that looked like MERICAM SPECIALTY PRODUCTS. From that terminal the pipe angled downward and disappeared out the back wall of the building.
Budge’s guess about the legs—literally “pipe stem legs”—being sources of pumped pressure was quickly confirmed. Air hoses from a new-looking gasoline engine and pressure pump were connected to them. The engine running, the pump was working, and one of Winsor’s greeters, clad in blue coveralls, seemed to be showing Winsor which levers opened which vents to deliver the pressurized air into the pipe.
Budge spent a moment trying to fathom what all this meant, decided he lacked any helpful knowledge, and looked around the room. The uniformed Mexican stood beside a wall, studying him. Behind the Mexican was an orderly stack of sacks, apparently of sturdy white plastic. Two other men, shirtless, wearing sandals and dusty overalls, had one of the sacks open and were spooning white stuff from one of the sacks into a cup. He weighed the cup on a scale sitting on the floor beside them and then poured it carefully into a funnel stuck in a hole in what looked to Budge like a slightly oversized soccer ball—bright yellow and seemingly equipped with a large screw-out cap. A long double row of such balls was lined against the wall. They adjoined a stack of tubes, metallic-looking but perhaps plastic. Each was about three feet long with their ends screwed on like bottle caps. Budge studied the balls and tubes, concluded they were about the size to fit inside the pipe.
For what purpose? It seemed likely to Budge that the white powder in the sack was cocaine, and the purpose was to fit the balls full of it into the pipe and use the air-pressure system to push them to wherever the pipe went. Which must be to that rich and self-indulgent North American dope market. Which must mean the pipe extended under the U.S. border and thus was invisible to the watchful scrutiny of the U.S. Border Patrol with its helicopters and drone aircraft patrols.
If that guess was right, it eliminated some of the uncertainty for Budge. That cocaine, even if it was cut with some sort of diluting powder, would be worth many, many millions. The last he’d read about the drug trade listed high-quality uncut coke at thirty thousand dollars a kilogram in New York. Maybe less now, or maybe more. With Rawley Winsor involved in this project, the stuff here was probably pure.
No wonder this project now had such high priority for Winsor. And no wonder he seemed desperate to keep the War on Drugs alive and well. Legalizing marijuana, or any of the stuff Congress liked to call “controlled substances,” would eliminate the multibillion-dollar profits and quickly reduce the market size. Users would be buying in licensed government stores, with the profits and taxes going into rehabilitation programs. Even worse for the drug barons, the glamour of doing something illegal would be gone for the teenagers, and there’d be no reason left for the drug gangs to hire them to push the stuff in school yards and keep the list of customers multiplying.
Winsor was walking up, frowning.
“I told you to stay with the plane,” he said.
“I did,” Budge said. “Then I had to take a leak, get a little exercise, and I decided to see what was keeping you so long.”
“You stepped into something that you may wish you hadn’t. Sticky stuff,” Winsor said. He glanced at the uniformed Mexican. So did Budge. The Mexican, looking embarrassed, glanced away.
“What’s the difference,” Budge said. He waved across the floor. “This is interesting. What’s in the sacks? Something illegal, I’d bet. And what’s with the pipe gadget there?”
Winsor glared at him. Then he shook his head. “Nothing you want to talk about,” he said. “Not ever.”
“If somebody ever wanted to talk about it with me, all I could say is I’m no expert but it looks to me like Rawley Winsor has something going with the Mexicans to reopen that old smelter, reopen a pipeline to bring in the fuel, and start using the equipment for something or other. Get some engineer or geologist to find out what. Maybe Mr. Winsor’s going to be drilling for oil. Something like that.”
Winsor was grinning. “Budge,” he said. “You should know by now you can’t kid me. If I believed you’re as stupid as you want me to believe you wouldn’t be working for me.”
Budge considered that. “Fair enough,” he said. “But either you trust me all the way, or you don’t trust me at all, and if you don’t, then I quit. But the way it is, I’m working for you. What do you want me to do now?”
“Come on,” Winsor said, walking toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. The colonel serves as sort of an envoy for the Mexicans invested in this business. He and I are going to get some business done. I want you back at the plane. And I want you to be remembering what happens to you if you do decide to quit.”
He stopped at the door, stared at Budge.
“You understand what I’m saying?” Winsor asked.
“I do.”
“We still have most of that bundle of pesos in the plane and we don’t want anyone breaking in. Eat that lunch you brought. Get some sleep. We’re going over the border to the Tuttle Ranch bright and early tomorrow. Landing on another dirt strip. You’ll want to be fresh.”
“OK,” Budge said. “I’ll have to call the FAA folks and make sure they know we have clearance. Do you have any problem with that.”
“None,” Winsor said. He handed Budge a photograph. “Nice-looking girl there. Take a good look at her.”
Budge agreed. She was nice-looking. Great eyes. Nice-shaped face. And, he noticed, nice shape even in that uniform she was wearing.
“Who is she? And why am I supposed to get interested?”
“Well, ...” Winsor said. “Did I mention before we left that you might have to kill a cop? ... Well, this is her. The Mexicans in this business agree she looks like a serious problem. Some sort of an undercover agent planted in the Border Patrol. They said they dealt with one such problem for us. That fellow who ... that fellow who got himself shot in a hunting accident up in northern New Mexico. The colonel says they eliminated that problem for us and now it’s our turn.”
“Another Chrissy?”
“Different motives, but the same idea. And it may not be so simple for you this time. With a federal cop, you’ll damn sure want to make it slick as silk. Maybe you can arrange to get her on the Falcon and dump her off into those mountains down in Mexico.
22
Budge had consumed what was left in his coffee Thermos, used some water from his jug to give his face a wakeup scrub, and was watching the dawn turn high clouds on the western horizon red, and then pink, when the SUV rolled up beside the Falcon 10 and discharged Winsor and the Mexican colonel. Budge climbed out of the plane to meet them.
“Colonel,” Winsor said. “This is Mr. de Baca, my assistant. Budge de Baca. Colonel Diego de Vargas is representing our partner in this venture.”
Budge said, “How do you do,” and the colonel said,
“Time to go,” Winsor said. “The colonel and I want to be there to see those deliveries arriving.”
Winsor was grinning, too. “Yep, very rich pigs indeed,” he said. “And it’s been a hell of a lot of work and worry to get them safely immigrated;”
Budge looked at Winsor. “You riding up front this time or with Colonel de Vargas?”
“The colonel’s a pilot,” Winsor said. “He’d said he’d like to fly the Falcon.”
“Are we going to that game ranch in New Mexico?” Budge asked. “You like the idea of a guy landing a strange airplane the first time he’s flown it, and having to put it down on a short dirt strip?”
Winsor grinned, shook his head. The colonel looked disappointed, and Budge noticed that.
“Why don’t you take the copilot’s seat, Colonel,” Budge said, motioning him toward it. “I’ll show you some of the gadgets the French built into this thing.”
“Oh, good,” the colonel said, smiling happily. “And people call me Diego.”
As a crow flies, or a pipeline runs, the trip from San Pedro de los Corralitos is short indeed, not much more than a hundred miles. As a Dessault Falcon 10 jet flies across the U.S. border from Mexico it’s more complicated. The colonel had explained some of those complications as they buckled in and prepared for takeoff, telling Budge, in Spanish, with a few technical terms mixed in, about where and when the Border Patrol flew its helicopters, where
