something that takes my breath away.
It’s a drawing Alex made when he was in first grade: two stick figures, a boy and a woman, both wearing giant spacesuits, floating in the starry night sky. His teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, had written in blue marker in block letters at the bottom: “When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut, so I can go to outer space with Mommy.”
Reading those words feels like a knife straight to the heart.
For so many months now, I’ve mourned the life that Alex had been leading in the present. I’ve barely thought about the one he was going to lead—in the future.
His dreams of being an astronaut may have been a childhood fantasy, but his future had been very real. He’d been spending time with girls. He’d started talking about college. He was going to have a career someday. A home, a wife. Children of his own. Alex would have reached the stars like he wanted to—in his own way, on his own terms—if only he’d had the chance.
I clutch the drawing to my chest and collapse onto the floor, letting this profound new wave of grief wash over me.
And I stay there. Paralyzed. Minutes ticking by. Tears streaming down my cheeks.
Oh, Alex. My baby. Will this pain ever go away?
I know the chicken is still cooking in the oven and my family is on their way. I know I can’t lie here forever. Maybe just a little bit longer…
When I hear something outside—a vehicle pulling up in front of the farmhouse.
I look at my watch. It’s early yet. The guests aren’t supposed to be arriving for quite some time. Who could it be? I force myself, finally, to get up.
I walk over to the attic window and peer down. The sun is setting, and the vehicle is hard to make out. A few people exit. But I can’t tell who they are.
It must be Stevie and Hank and their wives. Right?
Who else could it be?
3 minutes, 20 seconds
“This is the FBI!”
Mason is crouching behind the hood of a giant Lenco BearCat armored personnel carrier, talking into the 150-decibel speaker system mounted on its roof. He’s raising his voice, but Mason could whisper and his words would still echo across this dark, quiet, sweltering slice of Texas for a quarter mile.
“Your property is surrounded by armed federal agents!”
That’s putting it lightly.
Before beginning his callout, SWAT Agent Taylor received confirmation from all his team leaders—and passed it along to Mason—that each group had taken their positions along the four sides of the property.
“We are in possession of a search warrant for the premises and arrest warrants for all individuals on site!”
As the agents had approached, the power had also been cut to the farm—but to Mason’s surprise, that didn’t make much difference. The lights inside the main farmhouse went out, then flickered back on a few seconds later: diesel generators, most likely.
“This is your one and only warning! Come out peacefully, with your hands interlaced on top of your—”
“Sir, take a look at this!” whispers Agent Norris Carey, the burly thirty-nine-year-old leader of the primary tac team closest to Mason and Taylor.
He shows them an LCD screen, a live feed of a thermal camera sweeping the acres in front of them. The land is scattered with prickly bushes and stumpy trees—many of which seem to be giving off glowing orbs of white-hot heat.
“What in the hell am I looking at?” asks Taylor, confused and alarmed.
“I…I just don’t know,” Carey responds. “Trees and shrubs, they don’t give off this kinda heat signature. Teams at every position are seeing the same thing.”
Mason immediately knows what’s happening—and snorts in displeasure.
“Damn, are these smart sons of bitches.…”
He had witnessed this simple but effective defensive technique used just once before: on the sprawling estate of a Mexican drug lord outside Ciudad Juárez while taking part in a joint U.S.–Mexico strike-force assignment. He’d never seen it stateside.
“Heat lamps,” Mason explains. “Trying to thwart our thermal scopes. Gotta be wired to the generators, kicked in automatically as soon as they did. To hide the heat signature of any gunmen who might be hidden in the foliage.”
“Christ almighty,” Taylor says under his breath. He quickly counts up the number of heat orbs he sees on the screen. “So there could be twelve concealed shooters on our perimeter alone?”
“Or none at all,” Mason replies. “But they know we’ll have to check and clear each one. Slows us down more than coating the grass with tar.”
Mason