Somewhere on the coastal highway, they realized they had no idea where they were going. Mohammed wanted to meet a certain woman in San Francisco, but she wasn’t available for a week. To kill time, they decided to go to Tijuana. Neither of them had ever been to Mexico before. Far from being nervous, they made jokes about buying $15 car insurance and driving to Chile. Blake and Mohammed both considered it seriously, jokes aside, but Blake had promised Mohammed’s mother that he would return her son in time for the Fall semester. Mohammed, for his part, had painstakingly learned how to keep a job. The trick was showing up to work every day.

  The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1993, attracted a lot of business to the Mexican border region, including Tijuana, Mexicali, Juarez, and Laredo. There, companies could access cheap Mexican labor and rich US markets. The border itself provided opportunities for arbitrage. Populations exploded as migrants converged on the factories in search of work. Since NAFTA exempted international companies from many tariffs and taxes, border cities had no services to offer these new populations. Local police and intelligence forces could not counter the rise of powerful drug gangs. In fact, they became seriously corrupt.

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  Drug traffickers also used the border to make a profit: they produced cocaine, heroin, and amphetamine in South America, then transported their wares to the cities of the United States, where prices were much higher. The USA had declared a War on Drugs in 1971, and this war escalated continually throughout the 80s and 90s. In the 21st century, drug traffickers salvaged tactics and equipment from international intelligence services. They used night vision goggles, submarines, stock markets, and corporate franchising. In general, heroin moved from the Middle East, while cocaine moved from South America. Both commodities were sold mainly in Europe and the United States.

  Blake and Mohammed used a popular app to rent a room in a private home. They parked Lil Ol Blue in a lot and crossed the border on foot. They ate fish tacos. They went to a bar and sat on a balcony above the street drinking beer and watching punks and tourists. At 1 am, their hostess got nervous and called them, so they got a taxi and went to bed. It seemed like a decent town, but her paranoia infected them suddenly.

  In the morning, Blake bought a handwoven blanket of turquoise wool. He joked about going to Zona Norte, the red light district. They recrossed the border without any trouble, passing through a fortified office where American citizens used an express lane.