The Badge and the Border

By Mike Danford

What led up to a guy joining up with the U.S. Border Patrol to become their best, track down a murderous criminal who worked for the Mexican drug cartels that either or both poisoned or murdered other humans for profit. He was the very best that we had and his assignment was to find and kill the best expediter that they had, no matter the cost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664190443

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SUMAS, WASHINGTON 0200 GMT (ZULU), 1900 PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

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Sumas is located at the north end of the Cascade Mountain range, it’s a neat and tidy farming community, originally inhabited mostly by the descendants of Dutch immigrants that began to arrive in the early 1900’s to carve out farms in the fertile soil of northern Puget Sound. Overlooking this is a dormant volcano known as Mount Baker, a huge snow cone at the northernmost end of the Cascade Mountain range that gets well over twelve feet of snow every winter on the ski runs of the 10,7 1-foot peak that pretty well defines the eastern boundary of the tillable ground and provides outdoor winter sports for hundreds of thousands of Puget Sounders each winter in addition to the economic benefits to the logging industry. It also provides ideal forest cover for illegal aliens and other criminals moving furtively across the border in both directions, but mostly south.

The night air of the mountains was cool, clean, clear and eerily still with the moon and stars shining in all their glory. Nice weather, the big man thought as he backed slowly into the darkest shadow of a huge tree where his dark green uniform and muddy face paint made him nearly invisible. He squatted slowly to sweep the soft, moist ground with his hands as he carefully duck walked backward until the huge trunk stopped him. Since he couldn’t see in the darkness, he made sure no limbs or vines on the ground would trip him when he exploded out of this cover like a quarter horse lunging out of the starting gate. Satisfied with his preparations, he stood up and leaned back against the tree trunk to wait for the signal. Almost absent-mindedly, he went through another simple routine several times. Ver-ry slowly, he checked to make sure that the pistol on his belt was strapped securely in its black, fabric holster so it wouldn’t get lost in the scuffle he knew was certain to happen. At the same speed, he adjusted his body armor, then his fingers moved slowly and carefully along his belt to check the Mace can and handcuffs to make sure that they too were secure then he adjusted his black, surgical-style face mask and the ever-present black surgical gloves. Except for turning it backward and setting his dark green baseball cap on tight, that was his routine to prep for a fight. It was a very short checklist, but he ticked off the items on it slowly, meticulously.

Trapping smugglers, or laying in as in laying in wait, was definitely Shep’s favorite assignment and he was professionally meticulous about the details. It was a bit like lining up for the snap of a football, so he made sure that his teammates were well-briefed and in place before the signal was given to snap the ball. Laying in was his specialty and he was really good at it. He was a senior U.S. Border Patrol Officer, so it was his job to be good at it. The officers and their equipment were in place, so all Shep and his team had to do was wait. The ball would only be snapped once in this game.

Many of the trees in this area are well over one hundred and fifty feet tall and have limbs and thick foliage to match, so these deep woods are extremely dark at night, so dark that the brightest moon and millions of twinkling stars barely provide enough glow to allow the human eye to function beneath the canopy of the massive evergreens in the mountains of northern Washington state. Ferns, rotting leaves, layers upon layers of soggy leaves, needles and a few dead limbs strewn randomly on the ground, bushes, even the rough bark on the trees seem to baffle and absorb whatever rays of light manage to penetrate the dense canopy above. It’s so dark that most nocturnal creatures usually seek brighter areas to hunt, especially the predators who hunt primarily by their exceptional night-sight rather than by scent and sound. In spite of his comparatively inferior senses, Man is at the top of the food chain here. He’s also the only predator that wears artificial fur for protection against the elements and the weapons of his enemies, which of course includes many other men.

There were the happy songs of some crickets, an owl nearby hooted eerily in response to another owl somewhere off in the dark distance and several million tree frogs tuned up. The little amphibians squeaked and belched in cheerful, hormonal harmony that was sometimes so loud that the cacophony throbbed almost painfully on the human ear, then it sometimes stopped suddenly without warning and the silence was nearly deafening. Since humans usually use sound as a point of reference, sudden and total silence can be extremely unnerving in the darkness and downright terrifying to the un-initiated. The little croakers rested for maybe as much as thirty seconds before they tuned up again and the cycle repeated. The air was so clean and still that the only fragrance was a soft, sweet smell of cellulose decomposing in the moist, spongey pad of needles that cover the ground and that fragrance was tinted by a faint, chlorophyllic hint of fir. Even the occasional breaths of feather-light breeze seemed to contribute by gently rattling a few leaves and needles to stir the fragrance of the nighttime forest. It was a perfect time and place to trap humans.

The equipment was set and the team was in position, so all Shep and the six other team members had to do was to wait patiently and quietly, leaning back against a tree trunk that was wider than his linebacker-size shoulders. One of the basic requirements of his job was to always be in good physical condition, so he paid close attention to it because his job was his life. Besides, he’d seen a lotta guys get sloppy fat over the years and he didn’t want to look like that, much less suffer the indignity of not being able to run down most of his targets; some of those skinny little guys could really move! .... And he didn’t even want to think of the day when one of his targets proved to be tougher than he was. A few of them had been good enough to inflict damage on the old veteran, but most of his combat scars had either been fixed by discreet surgery or they weren’t visible under his clothes anyway. He was comfortable being lean and flat-bellied with muscles that still bulged when he flexed and rippled when he moved plus he still had most of the hair on his head, although now it was grey to just above his temples and his hairline was just beginning to recede slightly.

Figuring out what he wanted to do for a living once he’d grown up had been a problem for awhile. He’d floated around from job to job after a short hitch in the Army, spent a year in college where he got reintroduced to football, but being a cop was the only job he’d had that rivaled the rush he’d gotten from playing pro football for two seasons in the Canadian league. God, how he’d loved the violence of that game! The brutal, flesh- and-bone crushing impacts that’d numbed his body, the pain, the taste of sweat, blood, dirt and sometimes even the chalky lime that defined the playing field. Snow and ice on the turf didn’t phase him; it just was what it was. He hadn’t been thrilled with the occasional headache that sometimes lasted three days after a game, though. The risk of serious injury had rarely occurred to him back then, although he’d seen them happen to other guys. He’d even caused some of those injuries to other guys, but like all the men who play the game, Shep had just shrugged it off as the risk they all ran to play the game.

The combat had been exhilarating; it was an adrenalin-accelerated testosterone clash that lasted for sixty minutes of actual playing time with lots of timeouts so they could recoup from the short bursts of tremendous exertion. On the other hand, some of the other jobs he’d had were hardly worth mentioning and being a border cop sure beat a couple of factory jobs he’d had that’d bored him to tears. Maybe it’d been the timing, but laboring in heavy construction hadn’t challenged him for very long either and a job clerking in an office briefly had just about driven him nuts.

He’d been married once, but it only lasted for eleven months. It’d started as his exuberant team left the field after winning the first game of his second year in the Canadian Football League. Suddenly, the most breathtakingly beautiful woman he’d ever seen appeared in the crowd. The fans around her had screamed his name repeatedly and pulled him out of the stream of dirty, sweaty, steaming football players as the team filed jubilantly toward the locker room. Once he’d more or less satisfied the rowdy fans, he found himself standing in front of her with his mouth hanging open, unable to think of anything to say but Hi. I’m Shep…and God …you’re gorgeous.

Pamela Jean had laughed her soft and tinkling shower of pleasure on his ears. As she shook his hand and introduced herself he was entranced by her twinkling green eyes and just looking at her blonde hair had caused a curious tingle in his fingertips. Her voice was soft and he was enthralled by it. He was hooked at first sight. They’d chatted cheerfully as they walked side-by-side down the tunnel to the door of the locker room. At that point she’d confessed that she’d like to see him sometime away from the field, showered and dressed in street clothes, of course. They’d laughed at her humor, he agreed, they went to dinner and the romance began.

The next two games were in Quebec and she had some customers to visit there, so they saw a lot of each other for those two weeks. His next game was in Ottawa the following week, so when she showed up there the day before the game they celebrated the time by getting married by a Justice of the Peace. They were ecstatic for five months, then the long football season slowly began to take its toll on their relationship. Her job didn’t help because selling plywood wholesale for a Chicago-manufacturer required some travel and their schedules seldom ran parallel, frequently putting them in different cities across the continent for days and sometimes weeks at a time. They recognized it and struggled with the problem, but neither of them could do anything about it, so it ended slowly and painfully as the flame finally flickered and then it simply was no more. Shep went on playing football and Pam pursued her career. She filed for divorce a year later in Minneapolis and he didn’t contest it

YUMA

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Only a few months later and just as Shep was about to start his third year of professional football, a phone call from his older sister knocked the wind out of his sails. His father had just died unexpectedly. Shep immediately went home to Yuma to bury the old man, mourning his loss with his two sisters, his younger brother and his ageing mother. The tragedy didn’t end with the funeral. It was obvious that his mother was physically frail, so he stayed on, living in the old family home with his Mom. He thought she’d rebound, but her episodes of shakiness accompanied by loss of balance, forgetfulness and disorientation soon got worse. A month later, the doctors diagnosed it as an accelerated onset of early Alzheimer’s apparently aggravated by the loss of her mate and it quickly became clear that she could no longer take care of herself. She soon required full-time care which Shep quickly discovered he and his siblings couldn’t give her. They agonized for almost a week over her rapidly deteriorating condition before finally agreeing to place the faltering old lady in a full care nursing home. Relatives and friends gathered around them to express their regrets and their understanding, but Shep felt a serious feeling of guilt that didn’t go away for a long time. He checked on her every day and for a while she was able to talk to him on her good days, but those became increasingly rare and eventually they faded completely. She died four months later. It was simply her time to go and she went peacefully. It was time to get on with his own life, so he took a deep breath, raised his head to look at the rest of the world and there, sitting in traffic right in front of him was a U.S. Border Patrol SUV with a bumper sticker that read simply ...A few good men and women. Finding their recruiting office had been the hardest part of getting on board although it’d been a simple matter of looking in the phone book and they took it from there. He didn’t realize it at the time, but the tide had just turned for Shep.

A CAREER BEGINS

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When he signed up for this duty, ex-soldier, ex-professional football player Shep Kasch was a consummate candidate to become a U.S. Border Patrol Officer. He was a natural for the job, due in part to his Mexican-American heritage on his mother’s side. Her genetic influence had given him his light chestnut complexion, dark brown eyes and made him proficiently bi-lingual. His father’s Caucasian genes made him five inches taller than the average Mexican male. Shep had added an extra forty pounds of mean meat and muscle to his own otherwise lanky frame by sticking to a rigorous exercise program that had begun when he’d found football and wrestling back in high school. His size and build gave him a tremendous advantage in most hand-to-hand combat situations. Yeah, he was a big dude. Then there was the psychological side of him; he wasn’t merely sworn to protect the borders and the citizens of the United States from unwanted, uncontrolled, illegal intrusions, he was committed! In addition, he had just a slight attitude.

Shep soon found himself very much in his element. Basically, the job required that he be able to outsmart, outrun and outfight whatever the illegal immigrants threw at him. He was already over-qualified since he was bigger, smarter, stronger, tougher and faster afoot than nearly every man who’d ever crossed U.S. borders illegally. Shep’s new employer immediately saw his potential and made sure that he got every type of training available in hand-to-hand combat. He was as well-trained as humanly possible, a Walker, Texas Ranger in a dark green uniform. There were only two teams in this lopsided league and he had quickly become the MVP on the under-manned U.S. team. Twenty-two years later, he was still the heavy artillery in his department’s locker, but the laws had changed and the requirements for the conduct of the officers had softened along with the times.

During his career there had been a major change in the attitude of the U.S. toward illegal aliens and the new attitude had a serious impact on his job. In the beginning he’d simply caught intruders and marched them in disgrace back to the nearest border. Now, however, interception along the borders has evolved into a catch-and-release assignment which frustrates even the most patient officers. When the unauthorized interlopers are caught, they’re taken to the nearest official point of deportation, screened for felony ‘wants and warrants’ or felony history. If they have none they are immediately sent back to their country of origin where they’re nearly always released without charges. Consequently, the frequent border runners often beat the arresting officers back to the point of arrest.

OLD COPS ARE PRICKLY

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Shep really enjoyed his job. He’d often been heard to say Man, I just love this job and he was usually sincere when he said it, even though it usually sounded like a sardonic wisecrack or a growled complaint. The long hours of driving the same country roads looking for signs of illegal crossings, the endless string of nights spent watching known crossing points and even the arrests got boring at times. Early on he discovered his real satisfaction came when runners carried illegal contraband such as drugs, guns, explosives or large amounts of cash. That’s when there’s reason to lock them up for long sentences. Their fear of incarceration sometimes caused one of the illegals to pull a gun or try to stick a knife in him in order to avoid being arrested. On those rare occasions when they attempted to resist arrest, it only served to add to the excitement of the snag and he’d been addicted to that adrenaline rush for his entire career. This isn’t unusual; it happens to many police officers regardless of rank or department and Shep had been a cop for 22 years.

Shep was not an average nice-guy-cop-on-the-street who’s polite, diplomatic and well- trained in minority sensitivity. He was an old generation border cop and only had three professionally social gears. The first was usually spoken in Spanish. It translated into English as Hello. Are you an American citizen? Do you have any proof of citizenship? That was his only polite and sensitive gear. The second was a barked Halt! If nobody pulled his temper trigger at this point he was still easy to get along with, even congenial as he moved carefully among the detainees squatted in the dust. He frequently offered the adults a cigarette and candy to the children, both of which were always paid for out of his own pocket although he didn’t smoke. The third gear was typical of his generation, Hands behind yer back, shithead! and several other mu-u-uch more profane expressions often heard during pursuits and the scuffles in the mud, dust or bushes preceding arrests.

The phrase unnecessary use of force was rarely heard in these ranks until Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 195.

Once into his ‘third social gear’, the difference between the policeman of today and the cop of yesteryear was that once his trigger’d been pulled, the tough, old generation Border Patrol officer would most likely beat the crap out of whoever had been dumb enough to have pissed him off. The old cops just didn’t waste any time trying to talk somebody out of a bloody, bone-breaking brawl and if they even thought there was a weapon, they’d shoot first. Period! Their sensitivity training consisted primarily of being kind and understanding to elders, mature women and children while keeping a watchful eye on all those in-between, especially the teenaged boys and men. The new generation of officers is trained to treat the illegal aliens with dignity and respect, so these officers are much more likely to go to reasonable lengths to resolve any dispute peacefully, but there still ain’t a pansy among them. They’re patient and reasonable, but make no mistake, these men and women are well-trained, professional warriors.

THE NORTHERN BORDER

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Back in the forest where Shep was leaning against a tree in the darkness, the ‘lay-in’ was set, waiting for the bad guys to appear. Twenty yards away in the darkness the dull, orange glow of a cigarette marked where Sonny hunkered behind a log, cupping his hand to shield the glow of his cigarette from view to the Canadian side of the border. That’s a dumb move, Shep thought as he shook his head even though he knew that Sonny had a serious addiction to nicotine that forced him to suck up the stuff every 15 minutes to avoid getting shaky. I sure hope that breeze holds to the south or they’ll smell our trap, muttered his irritation under his breath.

A primary part of any interdiction operation is much like developing a game plan for a football game. The first step is in figuring out what the opposition plans to do. Next, get familiar with all known resources of the opposition. Finally, of course, there’s the ‘when, where and how’. Them’s the details. Since Shep was the local expert and team leader on the U.S. side, it was his job to collect and assemble all the information about these guys that he could find. He’d spent long hours pouring over incident reports that even mentioned suspicions by the officers that the current suspects had been involved in. Shep had picked the brains of officers on both sides of the border, studied the computer program called IBET (Integrated Border Enforcement Team) that took input from both Canadian and U.S. law enforcement showing mug shots, photographs of crime scenes, fingerprints, arrests, etc. He’d assembled a fairly complete picture of the gringo coyote.

Because of the electronic rap sheet and the folder he’d assembled, Shep knew tonight’s quarry pretty well. The briefing earlier that afternoon had included an extensive description of the guy and his ‘coyote’ activities including candid photos and his history, some of which had been taken by the TV cameras on tall poles along the border. The Canucks didn’t like the guy either because he was frequently involved in some real shady deals on their turf too, so the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had contributed discreet observations of his activities with some candid photos and videos to back them up.

This particular roundup was primarily intended to catch the slippery, very elusive guide or coyote and the intent was to put him away for the maximum sentence allowable. His customers paid him to get them across the border, but the customers were secondary as far as this sweep was concerned. Law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border knew a lot about this guy and his activities over the last decade, but had rarely been able to catch him in the act, much less obtain convictions. He was still on the loose and very active because now he was older, wiser and mu-u-uch craftier than he’d been those few times during his late teens when he’d been snagged doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. He was a small animal in this big jungle, but he’d provided crucial services to the criminal element, so he was valuable to them. Besides, now he was in the prime of his semi-pro hockey career, which meant that he was in excellent condition and enjoyed a good scrap or a good chase through the woods where he’d grown up.

He was known as Grover on the street. By reputation, he was the best border guide in the Pacific Northwest. Both the Mexicans and the Middle Easterners used his services extensively. According to the word on the street, Grover collected $10,000 for each illegal immigrant he led across the border with safe arrival guaranteed at the you’re on you own from here site. He was very slippery, very elusive and much of his success could be attributed to his secrecy, preparation and planning. Grover even required that his customers undergo an hour of training in the dark before he’d assemble a group of eight or ten of them and then move them from one Canadian border town to the next. His pattern was that he did this at least two or three times in as many days before he executed the plan that took them across at the time and place of his choosing.

On this night, the Border Patrol was operating on a tip from a confidential source on the Canadian side that Grover was leading a string of illegals across the border on foot and they were due to arrive on U.S. soil within minutes. The voice on the tip phone had almost whispered Okay, they’re moving south on foot right now and the wheels of the trapping team began to roll. Three of the six green and white SUVs towed enclosed utility trailers containing the necessary equipment and two officers. The others each carried two men and would later be used to transport illegal aliens to the processing depot. Although it wasn’t gist for the news media, it was fairly common knowledge that Grover had amassed a small fortune by leading those who could pay his fee across the Canadian-American border. He didn’t care what baggage they carried as long as it didn’t slow them down.

Shep knew that this time the odds were reversed, that the quarry was out-classed and out-gunned. As long as weapons weren’t brought into the equation, he really enjoyed tackling and wrestling with these guys even though the playing field was always un-level in one direction or the other. He grinned because this time the numbers were in favor of the good guys. Unless he got lucky he probably wouldn’t get to flatten more than one runner, two at the most. The odds are usually 5 to 1 or worse against us, so we only get to keep the ones we can get the cuffs on; the rest of ‘em ‘re usually long gone, then he thought with a sigh Y’know, guns ‘n knives just take all th’ fun out of it.

The officer operating the thermal imaging camera from 20 miles away advised Wes, the supervising officer that the quarry was less than 30 yards away in the dark, Sunglasses was the only command the supervisor whispered into the earplugs of the 12 officers. Five seconds was allowed to get the eye gear installed before the blinding floodlights came on with a loud click and a hiss. Simultaneously, Wes barked into his bullhorn Halt! Get on your knees. Get down. Get down! Then he quickly repeated it first in Spanish, then in French, English, Cambodian and English a second time just to make sure that they understood.

The startled illegals stopped in their tracks, shielding their eyes from the glaring lights with their hands. A few dropped to their knees immediately. Some were quick enough to get their own sunglasses on in order to see well enough to try to make a break for freedom. Only Grover was fast enough to get to the safety of the darkness, but he didn’t see the net until he ran right into it. Almost immediately, the beefy Pete piled on top of him, wrapping more net around the struggling scrapper. Fists flew, knees pumped, even foreheads, feet, elbows and fingers became weapons as they thrashed in the darkness. Pete was