Border Patrol Stories
Tubin'
A story from FB by John Strauch
There's only one right answer when someone asks if you wanna go tubin'. Hell yes. You're sure to have an epic time, no matter if it's on a lake or behind a drunk amigo's beater as he hauls ass on a frozen Chicago side street. When Poot asked me that question after muster, I knew it wouldn't involve innertubes or machinery. To go tubin' at CHU (Chula Vista) Station meant working the endless mazes of the local subterranean stormwater drainage system.
The State of California did a magnificent engineering job to handle flooding during monsoon seasons, a modern marvel unnoticed by most everyone, except smugglers, illegal aliens and the agents who harried them. These tubes, ranging from crawl-on-your-belly size to drive-a-truck-through tunnels, provided the perfect pathway to invisibly navigate the border town of San Ysidro for those who needed to avoid La Migra. They were also a quiet spot for hoboes to rest up, unless a local cholo gang claimed that spot as their party place. If you saw graffiti identifying their turf, that tube was best avoided unless you were prepared for trouble. For the coyotes, the tubes offered the perfect pathway to efficiently transport their groups to waiting vehicles at manhole covers. Our tubes were much safer than those connecting the border towns of El Paso, Nogales, and others with their sister cities in Mexico. When the smugglers have an easy retreat to home turf, they don't mind using deadly force, making tubin' a serious matter for the agents there. For us, tubin' was just good fun.
I was introduced to tubin' the Patrol way one night with my fellow classmates on the Field Training Unit. Our instructors, Jim Rosales and Mike Johnson told us we would be walking out the Alaquinas Tubes and gave us the standard spiel on light and noise discipline. The tunnel was big, about 5 foot high and would be mainly dry during our summer training session. I was no stranger to playing around in this environment since I had experience exploring drainage tubes when visiting my cousin Jerry in the suburbs as a kid. We used to play a style of 3-D hockey inside one by his house using a crushed beer can as a puck. This tube training session was right up my alley. It was an enjoyable iteration, even though one of my classmates reached a breaking point in the total blackness and kept turning on their flashlight to the chagrin of our instructors. We found no aliens inside which made the journey anticlimactic. A few nights later, Rudy Diaz was working that same tube and was literally run over by an escaping group. He ended up with a broken leg as a result of the trampling he received.
The night I took Poot up on his offer, we brought Dinger along. He was quite fastidious and didn't want to soil his uniform in the dirty tube at the mouth of Moody's Canyon, so he elected to act as the cork in the bottle. He constructed a hasty hide just outside the tube and would be responsible for sealing it once a group entered. Poot and I waited about 75 yards inside at a small chamber where a long ladder reached up to a manhole cover on Enright Street. This enabled us to stand upright in the tube, offering better tactical advantage if we
had to go hands-on with any rascals. The guide usually went first, and he would be most likely to go sideways once we sprung our little surprise. The inside of the tube was spray-painted with the logo of Linea XIII, a local border gang, so we also had to be watchful of them showing up. One of the Senior Agents, Dana Cunningham, had recently been shot in the chest at the mouth of Moody's, and while nobody was ever arrested for that assault, we strongly suspected the local cholos who opportunistically robbed the aliens when they strayed into gang territory. Dana was saved by a ballistic vest, which his wife had gifted him that past Christmas.
Our walkie-talkies had no signal inside, making backup a challenge if things went south. Due to the conducting ability of the concrete, the sense of sound was echoed and distorted. It was near impossible to judge the distance of people moving through a tube in the total blackness. We improvised an early warning system by setting empty beer cans ten feet in front of our position so that when we heard the clatter as our quarry walked through, we could illuminate them before they were upon us. If the guide happened to have his own flashlight, we could hide around the corners of the ladder chamber. It had begun to rain, and driving in the slick caliche clay roads was impossible. The coyotes would take advantage of the gaps in mobile coverage, and we expected a productive night.
It didn't take long before we were in business. Sitting quietly in complete darkness heightened our auditory ability, and we could hear the groups running for the entrance of the tube. They usually waited a bit just inside, catching their breath and gathering their nerve. It was hard not to snicker as we eavesdropped on their echoed whispers. One guide bragged about outfoxing La Mosca (the fly), our BP helicopter. Once we cuffed him, I couldn't resist telling him our pilot tracked him with invisible beams that enabled us to arrest him.
To liven things up we might begin moaning as the groups moved tentatively in the blackness of the tube. When they stopped and whispered, "What was that?...Let's go back", we shrieked like banshees and listened to their mad scramble. They were more than relieved to meet the agent waiting for them at the open end. Sometimes the gags were too much for me. Like when Poot uttered those age-old and oft-times regrettable words, "Watch this." He opened his jaw and stuck the end of his Mag-light right inside. That particular lantern, bright as a car beam, was indeed the magnum of flashlights. When he pressed the button, his bald head lit up in a sickly orangish glow. Instead of being amazed at his ability to so easily insert the beer can sized cylinder into his mouth, I was horrified at the hellish glow emanating from his skull and leaking through his eyes. I could tell he'd done this before. I saw my share of nasty sights working the border, but I made Poot swear never to let me see that abomination ever again. I'll bet that's the reason he wears glasses nowadays.
Tubin' was taken to the next level when I finally got to take ATC training under the tutelage of our ace rider, the Tubular Chris Wells. His graduation ride had us access a tube barely big enough to ride at a crouch, entering at Poggi Canyon and terminating at East Orange, some 3/4 miles. We would find out who had mas ganas by riding dark until someone's lost nerve hit the headlight button. The scoots made a hell of a racket, and anyone else in the tube always cleared out well in advance of our squad. Sometimes the monsoons didn't wash the tube clean of junk, but without a reverse gear there was no turning back. I once packed out a kid's rusted tricycle on my front fender so we could pass.
When I finally achieved my dream job as ATV Instructor, tube rides were mandatory. The tube under I-805 at Otay Valley was nasty with mud, and I had the class pause inside while I went out to plan a clean exit. Impassable swamp ooze on either side of the dry middle trail. Mounted as they were on new ATVs with some good torque, I told them to goose the throttle just as they left the slightly elevated tube and they would sail over the five feet of morass and land like rockstars on the hardpan. Scoots One and Two performed admirably. I could tell scoot Three was fixing to be trouble when I heard the engine screaming RPMs in mass excess of what was required. I watched astounded as The Nooner launched from the tube like a human cannonball from the old circus. I could hear him yelling as he flew past me, setting a new station record for ATV vaulting. He completely overshot the road and plopped to a muddy stop that velcroed his scoot to the muck and sent him over the handlebars to a similar splashdown. His stunned amigos later told me that as they waited for my recon, The Nooner sensed movement around the circumference of the dim tube. He lit things up with his penlight and saw thousands of spiders creeping either side and above his head. He had a strong aversion to their presence, which his amigos amplified by taking their time getting out. When he was finally cleared for takeoff, he apparently pushed the throttle all the way to panic, thus his epic launch. I initially thought he broke his neck when I ran to his aid and saw he lay belly down but with helmet twisted towards his back. "Nooner, you OK?". To my great relief, I heard his trademark but muffled response..."Duuuude!". He had apparently popped a wheelie in his haste to flee the creatures of the tube, and it jerked his helmet around when his head scraped the low ceiling. That white helmet was forever adorned with a blackish spider guts racing stripe on top to commemorate his achievement.
The rainy night tubin' with Poot was such a success that we repeated it the next shift. We needed another big guy to act as the cork, and Jeff Reedstrom was happy to oblige. We took the station polaroid to disorient the lead guy with the flash and snapped photos of wide-eyed guides as we took them down. Poot was always fidgeting between groups, and he had laced some rock-filled cans on a wire, reminiscent of fish hanging on a stringer. When the next group was well inside the tube, he commenced to swinging his contraption so it grated against the concrete, producing a startling effect. Jeff told us the coyote, who went in first, was also the first to exit. How the guide managed to scramble over that many pollos in the confined blackness was testament to the motivating power of panic.
I was having a great time, until humanity smacked me upside the head. A group hit our early warning system, Poot whipped up his can swinging screecher, and I lit the tube up to see what we caught. Instead of the usual assholes and elbows of the fleeing pollos, there stood a little girl. She couldn't have been more than eight years old, eyes wide like those overdrawn Japanese cartoons, silent and frozen. I have never seen a look like she had in her eyes, and while I don't have a word to describe it, no kid should ever know it. I felt like crap. While her group was being taken down by Jeff at the mouth of the tube, we spoke softly to her and ushered her out. She wouldn't respond to our attempt at identifying a parent or relative. Nobody in the all-male group claimed her and gave a bullshit story that she joined them in the hills. The most we could get from the child was that her mother was in LA, so we set her up to see the Mexican Consular rep in the morning. That was one step above giving her back to the smuggler in my experience.
I had the duty once during day shift to accompany the Mexican rep as he interviewed unaccompanied juveniles in our detention camp. I overheard and suspected some interactions that caused me to visit our Intel Shop afterwards and talk to our Enlace, the liaison agent. He schooled me in the scam. The consular rep, like virtually all of the local Mexican officials, was in on "La Mordida", the bite that got everyone paid. There were two likely ways those Mexican juvies ended up. The parents would be contacted and charged an inconvenience fee to be split between the official and smuggler, on top of what was already owed to the coyote. The other was worse. Any child that was the property of the smuggling outfit was returned to the owner. It didn't happen to all, but one was too much. Human trafficking is a most heinous crime, and the animals who participate deserve a bullet. State Department wasn't interested in offending their counterparts, CA Child Protective Services wouldn't respond, and the local U.S. Attorney was perpetually swamped, taking only the big headline cases. Our detention camps were usually full, and often the most we could do was set the coyote up for quick deportation, knowing that most times the judge would grant them an even quicker voluntary return to their bad business. When you continually overwhelm an immigration system with people, things pour through the cracks, like that little girl, whose haunted eyes I'll never forget.
The tubes continued to be a favorite on our menu of things to do. On dayshift plainclothes transportation check downtown, Tex and I got a call to assist San Diego PD with a load vehicle bailout. When we arrived, the cops pointed to a tube running under Grape Street and said the driver went in. Tex grabbed the Mag-light from his trique bag and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Where's your flashlight, John?". I didn't think I would ever need one checking flights at Lindberg Field. Tex just shook his head disdainfully, handed me his backup light, and a tubin' we did go. "Always pack your flashlight, John". After that, I always did.
Less, not more gear was the ticket one rainy night when a coyote led Smurf on a merry foot chase near the Port. He crawled into the tiny Rico Mack tube. We could see his feet but he wouldn't come out. Smurf wasn't having that, so he had transport bring him out one of the
orange jail jumpsuits that we made criminal aliens wear in the detention camp. Smurf was a wiry guy, and he donned the suit over his uniform to keep it clean. He couldn't fit, so he removed his river belt, armed himself with a Mag-Light in one hand and Buck knife in the other. Off he crawled. Every time he got a hand on the coyotes leg, the rascal crawled further in. We were getting worried when we couldn't hear him anymore, but after a long while, he backed out with smuggler following. They both looked like coal miners and smelled like rotten fish. Somewhere there is a polaroid trophy shot of a triumphant Smurf and the saddest smuggler.
Tubin' required some common sense, like don't get lost and have the entire unit, along with the Fire Department, looking for your ass. That happened to the unfortunate Agent Tarasevich. He became disoriented and hopelessly lost under the streets of San Ysidro. He finally found a small grate to push his portable radio antenna through and transmitted a call for help. They eventually located him by using emergency lights and sirens until he was able to vector a unit in above him. The Fire Guys had a tool to remove the grate and rescue him. You know they had fun with that story. They said he was lucky he didn't stumble upon a pocket of methane gas to drop him permanently in his tracks. Funny thing, none of us journeymen tubers ever considered that peril. It got me wondering how many skeletons might be interred in those vast catacombs. The nicest tubes I ever scurried through were adjacent to the Otay Mesa Port. With the passage of the NAFTA treaty, roadways were built all over in anticipation of the warehouses that would follow. The smugglers wasted no time. In a few short weeks, those tubes were layered with so much discarded clothing that you could walk in silence on the soft carpet. They even painted arrows and signage to help the coyotes navigate their brand-new subdivision. Lots of fond memories in those tubes. They all had unique names, much like Quasimodo's beloved bells at Notre Dame. Robertos, Rico Mack, Alaquinas, Oaxacan, Marzo to name a few favorites. The agents all had their favorite tactics too, like Tube Cleaners and The Pendulum of Death. Fun times. Except for that little girl who left her wide eyes permanently etched inside my head.
There's only one right answer when someone asks if you wanna go tubin'. Hell yes. You're sure to have an epic time, no matter if it's on a lake or behind a drunk amigo's beater as he hauls ass on a frozen Chicago side street. When Poot asked me that question after muster, I knew it wouldn't involve innertubes or machinery. To go tubin' at CHU (Chula Vista) Station meant working the endless mazes of the local subterranean stormwater drainage system.
The State of California did a magnificent engineering job to handle flooding during monsoon seasons, a modern marvel unnoticed by most everyone, except smugglers, illegal aliens and the agents who harried them. These tubes, ranging from crawl-on-your-belly size to drive-a-truck-through tunnels, provided the perfect pathway to invisibly navigate the border town of San Ysidro for those who needed to avoid La Migra. They were also a quiet spot for hoboes to rest up, unless a local cholo gang claimed that spot as their party place. If you saw graffiti identifying their turf, that tube was best avoided unless you were prepared for trouble. For the coyotes, the tubes offered the perfect pathway to efficiently transport their groups to waiting vehicles at manhole covers. Our tubes were much safer than those connecting the border towns of El Paso, Nogales, and others with their sister cities in Mexico. When the smugglers have an easy retreat to home turf, they don't mind using deadly force, making tubin' a serious matter for the agents there. For us, tubin' was just good fun.
I was introduced to tubin' the Patrol way one night with my fellow classmates on the Field Training Unit. Our instructors, Jim Rosales and Mike Johnson told us we would be walking out the Alaquinas Tubes and gave us the standard spiel on light and noise discipline. The tunnel was big, about 5 foot high and would be mainly dry during our summer training session. I was no stranger to playing around in this environment since I had experience exploring drainage tubes when visiting my cousin Jerry in the suburbs as a kid. We used to play a style of 3-D hockey inside one by his house using a crushed beer can as a puck. This tube training session was right up my alley. It was an enjoyable iteration, even though one of my classmates reached a breaking point in the total blackness and kept turning on their flashlight to the chagrin of our instructors. We found no aliens inside which made the journey anticlimactic. A few nights later, Rudy Diaz was working that same tube and was literally run over by an escaping group. He ended up with a broken leg as a result of the trampling he received.
The night I took Poot up on his offer, we brought Dinger along. He was quite fastidious and didn't want to soil his uniform in the dirty tube at the mouth of Moody's Canyon, so he elected to act as the cork in the bottle. He constructed a hasty hide just outside the tube and would be responsible for sealing it once a group entered. Poot and I waited about 75 yards inside at a small chamber where a long ladder reached up to a manhole cover on Enright Street. This enabled us to stand upright in the tube, offering better tactical advantage if we
had to go hands-on with any rascals. The guide usually went first, and he would be most likely to go sideways once we sprung our little surprise. The inside of the tube was spray-painted with the logo of Linea XIII, a local border gang, so we also had to be watchful of them showing up. One of the Senior Agents, Dana Cunningham, had recently been shot in the chest at the mouth of Moody's, and while nobody was ever arrested for that assault, we strongly suspected the local cholos who opportunistically robbed the aliens when they strayed into gang territory. Dana was saved by a ballistic vest, which his wife had gifted him that past Christmas.
Our walkie-talkies had no signal inside, making backup a challenge if things went south. Due to the conducting ability of the concrete, the sense of sound was echoed and distorted. It was near impossible to judge the distance of people moving through a tube in the total blackness. We improvised an early warning system by setting empty beer cans ten feet in front of our position so that when we heard the clatter as our quarry walked through, we could illuminate them before they were upon us. If the guide happened to have his own flashlight, we could hide around the corners of the ladder chamber. It had begun to rain, and driving in the slick caliche clay roads was impossible. The coyotes would take advantage of the gaps in mobile coverage, and we expected a productive night.
It didn't take long before we were in business. Sitting quietly in complete darkness heightened our auditory ability, and we could hear the groups running for the entrance of the tube. They usually waited a bit just inside, catching their breath and gathering their nerve. It was hard not to snicker as we eavesdropped on their echoed whispers. One guide bragged about outfoxing La Mosca (the fly), our BP helicopter. Once we cuffed him, I couldn't resist telling him our pilot tracked him with invisible beams that enabled us to arrest him.
To liven things up we might begin moaning as the groups moved tentatively in the blackness of the tube. When they stopped and whispered, "What was that?...Let's go back", we shrieked like banshees and listened to their mad scramble. They were more than relieved to meet the agent waiting for them at the open end. Sometimes the gags were too much for me. Like when Poot uttered those age-old and oft-times regrettable words, "Watch this." He opened his jaw and stuck the end of his Mag-light right inside. That particular lantern, bright as a car beam, was indeed the magnum of flashlights. When he pressed the button, his bald head lit up in a sickly orangish glow. Instead of being amazed at his ability to so easily insert the beer can sized cylinder into his mouth, I was horrified at the hellish glow emanating from his skull and leaking through his eyes. I could tell he'd done this before. I saw my share of nasty sights working the border, but I made Poot swear never to let me see that abomination ever again. I'll bet that's the reason he wears glasses nowadays.
Tubin' was taken to the next level when I finally got to take ATC training under the tutelage of our ace rider, the Tubular Chris Wells. His graduation ride had us access a tube barely big enough to ride at a crouch, entering at Poggi Canyon and terminating at East Orange, some 3/4 miles. We would find out who had mas ganas by riding dark until someone's lost nerve hit the headlight button. The scoots made a hell of a racket, and anyone else in the tube always cleared out well in advance of our squad. Sometimes the monsoons didn't wash the tube clean of junk, but without a reverse gear there was no turning back. I once packed out a kid's rusted tricycle on my front fender so we could pass.
When I finally achieved my dream job as ATV Instructor, tube rides were mandatory. The tube under I-805 at Otay Valley was nasty with mud, and I had the class pause inside while I went out to plan a clean exit. Impassable swamp ooze on either side of the dry middle trail. Mounted as they were on new ATVs with some good torque, I told them to goose the throttle just as they left the slightly elevated tube and they would sail over the five feet of morass and land like rockstars on the hardpan. Scoots One and Two performed admirably. I could tell scoot Three was fixing to be trouble when I heard the engine screaming RPMs in mass excess of what was required. I watched astounded as The Nooner launched from the tube like a human cannonball from the old circus. I could hear him yelling as he flew past me, setting a new station record for ATV vaulting. He completely overshot the road and plopped to a muddy stop that velcroed his scoot to the muck and sent him over the handlebars to a similar splashdown. His stunned amigos later told me that as they waited for my recon, The Nooner sensed movement around the circumference of the dim tube. He lit things up with his penlight and saw thousands of spiders creeping either side and above his head. He had a strong aversion to their presence, which his amigos amplified by taking their time getting out. When he was finally cleared for takeoff, he apparently pushed the throttle all the way to panic, thus his epic launch. I initially thought he broke his neck when I ran to his aid and saw he lay belly down but with helmet twisted towards his back. "Nooner, you OK?". To my great relief, I heard his trademark but muffled response..."Duuuude!". He had apparently popped a wheelie in his haste to flee the creatures of the tube, and it jerked his helmet around when his head scraped the low ceiling. That white helmet was forever adorned with a blackish spider guts racing stripe on top to commemorate his achievement.
The rainy night tubin' with Poot was such a success that we repeated it the next shift. We needed another big guy to act as the cork, and Jeff Reedstrom was happy to oblige. We took the station polaroid to disorient the lead guy with the flash and snapped photos of wide-eyed guides as we took them down. Poot was always fidgeting between groups, and he had laced some rock-filled cans on a wire, reminiscent of fish hanging on a stringer. When the next group was well inside the tube, he commenced to swinging his contraption so it grated against the concrete, producing a startling effect. Jeff told us the coyote, who went in first, was also the first to exit. How the guide managed to scramble over that many pollos in the confined blackness was testament to the motivating power of panic.
I was having a great time, until humanity smacked me upside the head. A group hit our early warning system, Poot whipped up his can swinging screecher, and I lit the tube up to see what we caught. Instead of the usual assholes and elbows of the fleeing pollos, there stood a little girl. She couldn't have been more than eight years old, eyes wide like those overdrawn Japanese cartoons, silent and frozen. I have never seen a look like she had in her eyes, and while I don't have a word to describe it, no kid should ever know it. I felt like crap. While her group was being taken down by Jeff at the mouth of the tube, we spoke softly to her and ushered her out. She wouldn't respond to our attempt at identifying a parent or relative. Nobody in the all-male group claimed her and gave a bullshit story that she joined them in the hills. The most we could get from the child was that her mother was in LA, so we set her up to see the Mexican Consular rep in the morning. That was one step above giving her back to the smuggler in my experience.
I had the duty once during day shift to accompany the Mexican rep as he interviewed unaccompanied juveniles in our detention camp. I overheard and suspected some interactions that caused me to visit our Intel Shop afterwards and talk to our Enlace, the liaison agent. He schooled me in the scam. The consular rep, like virtually all of the local Mexican officials, was in on "La Mordida", the bite that got everyone paid. There were two likely ways those Mexican juvies ended up. The parents would be contacted and charged an inconvenience fee to be split between the official and smuggler, on top of what was already owed to the coyote. The other was worse. Any child that was the property of the smuggling outfit was returned to the owner. It didn't happen to all, but one was too much. Human trafficking is a most heinous crime, and the animals who participate deserve a bullet. State Department wasn't interested in offending their counterparts, CA Child Protective Services wouldn't respond, and the local U.S. Attorney was perpetually swamped, taking only the big headline cases. Our detention camps were usually full, and often the most we could do was set the coyote up for quick deportation, knowing that most times the judge would grant them an even quicker voluntary return to their bad business. When you continually overwhelm an immigration system with people, things pour through the cracks, like that little girl, whose haunted eyes I'll never forget.
The tubes continued to be a favorite on our menu of things to do. On dayshift plainclothes transportation check downtown, Tex and I got a call to assist San Diego PD with a load vehicle bailout. When we arrived, the cops pointed to a tube running under Grape Street and said the driver went in. Tex grabbed the Mag-light from his trique bag and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Where's your flashlight, John?". I didn't think I would ever need one checking flights at Lindberg Field. Tex just shook his head disdainfully, handed me his backup light, and a tubin' we did go. "Always pack your flashlight, John". After that, I always did.
Less, not more gear was the ticket one rainy night when a coyote led Smurf on a merry foot chase near the Port. He crawled into the tiny Rico Mack tube. We could see his feet but he wouldn't come out. Smurf wasn't having that, so he had transport bring him out one of the
orange jail jumpsuits that we made criminal aliens wear in the detention camp. Smurf was a wiry guy, and he donned the suit over his uniform to keep it clean. He couldn't fit, so he removed his river belt, armed himself with a Mag-Light in one hand and Buck knife in the other. Off he crawled. Every time he got a hand on the coyotes leg, the rascal crawled further in. We were getting worried when we couldn't hear him anymore, but after a long while, he backed out with smuggler following. They both looked like coal miners and smelled like rotten fish. Somewhere there is a polaroid trophy shot of a triumphant Smurf and the saddest smuggler.
Tubin' required some common sense, like don't get lost and have the entire unit, along with the Fire Department, looking for your ass. That happened to the unfortunate Agent Tarasevich. He became disoriented and hopelessly lost under the streets of San Ysidro. He finally found a small grate to push his portable radio antenna through and transmitted a call for help. They eventually located him by using emergency lights and sirens until he was able to vector a unit in above him. The Fire Guys had a tool to remove the grate and rescue him. You know they had fun with that story. They said he was lucky he didn't stumble upon a pocket of methane gas to drop him permanently in his tracks. Funny thing, none of us journeymen tubers ever considered that peril. It got me wondering how many skeletons might be interred in those vast catacombs. The nicest tubes I ever scurried through were adjacent to the Otay Mesa Port. With the passage of the NAFTA treaty, roadways were built all over in anticipation of the warehouses that would follow. The smugglers wasted no time. In a few short weeks, those tubes were layered with so much discarded clothing that you could walk in silence on the soft carpet. They even painted arrows and signage to help the coyotes navigate their brand-new subdivision. Lots of fond memories in those tubes. They all had unique names, much like Quasimodo's beloved bells at Notre Dame. Robertos, Rico Mack, Alaquinas, Oaxacan, Marzo to name a few favorites. The agents all had their favorite tactics too, like Tube Cleaners and The Pendulum of Death. Fun times. Except for that little girl who left her wide eyes permanently etched inside my head.
Tubin'
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