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news crew had been present to tape the ceremony. Would they play footage of Sloan speeding away? And would CNN get ahold of it? Should that happen, Sloan would be held up to ridicule, and that would reflect on the president.
    That was what Sloan was thinking as the fisherman reduced power, the boat slid in through light surf, and Brody fished a wad of money out of his pocket. “Here,” he said, as he gave the fisherman a fifty.
“Muchas gracias.”
    If the fisherman was grateful, there was no sign of it on his sun-darkened face as he killed the engine. Sloan heard a whining noise as the prop left the water and the bow slid up onto the wet sand. A gang of boys ran out to steady it. “Let’s haul ass!” Brody said as he vaulted over the side. “If a wave comes, there’s no telling how far inland it will go.”
    Sloan jumped over the side and followed Brady up the mostly empty beach. The big man was nearly out of breath by the time they made it to the street. A black SUV was waiting for them twenty feet away from a dilapidated taco stand.
    Had Sloan been the Secretary of State, the vehicle would have been guarded by a team of people from the Diplomatic Security Service. But the Secretary of Energy didn’t rate that kind of protection—so Brody had been forced to hire a vehicle and driver from the local limo company. It had tinted windows and was extremely shiny. “Stay back,” Brody instructed, as he slipped a hand into his jacket.
    As Brody went to inspect the vehicle, Sloan took a moment to scan his surroundings. Tampico had been a burgeoning tourist town a few years earlier. But that was before two drug cartels began to fight over it. Citizens were assassinated in broad daylight, grenades were thrown into crowded bars, and the population of three hundred thousand lived in fear
    Sloan turned just as Brody pulled the SUV’s back door open and was thrown backwards by a blast from a shotgun. Brody’s body hit the street with a thump, and he lay there staring sightlessly into the sun. Sloan stood frozen in place as a man with long blackhair got out of the SUV. He was dressed in a neon-pink shirt, black trousers, and silver-toed cowboy boots. A pair of empty shell casings popped out of the double-barreled weapon and fell to the ground as he broke the shotgun open.
“Buenos días, Señor Sloan,”
the man said conversationally. “Get in the truck.”
    The bastard knew his name! It was a kidnapping then . . . What would a high-ranking American official be worth? Nothing really, since the government wouldn’t pay, but maybe the Tampico cowboy wasn’t aware of that. Or maybe he knew and didn’t believe it.
    All of that flashed through Sloan’s mind, followed by the impulse to run. He circled the SUV in an attempt to use it for cover. Then he took off. Thanks to the adrenaline in Sloan’s bloodstream, plus the fact that he was a competitive runner, he got off to a fast start. His goal was to put as much distance between himself and the man with the shotgun as he could. Maybe the Tampico cowboy would hold his fire. After all, what good is a dead hostage? Unless . . .
    Sloan felt the pellets strike his back a fraction of a second before he heard the BOOM. He stumbled, caught his balance, and continued to run. Sloan had grown up on a farm in Nebraska and, like all farm boys, knew a thing or two about shotguns. The fact that the man in the pink shirt was firing birdshot, rather than buckshot, meant he had a chance. Especially after sixty feet or so, when the spread produced by the short-barreled weapon would grow even wider.
    As if to prove that point, the cowboy fired again—and if any of the shotgun pellets struck Sloan, he didn’t feel them. He was running west on the Avenida Álvaro Obregón. The thoroughfare consisted of two lanes divided by a median. Shabby stores lined both sides of the street where they