Choke Point — James C. Mitchell

Former border patrol agent Roscoe Brinker is approached by an attractive reporter from L.A. seeking help in the shooting death of an undocumented Mexican national. The Juan Doe had contacted her with a story of murder, but was killed before he could talk. Reluctant to step back into the treacherous badlands of the Arizona-Mexico border, Brinker turns the case down. When the reporter is found strangled to death a few days later, Brinker's guilty conscience takes over.

The hit was professional and Brinker knows the game well enough to play dirty. He calls in a marker from a Mexican crime boss with enough at stake to worry about the rising body count from the maquilas--border factories set up by companies hiring cheap Mexican labor. In a place where the value of a human life grows cheaper by the day, Brinker decides to put a premium on payback.