Aim and Fire

“Department of Homeland Security.

Come out with your hands up!”

The shout was cut off by an explosion that made Kate snatch her earpiece off her head, gasping in shock. As she watched the satellite image, the sedan erupted in a glowing, gold ball of flame, forcing everyone to retreat. Kate inserted the earpiece again. “Tracy? Tracy, are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Jesus, he just blew himself up. Must have been a grenade or a bomb or something, I don’t know. But he’s gone and he took any evidence we might have found with him.

“You need to get out of there. I’m downloading an address and directions from your location right now. Try to coordinate the Border Patrol and any other DHS agents in the area if you can, but go in quietly—we can’t tip them off or they might launch early. Brief everyone there on keeping the press out of this for now—we don’t want to cause a panic,” Kate said.

Before Kate disconnected she heard Nate say,

“Hey, that isn’t too far from here, maybe about fifteen minutes southwest.”

I hope that’s quick enough, Kate thought.

Other title[s] in this series:

®

®

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

Special thanks and acknowledgment to

Jonathan Morgan for his contribution to this work.

As she crossed the border from Mexico to the United States in the dead quiet of a suffocating July night, Consuelo Maria Jimenez didn’t thrill to the possibility of beginning a new life, but instead felt the intense dread of entering a strange land. She shifted to a less painful position in the back of the stifling panel truck, filled to bursting with other illegal immigrants and lit only by the shaky glow of a few scattered flashlights. Her gaze alighted on her two children, and as she stared at their wary faces, she wondered again if this haz-ardous journey into an unknown future was the right choice.

The decision to leave her homeland had been the easiest part. Years of slow, insidious death by corruption from the Mexican government had choked the life out of hundreds of small villages across the country, including her home of San Pedro Canon, forty miles west of Oaxaca de Juárez.

The only choices for jobs were either menial work for barely living wages in the city’s factories, or joining one of the regional drug cartels, with all of the risk, violence and death that entailed.

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Consuelo’s sister, who had settled in the U.S. several years ago, had been persuading her to head north and make a new life in America. She had written of the possibilities in Wisconsin, where she and her family had settled, and her persistence—along with the money she had wired each month—had just about convinced Consuelo. The last straw had been when her husband had left without a word, leaving no trace or contact information for her to follow.

With two children to support, one look in their eyes was enough to make up her mind.

The trip so far had been long and difficult. She had heard horror stories from the relatives of those who had gone over, being left to die in a trailer or back of a truck, getting lost and suffering an agonizing death by thirst in the desert, being raped or sold into sexual slavery. Consuelo had asked her sister to find a reasonably reliable coyote—one of the men who made their living transporting people across the border. When the same name came up three times by other immigrants, Consuelo knew she had found the right person.

With help from her sister, she paid the fee of two thousand dollars apiece for herself and her two children, more money than she had ever seen in her life. They had left San Pedro Canon late one afternoon, the tears in Consuelo’s eyes at leaving her home rapidly drying in the desert heat. From there they had traveled steadily north for two weeks through a dizzying array of cities and towns—

Toluca, León, Mazatlán, Torreán, Chihuahua—staying in dingy rooms in small, crumbling motels, crammed with a dozen other people into shacks in festering slums and once even spending the night in the backseat of a car, sleepless, hungry and thirsty the entire time.

But at long last, their journey would soon come to an Aim and Fire

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end. While crossing the Rio Grande the night before, they had dodged the Border Patrol, which had made a large bust at their planned crossing site, the bright lights and the dark green vehicles forming an ominous cordon on the American side of the border. Instead of canceling the attempt, their guides had simply shifted the crossing point a few miles farther east. Now, about thirty miles outside of the notorious border city of Ciudad Juárez, their long trip out of Mexico was ending, and the journey through America to her sister’s family was about to begin.

Still, Consuelo worried about their chances of making it at every moment, what with the increased border patrols and unmanned observation aircraft she had heard the coyotes discussing. The thought of someone watching her, unseen from thousands of feet in the air, made her shudder.

The men guiding them had insisted there would be no trouble at all, that “it had all been taken care of.” But their furtive glances and whispered conversations to each other did little to reassure her.

“Are we almost there?” her oldest, Esteban, asked, his dark brown eyes shadowed with worry.

“Yes, sweetheart. Drink some more water.” As Consuelo looked at her son, she felt a flush of pride. As if they had sensed the importance of what was happening, both of her children had been very good during the prolonged trip, hardly complaining at all and listening to her with unusual patience. Even when they had first boarded the truck, Esteban had staked out a seat on the metal wheel well for his mother. Consuelo had promised herself that one of the first things she would do once they reached their new home of Milwaukee—such a strange name for a city—she would take them to the largest store she could find and let them each pick out one toy apiece as a reward for their good behavior.

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Gently shifting her daughter, Silvia, asleep on her lap, to a more comfortable position, Consuelo wiped sweat from her forehead and glanced around at the rest of the people crossing the border. The truck held a mixture of men and women from across Central America—from fellow Mexicans to those from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and other places, all looking for a new life.

But sitting at the front of the truck were three men who looked markedly different from the others, and whose intense gazes made her flesh crawl. Whereas no one else carried anything with them save the clothes on their backs and perhaps a bit of food and water, the three bearded men had brought a large crate, roughly two and a half yards long. They always stayed close to it, hauling it across the border and through the desert without a word of com-plaint.

Although the box had attracted curious looks from several people in the back of the truck, no one had asked the trio about it, since they didn’t speak to anyone save one another, and then in a melodic language that Consuelo couldn’t understand. The only potential trouble had come when everyone had entered the truck for the last leg of the trip. One of the Mexican men had tried to sit on the box, but had been ushered away by one of the three men with a determined shake of his head and violent hand gestures.

Whoever they were, Consuelo was certain they weren’t from anywhere in Central America. She wondered why they were traveling this way, but the idle thought passed quickly, replaced by more pressing matters—like the wail of a siren that suddenly pierced the walls of the truck. Her heart sinking, Consuelo knew what that sound meant—

they had been caught by the Border Patrol. The truck lurched forward, everyone in the back swaying with the Aim and Fire

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sudden motion, but a cooler head must have prevailed in the cab, for they started to slow down.

Conversation throughout the truck stopped, and all eyes turned toward the large metal door at the back. Several men uttered quiet oaths, but most of the people around her looked resigned to their fate. As Consuelo shook her daughter awake, her eyes strayed to the three men at the front of the truck. They were clustered together, two of them with their backs to the rest of the group. She heard a strange metallic clicking sound, then two of them turned and stood in front of the crate, while the third pushed his way to the rear of the vehicle, his hand resting against the colorful tail of his loose-fitting shirt.

The truck stopped, and the engine died. A loud voice outside called out in Spanish. “Attention, everyone inside the truck. This is the United States Customs and Border Protection. When the door is opened, you will file out one at a time, keeping your hands in plain sight, and kneel at the side of the road in a single line.”

Consuelo’s son exchanged a troubled glance with her.

“What should we do, Mama?”

“Listen to the men, and do as they say. If we are sent back, we will try to find another way across,” she replied.

She had no idea how they would manage another crossing.

It would be months before her sister could send the money to try again, and who knew what might happen to them in the meantime?

A metal rattle echoed through the cargo bay, and the segmented door was pushed up, revealing the bright headlights of a white SUV illuminating the men and women packed into the truck. An agent stood a few feet away from the back of the truck, one hand hovering above his holstered pistol. “Step out of the truck one at a time and take 12

your place over here. Kneel on the ground, cross your legs at the ankles and keep your hands in plain sight,” the agent commanded.

Blinking in the sudden bright light, the men and women jumped down to the dirt road and lined up as directed. As the first bearded man stepped off the truck bed, the Border Patrol agent’s eyes narrowed. “Hold it—” The bearded man pulled a compact pistol out from underneath his shirt and fired, spraying several rounds at the agent, hitting him more than once and shattering one of the SUV’s headlights.

As Consuelo watched in horror, the agent fell to the ground and slowly tried to draw his pistol. The man stepped over him and fired once at the agent’s head, stilling him.

The group of immigrants burst into panicked motion, those still inside the truck jumping out while others on the road scattered into the darkness. The gunman continued firing, mowing down several fleeing people. Grabbing Esteban’s hand, Consuelo lurched toward the open back as she heard another strange metallic clatter behind her, then the deafening sound of some kind of terrible weapon.

“Run, Esteban!” she shouted. Pulling her son along, she scrambled toward the open door. Around her, men and women died in their tracks, bullets from the chattering, deadly weapons punching through their bodies. Shouts and screams were heard both inside and out, and Consuelo realized one of the voices was her own, shrieking in dazed terror. One arm was wrapped tightly around her daughter, and her other hand clutched Esteban’s fingers in a death grip.

And suddenly, they were at the door, miraculously un-scathed. Consuelo didn’t stop, but leaped out of the truck, dragging Esteban behind her. She fell hard, landing on her knees, right beside the body of the Border Patrol agent who had collapsed against the side of the truck. The woman’s Aim and Fire

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oozing blood stained her uniform black in the bright lights and heat. Around her, the three foreign men methodically killed everyone in sight. The first one now stood on the patrol vehicle’s hood, shooting anyone who moved. Bodies were strewed everywhere, cut down as they tried to escape.

Sucking in a breath of hot night air, Consuelo staggered to her feet, helped by Esteban, who was now tugging on her.

“Hurry, Mama, hurry!” She let him pull her into the darkness, stumbling past yucca plants and Amargosa bushes.

She saw a thick cluster of
guajillo
a few yards away, and knew if they reached the thicket, they might be safe.