Border War

by Lou Dobbs

  The two men they were talking to now were off-duty federal police officers. Eriksen didn’t know if they realized they were talking to other cops, and he knew it wasn’t the time to ask any questions like that. The older of the two men slid a set of photographs across the rough table between them.

  He spoke English with an accent, but it was clear to Eriksen. “These are the two men found after the shootout with the border patrol. One man is a local coyote. It looks like he was hit in the chest from a great distance. But this man”—he tapped the second photo—“he had been shot with a .45 caliber from just a few feet away. He had one other bullet hole in his left arm, but he would’ve survived. They were both left at the scene where they could be found.”

  Lila checked the photographs and said to the man, “And you have the fingerprints and other information from this coyote killed up close?”

  The man nodded but made no other move.

  Lila sighed, dug in her pocket, and plopped down a stack of fifty-dollar bills. A smile spread over both men’s faces as one slid across an envelope.

  The man paused a moment, then said, “You’re not the first American federale we’ve given this information to.”

  Lila just looked at him, waiting for more.

  The man said, “One of your Customs agents. A black man, about fifty, named John, asked us the same questions.”

  Eriksen cut in, showing his first real interest in the conversation. “Do you know his last name?”

  The man shook his head. “We try to operate on a first-name basis with everyone. He had another man with him one time we spoke.”

  Eriksen said, “Who was the other man?”

  “I think his name is Andre. Very large, perhaps six and a half feet.”

  Lila spoke quickly to cut off any more questions from Eriksen. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Yeah, this is not the place to be caught after sundown.”

  * * *

  Luis Martinez wondered where in this beautiful hacienda these drab, featureless hallways were. They seemed endless. Unfinished cement with bare lightbulbs every thirty feet. It felt like a dungeon, but that was probably the idea.

  He was past the point of fear and almost didn’t notice the persistent pain. A bullet had been roughly removed from his upper chest, and a heavier bullet, from the rifle shot when he crossed the border, had passed through his upper shoulder, apparently bounced off his scapula, and left a clean exit wound near his collarbone. Some clumsy male nurse had patched him up and, out of professional courtesy, gave him a decent shot of Demerol, but he recognized the hopelessness of the situation.

  Now he walked alongside Manny, the older man showing the same dignity he always did, despite the fact that he had been wounded. There was something about the calm professional that made Martinez believe he had not given the order to have his wife slashed with a knife. But he was still going to pay.

  There were no other guards around, yet Martinez knew he had no chance to escape. At least not at this time.

  Casually, without even looking at the doctor, Manny said, “What kind of information does Enrique have?”

  “I don’t know, but he thinks it’s valuable. He expects payment for it.”

  “From us?”

  Martinez shook his head. “I think he is looking to embarrass an American company.”

  Manny stopped and turned toward Martinez. “Piña says we might have a use for you and that I can keep you alive as long as I can explain your value. Please tell me you can help me find Enrique.”

  “I can try.”

  Manny just nodded his head.

  * * *

  They came back across the border easily. The lines were short, because what sane American would visit the “murder capital of the world”? Just as they got through Customs, Eriksen’s cell phone rang, and he answered it. They walked toward a small restaurant district as he talked. Lila eavesdropped enough to know that it was the secretary from the Border Security Task Force and she was asking him where he was.

  Eriksen looked up at the sign of the restaurant they were about to enter. He said, “I’m about to walk into a place called the Border Cantina. Why, is something wrong?”

  He didn’t say anything else, just shut his phone and slipped it back into his pants pocket, so it looked like everything was all right. Lila knew he had a thousand questions, but the first thing she had learned in federal service was that being hungry never helped any situation. It was a slow time of day, after lunch but before dinner, and they took a nice, wide table with a view of the city and Juárez in the distance.

  Lila liked this young FBI agent. The guy was smart and funny, with good manners and a dazzling smile. It was too bad she never mixed business with pleasure. She was still in that assessment phase, trying to decide how much she should tell him about anything outside the confines of the task force they were both assigned to. She had already broken a lot of rules by slipping them into Mexico and letting him see two of the best-known informants for the U.S. government. But there were so many things that were none of his business. Lila rarely disclosed more than the DEA line of bullshit she’d learned.

  Now, sitting across from him, Lila appreciated someone else who’d gone through the academy at Quantico where both the DEA and FBI trained. And even though he didn’t brag about having gone to Harvard, it was obvious Tom Eriksen could be doing anything he wanted, from working at one of the big accounting houses to being a superstar analyst on Wall Street. The fact that he had chosen to be a working agent with the FBI said a lot about him. There seemed to be fewer and fewer people in the U.S. willing to consider the concept of duty and putting the country before themselves. That was why Lila never failed to give up a good seat on an airliner to anyone in the military. They got it. Military personnel understood what made the country and what it would take to keep it safe.

  She watched Eriksen shovel some guacamole on a chip as they waited for their fajita platters. “Pretty good Mexican food, isn’t it?”

  He nodded his approval while he finished his mouthful.

  Even having his cheeks filled, he was an extremely handsome man, with a strong jaw and deep-set eyes. It was hard to imagine him ever being lonely. But his laid-back and quiet attitude told her he wasn’t on the prowl for women every night. Finally, as he finished swallowing, Eriksen said, “I’m not sure I would trust some of the food we could’ve gotten in Juárez.”

  “If you know the right place, you can avoid some of the more serious setbacks, healthwise.”

  Lila watched him eat. He looked like a damn recruiting poster for the FBI. She could see a Bureau brochure with Eriksen, a black guy, and an Asian woman and some corny slogan like Today’s FBI or The FBI cuts across cultures. Yeah, right, unless you were black in the sixties, Hispanic in the eighties, or Muslim today.

  She engaged Eriksen in idle chatter. “Does your supervisor always talk so loud?”

  Eriksen nodded and said, “We thought he had a hearing problem and got his hearing tested. Turns out he’s just an asshole.”

  They shared a laugh and then a long, awkward pause. Finally Eriksen said, “You gonna tell me what’s going on and how you have connections like that? That wasn’t a typical DEA agent interview. And I know you hide a lot of what you’re doing from Andre. Don’t you trust him?”

  Before Lila could answer, she noticed a middle-aged man walking confidently toward them. Wearing a crisp white shirt and dark red tie, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a news studio, and there was something familiar about him. Before it clicked in her head who the man was, he stopped right in front of their table.

  Lila wasn’t sure she liked this interruption.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tom Eriksen was settled at the comfortable booth in the nearly empty restaurant when he noticed Lila look up and realized someone was walking toward them. He let his right hand drift down to the pistol he’d retrieved from Lila’s car. It wasn’t in his official hip holster but tucked into his waistband in a le
ather inside-the-pants holster. After everything that had happened in the last month he wasn’t about to be surprised. Lila’s eyes told the whole story until he saw the man stop in his peripheral vision.

  He slid away from the man and turned to his side, but his initial assessment was that there was no threat. The man was in his midfifties or a very fit sixty and dressed nicely in a shirt and tie. The man nodded to Lila but turned toward Eriksen and said, “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  Eriksen let his eyes coast around the empty restaurant to make sure this guy wasn’t here with anyone else. Then, as he focused on the man again, Eriksen realized he looked familiar, and his voice triggered something in Eriksen’s subconscious.

  Finally Eriksen said, “May I help you, sir?”

  The man smiled, then chuckled and said, “I appreciate good manners, especially from a fellow Harvard alum.”

  “Do I know you, sir?”

  Without asking, the man sat down on the bench on Eriksen’s side of the table. He reached out his right hand and said, “I’m Ted Dempsey. Nice to meet you.”

  * * *

  Kat Gleason sat in her neat cubicle next to the NSA listening post set up inside the Border Security Task Force. It was a plain room that she had tried to brighten with a Stanford pennant, two plants, and photos of her family. No one who didn’t work for the NSA was allowed into this part of the office.

  She was reviewing transcripts of several intercepts they’d made overnight. She’d been working on a program built on an algorithm that correlated certain phrases over certain forms of communication. Specifically she was tying into cell phone numbers from the northern Sonoran area of Mexico that made calls in two area codes in Texas and Arizona.

  These were not wiretaps in the traditional sense. They also had nothing to do with the Patriot Act. None of that really had an impact on her job. The NSA was tasked with monitoring foreign communications traffic. Although she had the ability, she had never intercepted a call from within the United States to a destination also within the United States.

  Three phone calls made overnight all appeared to be connected. It was far too soon to push the panic button, but the chatter involved hiring someone to come from Mexico into the United States to commit murder. The victim was referred to as a “chatterbox” and a “big mouth.” The conversation was entirely in English, and the person on the U.S. side of the call did not have an obvious Texas drawl.

  Kat took a break from her work to think about Tom Eriksen. She was a little surprised he had not called during the day. Everyone in the office already knew he’d been told to take a couple of days off because of everything that had happened. She didn’t want to be like a schoolgirl and obsess over a guy. But there was definitely something special about Tom Eriksen. He had a certain manner and understated charm that she found intriguing. She could see getting involved with a guy like him.

  She’d dated two naval officers since she’d graduated from Stanford. During her brief assignment to the National Security Agency’s headquarters at Fort George Meade near Baltimore, she only had contact with navy men for five months. But since she’d moved to El Paso it’d been difficult to meet anyone she found interesting.

  Kat sighed and looked back down at the transcripts as she started to compose an intelligence brief to send up the line. At least she had something to focus on and wasn’t hoping the phone would ring at any second. Even if that was the truth.

  * * *

  Tom Eriksen didn’t waste any time before saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Dempsey, I can’t appear on your show.” He said it so loudly that a waitress looked up from wrapping silverware on the other side of the restaurant.

  “So I understand. But we can still talk, can’t we?”

  “Off the record?”

  “That’s how I live the majority of my life, and one of the reasons I’ve had such a long career is I never break a confidence, minor or large. Sometimes what you don’t report is more important than what you do. There’s no way I would risk getting a public servant like yourself in trouble by revealing anything that you don’t want revealed.”

  Lila Tellis hadn’t been fazed when this bigger-than-life TV commentator sat down so casually and comfortably with them like a regular guy and introduced himself.

  Eriksen had asked Dempsey how he knew to come to this restaurant.

  Dempsey had given him a warm smile and said, “I have fans everywhere.” Eriksen knew this meant that the secretary from the Border Security Task Force, who had called them just before they got to the restaurant, had told Dempsey where he could find the reluctant FBI agent. That was a bit of information Eriksen would file away for future reference.

  Eriksen looked at the fit older man and said, “Mr. Dempsey, I appreciate the fact that you stood up for us after the shooting.” Before he could continue, Dempsey cut in.

  “First, call me Ted. Second, I appreciate what you do. I was sorry to hear about your partner’s heart attack.”

  Eriksen didn’t say anything. Someone was covering for John and preserving his memory. It was exactly the kind of thing Eriksen would’ve said if someone asked about John. Let their imaginations come up with the rest. Maybe people would think that the stress of the job was too much for him. That was very possibly the case.

  Dempsey continued, “I’m in El Paso for several reasons. It would’ve been nice to have you on the show, but I completely understand. I was hoping that by showing your side of the story, you could help the general public understand the complex issues of border security enforcement. Maybe it would calm down some of the hotheads on the Mexican side of the border, too.”

  Now Lila cut in. “I’ll ask what some of your other reasons for being here are.” Dempsey focused his attention on Lila and flashed her a smile, and Eriksen could see the man forming response, assessing both Lila’s likely interest and how much of an answer she would expect. It was comforting for Eriksen to realize this man was also a product of Harvard University. He was no empty suit or talking head. He had substance.

  Dempsey said, “There are a few issues I feel are vital to our society. Two of those issues are on perfect display here in El Paso.”

  “What would those issues be?” Lila looked like she was enjoying this.

  “Border security and job outsourcing. Our borders have to be secured, especially our southern border. Not just because undocumented and unsanctioned immigration has a crushing effect on our levels of employment, worker pay, and standard of living, but it’s an obvious opportunity for terrorists to enter our country.”

  Lila gave him a long look. “What crushing effect does undocumented immigration have on prices in our country? Don’t the undocumented people help keep prices lower?”

  Dempsey smiled at her, pleased by her obvious grasp of the economics, and said, “You’re absolutely right about that, but what is the larger result? Illegals take their lower pay, at least the part they can afford, and send it back to their home country, usually Mexico, rather than invest or spend their money here. The businesses that hire the undocumented people pay lower wages, then undercut their competitors. Lower wages sometimes have very high costs to our economy and our legal workers.”

  She stared at him for a moment before she asked, “If that’s so, then why do so many support undocumented immigration?”

  Now Dempsey laughed out loud, leaned back in the seat, and raised his hands in surrender, saying, “Your question is spot on. Leaving rationality aside, as so many love to do in America, the outcome of this great debate may be left to those preyed upon by pure propaganda, moved by simple sentiment. The facts be damned and love of country and countrymen forgotten. And we Americans can be a forgetful lot. But the facts are undocumented immigration does drain government resources, disrupts the labor market, and sometimes leads to the creation of new waves of crime.”

  Lila shot right back, “Are you saying undocumented people are committing more crimes than other people?”

  “No, quite the opposite. They become a co
mmunity of victims who are unable to call the police for help. Those who smuggle them into this country are most often also smuggling drugs, and the Mexican cartels oversee both products, in both markets north and south of the border. Their young women can be forced into prostitution. Whole families often work as indentured servants to pay off the cost of slipping into the United States, and they’re an easy source of street robbery victims who can never call for help.”

  Eriksen could see Lila considering all these points. He cut in by saying, “What about the outsourcing of jobs? Why is El Paso central to that?”

  Dempsey gave him a serious look and simply said, “The Technology and Research Center, TARC, is one of the biggest outsourcers in the Southwest. And there are more. Follow any of the four bridges across the river and you’ll find the maquiladoras, the assembly plants that build wealth for Mexican and American companies, but not our middle class, or for all the folks who want to live the American dream. And most Americans don’t know, don’t care, and yet wonder why our middle class shrinks, rather than grows. None of it is easy to fix.”

  Eriksen could see why this guy was so popular.

  * * *

  Cash felt better than he had in days. The couch he sat on didn’t hurt his sciatica, and the small house was very inviting. The company wasn’t bad either.

  He’d given Ari the slip, telling him he was going to question Carol DiMetti alone. Ari had pushed to be included but stopped short of forcing the issue. Cash saw a change in the little Israeli’s attitude since the shootout at the Martinez apartment. He seemed a little more open to Cash’s ideas and understood that he was the boss.

  Instead of grilling Carol about her husband’s attempts to blackmail the company and where Vinnie had gotten the information, he savored a home-cooked meal and a bottle of decent Pinot Noir. Now they sat comfortably on the leather couch just enjoying a calm moment.

  Carol said, “You’re nice to check on me, Joe.”

  He slipped his left arm around her shoulders. He liked the feel of her smooth skin and smell of her light perfume. He looked down at a photo of Carol and her late husband on the coffee table. “How’d you and Vinnie meet?”