Tracks in the Sand: A Tale of the Border Patrol

By Kent Lundgren

It didn't all happen just this way but it could have... Marcos Ayala deals in drugs and whores. Like any entrepreneur in Juarez, he has problems; one of them is how to get his wares past the Border Patrol. A renegade yanquí soldier offers a new technique but there is risk in letting an American into the organization. Luz Ortega is another problem. Ayala just bought the young peasant girl and she is unwilling to learn her new trade. Luz has discovered an iron will and cunning and she intends to complicate his life in ways he doesn’t foresee. Tom "The Real" Diehl thinks he has seen it all while wearing the Border Patrol's gold badge. Then he and his rookie partner follow tracks in the sand and catch a group of smuggled aliens - and the game changes. For Ken Travis, fresh from the Academy, the real learning process begins then; he finds there are drugs and guns and men willing to kill over them. He realizes that how he handles the job can mean life or death and the price for getting it wrong is paid in blood. It all comes together in the end, but like life, not how you expect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kent Lundgren
• Release date: Sep 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9780615699455

Kent Lundgren

The author served in the old Immigration & Naturalization Service from 1968 to 1997 in locations across the United States in a variety of duties. The most fun he ever had on the job, he says, was in the green uniform of the U.S. Border Patrol in El Paso, and he has drawn upon those experiences as source material for Tracks in the Sand. He is now retired and lives in central Washington state, where he spends his time committing golf (as he puts it) and riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycles around the country.

Book preview

Chapter 2

Diehl pushed the rig hard out the narrow two-lane extension of Zaragosa Road, running north from Ysleta to U.S. 180, the Carlsbad Highway. He was wrestling the wheel again, cursing the cheap outfit that would make men drive a vehicle with 100,000 miles on it, especially 100,000 miles like the Border Patrol builds up. Most of the Patrol’s sedans had even more miles on them than this old Jeep and all had seen hard use being driven at high speed across miles of western highways.

Before getting to the junction he turned off to the east on an unmarked, unimproved road. After following it for a mile or more he turned right onto a sand trail. Very quickly they were back at the Gomez place, having come in from the north this time. Ken realized that if they had turned left at the last corner the trail would have led them north, out to the Carlsbad highway, just as Diehl had told him earlier. They stopped right on top of where Diehl had slid to a halt a few hours before.

Ken, when you get out, stick close to me; don’t wander. I didn’t look at the sign around here this morning after we caught those old boys and I don’t want any more tracks laid down to confuse things for me. Diehl stood outside his door, gazing around. He walked slowly around the rig. His tracker’s eyes took it in and his tracker’s mind absorbed it all. He climbed up on the hood of the Jeep and looked some more.

Somebody else has been here since we left, he announced. Come with me.

He walked over to the jacal and went inside. It was a jackstraw jumble of collapsed vigas, the heavy beams that had once supported the ceiling and the latias, the smaller sticks that had lain across the vigas. Chunks of the mud brick walls had collapsed inside at several places

When I brought them back here this morning I never did anything but look in the window to make sure there was nobody else hid out here. I set them down in the shade of the wall, and then we just loaded them up and drove off. That was dumb.

Why do you say that, Mr. Diehl? Ken asked, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to keep being overtly respectful for a while. Maybe someday he’d be agreeable to a statement like that, but not yet, not by a long shot.

Looky here, Diehl said. "Just inside the door. You see where them old adobes that fell down have been disturbed?" He pointed to a pile of mud bricks on the floor at the foot of the wall by the door.

There was something put under them I’d bet, and whoever came out here after us picked it up. You can see where it set on the ground for a while. Looks like it was kinda small and wrapped in plastic. See the wrinkly marks it left in the sand? And see how there’s no weave marks, like fabric would leave?

Knowing what to look for by having it brought in front of his nose, Ken said, Sure do. The marks were plain to see in the sand, which was still slightly damp from the adobe blocks being turned over. Desert sand often has moisture trapped in it and where the sun can’t get to it that moisture is close to the surface. Something laying atop the sand will often draw the moisture up.

Now, Diehl asked, How do we know that whoever picked it up was here after us? And how did he get here?

Ken thought it over, then said I expect he came on that dirt bike that left tracks out there on the trail that came in the way we did. I didn’t see his sign until we turned onto this trail, so I’d bet he came in all the way down the trail, not on the sand road like we did. You told me this morning the trail goes out to the Carlsbad Highway, so I expect he came from there. Whoever was on it might have been here yesterday evening, but I don’t think so. That track is over the top of the ones we left this morning, isn’t it? He rode on in close, but never came into the yard. He stayed out of the area we were in.

Ken pointed to the northeast corner of the yard and said It looks to me like he parked out there a ways, but when he took off he ran over the tracks we left over there where we turned around and drove out. Do you think that the guys we caught put that package under there for him?

Not bad for a newby, Diehl said, smiling with the remark to take the sting out of it. Then, not yet ready to answer Ken’s question, he posed his own: But if that’s how it happened, how come he didn’t he leave any footprints over here at the house picking up the package?

Ken looked around and then asked if he could walk the area now. Diehl told him to go ahead. Ken walked over to a point near where the bike had been parked, taking a looping path that would keep him away from a direct line between the house and where the bike had been. He stopped close to where the bike had parked and looked around, checking out the ground before he actually walked on it.

After a minute of looking, he said Mr. Diehl, it looks to me like maybe he took his boots off over here. I don’t know why he’d do that; what with the sun overhead I can’t make out much more in the way of sign, but that’s what it looks like.

Diehl was mildly impressed. Travis apparently had a good eye for sign; he was looking like a better investment all the time.

Come on over here and I’ll show you why he called to Ken.

You’re right. With the sun overhead it’s damned hard to pick out tracks, but if you have some idea of what you’re looking for and where it might be, it’s easier. It also helps to change your angle, so get down here on your knees, scooch down so your head’s maybe a foot off the ground and look back towards the place he parked.

Travis did so, and there, very faintly, he could make out impressions in the sand, spaced out like a set of footprints would be.

See, Diehl said, he didn’t want to leave a set of tracks right up to the door here. If we wasn’t looking for them, if we hadn’t come back this morning, we’d have never known he was here at the house. What he did was take his boots off and walk over here in his socks. With no sharp edges to shape the sand it don’t leave that much of a track. A little breeze and it’s gone. That kind of thing tells us something its own self, don’t it?

Yessir, Ken replied. It tells us that he knows about sign, or at least that we look for it and that he didn’t want us to know that he’d been here. Does that mean the guys we caught brought something for him?

Diehl gazed at the horizon with a thoughtful look, then said, I sure to God don’t know for certain. But I’d bet they did. Whoever wanted that package dropped there probably wouldn’t have wanted to leave it laying around for long. Yeah, I think they probably did. Have a look at the boot prints he left over yonder. Remember them and the ones the motorcycle left; sketch them in your notebook if you have to. We may see them again. Now, let’s go.

Ken walked back to the parking spot to look at the tracks once more. In a dusty spot under the overhang of a mesquite bush the boot had left a clear partial track. It had a flat sole, distinctive in a land where cowboy boots were the favored footwear. The sole had some concentric circles, like a target in the center of the front portion, with grooves running from it out to the edges of the sole.

Hmmm . . . looks like maybe a motorcycle racer’s boot. He pulled a small, green notebook out of his shirt pocket and began to sketch the track.

The tire tracks showed the bike was running a full knobby, designed for maximum traction off road, but dangerous on the highway. He noticed that when the rider departed, he had planted a foot for stability, then nailed the throttle, spinning the rear tire and letting the bike make a donut, pivoting around the front tire until it was pointed in the right direction. The foot came up and the bike dug out, headed back up the trail the way it had arrived. Ken thought that he was dealing here with a real rider, not some hotshoe pretender with a new bike.

He told Diehl what it looked like. He grunted in acknowledgment. Yep. We’ll see ‘em again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~

Chapter 3

Across the river in Ciudad Juarez a young man stood at a wall phone surrounded by years of handprints in the Cantina Rio Bravo, just off Avenida Juarez. "Bueno," he said, and then hung up.

The place was only a few blocks from the Santa Fe Street Bridge between downtown El Paso and the city of Juarez. The barroom was dim, lit only by two feeble bulbs in the ceiling and a late afternoon shaft of sunshine that beamed through the open front door. It struck sparks as it fell on the oddly clean and polished mirror and glasses on the back bar.

The two-tone walls were a dirty cream color and faded posters for bullfights long over were plastered here and there. From waist-high to the floor they were dark brown to hide the dirt left by feet propped against them. A set of steep stairs against a side wall led to crib-size rooms upstairs and a fan overhead stirred air that smelled of ancient sin. Two professional women long past their youthful dreams sat at the bar showing fat, lumpy thighs up to the hip. Bosoms gone bad pushed up, overflowing the tops of their dresses. Good-looking women didn’t work the day shift in the Cantina Rio