What interested Rivera most, however, was the blood. Great blotches of it soaked into the cushions of the driver's seat, eliminating any notion that his enemy had slipped away unscathed. Someone had tagged the bastard, and the gunner would receive a bonus if Rivera could identify him. If he was alive.

He had already lost nine men, and while their lives meant nothing to Rivera in the abstract, he considered it a loss of face, a personal affront that must be rectified with blood. A man in his position must not let himself be vulnerable. He must have the wherewithal to stand against an army of his enemies. Humiliation by a single man would be unthinkable, the end of everything that he had worked for all these years.

But now his enemy was wounded and on foot. He had already lost a lot of blood, and every step would cost him more. He might already be delirious from pain and shock, condemned to wander aimlessly until the deadly sun finished him. The desert would kill the gringo, given time... but Rivera knew that he could not afford to wait.

He straightened and scanned the dark sandy wastes on each side of the highway, hoping against hope that he might see the bastard, spot his lurching shadow or the huddled corpse he would eventually become. The empty landscape mocked him, its mute rejoinder spelling out what he already knew: that they were dealing with no ordinary man.

This one was special, certainly. No ordinary man had cracked Rivera's security, blown his merchandise sky-high and eliminated nine of his most trusted soldiers before escaping in his Mercedes. It required a special man to drive away — and then to walk away — despite his wounds, the shock and loss of blood. He might not last a mile on foot, but while he lived, he was a mortal threat to everything Rivera owned, the empire he had created. While the intruder survived, Rivera was a man on borrowed time.