The Sinister Pig - 15 (6 page)

A second damper on her spirits was the letter from Chee folded into a pocket of her U.S. Customs Service uniform. It was an infuriatingly ambiguous letter. So damned typical of Sergeant Chee. Third, was the uniform itself, the costume of the Customs Service Border Patrol. New, stiff, and uncomfortable. She had felt much better, and looked better, in the NTP uniform she had cast aside.

[48] Forth, and finally, there was the immediate cause of her discontent: she was lost.

Being lost was a new and unpleasant experience for Bernie. In the “Land Between the Sacred Mountains” of her Navajos, she knew the landscape by heart. Look east, the Turquoise Mountain rose against the sky. To the west, the Chuska Range formed the horizon. Beyond that the San Francisco Peaks were the landmark. South, the Zuñi Mountains. North, the La Platas. No need for a compass. No need for a map. But down here along the Mexican border all the mountains looked alike to her—dry, saw-toothed, and unfriendly.

The rough and rutted road on which she had parked her Border Patrol pickup also seemed unfriendly. Her U.S. Geological Survey map labeled it “primitive.” Just ahead it divided. The left fork seemed to angle westward toward the Animas Mountains, and the right fork headed northward toward either the Hatchets or the Little Hatchets. The map indicated no such fork. It showed the track continuing westward toward the little New Mexico village of Rodeo (now her home), where it connected with an asphalt road running toward Douglas, Arizona.

The map was old, probably obsolete, obviously wrong. Bernie folded it. She’d take the right fork. It had the advantage of reducing the chance she wander across the Mexican border into the great emptiness of the Sonoran Desert, run out of gasoline, and into the custody of Mexican police, thereby becoming an illegal immigrant herself.

Fifteen minutes and eight miles later she stopped again where her track topped a rocky ridge. She would base her judgment on the reality as seen through her [49] binoculars and not on a USGS survey, which probably was made when General Pershing was fighting Pancho Villa’s army ninety years ago.

Bernie leaned against the front fender and scanned the horizon. It was hot—a hundred and one yesterday and about the same today. The usual August thunderheads were building to the south and west. The heat haze shimmered over the rolling desert, making it hard to know exactly what one was seeing. Nothing much to see, anyway, Bernie thought, if you didn’t know which of those ragged peaks was where. But miles to the north she saw a glitter of reflected light. A windshield? It disappeared in the shimmer. But then she saw a plume of dust. Probably a truck and apparently not far to the west of where this track would take her.

Bernie climbed back into her pickup. She’d catch the truck and learn what it was doing out here. After all that was her job, wasn’t it? Maybe it would be operated by a “coyote” smuggling in a load of illegal aliens or bundles of coke. Probably not, since Ed Henry had told her they almost always operate at night. And Henry, being the Customs officer more or less in temporary charge of the Shadow Wolves tracking unit and an old-timer in this desolate section of border land, probably knew what he was talking about. Nice guy, Henry. Friendly, down to earth. One of those men totally confident in himself. Nothing like Sergeant Chee, whom she had left behind just six months ago. Chee tried to play the role of an experienced shift commander of the Navajo Tribal Police, but Chee wasn’t so sure of himself. And it showed. In some ways he was like a little boy. Didn’t know what to say to her, for [50] example. Which brought her back to the letter in her pocket, which she didn’t want to think about.

So she thought about being lost instead. Whoever was making the dust could probably tell her where she was.

She caught up to the vehicle just west of a long ridge of volcanic rock that Bernie had decided might be part of either the Brockman Hills or the Little Hatchet Mountains. It was parked at the bottom of the brushy hump she was crossing—a green panel truck towing a small green trailer. It had stopped at a gate in a fence that seemed to run endlessly across the arid landscape. Across the fence a pickup sat. Bernie parked and got out her binoculars.

Two men at the gate, one with a mustache, wearing what looked to Bernie like some sort of military fatigue uniform and a long-billed green “gimme” cap. The other’s face was shaded by the typical wide-brimmed, high-crowned straw favored by those fated to work under the desert sun. This one was unlocking the gate, hanging the padlock on the wire, pulling the gate open. The green trailer, she noticed, wore a Mexican license plate.

Bernie picked up her camera, rolled down the side window. She had eight unexposed frames on a roll of thirty-six, the others being mostly portraits of tire tracks, shoe prints, and other evidence that either man or beast had passed through the empty landscape. Those Henry would examine and use to lecture her on what she needed to learn to become a competent tracker. This one would just prove to Henry that she was already keeping an eye on what was going on. She put on the long lens and focused. The gate was open now. Straw Hat stood beside it. Green Cap had a hand on his open truck door and stared up the road at her. Bernie took the picture. Green Cap said [51] something to Straw Hat, pointed toward her, laughed, climbed into his truck. Straw Hat waved him through the gate.

Bernie started her truck, gunned it down the slope as fast as the rocky ruts allowed, and turned off the “primitive” road she had been following onto the lane that led into the gate—producing a cloud of dust. Straw Hat had relocked his gate and stood behind it. He removed the hat, fanned away the dust, and replaced it.

“Young lady, it’s way too hot to be in such a hurry,” he said. “What’s the rush?”

Bernie leaned out the window.

“I’ll need you to unlock that gate for me,” she said. “I want to see what that man’s hauling.”

“Well, I guess I could help you with that.” Straw Hat was grinning at her, a tall, lanky, long-faced man. “Save you some time and bad roads to cross. He’s not transporting no wetbacks. Not a thing of any possible interest to you folks. Just a bunch of construction gear.”

“Well, thank you, sir,” Bernie said. “But my boss is going to insist that I should have gone on in and seen for myself.”

Straw Hat didn’t respond to that.

“Just doing my job,” Bernie added. She made a dismissive gesture. “United States Border Patrol.”

“My name’s O’day,” Straw Hat said. “Tom.” He raised his right hand in the “glad to meet you” gesture.

“Bernadette Manuelito—Officer Manuelito today, and while we’re talking, the man I want to see about is getting away.”

“Trouble is,” said Tom O’day, “I can’t let you in here.” He pointed to the No Trespassing sign mounted to the gate post withNO ADMISSION WITHOUT WRITTEN [52] PERMISSION printed under it. “You got to have a note from the fella that owns this place. That or get him to call out here and arrange to get the gate unlocked.”

“I’m an agent of the Border Patrol,” Bernie said. “Federal officer.”

“I noticed the uniform,” O’day said. “Noticed that decal on your truck.” O’day was grinning at her. “So if you will just show me your search warrant, or a note from my boss, then I’ll unlock the gate and in you go.”

Bernie considered this a moment. None of this was seeming very criminal to her. However—

“Hot pursuit,” she said. “How about that? Then I don’t need a search warrant.”

Now it became O’day’s time to ponder. “It didn’t seem much like hot pursuit from what I saw of it,” he said. “Except for the dust you was raising. Trouble is the owner of this spread is tough as hell about keeping people out.” He shrugged. “Had some vandalism.”

“Vandalism?” She gestured at the landscape. “You mean like tourists breaking off the cactus pods or the snake weed. Or getting off with some of the rocks?”

Tom O’day seemed to be enjoying this exchange. He chuckled. “Somebody did cut some of our fencing wire once,” he said, “but that was some years ago, back before Old Man Brockman decided to sell the place and Ralph Tuttle got it. Now it’s his boy, Jacob, running it. But I think maybe some corporation or such actually put up the money. And young Jacob, he’s always away somewhere or other enjoying himself.”

“Brockman?” Bernie said. “That the man they named that range of hills after?”

[53] “I think that was his granddaddy,” O’day said.

Bernie had been staring through the windshield, nervously watching the last sign of dust left by the green pickup disappearing.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’m going to declare that I am in hot pursuit of a subject suspected of smuggling illegal aliens—or maybe we’ll call it controlled substances— and I ordered you to unlock the gate or face the full force and majesty of federal law. Would that do it?”

O’day tilted back his hat. They stared at each other.

“Well, yes,” he said. “I think Mr. Jacob Tuttle would buy that. I may need you to swear that there were no ibexes or orxys or even pronghorn antelope in view, and that I confirmed you didn’t have a hunting rifle with you.”

O’day was unlocking the gate, swinging it open.

“Ibex?” Bernie asked. “The African antelope with the long horns? I thought the game department quit importing them.”

“That’s the oryx you were describing. The ibex is the goat out of the Morocco mountains. And, yeah, the Game Department decided importing them wasn’t worth the effort, but Tuttle wanted his friends to have African safaris without making the long trip. That’s what that big expensive fence is about.”

“To keep them in?”

O’day was grinning at her. “And keep you poachers out.”

Bernie drove her pickup through.

“Hold it a minute. I want to close this and then I’ll show you where he’ll be. It’s just about three miles but it’s easy to get lost.”

[54] Bernie had no doubt of that. O’day locked the gate, climbed into his truck, and headed down the tracks the green pickup had left.

By Bernie’s odometer it was a fraction less than four miles before she passed a taller than usual cluster of cacti and saw the truck with the green trailer parked with two other trucks—a flatbed and one towing a horse trailer. She had lagged far enough behind O’day’s pickup to avoid breathing his dust, but close enough to see he had done some talking on his cell phone during the trip. Probably telling any illegals who might be where they were headed that a cop was coming.

Three men were standing by the trucks as O’day drove up, apparently waiting. Fat chance of her seeing anything they didn’t want her to see. But then if they were smuggling illegals, where could they have hidden them?

O’day opened her truck door, inviting her out.

“Here we are,” he said. “And here is your smuggler. Colonel Abraham Gonzales of Seamless Welds Incorporated. And Mr. Gonzales, this young lady is Officer Manuelito of the U.S. Border Patrol.”

Gonzales bowed, tipped his cap, said:
“Con mucho gusto, Señorita,”
and produced one of those smiles that men of Gonzales’s age often display when meeting appealing young women. The side flaps of the trailer behind him were down, and Bernie could see racks of tools, pipes, hoses, and something that she guessed might be a motor of some sort—perhaps an air compressor, pump, or something. Beyond the trailer stood a much-weathered shack, its single room roofed and sided with corrugated metal sheeting, and its door hanging open. Beside the shack was a metal watering tank, and past it [55] three workmen stood beside a front-end loader parked beside the shack, occupied with looking at her. If she wanted to collect illegals, Bernie thought, at least two of those probably would qualify. Definitely the youngest one with the mustache now giving her a younger version of the Gonzales smile. His was the “come on, baby” leer.

Gonzales gestured toward the open side of his trailer. “No place in here to haul illegals,” he said. “But you’re welcome to take a look.”

“OK,” Bernie said. “But actually I misread your license plate. I thought it was a Canadian truck and maybe you were smuggling in maple syrup, or something like that.”

Gonzales considered that a moment and laughed. So did O’day, but his seemed genuine.

“I doubt if Mr. Gonzales has anything illegal in that trailer,” he said. “But maybe you ought to look. And I’ve got to get this crew back to work.”

“Doing what?” Bernie asked, walking to the trailer. “What are you building? Or digging?”

“We’re going to set up that windmill,” O’day said, pointing to a pile of framework beside the shack. “Going to have a little oasis here. Water tanks for the livestock and a place for Mr. Tuttle’s pets to get a drink.”

“Oryxs. Right? I’d like to see one of those.”

“Just take a look,” he said. “That’s a couple of them over yonder.” He pointed east toward the hills. “They’re waiting for us to go away so they can come in and see if there’s anything in the tank for them to drink. Trouble is, it’s about dry. We’re going to try to fix that.”

“Where are they?” Bernie said. “Oh, I see them now. Wow. Bigger than I expected. Aren’t they a kind of antelope?”

[56] “African antelope,” O’day said. “One of Tuttle’s hunting buddies shot one out here last spring. Weighed over four hundred pounds.”

Bernie finished a cursory check of the tools on the trailer’s racks, the welding masks, propane tanks, compressor engine, and a lot of large machinery far beyond her comprehension. She nodded to Gonzales. “Thank you. I don’t often get a chance to meet colonels.”

Gonzales looked slightly abashed. “Retired,” he said. “And from one of the Mexican army’s less noted reserve regiments.”

O’day was grinning at her. “That about do it?”

“I think so,” she said. “What’s the best way from here to get to ...” Bernie paused, visualizing her map, looking for a place that should be fairly nearby and also on a regular marked road that actually went somewhere. “To get to Hatchita.”

“First I got to let you back through the gate. From there you—hell, I’ll show you when we get there.”

“First I want to get a picture of those oryx,” Bernie said. She reached into her truck and extracted the camera. “No harm shooting them with a camera is there?”