Border War Read online

  Sitting here under the star-splashed night sky in close quarters behind the ridge with a cool breeze blowing in from the north made him appreciate all he had in his life, even if it wasn’t perfect. He liked it.

  He also liked this sharp FBI agent. Tom Eriksen was a hard worker and didn’t complain. It was something they needed to teach more thoroughly at the FBI Academy in Quantico. There seemed to be an institutional arrogance that filtered through many of the agents, but this kid from Baltimore was smart and, more importantly, tough. He also had a light sense of humor that would serve him well in the harsh world of law enforcement. John wondered why the FBI dickhead who supervised the agents on task forces treated him so badly. The supervisor wasn’t so much stupid as dismissive and insisted on knowing everything the young FBI agent was doing. The tubby FBI supervisor, whose name was Mike Zara, claimed that he treated all the agents under him the same and it was important for him to know what each task force was doing. John thought it was more of a babysitting job.

  Tom Eriksen would be a good boss one day. He was interested in catching criminals, not bullying people to prove he was in charge. He was twenty-nine but looked younger, with light hair and blue eyes. If the kid wasn’t so serious about his job he’d have women lined up to date. But he worked eighty hours a week and had to work out another ten. Throw in time to sleep and eat and that didn’t leave much time to chase women.

  John focused his attention down the hill toward the culvert and scanned the area with his powerful Browning binoculars. It took him a moment to notice that the grate on the culvert was wide open. Before he could see the smugglers, one of the Border Patrol agents called over the radio, “We’ve got two males creeping toward you guys from the culvert.”

  John Houghton scanned directly in front of him until he saw the two men, one of them with something in his hand, scurrying along the edge of the brush, scouting the area.

  Tom Eriksen whispered in his ear, “We could grab those two before they knew we were here.”

  John shook his head. “Those are just scouts. God knows how many are stuck down the culvert. Let’s give ’em a chance to all come out and see what we’re dealing with.”

  John pulled his SIG Sauer .40 caliber from a tactical holster. He liked the feel of the heavy metal pistol in his right hand. He’d kept the gun from when he was still part of the U.S. Customs Service. Unlike most of the other federal agencies, which dictated a narrow selection of handguns, the Customs Service always allowed its agents to show their creativity in arming themselves. Tonight the pistol was going to be more for show, because these guys didn’t want to tangle with law enforcement agents who were lying in wait.

  No one ever did.

  TWO

  Tom Eriksen surveyed the valley where he thought the smugglers would emerge. He could imagine a pitched battle between cavalry and Comanche a hundred and thirty years ago, with the horses stumbling over the loose rocks and the nearest decent medical treatment still a hundred years in the future. It was dark, even with unobstructed stars and a slight glow from the lights of El Paso. Ciudad Juárez, which was about the same distance away and eight times as big, was dimmer. It was more of a sprawling barrio with few commercial lights.

  Now, as he and Houghton crouched behind a patch of brush, with time to consider where they were and what was about to happen, his heart rate picked up. Eriksen didn’t have much experience on the border, or working operations like this, but he could tell the young border patrolman was itching to move. He had crept over from their right and wanted to see some action. He was no different than any other young cop. The money was okay in most law enforcement jobs, but that’s not why people joined a police agency. They wanted to do things most of the public only saw on TV. They wanted to shoot guns, drive fast, and chase people.

  Eriksen felt the excitement grow inside him, but he still realized the inherent danger of interrupting a crime in the middle of the night. The coyotes would have guns. One of the illegals could be armed and panic, or it could be a drug-smuggling group who would protect their load at all costs.

  Now he could see the whole line of people. These weren’t drug runners. It was a mix of people, male and female, with the first few appearing more upright and walking normally as opposed to the shuffling, slouched people in the rear of the line. The coyotes were spaced a few yards apart to the side. There were at least three, but Eriksen realized there could be more waiting in the culvert.

  John Houghton looked over to the young, dark-haired border patrolman and said, “Hang on there, partner. Let’s give them a chance to move up the hill. Between your guys and us, we’ll corral everyone easy enough.”

  Eriksen liked the way John could impart his experience without sounding like he was talking down to anyone. He had used the same tone to explain to Eriksen why this duty wasn’t as futile as Eriksen thought it was. The older HSI agent had explained that the porous nature of the U.S.–Mexican border made it a perfect place for a terrorist to enter the country, cause all kinds of havoc, and then scoot back across. Given that it was two thousand miles long, policing it was a mighty task. The fact that the Border Patrol stopped and returned 350,000 undocumented border crossers each year was an indication of how many got across safely.

  It may not have been directly investigating terrorists, but working the border for undocumented crossers had a certain value if viewed with the right attitude. Eriksen did what he could to look at his assignment in the best possible light.

  Eriksen noticed the young border patrolman pull his issued Heckler & Koch P2000 from his heavy-duty belt and ease forward. Before either he or John could tell him to wait, the radio came to life as someone in the other group of law enforcement officers said, “Let’s move.”

  One of the Border Patrol guys jumped up from cover across the sloping ravine. Before he even took a step, gunfire erupted from the bottom of the ravine and was immediately answered by the border officers on that side.

  John sprang forward and motioned his two companions to follow him while the smugglers were focusing their attention on the other group. They raced down the slope silently, covered by shadows.

  Now it was clear who the smugglers were and who the poor undocumented people were. The smugglers all stood tall and fired a variety of small arms, from handguns to a semiautomatic that looked like a Ruger Mini-14. The firing eased dramatically as this man with the Mini-14 ducked back into the culvert. It was suicide to chase him, but the two who had initially fired on the Border Patrol agent were stuck in the gully. A border patrolman was down. For a moment it was all Eriksen could focus on. He changed direction to go to the man’s aid. One of the people being smuggled across the border fell to his knees next to the wounded agent. Eriksen picked up his pace and shouted at him. He couldn’t tell if the man was hurting the agent or trying to help. He raised his gun as he continued to sprint toward the fallen man.

  * * *

  Cash stood just outside the five-foot-tall cement pipe they had just traversed. The shadows along the walls of the canyon could hide an army. His feet were unsteady on the uneven ground after walking on the stable culvert floor. Then he heard the shots he had expected and ducked back into the culvert. A few of the wetbacks pushed past him to race back to Mexico at the other end. He paid no attention. This wasn’t his normal job anyway. He didn’t like doing things in such a convoluted manner, but circumstances dictated that one of his assistants, Vinnie, be left out there on his own. The backup plan required Cash to slide to the culvert and move southeast about four hundred yards in case he had underestimated the Border Patrol agents’ ability to shoot. Management had decreed that Vinnie would not come back tonight, and it was necessary to make it look like the cops killed him. Cash would do his best.

  He had thought the three “special widgets” he was required to bring over would run back into the culvert, but so far he had only seen one of them, the tall guy named Eric. It was chaos. More than he imagined when he presented his plan to his employers. He’d been in a nu
mber of shootouts with everyone from the New Jersey State Police to Nicaraguan border agents. It took a few times for him to realize the cops always had rules and guidelines they had to follow, but he could just fire away and not worry about who he was going to hit. He wasn’t going to get in any more trouble after shooting at the police. In the States, he’d probably get twenty years in prison if he didn’t kill anyone, and south of the border, very few cops would take him prisoner after he popped off a couple of rounds. The rest of the world mocked the good old U.S. of A. about its prison population, but he could tell you from a different perspective it had the most professional cops he’d ever dealt with. One of his buddies in New York shot and killed a New York City patrolman, and he was taken into custody two days later without injury. Cash knew for a fact that kind of shit wouldn’t happen anywhere south of Texas. And sometimes not even in Texas.

  Vinnie had specific orders and was too stupid not to follow them. That was what made him such a valuable asset most of the time. He did exactly what people told him and rarely thought for himself. That’s why it had come as a surprise that the knucklehead would cause enough trouble at the office for Cash to be told to deal with him.

  A bullet pinged off the metal grate of the culvert, and Cash knew it was time to fall back to the rally point on the other side of the border.

  * * *

  Vinnie DiMetti didn’t like the way Cash had set this whole thing up. Right now he was stranded about thirty yards from the culvert and separated from the rest of the group except one of the Mexican assistants. He had never gotten used to open spaces and the lack of pavement. This was definitely not Long Island. He knew this kind of shit could happen on the border, he just hoped it wasn’t going to happen to him. He had fired a gun at another human three times in his life, and two of those times that human was tied up, on his knees, and facing away from Vinnie. The third time he had thrown a few rounds toward a Boston cop and taken a few rounds in return, but no one was hurt.

  This was different. The way the bullets were flying, he might as well be in combat. The cops or Border Patrol agents or whoever the hell they were didn’t seem panicked by a few shots fired their way. He knew there was no way he was going to die for a few illegals. All he wanted to do was shoot and scoot. He moved toward the gully Cash had told him to run to. It was an old wash that rolled directly into the Rio Grande, where he could swim across into the safety of Mexico. He popped off a couple of rounds at a guy in the green uniform but didn’t know if it was a sheriff’s deputy or a Border Patrol agent. He didn’t wait to see if he hit the man.

  Then he looked around at the scrambling people and decided this was nothing but bullshit. He’d done two years in a community college on Long Island. He should have a cushy office job. He had paid his dues and didn’t understand why he was still stuck doing menial tasks like this. That’s why he had barked like an agitated dog at his bosses. Now they had to listen.

  He screamed to his Mexican assistant, “Forget the people, let’s go.”

  * * *

  Eriksen was about to knock the middle-aged man away from the wounded Border Patrol agent, but he paused for a moment because it looked like the man knew what he was doing. Then he sank to his knees to see if he could do anything, but the man snapped in English, “I’m a doctor. Let me help this man.” There was something about his bearing and manner that instantly convinced Eriksen to let him do his job.

  Another Border Patrol agent raced up, taking a moment to assess the situation and deferring to the man who was carefully searching for the source of blood under the Border Patrol agent’s shirt. It looked like a bullet had slipped under his arm and above his ballistic vest.

  John Houghton rolled past and called for Eriksen to follow him. For an older guy, he could move pretty fast. Eriksen left the doctor helping the Border Patrol agent and tried to keep up with his partner. He had played lacrosse at Harvard, and it helped him immensely at the FBI Academy in Quantico with the daily physical training and the rigorous fitness tests, but it had been tough to keep that level of fitness in the real world.

  John ignored the terrified people crossing the border and dashed toward two fleeing bandits running southeast into an old river wash. The little valley cut under an old highway and ran directly into the Rio Grande, or as it looked here, the Rio Mierda.

  A round kicked up dirt directly in front of them, and both federal agents dropped to a prone position and returned fire. A lot of fire. Eriksen recalled his FBI firearms instructor screaming at them on the range, “The only reason to stop shooting at sixteen rounds is if you don’t have seventeen.” His finger squeezed the trigger and the pistol bucked in his hand over and over as his partner did the same to his left. There were muzzle flashes from the front as the bandits returned fire.

  An empty bullet casing from John’s pistol bounced off Eriksen’s face, making him jump when he thought he’d been hit. He took a moment to glance to his right and realized his casings had popped onto the ground next to him as well. Then the breech of his pistol locked back, and Eriksen rolled to his side to grab his spare magazine with his left hand as he ejected the empty magazine with his right. In a matter of seconds he was ready to roll back into position and continue firing. He purposely took a deep breath to stay calm, and he realized the shooting had stopped. His ears rang as if he were in the tower of Notre Dame, but there was no sign of firing coming from in front of him and no movement to either side.

  He took a moment to scan the area with his pistol up, then turned to John Houghton and said, “Did we scare them off or hit them?”

  There was no answer from his partner.

  Eriksen turned to his left and saw John lying perfectly still in the dirt.

  THREE

  Cash looked around the luxurious office of his boss and felt a pang of jealousy. This was what he wanted. Big oak desk, shelves filled with management books, framed photos of a cute family. The wide office had two layers of executive assistants in front of it, making contact with a regular employee unlikely. His boss’s view of the open prairie that led to the border and the open spaces of Mexico provided an image like one from the pages of National Geographic. From inside the climate-controlled office, set at precisely seventy degrees, the bright sunlight outside looked beautiful. He knew if he was out there in the sun, he’d be sweating like an Englishman at the dentist, but from in here it was spectacular. Cash felt anxious in front of his boss, even though the guy in the three-thousand-dollar Valentino suit sitting behind the ornate desk wasn’t the type who would seek physical retribution. He was a businessman, and a damn good one. But if there was dirty work to be done, he relied on Cash to do it.

  His boss, Rich Haben, pulled his glasses off and set them on the desk. He took a moment to massage his temples with the heels of his palms, then sighed and looked up at Cash. “So it didn’t go as we planned. Is that a fair assessment?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Haben, that’s a fair assessment.”

  Another silence made Cash tense. In North Jersey a few years ago, if his boss had been silent this many times during a conversation, he wouldn’t expect to be walking down the street afterward, at least not without a limp.

  Haben said, “Did you get the three people we needed across?”

  Cash shook his head.

  “We need to get our hands on the tall computer geek, Eric Sidle.”

  “Yes, sir. I know how important it is. I’ll jump on it right away.” He hadn’t been told about the computer guy. It was a mistake not to emphasize his importance. Luckily, his boss realized it had been a communication error.

  Now the stern middle-aged man said, “Did Mr. DiMetti make it back?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, that’s something at least.” Then there was more silence as another idea popped into the executive’s head. He looked at Cash and said, “You didn’t manage to shoot any cops, did you?”

  Cash hesitated, then said, “Vinnie fired. Remember, he was told to.”

  “We should’
ve thought this through a little bit more. I don’t need the attention a dead cop would bring. At least an American cop. Mexico loses dozens every week, but if one cop in the U.S. gets shot, it’s national news and those media assholes like Dempsey jump all over it. You’d think Dempsey of all of them would quit harping about a border war that he knows America lost years ago.”

  Cash knew his boss hated the popular TV host. Hated him for bringing the border and drugs and immigration to the forefront of the national debate. Ted Dempsey had taken on all the issues that seemed to drive both political parties nuts: trade deficits and debt, outsourcing of middle-class jobs, education, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, illegal immigration. And man, did the independent, conservative commentator piss off presidents, both Republican and Democrat. Left- and right-wingers both tried to shut him up on illegal immigration, trying to paint Dempsey as an economic isolationist, a protectionist, a racist, and none of it had stuck, because Americans weren’t quite as dumb as Washington liked to believe. Cash was sure his boss had helped finance some of those efforts to shut down the media on the border, and to shut down the politicians as well.

  The big money thought the recent election would end the discussion, that business would return to normal on the border, but, incredibly, Texas voters elected a new senator who was already causing trouble in Washington. Senator Elizabeth Ramos had fallen in love with the sound of her own voice, and her voice was loudest on two subjects: terrorism and immigration. To make her more controversial, she was educated and knew the subjects from all angles. Being the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants inoculated her against some of the harsh rhetoric from critics over her tough stance on illegal immigration. Plus, she was attractive.

  It didn’t matter how hot she was, though, her message was getting tiresome. And he knew the company didn’t need the heat from stepped-up border security. Finally, Cash said, “We should probably lay low for a little while.”