Everything Changed

Book excerpt: About the Book Everything Changed is a story about the wild, violent early days of southwest desert dope smuggling via the then innovative use of light aircraft. It depicts how huge profits were used to corrupt some cops, particularly local cops stuck in a dead-end job. The story also explores how the federal special agents of the then U.S. Customs Service worked clandestinely to disrupt and dismantle smuggling enterprises. The book is set in barren southern New Mexico right on the dangerous international border and it showcases how air smuggling and money transportation actually worked, how Mexican traffickers and their enforcers operated, and how a local family facing marriage problems could become unintended players and victims in the damage that narcotics trafficking always brings. This story is unique in that much of it is reality that has been gleaned from many different narcotics and dirty money and firearms trafficking cases that the author, a retired US Customs Special Agent, actually witnessed and investigated. The smuggling, trafficking and investigative techniques are genuine, and the story, although completely fiction, is realistic as it’s built and compiled from the author’s (and his colleagues’) experiences and participation. About the Author Ken Cates is the retired Special Agent in Charge, Department of Homeland Security-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, having served 34 years as a criminal investigator with ICE, U.S. Customs and ATF. His personal knowledge of firearms, narcotics and currency smuggling cases from Los Angeles to the Caribbean and up and down the U.S./Mexico border have made him a recognized expert in international cross-border contraband smuggling casework. Ken also served as a U.S. Army-Military Intelligence Specialist and as an Operational Law Enforcement/Border Ops Subject Matter Expert with a U.S. Army Special Missions Unit in the Global War on Terror. These days, he writes fiction, lives in the country outside of Dallas, with his Nurse Practitioner wife and his five daughters nearby. He also ranches, does specialty trial consulting, and assesses internal security matters for a variety of corporate clients.