Left for Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

crossed theborder in search of the American dream, of making a better life for themselves and for their families. And every time he picked up people like that—people whose major crime was wanting to better themselves—he couldn’t help but feel guilty, because his family had come north for the same reason. As he rounded up dispirited border crossers and loaded them into buses to ship back home, Al felt guilty because, but for the grace of God, that could have been him. Or his brothers.
    Their grandfather had come to the States as part of the old bracero program. He had married a U.S. citizen and had become a naturalized citizen himself. Had it not been for Al’s father’s mother, Al himself wouldn’t be here, riding around in a Border Patrol vehicle and doing this job. As conflicted as he somehow felt about all this, he continued to remind himself on a daily basis that it was his job—something he was sworn to do, like it or not.
    Al had parked his vehicle on a dirt track on King’s Anvil Ranch. Now he walked away from the SUV to the arroyo just out of sight from where he had parked. He knew that illegals often trudged north in dry creek beds, keeping to the sandy washes in hopes of staying out of sight and avoiding apprehension. That was where Al was when he heard the sound of an engine turning over. The engine was followed by a moan of pain that made the hair on the back of Al’s neck stand on end. Drawing his weapon and crouching behind a clump of mesquite, he eased his way over to the edge of the wash. In the sand ten feet away, he saw what appeared to be the naked body of a woman lying faceup in the stream bed.
    He stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The sand surrounding the victim was smooth and undisturbed, as though she had been rolled down the bank and left there.
    In his months on the job, Al had seen his share of beating victims, but what he saw here went far beyond a mere beating. The woman’s body was bloodied, cut, and bruised. Someone had carved tic-tac-toe games into her skin. Her body was dotted with scabs that he was sure were cigarette burns. But the worst of her injuries looked as though they had been inflicted by someone wearing steel-toed boots while they kicked the hell out of her.
    The fact that she was bleeding told Al that she was still alive and her attackers hadn’t been gone long. He suspected they had heard his approaching vehicle, and that was what had sent them packing.
    Al was torn. It was possible that he could give chase and catch whoever had done this, but he knew that if he left the woman alone for very long, she might well die. That was when she moaned again. The agonizing sound galvanized him to action. He vaulted down the edge of the bank, dropping down beside her. She must have heard him land. Her eyes blinked open.
    “Water,” she whispered. “Water, please.”
    Not agua, he noticed. Not por favor. “Water, please,” in English.
    “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll be right back,” He raced back to his vehicle, radioing for help as he went. He had no idea who her assailants were, which direction they were going, or what kind of vehicle they were driving, but he did the best he could.
    “How bad is she hurt?” the dispatch operator wanted to know.
    Al thought about the catalog of bloody bruises, cuts, and burns. “Looks to me like someone tortured her first,” he said. “Then they threw her down in the sand and kicked hell out of her.”
    “Survivable?” the dispatcher asked.
    “I don’t know,’ he said. “She’s hurt real bad.”
    “Ambulance or helicopter?” the operator asked. “Your call.”
    As a taxpayer, Al knew that each and every airlift of an undocumented—and, as a consequence, uninsured—alien was coming out of the pockets of legal Arizona residents at a rate of fifty thousand dollars a pop. Still, he didn’t think the woman would live long enough for a regular ambulance to arrive, to say nothing of driving