Dickenson was an old hand, approaching nearly thirty years with the border patrol. The last twenty of it he spent along the Rio Grande. Out of the office in Marfa, he was the first on the scene, he and his junior partner, Rod Jahrling. As soon as they had interviewed a few people at the hospital, they returned to the office. He put in a call to the next higher headquarters, drew an M1A Springfield, four magazines, a hundred rounds of .308 Winchester cartridges, a hundred rounds for his issue sidearm, a Beretta Model 96 .40 Smith and Wesson semi-automatic, and a Deer Hunter version of the twelve gauge Remington 870 pump shotgun., along with a box of 00 buck for the latter.
Jahrling drew a box of 50 rounds for his Beretta 96, but drew his Remington 700 varmint synthetic stocked rifle in .308 Winchester cartridges in its aluminum case from the trunk of his privately owned vehicle. He took fifty rounds of match ammunition from the ammunition locker. On top of the rifle sat a Burris Black Diamond T-plate variable power telescopic sight. With its twenty-six-inch barrel, he could keep five slowly fired rounds in a six-inch circle at five hundred yards. It was a sniper rifle in the guise of a varmint rifle. He had purchased it two years earlier out of his own pocket. In fact, he had made it to the national finals in the long-range rifle match in the Border Patrol shoot off the previous year.
It was dark by the time they reached Ruidoso, but they began a systematic interview of everyone who had been involved or was a witness. After 22:00 hours, they checked into the single motel at the edge of town, one of the enterprises that had been robbed by Jesus. No one was hurt at the motel where they only took money from the cash register. By morning, others from various law enforcement agencies had begun to arrive. First were two Texas Rangers, followed by two Department of Public Safety highway patrolmen. The laboratory boys had flown in and landed their light plane in Marfa late that night, rented a car, and drove down the next morning.
The first stop was the home of the Border Patrolman, Adam Satcher. According to his wife, he had just stepped out on the porch to go to the local coffee shop where he usually ate breakfast. She heard a rifle shot while in the bedroom. She ran to the living room only to find him sprawled on the front porch in a pool of blood on the other side of the screen door. He had been shot in the middle of the chest. He was instantly killed. This was to be his last year. He planned to retire on 31 December. He had ridden the river for many years, and this was considered a relatively non-hazardous assignment, patrolling up and down the deserted highways. Only occasionally would he find illegal aliens. Sometimes, he would scare them back into the brush by firing a few shots, occasionally, he would take one or two into custody, or if he was in a good mood, ignore them. He felt that he had done his duty for many years but was never supported by national policy. Always so much duty, so much time, so little resources; most of his career he was going in harm’s way without a partner. Therefore, he didn’t feel much of an obligation to his duty anymore. When he had made his intentions known, he was moved from the Marfa office to Ruidoso for his last year. Dickenson, the number two man in Marfa, took the job as section chief. Dickenson thought it was time the old man retired. He didn’t seem to want to leave the office anymore, only shuffle papers and be a petty bureaucrat. It was decided that Satcher would maintain the rank of Lieutenant. They justified moving him to Ruidoso to regional headquarters by claiming it was a hotbed of smuggling activity and a dangerous section that required an experienced man. The regional office was well aware of the circumstances and winked at the move. There was insufficient manpower, and really no reason, to allow him to maintain a partner in Ruidoso.
Dickenson was beginning to have brief periods of the same attitude, and they were coming more and more often. He tried not to let Jahrling see it so he would not influence the young officer. Dickenson searched the area and found a rifle cartridge across the street from the Satcher’s home. According to a neighbor and confirmed by Mrs. Satcher, a white van was seen driving away from the scene. The neighbor and his wife loaded Satcher’s body in the bed of their pickup and put Mrs. Satcher between them in the cab. They drove off for Marfa. They saw the roadblock on the highway and turned around. Afraid to go back into town, they drove into the desert and hid behind a low hill for several hours until the roadblock left. By then, most of the other wounded had also been loaded into various vehicles and the convoy formed for Marfa. It was obvious they knew Lieutenant Satcher’s habits and were waiting for him. Dickenson bagged the rifle cartridge and called the lab boys on his cell phone, as if they couldn’t find the house on their own in such a small town.
Their next stop was at the home of the local deputy sheriff to pay their respects to his wife. He had been ambushed in his office. Apparently, two Mexicans walked into his office, and as he looked up from his desk, drew hidden pistols and opened fire. A Winchester .30-30 rifle case was found outside as well.
Two people were shot at the food store. Two employees and a customer were murdered in the hardware store. The home of the owner of the food store had been burglarized. The owner’s wife, a lady of sixty years of age, had been beaten into unconsciousness but recovered consciousness in a few hours. The house had been ransacked from top to bottom. They even removed a small color television. She managed to drive herself to the doctor’s office in town. His office had also been burglarized, as had been the drug store next door. They took most everything on the shelves. The pharmacist had been pistol whipped, suffered severe contusions and a mild concussion, but was otherwise unhurt.
The physician, a middle-aged family practitioner in his fifties, had made his millions in the city of Bayonne, New Jersey. He moved to Ruidoso to escape the big city life and very quietly practice where his skills were truly needed. He was beaten into unconsciousness for objecting when his nurse turned office girl Friday was held across her desk and gang raped. He offered no violence, only verbally objected to her being raped. His nurse, shaking all the way, drove him to Marfa in her pickup. Radiographs revealed his jaw broken at the symphysis, in two places of the left mandible, and a fracture of the right maxilla where he had been pistol whipped. He was treated with morphine and hospitalized. One of the physicians called a friend at El Paso General and scheduled him for facial reconstructive surgery in two days. His nurse was treated for rape, put on antibiotics for possible venereal infection, blood drawn as a baseline, and hospitalized for the night. She would receive counseling the next day for psychiatric trauma and the possibility of HIV infection. If she would go to El Paso General with her boss, she could receive an experimental vaccine against human papilloma virus, as could the other rape victims.
Chapter 3
Jesus had filled the gas tanks of three vehicles he was immediately commanding, then robbed the only gas station in town. He shot the owner when the man demanded payment for the gasoline. A witness said that Jesus smiled and said, “Die, you Gringo son of a bitch!” in clear English. Jesus then shot the witness, but it was a shoulder wound from which he was expected to recover.
One of the deceased was found dead on the corner of a side street. He was known as something of an old desert rat. He lived alone a few miles out of town in an old shack. He did odd jobs when he could and helped out on the ranches in the county when they needed an extra hand. Apparently, he pulled an old lever action .30-30 rifle out of his gun rack and fired at the raiders from across the hood of his pickup truck. The response was that he was raked with automatic weapons fire. They counted forty holes in his pickup truck, and four in his chest. Nobody knew that he inflicted a lethal wound on one of the raiders. After they pulled off state route 70, Jesus ordered the body of his dead man stripped of all belongings and clothes, taken two hundred yards off the track and placed in a coulee. There, the coyotes and buzzards would make quick work of it. The clothes and belongings were burned back at camp.
The twelve-year-old girl was physically more mature than most girls her age. She just happened to be in the hardware store at the wrong time. She was there when they walked in and was immediately observed. Two dragged her down the aisle and into a corner where she was attacked. Stricken with fear, she offered little resistance at first. Then, she began to fight back. They beat her, raped her, and because she appeared to be Mexican, they let her live.
One rancher had the unlucky fortune to be driving his new pickup into town for a load of barbed wire and fencing staples. Unaware of the robbery occurring, he walked into the store only to be faced with a shotgun. One raider asked if that was a brand new truck, and when informed it was less than a month old, the raider demanded the keys. Reluctantly, the owner surrendered them. “Gracias, Señor,” was the response, along with a twelve-gauge shotgun blast to the chest.
Interviews with forensic artists over the next few days resulted in composite drawings of a number of the raiders. These were computerized and broadcast across the southwest and to all FBI and Border Patrol offices nationwide.
No convoy of the assorted vehicles was noted passing through any of the adjacent towns. Dickenson then concluded that the raiders had turned into the desert somewhere. He sent Jahrling back to Marfa to hitch one of the station’s two horse trailers to their Dodge and load their two saddle horses, two pack horses, saddle bags, and bedrolls. Dickenson continued questioning witnesses, everyone he could find until virtually all of the citizens of Ruidoso had been interviewed.
Jahrling arrived the next morning with the horses and trailer. They put the horses in a local corral and bought dried foods at the local store, enough for three days. Then they drove out of town looking for any indication of where the raiders had left the highway. When they found multiple tracks turning south off Highway 70, they pulled the trailer off the road two hundred meters and unloaded the horses. They unhitched the horse trailer, filled their canteens, packed two panniers on one pack horse and four five-gallon cans of water on the other. Dickenson checked his cell phone, put fresh batteries in his saddle bags, put their rifles in the scabbards and began tracking across the desert. It wasn’t hard to follow so many automobile tracks, even across the hard pan. It wasn’t long before they noticed the buzzards circling. They found a body, already partially devoured by coyotes, foxes and vultures.
Periodically, Dickenson would scan the landscape with binoculars, looking for any indication of an ambush. The second day out, they stopped at the Rio Grande. They were at the river’s edge before they knew it. Dickenson immediately turned them around and backed off four hundred meters. “Unpack the pack horses, keep your rifle within arm’s reach at all times. Keep our saddle horses ready in case we have to high tail it out of here. I’m going to the river for a closer look.” When he came to within one hundred meters of the river’s edge, he sat behind a mesquite tree and carefully surveyed the far side of the river. He thought he could discern where the vehicles had left on the far side. He was particularly interested in places within four hundred meters where a rifleman could hide to ambush anyone who dared cross the river. He crept slowly back to the camp.
“We’ll move back behind that small rise and make camp for the night. Keep your rifle handy. I’ll cook, and you picket, feed and water all of the horses.” Dickenson began to gather dried mesquite wood by digging roots out of the ground. When he had enough, he built a small fire and set a pot of coffee on a camp grill along with a pot of water to boil rice and beans, to which he added a can of tuna fish. After supper, as the sun went down, they took their rifles and binoculars, and Dickenson led Jahrling down to the river. Dickenson took a GPS reading of the crossing site after glassing the area again. He telephoned the location in to his office and informed them they were camping for the night. The information was passed up the chain of command. Thirty minutes later, Dickenson’s cell phone rang. He was given explicit orders not to cross the border but to maintain vigilance there for as long as they had sufficient food and water. Their job was to monitor any activity. An aircraft would be dispatched in the morning for photographic purposes.
When the information continued on up the line, the State Department informed the Mexican ambassador of what had occurred and that the raiders had been tracked into Mexico. Would the Mexican National Police please pick up the trail and continue the search? The Mexican ambassador was only too glad to agree to such accommodation. The National Headquarters of the Border Patrol requested aerial surveillance of the area from the U.S. Air Force. The President ordered a long dwelling drone equipped with high resolution and infra red cameras to be flown just inside the U.S. border but to take photographs for one hundred miles inside Mexico for any sign of the raiding force. Unfortunately, by this time, all the vehicles were parked inside Gonzalez’s packing sheds. Aerial reconnaissance revealed nothing unusual.
Henry Dorn, second term Democratic President of the United States, called to Roberta, his secretary, to get the Mexican President on the phone.
“Good Morning, President Bustamante.”
“And a good morning to you, President Dorn.” Bustamante knew why Dorn was calling him but waited for him to breach the subject.
“I trust you heard of the cross-border raid on Ruidoso, Texas yesterday. We have circumstantial evidence that the raiders originated in Mexico. What do you make of it?”
“Most unfortunate, Mr. President. We are deeply troubled here in Mexico that such violence occurred. Our sympathies go out to all of the families whose loved ones were lost and wounded or otherwise injured. But tell me, what evidence is there that the raiders were from Mexico or that the raid was launched from Mexico?”
“For one, Mr. President, the vehicles were tracked from where they left the highway to where they crossed the Rio Grande. Our officers did not cross into Mexico to continue pursuit. Indeed, they chose to respect the sovereignty of Mexico.”
“Please pass to those officers my respect for their professionalism. If they can identify the location, perhaps our officers can, as you Americans say in your western movies, ‘pick up the trail.’”
Dorn gave Bustamante the coordinates reported by patrolmen Dickenson and Jahrling.
“I will have my officers on it immediately, both on the ground and in the air. We shall do our utmost to bring these murderers to justice. One problem I see, however, is a Mexican law that we cannot extradite criminals to a country where the possibility of capitol punishment exists. The state of Texas executes more felons than any of your other states. When we capture these vicious killers, some other arrangement will have to be made.”
Dorn winced at the thought of the political fallout of such an arrangement. The demand for execution by the public would be intense, particularly in Texas. That might cost the Democratic Party Texas in the upcoming presidential election. Labor unions and nationalists were already making noises about tightening inspections on goods originating in Mexico. Some were beginning to float the idea of revoking the North American Free Trade Agreement. With the unemployment rate steady at 9%, it was gaining credence. Dorn certainly did not wish to return to trade wars and tariffs. That would make the international economic playing field lopsided once again, a theory near and dear to liberal hearts.
“Mr. President, I am certain that appropriate arrangements can and will be made. When you catch them, and the sooner the better, we will request extradition. I’ll have our Attorney General look into it and get in touch with your people through your embassy here.”
“President Dorn, I assure that Mexico will do all that is necessary to bring these rabid dogs to justice. Again, the most sincere condolences from the people of Mexico to the grieving families.”
“Thank you, President Bustamante. I will immediately call again if there are any further developments on this end.”
“Victory is the main object in war. If this is long delayed, weapons are blunted and morale depressed. When troops attack cities, their strength will be exhausted.
The worst policy is to attack cities; attack cities only when there is no alternative.
There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.
They carry equipment from the homeland; they rely for provisions on the enemy. Thus, the army is plentifully provided with food.
Hence the wise general sees to it that his troops feed on the enemy, for one bushel of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of his; one hundredweight of enemy fodder to twenty hundred weight of his.
