Ballistic

myself.”

After the side trip to the church, the Gray Man was all business. He drove to Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juarez; just a few minutes before arriving, he had Pfleger use the store-bought cell phone to rent a car in his name from the Hertz office in the airport. They parked Jerry’s car in long-term parking, picked up the rental, and drove to another part of the airport. Then they took a taxi back into town, into the Reforma district, and here Court and Jerry took a city bus to el Zocalo. Two long blocks south of the main square, with Gentry helping the hobbled Pfleger walk upright, they found a hotel parking lot that was unattended, and here the American assassin hotwired a Ford Mustang.

At two forty-five in the morning, Gentry and Pfleger left Mexico City behind them and headed northeast to Pachuca, a ninety-minute drive. They ditched the stolen car in Pachuca, waited on a park bench across from the main bus terminal until it opened at six a.m., and then took the first bus heading north to Juarez. They would get off before Juarez and take a regional bus to Tijuana.

Twenty-four hours on the road.

As they sat together in the back of the bus, Jerry spoke his first words in hours that were not complaints or curses. “Why did we do all that?”

“All what?”

“We’ve been jumping on and off vehicles for a dozen hours. My foot is killing me, dude. I need a doctor.”

“We burned our trail. There is no way the Black Suits are going to find us. They’ll look for your car and find it at the airport. They’ll think we wanted them to think we got on a plane, but they’ll be smart enough to see that you rented a car. They will find the rental there at the airport, and they might think we did, in fact, fly out of Mexico City, but if they are good, they’ll check with the taxi company and see that we tried to throw them off. Then if they are good and they are lucky, they might even find out about the Mustang stolen several miles from where the cab dropped us off, but I seriously doubt it.”

Pfleger rubbed his calf with a grimace as the swelling caused the nerves to flare up.

“Even if they managed every bit of that, they’d have to be more dialed in than the FBI to find the Mustang in Pachuca, and even if they did, there was no video security at the terminal there, and we paid in cash, so there is no chance in hell they will track us now.”

“But won’t they still guess that we are going to TJ?”

Gentry nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he said, as if it were obvious. “They’ll be all over Tijuana when we get there, scanning the border, ready to kill us all.”

“That’s great,” Pfleger said. “And then, even if they don’t, you are going to kill me when this is all over.”

“Not if you do what I say.”

“Bullshit. I saw what you did to the CIA guy, the guy who saved your ass. You fucking murdered him.”

Court shrugged. Smiled wearily. “It had to be done.”

“Right. You’ll say that about me in a couple of days.”

“Only if you try anything cute.” Gentry pulled a pair of zip ties from his pocket. He’d picked them up at a grocery store back in the capital. He made a two-link chain with them, with his left hand in one of the links and Jerry’s right hand in the other. He tightened the bindings. Court found a small sleeping blanket that the bus provided, and he tossed it over his and Jerry’s laps. To anyone looking it would appear as if the two men were holding hands. An old woman sitting across the aisle noticed their apparent public display of affection and clucked disapprovingly.

“So we are going to TJ even though we know they will be at the border, waiting for the Gamboas to cross?”

“Let me explain what is going to happen, Jerry. We are going to the border. To Tijuana. When we get there, Elena, Luz, and Diego are going to cross the border. You are going to set up their crossing from this side, and you and I are going to sit in some hotel room together, just sit there and look at each other, until I get a phone call from Elena telling me that they are safely in the United States. If I don’t get that call, if they don’t make it across, Jerry, you are going to die a very, very slow and very, very miserable death right there in that hotel room. You have one chance to arrange a fucking foolproof crossing for them, so you better start coming up with something quick.”

Jerry began shaking his head before Court finished talking. “I can’t ever be sure someone will make it over! Yeah, if we had the documents, I could just about promise. But with a midnight run there are too many variables. I always tell people I’ll get them over within two or three tries.”

“These people don’t have two or three tries. If they are caught and they go into the system, then de la Rocha can make them disappear. You get one shot at this.”

“I am telling you, I can’t promise anything!”

Court shrugged. He closed his eyes and tucked his head against the headrest. He pulled the blanket up high to his shoulders and said, “Well in that case, Jerry, you are going to die.”

FORTY-TWO

Diego Gamboa Fuentes sat on the park bench, three hundred yards from the border crossing into the United States. His eyes darted to everyone around over the age of ten. He was terrified of being seen by the wrong people, and he was certain the wrong people were crawling all over the place.

This was the third day he had sat here in this spot, and each day he became more and more certain that Jose and tia Laura were not going to appear, and more and more certain that the men walking around the park were working for the Black Suits. The air was only seventy degrees, but sweat dripped from Diego’s big dark sunglasses and from the scalp of his nearly shaved head.

He’d followed Joe’s instructions to alter his appearance, as had tia Elena and his abuela. They remained at the hotel, a few miles south of here, in hiding, because they just knew the Black Suits were close by.

They’d had a bit of luck the day before. Members of the Tijuana Cartel had spotted some new men in the area, thought them to be a rival cartel up here muscling in on their plaza, and they reacted accordingly, responding in the only way they ever responded to threats to their bottom line—they opened fire. No civilians had been hurt or killed, miraculously, but the daily machine-gun fire in the streets of TJ had picked up considerably since, as more guerreros for the Tijuana Cartel had been sent out to find and scare away the new visitors to this lucrative crossing point.

Diego and his family had heard the shooting, but they learned the reasons behind the cartel-on-cartel street battle the evening before on the news. They hoped this meant the TJ narcos were, although unwittingly, providing a level of protection for them, giving Los Trajes Negros a little something to worry about while up here in the north.

Diego did not want to come out today, to wait at the park for the three p.m. meeting time. He did not expect to see his aunt or the gringo, and he did not like leaving the hotel. He knew he would have to be the one, eventually, to leave cover and make contact with the local coyote to try and find some transportation over the border, but he was more than willing to wait a few days before attempting this. They had little money, no connections, and a palpable fear of the men of the Black Suits.

Getting over the border on their own was going to be tough.

A man walked past the bench; Diego had not even noticed him approach. His hair was razor short; Diego could tell even though the man wore a ball cap. His goatee and mustache were full but trimmed close to his face; his eyes were hidden behind mirrored lenses. He wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt and baggy jeans, the typical attire of a laborer, not the nicer clothes of a cartelero. But when he slowed in front of Diego, the young Mexican stiffened in fear.

“Follow me,” the man said softly in Spanish.

Diego recognized the accent. The voice.

It was Jose. The American.

He had changed his appearance so completely Diego hesitated, even when the man crossed the park, sat