Landing [Yahoo!News]

©2006 Phillip Nesmith

 

A Border Patrol agent (member of BORSTAR) watches as Omaha 18 finds a place to land in the borderlands of Arizona.

 

**This image was published as part of a Yahoo! News interactive feature on immigration**

 

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As Omaha 18 danced in the hot sky around me my mind and eyes were occupied to full capacity. My eyes darted from the ground and the tracks that we were following to the surrounding terrain looking for people in the scrub, over to Agent S.K., up to the helicopter, then back to the ground. The harsh high desert sun beat down on the back of my neck like a hot steaming towel after a barber shave. We had been walking North for a couple of miles and we had lost and found the trail left by the small group of border crossers about six times. I was beginning to think that the tracks, although fresh were older than we all thought. With the helicopter so far ahead I thought that the crew would see something…or the crossers would be running, and their tracks showed no sign of hast.

 

Up ahead I saw a large billowing cloud of fine tan/orange dust rise into the air. Omaha 18 had landed ahead of us just short of clump of vegetation. In this area of the country a clump of dense vegetation means the presents of water sometime during the year. Omaha 18 was dropping off the second member of the two-person crew to search the area prior to our arrival. Not having access to the radio I thought that we were getting close. As I walked along I looked at the four to five sets of dusty athletic shoe and boot tracks leading us across the land. My mind wondered about the people that left the tracks and about that face that I might soon be able to put a face to the footprints.

 

Reaching the vegetation I caught movement out of the corner of my eye to the right. It was the agent that Omaha 18 had dropped off. He waved in our direction and said he had found the tracks over there. We caught up with this agent and we exchanged greetings and we talked about this situation. He said his name was Dave and that he had doubts about how fresh the tracks were. As we walked along I discovered that Dave was with BORSTAR (Border Patrol Search Trauma and Rescue: www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/bor... ). We walked and chatted, talking about the state of the tracks, the way in which the people seemed to be walking etc. It was decided that Dave would call the helicopter to land and Agent S.K. would be taken back to our truck so that he could move it to a road near by to pick me up.

 

After Omaha 18 landed, coming in low over the brush, blowing a thing fog of Arizona into the air all of which would seem to find its way into my ears, hair, cloths, camera, and eyes. The smell of the burning aviation fuel, the heat, and the gritty feeling of dirt on my face took me back to Iraq. Agent S.K. climbed into the small cockpit and with an increased whine of the engine and a furious whipping of the air by the rotors Omaha 18 broke free of the chains of gravity, banking to the south.

 

Dave and I stood talking as we looked at the tracks on the ground. We walked a bit more to the North, as there would be a good amount of time before the truck would be closer. The desert ghost laid their tracks in snaking lines across the Mars like dirt as if walking drunk. Through thick vegetation, then across open ground, up over rocky sections to end up disappearing into a patch of grass. We walked in circles until we found them again. This was the same pattern that we had been following for a few miles. Picking up the trail again as it led across a plane of flat dry dirt I looked to the direction they were going…toward more thick vegetation. My mind had been thinking about how these people had been trying to keep anyone from following them long by trying to leave (or not leave) tracks across all types of terrain. Then suddenly as the tracks went into a tangle of dead and downed mesquite trees, which looked like some military obstacle, it hit me. These people had walked through in the dark! This would put us about 4 hours behind them.

 

Someone had posted a comment to one of my other border images and asked if the Border Patrol “always gets their man”. I am here to tell you that many get past the efforts of the Border Patrol, which is a testament to the skill of the coyotes and drug runners and the vastness of the Arizona desert.

 

*** Names and callsigns changed ***

 

*** See the beginning of the story here: www.flickr.com/photos/visualadventure/241138484/ ***

 

Done