The Darque Side

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Through binoculars, the low-flying vultures looked like dots atop the tightly spiraled dust devils dancing across the desert floor.

It was not an uncommon sight, and the Border Patrol Agent viewing the scene had seen it more than once in the past.

Unfortunately, as he also knew, it often turned out to be the harbinger for a scene involving the remains of illegal aliens trying to cross the vast, uncharted expanse of the arid Texas countryside.

On this particular occasion, he had a queasy feeling because another agent in the area had not been heard from in over four hours.

His last report stated he was on the trail of a small group of illegal border crossers in the area where the buzzards were now circling, and agents had been searching for the officer in the dark since the report was made.

Fearing what he might find, the agent relayed what he had seen, waited for back-up, and then drove his four-wheeler with the others toward the place where the vultures seemed to be gathering for a meal.

As the small group of agents arrived at the scene, it was obvious they had found what they hoped they wouldn’t.

The green uniform of the missing agent was torn and bloody, which may have been the result of an accident, but his duct-taped hands behind his back and the strip of tape over his mouth weren’t.

After dispersing the birds, one of the agents began to photograph the scene, but stopped long enough to vomit in a bush when he saw the dead officer’s face, and realized the man’s throat had been cut almost to the point of decapitation.

The dead man’s shirt had been unbuttoned, and his chest was covered in dried blood which led one of the agents to comment that the body had probably been there for 3-4 hours … the same amount of time he had last been heard from.

A search of the immediate area turned up no usable evidence, but the leader requested a tracker dog be airlifted to the scene in the hope a trail left by whomever did the heinous act might be found and followed.

Drug smugglers and coyotes leading people across the border into the US often used branches from bushes to sweep the areas they walked through to erase their footprints, but the dogs could often pick up the trail anyway.

The agents turned the body over looking for other injuries, but finding none, they replaced the corpse on its back, and one of the agents poured water from his canteen on the man’s chest before wiping away the blood.

Once the blood had been wiped away, the agents looked at each other with disgust in their expressions and anger in their voices.

There was a word carved into the man’s chest, and from the amount of blood covering it, the desecration had to have occurred while he was still alive.

“Who would do such a thing?” one of them asked.

“I think ‘why’ somebody did it is the bigger question,” said another. “It’s probably a message to someone, but I have no idea how we’re going to figure out who it was intended for.”

“What bothers me,” said another, “is whoever did this is now loose in this country, and what was done to our dead brother was an intentional act, not something that happened as an afterthought.”

“Why do you think it was intentional?” one of them asked.

“Because it could have been easily avoided,” the man said. “The agent was alone and probably could have been overcome and left behind without any problem because I’m sure more than one assailant was involved, but that wasn’t the case.”

“What makes you think more than one person was involved?”

“I believe if it had been a one-on-one situation, the agent would have had the advantage, and the results would have been different.”

Everyone was quiet while they thought about what the man had said, but became attentive once again as he continued.

“At this point, how many people were involved is unknown, but I’m pretty sure one of them was carrying a roll of duct-tape for just the purpose it was used; I don’t think they just happened to find it lying on the ground out here in the desert. Since that’s the case, I suspect the act was premeditated.”

“Did you find anything else suspicious?”

“Yes,” the agent said. “His radio is missing … not his weapons, water, uniform or four-wheeler … just his radio. I believe any transmission we make will be monitored, and whoever took the radio is waiting for confirmation that the agent’s body has been found.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Call headquarters and tell them we found the missing agent’s body, but don’t provide any details … we can report all of that when we get back. Since all our radios have tracking devices built into them, we may be able to determine the direction the group is traveling. We may also be able to keep the tracker active while disabling the radio’s receiving capability.”

As one of the agents prepared to advise their headquarters of the situation and request a dog to try to find any trail left by the border crossers, the leader continued addressing the remainder of his group.

“We need to search this area for the coyote who brought the team across the border. I have no idea where the people who did this are from, but I think it’s safe to say they weren’t migrant workers looking for a way to make a better living. Having said that, I don’t think they could have found their way here through the desert on their own, and they wouldn’t have left someone behind alive who could identify them.”

“Why would the group enter the country using the Mexico/US border when there are safer and quicker ways to accomplish the same thing, and why would they do something like mutilating a Border Guard’s body that would anger those they had to know would soon be pursuing them?” asked one of the agents.

The group’s leader was quiet for a moment while he thought about his answer.

“That’s a good question,” he finally said before continuing. “I don’t know what the carved-word means. I suspect it might be a person’s nickname or something like that. An inanimate object or non-human animal wouldn’t be able to read or understand it if it was in the news, and whoever did this expected it to be made public.”

“I think whoever did this went to a lot of trouble and took a lot of chances just to send a message,” said one of the other agents.

“That would depend on the importance of the intended recipient of the message to whomever sent it, wouldn’t it?”

The other man nodded in agreement.

“See if this makes sense,” the leader began. “The mutilation was done not only to instill fear and create anger in its target, but also to show how ruthless they can be. It really has nothing to do with the border, or why the group is in this country. I think this situation was incidental. I doubt if whoever did this knows who or where the person they’re looking for is. If they did, they’d just look up whomever it is and kill him. The desecration was done in the hope that the act would cause the individual to surface so they can eliminate him.”

“All of that makes sense,” said another member of the group, “but if everything you said is true, and the mutilation is only incidental, why is the group really in the US?”

“That’s the real question, isn’t it,” said the leader. “Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for that and we may never know unless something happens that makes the headlines.”

When the leader stopped speaking, the agents fanned out across the desert searching for the body of the person who had led the deadly group across the border and into the desert, and it wasn’t long before they found what they were looking for buried under a pile of rocks.

Like the agent, the man’s throat had been cut, but it didn’t seem to have been done with any animosity.

In this instance, it seemed to be something that was done merely to cover the perpetrators actions and avoid identification.

Caution was the motive for taking the man’s life.

After the body was recovered, one of the agents wrapped it in a tarp and laid it beside the body of the dead agent.

The helicopter bringing in the dog and its handler to search for the people responsible for the killings would take the bodies back to a base camp.

Although the agent’s felt anger at what had happened to their comrade, they knew it was an ever-present danger in their daily lives on the job.

While awaiting the aircraft’s arrival, the group leader tried to figure out what the importance was of someone who attracted so much ire that people would mutilate the body of an innocent Border Patrol Agent just to get the individual’s attention.

They had to know that news of the agent’s death would immediately heighten law enforcement efforts to find them, but that couldn’t have concerned them too much because instead of heading back across the border into Mexico, a trip which would have required their guide’s knowledge, they more than likely headed north deeper into the US.

As he listened to the sound of an approaching helicopter, the leader once again wondered what the word carved into the agent’s chest could mean.

It made no sense.

CHADEAUX