Enemy of the People

by Peter Eichstaedt

  The Black Hawk pulled up like a surprised and wounded animal, exposing its belly. Tariq squeezed the trigger and raked the bottom of the Black Hawk, bullets banging into the riveted steel of the wounded chopper, which rose and swooped away, disappearing into the darkness.

  The chopper gone, the hillside fell eerily silent, the air thick and black as coal. Any remaining border agents had fled, Tariq guessed, or were hiding nearby, having seen they were outnumbered and outgunned. Tariq dropped to his knees, his chest heaving, the taste of dirt in his mouth, dust floating in the air. Clutching his weapon, he stood unsteadily, his breath heavy and short.

  In the darkness Tariq found José’s backpack. Searching it, he found the flashlight José carried. He flicked it on, and pointing it to the ground, let his eyes adjust to the shaft of light, even though the light might draw a shot. It didn’t. A moment later, he moved toward the moans of his wounded jihadi fighter and shined the light onto the man’s face. The dying man’s eyes glistened, his chest soaked with blood, his breath labored and gasping. The man licked his lips and whispered, maá, begging for water.

  Tariq held his Beretta to the fighter’s head, but hesitated to pull the trigger. He could not afford to lose a single man because it might compromise the mission. But a badly wounded jihadi was useless and would only slow them down. And if they left him behind and still alive, he could be captured and tortured into talking. That possibility was intolerable. “Allah akhbar,” Tariq said softly, then pulled the trigger. The fighter’s head jerked, blood spurting from the man’s temple. Tariq’s stomach clenched. Though he had killed many men with his own hands, shooting a friend was different. Tariq wretched and gagged, the bile burning his throat and nose, then spit and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  Tariq stood again and swung the flashlight to shadowy movement in the distance. Two green-clad US border agents scrambled up the hillside and away from them, attempting to flee.

  Stop!” Tariq yelled at the agents, then fired several shots over their heads. He flicked off the flashlight, then paused and listened, but heard nothing but the agents’ frantic footsteps.

  “Capture them!” Tariq barked to his men in Arabic, waving his gun and pointing, as the agents’ backs disappeared among the bushes. “But don’t kill them.”

  Tariq’s men fanned out and clambered after the agents, following them in the faint light now provided by a slice of the recently risen moon. The scrambling footsteps of his men faded. Then he heard nothing, as if the world had stopped.

  Shots broke the silence, flashing sparks piercing the darkness, coming from up the slope. The border agents were less than fifty yards away and firing at their pursuers. His men returned fire, prompting sporadic shots from the agents, who Tariq guessed would soon be out of ammunition. Tariq trotted up the slope toward his men, who were spread throughout the trees and bushes. The firing stopped. After a pause, he broke the silence and shouted, “Drop your weapons, and you will live.”

  The border agents fired in his direction, the bullets ripping through the branches of the nearby trees.

  “We don’t want to kill you,” Tariq shouted. “Drop your weapons and you will live. Or, you can die here and now. It’s up to you.”

  The agents replied with another burst of gunfire.

  Tariq wondered how much ammunition each agent carried, guessing it was minimal. They could not have anticipated an extended fire fight, but didn’t want to be captured alive. Tariq continued up the slope, despite an occasional shot, pausing to listen as his men closed in, stepping clumsily through the darkness. Neither he nor his men could afford the expenditure of more ammunition, but they had no choice.

  A few moments later, one of his men shouted gleefully in Arabic: “We have them! Come now, Tariq! We have them!”

  Tariq’ heart leapt and his lungs ached as he hustled up the slope until he faced the two agents standing back-to-back, their fearful eyes glinting in the dim moonlight. The two agents pointed their weapons at their captors.

  “Drop your weapons,” Tariq ordered in his accented British English.

  “Fuck you,” one agent growled.

  Sizing up their situation, the other said, “It’s our only chance.” The agent lowered his pistol, and after a moment, so did the other.

  “Drop them,” Tariq ordered.

  The agent’s weapons clunked to the dirt and each slowly lifted his hands. “Out of ammo,” the second one said.

  “Grab them!” Tariq barked.

  His men leapt forward and seized the two agents.

  “Take us to your trucks,” Tariq said. Motioning to his men, he spoke in Arabic. “Go back to where the other agents were. Collect all the weapons you can find. Strip the dead of their clothes. Hurry. We have very little time.”

  With their weapons at the agent’s backs, Tariq and his men ambled down the sparsely vegetated slope and soon were at three white-and-green Border Patrol pickup trucks, each with a large container unit mounted in the truck bed and designed to carry eight captive migrants. Tariq pulled off his shirt and pants and stuffed his clothes into his backpack, telling his men to do the same.

  He put on a green Border Patrol shirt and pulled on a pair of pants they’d stripped from one of the dead agents. He fitted a border patrol cap onto his head, as three of his men did the same. Tariq stepped away, and taking a satellite phone from his backpack, tapped in a number. “Sal’am alekum,” he said, speaking rapidly in Arabic. “We must change the pickup point. I will call you in one hour and tell you where.”

  Tariq turned to his men, motioned them close, and explained the plan. Without a word, they split up, several climbing into one of the mounted container units, the rest in the other, then pulled the doors shut.

  Inside the cab of the first truck, Tariq held his gun to the head of one of the captured border agents, who now sat behind the driver’s wheel. “You’re going to drive us to freedom, my friend. At the checkpoint, you tell them you have the Mexicans in the back and you need to get us to Tucson, fast. Any problems and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  The agent nodded, clenching his jaw.

  Tariq turned to the cab of the second truck. Another of his men, also dressed as an agent, had climbed into the passenger side of the cab, and like Tariq, held a pistol to the head of the second border agent, who also was driving. He signaled he was ready. The truck engines revved and the two trucks nosed into the darkness.

  ***

  Twenty minutes later, the Border Patrol trucks turned from a dirt road in the Pajarita Wilderness Area of the Coronado National Forest. It was a lightly protected border region and the trucks rolled along the paved, two-lane highway in the darkness of the desert night. Tariq tensed as a cluster of pole-mounted floodlights glowed in the distance, bathing a remote Border Patrol checkpoint in harsh, white light. Tariq motioned for the agent to slow. “Do as I say and you won’t get hurt.”

  Tariq pulled a simple, palm-sized walkie-talkie from his pocket and clicked it on. “We’re coming to a check point,” he said in Arabic to his fellow jihadi in the second truck. “Be calm. Don’t say anything. Tell the driver to do the talking. Keep your weapon out of sight. Allah akhbar.”

  The two Border Patrol trucks slowed as the truck lights shined on rows of orange traffic cones, flanked by more Border Patrol vehicles parked at the roadside, guiding traffic into a single lane where a lone Border Patrol agent waited in the glare, watching warily as the trucks approached.

  Tariq withdrew his gun from the ribs of the driver, who gripped the steering wheel casually with his right hand, keeping his jacketed left arm resting in the opened window. The truck came to a stop. The checkpoint agent bent to the window and peered inside. He nodded to the driver, then glanced at Tariq, his eyes falling on Tariq’s uniform. He stared at Tariq’s face, not recognizing Tariq as an agent, or even an American. The agent’s face told Tariq he suspected something wasn’t right as
the man’s eyes clouded with confusion. Tariq lifted a couple of fingers to the bill of his cap and with a mock salute, said, “Evenin’, boss,” using a forced western accent.

  The checkpoint agent blinked, then nodded slowly. “Did you hear about the shoot-out?”

  The agent at the wheel grimaced. “We got the bastards,” he said, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the back of the truck.

  The checkpoint agent nodded to the driver then glanced again at Tariq. “Get’em behind bars where they belong,” he said, then stood back and motioned for the trucks to pass.

  As the trucks pulled away, Tariq exhaled and leaned back, then looked into the rearview mirror at his right as the second the Border Patrol truck rolled through the checkpoint unimpeded and quickly drew close behind. Tariq watched the lights of the checkpoint fade from view.

  Chapter 7

  Kyle gazed distractedly at the passing scrub of the Arizona desert landscape as he rode south out of Tucson on Interstate 19 in a green and white Border Patrol pickup truck. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was headed back to a war zone. As much as he hated to admit it, that was what the borderlands had become.

  He’d gotten a call two days earlier from his old boss, Ed Frankel at the Washington Herald, who, as he eased his way toward retirement, now managed the newspaper’s network of freelance reporters. Some were former staff writers, who like Kyle, were off writing books, but still kept a finger in the news business.

  Frankel had called as soon as news broke about the Border Patrol agents who’d been killed while apprehending Mexican migrants crossing the border. Kyle had grown up in El Paso and considered the borderlands his home turf. Of course he’d take the assignment.

  Some 40,000 Border Patrol agents worked the 2,000-mile dividing line between Mexico and the US, along with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, the FBI, branches of the US military, and thousands of state and local lawmen and women. People were killed and died every day as armed men surged back and forth across the border, ferrying people, drugs, and weapons into and out of the US. Now three border agents had been murdered, the single worst loss of life in Border Patrol history and the deadliest border incident since Pancho Villa crossed the border in 1916 and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico.

  Kyle glanced at the driver, Agent Ricardo “Rico” Chavez, whose muscled arms strained the sleeves of his uniform. His cap sat over his iridescent sunglasses, making his eyes look reptilian. He occasionally scratched at the thick mustache that covered his upper lip and spread down the sides of his chin, Fu Manchu style.

  “Me and Raoul served together in Iraq,” Chavez said. “He said you’re an okay guy.”

  “We’re cousins, actually,” Kyle said.

  “El primo! Que bueno!” Chavez said. “That’s good. Raoul said you wanted to do a story, so I said, sure. The more people know about the situation on the border, the better. But, I had to clear this trip with the boss. They were cool with it once I told them you were with Washington Herald.”

  Kyle nodded uncomfortably. He disliked notoriety, despite more than a decade with the newspaper, but was thankful for the insider access. Chavez explained he had left the US Special Forces and signed on with the Border Patrol. But he was not your average agent. He was part of the elite border tactical unit, or BORTAC, lethal night fighters who tangled with the vajadores, the Mexican bandits who prowled the borderlands like packs of wolves, robbing and occasionally killing their fellow Mexican migrants or any US border agents who got in their way.

  “Vajadores!” Chavez said with a snort. “Animáles is more like it. They go after the ones who carry the weed across the border for the cartels. They steal it and sell it themselves.”

  “Maybe they work for competing cartels,” Kyle said.

  “Most of them are small time operators,” Chavez said. “We call them rip crews. Short for rip offs. They pick on the people forced to carry the weed. The cartels tell them they don’t have to pay to cross the border if they carry the drugs. That’s how they turn the migrants into drug mules.”

  Kyle jotted in his notebook, then looked up as they approached the border crossing at Nogales. Chavez veered off the main road and into the parking lot of the patrol’s station on the US side of the border. “I want to show you something.”

  Kyle followed Chavez around to the back of the station and into a cavernous warehouse. The charred hulks of what were once two Border Patrol trucks sat on the bare concrete, lighted by a dozen overhead florescent lamps. The air reeked of burned plastic and paint. Chavez parked his sunglasses on his forehead and stood with balled fists on his hips, his jaw muscle flexing slowly. “This is what’s left of the vehicles that were taken,” he said.

  “Nothing,” Kyle said.

  Chavez cleared his throat. “Even their damned badges melted.”

  “You think the cartels did it?”

  Chavez shook his head. “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “The cartels know better than to go head-to-head with the Border Patrol,” Chavez said. “It’s bad for business. They have too much to lose. Besides, there’s no need.”

  “No need?” Kyle asked.

  “Think about it. There are tens of thousands of Mexicans who will pay $3,000 to $4,000 per person to the drug cartels to get them across the border and into the US. So what if you lose a few?”

  “Lose a few migrants or coyotes?”

  Chavez shrugged. “Either. It don’t matter. The coyotes, the men who bring the migrants across, run when we show up. They go back across the border, find another group, and come again. They work for the cartels. Killing the Border Patrol is not in the coyote playbook.”

  “Maybe it was the vajadores?”

  “Maybe. But they’re the rip crews. Banditos. The agents who died had nothing to steal. There was nothing to be gained by killing them.”

  “So, who killed them?”

  “Someone who didn’t care who they killed or why,” Chavez said. “They didn’t want to leave any traces, either.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “We don’t know,” Chavez said. “They were met and picked up by someone, though.”

  “How do you know they didn’t walk away?”

  “They would have been spotted.”

  “How is it possible for a group of people to cross into the country, kill three border agents, and then disappear?” Kyle asked.

  “C’mon,” Chavez said. “I’ll show you.”

  Kyle followed him up a steel and concrete stairway to the second floor then down a dim hall and pointed to the patrol’s armory. “We can check out most kinds of weapons here, night vision goggles, that kind of thing. But we’re still over powered by the cartels and the vajadores. They can buy the latest on the market and most of it comes directly from the US.”

  “So American arms dealers are selling guns that are used against the Border Patrol agents?”

  “Yep.” Chavez grimaced as he leaned against a heavy metal door and turned the handle.

  They entered a large dark room where several agents sat at keyboards with what looked like computer game joysticks. Large video screens covered the nearby wall, each depicting a stretch of desert. Chavez waved to screens. “The cameras are mounted on towers along the border. We monitor a limited number of sections 24/7.”

  “The virtual fence?”

  Chavez nodded. “We’ve got video for daylight and infrared for night. They can be rotated and zoomed in and out. If the monitors pick up any movement, we track it and send our agents.”

  Kyle nodded. “Looks incredibly efficient.”

  “Yeah, well,” Chavez shrugged. “It only covers about forty miles of the border and it cost millions of dollars.”

 
“Forty miles? The border is two thousand miles long.”

  “Yeah. I know. It makes me long for the old days when agents rode horses and carried Winchesters. One agent could cover twenty miles in a day.”

  “So, that means a hundred agents could patrol the border in a day.”

  “There’s nothing like eyes and boots on the ground.”

  “But not if they’re targets,” Kyle said.

  Chavez nodded grimly.

  Chapter 8

  Alan Morris stood on the graveled parking lot of the Al-Salam mosque in the parched hills a few miles from the small village of Abiquiu in northern New Mexico. He faced his daughter Jennifer, waiting for her to respond. The sun was high and heavy on his shoulders. He’d never felt so helpless and alone. He squinted as he scanned the raked gravel paths lined with rocks connecting the cluster of plastered adobe buildings of the Islamic studies center. The grounds were landscaped with blossoming yellow blade cactus, angular cholla cactus festooned with white flowers, and the pale gray-green of the chamisa bushes.

  Morris’s eyes returned to Jennifer. She wore a loose, ankle-length skirt, a long-sleeved blouse, and a scarf covering her head and tied under her chin. He hardly recognized her any more. What the hell happened to her? But he knew. When his wife Anne had died of a rapidly metastasizing form of skin cancer, he had buried his grief and himself in his work. He contemplated an early retirement and she was all he had left.

  It had been particularly hard for Jennifer. Losing her mother at the age of sixteen had set Jennifer adrift. Morris knew she had needed the comfort of her father as much as he had needed the comfort of a daughter, but had turned inward rather than reaching out. It was a huge mistake, he now realized, and wanted to make things right, refusing to admit it was too little, too late. He’d been a man who was all but gone from her life and now was paying the price.

  He had convinced himself it didn’t matter. Jennifer immersed herself in her classes and clubs at Los Alamos High School and graduated with honors, earning a full-ride academic scholarship to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Morris was immensely proud—until the day she announced she was converting to Islam. What the hell is she doing at this mosque, anyway?