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that sort of work. The compartments had concealed door panels that would unlock and pop open only when a certain
combination of electrical input signals in the right order unlocked them, and on every car it was always something different. It
was usually something like the driver would have to push the switch to open the right rear window, then hit the switch for the
interior cabin light, then pump the brake pedal twice, and then unlock the front doors. Then the secret latch would pop open
somewhere and the bad guys could remove a door panel that was so expertly built-in that it would be impossible to find, like in
the side of a door or under a seat or behind a seat or in the dashboard or wherever. That’s the kind of work Steve did.

And so the bad guys started bringing in more cars every week for more work. The cars were all different makes, models, and
colors, but most of them were newer cars that did not fit the usual look of being a drug smuggling kind of a car. Now what makes
this story so interesting is that before the first cars were finished, Steve went to the nearest federal DEA office he could find, and
he explained to some federal agents that he had been forced to essentially join a drug cartel as a contracted agent. He explained
to the agents that he didn’t want to be in this line of work but he had no choice. He then suggested that he was suddenly in a
perfect position to actually help out in the war on drugs, because since he was tearing these cars open and putting hidden secret
compartments in them, he would be able, if the feds wanted him, to install secrets GPS trackers in there, too. There was much
discussion and the federal agents agreed that would be awesome. Now this was a huge risk and Steve didn’t want to just do this
for nothing, so he was able to strike a very special deal with the US Government. First, the cash money he was receiving from
the drug cartels would be kept secret. I don’t know how much red tape was involved but in the end this guy got a very, very
special secret exemption from the IRS; in which they agreed to not audit his business or his personal taxes and let him keep any
cash that found its way into his pockets.

So the feds gave him some special GPS tracking units; very small sealed things that were disguised to look like innocuous car
parts if they were ever to be found buried deep inside the cars. Which they wouldn’t, because this guy was able to hide one per
car where nobody would ever find them and even if they did they would think it was some normal car part or component that
had been installed in the new car factory production line. So now at the time I heard this story, Steve was still active, making
hidden compartments in cars for drug cartels. And so each car was being tracked 24/7 in real time by somebody at the DEA or
some other anti-narcotic organization. Somewhere, behind a lot of closed and locked doors, somebody was sitting in front of a
computer screen that showed the locations of each and every one of those cars. Most left Mexico with a load of drugs hidden in
them, crossed the border into the US somewhere, and after their delivery they would return to Mexico with cash stuffed into
the same secret compartments.
Occasionally the agents in charge of tracking these cars would gather enough intelligence from other sources to determine when
it would be a good time to stop one of the cars while they were moving and seize it. I suppose when the cash loads were significant
enough, the agents would carefully swoop in on that car and pull it over on an interstate or at a truck stop, and make it look like
a random local stop that just happened to get lucky by busting a driver who just happened to have a massive amount of cash,
like hundreds of thousands of dollars, hidden in his car. It was important to not stop too many of the cars though, otherwise it
might start to look suspicious. This was still going on when I heard about it. Steve was enjoying life because he had the best of
both worlds; immunity from the police, and steady cash coming in from the drug cartels. And as a bonus, Steve also got a cut of
the profits when the cars were caught with cash in them. So it sounded pretty lucrative, but Steve was really playing with fire
because of course if the drug lords ever found out about what he was doing he would be so dead. Actually he’d be tortured first
for a very long time, and then dead. Now I don’t know how this story ends because that’s all I ever heard about it. Pretty good
story, huh?

Alright back to my K9 training: I found a lot of books about working dogs at the local library and I read them, and I also started
hanging around other K9 officers and went to their trainings to see how things worked. Most of the trainings were in the Seattle
area where cops from police departments and sheriff’s offices got together to keep their skills sharp. They hid drugs in different
places and the other K9 units took turns sniffing them out. The usual training areas were storage locker rental units, or junkyards
full of cars. I got to see how different officers handled their dogs, and the officers or deputies in charge of the training would
explain to me how the K9 units were doing things well, or wrong, and they’d point things out to me while we watched them
work, like tactics and techniques and tips.