Triple Crossing (32 page)

“Amen, Licenciado,” Porthos said, and drank.

Athos’s pointy, nicotine-stained teeth appeared inside his goatee as he raised a Fred Flintstone mug.

A flame of tequila expanded in Méndez’s chest. They were sitting around the kitchen table. They were still wearing their raid
jackets.

After Junior’s getaway, Méndez had stayed away from headquarters. He had ignored the messages from the Secretary, turned off
his radio and cell phone. He intended to communicate his resignation from government service only when he was good and ready.

“Junior surprised me,” Méndez said, staring at the killer whale. “He knew the state police would have started shooting, fucked
up everything. So he brings in Peralta and the federal police. And the Secretary and the attorney general drop their pants.”

“What I want to know is, who tipped them off?” Porthos said.

“If you ask me, the gringo,” Méndez said. “Isabel says that doesn’t make sense. She says it had to be someone in our unit.”

“A traitor?” Porthos said.

“Isabel says the Secretary must have gotten word of the operation before we started. She has a point, the
federicos
showed up very quickly.”

“Maybe Mexico City called Junior to warn him, not the other way around,” Athos said.

“Maybe.” Méndez thought about working up the energy to pull off his bulletproof vest. “I still think the gringo played both
sides. Isabel is not objective when it comes to Pescatore. Her only weak spot, as far as I am concerned.”

“She looked good out there last night,” Athos said. “A real lioness.”

That observation amounted to an outburst for Athos. It was perhaps the only sign that he had been drinking. Along with the
repeated tapping of his fingers on his temple beneath his receding hairline.

“A very attractive lady, Agent Puente,” Porthos said in his earnest proclamatory way. “I was surprised about her and Pescatore.
I thought she didn’t… I thought she preferred… well, you know.”

“What?”

The big man rubbed his beard uneasily. “Well, Licenciado, I thought she had an, eh, alternative lifestyle.”

“
Epah,
maestro,” Athos said, raising his eyebrows. “Where did you learn that term?”

“In a debate on the radio, I think.”

“A complicated way to say she likes women.”

“I know it’s difficult for you to comprehend, Commander, but I was being delicate.”

“You’re delicate alright. Listening to radio shows like a
comadre.
”

Méndez reached slowly across the table for the bottle and filled their mugs. When Athos and Porthos went into their put-down
ritual, they were like bears taking lazy swipes at each other. They were performing for his benefit, trying to cheer him up.

“Her lifestyle is perfectly normal—except she has the bad taste to prefer that yanqui hoodlum to one of us,” Méndez said.
“In any case, she never quits. She went back to San Diego because she thinks the task force can track the destination of the
plane.”

“South America, no?” Athos said.

Méndez stared out the window, feeling the tequila rekindle his anger. “We had him, Athos. I hesitated. I let you all down.”

“No sir.”

“Once the federal police showed up, I…” The alcohol was
jumbling Méndez’s thoughts. “Even if we had held them off, what would we have done? I thought…”

“You protected your men,” Athos said. “You let no one down.”

“That’s right, Licenciado,” Porthos said.

“There’s only one thing I regret,” Athos said, the lines around his eyes crinkling mischievously. “I wish you had let Porthos
lead the charge. I really wanted to see him knock down the door with that big fat gut of his.”

“As you bravely gave orders from the rear,” Porthos growled.

They chortled and drank, comfortable with the silence and one another. Méndez considered Puente’s theory: If there was a traitor
inside the Diogenes Group, Athos and Porthos were the only ones he could trust. Here we are, on our own at last. The Three
Musketeers.

“What really infuriates me is Mauro Fernández Rochetti,” Méndez said after a while. “The jailbreak, the Colonel, Araceli.
He has manipulated everything.”

“What he did to Doctora Aguirre is the ugliest thing I’ve seen in seventeen years as a policeman,” Porthos declared. “And
I’ve seen ugly things, believe me. Ugly ugly ugly.”

Athos nodded.

“Repugnant son of a bitch,” Méndez said, sipping from his mug.

“A real beast,” Porthos said.

Méndez bit his lower lip. “After what happened with Junior this morning, Mauro thinks he owns this town.”

“He’s probably sitting in Café Bumpy right now,” Athos said quietly. “Laughing about it.”

“Now?” Méndez reached for his mug.

“He has breakfast at El Bumpy every morning.”

“He thinks our arrest warrant is worthless, we’d never dare touch him,” Méndez said, draining the tequila.

“Probably he thinks that.”

“I’d enjoy wiping that smile off his face.”

“Me too, and how,” Porthos said, polishing off another drink.

“Abuse his human rights for a while.”

“That would be something, Licenciado.”

They looked at one another.

“In fact, I’m tempted to go pay him a visit right now,” Méndez said. He knew when he said it that it was going to happen.

Athos wiped a hand thoughtfully across his lips. He put on his cap. Porthos gave a soft whoop. Méndez resisted an urge to
laugh out loud.

He was surprised to find that he felt steady on his feet. Steady, warmth rushing through him, ready for combat. D’Artagnan
goes out hunting for his nemesis, Rochefort, the Man of Meung, the Cardinal’s ace swordsman.

“Very good,” Méndez said. “Let’s get going, then.”

Café Bumpy was a diner off Boulevard Agua Caliente. In recent years it had lost clients to the new coffee-shop franchises
in town that offered glossy menus, big parking lots and gleaming interiors. El Bumpy was older, ricketier, greasier. But it
survived thanks to cops, journalists, government officials and other old-school clients of dubious repute.

Porthos circled the block once. They spotted Fernández Rochetti’s Suburban in the gravel parking lot. They saw the homicide
commander at his usual window table with his cowboy-hatted bodyguard, Chancho.

The three men had barely spoken during the ride over. The odds were bad. The Musketeers pick a fight with the Cardinal’s Guards,
the Musketeers challenge a regiment, an army. Look at me, Méndez thought: an amateur cop to the end. A second-rate writer
with a gun, reeking of tequila.

Porthos stopped in the alley behind the diner. Méndez and Athos got out of the car, slipped through a gap in a wooden fence
and crossed a patio containing Dumpsters. As Athos opened the back door to the kitchen, he gave Méndez a fierce grin over
his shoulder.

“Total suicide, Licenciado.”

“Absolutely.”

“What do we do after?”

“One thing at a time.”

Athos told Porthos over the radio that they were inside.

They stalked through the restaurant kitchen. The cooks froze at the sight of the guns. At the swinging doors to the dining
room stood an assistant manager who knew Athos and Méndez. She was heavyset in a green uniform, her hair arranged with ribbons.
She blinked rapidly, dismayed, and said, “Oh no, Comandante, please, what?”

Athos put a finger to his lips.

Past the swinging doors, Méndez took the lead. He stormed down a narrow aisle between crowded booths, turning a corner, his
jacket knocking over a ketchup bottle on a table. Méndez homed in on Fernández Rochetti in his booth: natty in a blue blazer
and red tie, intent on his breakfast. Fernández Rochetti’s bushy eyebrows were raised in concentration as he cut steak, holding
the knife and fork with his hands close together.

Méndez had the arrest warrant in his left hand and the gun in his right. He had intended to announce the arrest with by-the-book
language. But all the rage and liquor bubbled up in his throat; he managed to roar Fernández Rochetti’s name before slamming
the warrant onto the table. The homicide chief reared back, sputtering in surprise.

Méndez grabbed the tie and yanked Fernández Rochetti out of the booth. He clubbed him once across the head with the gun barrel.
He was aware of Athos pointing his rifle at Chancho’s chest, exclamations from nearby tables, Porthos’s voice booming from
the front entrance: “Police, stay down, nobody move or I blow your heads off.”

Méndez clung to Fernández Rochetti’s tie. He hauled him along the row of booths. Fernández Rochetti staggered and choked.
Méndez gave him another swat with the gun, the metal
thunking against the back of his skull. Méndez wondered if the gun would go off by mistake. Dragging Fernández Rochetti toward
the front entrance. Giving the tie a savage twist and yank. Fernández Rochetti on one knee, gagging.

So this is the real way to arrest someone, Méndez thought. This is what I’ve come to, Mauro, right down to your level.

Mendez realized that the warrant had remained on the table, a discarded facade of legality. At the front door, Athos covered
the room with the rifle. Porthos grabbed the prisoner, pawed inside his blazer, and relieved him of his gun. They stumbled
down steps into the parking lot, where Porthos shoved Fernández Rochetti face-first onto the hood of the Crown Victoria and
handcuffed him.

“I’ll kill you all, sons of bitches,” Fernández Rochetti gasped as they crammed him into the backseat, Porthos hustling around
to the driver’s side.

“Shut up, asshole,” Méndez growled, hearing the shriek of brakes.

A blue Dodge Charger skidded into the parking lot, clearly a state police car. Perhaps the detectives inside the car had seen
the commotion as they approached; perhaps they had been called from the restaurant. Méndez scrambled back out of the car and
started to take aim over the roof.

Athos was way ahead of him. He had been backpedaling toward the Crown Victoria in rearguard mode, his rifle aimed at the diner.
Now he pivoted smoothly toward the new threat. Two officers emerged from the Dodge Charger, drawing pistols.

Athos did not wait for them to announce their intentions: He opened fire. He raked the rifle back and forth, bullet holes
spattering a long
X
across the windshield, splintering glass, shredding metal: the bodies jerked and shuddered.

One detective toppled facedown in the gravel, his pistol clattering beside him. The other detective staggered on the far side
of the car, wounded but still on his feet, trying to return fire.
Athos sprinted forward, his cap flying off. He veered left, shooting on the move, shooting from a crouch, shooting down into
the body of the second detective.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go,” Porthos bellowed from behind the wheel. Somebody was coming out of the front entrance of Café
Bumpy and Méndez hunched, anticipating fire from that direction. He jammed his gun into the base of Mauro’s skull to keep
him on the floor. Athos swung into the front seat. The Crown Victoria lurched and roared, spraying gravel, fishtailing into
Boulevard Agua Caliente. Porthos snarled behind the wheel and tromped the accelerator, in the clear.

Athos turned up the volume of the police radio on the dashboard. A report was coming in already on the state police frequency:
Shots fired. Officers down. Commander Fernández Rochetti abducted by assailants.

“Where to, Licenciado, our headquarters?” Porthos bellowed.

“The Line,” Méndez said, dialing Isabel Puente’s number on his phone. He felt a rush of euphoria and disbelief.

“Forgive me, Licenciado, The Line?” Athos asked.

Although Athos’s thinning hair was disheveled, his goateed face was like stone. He just killed two men and he isn’t even breathing
hard, Méndez thought. Nonetheless, the old cop looked like he would prefer a faceful of bullets to running to San Diego.

“I don’t have any other ideas,” Méndez exclaimed, strange half-choked laughter welling up in him. “Do you propose we barricade
ourselves in the headquarters? Who’s going to help us?”

“Yes, but…”

Athos was making the same calculation: There was nowhere else to go. Certainly nowhere Athos would be safe after killing two
state police detectives.

They headed east past the Cultural Center and City Hall and turned north. They stopped on a side street long enough to gag
the semiconscious Fernández Rochetti with a rag and stuff him
into the trunk. Fernández Rochetti’s eyes had the dull glow of a dying animal’s. He was silent.

Méndez told Puente over the phone that he had an urgent package for her. He asked her if her friends in blue at San Ysidro
could help him make the delivery before the competition caught up. She told him she would handle it.

The traffic in the twenty-four-lane northbound approach to the San Ysidro border crossing was backed up for a good half-mile,
a sea of vehicles, exhaust fumes, vendors and pedestrians. Porthos followed ramps and bridges to a separate Mexican-run lane
for VIPs east of the port of entry. A Mexican immigration officer sat outside a guard shack by a gate like those at railroad
crossings.

Athos concealed the rifle. Porthos nodded at the approaching green-uniformed figure.

“Run him over if necessary,” Méndez whispered, forcing a smile.

But the officer recognized them, saluted and raised the gate. The VIP lane descended a gentle incline and curved left, emptying
out at a spot that was still in Mexican territory but put them near the front of the lines waiting to enter the U.S. inspection
lanes.

“Go to Lane One, Leo,” Isabel told Méndez over the phone. “They know you’re coming.”

Porthos sped toward the first three lanes, which were empty because the inspection booths were closed. The Crown Victoria
crossed over a yellow line into U.S territory, which began several hundred yards south of the inspection stations.

On his left, Méndez saw four U.S Customs and Border Protection inspectors hurrying toward them through the sea of cars. One
inspector held a lunging German shepherd on a leash. They were one of the roving teams that walked the vehicle lanes sniffing
out drugs and illegal immigrants. They were jogging, hands on their blue caps.