14
Customs Patrol Officer Bernie Manuelito was no longer feeling like an utter novice in this business of guarding the Republic’s boundary line. She had learned the language of her new profession, taken part in two “nettings” of illegals, and had personally detected a “mule track” down which “carpet people” had been carrying loads of illegal skag, coke, and refined pot. She understood the difference between mere illegal immigrants and mules who were also illegals but were hired to haul bales of controlled substances in on their backs—sort of like FedEx deliveries. Near the dangerous top of all this were the “coyotes” and the buyers. The coyotes were the travel agents and tour guides of those who came to cross the border into the land of milk and honey, promising to get them safely past Bernie and her fellow CPOs to some community where the phony credentials the coyotes sold them would qualify them for minimum-wage jobs. The receivers, of course, were those who met the mules and warehoused the cocaine, heroin, and pot until it could be delivered to dealers who, in turn, delivered it to their customers in country clubs, corporate boardrooms, honky-tonk bars, chic nightclubs, sorority and frat houses, and bar-association meetings where those who could afford the stuff bought it and used it.
Bernie’s dream was to nab a receiver and follow him all the way back to the high-rise, glass-walled, deep- carpeted office of the banker who financed the operation and haul them both to jail in the banker’s limo. But that wouldn’t happen soon. From what she had seen as a cop, the so-called War on Drugs filled the jails with addicts and the nickel-and-dime peddlers, but left the drug czars unmolested. And from what she was seeing now, as a Customs patrol officer, she wouldn’t change that soon. If she made an arrest today it would be a little family of destitute Mexicans.
She was standing on one of the numerous ridges of Big Hatchet Mountain looking southward into the gap between her ridge and an adjoining volcanic outcrop identified on her map as Bar Ridge. She saw an old-model school bus converted into a sort of van—its windows Covered with plywood and its top loaded with bundles, boxes, and rolls of bed clothing and two mattresses.
A man in stained coveralls was squatting beside the bus doing something to the front wheel. Nearby, sitting, standing, or prone, she could count five others taking cover from the sun in the sparse shade of the mesquite brush growing beside the outcrop.
Bernie reached into the cab of her pickup, got the mike, pushed the proper buttons. “Manuelito again,” she said. “I count five people now. Man trying to fix the bus. Another man, a woman, toddler-sized boy, and a girl, maybe six or seven.”
“That global positioning you gave me put you at Big Hatchet Mountain,” the dispatcher said. “That look right?”
“It does to me. But not much of a mountain to be called big.”
“Smaller down here, but rougher. The nearest backup I could find for you is a unit south of Road Forks and he’s tied up for a while. If you think they’re running dope I could send down a chopper from Tucson. What do you think?”
“I think we’re looking at a family of starved-out farmers. I think they got off on the wrong track and ruined their front suspension.”
“OK, then. Keep an eye on ’em. Let me know if they’re moving out, or if anyone shows up to haul them away.” He paused. “And remember, Miss Manuelito, they’re illegals. That’s criminals. C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L-S. Don’t do anything dumb.”
Whereupon, after a few more minutes of watching the driver struggling with the front wheel, after remembering the painful plight of the half-starved and dehydrated illegals she had helped round up a week earlier, Bernie decided she’d rather do something dumb than be ashamed of herself. It was standard practice for Customs officers patrolling in desert country to carry oversized canteens. Since a painful arrest of last week in which the illegals had been almost dead of dehydration, Bernie had also been taking along two big plastic jugs of water just in case.
She drove down the ridge, circled carefully through the brush and cactus, and found the still-fresh tracks the bus must have left. She followed them around the corner of the Big Hatchet toward the Bar Ridge outcrop. The bus was there, but no humans were in sight. Bernie wasn’t surprised. They would have heard her coming, seen the Customs vehicle, and would be hiding somewhere.
She parked behind the bus, got her pistol out of the glove box, and put on her holster, took the battery megaphone from its rack, and stepped out of her pickup.
Bernie dropped the truck’s tailgate, extracted her water jugs, and put them on the hood.
Again, no answer. What now?
A man was hurrying through the brush toward her, waving. She had the sudden thought that perhaps she had been stupid and felt for the snap on her holster flap. Then she saw the man seemed to be crying. Or was he laughing? Whatever, he didn’t seem threatening. And he was babbling something in Spanish. It was, “Thank God you found us.”
Bernie raised her hand. “Hold it,” she said. “Do you speak English? Who are you?”
“I was coming to get these people,” he said in fluent English. He pointed to the bus. “But it broke. Going over a rock.”
“You can’t fix it?” Bernie asked. “And who are you?”
The young man in the greasy coveralls straightened, drew a deep breath. “My name is Delos Vasquez. I am a mechanic.” Then he gestured toward the jugs. “Water, you said. I must call Mr. Gomez and his family.”
“Sure,” Bernie said, thinking the man looked totally harmless. Not much taller than her and skinny. About thirty, with large, brown, sad-looking eyes. Now she noticed Mr. Gomez and his family emerging from the hillside brush and moving cautiously toward them. Gomez wore a straw hat, a neatly trimmed white beard, and was carrying the little girl.
Vasquez motioned, shouted in Spanish. Something about water but Bernie didn’t catch much of it. She was in the truck cab, screwing the cap off her Thermos, handing that and the cup under it to Vasquez, motioning to him to help himself to the water.
He smiled at her. “No. The rule is that the women and children must go first.”
While the woman and the children were dealing with their thirst, Vasquez brought over the bearded man. “May I present the father of my sister-in-law, Senor Miguel Gomez,” he said. Senor Gomez bowed. So did Bernie, trying to remember the formal language of introduction. Failing that, she said: “Welcome to the United States.”
“And this is Senora Catherina Vasquez, the
Catherina Vasquez, dusty, disheveled, looking utterly exhausted, managed a shy smile. So did the children.
My criminals, Bernie thought.
Before the Border Patrol shuttle arrived Bernie had improved her Spanish a little and collected from Vasquez and Mr. Gomez an account of how he and the Gomez group happened to be here. Gomez, so the story went, had gone to San Pedro Corralitos to get work at the copper smelter there because there was no work at Nuevo Casas Grandes, where his family lived. But the smelter was still shut down, and the only work there was a crew repairing the pipeline that had brought the fuel in to fire its furnaces. So Mr. Gomez had paid a tour guide in Sabinas Hidalgo to bring his daughter, Catherina, and her children to visit Vasquez’s mother in Lordsburg, so she could see her grandchildren. The coyote had taken them to the port of entry at Antelope Wells and given them visa credentials. Mr. Gomez showed these to Bernie, who recognized them instantly as examples of the fraudulent documents she’d been shown in training classes. With some translating help from Vasquez, Gomez told her the coyote had then taken them to the border fence, showed them where to cross it, and showed them where to wait until a truck would arrive to take them to Lordsburg. The truck arrived, took them up the road toward Interstate 10. But near
