“I get that, but can you pretend that vehicle is a clown car stuffed full of MS-13 drug runners and you want to know where it stopped?”
I could tell he was on the verge of helping and he just needed a push.Jennifer gave it to him, saying, “We can’t detail the threat we’re tracking, but trust me, it’s real and it’s foreign. That car might have nothing to do with it, and we’re not asking you to determine if it does. We’re just asking for some help locating it.”
He said, “Okay, okay, Chet, can you make that happen?”
Now Chet got surly, saying, “Do you know how much work that’ll be? Checking the feed of every camera for a car for days of video?”
Not wanting to cause a disruption inside the FOB, I placated both of them, saying, “Chet, just look at the time stamp and track that plus or minus, say, an hour. We know the car’s headed west, so ignore the east. If you pick it up, you pick it up. Speed up the videos.”
He mumbled something but nodded his head in agreement.
The supervisor led us away, going back to the hallway and taking us to his office. It was spartan, with a harsh overhead fluorescent bulb and no knickknacks of service time or family photos one would usually find in such a place.
Jose took a seat behind his desk and said, “This might take a while.”
Jennifer and I sat in a couple of folding chairs. I said, “Yeah, but I bet not. He speeds up those videos from the camera arc and he can get through them pretty quickly. Especially if he uses the vehicle direction from the first video. If it’s not found early, it probably went north.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
“I have, but really, so has just about anybody in law enforcement in today’s age. Ever since they jacked every security camera and private cell phone video hunting for White Hat and Black Hat from the Boston marathon bombings, it’s like step one of the playbook.”
He nodded and I changed the subject, saying, “You guys are living pretty rough out here. Is this like a permanent station?”
He chuckled and said, “Yes and no. It was built to be temporary, but you’d have to define that term for me now. It’s been here since 2004 and we rotate out to it on two-week shifts. Since it’s ‘temporary,’ everything is fixed with a Band-Aid. Nobody wants to invest infrastructure into a ‘temporary’ facility.”
Jennifer said, “Well, somebody’s going to have to invest something because this place is starting to fall apart.”
He said, “What’s your place like? Where are you out of?”
Uh-oh.I was frantically trying to think of a location that was real but he’d never been to, when Jennifer said, “FLETC in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s fairly new and a hell of a lot better than this place. I feel for you.”
Well, well, well, look who actually did some research. FLETC stood for Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and therewasone in Charleston—run by Homeland Security. The best part was both Jennifer and I had been on it.
Perfect.
He said, “Yeah, I’ve been there on a training package. That placeissweet. How do you like Charleston?”
From there, we were off and running, killing time by talking about something we didn’t have to outright lie about. Jose grew more comfortable with us as we bullshitted about the Holy City, rambling on about the food scene, tourist sites, and what we knew about the CBP posture at the port—which told me he was seriously looking for a change of scenery. Before I knew it, thirty minutes had passed, and our chitchat was interrupted by a knock on the door.
Chet poked his head in, saying, “I got it. Come take a look.”
We went back to the computer room and Chet began clocking video, saying, “I first picked it up on camera Romeo Twelve, but only for a split second. From there—”
Jose cut him off, saying, “Cut to the chase. Did you find out where it ended up?”
Deflated, Chet went to the last video and said, “Yeah. Menagers Dam.”
I saw the vehicle driving right along the border fence, then go north, disappearing off the screen. I said, “Did I miss something? Is there another video?”
Chet said, “This is the last video, but the camera’s Romeo Seventeen and there’s nothing on that road but Menagers Dam. That’s where he’s headed.”
“What’s that?”
The supervisor said, “It’s a border town on the rez. Chet’s right, it’s literally the only place he could be going. There’s nothing else but desert. If that video was Romeo Two or Romeo Three, I’d say he could be leaving the rez and headed to Tucson, or he could be going to town X or Y on the rez, but in this case, it’s Menagers Dam or nothing.”
I nodded, saying, “Okay, but that doesn’t really help me. All we’ve necked it down to is a town.”
The supervisor said, “Trust me, you get out there, you won’t have any trouble finding if he’s present or not. Calling it a town is being generous. One pass through and you’ll have seen every vehicle there is.”
