'I wonder how many other cases of museum fraud we'll find,' mused Ragsdale.
'I suspect this may only be the tip of the iceberg. These files represent thousands upon thousands of illegal deals to buyers who turned a blind eye in the direction the objects came from.'
Ragsdale smiled. 'I'd like to be a mouse hiding in the wall when the U. S. Attorney's Office finds out we've laid about ten years' worth of legal work on them.'
'You don't know federal prosecutors,' said Gaskill. 'When they get a load of all the wealthy businessmen, politicians, sports and entertainment celebrities who willfully purchased hot art, they'll think they've died and gone to heaven.'
'Maybe we'd better rethink all the exposure,' cautioned Ragsdale.
'What've you got cooking?'
'We know that Joseph Zolar and his brothers, Charles Oxley and Cyrus Sarason, are in Mexico where we can't arrest and take them into custody without a lot of legal E hassle. Right?'
'I follow.'
'So we throw a blanket on this part of the raid,' explained Ragsdale. 'From all indications, the employees on the legitimate side of the operation have no idea what's going on in the basement. Let them go back to work tomorrow as if the raid turned up nothing. Business as usual. Otherwise, if they get wind that we've shut down their operation and federal prosecutors are building an airtight case, they'll go undercover in some country where we can't grab them.'
Gaskill rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Won't be easy keeping them in the dark. Like all businessmen on the road, they probably keep in daily communication with their operations.'
'We'll use every underhanded trick in the book and fake it.' Ragsdale laughed. 'Set up operators to claim construction work severed the fiber optic lines. Send out phony memos over `their fax lines. Keep the workers we've taken into custody on ice. With luck we can blindside the Zolars for forty-eight hours while we figure a scam to entice them over the border.'
Gaskill looked at Ragsdale. 'You like to play long shots, don't you, my man?'
'I'll bet my wife and kids on a three-legged horse if there is the tiniest chance of putting these scum away for good.'
'I like your odds.' Gaskill grinned. 'Let's shoot the works.'
Many of Billy Yuma's village clan of one hundred seventy-six people survived by raising squash, corn, and beans. Others cut juniper and manzanita to sell for fence posts and firewood. A new source of income was the revival of interest in their ancient art of making pottery. Several of the Montolo women still created elegant pottery that had recently come into demand by collectors, hungry for Indian art.
After hiring out as a cowboy to a large ranchero for fifteen years, Yuma finally saved enough money to start a small spread of his own. He and his wife, Polly, managed a good living compared to most of the native people of northern Baja, she firing her pots, and he raising livestock.
After his midday meal, as he did every day, Yuma saddled his horse, a buckskin mare, and rode out to inspect his herd for sickness or injury. The harsh and inhospitable landscape with its bounty of jagged rocks, cactus, and steep-sided arroyos could easily maim an unwary steer.
He was searching for a stray calf when he saw the stranger approaching on the narrow trail leading to his village.
The man who walked through the desert seemed out of place. Unlike hikers or hunters, this man wore only the clothes on his back-- no canteen, no backpack. He didn't even wear a hat to shade his head from the afternoon sun. There was a tired, worn-to-the-bones look about him, and yet he walked in purposeful, rapid strides as if he was in a hurry to get somewhere. Curious, Billy temporarily suspended his hunt for the calf and rode through a creek bed toward the trail.
Pitt had hiked 14 kilometers (almost 9 miles) across the desert after coming out of an exhausted sleep. He might still be dead to the world if a strange sensation hadn't awakened him. He blinked open his eyes to see a small rock lizard crouching on his arm staring back. He shook off the little intruder and checked his Doxa dive watch for the time. He was shocked to see that he had slept away half the morning.
The sun was already pouring down on the desert when he awoke, but the temperature was a bearable 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). The sweat dried quickly on his body, and he felt the first longing for water. He licked his lips and tasted salt from his swim through the sea. Despite the warmth, a cold self-anger crept through him, knowing he had slept away four precious hours. An eternity, he feared, to his friends enduring whatever misery Sarason and his sadists felt like inflicting on them this day. The core of his existence was to rescue them.
After a quick dive in the water to refresh himself, he cut west across the desert toward Mexico Highway 5, twenty, maybe thirty kilometers away. Once he reached the pavement, he could flag a ride into Mexicali, and then make his way across the border into Calexico. That was the plan, unless the local Baja telephone company had thoughtfully and conveniently installed a pay phone in the shade of a handy mesquite tree.
He gazed out over the Sea of Cortez and took one final look at the Alhambra in the distance. The old ferryboat looked to have settled in the water up to her deck overhang and was resting in the silt at a slight list. Otherwise she seemed sound.
She also looked deserted. There were no search boats or helicopters in sight, launched by an anxious Giordino and U.S. Customs agents north of the border. Not that it mattered. Any search team flying a reconnaissance over the boat, he figured, wouldn't expect to look for anyone on land. He elected to walk out.
He maintained a steady 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) an-hour pace across the isolated environment. It reminded him of his trek across the Sahara Desert of Northern Mali with Giordino two years before. They had come within minutes of dying under the fiery hell of scorching temperatures with no water. Only by finding a mysterious plane wreck did they manage to construct a land yacht and sail across the sands to eventual rescue. Next to that ordeal, this was a jaunt in the park.
Two hours into his journey, he came to a dusty footpath and followed it. Thirty minutes later he spotted a man sitting astride a horse beside the trail. Pitt walked up to the man and held up a hand in greeting. The rider gazed back through eyes worn and tired from the sun. His stern face looked like weathered sandstone.
Pitt studied the stranger, who wore a straw cowboy hat with a large brim turned up on the sides, a long- sleeved cotton shirt, worn denim pants, and scuffed cowboy boots. The black hair under the hat showed no tendency toward gray. He was small and lean and could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy. His skin was burnt bronze with a washboard of wrinkles. The hands that held the reins were leathery and creased with many years of labor. This was a hardy soul, Pitt observed, who survived in an intolerant land with incredible tenacity.
'Good afternoon,' Pitt said pleasantly.
Like most of his people Billy was bilingual, speaking native Montolan among his friends and family and Spanish to outsiders. But he knew a fair amount of English, picked up from his frequent trips over the border to sell his cattle and purchase supplies. 'You know you trespass on private Indian land?' he replied stoically.
'No, sorry. I was cast ashore on the Gulf. I'm trying to reach the highway and a telephone.'
'You lose your boat?'
'Yes,' Pitt acknowledged. 'You could say that.'
'We have telephone at our meeting house. Glad to take you there.'
'I'd be most grateful.'
Billy reached down a hand. 'My village not far. You can ride on back of my horse.'
Pitt hesitated. He definitely preferred mechanical means of transportation. To his way of thinking four wheels were better than four hooves any day. The only useful purpose for horses was as background in Western movies. But he wasn't about to look one with a gift in the mouth. He took Billy's hand and was amazed at the strength displayed by the wiry little man as he hoisted Pitt's 82 kilograms (181 pounds) up behind him without the slightest grunt of exertion.
'By the way, my name is Dirk Pitt.'
'Billy Yuma,' said the horseman without offering his hand.
They rode in silence for half an hour before cresting a butte overgrown with yucca. They dropped into a small valley with a shallow stream running through it and passed the ruins of a Spanish mission, destroyed by religion-resistant Indians three centuries ago. Crumbling adobe walls and a small graveyard were all that remained.
