Dale Brown: Edge of Battle

He knew his route well, so they traveled at night. That usually meant a more comfortable journey, but in the arid, cloudless air the desert released its sun-baked warmth quickly at night, and now the temperature was in the low forties. The pollos baked during the day and shivered at night. There was no way around it. It was a hard journey, but the work and the money at the end of the trail hopefully made the sacrifice worth it.

Victor’s specialty was the El Centro Border Patrol region of eastern Imperial County, between Yuma, Arizona, and El Centro, California—what the coyotes called the Moñtanas del Chocolate, or Chocolate Mountain region of southern California, an area of roughly two thousand square miles. He led a small group of migrants all the way north to Interstate 10 somewhere between Blythe and Indio, California. With decent weather and a cooperative group, Victor could escort a group of twelve along that route to his drop-off point in two days, sometimes less, with almost one hundred percent probability of success.

For an additional fee, he would take pollos as far as they desired—Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Reno, even Dallas, Texas, if they desired. But the real money was in the short trek across the deserts of southern California. Most migrants hooked up with friends or relatives quickly once they got to the farming communities of the Coachella or Imperial Valleys or along the interstate highways, and Victor’s prices for travel beyond southern California were steep. It was safer traveling with him than trying to take the bus or trains, since the Border Patrol checked IDs of Hispanic-looking individuals frequently on those two conveyances. Victor charged mightily for the safety and convenience of longer-distance trips, but it was well worth it.

Victor never bragged about his skills at evading the authorities, but he never denied them either—it was good for business. But he was not gifted with any sort of extrasensory perception. He was successful because he was smart, patient, and didn’t get greedy, unlike many of his friends who also worked the migrant underground railroads. Where other coyotes took twenty migrants in more conspicuous vans and rental trucks, Victor took a maximum of twelve in smaller vehicles; when others raced and took unnecessary risks to do the job in one or two days and were caught at least half the time, Victor was careful, took extra time, and made it 95 percent of the time.

Many thought he was good at his job because he was a bebé del angel, or “angel baby,” born in the United States. Perhaps most folks wouldn’t consider being born in an artichoke field in Riverside County near Thermal, California an angelic thing, but Victor had something that his friends didn’t have—a real American birth certificate.

About ten miles north of the border, just before daybreak, Victor came upon his “nest,” and after removing a few branches and rocks and a sand-covered canvas tarp, his pride and joy was revealed—a 1993 Chevy Suburban with four-wheel drive. Before doing anything else, he started inspecting the outside of the vehicle.

“ ¿Qué usted está haciendo? What are you doing?” one of the male pollos asked in Spanish, with a definite Eastern European accent. This guy was somewhat different than the others. Victor at first thought he was a federale, but he had paid cash and observed all of the security precautions without question or hesitation. He wore sunglasses all the time except when walking at night, so it was impossible to see his eyes. His hands were rough and his skin toughened by the sun, but he didn’t carry himself like a farmworker.

Of course, more and more migrants using Victor’s service were not farmworkers. This guy looked tough, like he was accustomed to fighting or violence, but at the same time he was not pushy or edgy—he seemed very much in control of himself, capable of springing into action but very content not to do so right now. An Army deserter, maybe, or some sort of fugitive from justice or prison escapee trying to sneak back into the United States. Victor vowed to keep an eye on him—but he was not his biggest concern now.

“ Comprobación primero, ” Victor replied. Very few of his clients ever spoke to him, which was probably best—this was business, pure and simple. He believed these were his people, even though he was an American, but he wasn’t in this line of work to help his fellow Mexicans—he was doing this to make money. Besides, in this business, except for the question “How much to L.A.?” or “How much to the I-10?” the only other ones who ever asked questions were federales . “Checking first. Maybe the Border Patrol inspected or bugged my yate, or the lobos sabotaged it.”

The man looked at the beat-up Suburban and chuckled when he heard Victor refer to it as his “yacht.” “Lobos?”

“Los contrabandistas,” Victor replied.

“But you are a smuggler,” the man said.

Victor smiled a pearly white smile and corrected himself, “ Los contrabandistas malvados. “The evil smugglers.” I smuggle honest workers who want to do honest work, never drugs or weapons.”

The man nodded, a half-humorous, half-skeptical expression on his face. “A man of principle, I see.”

Principles? Victor had never thought of himself like that—he wasn’t even sure what it meant. But if it meant not moving drugs or weapons across the border, he supposed he had some. He shrugged and went back to work, noticing that neither the man nor any of the other pollos offered to help him. Yep, just business. He was the driver; they were his passengers.

After not discovering any evidence of tampering, Victor uncovered a second hiding place and pulled out a canvas bag containing a battery and ignition components. He filled the battery with water from his water jugs, quickly reassembled the parts in his SUV, and fired it up; the pollos let out a little cheer when the big vehicle started amid a disturbingly large cloud of black smoke. With his clients’ help, he eased the truck out of the depression, and they clambered aboard quickly and wordlessly, thankful they didn’t have to walk for a while.

They followed dirt roads and trails for several miles, then crossed the Coachella Canal and entered Patton Valley. A large portion of the environmentally sensitive Glamis Dunes desert was closed to vehicles—and the off-highway vehicle enthusiasts, afraid of losing all their favorite driving sites, patrolled the off-limits areas just as well as the police and park rangers—so Victor was careful to avoid the off-limits areas that trapped so many other coyotes. He stayed on dirt roads and trails, being careful to keep moving and not pull off into a parking area because he didn’t have a camping permit and anyone stopping in a camping area had to display a mirror hanger or be cited on the spot. He crossed Wash Road north of Ogilby Camp Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Area, emerged onto Ted Kipf Road, and headed northwest toward the town of Glamis, occasionally pulling off into a hidden OHV trailering area and mixing in with the dune buggy riders when his senses told him patrols were nearby. His trusty “land yacht” did well in the sandy desert and low hills of Patton Valley.

A few pollos got out at Glamis, ahead of schedule, but it was entirely up to them. Glamis was near the fertile Coachella Valley farming region, and there was work around if you knew where to ask—but of course, there were plenty of Border Patrol agents hereabouts as well. Victor stopped long enough to gas up and let the two migrants out, then hurried back onto the road.

He took Highway 78 north around the southern end of the Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range, then exited on Imperial Gables Road. A turn onto Lowe Road, past Main Street into the town of Imperial Gables, then a left onto a dirt road northbound, through fields of every imaginable kind of produce. They made several turnoffs and stops, sometimes prompted by a signal from a worker in the fields that the Border Patrol was nearby, but most times by Victor’s sense of nearby trouble. After nearly twenty miles of negotiating the dirt farm roads, they emerged onto Wiley Well Road, and it was an easy cruise north to the intersection with Chuckwalla Valley Road, just south of Interstate 10, shortly after sunset.