American comic book: I, with my abundant martial virtue, love to do good to others.

Chapter 748 Executing the Mission

He paused, then pulled the curtains open a little wider to let more light in.

"It's precisely because certain parts of Mexico have become crime capitals that criminals flee there. It's a cause-and-effect relationship, not a question of who's right or wrong. We only have two options: either accept that they've escaped and the case ends there, or we go there ourselves."

Miles sat up straight in bed.

"We go there ourselves? But Drake just said—"

'

"Drake was referring to official channels," Lynn said, looking at him. "I didn't say we should go through official channels."

Carter frowned slightly.

"You want to enter the country secretly."

"I want to save him," Lynn said. "Wayne is still alive. He was in that car early this morning, and someone was feeding him his medication."

If we stop now to wait for diplomatic procedures, for the federal government and Mexico to reach an agreement, and for both sides to clarify their responsibilities and jurisdictions, he might already be dead. Not murdered, but because he ran out of medication, his heart stopped in a car parked in some unknown warehouse, and no one discovered it.

The room was very quiet.

A car started up in the parking lot; it was the vegetable delivery truck. The sound of its diesel engine was particularly loud in the early morning air, churning for more than ten seconds before slowly fading away.

"The federal government won't approve it," Carter said. "Under what status would you go? Special Agent credentials don't grant law enforcement authority in Mexico. If you're stopped there, the federal government will immediately distance itself from you, saying you were on a private mission and didn't represent the U.S. government."

"I know."

"You knew that, yet you still went?"

“I didn’t say I was going,” Lynn said. “I said I had to go.”

Carter stared at him for a long time.

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is that the latter isn't an option." Lynn walked back from the window, sat at the foot of the bed, and crossed his hands on his knees. "If Wayne were an ordinary person, perhaps we would stop, write reports, wait for approval, and then proceed. But Wayne isn't an ordinary person. His company's cooperative projects in the Federation involve military and energy industries, and the amount of information he possesses—I'm not saying he did it intentionally, but he's been exposed to far too much. If he's interrogated within Mexico, no matter what method is used, no matter how long he can hold out, something will eventually be uncovered. And once that information falls into the wrong hands..."

He didn't finish his sentence.

But Carter and Miles both understood.

"So we're not just going to rescue people," Miles said, his voice softening slightly. "We're going to prevent information leaks."

"Saving lives is itself a way of preventing information leaks," Lynn said. "The living can't speak. The dead can."

Carter paced back and forth by the bed for a couple of steps, then stopped, took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out, didn't light it, twirled it between his fingers a couple of times, and then put it back.

"What did Drake say? About the number of people."

Lynn picked up his phone and glanced at it. There were two unread messages, one from Drake and the other from an unknown number. He opened Drake's message first.

very short.

"It's been approved. A maximum of ten people. Not ten groups, but ten people in total. Including yourself."

"7

Lynn handed the phone to Carter. Carter glanced at it, and the downward curve of his lips deepened.

"Ten people." He handed the phone back to Lynn. "Ten people are going into Mexico to track down a criminal gang with at least three mutants. The gang itself probably has five or six people. We don't know how many people are in their contact group over there, which city they're going to, or whether they're working with local drug cartels."

Ten people go in, stand on completely unfamiliar territory, and face an opponent they don't fully understand. What's the difference between that and suicide?

"The difference is whether it's us or them who die." Lynn stood up, put his phone back in his pocket, and said, "I'll reply to a message first."

, 7

He walked out of the room and stood in the hallway.

The morning air was a bit better than inside, but the cloying scent of air freshener still lingered, seeping from the crack in the door of the next room and mingling with the fresh air outside. One of the motion-sensor lights at the end of the corridor went out, leaving two that cast a weak, pale yellow glow in the morning light.

He looked down at the second message.

Unknown number.

"I heard you're coming. Don't go through the official border crossing."

Lynn stared at the line of text for five seconds.

He replied, "Who are you?"

The other person replied very quickly, as if they were holding their phone and waiting for him to send this message: "The person who gave you the tablet."

Lynn's finger stopped at the top of the screen.

The motion-sensor light at the end of the corridor, which had been off, suddenly turned on again. Perhaps a cleaner came out of the stairwell, or perhaps the wind simply stirred something. The light shone from a distance, casting a long shadow that stretched all the way to the wall at the other end of the corridor.

He typed: "How did you know I was going over?"

"Because I'm over here. They're walking this way to me."

Lynn's heart skipped a beat.

Where are they?

"Reynolds. But they won't stay long. They're heading south to a place I haven't found out yet. If you enter from Texas, cross the bridge at McCarran, and get to Reynolds, you have about thirty hours left in the time window."

Lynn read the message three times.

Reynosa. Tamaulipas. South bank of the Grand River. A city infiltrated to the bone by drug cartels. The U.S. State Department's travel warning reads "High-risk area; U.S. citizens should avoid travel there," not because of natural disasters, but because of kidnappings, murders, and disappearances.

He typed: "How do you know all this?"

The other party's reply was a voice message, lasting only five seconds. Lynn put the phone to her ear.

The voice was very low, and the sound quality was poor due to encryption, like someone speaking through a thick pane of glass. But there was a strange sense of familiarity in the tone, as if I had heard it somewhere before, but I wasn't entirely sure.

"Because I've been following them. I've been following them since Long Island. But this can't be explained over the phone. Come over, let's talk in person."

Lynn stood in the hallway, the morning breeze blowing in from the window at the end, lifting and lowering the hem of his coat. He stared at the line on his phone screen, "Come over, let's talk in person." All the warnings about security, procedures, permissions, and consequences flashed red in his mind at the same time, but the image of Wayne with his head down, gray hair, wearing pajamas and no shoes was also in his mind, superimposed on the red lights, making it impossible to tell which was brighter.

He went back to his room.

Carter was standing by the window, and Miles was sitting on the bed. Both of them looked up at him at the same time.

"How do you plan to allocate Drake's ten men?" Carter asked.

Lynn stood in the doorway and closed it behind her. The sound of the door closing wasn't loud, but in the quiet little room, the "click" was as clear as a period.

"Six men came with me," he said. "Four men stayed on this side of the border for logistics and information support. Miles, you're with me on the front lines."

Miles nodded decisively, without any hesitation.

"Carter, you stay on this side of the border. You have more experience than any of us, and I need backup with someone making decisions from the rear."

"And—" Lynn glanced at him, "in case something happens to us here, we'll need someone outside to relay the message back."

Carter's fingers reached into his pocket again for the unlit cigarette.

"Where do you plan to enter the country from?"

"McCarran. Cross the bridge to Reynosa."

Carter's fingers paused for a moment.

"Renoza." He repeated the name without question, but then chewed the word in his mouth, tasting its inherently dangerous bitterness.

“Someone’s waiting for us over there,” Lynn said. “The guy who gave me the tablet. He said he’s been following Wayne’s car all the way from Long Island.”

"9

Miles suddenly looked up.

"What? They've been following them since Long Island? One person? Following three mutants?"

He said yes.

"You believe him?"

Lynn thought for a moment.

“I don’t completely believe it,” he said, “but he knows Wayne is in Reynosa, knows they’re heading south, and knows the window of opportunity is less than thirty hours. This information doesn’t contradict what I have so far.”

"So far," Carter emphasized those four words.

"Yes. So far." Lynn stood up, zipped his jacket up to his chest, and said, "We'll keep a low profile once we get there. We won't go into the city center, stay in hotels, or deal with any local officials. We'll find Wayne, bring him out, and return the way we came. If all goes well, it shouldn't take more than forty-eight hours."

"What if things don't go smoothly?"

Lynn didn't answer the question. He walked to the window and took one last look at the increasingly bright sunlight streaming into the parking lot.

A white pickup truck pulled up, loaded with bundles of barbed wire. The driver jumped out and shouted something in Spanish to the hotel reception. The words were unclear, but there was a rough, energetic quality in his tone, a trait of someone accustomed to getting up early.

"If it doesn't work out," Lynn turned around, "at least we tried."

Carter took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it this time. He walked to the other side of the window, opened it a crack, and exhaled the smoke through the gap. The wisp of bluish-gray smoke was dispersed by the wind in the morning light, as quickly as if it had never existed.

"I'll go and get more people," Carter said, his voice a little hoarse. "Give me six names. I'll keep the other four here."

"It's your choice," Lynn said. "Who stays and who goes is up to you. I only need Miles and me."

"Why me?" Miles asked.

"Because your Spanish is better than mine, because your reactions are faster than mine, because you haven't learned to choose conservatism when you should be taking risks." Lynn looked at him, her tone devoid of praise, merely stating a judgment, "But it's also because you're sometimes too impulsive. This time, I need you to promise me one thing."

"What?"

"When I say retreat, you must retreat. No matter what you see, no matter how far you think we are from catching them."

"I said let's leave, so you go."

Miles adjusted his glasses, and blinked twice behind the lenses.

"it is good."

"It's not that I don't trust you," Lynn said, "it's just that this time is different."

"How are they different?"

Lynn walked to the door and opened it. The motion-sensor lights in the corridor went out again, and the morning light streamed in from the window at the end, turning the entire corridor into a long, luminous tunnel. He stood in the doorway, half his face in the light and half in the shadow.

“This time it’s not on our turf,” he said. “This time it’s a place where nobody’s credentials matter. There, we’re not federal special agents; we’re just a few armed, English-speaking foreigners. If we die, nobody will hold a memorial service for us, nobody will carve our names on a wall. We’re just numbers on missing persons reports, like the tens of thousands who disappear in Mexico every year, counted in a statistic nobody really looks at.”

He paused for a moment.

"So I want to make sure everyone who goes in understands this."

The corridor fell silent.

Carter stubbed out his cigarette on the windowsill, Miles closed his laptop and placed it on the bedside table, and the two looked at Lynn. No one said, "I'm not going," and no one said, "We'll definitely succeed." The three men standing in this cheap motel room all knew perfectly well how foolish their next move was, and they all knew perfectly well how much they would regret it if they didn't.

"When do we leave?" Carter asked.

Lynn glanced at the time on her phone.

"This afternoon. I'll cross the border before sunset. I don't want to enter Reynosa at night."

He walked out of the room, stood in the hallway, and dialed Drake's number.

The phone rang three times, then I answered it.

"Have you chosen your people?" Drake's voice sounded even more tired than yesterday.

"It's settled. Six will go, and four will stay here."

"Send me the list. Also, Lynn."

"Um."

"What they mean is that if you are stopped in Mexico, the Federation will not recognize that you are on a mission. You will have to bear all the risks yourself."

Lynn stood at the window at the end of the corridor, looking out at the parking lot, which was bathed in sunlight. The white pickup truck had already unloaded its cargo, and the driver was sitting in the driver's seat eating a burrito, catching the crumbs with a tissue. He was so engrossed in his meal that he had no idea someone was watching him from the window.

"I know," Lynn said.

He hung up the phone.

Outside the window, the wind flipped the broad leaves of a palm tree, revealing the lighter-colored underside, which looked like an open fan in the sunlight. Further away, he could see the outline of a highway, with little traffic; occasionally a truck would pass by, kicking up a small cloud of dust. The highway ran south, all the way south, leading to where he was going that afternoon.

He put his hand in his pocket and felt for Gwen's apartment key. It wasn't his; it was the one she'd slipped into his coat pocket last time, which he'd forgotten to return. The metallic teeth pressed against his fingers, cool and slightly prickly.

He took the key out of his pocket, glanced at it, and then put it back.

Then he turned around and went back to his room to start packing his meager belongings.

They crossed the bridge as the sun began to set.