He weighed the weapon in his hand, removed the magazine to verify that it was still loaded and tucked it inside the waistband of his slacks. His enemy had left one weapon empty, missed another, but they could not leap to the conclusion that he was unarmed. He had been carrying explosives at the rancho and he might have other lethal tricks in store for anyone who got too close. Despite his wounds and loss of blood, despite the distance he would have to travel and his loss of the machine gun, he was dangerous. This one would be dangerous until he died.

They were no more than sixty miles from home and yet Rivera felt the chasm widening, experienced the sense of distance that he always felt on entering the States. He was light-years removed from childhood in Nogales, running with the other homeless gutter rats who joined together for survival on the streets. As best Rivera knew, his mother was a prostitute who had been murdered by a gringo when her only son was eight years old. His father was a faceless shadow, never seen and seldom thought of. Rivera had survived without maternal or paternal care, and he had grown up hard, accustomed to the violence of the slums, where life was cheap and love was a commodity on sale.

At nine he had been picking pockets in Nogales, trusting in his size and speed until he grew proficient at the art, acquiring skill enough to dip the fattest wallet without ruffling its owner. Street gangs fought for territory, coveting the districts where the gringos came to spend their dollars, and before he was eleven, Rivera was a grizzled veteran of those wars. At twelve he killed a man — a boy, really, three years his senior — and ascended on the basis of his growing reputation to a leadership position in the gang he ran with. No longer forced to work the streets himself, he had instructed others in the art of picking pockets and began to cultivate a taste for certain minor luxuries.