Pack Mule part 1 of 4

[a guest blog entry from "a friend" somewhere along the border]

I met my contacts just outside of the convenience store at 2:00 p.m. as scheduled. The man and woman lead me to their headquarters in a non-descript office building. The front half of the large workroom was stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes filled with recently arrived inventory that had not been processed or repacked. The middle section of the office space was lined up with dozens of cases that were loaded up with materials and ready for delivery. The far end of the office was filled with a small desk with a computer on it, a second-hand sofa, and a slightly dinged-up whiteboard. It was here that my host sat me down and gave me an overview of what were about to do, the risks involved, and what we should expect. He also went through several scenarios of what could unfold if things went wrong.

These days, bringing materials over the border is not fraught with the perils that it was in the recent past. A dozen years ago, a friend of mine was arrested, smacked around a little, and made international news for doing the exact thing that I was about to do. But times have changed. None-the-less, it was not risk free.

Once all the formalities were taken care of, we were ready to head out. My two contacts and I were joined by a fourth person, a western woman of in her late thirties. We each grabbed a case or two. They were heavy, which should not have surprise me considering what they contained.

We were off.

We snaked our way through the neighborhood, met our transport, and made our way to the border. Getting through immigration on this side went without a hitch. That was the easy part; next we had to go through immigration on the other side. I handed the immigration officer my passport and the form I had filled out. I smiled and tried to appear as innocuous as possible. He scanned my passport with his electronic reader and reviewing my travel history that came up on his computer. After he compared me to the picture one more time, he waved me through.

So far, so good.