Inca Gold (Dirk Pitt 12)

Gaskill looked around. "Where's Pitt?"

"He's safe on. the other side," replied Giordino.

Sandecker struck the side of the aircraft with his fist. "To come this close," he muttered angrily. "A bust, a goddamned bust."

There must be some way we can get these people and their gear back to Satan's Sink," said Ragsdale to his fellow federal agents.

Starger and Gaskill matched crafty grins. "Oh, I think the Customs Service can save the day," said Starger.

"You two got something up your sleeves?"

"The Escobar affair," Starger revealed. "Familiar with it?"

Ragsdale nodded. "The underground drug smuggling operation."

Juan Escobar lived just across the border in Mexico," Starger explained to Sandecker and Giordino,

"but operated a truck repair garage on this side. He smuggled in a number of large narcotics shipments before the Drug Enforcement Agency got wise to him. In a cooperative investigation our agents discovered a tunnel runnin

g a hundred and fifty meters from his house under the border fence to his repair shop. We were too late for an arrest. Escobar somehow got antsy, shut down his operation before we could nail him, and disappeared along with his family."

"One of our agents," added Gaskill, "a Hispanic who was born and raised in East Los Angeles, lives in Escobar's former house and commutes through the border crossing, posing as the new owner of Escobar's truck repair shop."

Starger smiled with pride. "The DEA and Customs have made over twenty arrests on information that came to him from other drug traffickers wanting to use the tunnel."

"Are you saying it's still open?" asked Sandecker.

"You'd be surprised how often it comes in handy for the good guys," answered Starger.

Giordino looked like a man offered salvation. "Can we get our stuff through to the other side?"

Starger nodded. "We simply drive the van into the repair shop. I'll get some men to help us carry your equipment under the border to Escobar's house, then load it into our undercover agent's parts truck out of sight in the garage. The vehicle is well known over there, so there is no reason why you'd be stopped."

Sandecker looked at Giordino. "Well," he said solemnly, "are you ready to write your obituary?"

The stone demon stoically ignored the activity around him as if biding his time. He did not feel, nor could he turn his head and see, the recent gouges and craters in his body and remaining wing, shot there by laughing Mexican soldiers who used him for target practice when their officers had disappeared into the mountain. Something within the carved stone sensed that its menacing eyes would still be surveying the ageless desert centuries after the intruding humans had died and passed beyond memory into the afterworld.

A shadow passed over the demon for the fifth time that morning as a sleek craft dropped from the sky and settled onto the only open space large enough for it to land, a narrow slot between two army helicopters and the big winch with its equally large auxiliary power unit.

In the rear passenger seat of the blue and green police helicopter, Police Comandante of Baja Norte Rafael Corona stared thoughtfully out the window at the turmoil on the mountaintop. His eyes wandered to the malevolent expression of the stone demon. It seemed to stare back at him.

Aged sixty-five, he contemplated his coming retirement without joy. He did not look forward to a life of boredom in a small house overlooking the bay at Ensenada, existing on a pension that would permit few luxuries. His square, brown-skinned face reflected a solid career that went back forty-five years.

Corona had never E been popular with his fellow officers. Hardworking, straight as an arrow, he had prided himself on never taking a bribe. Not one peso in all his years on the force. Though he never faulted others for accepting graft under the table from known criminals or shady businessmen seeking to sidestep investigations, neither did he condone it. He had gone his own way, never informing, never voicing complaints or personal moral judgments.

Bitterly he recalled how he had been passed over for promotion more times than he could remember.

But whenever his superiors slipped too far and were discovered in scandal, the civilian commissioners always turned to Corona, a man they resented for his honesty but needed because he could be trusted.

There was a reason Cortina could never be bought in a land where corruption and kickbacks were commonplace. Every man, and woman too, has a price. Resentfully but patiently Cortina had waited until his price was met. If he was to sell out, he wouldn't come cheap. And the ten million dollars the Zolars offered for his cooperation, above and beyond the official approval for the treasure removal, was enough to ensure that his wife, four sons and their wives, and eight grandchildren would enjoy life in the new and rejuvenated Mexico spawned under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

At the same time, he knew the old days of looking the other way while holding out an open palm were dying out. The last two presidents of Mexico had waged all-out war against bureaucratic corruption. And the legalization and price regulation of certain drugs had dealt the drug dealers a blow that had cut their profits by 80 percent and their death-dealing volume by two-thirds.

Cortina stepped from the helicopter and was met by one of Amaru's men. He remembered arresting him for armed robbery in La Paz and helping obtain a conviction and a five-year prison term. If the freed criminal recognized Corona, there was no indication. He was ushered by the ex-convict into an aluminum house trailer that had been airlifted from Yuma to be used as an office for the treasure recovery project on top of the mountain.

He was surprised to see modern oil paintings by some of the Southwest's finest artists adorning the walls. Inside the richly paneled trailer, seated around an antique French Second Empire table, were Joseph Zolar, his two brothers, Fernando Matos from the National Affairs Department, and Colonel Roberto Campos, commander of northern Mexico's military forces on the Baja Peninsula.

Cortina gave a nod and a slight bow and was motioned to a chair. His eyes widened slightly as a very attractive serving lady brought him a glass of champagne and a plate of smoked sturgeon topped by a small mound of caviar. Zolar pointed to a cutaway illustration of the passageway leading to the interior caverns.