Chapter 83

"Let's get the hell out of here, you never know when someone will come," I said.

"Sure, we can look at this while you drive." Hugo said.

"Hugo it you start that playback and find anything at all in the file while I'm driving, I will end up in a ditch. Hold on I'll find a country church parking lot. I saw a half dozen as we drove up from the compound."

"Okay, I'm not that curious," Hugo said and I knew it was a lie.

I stopped the car in the small parking lot of a frame building the was really not much larger than a old style farm house. The only reason I knew it was a church was the small sign attached to a large cross, it read, 'Sweet Water Baptist Church.'

"Too bad we don't have coffee," Hugo said.

"Did anybody tell you that you are demanding when you are in the passenger seat," I said with a smile.

"Yeah, I don't do well, when I'm not in charge." Hugo said. "Then he put his laptop on the dash and started the time lapse images from the game trail camera. They started in the sunlight there was a truck in the parking lot with a boat trailer as well as Hugo's bronco. The first images were of Hugo walking to the bronco and sliding the ladder on top and tying it to the cargo frame up there. Then he drove off.

Time passed until a boat landed and a two men spent some time loading the boat onto a trailer. They had a pretty good sized string of pan fish. It was quite the haul. But certainly nothing illegal about it.

We waited and nothing happened all the way through the night. Then it started again. "I thought it only ran 24 hours." I said.

"It does run 24hours at least. Then it keeps on going till the battery dies. I put new batteries in so it runs till it died. I started it noon Saturday and it ran till the batteries died sometime Sunday," Hugo explained.

I just kept watching as the time flipped over. We had seen a boat launch Sunday about noon probably someone going fishing with the kids after church. That theory was boosted by the two kids who climbed from the car and 'helped'with the launching of the boat.

They returned empty handed sometime after 5PM. The time stamp seemed to be accurate. Just when I was about to give up, because the image had gone dark again. It was a long time before a cars headlight showed up on the screen. The car could have belonged to a catfisherman, but he had no boat. When he climbed from the car he did have a large flashlight.

"So what is he doing?" I asked.

"I have no idea. He doesn't appear to have a rifle, and he isn't really dressed for a walk in the swamp. I bet he is meeting a boat. He is picking up something. Something they can't land in a port. Not even in a small port like Blane or New Holt," Hugo said.

"That's a first rate theory, nice work. It will be even better, if it is true," I said.

The time stamp showed it to be midnight when he went to the small boat ramp and flashed the light several times. A few minutes later a small boat pulled up beside the wooden dock. From the boat five small figures worked their way ashore. "Illegals," I said. They were not all that happy to be in the states. They were cowering. "Looks like they might not be here of their own free will," I said.

"Damn, it would be so much easier to land them on some desolate beach in Florida," I said.

"Think about it. If you bring them ashore in Florida, you have to worry about landing then in a state with a coast line that the coast guard patrols. Once ashore there is the problem of transporting them up the coast. As you said they don't look too happy to be here. There is always a chance for something to go wrong. Say they are going to Washington. Philly or even New York, you would have a lot less moving them around by road to do from here. You don't have customs or any real law enforcement along the waterway, so you get them ashore no sweat.

Then it just becomes down to how to move them around. You are starting on a desolate road which connects back to roads from the days before the interstate highway system. Even then you can connect to the interstate highway system withing fifty miles. It's perfect for dropping off small amounts of contraband," Hugo explained.

"Or five soon to be whores from the Ukraine," I said. Yeah it was just a guess but white whores were valuable in big towns. The Russian mob was big in strip joints which were just fronts for prostitution. Everyone in law enforcement knew that.

"Or that," he said. "It's more complicated than most ways to land them, but it's pretty safe."

"So we going to call homeland security and customs," I asked.

"We could do that, or we could just wait till them come back and bust them ourselves," Hugo suggested. "There was just one of him, and he didn't look like he had more than a handgun, if that."

"Hugo it sounds real good, but you need some logistical support if nothing else," I said.

"Well, I can dream," he said. "I guess it could be weeks before they land anything else."

"How often did your CI say they were using the road?" I asked.

"His words were, 'There is a lot of new traffic on the road," Hugo explained.