In Sonoita

Jesús and Maradona stay at the Mexican border Hotel San Antonio in Sonoita, where Chespiro keeps rooms permanently booked, and wait for a call. It is a horrible place. El Negro comes himself to place the boys with their local mentors.

The new smuggling route is dangerous, anywhere from 35 to 65 miles long, depending on the eventual destination of the walkers. El Negro’s scouts cut a trail that should get them where they need to be in two days, three at the most; if they have to detour, there are several million acres of possibilities. The terrain here is more difficult with very few water sources—and neither Jesús nor Maradona knows where to find them.

Between training runs, Jesús and Maradona stay in their hotel room during the day and go out drinking at night. Jesús meets and falls in love with Celia Mendez, and soon he moves into her house while Maradona rents a room nearby. Jesús assumes Celia’s name, Mendez, as his alias.

El Negro’s plan is for walkers to arrive by bus in groups of fifteen or twenty; they will stay in the hotel until the night before they depart, then spend a night in a boarding room run by Nelly (which El Negro owns).

“The Saturday before the fatal walk begins,” Mendez and Maradona take a group across the Devil’s Highway. It is a long and arduous but uneventful trip. They travel over Bluebird Pass and arrive at one of El Negro’s outposts with a water tank; they rest and wait for their pickup.

Instead, a Border Patrol car picks them up. Maradona and one pollo escape while Mendez and the other twelve walkers are apprehended. The Border Patrol does not recognize Mendez, or the Yuma 14 might not have died. From then on, that water stop is always a risk.

Three brothers were in that group; they beg El Negro for another chance to cross. On May 19, the brothers join the group of walkers already gathered at the rooming house. In Veracruz, Don Moi’s walkers board a bus. Only a few have any belongings, some have lunch, and the group is in good spirits as the journey begins.

Everyone gawks as they near Mexico City, looking for UFOs along the way; often the bus drives parallel to the Devil’s Highway, and the land on the other side of the border looks just the same to them. The names of the towns here are dangerous and unfamiliar, but the men are still laughing and in good spirits.

Finally, the weary, sleepy, and even sick (from the food) men arrive in Sonoita. They are rushed off the bus and into the hotel. In the morning, El Negro himself hustles them over to Nelly’s safe house to wait, although the men have no idea how long their wait will be. Don Moi is already headed home when the men begin to wonder where he is.