He is later helped by the boy's mother, Elena Morales (Karmin Murcelo) and a rookie Patrol Agent, Jimmy Fantes (Bruno Kirby).

Hotchkiss works for a local fruit rancher, Carl Richards (Bert Remsen), a ranch he uses as a front for his alien-smuggling operation.

Jackson, on routine road patrol, stops Hotchkiss's truck full of aliens, driven by a subordinate smuggler.

The truck has boxes of tomatoes on top but the main body, accessed by rear doors, is a compartment carrying illegal aliens.

The Mexican boy is badly wounded by stray buckshot, so Hotchkiss kills him with another blast and drags both bodies into the roadside bushes where he also parks Jackson's Border Patrol sedan.

The FBI seems convinced the murders are drug related, but not Jeb Maynard who doesn't believe someone would go to the trouble of removing all identifying information from the truck but carelessly leave several bags of marijuana behind.

Maynard's physical features are such that he can pass for Mexican, but he does not speak Spanish fluently, and so Elena tells the smuggler that her cousin is simple minded and doesn't talk much.

Elena pays the smuggler with money Maynard gave her, and they are smuggled across the border into the United States along with a group of thirty other migrants.

Maynard hears the smuggler guiding them mention "the Marine who runs things" to Elena, but then the group is ambushed by bandits.

Maynard and Elena escape unharmed but lose their chance to encounter the ringleader (Hotchkiss) and walk on towards the suburbs of San Diego.

Maynard knows of Richards's reputation for exploiting illegal aliens, hiring them at poor wages to harvest his fruit.

Hotchkiss is in the main ranch house when Maynard and Fantes arrive but stays inside as Richards goes out to speak to the Agents.

While talking to Richards, Maynard notices the military boot prints in the dirt near the main house that he had detected earlier.

Using binoculars, they see Hotchkiss wearing his combat boots and camouflage marine field jacket leaving the house with other smugglers including the Mexican who had guided the group that Maynard and Elena had infiltrated.

Hotchkiss attempts to lose him on an old dirt road that comes to a dead end, and then runs into the surrounding trees and bushes.

Maynard and Fantes watch Richards leaving San Diego's United States District Court House after being sentenced to two-to-five years in federal prison.