âDepartment of Homeland Security. Come out with your hands up!â
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. âTracy? Tracy, are you there?â
âYeah, Iâm here. Jesus, he just blew himself up. Must have been a grenade or a bomb or something, I donât know. But heâs gone and he took any evidence we might have found with him.
âYou need to get out of there. Iâm 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 quietlyâwe canât tip them off or they might launch early. Brief everyone there on keeping the press out of this for nowâwe donât want to cause a panic,â Kate said.
Before Kate disconnected she heard Nate say, âHey, that isnât too far from here, maybe about fifteen minutes southwest.â
I hope thatâs quick enough, Kate thought.
As she crossed the border from Mexico to the United States in the dead quiet of a suffocating July night, Consuelo Maria Jimenez didnât 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 hazardous 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 cityâs factories, or joining one of the regional drug cartels, with all of the risk, violence and death that entailed.
Consueloâs 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 persistenceâalong with the money she had wired each monthâhad 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 coyoteâone 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 Consueloâs 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 townsâToluca, León, Mazatlán, Torreán, Chihuahuaâstaying 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 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 sisterâs family was about to begin.