Table Of Content“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:
THE POWERS THAT BE
OUT OF TIME
AIM AND FIRE
®
A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM
®
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 im-
migrants 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.
8 CLIFF RYDER
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. Con-
suelo had asked her sister to find a reasonably reliable
coyote—one of the men who made their living transport-
ing 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 9
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 Ameri-
can 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.
