Please, if you haven’t already done so, go back and read Parts 1 and 2 of this story of the same title before you start this segment.

Okay, to recap – I was out in a remote area in a military bombing range and had just finished a stealth climb. I was on my way back out, riding my mountain bike on a military road, when I looked up and saw a vehicle coming straight for me. I’d been discovered, and there would be hell to pay!

As I looked up and saw the military truck approaching, I about crapped my pants! I had worked so hard these past hours to sneak in and climb my peak, maybe I had become complacent about being vigilant. How he had gotten within sight of me without my seeing him first, I don’t know – I guess I’d let my guard down. The moment I saw the truck, it was perhaps a quarter of a mile away and driving straight toward me. There was nothing between me and the truck to block his view of me, just open space on level ground. There is no possible way he could not have seen me.

I was probably doing 5 miles an hour when I saw the truck, but within seconds I had jammed on my brakes, jumped off the bike and rushed it off the road. The only thing in my favor was a row of trees and brush on my side, the right side, of the road. I charged into that thicket, dragging the bike in with me, and slammed it to the ground, then laid myself down beside it in the dirt. My heart was pounding. I listened carefully – it was totally quiet, I couldn’t hear the truck yet, but I knew it was coming. It didn’t take long. Very faint at first, then louder and louder. The road was flat and smooth, and he could have driven 50 miles per hour on it if he wished, but he wasn’t. In maybe a minute, he reached my position.

The truck passed me very slowly, at maybe 5 miles per hour, as if he were looking for something – me! Thankfully, the vegetation was so thick he couldn’t see me. If he had stopped and started looking on foot, it would have been the work of only a few minutes to find me. I think I was holding my breath as he passed, as if breathing normally would somehow have revealed my position. Not daring to move, I waited until the sound of the truck had completely disappeared in the distance. Only after several minutes had passed did I dare peek out of the thicket – he was nowhere in sight. I had a pretty good idea where he was going, to a military facility several miles away. The question was, would he retrace his route and come back this way before I made it back out to my truck?

I dragged my bike through the dirt and brush out on to the road – there was nobody in sight, at least for now. I rode like a man possessed. So afraid somebody would catch me, I pushed myself harder than ever before, not stopping even to slake my thirst. My heart was pounding and my lungs aching as I covered the miles, until finally I could get off the road and travel the last mile to my truck. Only then did I relax. Three and a half hours, that’s how long the entire trip had taken, from truck to peak and back to truck again. Damn, it was a close call – 90 per cent of the road I’d traveled had no vegetation whatsoever along it, so it was a minor miracle that there was some where I spotted that vehicle and it afforded me a chance to hide.

I loaded everything into my truck, changed out of my sweat-soaked clothes and drove away, all the while contemplating my good fortune. About 5 miles later, driving through the desert on tired old roads, I found myself on top of a small hill. I had stopped for a moment to check my maps and had applied my parking brake, enjoying the blast of ice-cold air from the air conditioner (a necessity in this part of the world). Once I verified my position, I went to release the brake and found it unresponsive – the handle wouldn’t release, the brake was stuck in the “on” position, and I couldn’t move. What the hell, was this some kind of karmic payback for my trespass?

I shut the engine off. I know nothing about auto mechanics, so thought I was pretty well screwed at this point. What to do? I had cell-phone coverage, so I called my mechanic back in Tucson and told him of the problem. He quickly diagnosed it as a broken cable running from the brake handle under the dashboard to the rear axle. He told me I’d need a 12-mm socket to loosen the cable to the emergency brake and release its hold on the truck, but he was pretty sure I didn’t have one. Well, it was my lucky day after all! I carry a box of truck stuff at all times, and I found a metric socket set which included the correct socket. I blocked all 4 wheels with rocks so it wouldn’t roll on me and down the slope, then crawled under the truck. There’s tons of clearance, so I had plenty of room to work. In less than 30 minutes, I had loosened all the right connections and the brake released with a lurch – I was free! I changed once again out of my sweat-soaked clothes and motored on, reaching the freeway by noon.

My next goal was a group of mountains some miles away, but I thought that I’d make a stop on the way to pick up a small peak I’d bypassed on previous trips. Half an hour after I’d reached the freeway, I was traveling south on a paved highway, counting the miles so I could turn off and park at the best place. As I got closer, I spotted a flat spot which would make a perfect starting point. I hit the brakes, slowed down quickly and crossed the lane of oncoming traffic to come to a stop in an open area on the east side of the highway. Moments later, I turned off the ignition and hopped out, then all hell broke loose!

The moment I stepped out of the truck, I heard a lot of yelling. When I looked towards it, I saw a group of men on the other side of the highway, directly across from me, running west into the desert. I counted at least 9 of them, running towards a barbed-wire fence which marked the boundary of the military bombing range. They climbed over it, through it, under it and kept running towards a few small hills maybe a quarter-mile away. Meanwhile, it soon became apparent who had been doing the yelling. Four men in plain clothes were there, along with a large black van, unmarked. I knew right away that they were Border Patrol.

One of them quickly walked over to me as I stood there, caught off guard by the flurry of activity. He asked me what I was doing there. I didn’t want to tell him that I had stopped to sneak out into the bombing range to climb a peak, so I just said that I had stopped to pee. He said that it seemed an awful coincidence that I happened to stop there at the very moment that they were trying to apprehend those undocumented border-crossers. That’s exactly what it was, a coincidence, I told him, which was certainly true. He seemed to accept my excuse, then told me I should go ahead and pee and then move on.

He left me and walked across the road to join the other three agents who had watched the men disappear into the desert. They then did something which wasn’t the smartest thing they’d do that day – one of them drove the van over towards the fence, maybe 50 yards from the highway, tried to turn around, and got stuck. The harder he tried to extricate it, the worse it became and he promptly buried the back of the van up to the rear axle in soft sand. They tried pushing it, to no avail – it was a large, heavy vehicle and wouldn’t budge.

I was still standing by my pickup, watching this whole scene play out. No more than 5 minutes had elapsed since I’d stopped. I felt there couldn’t be any harm in trying to help them out, so I walked across the road and over to where they stood, scratching their heads and trying to figure out a way to get their van un-stuck. As I approached, they looked up and saw me, giving me a “what, you again!?” kind of look. I told them that my truck was a four-wheel-drive and I had a heavy nylon tow-strap, and did they want me to try to pull them out of the sand. They said okay, let’s give it a try. We got everything set up, but try as I might, I couldn’t budge that big van, which no doubt weighed much more than my truck. We all agreed it was a lost cause.

They asked me if I could give one of them a ride to their checkpoint along the highway south of Black Gap so they could get more help in the form of more men and a bigger vehicle. I said sure, and cleared out the passenger side of my truck to make room. That done, he hopped in and away we went. In the 11 miles we drove, in completely the opposite direction I had planned to go for the day, we chatted as we drove, but he wasn’t giving away any secrets. The moment I dropped him off, he ran and got into a Border Patrol vehicle. I turned around at the checkpoint and headed back north. In a few minutes, a couple of BP vehicles passed me heading north at high speed. By the time I neared the spot where the incident had occurred, there were more men and vehicles gathered there. Then I did something I regret.

I parked where I had stopped  before and walked across the road to where they were still trying to figure out how to get the van unstuck. Thinking that I’d see a few familiar faces, I asked a guy how it was going and did he think they’d be able to get it out okay. I think he must have been a supervisor and that others had told him who I was, because right away he said that it was one hell of a coincidence that I’d been there right when they’d tried to apprehend those guys. I was shocked, after all I’d tried to do to help them. He said that my presence was not needed there and that I should move on, now. Just goes to show you – no good deed goes unpunished.

I walked back to my truck and drove away, but not very far. A short piece down the road, I parked well off the shoulder and got my pack ready. Although it was broad daylight, I was still going to get my peak. There was good cover to start with, as I dropped down into a wash and went under an old railroad bridge. Past that, a half-mile walk across open desert deposited me by my small peak.

My little stealth

This little beauty was out on the bombing range all right, and a pretty bold stealth at that, so it was a nice adrenaline rush to hurry over to it and tag the summit. One other climber had been there before, but neither he nor I left a register. One more view for you, a little tease of where I was.

Lookout Mountain, maybe?

My round trip took less than an hour. Once back in my truck and heading to my next mountain range, I thought back on my day. It started off with an exciting stealth where I was almost caught, followed by a mechanical mishap, then an unusual encounter with the Border Patrol, and finished with another stealth climb. It was a lot to ponder, and my mind was buzzing with it all, but my day wasn’t done – there was still one more mountain to climb, and it was only mid-afternoon.

Please stay tuned for the final chapter of this story.