Ten days before Thanksgiving, State of Chihuahua, Mexico
Lupo Martinez pulled the twenty-year old Toyota Corolla over on the side of Highway 45 just past the city limits of Delicias in the state of Chihuahua. The caravan of some 700 migrants from Honduras and Guatemala was now six hundred kilometers from the Arizona-New Mexico borders.
He eyed the long lines of migrants three deep go by on foot on the side of the road as he situated himself in the car under a shade tree. Between sixty to eighty kilometers a day, he figured they should be in Agua Prieta outside the U.S. border port of entry in Douglas, Arizona in nine or ten days, maybe less.
Now he took his Android mobile and dialed the number written on the yellow cloth ribbon around his right wrist.
“Hola, amigo!” he greeted as soon as the receiver said 'hello'. “Lupo Martinez here, senor.”
Tom Carlin, CBP Border Patrol Agent at the Douglas border port of entry held the DHS-issued mobile closer to his face as soon as he heard Lupo's voice, in Spanish, turned around from the other agents at the station and walked a good distance beyond earshot at the border.
“Lupo, English only,” he said quickly in a low voice.
“Okay. Sorry,” Lupo replied quickly, continuing to watch the lines of migrants going by, eyeing those with the white cloth ribbon around their right wrist, the ones who paid a hefty price for a sure passage to the north with their hard-earned money back home which were now bundled together, tens of thousands of them, in a sackcloth hidden inside the rear bumper of the old Corolla.
The caravan left Tapachula in the southernmost state of Chiapas near the border of Guatemala thirty days ago. Everyone on both sides of the U.S. border including Agent Tom Carlin and the rest of the contacts in Arizona expected it to be outside the border at the designated ports of entry five days ago. But there had been delays starting at the southern Sierra Madre in Chiapas and more going through the central mountain regions of Zacatecas and Durango states. But now, going due north by northwest along good roads in Chihuahua, they could be at the border well before the Thanksgiving holiday in the states as those gringos at their border stations expected.
“Where are you now?” Agent Carlin now asked on the phone.
Lupo checked the old Atlas he had been using from the start, ran a finger from where they were past the big city of Chihuahua straight up north on Highway 45, northwest on Highway 10 all the way to the border of New Mexico on Highway 2 which stretched directly west another 60 miles to the Agua Prieta-Douglas, Arizona port of entry.
"We're just south of Chihuahua now." He ran the numbers in his head again real quick and cut his estimate to cover six hundred kilometers to their destination. "We should be in Agua Prieta between six to seven days before Thanksgiving."
A short pause from Agent Carlin, then: “Is everything alright? All goods secured?”
“Yes, sir,” Lupo replied respectfully. “Everyone has paid up. I have the packages secured in the car where you told us to put it.”
“Good. Keep moving and no more delays.”
“Yes, sir.”
Agent Dennis Parker, sitting at a desk in the Douglas CBP Patrol Station office, nodded at Agent Miles Evan two desks away. The two heard every word Lupo and now one-of-the-known dirty Agent (AOT) Tom Carlin spoke to each other, clear as if they were part of the conversation. Actually, they were, silent part of the conversation, that is, made possible by Morse, the app Jason Philips developed just for the purpose it's being used now. The satellite link initiated by the copy of Morse in Agent Carlin's mobile with that in Dennis Parker's mobile and other agent's copy at the border worked very well.
The app captured every data packet sent from and received in Carlin's mobile, re-uplinked it to satellite and downlinked immediately by the satellite transponder to the listening units in the CBP offices with only a second or two delay.
When Eli Morton distributed copies of Morse to the border agents, one version for the POC agents and another for the known dirty ones, and tested them successfully, he thought Jason Philips should receive an 'outstanding' performance appraisal and a nice lump sum award for it.
Responding to Agent Parker's nod, Agent Miles Evan nodded back with a thumbs up, indicating everything was working. Meaning, he was capturing, in the two-terabyte flash drive in his laptop, the satellite downlinks of every word and sound from the call between Lupo and dirty Agent Tom Carlin.
While watching the graph of the audio recording on the screen and listening at the same time, he was thinking: “Your fuckin' ass is grass, Agent Carlin! You Motherfucker!”
The plan, as worked out by Mike Powell with Jonathan Preston, the fully vetted Director of the Office of Field Operations in Tucson weeks ago, was to deploy a combined force of FBI and DEA special agents at five ports of entry in Arizona: here in Agua Prieta-Douglas, Naco, Nogales-DeConcini, Sasabe and Lukeville.
The other caravan, the one that built up in Veracruz and now numbered around eight hundred migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and a couple hundred Mexicans who joined along the way in the states of Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, had marched two days ahead but was now no closer to the border than the other. That's because the organizers targeted the Lukeville and Sasabe ports of entry, farther west, and had to go over the Western Sierra Madre Mountain range in the states of Durango, Chihuahua and Sonora. It had been heading west on Highway 16 the past three days from south of Chihuahua City and was now descending the hills towards the plateaus on Highway 16 five hundred kilometers from the city of Hermosillo, Sonora.
A half hour ago, Gustavo Valencia, a Sinaloan Mexican riding in the passenger seat of the twenty-five-year old Honda Accord told the driver, Gonzalo Torres, a Guatemalan, to pull to a side road as they entered the little Chihuahuan town of La Junta. The weather had been mostly cooperative through their journey so far. Like today in this mid-morning hour with the temperature in the high 60s Fahrenheit. They had been riding ahead of the caravan by a kilometer through most of the way over the mountain as a point guard through the tortuous road over the sierras.
As soon as Gonzalo cut the engine to let it cool off awhile, Gustavo's mobile rang.
“Hola, senor Benson,” he greeted upon seeing the caller ID name. “Good to hear from you, senor.”
“Mr. Benson, Gonzalo. English only, remember,” Jack Benson, a CBP border station agent at Lukeville port of entry, another AOT, cautioned the Sinaloan migrant leader.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, Mr. Benson.”
Agent Jack Benson, an AOT who had been collecting a share of 'entry' money from hundreds of illegals for a couple of years asked the migrant leader where they were now, when did they expect to be at the border, had everyone 'settled' (paid)?
Gonzalo said they were now close to entering the state of Sonora, three days away from the city of Hermosillo. From there another two days, given no more delays, to Lukeville border station. And yes, the 'white ribbons' were all paid up, the ones who would be allowed to set foot in U.S. territory unencumbered, the hundreds identified by the white cloth ribbon they were wearing on their right wrist.
“Call me if there's any delay,” Benson said on his mobile which Morse uplinked via a teleport station nearby to the satellite which downlinked it to the channel Morse gave to the satellite transponder.
All that in a couple of seconds CBP Agents, along with a couple of DEA and FBI agents in Lukeville station office, heard in their mobiles similarly loaded with Morse as if they were participants in the call. Listening participants, that is.
Among them—Mike Powell accompanied by the other Associates of the group: two FBI special agents, two DEA undercover agents and a liaison officer from State and Justice.
They had been following up on the two caravans since the day before. The one they had come to name the Chiapas caravan and the other the Veracruz caravan. From their eavesdropping provided by Morse, they learned what the organizers of the Veracruz caravan planned. They were going to split the migrants into two groups. One group will head to the Sasabe port of entry, the other to spread between the Naco and Agua Prieta-Douglas ports of entry. They were skipping the Lukeville and the Nogales-DeConcini port of entry because they were bigger CBP border stations and more difficult to penetrate.
Most of the group headed to Sasabe would be the migrants who would be sneaked in the border at night in buses with the help of several AOTs. A similar group going to Naco and Douglas likewise would be bused in at night the next day. Those who had paid their way, identified by the white cloth ribbon on their right wrist get in the bus. The rest would be left to trek north through the desert.
The Chiapas caravan, likewise would be spread between the Naco and Douglas ports of entry. But most of them would push through the border in the daytime with the 'white ribbons' being selected by the AOTs to proceed inside the border and 'processed'.
Squads of undercover DEA and FBI agents led by the group's POCs would be waiting for them in the border processing areas, waiting to see the AOTs in the act of 'processing' them and, once they—the AOTs— had the 'package' from the 'yellow ribbons', watch them 'report' into the offices of the higher-ups of the station where Morse's surveillance AVs would be recording everything they say and do.
Early in the afternoon, Mike Powell and his group associates in Tucson flew the 120 miles to Douglas port of entry in a DHS Hughes OH-6A chopper, arriving there at three o'clock just as their POCs were filing the reports on their satellite surveillance of the Chiapas caravan. Everything they did on site at every border port of entry was done in strict secrecy with only the thoroughly vetted participants in the investigations in the know, from the lowest-ranked border agents and officers, through the ranks in the Office of Field Operations.
Mike Powell and the associates hoped to God that it stopped there, as did—on the other hand—the corruption. Unlike in the Cases documented so far in Hermes by the Finance Team of the group, several of which Mike and the associates couldn't wait to start working on—the corruption did not stop at low-level bureaucracies. It started with the participation of journeyman bureaucrats, civil servants and contractors, to elected public officials and their staff, powerful members of the U.S. Congress, Executive Branch personnel, including powerful White House officials.
Following this trip he made to the borders, next is huddling with Oliver Payne and Eli Morton of the Border Team to mop up all the preparation on the Operations at the borders, including the Operation for that one big Case involving the Southern California Congressman and his cartel connections—their plan to smuggle hundreds of keys of cocaine and methamphetamine during the holiday season.
And after that, the one Case all the associates couldn't wait to start the Operation on—those lawmakers in both the House and the Senate, members of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development and the FDA in the case involving an eighty-billion-dollar appropriation for the infrastructure development of hundreds of square miles of virgin land in their state.
And then there was the Case by the Finance Team on the six-billion-dollar Navy contract that was practically awarded to Deftron Sciences by the left hand of New York Congressman Albert Gorman for a kickback of millions later in his right hand.
Motherfucking corrupt politician! Your days are numbered.
Later in the day, as he and the Associates rode the DHS chopper back to Tucson, he commented to no one in particular:“Man, this sure is going to be one busy holiday”.
For which he got a chorus of approving chuckles.