Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

“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.