Hector crouched beside an air-conditioning unit, trying to think. His heart was still pounding from his encounter with the mercenary. Who knows how many others there might be? In the mountains I always saw the hunters in groups. Never alone.

He studied his surroundings with a new burst of caution. I can’t let that happen again- I might not be so lucky next time. He could still hardly believe that he had survived an armed assassin’s attack.

Around him was a jumble of rickety houses, brick buildings, small shacks, and piles of junk, crammed so close together as to be nearly touching. The ground rose ahead of him, away from the main street. May as well keep going forward.

Advancing through the tightly-packed grid of structures was simple enough- he stuck to alleys as much as possible and when he had to cross a road, he did it quickly, hiding his face and not meeting anyone’s eyes. Yet the feeling that he was being followed was constant. As he looked behind himself for the fifth time, he saw something flit out of vision behind a large brick building.

Hector froze. His hand found the cold steel grip of the pistol he had taken- or rather, his hand tried to find the cold steel grip of the pistol he had taken. Instead, it found his pants pocket and a whole lot of empty air. The gun was not there.

Great. Now what?

Hector looked around frantically. It must have fallen out of my pocket without me noticing. Somehow, though, that seemed unlikely- pistols are not the easiest things to lose, and Hector suspected that he would have noticed if it had simply fallen out of his pocket. (In fact, he had set the pistol down when he had rested at the AC unit, but Hector had better [perhaps worse?] things to worry about and so he didn’t remember this at all. Namely, more important were the facts that (1) he was being chased by mercenaries who were out to kill him, (2) he was only armed with a super-compact collapsible bolt-action sniper rifle which was currently unloaded and stuffed into his backpack, and (3) super-compact collapsible bolt-action sniper rifles are not very useful in close-quarters urban combat, especially when unloaded and stuffed into large backpacks.)

While Hector was busy not remembering where the pistol had gone, he also failed to notice the pattering noise of feet on the roof of a nearby building and failed to see an armed man duck behind a chimney. He failed to notice these things because they were not actually there- instead, the aforementioned man was on the ground, poking his head and his rifle out from another alleyway.

If that was confusing, I do not apologize, as that was the point. Deal with it. Read it again, maybe.

Hector glimpsed the man aiming at him and ducked into a narrow gap between two buildings. Drat. Now they’re actually showing themselves. That means they know I’m unarmed. Circumstances were degrading faster than an oil tanker on fire.

So Hector ran. He ran and ran and ran. Then he decided why not run some more? Dog kept up easily, acting as if they were going on a nice, relaxing walk through a park instead of hurtling down various backstreets while pursued by hired assassins. The truth was that, apart from the one man he had just seen, Hector couldn’t be sure that there were any more hunters. Maybe it’s just that guy and the kid I knocked out earlier. Maybe there’s just one more guy after me. Somehow, he doubted it, though. Flores was notorious for the fact that when he wanted something, he usually spared no expense to get it. Drug lords are like that sometimes.

Suddenly, Hector skidded to a stop. He had run almost directly into the towering wall of the US-Mexico border. About a hundred yards to his right was a gap in the wall. He might not have noticed this gap had it not been packed end-to-end with people trying to get into America.

He was almost there. Almost to safety. If I can really just walk across… Without being noticed… Well, surely they won’t let the assassins through if they’re visibly armed, and then I’ll be safe. For the time being, at least. What he would do if he safely arrived in the States, he had no idea. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now to get to the border gate without being seen.

That particular task didn’t seem too difficult. The cluster of houses and other buildings ran right up to the wall, so it’d be easy enough to take cover. He looked over his shoulder. There were a few people milling about on their porches and one man throwing something large into a dumpster, but no one seemed to notice him, and no one was carrying a weapon. Even so, there was no time to lose. Hector looked at Dog, who was staring longingly after a stray cat that had disappeared into some building.

“You ready?”

Dog didn’t answer, at least not verbally. Members of his race generally didn’t. Instead, he turned his slobbering maws in Hector’s direction and slurped his leg with glee.

“I take that as a yes.”

The two companions set off at a hard pace. Hector was tired, yes, but with safety in sight, his weariness seemed to slide sulkily off into a closet. Which was fine with him.

As they approached the multitudes of Hispanic immigrants, Hector slowed. He peered into the crowd and then at the surrounding area, searching for anyone who could possibly be an enemy.

There were no hunters, at least not as far as Hector could see.

He stepped into the horde of people, apologizing his way through the masses until he thought he was roughly in the center of the crowd, and hopefully hidden from anyone without a bird’s-eye view.

The sea of yelling men, jabbering women, and bawling children slowly swept forward in an undulating motion, sometimes going twenty feet forward only to retreat fifteen feet. It looks like I’ll be waiting here for a while. Try as he might, it was nearly impossible to push past the people in front of him. Some of them had been standing here for five hours and by Jove, they weren’t going to let any hobo with his dog get ahead of them.

Hector’s agitation increased as he stood there, slowly at first, but then it ramped up and had anyone been there to record or measure it, it would have humiliated exponential growth. He glanced around nervously. How long will I have to stay here? What if they’re looking for me in the crowd? Do they know I’m here?

His question was answered by a “thop” sound as a bullet from a silenced weapon whizzed over his head. Chaos broke loose.

The bullet had evidently hit someone- someone else, Hector noted with a guilty sense of relief- and the huge crowd burst into a screaming mass of people, all trying to go everywhere at once. Hector dropped into a low crouch and barreled forward, Dog close behind. Now’s my chance. The bullet had missed, and this had inadvertently helped Hector’s escape. The crowd was easy to press through- most people were crouching in terror or running madly in no definite direction with no clear purpose.

Up ahead, Hector could make out three border guards in blue, frantically searching for the shooter. They all carried rifles, but two of the three looked as if they’d never used them before and had no idea how to. Some guards. Hector took a deep breath. Here goes everything. And then he ran past them as fast as his legs could cover ground.

He was in America.