He cranked the ignition. The car give a little shake as the engine turned over.

A tremendous eruption roared in a firestorm out of the car’s engine, then out of the chassis. It happened so fast that Janet later had a sense of first seeing it happen, then feeling the shock waves and then, with a disconnect of several seconds, hearing it.

The explosion knocked Janet backward and sent her sprawling. She whacked her face and arms hard on the hot asphalt.

The car flew up into the air and into the driving lanes of the parking lot, rocking the cars parked in front of it and behind it and setting them on fire.

Stones, mortar, and brick cascaded off the walls of the hotel and tumbled down into the street near Janet, almost burying her.

Her entire world was suddenly immersed in a silence punctuated by a profound ringing. She felt nothing, knew nothing.

Then it came to her that she was lying down on the sidewalk. Smoke billowed and flames raged from the wreckage of the car. There was something wet all over her, which she quickly realized was her own blood.

An excruciating pain throbbed through the silence. Her vision blurred. Mentally and physically, she was in shock. Prone, she moved her hands, which seemed like someone else’s. She saw that all that remained of the auto in front of her was wheels and a chassis. The rest of it burned before her, the body of the young man she loved within it.

She blinked. There was hot sticky blood in her eyes. Everything in her vision had a reddish tint. Words and ideas formed in slow motion, but they formed anyway. Carlos is dead, and in a few seconds I will be too.

Good thing, she thought as an excruciating pain shot through her head. At least we’ll die together.

Things went very white, and then completely black.

In a quiet wing within the main building of the United States Department of Treasury in Washington, DC, Alexandra LaDuca leaned forward at her desk. On the screen of her main computer, Alex studied the final anatomy of a case she had plunged herself into upon her return from Spain two months earlier.

Ray Medina’s clients had been his wealthy friends. He had promised them twelve percent on their investments; then, using the old technique of underselling his abilities, he had produced K-1 tax forms showing returns of twenty percent.

But Medina had also been battling a serious liver infection. His health had declined to such a degree that he had taken his wife and children to the mountain home he was having built in Aspen. He needed time to convalesce.

Medina’s clients grew worried. So while he was away, several clients exercised a remote clause in their agreement with him that granted them access to Medina’s office should he become incapacitated. A few hours later, the investors were phoning their friends. Office records showed that there was hardly any money in the brokerage accounts. Other accounts didn’t exist. The K-1 tax forms Medina had been providing them for years were forgeries.

Two days ago, Medina had pleaded guilty to fifteen counts of theft, securities fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and forgery. He had been sentenced to sixteen years and eight months in the Arizona state prison system, plus a restitution order of nine million dollars.

Through a default judgment in the civil case, which Alex had helped arrange, some of the victimized clients had reclaimed just over three million dollars of their missing funds.

Another “mini-Madoff,” as these schemes had come to be known. With the downturn of the world economy in the first decade of the twenty-first century, there was no shortage of them. These cases were starting to depress her. She was bored to tears of white-collar frauds, mini-Ponzi schemes, and their slick-as-oil perpetrators.

A phrase came to mind from the old Woody Guthrie ballad about Pretty Boy Floyd:

Some will rob you with a six-gun,

others with a fountain pen…

She was glad she had been able to help some of these people recover some of their retirement savings from one of the fountain-pen thieves.

Enough!

She sighed. She glanced at the time at the bottom right corner of her computer screen. It was past 6:00 p.m. For today, she was more than ready to blow out of the joint.

She logged out of both computers on her desk. She was conscious of the weapon on her right hip. She was overdue at the firing range and always needed to stay sharp, just in case. Not everyone she went up against robbed with a fountain pen, and increasingly she found the other type of criminal a more exciting challenge. So she wore her firearm everywhere now. There was no reason not to.

Recently, she had gone over to a new weapon for personal protection: a Glock 26, better known as the “Baby Glock.” The weapon was a snub-nosed automatic that carried ten rounds. It had been developed for ease in concealing and accuracy in firing. Alex had acquired it when she returned from Spain. It fit her hand nicely and on her right hip just as well. She appreciated the perfect match.

Now if she could only get to use it…

Shortly before dawn the next day, in southern Ontario, a blue Volvo pulled to a stop on the road that led to the official entry point into the United States. Out stepped a Syrian named Nagib, a large bulky man, about six-four when standing. His boots crunched on the thin layer of packed snow on the edge of the roadway. Winter had come early to the region just north of the border, twenty miles east of Buffalo; then again, it often did.

Nagib looked at his driver, then over his shoulder at the southern embankment of the highway. It first sank lower than the road, then led up into a stand of trees that veered into deeper woods. He scanned the area for several seconds. He saw no one and neither did his driver. The location was quiet in the dim gray light of near-dawn. The only sound was the rhythmic flap of the windshield wipers and the rumble of the engine. Frost had turned the side and rear car windows gray and opaque.

The men spoke in Arabic with Syrian accents.

“You know where you’re going?” the driver asked.

“I have it memorized,” Nagib said.

“Then go with God,” the driver said.

“And you also,” Nagib answered.

They exchanged a hand clasp. Nagib turned and faced the quiet woods as the car did a U-turn and drove away.

Nagib lit a cigarette and began his hike. He trailed a stream of smoke and breath. He entered the stand of trees, looked up at the moon, and listened to the churning crinkle of his boots on the snow in the woods. His gloved right hand dipped into his pocket and pulled out a compass. He consulted it carefully. Yes, he was in the right spot, and, yes, he was heading in the right direction.

He saw his first marker, a blue ribbon tied around the trunk of an otherwise bare maple. He trudged past it. Nagib had slipped in and out of many countries in the past and had developed an instinct about such things. He continued due south beyond the first marker and then found another yellow ribbon about fifty meters farther into the woods.

There was a faint hint of a breeze. He continued to smoke. He found the third marker and the fourth. He came to a clearing and crossed it. By now there was a certain logic to his trek. He found a small lake and followed its bank. This was all as expected. He knew that he was now within a mile of the United States.

He glanced at his watch. Seven past five in the morning. Hurry, hurry! His next ride-the one on the American side-could only sit for so long without arousing suspicion.

Then he came upon something unexpected. A pair of men with rifles in heavy camouflage-style clothing. There was a green Jeep parked beyond them. Nagib halted and caught his breath. He didn’t like this. Not at all.