered torso under a burgundy sweater that was torn
     along one sleeve, exposing a snake tattoo. There were bruises on his forehead. His hair was spiked and gelled and he had hipster
     sideburns. A city-hardened version of the country boys in the next room.
    Athos said that the smuggler had resisted arrest, putting on a martial-arts display. There was a note of grudging admiration
     in Athos’s voice. “He was throwing fancy kicks, using his elbows, spinning. The
muchachos
say it took five minutes to subdue him.”
    Méndez slid into the chair