Behind the wheel, Jennifer said, “What did you expect?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never been on a reservation before.”
“Me either. Is the GPS still working?”
“Yeah, track’s still working, but the map sucks. It’s like we entered a military base. Bare bones now.”
“Bare bones because it’s not showing anything, or just because this place is bare bones?”
I looked around at the desert on both sides of the road, nothing man-made in sight and said, “Probably the latter. But it’s the same route to the FOB we saw in Tucson.”
After I’d made my leap of logic about the Ghost crossing the border into Mexico, I’d done a quick map reconnaissance, then had Jennifer coordinate for the first flight she could find to Tucson. I’d called Veep and told him we were heading to the Tohono O’odham Indian reservation to explore the burned-up van, and gave him a laundry list of things I needed him to do, including finding out who we could talk to about the van on the reservation.
It turned out that reservations are weird little sovereign states insidethe United States, and I’d have to coordinate with the internal reservation police for help, which was something I most definitely didn’t want to do. From the little research Jennifer had done, the reservation spanned across the border, existing in both Mexico and the United States. Because of its location, it required a huge presence of United States Customs and Border Patrol, but the people of the Tohono O’odham nation didn’t like that one little bit. For them there was no border, as they were their own nation, and they resented all the patrolling, walls, and everything else that separated the two countries their land spanned across.
It would be hard to leverage our Homeland Security badges for cooperation with a Native American police force that, best case, couldn’t care less about seeing us, and worst case, actively resented our presence. Luckily, Veep had learned that the van itself had been discovered by the CBP, so that’s where I intended to start. I’d had Veep coordinate with them while we flew to Tucson, and by the time we’d landed, he had a point of contact who would see us. All we had to do was find the place.
The CBP contact was working out of something called the Papago Farms Forward Operations Base. It took about thirty minutes of driving through the desert to find it after we crossed the reservation border, passing little villages along the way that weren’t reflected on the map. The living conditions were brutal, with clusters of shanties that seemed to have sprung up for no apparent reason. They reminded me of old west Hollywood ghost towns, only everything was cinderblock instead of wood, with an occasional stray dog the only form of life.
We eventually reached the location that indicated Papago Farms on the map and found ourselves still in the middle of nowhere, with no sign of life. I saw what looked like a cell tower in the distance, and told Jennifer to head to it. Eventually, we came upon another cluster of cinderblock buildings, only this one was surrounded by chain-link fencing. One of the buildings was the size of a warehouse with a helipad next to it and four CBP trucks parked in front. The others looked like military barracks, with a water tower in between them.
I said, “That’s got to be it.”
She pulled in through the gate, put the car in park, and we went inside, finding a building that was starting to rot from the inside, but filled with modern technology. One of the walls was damp and the vinyl flooring was starting to crack from the heat, but they had computers on the desks, tasking boards hanging on the walls, and a TV blaring local news. Clearly, this FOB—like every temporary government building—was constructed by the lowest bidder.
A man in a dusty CBP uniform and a handlebar mustache met us, saying, “You the Homeland Security folks?”
I showed him my badge and said, “Yep. We appreciate you taking the time.”
“I’m Jose, the guy your guy talked with.” He appraised us both, then said, “Why does Homeland Security care about some stolen van burning up on the rez?”
Here is where I got to play secret squirrel. “Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say, but it’s important.”
He looked at me like he’d swallowed sour milk, but said, “I understand. Follow me. I’ve got the monitor cued up.”
We walked towards a room at the end of the hall, and I said, “Monitor? You have it on tape?”
“Not the actual van, but you can see the smoke. Why? Did you want to go see the van itself? I mean, it’s been towed, but we can do that. You won’t find anything, though. It was burned up good.”
I said, “Let’s start with the video and go from there.”
We entered a darkened room with monitors covering the walls and blinking servers droning, the air conditioning hitting us like a slap to the face. I said, “What is this?”
“It’s a pitiful attempt at a virtual wall. We have camera and radar towers all along the border on the rez to track illegal penetrations from either migrants or drug runners.”
“Does it work?”
“Yeah, sort of. If you think holding your hand in a river ‘works.’ Sure, you’re blocking some water, but a shit ton more is going by you. We canspot ’em all day long, but we don’t have the manpower to round ’em up. Most’ll come right to us because walking through this desert is basically a death sentence, but the ones who run, we have a hard time chasing.”
I nodded and said, “Well, show us what you’ve got.”
He turned and said, “Chet, you ready?”
A smaller guy with a clean uniform and glasses stood up, saying, “Yeah. I’ve got it loaded.”
I went to his monitor and saw a ribbon of smoke rising from a wash, the vehicle itself hidden. I said, “Is that it? All you got?”
“Pretty much.”
