A delicious victory

So the last couple of days here have been pretty unproductive. We've hiked some rough terrain with no results, and on Sunday me and a partner managed to get ahead of a small group of three smugglers and set up on a small hill to wait for them, only to have them go to ground and hole up, probably because one of their network of scout/spotters sitting on a hillside on our side of the border saw us and warned them. For those who don't know how this game is played, the cartels are all in over here and they keep a network of lookouts in place both on their side of the border and on ours with optics and communications gear just to watch for us and to guide their smugglers across. These scouts also approach small groups of illegals trying to cross without having paid the cartels a crossing fee and they will beat those illegals and send them back to Mexico to pay. And these scouts will stay up in their posts for days, or sometimes weeks, being resupplied by passing groups or by special resupply teams who bring them food, water, batteries, new phones, etc.

Now last night, just as we were getting ready to call it a day, we got a call from Border Patrol that they had two groups trying to cross at once, both pretty far apart. They do this sometimes to divide our resources so we decided to help out and we went after one while Border Patrol chased down the other. We drove to a wash where our group was coming up and tried to intercept our group of four (turned our to be five) only to have them drop their backpacks and other gear and run back to Mexico, climbing back over the border fencing just ahead of us. So we lost them but got their packs. And when we went through the packs--nice new camouflage backpacks--we found that we'd caught a resupply group and interdicted a metric ton of food and water intended for some scouts, everything from rice and beans and water to cookies and cakes and sodas and new cell phones.

So even though we didn't catch these particular toads, some scouts undoubtedly went hungry last night while we ate ourselves stupid on the store-bought packaged cookies, candy bars and other delicacies that had been intended for them. Thanks, cartel shoppers. Send more Chokis next time please--these things are yummy!

Oh, and Border Patrol caught one guy on their chase and nabbed three dope bundles and another food bag too. Lot of hungry Mexican scouts in America last night.