Edge of Battle

“Comprobacion primero,” Victor replied. Very few of his clients ever spoke to him, which was probably best—this was business, pure and simple. He believed these were his people, even though he was an American, but he wasn’t in this line of work to help his fellow Mexicans—he was doing this to make money. Besides, in this business, except for the question “How much to L.A.?” or “How much to the I-10?” the only other ones who ever asked questions were federales. “Checking first. Maybe the Border Patrol inspected or bugged my yate, or the lobos sabotaged it.”

The man looked at the beat-up Suburban and chuckled when he heard Victor refer to it as his “yacht.” “Lobos?”

“Los contrabandistas,” Victor replied.

“But you are a smuggler,” the man said.

Victor smiled a pearly white smile and corrected himself, “Los contrabandistas malvados. “The evil smugglers.” I smuggle honest workers who want to do honest work, never drugs or weapons.”

The man nodded, a half-humorous, half-skeptical expression on his face. “A man of principle, I see.”

Principles? Victor had never thought of himself like that—he wasn’t even sure what it meant. But if it meant not moving drugs or weapons across the border, he supposed he had some. He shrugged and went back to work, noticing that neither the man nor any of the other pollos offered to help him. Yep, just business. He was the driver; they were his passengers.

After not discovering any evidence of tampering, Victor uncovered a second hiding place and pulled out a canvas bag containing a battery and ignition components. He filled the battery with water from his water jugs, quickly reassembled the parts in his SUV, and fired it up; the pollos let out a little cheer when the big vehicle started amid a disturbingly large cloud of black smoke. With his clients’ help, he eased the truck out of the depression, and they clambered aboard quickly and wordlessly, thankful they didn’t have to walk for a while.

They followed dirt roads and trails for several miles, then crossed the Coachella Canal and entered Patton Valley. A large portion of the environmentally sensitive Glamis Dunes desert was closed to vehicles—and the off- highway vehicle enthusiasts, afraid of losing all their favorite driving sites, patrolled the off-limits areas just as well as the police and park rangers—so Victor was careful to avoid the off-limits areas that trapped so many other coyotes. He stayed on dirt roads and trails, being careful to keep moving and not pull off into a parking area because he didn’t have a camping permit and anyone stopping in a camping area had to display a mirror hanger or be cited on the spot. He crossed Wash Road north of Ogilby Camp Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Area, emerged onto Ted Kipf Road, and headed northwest toward the town of Glamis, occasionally pulling off into a hidden OHV trailering area and mixing in with the dune buggy riders when his senses told him patrols were nearby. His trusty “land yacht” did well in the sandy desert and low hills of Patton Valley.

A few pollos got out at Glamis, ahead of schedule, but it was entirely up to them. Glamis was near the fertile Coachella Valley farming region, and there was work around if you knew where to ask —but of course, there were plenty of Border Patrol agents hereabouts as well. Victor stopped long enough to gas up and let the two migrants out, then hurried back onto the road.

He took Highway 78 north around the southern end of the Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range, then exited on Imperial Gables Road. A turn onto Lowe Road, past Main Street into the town of Imperial Gables, then a left onto a dirt road northbound, through fields of every imaginable kind of produce. They made several turnoffs and stops, sometimes prompted by a signal from a worker in the fields that the Border Patrol was nearby, but most times by Victor’s sense of nearby trouble. After nearly twenty miles of negotiating the dirt farm roads, they emerged onto Wiley Well Road, and it was an easy cruise north to the intersection with Chuckwalla Valley Road, just south of Interstate 10, shortly after sunset.

Unlike Imperial Dunes and Sand Hills, this area was lush and green thanks to the series of irrigation canals that crisscrossed the area—right up to the areas beside the freeway that had no irrigation, where the earth immediately turned to its natural hard-baked sand. There was a closed fruit and vegetable stand, a self-serve gas station, and a large dirt open area with a few portable bathrooms where truckers could turn around and park for the night, awaiting another load. Victor did not pull into the turnaround area, but stayed just off Chuckwalla Valley Road near an irrigation control valve sticking out of the fields near the road, trying to make himself look like a repairman or farmer.

“Pull up there,” the military-looking man said, pointing to the truck parking area. True to form, he was still wearing his sunglasses.

“No, senor. Demasiado visible.”

The man nodded toward the parking area. “They don’t seem to think it’s too conspicuous,” he said. There were four produce trailers parked there, two tandem rigs, a beat-up old pickup that looked like it belonged to a ranch foreman…

…and a large brown and green panel truck with fat off-road tires that Victor recognized, and his warning alarms immediately started sounding.

“There is my ride,” the man said. “It looks like mis amigos have already arrived. Take me over there.”

“You can walk, sir,” Victor said.

“?Nos asustan?” the man asked, smiling derisively.

Victor said nothing. He didn’t like being insulted, but getting in a customer’s face was bad for business. He ignored the remark about his courage, took a clipboard, put on a straw cowboy hat, and went out beside the irrigation manifolds sticking out of the ground to make it look like he was taking water pressure readings. He carefully looked up and down Chuckwalla Valley Road and Interstate 10, then waved at his Suburban, and the rest of the migrants quickly jumped out. The mother of the dead baby girl gave him a hug as she stepped past him, and they all had satisfied albeit tired and worrisome expressions on their faces. Within seconds, they had disappeared into the fields.

It was a tough business, Victor thought. One out of every twenty pollos he dropped off near the interstate highway, mostly young children or older women, would be killed trying to cross it. Two out of this group of ten would be caught by the Border Police within a matter of days. They would be taken to a processing center in Yuma or El Centro; photographed, fingerprinted, ID’d if possible, and questioned. If they resisted or complained, they would be taken to the Border Patrol detention facility at El Centro, Yuma, or San Diego for booking on federal immigration violation charges. If they were smart, stayed cool, and said, “We are just here to work,” they would be treated fairly well by the Americans. They would be fed, clothed if necessary, given a fast medical checkup, and within a few hours taken to the border crossing at Mexicali or Tecate and turned over to Mexican authorities with their possessions.

Their real troubles would begin then. If they or their families had money, they could pay their “bail” by bribing their way out of jail on the spot; if not, they would be taken to jail until they could raise “bail.” Their clothes and all possessions would be taken away, they would be given prison rags to wear, and they would serve as virtual slaves for the federales in any number of menial, dangerous, or even criminal tasks—anything from road crews to prostitution to drug running to robbery, anything to raise the “bail” money and secure a release.

To Victor’s dismay, the tough-looking man was still there beside the Suburban by the time Victor made sure his pollos were on their way. Victor said nothing as he walked around to get in, but the man asked, “Where do they go?”

“No se,” Victor replied. “To work, I suppose.”

“Well, well, it’s Victor Flores, late as usual,” he heard. It was none other than Ernesto Fuerza, probably the most notorious and successful smuggler on the U.S.-Mexico border. Tall, young, good-looking, wearing a dark military-looking utility uniform without any badges or patches, black fatigue cap over a black-and-white patterned bandana, long hair and goatee, and well-cared-for military-style boots laced all the way up, Fuerza had successfully made a worldwide reputation for himself not as a criminal, but as an entrepreneur, satisfying the needs of Americans and Mexican immigrants alike…

…and also because Fuerza had no compunction whatsoever to abandon his pollos if the federales closed in on him. It was widely suspected that Fuerza had ditched one of his trucks filled with migrants in the middle of the desert and escaped—except the authorities never showed up until