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fallen, and he glanced out the window at the darkness
rushing past before he thumbed the button to answer the call.
    "Carranza."
    "How did it go, amigo?"
    The voice on the other end of the satellite transmission was
a deep, familiar purr. The tone of the question was friendly, with nothing even remotely threatening about it, but Ramiro
Carranza felt a chill go through him, anyway. The same chill
he felt every time he talked to this man.

    "Perfectly," he said. "The president was so eager to save
face that she accepted my suggestion without the least hesitation. By the time we reached San Antonio, I halfway expected
her to claim that she had come up with the idea."
    "And Alvarez and the members of the City Council?"
    "They could not agree fast enough. A great many illegals
have managed to get registered to vote, not to mention all the
first- and second-generation immigrants who still think of
themselves more as Mexicans than Americans. You should
have seen them turned out along the route of the motorcade,
holding up signs and waving Mexican flags. It would have
done your heart good, General."
    The voice on the phone hardened. "What will do my heart
good is to see our land returned to us. They call the Alamo the
cradle of Texas liberty. Bah! The cradle of theft and oppression is more like it. But soon, amigo, soon all that will
change"
    "Of course," Carranza agreed. He had no choice but to
agree. His son was a hopeless drug addict who, in a stupor,
had murdered the whore who brought him the drugs. General
Salgado knew about that and had, in fact, helped to cover up
the whole sordid affair. If the knowledge of what had happened ever became public, Carranza's career would be over.
So whatever the general wanted, Carranza would do everything in his power to accomplish.
    "Soon," Salgado continued, "we will take the first step in
recovering what is our own. And all it took were a couple of
minor incidents to scare the Americans into cooperating.
Those people's cojones shriveled up and dropped off long ago,
eh, amigo?"
    Carranza laughed. The general didn't really need to black mail him into embarrassing the Americans. He was glad to do
that on his own. Even in their weakened state, brought on by
years of cancerous liberal rot from within, the arrogance of
the norteamericanos was still astonishing. They deserved to
be brought down a few notches, and men such as Carranza
and General Salgado were just the hombres to do it.

    The general's voice became more solemn as he went on.
"You have done your part. Ambassador. Now, leave the rest
tome""
    "If there is anything else I can do. .
:
    "Just know that soon you will bask in the thanks of the
Mexican people as we are restored to our former glory. No
quarter!"
    "No quarter," Carranza echoed. The famous decree by General Santa Anna when he declared that all the Texican defenders of the Alamo would be put to the sword.
    Carranza broke the connection and slipped the phone back
into his pocket. The jet droned on into the darkness.
    In the mountaintop villa outside Mexico City, General Augusto Lopez Montemayor de Salgado set the satellite phone
aside and looked down at the whore whose head was bobbing
up and down over his naked lap. He enjoyed conducting business on the phone while being serviced like this. It gave him
a chance to practice the iron control he exerted on himself. A
man could not hope to control others if he could not control
himself.
    A stocky man with thick dark hair, a mustache, and a small
patch of beard on his chin, Salgado had risen through the
ranks to become one of the leading officers in the Mexican
army. Simply put, that meant he was better at extorting bribes,
strong-arming those weaker than him, and ruthlessly eliminating anyone who got in his way than his competitors were.

    Since life was a serious matter, he seldom smiled, but he
did now. Carranza had delivered good, albeit not unexpected,
news. The Americans were going to