Page 4 of Breaking Free
Once traffickers reached the highway, it was much harder to stop them. An SUV loaded with coke was a lot easier to spot in the desert than in traffic.
Jason passed a car with Illinois plates. “Ren flanked them. I came up in front. Ellio and Dale cut them off at the rear. We moved in, but no one was there. We thought they had abandoned the vehicle.”
Traffickers often chose to dump their cargo rather than risk capture.
“What were they carrying?”
“Thirty kilos of uncut cocaine.”
Zach gave a low whistle. “That’s what—five million on the street?”
“Something like that. Ren and I went after them, following boot prints, but they hadn’t gone far. They ambushed us, opened fire, hitting Ren in the belly. I took one out, but the other rabbited, heading south again.”
“You pursued.”
Jason nodded. “Once I saw that Ellio and Dale were taking care of Ren, I pursued on foot. His trail was easy to follow, but he knew the landscape as well as I did. When we got close to the line, he started to run. He thought he was home free.”
“You followed him to the other side, crossed the border.”
“Hell, yes, I did. I’m TO and a dual citizen. That land belongs to our people, even if it is in Mexico. The bastard had just shot a federal agent on TO land. I wasn’t going to let him get away.”
“I get it. I do. I’ve worked black bag jobs on the other side of the line, bringing high-value suspects across the border in secret. I called it ‘unofficial extradition.’ If you don’t get caught, you’re a hero. If you do, you’re fucked.”
“Yeah.” Jason was definitely the latter. “He was out in the open. The area there is pretty flat, so he had nowhere to hide. He turned and raised his rifle. I fired before he did and killed him. I didn’t know there was a group of Mexican agents nearby.”
“Oh, shit. That’s when the real fun began.”
Jason nodded. “They came in hot, weapons out. They frisked me, cuffed me, took my firearms, my badge, my personal ID. I thought they might be working for the cartel and have instructions to blow my head off right there. I was lying face down in the dirt with a pistol to my head when the rest of the Wolves showed up.”
“The pack had your six.”
“They were careful to stay on the other side, but there was a lot of shouting. The Mexican agents finally released me. They escorted me back to the border and filed a complaint with DC the next morning.”
“I heard that part of it—the complaint, the unpaid leave—but I didn’t know what had happened. I feel for you, man.”
“I’ve got a hearing next month. The board will expect me to grovel, but I don’t regret it. The bastard was still on TO land, man,ourland. He’d just shot one of my brothers.”
“How is Ren?”
“He’s going to be okay, but he won’t be back on the job for a while.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. McBride didn’t bring up Elena, which was a relief. All Jason had told him in his email was that he’d broken off their engagement. He hadn’t told him why.
He changed the subject. “Tell me about this camp.”
“Naomi Belcourt, a Lakota friend, bought it and opened it last summer. She named it Camp Mato Sapa—Camp Black Bear. The idea was to bring in Lakota kids who live in poverty on reservations here and give them a space where they can build their confidence and feel pride in their heritage. They do fun things like art classes, jewelry-making, a ropes course, Lakota language classes, story-telling—stuff like that.”
“That sounds fun.” Jason could see the value of that—provided the experience didn’t encourage children to leave the reservation when they grew up.
The Nations needed young people to stick around to help build a better future.
McBride told him how a wildfire had threatened to burn the camp and Scarlet Springs to the ground just two months ago. The phone lines to the camp had been brought down by a fallen tree branch, and there was no cell service in the canyon. “No one at the camp had any idea that a fire was heading toward them until a sheriff’s deputy drove up to make sure they had evacuated. By then, it was almost too late.”
“Good God.”
“There were more than forty people still there, most of them children. They didn’t have enough room in the available vehicles to evacuate everyone. Volunteers stayed behind knowing they would probably die—some of the camp counselors, a kid who’d hidden in a tipi, Naomi’s husband, Chaska, Chaska’s grandfather, and Gabe Rossiter.”
“Kat James’ husband?” Jason knew him.
