Borderline Minutemen

“Intellectual masturbation’s what I call it,” Rod shouted at the CNBC feed, running on the small screen mounted above the long dark bar of the Loyal Order of The Moose Lodge in Peralto, California. He was responding to a guest on the show, a noted financial strategist talking about The Great Recession of 2009.

“Great Recession my ass; if this ain’t a depression I don’t know what one is. It’s just a another goddamn, liberal, jack-off trying to paint a pretty picture… so the Islamic Negroid we got running the country don’t look bad.” He continued.

“You trying to say it’s a black and white issue?” an unshaven, thin man said from the end of the bar, tapping the embers of a Macenudo cigar into an ashtray.

“No, I’m sayin it’s more like a brown and white issue round here. What’s unemployment in California right now….something north of fifteen percent?” Rod asked.

“And that don’t include men like Pete who’s D-9’s been sitting on the side of his house for six months. He ain’t moved an ounce of dirt since last spring, and he don’t qualify for unemployment cause he was self employed,” another man said, holding a beer with both elbows on the bar; a cigarette burning limp in the ash-tray in front of him.

“Only way you get a hand-out in this state is to be brown and illegal,” the thin man said.

“Damn right, hospital emergency room is nothing but wetbacks and their crying babies. Hell, they even get welfare,” Rod shouted, throwin back a three finger shot of Makers-Mark, then a Bud chaser.

“Three blocks down Colton Avenue there’s gotta be a hundred a Montezuma’s nephews waiting in the parking lot for work. If there’s one legitimate green card in that crowd, I’ll buy the next round,” the thin man said.

“It’s almost like they’re flaunting it, in our own back yard. I say screw the Border Patrol, where’s the goddamn Marines?”

“Why don’t you get your lazy ass off the bar stool and join em. Ain’t no one stopping you. Last time I checked, you had a tool belt,” the man nicknamed Crew shouted from further down the line.

“Just ignore him, he won’t even eat a Taco, calls it un-American,” Rod said laughing.

“No….What I call un-American is a goddamn billboard in Spanish. What’s next, Al Queda advertising a guest worker program?” Crew asked.

The front door crashed open. A heavy set man of military bearing stood in the doorway. His name was Jake Oliver. He wore a collared white western shirt, tucked in with his paunch hanging over a western belt buckle with the initials “JO”, set in fake diamonds. “Boy’s…. the brothers in Yuma are forming a private border patrol and calling themselves the Borderline Minutemen. Stan Oliver’s already got somethin like twenty five men lined up.”

The village of Saric lies near the northern tip of Sonora, Mexico and is roughly thirty miles south-east of the U.S. border town of Sasabe Arizona. The road that connects the two is unpaved, potholed and strewn with large boulders and ruts. The village sits deep in a cartel-controlled war zone. There is no law except for the once a month Army convoy that arrives to dispatch government pension checks and rudimentary medical provisions; it comes in-and-out in broad daylight in armored vehicles meant for battle. The only market in town has barren shelves save for bags of dried beans, masa and scant local produce delivered in the night. The mayor and police force of eight disappeared months earlier. The only evidence of law that remained was a battered, rusting, Nissan police-car which providing shade for a homeless, flea-invested dog. Two of Sonora’s strongest cartels were waging a vicious turf-war for control of the area known as Cocaine Alley; the gateway to America. It ran through the Altar Valley which runs a northwest course to Arizona through scorched desert plains dotted with towering saguaro cactus and dense creosote and mesquite patches. The valley is full of hidden arroyos and gullies formed by infrequent torrential rains that flood the wasteland like an anomaly on the baked, sand and rock; a great place to move human cargo and black tar heroin.

Saric is populated by older men and women and children and their mothers; men, particularly young men, are conspicuously absent. They’re dead, missing or recruited to one of the two rival cartels that wage a guerilla war against each other. At night, people stay indoors as squads of trucks with tinted windows, full of men in ski masks and automatic weapons patrol the area looking for any suspicious activity, outsiders, police or rivals, even someone talking on a cell phone.

Border towns like Ciadad Juarez and Tijuana are infamous for racking up large body counts and front page, broad-daylight massacres but the battles for human and drug trafficking routes into Arizona in remote villages like Saric are just as sinister. Anyone in the war zone, brown, white, star-spangle- bannered or tri-colored become hard targets if they’re not there by truce, contract or permission.

The war escalated when Beltran-Leyva cartel gunman took over a string of pueblos and ranch lands in the Altar Valley and then were surrounded by their foes in the Sinaloa cartel. In the village of Saric, the Sinaloa cartel used a bloodless, siege strategy of medieval proportions to cut-off roads in the region from government services. Their intent was to sever the lifeline to thousands of ranch hands, store keepers and retirees. Few dared leaving and even fewer braved going in.

The irrecusable truth of the border problem is that the United States is fighting for control of who and what are being smuggled into the country and Mexican forces (which are the cartels) are fighting for control of who and what are being smuggling out. The Mexican government, who fears the cartels, and its hold on all levels of government, covers its ass and simply stays alive.

Rod stood motionless with his back to the passenger-side door of the dull yellow, weathered, Ford pick-up staring south across the Sonoran desert through vintage Lieberman & Gortz binoculars. He had slept on the drive out of Yuma and knew they were south-east, but where? He didn’t have the faintest idea. They thought they were near the border, but the border wasn’t marked by a fence. Steam rose off every breath. He wasn’t wearing gloves and had to rest the heavy, steel, Eagle-Eyes against his chest every few minutes to blow warmth into his freezing hands. His partner, Jack Doernan, nicknamed Crew for his close-cut, flat-top, sat in the cab pouring coffee from a thermos into two metal cups. A half-full bottle of Bailys sat on the floor.

Both men bowled with the wives on Wednesday nights and were drinking brothers at the Lodge on Fridays. This morning, they were working Beaner Patrol” for the loosely formed Borderline Minutemen based in Yuma.

At 6:30 a.m., the December air was cold, hard and still; a shitty time to be on a patrol but a great opportunity for targets to move. A thin layer of ice crystals gave the creosote a frocked look and the brown, barren landscape was dusted with white patches as far as he could see in every direction. The only sign of life was three vultures drifting high in the northern sky doing their own surveillance.

His face had lost all humor, a hunter, with nothing to show but clothes that stank and a box of thirty-ought-six shells that hadn’t been touched. The base-camp bravado and laughter and lies and whiskeys and steaks from three nights ago had yielded to the dull vigil of doubt and frustration; quieter by the hour, impervious, impatient and freezing.

Both men wore heavy flannels shirts and jeans over full-body thermals and wool- lined hunter caps with ear flaps. They used walkie-talkies to connect with base because cell phones were useless. A familiar voice crackled through the speakers.

“Sector four, this is base, come in.”

“Base, this is sector four, we read, copy?” Crew replied.

“Copy that, anything sector four?”

“Not a Goddamn thing, but we’re freezing our ass off.”

“Copy that sector four, not a goddamn thing and you’re freezing your ass off,” the base voice replied.

“Roger that base. Fuck you, ten-four.”

Crew put down the handset, added Bailys to his coffee and began reading sections of an old sports page. “Hey Pard, you ready for some black sludge?” he called to Rod without looking up.

The muted crack of a rifle shot in the distance echoed across the landscape and the man they called Crew slumped sideways from the impact of an expanding bullet that blew out the driver’s side window and half of his head. Another shot, from the same direction took out the front tire, then another blew out the back. Rod dropped to the ground, holding his rifle to his chest and waited and listened. He peered around the front of the truck trying to spot anything that moved and another shot rang-out, hitting the front fog light, a foot above his face, exploding glass shards in every direction. “The motherfucker’s got me on a scope.” He cursed to himself. He inched back towards the driver door, cracked it open and pulled down the walkie-talkie which was dotted with flesh and brain matter and blood. He punched the call button.

“Base come in. Repeat base come in! This is sector four, someone’s shooting at us. Crew is dead. I repeat, Crew is dead!”

It took a long ten seconds for a response.

“Sector four, this is base, copy that, Rod….What the fuck’s going on?”

“Stan…. Crew, is dead, and who’s ever doing the shooting has me on a scope. I’m pinned down!”

“Roger that, Jesus Christ, do you have ANY idea where the shots are coming from?”

“Gotta be from the north-east but I can’t see any cover in that direction.”

“What is your location?” Stan asked.

“I don’t have a goddamn clue.”

“Read the coordinates on your GPS,” Stan said.

“It’s in a backpack in the back of the truck.”

“Rod, you gotta gimme a ball park idea where you are? Roughly how far south of Gila Bend? One hour…two? Did you take any side roads off 286? Is there anything in the terrain you can describe?” Stan asked.

“Where the hell is sector four? I don’t have a fuckin’ clue. Crew knew this shit and he was driving and I was asleep. I think we might have passed Lukeville. I vaguely remember him taking a piss at a gas station but I was out of it. We may be in Beaner-Ville for all I know. There ain’t exactly a sign flashing Welcome to Mexico. The terrain is the same in every direction. Slightly rolling, a billion clumpy bushes and dry as hell.”

“Any power lines?” Stan asked.

“I can see lines running maybe ten miles to the north, running east to west.”

“Okay, stay put. We’ll try and get some help.” He belly-crawled his three hundred pound frame to the back of the truck, cradling his rifle and binoculars, and tried to scan the horizon from ground level. Another muted shot kicked up dirt with a ping near his head. The shoot definitely came from the north east. The sumbitch had the rising sun at his back.

He felt his heart pounding through the veins in his neck and he was starting to hyperventilate. Sweat from his massive body drenched the under-thermals. The asthma he took for granted, started to attack, like the hidden shooter. His inhaler was in the backpack next to the bullets and GPS device.

He judged the shooter to be about a quarter mile out but it could have been more. The Navy didn’t teach three-year swabbies about things like that.

From underneath the truck he tried scanning north and east; nothing… but blinding light from the sharp, cresting rays of the rising sun. With the butt-end of his rifle, he hammered off the passenger side, rear view mirror, and crawled to the back of the truck where he held it out in an attempt to scan the terrain without getting his head or hand blown off. He angled it into the sun sending off a reflection that could signal his presence from miles away. The shooter saw it. Another shot, this time fired from much closer, and another a spray of dirt, two feet from his hand.

He called base again.

“Stan come in, I’m trying to signal with a mirror from the side of the truck, anyone north and east should be able to see it. The shooter’s getting closer.”

“Hang tough Rod, we got everyone heading your direction.”

He thought of Stella. He reached back into the cab and pulled a blood-soaked pen off the floor and wrote a message on the back of a wrinkled bank deposit receipt and folded it in his wallet.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t call yourselves….The Double-Chin Brigade?” a man said hunched over the only pool table in the room. He was in his early seventies, gaunt, and grey, fingers twisted in advanced stages of rheumatoid arthritis. He wore a weathered, pin-covered USS Missouri hat slightly crooked.

“I can see it now, a bunch of beer-drinking, fatigue-wearing, rifle-trippin, ex- sailors and grunts who ain’t walked further than the car to the bar in the last twenty years, trying to patrol a thousand miles of open desert with the eyesight of turtles, who can’t tell a cartel from a carton of eggs.”

“Admiral, with all due respect, sittin here drinking beer and playing pool ain’t gonna solve anything. We’re being invaded and gotta call up the rank and file before we get overrun.”

“Overrun?.. Overrun by what? Jose the strawberry picker and his pregnant wife who cleans houses?” the Admiral said laughing.

“Yea, whose pregnant wife delivers a brown, screaming, baby who becomes an automatic U.S. citizen; the country that rubber-stamps their green cards and makes em eligible for welfare, public schools, and free health care.”

“None of that’s free to any of em,” The admiral said as serious as always.

“Since when did you become a color-lovin, leftist?” Rod asked?

The admiral ignored the question. “Rod, with a name like O’Donnel, I’m guessing it was your great grandfather, maybe great-great, who sailed into New York Harbor?”

“Yea, and I’m also sure he had to sign the guest book before he took one step into New York.”

“I’m not so sure, the guest book wasn’t around until the turn of the century.” The Admiral said.

“Will somebody just buy him a drink so I don’t have to listen to that crap,” Rod said turning back to the bar.

“Admiral, what do you have?” the thin man asked .

The soldier was small, wiry, strong and fast, agile like a cat. He served for nine years with the Mexican Special Forces Tactical Commando Unit (M-6), The Mexican equivalent of the US Rangers. That was before the kidnappings and extortion and lack of support and complete breakdown of chain of command started occurring all around him. He had a family to feed and he was a soldier, it was all he knew. The government couldn’t be trusted; nor the police, nor the army.

He was hired by the Sinaloa cartel to act as a mercenary, a gatekeeper, to protect their business interests including drug running and human smuggling flowing through the Altar Valley. He was a highly trained, free-lance specialist. The cartel paid well, in cash, on time; more than could be said for his previous employer. Most of the cartel leaders were scum bag assholes who’d kill their own brother if it meant a promotion or more money, but the local politicians he knew and the police were all on the take and dealt in shadows so he figured he might as well work for the direct employer, it made things much simpler and safer. The border was the Wild-West and he was a hired gun. The target he was engaging was on Mexican soil, four hundred yards in; of that, he was certain; GPS units were accurate to within ten feet. They were trespassing in a war zone. Strange, because their license plates were American and they were carrying rifles and field glasses. Through the scope he read their bumper sticker: “Save America! Fire a Mexican!” They were either fools or ignorant accidents waiting to happen; that wasn’t his problem. This was his ground and they were trespassing and armed. The Border Patrol couldn’t touch them…not by four hundred yards… or him. Had the intruders offered any number of safe communications he would have ignored them…perhaps shot out their tires, but his rules of engagement were clear and he knew how to execute them with the precision and cunning of an Apache Warrior.

Crew was making gurgling, choking sounds and his limbs were convulsing in uneven spasms, the last vestiges of life, flailing.

Rod got on the Walkie-Talkie again. “The shooter’s closing in, where’s the fucking back-up?” he whispered in desperation with sweat beading on his forehead.

“We got Bobby and Gabe somewhere in your vicinity but they’re having trouble finding you. Can you fire off some rounds to give some kind of a signal?”

“I can’t, the bullets are in my backpack in the back of the truck and this asshole will blow my head off if I give him an inch.”

“Hang in there, buddy, I got the Border Patrol on it too.”

“Hurry!” he said.

The numbness started in his right arm and worked its way up to his shoulder and chest. He threw up. The right side of his face was becoming numb and his vision began to blur and he heard a hissing sound in his ears.

“Gentlemen, we are an un-official public watchdog for our under-manned and under-funded friends at the Border Patrol. They don’t want us here. Tough. I’m sure there are thousands of our neighbors to the south that don’t want us here either. Our official policy is to observe and report. Now I know a lot of you, in fact, I’d bet all of you, carry gun permits. Do not use your fire arms either for target practice or in any form of threatening manner to immigrants you observe in the field. You’ll each have a walkie-talkie and we’ll check with you hourly. You’ll be assigned sectors that will take us as far south as Nogales. Remember, there are illegal immigrants and then there are bad guys. The bad guys are heavily armed and will shoot at you if they feel threatened. Most are low-level drug mules. Do not put yourself in harm’s way over a person carrying a backpack of dope.”

“What if they fire at us?” Crew shouted from the second row of chairs.

“Unless it’s absolute self-defense, you are not to use your weapons under any circumstances. There are a lot of eyes on us and the last thing we need is some rasta-haired, tie-died, leftist reporter from Rolling Stone calling us a bunch of red-necked yokels.

The soldier, dressed in desert camouflage, face covered in brown and gray face paint, folded and snapped the “V” support against the stock of the Barret M-82 sniper rifle and moved quickly to the south, closing in on the target, using the gray-brown Creosote clumps as cover. The man in the truck was dead and the fat man hiding behind it would be, soon enough. He was directly south of the truck and went to his stomach folding down the “V” again and using the scope to observe the target. The sun was now directly at his back. He could walk straight to the truck and be nothing more than an outline against the blinding sun. These were amateurs. He lay down again and trained the scope on the side of the truck.

The fat man was motionless, his face against his chest with his back propped against the rear tire, a rifle at his side. He ran a hundred yards to the truck, over open terrain and verified the business. The fat man was dead; probably a heart attack. He placed a note inside the cab; then took both men’s guns and wallets and backpacks and sped off a quarter mile south-east where a truck was hidden.

Bobbie Childs and Gabriel Wilkins spotted Crew’s truck on a dirt road about three miles north-west off Highway 85 which ran to the border.

“I’ll be goddamn, I think they’re in Mexico if my GPS is correct,” Bobbie said. Gabe was using a hunters telescope and could see a slumped body in the cab, but not a second. He couldn’t tell if it was Crew or Rod.

“Base, this is sector five, do you read?” Bobbie asked.

“Sector five we read, what do you got down there Bob? Over.”

“Base, copy, We’re on a dirt road about a two miles north of Sasabe near the border and can see the truck off-road maybe a quarter mile to the south. In the scope I can make out one dead man in the cab. We’re checking the perimeter and don’t see a thing. You want us to go in? Over.”

“Not until we know what’s out there, I got the Border Patrol on the way; can you verify your GPS coordinates? Over.”

“We’re at 21S 4454 26N, Stan… if that’s correct, Rod and Crew are sitting in Mexico!”

“Shit,” Stan replied.

“Stay where you are until the Border Patrol gets there, copy?”

“Copy,” Bob replied.

“Fuck that, I’m going in,” Bob said turning to Gabe.

“I agree.”

What they found was something that soldiers on battlefields see and no amount of training or experience prepares them for. Out of respect for the two dead men, Gabe removed the note in the cab and stuck it in his pocket.

Christmas came warm and clear, like most in this part of the world. The small square building near the town square had a string of colorful lights running around the crown and cards hung on strings draped across the wall. Two men in civilian clothes stood guard at the entrance with automatic rifles. A six-foot scraggly pine was wrapped with a string of blinking colorful lights and adorned with tinsel and dusty red and gold bulbs and sat in the corner, opposite the bar. A stereo was playing Tenaja Music below a TV propped high on the wall, streaming dialogue in Spanish, with reports from Afghanistan showing heavy fighting; seemed as though Al Queda was acting on its own version of a Tet-Offensive. In other news, housing starts were weak and other economic indicators pointed to a free-falling GDP and bleak employment numbers.

The patron paid no attention, nursing his beer in silence. A cauldron of steaming Pork Tamales sat on a table, next to trays of beans and rice and a large bucket of Dos Equis on ice. The atmosphere was peaceful.

In Peralto, California, Stella O’Donnell received an envelope with no return address; inside was a blood-stained note from her husband.