by Leon Uris
She tried to rest and closed her eyes, but the plane’s motion made it impossible. Maud lit up.
Already ten years she had been “special counsel” for The Combine. She
had been working in a massive Washington law firm as a labor lawyer,
married Morton Traynor, also a labor lawyer, and settled into dull
dom
Yet her appearances at legislators’ offices on the hill had gained her a measure of notice. The Combine had offered her a position that assured her a life of creature comforts.
Her husband had objected. With The Combine she would be immersed in secrecy, among sleazy characters, and straddling the line of legal and illegal.
One thing was for certain. Morton had to go. She divorced him.
A short while later, Maud proved her mettle to The Combine, and she purchased a horse farm over the state line in Virginia.
Maud’s daughter, also divorced with a pair of children,
became the centerpiece of her life. Maud did not struggle long or hard to make peace with the morality of her work: three hundred fifty acres, a very rapid sports car, eye-dazzling finger rings, and a roustabout’s lust.
Maud always had a tall and handsome and manicured Washington first-stringer after her short and uncommonly plain body. She seduced whomever at will. Earthly rewards? The devil pays mighty wages. Maud didn’t let morality compromise her lifestyle. Once in a while, when a jet carrier was bombed out of the sky, she winced.
That was the way of things, straddling the line. Legally, America exported more weapons than any other nation. Below the line in the gray and black world of gun runners, America exported more weapons than any other nation. Fall into wrong hands? Who decides wrong hands when you put Stinger missiles in the hands of Afghans to shoot down Soviet planes, then have to buy them back from the Afghans?
That was the way it worked. Morality was best kept at arm’s length.
Maud mulled over the coming meeting with Red Peterson, who had become a major player. The Combine had decided it would be best to ally with Peterson, who had gained inside control of the distribution point in Colon, Panama. Two of The Combine’s top dealers had been erased, one tossed from a helicopter at sea. No one had accused Red Peterson. Yet no one failed to get the message.
Maud’s Cessna blessedly set down on a baked dirt strip on the far side of the mountains from Los Alamos near Yucca Bend.
The plane turned and taxied back to where a Wagoneer waited.
“Maud Traynor?” Red asked.
“Red? Do I call you Red?”
“Christ, I don’t even remember what my Christian name was.”
They sized one another up quickly. That old bird will fly, he thought.
Maud had looked into the eyes of the crudest men in Afghanistan and Guatemala. Red Peterson was in their league. His skin was spotted and wrinkled from too many years in the oil fields.
“Here, let me give you a hand.”
Strong old bastard, Maud thought. Red was put together in quality tailor-made shirts and jeans and the prerequisite turquoise and silver trimmings. His voice was politely soft. He could let his eyelids drop in such a manner as to block him from looking on another’s eyes but at the same time look directly at you.
Peterson’s villa was halfway up a thousand-foot butte, negotiated by a series of switchbacks. The building was unevenly integrated into the natural contours of the hill. A smashing flying wing seemingly hung way out with no apparent support, its vista nearly to infinity.
Maud took quick takes. Five-car garage. His and hers Mercedes.
Furnishings a daring but easy mix from ultramodern to staunch Western. Paintings were expensive, partly Western and the balance from Impressionism, nearly to modern.
Maud had not seen a more magnificent suite since the Peninsula Hotel. Marble floors with soft Navajo coverings, huge and fluffy monogrammed towels, hot jets, seating for two or more, and every electronic convenience imaginable. It’s going to be interesting, she thought.
They took drinks on the flying-wing veranda. Staff, well trained and silent. Maud lifted a pair of binoculars and scanned beyond the valley where a set of book cliffs threw off their covers to take a vibrant fling before the sun dropped. She picked up a car ripping around the curves to the house and into the garage. In a moment, Red Peterson’s wife, once among the most beautiful show girls in Vegas, appeared with a pair of preteen girls.
Maud watched him turn into an affectionate pussycat daddy. “My wife, Greta, and my daughters. Joan is named from my momma and Tammy after Tammy Wynette.”
They found their presents in Daddy’s pockets and traded talk to catch him up. He’s just like I am with my grandchildren, Maud thought. Maybe they will be both of our salvations.
Greta gathered them up and moved them to their desks for homework. Greta was still extremely beautiful, a Walkure, an Amazon. She had little to say as she curled his long gray hair with her forefinger.
It certainly did not appear to be a dysfunctional house. What a show girl Greta must have been, not a high kicker in the chorus line, but at six feet she stood on the platform of the ascending staircase, arms out, breasts out, and packing forty pounds of glitter.
The daughters were animated and seemingly at ease with themselves and strangers.
It all broke up the snarling, leathery image of Red Peterson. And Greta? What the hell! A six-foot Swedish lady comes to Vegas to find herself a Red Peterson. He pampered her, and she knew what to do in return.
Not a bad life, winters in Mexico and high-roller trips to Vegas or a New York or Paris spree.
Red’s hand slipped between his wife’s legs.
“I’ll let you two talk,” Greta said. “I’ll have dinner served on the veranda.”
“Sure, Swede,” Red said, “and maybe you’ll join us for dessert.” He patted her backside as she arose. “The donkey is going to ride tonight.”
Now, not to get it mixed up, Maud thought, is Red making a pass at me by getting a rise out of me? Maud realized that Red had held her hand just a little too long and tried to get a peek up her leg in the Wagoneer. That should have delighted ‘most any sixty-year-old divorced grandmother, except that Red was threatening.
“This cognac is magnificent,” Maud commented.
“Ought to be, it cost enough. You’d think it was biblical.”
Red had started life as a son of a Gulf shrimper and went the daring way by taking his best shot at the oil fields of Tyler. In the fifties and sixties it was strike and boom, boom, and bust. He went through three fortunes, and he sang the wildcatter’s song of big winner to broken-hearted loser.
Red smelled a coming collapse of the oil fields early in the sixties and sold off his equipment and leases.
What hot spot remained for an old wildcatter? Mexico for a time. Venezuela for a time. Hell, these countries had so many crooks in office, the guy out in the field didn’t have a chance.
Immigrant smuggling from Mexico showed promise. He knew every bend in the Rio Grande. It led to drug smuggling.
During the Clinton years the North American Free Trade Association reversed the established pattern of traffic at the borders. In the old days Mexican vegetables and fruits and cheap goods had flowed to America. Now America was exporting heavily to Mexico.
American weapons, in eighteen-wheelers, lay under the false bottoms.
The trucks went through without sincere inspection.
Once on the Mexican side, a few friends had to be taken care of, and passage was open to Central America.
An incredible dinner on the veranda followed, but the air turned cold instantly when the sun dropped, and they retired to Red’s office, a tucked-in little room to remind him of the bitter past, complete with rolltop desk and big pictures of oil men and oil strikes. Red had been a wiry and handsome young man in those days.
“Got any more of that thousand-year-old cognac?” They sparred until Greta led Joan and Tammy in to say good night. Maud thought Greta a tiny bi
t condescending, indicating a feline bent. Or was it that Red went for all women, despite age and configuration?
Promised once more the donkey would ride, Greta departed.
“Well, now, Miss Maud, what brings you to the fleshpots of New Mexico? I’ve been trying to reach The Combine for more goddamn years than I’d like to think.”
“It’s a closed club, Red. We reached you because we feel we can deal with each other now.”
“What kind of deal?”
“There have been virtually no Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms stings since Thorn ton Tomtree has been in office.”
“Yeah, he sure likes unimpeded commerce.”
“Red, we’ve been looking into your operation since some of our top agents started disappearing in Colon.”
“I heard about it; cut to the chase, Miss Maud.”
“Smugglers’ routes have changed. Contraband moves north and south. Vancouver is practically an oriental city. Once an eighteen-wheeler gets into the States, the way is through Route 99, inland California. You’ve put a lock on the border and through Mexico. It’s not friendly to us anymore.”
“You’d think The Combine would be happy enough supplying the new NATO armies.”
“We’re all greed heads in a greed head business,” she said.
“I like that, Miss Maud. I’d like to be on a slow boat to China with a load of weapons heading to Colon and pass a sister ship on the high seas with a load of American guns heading for the Philippines. What level deal are we talking about?”
“Top level. Partners from Vancouver to the southern tip of Argentina.”
Oh, my goodness, Red thought. The power of The Combine was awesome.
“All supplies?”
“Uh-huh. Fifty-fifty split after expenses. Cash. It includes ack-ack, fifty-caliber machine guns, dynamite, water-treatment plants, medical supplies, field boots, you know, you know .. .”
Red was silently adding zeros to his potential take. All the hard work had not been in vain.
“Why?” he asked softly.
“You’ve got a very fine reputation, and you also have what seems to be foolproof access into and through Mexico. You’re a man who is well thought of, a straight shooter. The Combine sees enormous growth in the Southern Hemisphere marketplace. There are now three opposing guerilla groups in Cuba, restless bands along the Amazon, weapons for the dealers, and a half dozen spots in the Caribbean ready to pop.”
“What do you think you’re going to be able to do for me?”
“We can supply you with American weapons, no limits.”
“You supply, I run them over the border.”
“That’s right. And, uh, we go on a handshake. No letterheads, lawyers, websites, contracts. It has to be a matter of trust, Red.”
“Trust among the polecats,” Red mused. “Is that it?”
“You must produce one key element. Not all merchandise can move at all times like a conveyor belt. You have to produce a fail-safe secret depot for storage.”
If Red Peterson wanted to make a stand, The Combine could construct parallel routes and get rid of him. But that would cost The Combine a fortune. Red had it down, to the permanent key officials to be paid off. He knew that Red Petersons would come and go, but The Combine would be there forever, because greed is eternal. Come drought, famine, earthquake, collapse of government, come what may—guns were the currency.
The two went through a long list of figures. Red was coming to realize that in relatively short time he could put upward of a hundred million dollars in his pocket. He offered his hand.
“We’ve got a deal when I approve of your depot,” she said.
“I’ll take you there tomorrow. Want to get laid tonight?”
“Never on the first date, Red.”
Red Peterson groped, caressed, patted his wife’s backside, then hopped up into the pilot’s seat of his Queen Air. Greta touched cheeks with Maud, giving her a mandatory “Ummm” but knowing full well her old bastard was on the prowl.
The rattlesnake knew he was good, Maud thought. They had blended into a merger that would corner the expanding Latin weapons market. Maud had slept with one eye open and one ear trained on the bedroom door, hoping he might pay her a visit. He was menacing, like the men in The Combine.
Red moved with certainty to hold the sassy airplane in check, as though he could see the wind.
That morning after breakfast, Red gave her a briefing of the Hudson Mining and Cattle Co. on the White Wolf Ranch. It lay in southern Utah and was one of the few militia able to keep some full-time “freedom soldiers.” These men were carried on the payroll of the copper mine and ranch.
The White Wolf Brigade commander and ranch owner was a retired Army officer, Oswald “Wreck” Hudson. The mine and ranch barely broke even. Big monies came from Red Peterson, drug and immigrant smuggling, and web-site scams. White Wolf was also part of an underground network supplying a safe haven for criminal militia on the run.
They flew west into Utah past one canyon after another, mesas holding a few determined trees, stone chimney rock formations of a phallic nature, agonized peaks, tan desert and, always, a stone edifice to a sleeping Indian maiden.
Red set the Queen Air down at Cortez, as anonymous as an airfield could be without being illegal.
Maud had pictured Wreck Hudson accurately. Thin man, handlebar mustache in a struggle to get attention and to be brave. He greeted them in civilian garb but packing a pair of ivory-handled pistols finished in silver.
In a Land Rover, Wreck settled in behind a field marshal’s panel. His tutored hand flipped dials, punched buttons, and picked up a microphone.
“This is Rover One to Rover Two,” Hudson said to a second Land Rover nearby filled with a guard detail.
“This is Rover Two to Esteemed Personage. Rolling right behind you.”
“Base One, this is Esteemed Personage.”
“Go ahead, Esteemed Personage,” the ranch called back.
“Base One, we are rolling from Cortez. Do we foresee any security problems en route?”
“Negative.”
Wreck bullied his vehicle like a heavyweight hitting the big punching bag. As yucca and thistle and tumbleweed flashed by, Wreck rambled, as would a braggart.
After a long dirt run through Navajo country, they came to a halt at a guard shack. Three surly members bearing Uzis approached the car and upon recognizing Esteemed Personage snapped to salutes.
“Inform Base One of my entry.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard placed a pair of four-star pennants on the fenders and waved them through.
Ten miles later, an oasis loomed in the form of a huge Iowa style
Victorian ranch house, where Wreck was greeted by three barefoot Mexican women, all twenty-something or younger. The guard vehicle pulled up behind them.
“Clean up the fucking command car,” he ordered. The women quickly took Maud’s and Red’s luggage, each getting a pinch on the cheek from Esteemed Personage as they passed him. Wreck took Red off to a side:
“Can we show this broad everything?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything more I should know about this?”
“No, but put us in adjoining bedrooms.”
They settled into a powerful Mexican lunch in a huge tiled kitchen, attended by the women. Red’s eyes followed the sway of their hips and rear ends. Wreck joined them, having changed into a military uniform of sorts: a hodgepodge of crossed sabers, gold epaulets, and scrambled eggs.
The lunch, tequila and beer, hit home with a thud, accompanied by Wreck Hudson’s never-ending intoxication with his good self. Between shifts in tales of Wreck’s imagined past, Red popped up. “We’d better get a move on and have Miss Maud look over the facility.”
Miss Maud indeed! Who the hell was she, anyhow? Wreck played with the console of buttons near his chair. “This is Esteemed Personage calling Ranger Two. We are about to embark on a tour of inspection. Is the fucking car
clean?”
“Positive.”
“I want four guards to follow in Ranger Two.”
Red had liked the White Wolf setup from the get-go. It abutted Navajo land on three sides. Underpaid Navajo police received innumerable perks and lots of booze to act as an advance warning system. Even if the government was to mount a raid on White Wolf through the reservation or even if helicopters were used, the Navajo would have to be warned in advance.
The other opening into White Wolf Ranch was through Six Shooter Canyon,
a five-mile defile whose path was punctuated by sheer walls of stone up to two thousand feet high. Once past a wide spot in the canyon called Bloody Gulch, it ran another two miles into the rear of White Wolf.
On the mesa, near the ranch house, Wreck Hudson had installed a horseshoe ring of gunfire to cover the two miles of canyon visible to them.
There were six multi-use .50-caliber machine-gun nests and 37mm ack-acks to down helicopters, and another six 150mm mortar posts and four artillery pieces of various measure.
Down in the canyon, every narrow spot past Bloody Gulch held up to a hundred yards deep of barbed wire running from wall to wall.
They had night-vision gear and homemade fire bombs.
All of this played into Red Peterson’s hands. Certainly, government forces could take White Wolf, but the risk of high casualties was too great in a nation that did not like casualties. Losing a hundred- or two-hundred-man army was not going to sit well with the American people. Moreover, there was a lack of government initiative, a hands-off policy.
They drove to the mine entrance, a mile from the ring of fire over the canyon. Hudson had built a spur rail line from the reservation on into the mine.
Enough salable ore, with copper and iron the main metals, justified the operation. The ore cart tracks moved slowly downward inside the cliff entrance. At an unlit, hidden juncture a rail switch moved some tracks into what appeared to be a black hole.