Saint Death - John Milton #3 by Mark Dawson Read Free Book Online

professional eye. How many of them were carrying drugs? Every tenth truck? Every twentieth? Vacuum-packed packets of cocaine dipped in chemicals to put the dogs off the scent. Packets stacked in secret cavities, stuffed in false bumpers, hidden amongst legitimate cargo. Billions of dollars.
    Beau regarded the high fence, the watchtowers and the spotlights. It had changed a lot over the years. He had been working the border for all of his adult life. He had graduated from Border Patrol Academy in 1975 and had been stationed in Douglas. His work had taken him across the continent and then to the Caribbean in the immigration service’s anti-drugs task force, eventually returning him full circle. For two decades, he had been a customs special agent in this wild and untamed corner of the frontier, patrolling the border on horseback, a shotgun strapped onto his saddle.
    He looked out at the guards circulating between the cars and trucks. Those boys doing the job today would have thought he was an anachronism, relying on a horse when he could have had one of the brand new Jeeps they were driving around in. The pimpled little shit who had given him his cards had said that he had a “John Wayne complex.” Beau couldn’t see what in the hell was wrong with that. How could those boys get down and read tracks in their four-by-fours, see the evidence that said that smugglers had been coming through? They called it ‘cutting for sign’ and Beau was an expert at it. You needed to know the difference between a starburst and a chevron imprint, when a mat of some sort had been attached to shoes, when the footprints had been brushed away by the last person in a convoy. He could read the signs that told him exactly when movement occurred, whether his quarry was near or far. Those were kinds of things a man could learn from whether the track of a bug ran under or over a footprint. You couldn’t do any of that from a Jeep.
    But Beau was a realist, too, and he knew that time had moved on. A man like him was from a different era. He’d fought regular battles with the narco traffickers of Agua Prieta over the border. During his career, he had seen the territory between Nogales and Arizona’s eastern border with New Mexico become known as ‘cocaine alley,’ and then quickly get worse. Juárez was the worst of all. The dirty little border pueblo was a place where greed, corruption and murder had flourished like tumbleweed seeds in souring horse manure. Now, with the cartels as vast and organised as multi-nationals, with their killing put onto an industrial scale and with the bloodshed soaking into the sand, Beau was glad to be out of it. In comparison to that line of work, hunting down bounties was a walk in the park.
    But perhaps not this one.
    His thoughts went to Adolfo González. On reflection, fifty grand was probably a generous quote for a job that was fixing to be particularly difficult.
    He had heard about the six dead Italians on the news this morning. Ambushed in the desert, shot to shit and left out for the vultures. He had seen the video on YouTube before it had been taken down. He recognised Adolfo’s voice. The cartels were all bad news but La Frontera was the worst. Animals. And Adolfo was the worst of all. Getting him back across the border wasn’t going to be easy.
    He wondered whether he should have turned the job down.
    There were easier ways to make a living.
    He edged the Jeep forwards again and braked at the open window of the kiosk.
    “Ten dollars,” the attendant said.
    Beau handed it over.
    “Welcome to Mexico.”
    He drove south.

 
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    10.
    MILTON PAUSED in the restaurant’s locker room to grab an apron and a chef’s jacket. He sat down on the wooden bench and smoked a cigarette. The room was heavy with the musty stink of old sneakers, greasy linens, body odour, stale cigarette smoke and foot spray. Familiar smells.
    He changed and went through into the kitchen.
    It was a big space, open to the restaurant