Night on the Border
Border
The glove slid off in the dark and I tasted for blood. Some. Not a lot. Mostly the taste of dust from the long, dizzying slip, slide, climb down the steep canyon walls. The decent into the pitch black night was terrifying, something we would not have done in the full light and reason of day. But a half mile away and probably five hundred feet below us our quarry waited, momentarily trapped and confused by the bright beam arcing from a helicopter, itself trapped by the steep canyon walls only feet from it’s whirling blades.
The pilot, who we knew only as Foxtrot One and a welcome voice from a static-filled radio, was a pro. Perhaps a Vietnam leftover who still flew for country and glory here in the remote mountains on the Mexican border. Even in this moment there was room to admire him. Whoever it was that called himself Foxtrot One either knew his business or had borrowed anatomy belonging to that famous brass monkey. We had to hurry.
Racing down the canyon walls we had paused not to breath or rest but to shine a light into the darkness, feeling with fingers of disappearing light for the edge that we knew would be there. Then, without thought, down and down again in our barley controlled fall. About the time we were certain that the bottom was close, we would find yet another edge, dropping another dark and scary fifty or so feet before starlight, flashlight, and common sense ran out.
Now, lying face down on the dark canyon floor I knew there was something wrong with the other finger. Nothing that couldn’t wait.
Agent BC Brown flashed a light in my direction.
“You hurt?”
“No. But this would have killed a normal man.”
OK. The sense of humor didn’t get broken and other than thinking that my quadriceps might explode, all the main systems seemed to be working still. Apparently there are muscle groups not normally available to pen pushers and I had found quite a painful collection.
Almost close enough to touch, Foxtrot One hovered across a small stream, illuminating the night and nearly a dozen aliens or smugglers, we didn’t yet know which, in a beam of surreal white light. The light looked solid as it danced from the smugglers into the brush and back again before anyone could think to run.
I remembered the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when a huge beam of white light lifted reluctant travelers into the alien spacecraft. Tonight the spacecraft was ours and it was the aliens who were reluctant. Our light could not lift them into the chopper but it managed to hold them, frozen for the moment in time and place.
They were caught in pincers of light. The blinding, terrifying column from the copter and the still bright pinpoints of light moving from both ends of the canyon. Our two small lights flickered through the woods. Two more lights belonging to agents working down from the head of the canyon were closer than ours.
“We’ve got ‘em!” Came a shout from the other side. The Border Patrol in this wild section of east San Diego County may as well be stationed in a foreign country, even another planet. And it’s not just a matter of language and terrain. Here it is a matter of culture, a culture of violence and predation that separates the espresso sipping suburbanites on the other side of the ridge from the rough and tumble wild, wild west of the Otay Mountains.
You can’t have a wild west without cowboys and tonight, I was riding with the best of the best, decked out in dark green uniforms and saddled up in white four wheel drive Broncos. The wild and woolly guys of the US Border Patrol work this rugged badlands to keep our border closed, or almost, to the smugglers who fight them nightly.
Tonight, at least in Bee Canyon, the bad guys were losing big time. Cowboys twenty-two, bad guys, zero.
Finally, I had found a job that is exactly like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of shear terror.
We hadn’t planned on leaving so soon. Maybe it was just that so close to Christmas it seemed a better time to stay home, clean the office, burn brush, eat chili. So when Melanie reminded us of the long flight and difficult schedule we knew she was right. Better to leave early and arrived rested for the adventure to come.
Earl Nightengale once said that the difference between the winners and the losers is that the winners are willing to do the things necessary to win while the losers find it easier to adjust to a poor living. I think of that everytime I see Melanie packing my bags. I’d much rather stay home with her but that’s not how books get written. Still, I was missing her before the little Mooney lifted herself from runway three zero in Kerrville.
In a couple of short hours, Stu and I were once again bearing down on El Paso. This time only a fuel and pit stop at Cutter Aviation on the south side of the field.
The controllers let us in on two six left, the big, long runway closest to the FBO. I set her down and easily made the first turn off.
The folks at Cutter are first rate. They had us out in less than twenty minutes and less than five minutes after that, we were cleared for take off on that same long runway two six. The little Mooney with six brand new jugs was running like a pocket watch.
Taking off in El Paso is interesting in that the controllers almost inevitably vector you over the city of Juarez. The first time this happens and the GPS flashes a warning that you are in Mexican airspace, it feels a little discomforting. Did I mess up? Is this gonna get me in trouble? Would the Mexicans shoot?
When they finally turn you west again, the tension leaves the cockpit and there is time to see things from this eagle eyed perspective. To the north are the mountains. Sangre Christi... blood of Christ. They are tall and devoid of meaningful vegetation. The biggest crop on this mountain is a grove of communications antennae that reach the final two or three hundred feet, grasping for airplanes that tried but really couldn’t.
By the time we lifted off the runway, the sun had set behind mountains that promise but never quite deliver shade to the town of El Paso. As if to make it easy on the early settlers, the mountains stop just shy of the border presenting a long, flat, rocky face to the folks in Juarez. As happens every year at Christmas, a huge star of lights is erected on this face looking into old Mexico.
The Mexicans answer in huge letters outlined in white-washed rock and set against a mountain of their own: La Bible es verdad leerle... The Bible, it’s the truth, read it.
I know that the sentiment of peace and goodwill to all is what the star is supposed to convey. But in some respects the star seems to mock those who are so very close yet so far from enjoying the bounties of living in freedom. And yes, I know, Mexico is a democratic country where officials are elected freely. At least that is the theory. The facts may be different. If money talks in the US, it shouts in Mexico. There the wealth is held in a death grip by the tiniest minority. And those that do not inherit wealth often seek it through other means. Mordida, the little bite, is the language of the land. Grease a palm and anything can be made to happen.
Mexico frightens me.
So the star shown brightly, white in the early evening an electric invitation glowing at the very moment that we, as a sovereign nation, were trying to yank in the welcome mat.
It was with this in mind that we turned to the west, flying over some of the most desolate, foreboding yet beautiful country on the planet. I used the half light of a fading day and the help of the autopilot to complete the Christmas spirit. At twelve thousand feet I wrote out Christmas cards all the while thinking what Christmas could mean.
We were high, as usual, when the SoCal controller handed us off to the approach controller in San Diego. The new guy was even busier than the last. Now, there’s a job you wouldn’t want. Just admire them and appreciate them but don’t even think about becoming an air traffic controller. We’re talking the best of the best. Period.
“Approach. Mooney niner five mike kilo, checking in at one zero, ten thousand and I’ve got information echo.”
We got a roger and instructions to fly a vector to the south but no suggestion to go lower. Oh, swell, another slam dunk! This guy was so busy handling big iron that the little Mooney was going to get a vector to the moon and then be left too high to complain.
A Flight Check King Air was creating havoc out of the busy but elegant movements of aircraft in and around San Diegos Lindbergh Field. Flight Check is a government group that uses sophisticated aircraft based electronics to check airplane navigation systems. They make low flights over airports while monitoring navigation beacons and equipment, checking for the dead-on accuracy that tricky instrument flying demands.
Every pilot loves Flight Check. Just not when they are in the middle of already busy operations at an airfield that big iron pilots rate as one of the most dangerous in the world. Land in San Diego and experience the odd sensation of flying at eye level to office buildings and parking garages. All the minimum standards for clearance are met but just barely. If you think it’s unnerving to see another aircraft off your wing tip, imagine how it feels to spot an entire office building!
“Mooney five mike kilo descend and maintain six thousand and report when you have the Flight Check King Air in sight.”
“Five mike kilo, six thousand. We have the traffic.”
“He’s going to make a low pass over the field. Follow him straight in. Cleared for the visual runway two seven. When you have the field, contact tower on one one eight point six.”
Oh boy! We were headed south, too high for comfort, and needed to turn west while descending fast without running up the tail of a King Air. Yee ha!
Stu took pictures of the skyline as we landed. Why not? Didn’t need a telephoto lens!
The US Border Patrol has no business being a government agency.
Too accessible. Too professional.
Setting up this adventure was as simple as placing a phone call. In no time at all, a professional public information officer, Mark Moody, was at our disposal. Moody, a patrol agent on temporary assignment, is as polished as any corporate PR representative. And that could be said about any of the gentlemen that we met in a small, neat office less than a mile from the border.
Got a question? Ask. You’ll get an answer that is straightforward, no beating around the bush. The Border Patrol, make that the INS, has learned that the best way to handle the media is to tell the truth, all the truth, all the time. Smart.
And apparently there is little, if anything, to hide. In fact, Operation Gatekeeper is a success story that anyone would want to tell.
In ‘the old days,’ and we’re talking anything before October 1994, the US border was wide open. Thinly staffed with poorly equipped agents who would often detain as many as fifteen hundred illegals in a single night along the fourteen mile strip of border known as IB... Imperial Beach. If that’s the good news, consider that this huge number of detained illegals was estimated to be only ten percent of those who had attempted to cross. Get it? That’s over ten thousand or so illegal entrants per night in a single sector!
Today the numbers are vastly different. A big night might find three hundred in the Border Patrol net, estimated to be ninety percent of the total.
But this isn’t our story. Our story lies to the east of Imperial Beach. The tall fence made of surplus military landing mats that extends all the way into the surf on our western coast ends in fourteen miles. It’s really someting to watch the fence march right into the Pacific. Here the border is calm.
The fence is probably ten feet high. Solid.
Solid but not dangerous. Agent Moody mentioned that visiting German military officers were shocked that USBP personnel are bound by policy to refrain from shooting. Funny, but that the very sensitivity that keeps us from shooting people trying to get in is exactly why people would want to get in.
Still, no one seems to miss the days when illegals gathered by the thousands at the border, waiting, sensing, smelling for the unseen signal that would send them enmass, in what the guards called a ‘bosai’, streaming across the border to the siren call of jobs and medical care and promise.
On the north side, the ground has been graded flat, cleared of hiding potential. On the south side, Mexican poverty backs right up to the fence. Traffic here is one-way, northbound.
There is a graded strip on the north side of the fence although Mexican poverty backs right to its base on the south. There was a time when the strip was regularly dragged with a ragtag collection of old tires. Then, in the morning, fresh footprints could be counted to give the agents an idea of how many had slipped their net. Today, the tires have been hauled off into the brush and are rarely used.
Said one agent, “Every night we’d come to work and simply get our butts kicked. There were thousands of them and so few of us.”
Where attempts to dig under have been made, the national guard has deposited thick, un-pretty plugs of concrete. To complete the picture, huge towers bearing clusters of lights bath the entire stretch in quesy yellow light. Agents in patrol vehicles are posted with-in sight of one another. Imposing? You bet! Today the biggest challenge a day shift agent faces is turning his vehicle for maximum shade, following the sun with their vehicles, following sports on their radios.
In IB the only hot spot remaining is along the south levee, that unfenceable concrete lined wash where nature and sewerage runs to the sea. Here agents sit and watch, an all day staring match on the other side waits the frustrated dozens, gatheriing during the day to chuck rocks at a too-close officer and consider odds and options for a possible crossing should the guard ever falter.
“We used to get our butts kicked every night,” said an agent now proud to be on the winning side. “It was awful. Not enough men. Not enough equipment. We’d have to drive from our posts so that our replacements could use the vehicle. In the meantime...”
But slam the gate in one place and, like a flood of the more literal version, the pressure will build until a weak spot can be found. Naturally, some one is going to try to make an end run. Lots of someones.
We left the spit and polish of Imperial Beach, a station so well under control that the biggest enemy is boredom, to drive to El Cajon on the other side of the county, the far side of the world. There we watched thirty or so slightly less polished agents muster for the evening shift. Lots of boring news delivered to thirty bored agents. The meat of the meeting came last with the assignment of patrol teams and duty stations.
That duty stations would be a matter of preference was no surprise. That officers felt so strongly about who they drew as a partner was. It quickly became obvious that the group divided neatly into two camps: the gung-ho cowboys and the clock-watching slugs.
‘Slug’ is exactly the name that the cowboys used to describe the folks who really would rather switch than fight.
Now, this isn’t a comment that the Border Patrol is riddled with government free-loaders who simply put in their time. It is not. Not by a long shot. But there are, as in any organization, a percentage, hopefully small, who would rather be anywhere but where they are. You know it and so do I. What we wanted to find out is what makes the cowboys tick and if you knew the answer to that question could you use that knowledge to turn on the terminally tuned out?
Brian C. Brown, ‘Brownie’ to some, drew the short straw and was assigned to be our ride for the shift. We know that he was picked because he is suspected to be one of the USBP’s best. Good choice, that BC Brown.
Brown wore a dark green stealth-like outfit complimented with the usual leather belt ornamented by every imaginable tool you could hang from a belt. Pistol, two flashlights, handcuffs, you name it. In a matching green ‘trickie bag’ Brian carried his eight year old, woefully out of date bullet proof vest.
We saddled up in a bright white Bronco, Stu and camera in the back, me riding shotgun.
San Diego doesn’t hug the ocean and then stop. It sprawls wider and wider, thinner and thinner one little community blending into another until it all just runs out. And this is where our story really begins, east of the city, east of the suburbs and bagel stores, east to the mountains where the world changes color after dark.
To the east of Imperial Beach the Otay mountains rise several thousand rugged feet from the dessert, skirting along the border as if borders meant something to mountains. Otay means ‘brushy place.’ I found that on the internet and, having been there believe that the Native Americans who named it, probably the Cuyapaipes, were born optimists.
If names tell you about a place, how about these... Engineer Springs, Boneyard Creek, Rattlesnake Canyon, and Mother Grundy Peak. Go figure. Indians and hippies and snakes, oh my!
The Otays lie in rocky waves, one range after another running east to west. A narrow valley cuts deep behind the first wave of stone and brush about five or so miles as the crow flies north from Mexico. Of course, if the crow walks, actual mileage may vary... it could be seven or eight or more miles from the border to the little valley. A twisted strip of asphalt, state highway ninety-four runs along the valley floor past a cafe, a few houses, and a whole lot of nothing.
After a thirty minute drive, we turned off highway ninety four and drove up a small side road to an overlook where Brian clearly had parked before. It was a collecting point, a place where an agent, just on station could park and watch and wait for a plan to materialize. We weren’t on station three minutes when the plan presented itself by radio.
In mid-conversation, Brian held up his hand for silence. A faraway voice reported that a citizen had called in to tell of two pick up trucks loading drugs just up ninety four they were headed westbound.... toward us. Brian mentally calculated and then shouted to no one in particualr, “They should be just passing us now!”
Call it instinct, call it luck, but as Brian shoved the truck into gear and stomped on the gas, a white pick-up fitting the description flashed passed. Gravel flew, Stu grabbed for anything attached and I checked the seat belt.
We roared down the hill and onto the highway but not before a white USBP van, lights flashing, whipped around the corner in hot pursuit. We were not more than a half mile behind.
Brian quickly caught the van that was just as quickly losing the pick-up.... and we were doing nearly eighty! One curve laced into another. We whipped along the only real estate that could be considered a straight-away, passing the cafe and a lone highway patrol officer writing a ticket while a truck load of dope clipped by.
What an opportunity. I yelled at Stu, “Roll tape! Roll tape!” And turned to see that there was not a prayer of getting this on video. Stu is dedicated but to a limit and now I had a pretty good idea of what was that limit.
“Can’t you move a little faster?” shouted a frustrated Indy agent into the mic.
“Brian, this is a van!” Then, “he’s passing on blind curves!”
“For God’s sake, back-off! Let him go before he kills someone!”
It was too late. The pick-up took one too many blind curves. When we rounded it, maybe fifteen seconds later, there were already signs of the obvious. The white pick-up was in the left lane, facing us, front end demolished. A smaller red pick up was facing the same direction sporting similar, near total damage.
The fleeing driver was long gone. The steering wheel of his late model truck had been hit and hit hard and, although there was no blood on the wheel, Stu, a paramedic by training, guessed that the impact had resulted in massive internal trauma, probably pericardial concussion, an injury that can kill if the heart sack fills with blood and pressures the heart into an arrest.
In the back of the truck, six tightly stuffed US Army duffel bags, carried nearly four hundred thousand dollars worth of marijuana. Heavy. Bulky. Priceless had they made it to the street. Obviously worth the risk to some.
An editorial comment, please. I don’t care how you feel about marijuana. It is illegal. If you want it legalized, then fight for that. In the meantime, if you use it or tolerate it, you are contributing to violence. Period.
More Border Agents from the changing shifts arrived with-in seconds. Brian wisely ordered agents into the woods to serve as guards in the off chance that the bad guys would attempt to recover the goods.
The driver and passengers of the other truck appeared to be little worse for the wear other than the fact that the driver carried no insurance.. guess there is at least some justice.
As the minutes ticked by and the sparse highway traffic grew thick behind the accident scene, emergency vehicles arrived in convoy fashion to complete the picture. Finally, ticket written, the highway patrol officer we had passed earlier arrived and in a clip from Barney Fife, used his PA system to announce, “clear the area, this is my scene.”
A helicopter, Fox-trot One, appeared from nowhere, announcing its presence with a thickening whop, whop, whop, long before it was seen.
A clean white light flashed down from the chopper, darting this way and that as if the operator was thinking with his hands and had not yet decided how and where to begin the search. In an instant, the plan presented. Fox-trot One began slicing the entire area from highway to hilltop into precise strips of light and dark.
The bad guys were radio equipped. One radio lay abandoned on the seat of the truck, begging to be picked up. Before they figured out that half of their convoy was missing, a breathless voice, probably not more than a few miles further west, announced that he had unloaded and asked where number two was.
‘In the woods, pal,” I answered to myself.
When the traffic cleared we set out to plan again. Brian thought it might be good to check a canyon he knew where the smugglers might have loaded.
We drove east a couple of miles and pulled off just beyond a bridge.
We parked and walked in the darkness into a narrow, brush-filled canyon.
No drawn gun. No back-up. Just a flashlight.
Lucky us. No smugglers.
The best of the Border Patrol are spiritual descendants of great hunters. They sense the smallest of signs and can follow even the craftiest quarry over rock and ridge. “Cutting sign” is the term they use. It can be slow going but if you have feet, you can be found.
Back in the truck, Brian told a story of tracking smugglers into the mountains and surprising a group of seven. He had four under control but knew three more were hiding in the brush nearby. Not wanting to resort to the pistol, he threw a rock into the brush ahead of where he suspected they were hiding. Thinking that it was another agent, three bad guys came out, hands held high, one bleeding profusely from a fresh head wound.
In the best bureaucratic fashion, Agent Brown was disciplined for throwing rocks!
This border business is seasonal. Now, only a few weeks before Christmas, business was slow. We drove to the port of entry, our side, just north of the Mexican town of Tecate looking for action. Instead we found something other than your stereotypical ‘sleepy’ border town. There wasn’t anything sleepy about Tecate. This town was completely dead.
The Border Patrol has a small station located right on the border. Holding cells, rest rooms, vending machines. all in government issue hospital white. Still, it was a good place to get in out of the cold.
Inside we met a rather unassuming agent who, sans bullet proof vest and Harrison belt would have fit just nicely leading the local Sunday School. Only this one was making a rather unusual request. Mr. Mild Mannered BPA was asking for permission to “lay up” in some little canyon for “a couple of nights” in hope of catching a band of drug smugglers who seemed to have found a route that made them nearly invincible.
Funny thing, the Border Patrol agents seem to have little if any animosity for the men, women, and children who brave the wilds in search of a better life. But they absolutely hate the thought of drug smugglers crossing their border. Too bad. The primary mission seems to be to halt illegal immigration. Drug smugglers are definitely not top priority.
Further to the east and sitting on the north side of the highway is White Mountain, an imperfect twin to Tecate Peak that guards the south side. We followed near-hidden mountain tracks for several miles until the truck could go no farther.
“Up there. Check it out. It’s one of our guys and he has the only parking spot. You’ll have to walk if you want to see.”
We started up what was left of White Mountain. No reason to call it either white or mountain. What is Indian for Big Pile of Nothing?
In a van, sitting precariously near but not quite on the ridge, sat a lone agent. I walked up quietly and said, “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good. Kinda slow.” The head never turned, the eyes never moved.
“I didn’t mean to walk up on you unannounced but, now that I did, how come you didn’t jump out of your skin? How did you know I wasn’t a bad guy?”
“If you had been a bad guy, I would be dead. I’m not dead so you must be a good guy. Who are you?”
The eerie green glow of the night scope cast the operator in frightening silhouette. Why someone would sit in the darkness, looking at a television on hormones? Me, I’d be too scared to sit out there all alone wondering if, no when, the bad guys were going to jump out of the brush and...
“So, I guess you drew the short straw?” I shivered as a little gust rose up the side of the peak and found its way under my vest.
“Oh, no. I asked for this duty. Running the scope is a big deal. You have to know the equipment to be able to take full advantage of it and you have to know the terrain like the back of your hand. Once you spot traffic, you have to be able to very precisely direct the response teams. No, this is good work.”
The guy was a nut in my book. Cold, lonely, boring as hell.
“It’s a little slow tonight,” he continued obviously able to read my mind with a machine designed to see in the dark. “But when it’s busy you might have three or even four groups trying to get in at the same time. This position is at the heart of the action even though the action might be ten miles away.”
With that he zoomed in on a house in Tecate, Mexico. Closer then closer again until we could clearly see right up to their back door. A small truck moved silently across the screen when the operator zoomed back. The infrared technology produced a picture that was for all the world not much different than a daylight picture on a black and white TV... incredible.
In San Ysidro we had seen tapes of this equipment. Trust me, when this stuff is up and running, the illegals haven’t much of a chance.
Too bad. The equipment isn’t always up. Tonight was a perfect example. One of the scopes was down leaving a huge gap in coverage that backup systems could only partially fill. Just as I was thinking that the bad guys had an easy way in if only they were aware of it, they came right through it. Almost as if they knew.
Dispatch called that a seismic sensor had a “hit.”
“You want to check it out?”
“Sure!”
We raced down the mountain to catch highway 94 then headed west. A few miles down the road, Brian pulled into a canyon just beyond line of sight from the night scope post we had just visited. Brown cursed and calculated. He calculated that if the hit had indeed been interlopers and not just a coyote, it was possible that the party could already be close. He cursed that he was not allowed to continue on without lights.
“Too dangerous,” was all he said.
“Are you afraid of running off the track? Even in the dark I can pretty much see it.”
“No. We might hurt someone who could be laying in the brush. We won’t see them if our lights are out.”
Another mile or so and we gave up the truck. Any further and we would be sure to be seen assuming that we hadn’t already been heard.
We heard another truck and waited in the starlight, crouched low, to see who or what would follow. First came the crunch of gravel beneath boots, then the silhouets of broad-brimmed campaign hats and we knew that they were two of ours.
“Who are you?”
“I’m a writer. ‘Riding out with Brian.”
“You gotta gun?
“Naw.”
“Naw.”
“You want one?” This was more threat than neighborly offer.
“Why? So I can shoot myself? No, thanks.”
The party continued on foot for another quarter mile or so, maintaining silence, playing a game that none really imagined had an ending other than a long walk in the cold night air.
We walked steadily upward until a peak could be seen in the distance, a third of a mile I guess. There we split. The new guys headed southeast arounf Little Tecate Peak. We headed west intending to circle the peak and, with a little luck, finding whoever or whatever had sent electronic chills down a seismic sensor located in a valley a mile closer to the border.
Brain began looking for ‘sign.’ These guys can spot the most subtle of indications that some one or something has been in the area. They know hot sign from cold sign. They can tell man, woman, or child. They know which direction. They’re good. Really good.
Radios are difficult to use when you are trying to be quiet. Earplugs pretty well mask incoming sound but what do you do about talking?
A cold wind blew up the back of the peak then swirled around and kicked up shirt collars on our side of the mountain. Overhead, the power lines hummed. Have you ever heard power lines hum? They do. A low, mean sounding tone. Carrying the energy of life over stone cold mountains to little houses everywhere. Televisions brighten, schoolwork gets done, dinners are cooked all because somewhere power surges from tall tower to tall tower, marching quietly across the darkness.
The other team radioed that they were “cutting sign and that they seem to be heading your way.” We froze. Brown asked for the time in a whisper that seemed like a roar. He cursed and announced, still quiet in case he was wrong, that there was no way we would win tonight. “They’re probably already past us. Damn!” All this in a whisper that implied that there was still a chance.
To the west the peak dropped off suddenly. A canyon, Bee Canyon ran long a deep, cutting a gash from Mexico to freedom if you were brave enough, lucky enough, foolish enough to try it. From our perch at the head of the canyon we watched two flashlight. Obviously another two agents had responded and were looking for sign and working from the top of the canyon down.
Brian decided that if they were headed into the canyon they hadn’t yet seen sign and that could only mean that the bad guys had yet to pass us by.
Standing on the canyon edge, Brown called for Fox One.
“He’s down for maintenance,” came the answer.
Brown was ready to scream when the radio crackled again, this time from the guys who had headed south around the peak. They should be nearly to us by now, and they were.
“We’ve got sign and it’s fresh!” came whispered excitement over the tiny speaker. “They have to be between us.”
We squatted low to the ground, waiting for what might happen.
“Forty-eight, Fox One is back up. You still want assistance?”
“Yeah, send him quick.” Brian hissed into the cold night air.
We waited and listened. Brian heard a cough. We both heard what sounded like a boot scuffing against a stone then nothing more. The night ticked by one shallow breath at a time. A red light rose over the horizon to the north and grew larger. No sound, just light. The sound came almost a minute later and grew bigger and bigger until it filled the night.
Fox One was on the radio requesting a beacon. Brian switched on his massive Magnalite, a beam that Fox One could ride all the way to the canyon edge.
If there were any illegals or smugglers or coyotes out in the darkness they would no longer have to guess as to whether they were being hunted. The hunt had begun in earnest when Fox One swung onto station, acknowledged Brians warning about the power lines, and then settled quickly deeper and deeper into the canyon.
We were drawn to the edge to watch the massive white beam for the second time that night. It began to wash the canyon from north to south. We assumed that the search at our level was pretty much history... and we were wrong.
In a matter of minutes Fox One struck pay dirt. The light stopped dancing, glued now to a spot deep in the canyon and about a half mile away. If a light could think, this one did. Stuttering in place just long enough to be absolutely certain, flitting away then not quite, stuck in place on a target we could not see. Aliens? Smugglers? Coyotes?
The radio came alive with two reports at once. The team that was cutting sign around the peak had literally stumbled upon the owners of the cough and boot that we had heard only minutes before. Eleven illegals had plastered themselves to the mountainside not thirty yards from where we had waited. Had it not been that one of them had a yellow stripe on his jacket there is a small chance that the trackers may have walked right on by in the dark, dark night.
“Forty-eight. Fox One. We have your party in the light.”
We took off at a trot toward the canyon, literally running over eleven illegals flattened in the brush. Apparantly they had been there all along. The other two agents had just come upon them from the opposite direction and were setting about the round up.
Brian had already started down the mountain when he turned to yell over the noise of the chopper, sound waves crashing out of the rock canyon below, “You want to go?”
“Go? Hell, I didn’t come this far just to watch you break your butt in the dark!”
“Go? Hell, I didn’t come this far just to watch you break your butt in the dark!”
And it started. A controlled fall into the pitch black canyon. Brian tossed me a small flashlight and began the race before I could figure how to work the light.
Jump, slide, skid to a stop. Jump, slide, skid again. Boot heels digging into the dust and rock, hoping each time that I could stop. A hundred yards of this and I was winded. Two hundred yards and the thighs were on fire, muscles burning free of their attachments, mouth sucking dust with every breath.
When we reached the bottom the brush began to close in. Had to hurry. Agents coming down the canyon. Need to squeeze the bad guys from the south. Watch your step.
Too late. A boot slipped and the body followed. Chest smashed into granite the size of a basketball. Thud. Big, dumb, stupid writer boy. What the hell are you doing lying face down in this canyon with your legs on fire?
We gathered them up. Eleven human beings who were never quite sure that they wouldn’t be beaten. Never quite sure why they were not beaten. But that’s the point, the reason you would risk your life to live a few miles further north. In this country we don’t beat people. We round them up and send them home. And on some other dark night we may meet them again. Or maybe not. Or maybe they will be smugglers next time loaded with drugs and violence rather than those pitiful plastic bags carrying bread, water, and toilet paper.
Can you imagine planning to walk for days in the dessert and carrying only bread, and water, and toilet paper?
The youngest in the canyon that night turned out to be fourteen, sent by his parents to find work. Instead he found himself trapped by the giant mosque blanco, the white mosquito.
The oldest was fifty seven. He had trouble climbing his way out of the canyon. We held his arm and encouraged him in two languages.
“Viejo! Tiene una problema?” (Old Man, Do you have a problem?) “Tengo duele,” he gasped. (I have a pain.)
(In Spanish) What kind of pain?”
“My heart. And I have diabetes.”
“You sure picked a godawful route. For a sick man you seem to have your butt in a strange place.”
“I wanted to get medicine for my heart. It is so very expensive in Mexico.”
“And so you think it’s cheap here?”
“It’s free, it’s free.”
OK. Now is your chance to decide Republican or Democrat.
The Republican might say, “Why should we be responsible for the healthcare of a foreign country? And the Republican would be right.
The Democrat might say, “But this man has grandchildren and naturally wants to live to see them grow up. And the Democrat would be right.
It’s a puzzle.
There are two kinds of agents. Cowboys and slugs. The slugs would just as soon sit in their trucks and watch the world and half of Mexico go right on by.
Sit in at the evening muster and listen to the guys wrangle over who rides with whom. The slugs and cowboys just don’t mix. What slug wants to be rousted out of his truck for every little potential nothing? And what cowboy wants to risk his backside with a less than enthusiastic partner?
We rode for ten hours with Brian Brown on a cold and biting night. Not once did he turn on the heater in his vehicle. Why? We didn’t ask. It was obvious. Turn on the heater and you may not want to get out. Too often instinct or other sometimes false alarms will roust you out of the truck and into the night.
But it is the getting out, even on a hunch, that separates the cowboys from the other guys.
The cowboys just want to go hunting. It’s their border. Cross it without permission and you may as well be taking a swing at them personally.
I was absolutely amazed to discover the humanity with which the cowboys treat their prizes. Round them up. Tie them up if necessary. But send them home good as you found them.
When we rounded up our eleven in the bottom of Bee Canyon, there was only one way to go: up and out. The two smugglers, the coyotes, who had attempted to run where cuffed together. The rest were lined up and herded along the steep trail
This was no simple task. The narrow trail climbed steadily up the side of the steep canyon wall. At times, this trail shrank to a matter of inches. And there we were in the pitch dark, climbing one step at a time and one step from the edge. My wobbly legs gave me a start on several occasions when I would step but the legs did not. I considered sitting on the canyon wall until dawn. Leave the old one with me and I will watch his tired heart beat until the sun comes up and my legs return to function.
It’s easy to see what gets men and women like Mark Moody and Brian Brown to pull on their boots and go ‘lay in’ in some dark canyon. On the border the goal is always in sight. It’s top of mind continuously. Step across the border and you are mine.
On the border everyone knows the score. When the sun comes up, agents check for tracks and count how many made the trip north. Then they compare that with the number caught and...instant score.
When I asked Brian how he kept score he simply said, “You can count ‘em.”
On the border there is a definite sense of position that goes beyond rank. Out in east county it’s as simple as good guy, bad guy.
My favorite on the list is that need to play games that you can win.
It’s trendy amoung goofball educators to work on the self esteem of students, devoting precious class time to baking cookies and other nonesense. What they fail to realise is that self esteem comes from being able to produce or perform. How could a kid who can’t read or write or add have any self esteem? And baking cookies isn’t going to do it. Nope. Human beings in any endeavor thrive on their ability to see results and solve problems. On the border the USBP has done more for management than a jillion consultants could ever have done, they’ve made winning possible again.
Operation Gatekeeper has turned the tide. Not just the tide of illegals who used to cross our border with absolute impunity, but also the tide of morale among the good guys. Because now they can win. And they do. On the drive from the station, I remember Brian saying that he had the best job in the world. I agreed that, while he was close, it was me who had the best job. His could only be second. But now, now that my finger has healed and my legs belong again to me. Now that my chest does not hurt so that sleep is difficult. Now, maybe Brian has a point.
I can’t know for sure about who has the best job. But I bet that if I called him and asked him to help me write, that he would say no. That he has other things to do.
And I know that if he called me and said that he needed a little help, well, I would be there by nightfall.
posted by tscott | 6:35 AM
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