The Devils Highway: A True Story (17 page)

14

Helicopters

M
endez and Lauro stumbled. Lauro was sick. He kept muttering that he couldn’t go on. No, man, Mendez told him. No way—you’re not dying now. We’re there. We’re
there
. Can’t you see?

And they were there. In desert terms, they were right on the back porch of salvation. On high points and rises, they could actually see the Mohawk peaks. It was incredible, what they’d done. From the valley where they’d left their pollos, they had walked forty miles. It was a major accomplishment—merit badge stuff, Eagle Scout-quality marathon hiking. Considering the condition they were in when they started, it seems almost impossible that they made it so far so fast.

I can’t, Lauro kept crying.

You can.

I can’t!

You can!

Mohawk meant freeway, and freeway meant rest area, and rest area meant water and Cokes and Mars bars and rides and even the pinche Migra. Being arrested by the Migra—oh yes, that seemed like a really good deal right then.

You can make it.

But Lauro couldn’t.

He fell down.

I’m going to rest … right here … right under … this little … tree.

Mendez tried to wake him, to get him up. Mendez got down on his knees and shook him. Slapped him. Lauro only snuffled and moaned, as if he were dreaming some sweet dream.

Mendez took the money from his pockets, what money Lauro had. Then he tried to get up. Was astonished to find that he couldn’t stand. He pushed on the ground, but his legs gave out on him.

How about that?

Those damned legs.

He grabbed bushes and tugged and rose a few inches and fell over. The twigs ripped across his palms.

Ouch.

He got on his knees.

That hurts.

Okay.

All right.

All right, fine. I can do this.

The freeway’s just over there.

No problem.

He started to crawl. He went on all fours, and sometimes he went on his knees like a religious penitent. The world of sin and grace spun in flaming disks around his head. He fell. He rose. He lay. He crawled. He tried to rise. He sat down.

He thought it would be a really really good idea if he just lay down right over here under this little bush for a minute and collected his thoughts. He slumped, he fell sideways.

Just a minute.

The coma came up from the ground and covered him.

Celia? I’ll get up in just a minute.

Sleep.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23.

Somehow, it became the next day.

Late in the night, more men had fallen, and the small commando group headed out, five of them, led by Mario González Manzano and his brothers, Efraín and Isidro. With them, young Francisco Morales Jimenez. They made the final dash for salvation.

“My brother was talking about water, water,” Mario says. “The five of us said we were going to make it. We were hoping the Border Patrol would see us.”

The five men stumbled, sunstruck, down the mountains. They were facing Barry Goldwater Range. Efraín broke away. The Border Patrol report states that he became ill and they left him behind. The brothers say he went up a mountain to see what he could see. He was too weak to come down and died up there.

Mario: “We went to the cactuses finally and broke them open to try to get water out of them. We had walked very far. We were dying. There wasn’t even a tree where we were. The heat was sitting down on us and we were dying. We were looking for the Border Patrol because we were dying. We were looking to the right and the left for La Migra because we were dying.”

West and north, the vast bombing range sprawled. In its heart, there were false villages with empty houses—ghostly curtains blowing from empty windows. These are strafing targets, and the signcutters regularly have to roust sleeping illegals from the hollow living rooms lest the fighter bombers blow them away. And deeper still, huge tractor tires are arranged in rings and painted red and white, echoes of the tires wired together to pull the drags. Illegals often sleep in these, too, not knowing they are bomb targets.

To the south, the Cabeza Prieta wilderness, the Pinacate Lava Flow, the Devil’s Highway. Ahead: the Lechuguilla Desert, the Copper Mountains, Raven’s Butte, Tinajas Altas Mountains, Coyote Peak, the Wellton Hills, the Gilas. And to the north, Mendez, sleeping under a bush, Lauro slowly dying in his wake. Beyond them, the Holy Grail: I-8. And Wellton Station, where Kenny Smith half-listened to the radio in his back room, and Ol’ José, the grinning skull, smiled down from the wall. And coming south from home base, agent Mike F. made his way down the landscape, cutting the drags, rattling over the bumps, looking for fresh sign, checking the hiding places.

And then he saw them.

Mario, after he could speak, after Mike F. gave him water, told the American his brother was lost in the hills.

Mike called in the Banzai Run.

At home base, the Trailer Trash uttered their famous “Oh, shit.”

Vehicles from all sections of the sector responded.

Mike F. cut sign back into the hills, searching for the lost González Manzano brother, Efraín. It is important to note that within ten minutes of finding the lost men, the Migra was already fully engaged in rescue. Mike F. found Efraín at GPS position N. 32.24.40/W. 113.22.53. It was too late to save him. Agent F. reported it: “One male, deceased.” Efraín was in sight of the Mohawk Valley and the freeway, if he’d known where to look. Like many of the walkers, Efraín was in love: his sunburned arm revealed a tattoo that said “María.”

While Mike F. cut for more sign, the old boys were kicking off their desert race. The Border Patrol sped there so fast, with so many vehicles, over such vicious terrain, that they suffered twenty-six flat tires. Some agents drove on rims to get there.

Marine pilot Major Robert Lack took the call that morning and scrambled. He flew over Mike F. and the lost walkers and circled the rough terrain. His crew spotted bodies scattered on the ground, and he landed among them. Ten men were on the ground, and one was dead. They were in their underwear. When the crew dragged the men into the choppers, they were too tired or weak to sit in the seats. They collapsed on the floor and went to sleep.

Altogether, five helicopters joined in the hunt.

Reyno Bartolo. N. 32.23.16/W. 113.19.55. Face up, green pants, green socks. Deceased.

Enrique Landeros. N. 32.23.17/W. 113.19.54. Blue under-pants. Deceased.

José Isidro Colorado felt death catching up to him. It was a force that came from outside him. He tried to outwalk it, but it was faster, stronger than he. He stumbled. He thought it was no use to fight any longer—the battle was finished. Death caught his clothing, and he started to fall asleep as he walked, knowing he would fall and never awaken.

Then he heard his daughter’s voice. She was calling to him from somewhere nearby. “Papi! Papi!” she yelled. He opened his eyes, looked around. “You promised to build us a house!”

José got up off his knees—how did he get on his knees?—and walked again. Until he was spotted.

Agent Blaine Wilson led the Tucson BORSTAR units by air. Agent Stuart Goodrich, Migra pilot, took to the air and began cutting the drags from the air. The sheriffs joined in: Yuma’s Ralph Ogden took to the hills. He said, “It was dirt, some rock, just a few small trees.” BLM ranger Ruben Conde helped find a group.

It was a mobilization worthy of a small invasion.

Abraham Morales Hernandez. N. 32.21.85/W. 113.18.94. Deceased.

The rescued thought they were dreaming. Heriberto Baldillo Tapia might have awakened long enough to think he was saved. The cutters got him off the ground and into a chopper. As they tried to get a saline IV into him, and the helicopter rose and turned west, Heriberto cracked his eyes. He might have seen the helicopter crew. His eyes rolled and drifted closed and he died.

Nahum Landa said he wanted them to forget giving him a drink—he wanted them to pour cold water over his head. The sound of helicopters filled the sky, the calls of Migra agents. In spite of their terrible situation, it was still tempting to hide for a few of them. Even then, they didn’t want to give up.

Lorenzo Ortiz Hernandez lay as if asleep beside an ancient saguaro. The cactus was easily three hundred years old, and it had seen walkers die before. GPS N. 32.23.18/W. 113.19.59. Lorenzo was on his back, his eyes open to his enemy, the sun. His brown slacks were empty looking: his abdomen had fallen in, his pelvis held up the material of the slacks as if his slacks were a circus tent coming loose from its poles.

It was 110 degrees before noon.

N. 32.13.16/W. 113.19.51. Claudio Alejandro Marin. Black pants, horse head belt buckle. One small mirror in his pocket.

Cutters, Marines, cops, EMTs, rangers, hunted all night. Mendez slept through it all. They cut his sign from the group’s breakup point all the way to the outskirts of Dateland. Among their traces were a couple of bottles, which suggests they did have some water.

Lauro was found dead beneath his bush.

When they found Mendez, they thought he, too, was dead. They dragged him out and got him in the helicopter. He might have thought he was still in his strange dream, dark goggles and engine scream, the sky above and the killer dirt so far below.

N. 32. 23. 17/ W. 113.19.45. Arnulfo Baldilla Flores. His white shirt still looked remarkably clean. His white shoes were scuffed. He had a wad of pesos in his pocket, money Mendez had refused to accept. He had a letter from somebody in his pocket, but out of respect, the cutters didn’t read it.

Reymundo Sr. was found at N. 32.23.16/W. 113.19.52. He wore maroon pants and his favorite spur belt buckle. His shoes were gone. Oddly, he only wore one sock. It was black. His son, young Reymundo, was picked up at N. 32.23.19/W. 113.19.56. The cutters wouldn’t know until Nahum told them that they were father and son.

The helicopters. Their engines whopped the air. They looked like dragonflies.

Mario Castillo Fernandez wore blue jeans. His belt buckle had a rooster inlaid in the silver. N. 32.23.16/W. 113.19.54. Deceased.

Far back, far east from all the action, Edgar Adrian Martinez lay, still alive, still breathing. It was incredible that he’d lasted that long.

He’d been lying in the heat for days. The rescuers did what they could for him, but he was in bad shape. They called in the coordinates on him and waited for the dust-off to get there. He never responded to questions, they tried to pour water between his split lips.

It must have been his sixteen-year-old body that kept him alive.

Finally, the helicopter came over the peaks. It hove into view and circled.

Edgar opened his eyes. They were dull. Maybe he saw, maybe he didn’t. The big beast hovered over them, kicking up dust. It started to descend.

Edgar raised his head. He opened his mouth, but the motors were too loud for anyone to hear anything. He raised his hands as the machine landed.

He put his head down.

He died.

PART FOUR

AFTERMATH

15

Aftermath

T
he Border Patrol, enacting a long-standing federal plan, tried to palm the survivors off on the hospital in Yuma without arresting them. If an illegal was brought in and turned over for lifesaving purposes, and the Migra had not officially arrested the culprit, the bill immediately was the hospital’s problem. If the clients were prisoners, the government had to pay for their health care. It was not uncommon for illegals to rehydrate, catch a nap, eat some hospital food, then walk out the doors and into the United States. Migra-as-Coyote. But it saved the government money. Seventy-seven hospitals throughout the American Southwest were losing about $190 million in unpaid bills, and tens of millions of these could be attributed to medical attention for illegals, including those dropped off by the Border Patrol.

Pima County, home of Tucson sector, wrote off $24.7 million in 2000 alone. San Diego and El Paso were, incredibly, worse. In Tucson itself, University Medical Center lost an estimated $6.5 million for treatment of “undocumented entrants.” And little old Yuma, population 160,000, spent $4.1 million. About a quarter of these bills were from illegals, though the media laid it all on them.

A survey conducted by Florida’s MGT of America, a consulting firm, estimated that illegals made up 23 percent of unpaid bills in the Southwest’s ER’s and care centers. Twenty-three percent might seem like a moderate percentage of the cost—after all, that means that 77 percent of the bills are unpaid by good Americans. Still, elder care, certain emergency services, and long-term care for American citizens were forced to shut down all over Arizona as the toll mounted.

The walkers lay in beds, unaware that they were costing anything.

The border makes number crunchers go mad. It’s harder to cross, so there are more Coyotes; the numbers of crossers, in spite of $5.5 billion spent to stop them, keep swelling; deaths increase; wildlife is endangered; landscape is ruined; and supply and demand rule—Coyotes charge more every year, and because of this, fewer Mexicans are willing to return to Mexico. Why risk it? Now that the average cost of crossing is somewhere around seven hundred dollars, only 38 percent of illegals choose to go back after two years in the United States. They simply can’t afford to go home.

The lost walkers lay on crisp white sheets, rolled through swinging doors, blinked at confusing lights and masked faces, hospital gowns, the smell of disinfectant and their own strange musky stench. Needles. Liquids. A sign flashed by: THIS WAY HEART CENTER. People in green inserted electric thermometers in their ears. Hands in rubber gloves. “Are we contagious?” one of them asked, but no one answered.

On that last morning of the long walk, Wednesday, May 23, when agent Mike F. found the men on the Vidrios Drag, it was ten in the morning. The men began to arrive in the Yuma Medical Center within hours. They were met by Dr. David Haynes and his team. It was overwhelming: body after body, patient after patient. Dr. Haynes jumped to it. All of them had kidney damage from the relentless cooking. The Border Patrol and other rescuers were truly racing the clock: Haynes told the local newspaper, “They would all be dead if they hadn’t been brought in to the hospital when they were.” Later, Haynes told reporters, “Have you ever seen a mummy from ancient Egypt? That gives you an idea. They looked shriveled up.”

Nine of them were in fair condition. Two were in serious condition. One was critical. When Mendez arrived, he scrunched low in his bed and tried not to make eye contact. Would the boys cover for him? Would they let him escape?

The walkers went into rooms, sometimes together, and sometimes paired with strangers. Hilario, who had lost his water the first night, not only survived but managed to somehow look dapper in his bed. His hair was neatly combed, and his thin moustache looked like it was drawn on his lip.

Rafael Temich ended up in a room with an old white man. His nurse was named Jenny, and Jenny came and went, wrestling mightily with the old man.

“Did they come and exercise you?”

“What?”

Rafael didn’t understand a word of it.

“Who turned down your bed today?”

“Huh? What?”

Rafael kept finding dry little things in his nose and mouth, kept picking them out while Jenny struggled with his neighbor.

“You pulled out your needle!”

“I did?” the old man replied.

“He pulled out his IV.”

“What?”

The old man launched loud, hacking coughs into the room.

“Our friend,” Rafael said, “is in bad shape.”

The hospital’s social worker spoke Spanish. He stepped into the room, interrupting the sheriff’s interrogation. Rafael’s mother called from Veracruz, trying to see if he was alive. The hospital was going to provide him with a call back to her once the cops were done with him.

Rafael said thank you, but he did not smile.

By 11:30
A.M.
that same Tuesday, Rita Vargas was on the case. A strong woman with movie-star looks, Vargas was the Mexican consul in Calexico. Her husband, Felipe Cuellar, was the consul of San Diego. They were uniquely qualified to understand the vagaries of migration and tragedy along the line, overseeing between them the region encompassing the Tijuana, Mexicali, and San Luis migratory corridors. Having originally come from Mexico City, Vargas had made it her business to become an expert in the norteño territories, a land alien to her.

The Calexico consul had responsibility for Yuma (and, by extension, Wellton), which at that time had no consulate. Yuma called Calexico to tell them there were dead Mexicans in the field. Rita Vargas was on the telephone in minutes, hunting down Mexican authorities all over the world.

Rita was known as a no-nonsense consul who brooked no foolishness. While charming and funny, endearing when it was appropriate, she was not afraid to stand up to both the Border Patrol and her superiors. She lived in a world far removed from the decencies of La Capital—no exquisite dining or Aztec collections in Calexico, no waiters in tuxedos with perfect manners, all-night bookstores, concerts and strolling mariachis in Garibaldi, no metro, no small white lights in the trees of Coyoacán where coffee shops served demitasse cups across the street from Frida Kahlo’s house. Rita Vargas lived in a world of gangsters and Coyotes, cops and victims. She traded now in mummified bodies and gunshot wounds, fear and force.

In a notorious case earlier in her tenure at the consulate, Vargas handled the case of a classic border shooting. A green Migra agent had fired into a crowd of illegals in the dusty night near Mexicali. He claimed that he’d fired his weapon in self-defense—the gang had outnumbered him and rushed him. One of the runners was mortally wounded. The others, according to his report, turned tail and fled.

While this agent awaited medical evac for his victim, the Mexican slowly bled into the soil. The agent, clearly distraught, turned in his report, and he was supported by the testimony of the old boys of Calexico Station. The shooting was ruled righteous, and the newbie was cleared of any charges.

Only Rita Vargas thought it was worthwhile to investigate the ballistics. A quick review of the coroner’s report demonstrated that the wound had entered the runner’s back. It occurred to her that a self-defense shooting should have hit the victim in the chest, unless the Mexicans were assaulting the Migra boy with their buttocks. Her investigation sought out the illegals now safely hidden in Mexico. The science and their testimony revealed exactly the reverse of the Migra’s report. They had been running for the border, going back. The agent, allegedly young and nervous, had fired at them as they hit the fence, and the victim was hit as he tried to repatriate posthaste.

Vargas famously walked into the station chief’s office with her report and said, “Your men are lying to you.”

Thus started a respectful relationship between them. While perhaps not a friendship, their mutual respect was a feature of the Mexicali/Calexico corridor during her tenure there. Vargas became close to the chief’s wife, for example, and she oversaw the amazing development of a Mexican government service window in the Border Patrol station with his mute blessing.

By 11:30
A.M.
of that last day, Rita Vargas already knew that the walkers were mostly from Veracruz. She tracked down the governor of that state at his hotel in Europe. She stopped his vacation cold and gave him a long-distance report. She then pulled her superior out of an important meeting in Mexico City. That work done, she sped to Yuma, where the first of the walkers were arriving by Marine and BORSTAR helicopters.

The men were gawking with huge black eyes at the hustling gringos. Cops everywhere. Huge Migra monsters lurched around them. Deadly serious Latino sheriffs descended on them. Soldiers. Nurses. Pilots. Chaplains. Doctors. The Mexicans soon joined in: scary Federales with notebooks and expensive after-shave lotion pulled chairs up to their beds.
Who did this? Where is he? Where’s El Negro? Where’s Don Moi? Do you know Daniel Cercas?

The overwhelming flow of panicky radio calls had been picked up by scanners all over the southland. The scanners started to attract reporters. TV crews sped to Yuma from central Arizona and California, newspaper stringers and borderland beat reporters hustled to the medical center. It was lights and mikes, notebooks and flashbulbs. Television vans raised their satellite dishes. Press credentials flashed in the sun. The hustle and jiggle overtook the parking lot of the medical clinic. Signcutters suddenly became perimeter security experts.

“We’re famous,” somebody said.

Gringos giving orders—one of the boys thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen in his damned life. His arms were full of bloody cactus punctures, and his balding head was burned bright red. But Jesus Christ! He was alive! It was so funny, he couldn’t stop giggling. And these cops! These ridiculous cops strutting around. He could have wet himself, they were making him laugh so much. He wiped and wiped the blood that started seeping out of his wounds the more he drank. Pinches gringos! “We’re all fucking dead!” he told the cops. “We all died!” He burst out laughing. Showed them the blood. “Death!” It was the best laugh he’d ever had.

The boys were coming in: Rafael Temich, Nahum Landa. They were hydrated and made comfortable. The helicopter racket came through the walls. They stared dully as IV needles were stuck in their veins. As they drank, they started to be able to urinate again, and women held strange little pitchers to the ends of their penises and collected the dark fluid and whisked it away to peer at it in stark rooms. The men were still so stunned by the walk that they weren’t able to completely process this unexpected North American development: white women clutching their privates.

Cops stared at them, tried to intimidate them with badges and big chests. Officers who spoke Spanish, some better than others, glared down at them. They set up video cameras on tripods and held clipboards. They had big guns on their belts. Mustaches. Pens. It was all dreamy and stupid. Cops didn’t scare anybody. Some of the survivors resented the questions. Some of them were still insane from the walk. Some, like Nahum, went opaque and shifty, not sure what they should say. How much could they share? Any reasonably tough guy from Mexico knew that you were nebulous with cops, and you didn’t rat out your associates. Besides, who were these big men? More Migra? Would they deport everybody? Nahum kept his eyes hooded and answered their questions with quiet evasion, with maddeningly impressionistic answers.

“It was the guy with the forelock,” he said. “The rooster hair. He left us.”

Some of the boys in beds nearby glanced at each other. Everybody was listening to everybody else. Nahum set the course for some of the younger guys: he wasn’t going to crack. They wouldn’t crack, either. But he sure as hell was going to finger Mendez. Nobody was going to stand up for that asshole. They wanted to help. They wanted to know who was alive. And they were afraid to know who had died. Everything in their lives was chaos and fear. They had only been in the norte for less than two weeks. They still didn’t know where they were, didn’t know what “Yuma” was—Mexican or American—didn’t know if they were going to jail or being deported or if El Negro and Chespiro would hunt down their wives and mothers and kill them.

The beds were comfortable, though. The AC was cool. The Jell-O was tasty. If only the cops would go away and let them get some sleep, things would be a lot better.

But the cops weren’t going away.

“Tell us about the rooster guy.”

They called him Mendez.

“Did the rooster guy threaten you?”

No.

“Were there any sexual improprieties, any violent acts?”

Sex! No.

“What’s the name of the guy with the red haircut?”

Don’t know his name. Mendez.

“Is the guy here? The rooster boy?”

I don’t know. Is he here? I think he’s over there.

And they all looked down the way. Mendez. Oh yes, they said. He’s here. He’s down at the end of the ward. In that bed. That’s the guy with the hair.

And the sheriffs, smelling their prey, gradually made their way to him, recording each survivor as they went, building their case as they closed the distance between them and him. Every few minutes of tape brought Mendez closer to a life in prison.