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Back The Neighborhood Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. Part I Reconnaissance
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Part II Incursion
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Part III Under Siege
  14. Chapter Eleven
  15. Chapter Twelve
  16. Chapter Thirteen
  17. Part IV Course Correction
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Part V Balance of Power
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Chapter Nineteen
  25. Chapter Twenty
  26. Chapter Twenty-One
  27. Chapter Twenty-Two
  28. Chapter Twenty-Three
  29. Chapter Twenty-Four
  30. Chapter Twenty-Five
  31. Chapter Twenty-Six
  32. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  33. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  34. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  35. Part VI Spy versus Spy
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-One
  38. Chapter Thirty-Two
  39. Chapter Thirty-Three
  40. Part VII Winds of War and Flame
  41. Chapter Thirty-Four
  42. Chapter Thirty-Five
  43. Chapter Thirty-Six
  44. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-One
  49. Part VIII Strong to the Finish
  50. Chapter Forty-Two
  51. Chapter Forty-Three
  52. Part IX Spy Games
  53. Chapter Forty-Four
  54. Chapter Forty-Five
  55. Chapter Forty-Six
  56. Part X What Goes Around
  57. Chapter Forty-Seven
  58. Chapter Forty-Eight
  59. About the Author

Esli Flores struggled between wakefulness and a semiconscious dream state as the screaming caused him to toss and turn. No. Not again. Please, his tangled mind pleaded. No more screams. The battle between lucidity and Alzheimer’s waged on, and he wasn’t certain if he was awake or asleep. Just no dead babies. please.

A survivor of the Salvadoran Civil War, Esli had been a happy and simple ten-year-old boy when the elite, US-trained Atlacatl Battalion death squad had swept like a cemetery wind through his village in northern Cabañas Department. With orders from the military, the soldiers operated under rules of engagement that all civilians in that area were guerrillas. Early in the morning, they’d pulled his parents from their home and shot them in the dirt as they screamed for him to run. Miraculously, he’d dodged the gunfire and fled into the bushes and forest under a surge of fight-or-flight adrenaline that had replaced his grief. The grief and all that it carried would come later.

As his village of Santa Cruz was systematically slaughtered with mortars, gunfire, and aerial bombs, he’d fled north through the jungle, surviving horror after horror, mothers and children dying together from violence, starvation, and pure evil luck. He was discovered by a group of soldiers, spared execution for a reason he still couldn’t fathom to this day, and placed on an army helicopter. He was flown to an orphanage in Santa Tecla, where he would remain, a boy with no family, until he turned eighteen and fled north to the United States.

The immigration crisis hadn’t reached its full peak yet—that would come during the 1990s—and he’d been able to apply for a green card and claim political asylum under the Refugee Act, which had been passed only a year before his family had been murdered. He’d lived with a third cousin in San Antonio, worked as a day laborer in construction, and waited for his hearing.

Whether the judge had sympathized with his situation or just wanted to push his case through the beleaguered system, Esli would never know. All that mattered was that the judge granted him his asylum and a green card, and four years later—since the green card was back-dated one year, per the process—he naturalized and became a US citizen. It was still one of the proudest days of his life.