“For where?” he said, not moving.
“For the old smelter in Sonora,” Winsor said. “Come on. You’re wasting my time.”
Budge looked at his boot tips, then up at Winsor. “OK,” he said. “Away we go.”
The flight from El Paso’s Biggs Field to the old smelter is a mere hundred and fifty or so air miles over a stretch of the emptiest segment of Chihuahua to the emptiest part of Sonora. Dry country, relatively flat, and the pilot’s role complicated only by the chance of encountering the helicopters and radio-controlled drone surveillance aircraft the Border Patrol uses to watch the bottom edge of New Mexico and Arizona.
Winsor sat behind him now, silent, reading papers in a folder. Budge identified the bumpy shape of Sierra Alto Azul Mountain, his navigating mark for the smelter, adjusted his controls, and looked at the desert below him. Grim, dry, hungry, unhappy country, not intended for any life beyond javlina, cactus wrens, and reptiles. Too harsh and cruel for humans, and that returned his thoughts to the last time he’d seen Chrissy, the afternoon Winsor had summoned him into that luxurious office, asked him to sit down—a first for that—and offered him a cigar, which was another first.
“Budge,” he’d said, “I’ve been thinking of the things you’ve managed for me. Four years now, isn’t it, and you’ve never let me down.”
“Four years,” Budge said. “I guess that’s about right.”
“I’m going to give you a bonus,” Winsor said. He was smiling.
“A pay raise?”
“No. Better than that. Cash.” He opened a drawer, extracted a manila envelope, dropped it on the desktop.
“Well, thanks. That’s nice of you,” Budge said. The envelope looked rather thick, which meant probably quite a bit of money, which meant what Winsor now wanted him to do was probably either dangerous or something unusually nasty. The fact it was cash certainly meant Winsor was willing to give up the tax deduction he’d get by making it salary. Therefore, Winsor wanted to leave no way it could be tracked back to Winsor.
Winsor picked up the envelope and tossed it to Budge. He let it fall onto his lap.
“What have I done to deserve this?”
“I didn’t make a list,” Winsor said, smiling again. “But the first thing that comes to mind is that time we had the head shyster for Amareal Corporation over here. And I let you know that I really needed to get a look at what was on those papers he was carrying in his briefcase, you remember that, and that night after you hauled the wino bastard back to his hotel, you came back with copies for me.”
Budge nodded, remembering. The man had been drunk, but not as drunk as he wanted to be. When Winsor had sent Budge a scrawled note, telling him what was needed, he had remembered an all-night Kinko’s copy center around the corner from a convenient bar. He’d suggested his passenger might like a nightcap, stopped at a bar, explained limo drivers have to stay with their vehicle, and, when his passenger was on the bar stool, extracted the folder from the case, hurried it into Kinko’s, got the copies done, got the refilled folder back into the briefcase, and talked his tipsy passenger out of the bar, back into the limo, and turned him over to the hotel doorman.
Winsor had been waiting. “How’d you do that?”
Budge explained it.
Winsor laughed. “The son of a bitch never had a clue. Never guessed how we screwed him. And how about that time you got the Bible Belt congressman photographed with the bimbo. How’d you do that?”
Winsor already knew how that had been done. In fact, had outlined the plan himself. But Budge was patient. He explained it. With this much preparation, the next job Winsor intended to hand him must be something special. As he sat through two more examples of his undercover deeds, his sense of dread was growing.
Finally, Winsor got to it.
“One more problem I want you to handle for me,” he said. “This girl I’ve been having you drive here and there, she’s become a serious problem.”
Budge drew in his breath.
“Which one?”
“The feisty little brunette. Sorts out my lawyer paperwork, keeps it filed, thinks she’s going to be a lawyer. She’s copied off a bunch of very sensitive stuff. Letters, so forth. Confidential material. The little bitch wants to blackmail me with it.”
“What’s her name?” Budge knew the name. He wanted to make Winsor say it. He wanted a moment to think. He was sure Winsor was lying. But how could he deal with this?
“Chrissy something-or-other,” Winsor said. “Some sort of Wop last name.”
“Oh, yes,” Budge said. “She talks a lot.”
Winsor nodded. “Too damn much,” he said. “I want her to disappear.”
“Send her away somewhere, you mean? Different assignment at one of your companies?”
Winsor studied Budge a long moment. “You’re playing dumb, aren’t you? Didn’t I mention blackmail? This is dead-serious business.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I want a permanent solution to this. I want this problem eliminated. Permanently, absolutely, and eternally.”
“Kill her?”
“That’s part of it. But there has to be a way we can do it so it won’t cause us any damage. I can help by setting her up for it.”
And with that, Winsor explained what he had in mind.
Now, behind Budge in the little jet, Winsor was fastening his seat belt. They were close enough now to see the smokestacks of the old smelter. Budge eased back on the throttle and began a slow pass over the graded earth landing strip to make certain it looked safe. He noticed a large panel truck parked beside the doors of the only new- looking building on the grounds—a slope-roofed box with metal walls. The only other vehicles visible were a black sports utility vehicle parked next to the strip, with a red convertible looking tiny beside it. But nothing on the strip itself made it look riskier than landing on dirt always is.
It turned out to be a smooth one. Budge rolled the jet up to the cars, shut off the engines, and watched the three men waiting with the vehicles.
Rawley Winsor climbed out of the plane and looked at Budge. “Stay in the plane,” Winsor said. “I’ll either be right back, or I’ll send someone for you.”
Two of the men stood by the door and greeted Winsor with bows and signs of respect. The other one— wearing a Mexican army fatigue uniform and the symbols of a colonel—stood aside, studying the Falcon 10. He grinned at Budge.
The colonel’s grin widened. He did, indeed, wish to see the interior. But Winsor cut off the conversation, climbed into the SUV with his greeters, and they drove off to where the truck was parked near the smelter. Budge gave them time to get there, climbed out of the jet, stretched, yawned, made sure all was secured, and followed them at an unhurried walk.
A fourth man was sitting behind the wheel of the truck. He nodded to Budge, said,
The driver shrugged.
Budge walked through the doorway into the new building.
There wasn’t much in it. Winsor and the two who had greeted him so warmly were clustered at an odd- looking structure mounted atop two pipes jutting from the floor. Each of these supporting legs was equipped with a wheel, which Budge guessed would open and close some sort of pressure valves. If that guess was right, he presumed those valves would control the flow of something—natural gas, air, fluids—that was being forced under pressure into the larger pipe that these two legs supported. Budge estimated the large pipe had an interior diameter of eighteen or twenty inches, and it had its own set of valve wheels. The butt end near Budge was closed with a stainless-steel screw-on cap with a plate on it that read PIG LAUNCHER, and, in smaller print, something
