THE BAJA GATE

                                            Blaine C. Readler



            The Baja Gate copyright (c)2007 by Blaine C. Readler

            This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's wild imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, although inevitable and in a weird way complimentary to the author, since it shows he is not so insulated from reality that the products of his imagination are totally alien to the average mind, is nevertheless entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

            http://www.readler.com             blaine@readler.com




                                CHAPTER 1



            The letter fluttered in Winn's hand as he sat in the cockpit and gazed out across the other sailboats moored in the San Diego harbor. After ten years, he was surprised that Pierce even remembered him. The SOB had not only finished his four-year program, but had gotten his Master's degree and started his own business. How do you build a company around a degree in anthropology?
            "Parole board make a mistake?"
            Winn looked up at the dock. It was Derrick, standing there in his torn shorts and broken sandals grinning at him. His friend nodded at the letter. "They decided you have to go back?"
            The tanned, sandy-haired man was the harbor rat, taking odd jobs to support himself and his little twenty-eight-foot boat anchored out in the harbor. Winn's situation was basically the same, except that Prudence was five feet longer, and instead of boat repairs, he did odd jobs with corporations' computer networks.
            Winn smiled and waved him aboard. "I almost wish it was; I wouldn't have to worry about this month's dock fees."
            Derrick jumped across the transom and started for the companionway. "Sorry," Winn said, "out of beer."
            The young man gave him a disgusted look and flopped down on the other cockpit seat. "In that case, you might as well go back, since you now have nothing left to live for ... hey! Do they give you beer in jail?"
            Winn shook his head. "That's why it's called jail." It had been ten years since he'd done his three-month stint, but it provided material in perpetuity for Derrick's ribbing.
            "What's with the letter?" Derrick asked.
            Winn sighed and shook his head at it. "It's from some friends I haven't talked to since I was paroled."
            "College?"
            Winn nodded.
            "You didn't keep in touch?"
            Winn stared at the letter in his hand, then looked up at Derrick and shrugged. "I figured they'd just as soon forget about me."
            "I can understand that," the young man said, nodding. "They wouldn't want to associate with the criminal element. Every day I risk social backlash for my unselfish friendship."
            Winn slouched back against the cockpit cowling and eyed his friend. "I'm the criminal element? Am I the one who spends all his money on pot instead of food?"
            Derrick waved him off. "Weejee's practically legal. Crystal meth is another matter altogether. I would have thrown away the key if I was the judge."
            Winn grinned and nodded. "How about we call the sheriff and ask him if it's okay that you have a couple of pounds stashed away on that floating rat-trap hazard you euphemistically call a boat?"
            His friend rubbed the stubble on his cheek and pondered his reply. "You have a point, albeit a small one."
            Winn raised his eyebrows. " 'Albeit?' Have we begun to expand our vocabulary with the Reader's Digests in the men's locker room?"
            Derrick threw his head back in mock indignation. "I don't know about our vocabulary, but mine has always been fine -- erudite, in fact." He nodded again at the letter. "Are these alleged friends coming to visit?"
            Winn glanced again at Ginny's neat cursive words. "They're asking for help ... one of them is, anyway."
            "What kind of help? Do they know you don't have any beer?"
            Winn smiled. "Maybe I should inform them; it could solve the whole problem."
            "What problem?" Rather than waiting for an answer, Derrick reached over and snatched the pages from him.
            Winn watched as his friend read the letter. At one point Derrick looked up and asked, "Who's Pierce?"
            "My old college roommate."
            Derrick scanned back through the letter, then looked at him in surprise. "Anthro-pology?" he asked incredulously.
            Winn shook his head. "Not me; I was in the engineering program."
            Derrick read some more. "He wants you to sail to Baja -- cool!"
            "Did you see why?"
            His friend flipped the page and read on. "Supplies," he said looking up. "What supplies? And, why doesn't he just have them trucked down?"
            "Ahh," Winn said, "the million-dollar question."
            Derrick read to the end and peered at the signature. "Benny?"
            "Ginny," Winn corrected.
            His friend's eyebrows shot up. "She says she was married, but is now separated. Is she a babe?"
            Winn stared through the other man, remembering her slim profile and mischievous smile. "Yeah," he said. "She's a babe."
            "Hey, hey!" Derrick exclaimed getting excited for him. "She's running to you!" His eyes went wide at a sudden thought. "What if she got fat? It's been ten years ... and she was married!"
            Winn shook his head and nodded at the letter. "Pierce asked her to search me out and write to me. Besides, the two of them were a couple in college."
            Derrick shrugged. "So what. She didn't marry him."
            Winn grinned, a melancholy smile. "She would have."
            His friend searched him for understanding. "The guy dropped her?"
            Winn snorted. "In a manner of speaking. He decided one girl wasn't enough for him."
            "The cheating bastard," Derrick said, sounding genuinely earnest. "Hey!" he cried as another idea popped into his head. "Why didn't you pick up the pieces...?" The harbor rat's face froze in embarrassed shock.
            "Right," Winn finished for him. "I was in jail."

            Winn stood to the side of the security exit point, watching for Ginny among the stream of arriving airport passengers. He was nervous that he wouldn't recognize her after ten years. What if she had gotten fat? His pulse quickened every time he spotted long brown hair. He was surprised at his reaction; he'd thought these feelings had dissolved long ago in the sobering confines of his jail cell.
            Derrick paced around him like a puppy searching for a scent of something interesting. "You want a hot dog?" he asked, stopping suddenly.
            "We ate lunch on the way here."
            "Just asking," his friend replied, continuing his meandering.
            Suddenly, there she was, a regal princess among the refugees. She'd cut her hair! It made her look ... older -- mature. But she wasn't fat! If anything, she looked more fit than their malnutritioned college days. Her face was like a zombie's, but he knew that it was just travel daze, and this was confirmed when her roving eyes met his and her features woke with obvious joy. Her smile melted his heart exactly as it had a decade ago, and her eyes still flashed with mischievous delight. He always imagined her twitching her little pug nose back and forth and instantly materializing in his waiting arms.
            "Winn!" she cried, dropping her bags and spreading her hands wide for a hug.
            He wrapped his arms around her slim body and her hair tickled his nose as she gave him a big squeeze. He looked up to find Derrick eyeing her figure, and winking at him, mouthing a silent, Babe! Winn extended his middle finger to his friend from its position on Ginny's back, then broke away and stepped back.
            She held him by his shoulders and looked him up and down. "You look so...."
            "Young?" he offered.
            She laughed. "Californian. You're all tanned and ... wiry!"
            He felt himself blushing. "It comes with the lifestyle -- I live on my sailboat."
            "It's that big?"
            "No. But I live there anyway."
            "So, I guess I'll be...."
            "Sleeping on the boat? Unless you have money for a hotel, but the nice ones aren't cheap in San Diego."
            She shook her head quickly. "No, the boat's fine. Besides, I don't expect we'll be here very long, right?"
            "I don't know; I was hoping you'd be able to explain."
            "I will, but let's move out of the way -- I haven't been more than six inches from a person in eight hours...." Her face became alarmed. "Oh! I didn't mean you, Winn!" She placed her hand on his wrist for emphasis, and it felt soft and warm.
            He felt the blush deepen as he shrugged.
            Derrick had moved up next to them, threatening Ginny's six-inch security zone, and she glanced at him quizzically.
            "Ginny," Winn said, "this is Derrick, my friend, surfing instructor, drinking buddy, and ultimately probably my downfall."
            She extended her hand, and Derrick pumped it, smiling at her. "Welcome to San Diego," he said. "Let's celebrate," he added, looking at Winn.
            Winn snorted. "What he means is, he wants to get drunk on our nickel."
            His friend straightened indignantly. "I resent that!"
            "Do you have any money on you?"
            "Well ... no, but I'd pay you back."
            "Like you have in the past?"
            "I've done work on Prudence...."
            "That I had to finish."
            "Other work came up!"
            "Yeah -- running pot up from Mexico."
            "Jeez!" Derrick exclaimed, glancing nervously around. "Why don't you announce it over the PA!"
            Ginny watched them both with obvious humor. "How about a compromise?" she offered. "Let me get settled and catch my breath, and we can go out for dinner tonight on me."
            Derrick's eyes lit up. Winn could read his friend's thought: free food and beer!
            "Sounds like a deal," Winn said. "But, be careful that my leech friend doesn't decide to pull his sucker out of me and attach himself to you."
            Winn picked up one of Ginny's bags and led her away.
            "Wounded!" Derrick shouted from behind them. "A knife in the heart!"

            Lindbergh Field airport was only a few miles from the marina, and ten minutes later they were carrying Ginny's bags along the dock. Winn set his down and pulled on one of Prudence's spring lines to draw the boat towards them, while Ginny admired the old boat. "I love it!" she said. "It looks so ... traditional."
            "She does have nice lines," Winn agreed. "She was designed before sailing boats became the playthings of doctors and lawyers, all imagining themselves the next America's Cup contenders. They want boats that look like the ones they see in the races, which are specialized, and handle horribly in heavy weather."
            "Maybe they don't intend on being out there in storms," she offered.
            "Then they shouldn't leave the harbor," he said, grabbing a winch and pulling the boat close so that she could step aboard. "There's a race called Fastnet that runs from England to Ireland and back. In 1979 an unexpected storm caught them, and five boats sank, twenty-four were abandoned, and fifteen people drowned. In some cases, the keels broke off the boats -- not the masts, the keels, for God's sake!"
            "Uh oh," Derrick said behind him. "Now you got him started. Before he's done, he'll have you promising to never go aboard any boat that has wine glasses or a cutesy name like Weekend Warrior, or Doctor's Orders.
            Winn held Prudence while Derrick jumped on, and then stepped on himself. "Tell her the name of your floating chicken coop," he said.
            "I don't see how that's relevant."
            Winn pointed to it out in the harbor. "See the one that looks abandoned out there? It's the one listing heavily to port because its engine has been sitting on a cockpit seat for months waiting repairs.
            Ginny shielded the sun with her hand. "Joint Venture," she read, and looked at him. "I don't get it."
            "Joint Venture? Joint?"
            She nodded and gave Derrick a critical look. "Doesn't that draw attention if you're bringing in pot?"
            "I don't use the boat!" Derrick exclaimed. "They'd impound it if I got caught!"
            "And how," Winn observed dryly, "would that be a problem?"
            His friend pointedly turned his back on Winn and addressed Ginny. "If you find you just can't take him anymore, you can stay with me."
            Winn laughed. "And, where exactly would she sleep?" To Ginny he explained, "Mr. Handyman here decided to upgrade his bunks over a year ago, except that he only got as far ripping out the old ones. The cabin floor is now a solid foot deep in his random possessions. At night, he just flops down on top of it all."
            Derrick sniffed. "It's a small boat -- that's efficient stowing."
            Ginny gave them both her squinty smile. "Did I understand correctly that you two are friends?"
            "That's a damn good question," Derrick said, nodding enthusiastically. "Would a real friend treat me like he does?"
            "A real friend is not an option for you," Winn replied. He tousled the young man's hair because he knew Derrick hated it, and said to Ginny, "How did you track me down?"
            "I work in the City Clerk's office in Fairfax. I have access to all kinds of information. Your boat is registered in San Diego; you've registered to vote here -- independent -- you've gotten two traffic tickets: one for speeding, and one for running a red light--"
            "Hey!" he cried, "the speeding ticket is eight years old, and the judge dropped the red light -- the automatic camera malfunctioned."
            "The incident is still in the records, though."
            He shook his head. "You've joined Big Brother's family. You've gone over to the Dark Side."
            Her face became serious. "It's just a job."
            He waved it off. "I'm kidding."
            She continued to watch him carefully. She's wondering if she touched a raw nerve, he thought. "That whole drug bust thing is history, you know," he said.
            After a second, she nodded and smiled.
            Ginny and Derrick settled into the cockpit, and Winn took Ginny's bags below and came back with cans of warm diet soda. "Since when did you begin worrying about calories?" she asked, accepting one of the cans.
            He shrugged. "Hold it over the edge when you open it," he told her.
            She looked at him questioningly, then watched as Derrick held his can over the transom and pulled the tab. Carmel foam welled out over the top and down his hand, dripping into the harbor. "He doesn't care about calories," Derrick said, transferring the can to his right hand, and shaking the soda off the left. "He's just picky about getting his precious Prudence sticky."
            Ginny held hers over the edge and winced as she popped the top and let the soda run over. "I guess I take refrigerators for granted."
            Winn popped his can, and wrapped his mouth around the top to catch the upwelling. He swallowed and said, "Fresh meat's the only real drawback for me. I go to a restaurant when I get tired of the canned or smoked variety. Eggs, on the other hand, keep up to a week unrefrigerated. I coat them in vaseline when I take trips, and they're good for more than a month."
            "Sounds like you're trading luxuries for a simpler existence."
            He nodded. "One man's luxuries are another's necessities. It's not a life for the finicky ... speaking of which, are you ready to tell me what's up with Pierce and the letter?"
            She shot him a quick look. Maybe a little defensive of old Pierce? "You knew he was in Mexico doing excavation?" she said.
            "Is that what he's doing down there?"
            She raised her eyebrows. "I guess not," she said. "Well, you know about his business--"
            "What I know of Pierce is what I knew when they dragged me off to jail ten years ago, plus what you wrote in your letter."
            Her brow scrunched. "He didn't keep in touch with you?"
            He looked at her and snorted. "About the same as you."
            "I wrote you letters in jail!" she exclaimed.
            "Two. You never came to visit."
            "You never wrote back! You told us not to come!"
            That was true. "People in jail always say that. Nobody believes them."
            "Well, maybe you should have told us the rules beforehand!" She was getting angry. "You never called after you got out; you just disappeared off the face of the earth!"
            He stared at her. Her eyes flashed with defiance. This was the spunky Ginny he remembered from college taking no crap. He nodded. "You're right; I fucked up, Gin. I was feeling sorry for myself."
            "You wanted to feel rejected by us." It was more an accusation than an analysis. Her face softened, though. "You should have called, Winn ... I missed you."
            In her second letter, she'd written that she'd left Pierce after he cheated on her. Winn had fantasized every day about getting together with her when he got out, but chickened out when the time finally came. He couldn't have taken the rejection if he was wrong. It was a long time ago, and now she was hooking up with Pierce again. He'd fucked up indeed. "So, old Pierce managed to make a career out of anthropology," he finally said. "What kind of excavation is he doing in Mexico?"
            She held him in her gaze a moment, searching inside his skull for something, then the impish smile returned. "It's a secret."
            "What is he, Indiana Jones? The Ark of the Covenant ended up in Baja?"
            "He said I could tell you, but only once you've agreed to help out."
            Derrick spoke up from the stern. "Sure we'll help -- what's the secret?"
            Winn gave his friend a level gaze.
            "What?" Derrick finally said. "What'd I do?"
            "We?" Winn replied. "Since when did you become part owner of Prudence?"
            "Well, that's a fine way to treat your best friend." To Ginny he said, "Forget him and his selfish attitude; we'll take Joint down the coast."
            "You wouldn't make it past Tijuana. Seriously, Ginny, how can I agree to something I don't know anything about?"
            Her brow wrinkled in thought. "Okay. But you can't tell anybody about this." She looked at him, then at Derrick. The young man drew his finger in a cross across his heart.
            "He'll keep your secret," Winn said, "until he meets someone he can tell it to."
            Derrick held his head high. "My word is my honor."
            "That's exactly what I'm afraid of," Ginny said, nodding slowly.
            "Wounded!" he cried, clutching at his chest. "Another knife, right through the heart!"
            They both sat studying the disheveled man who pulled himself up straight and returned their scrutiny with a show of pride mixed with pleading.
            "There's one way to keep him quiet," Winn finally said.
            "Tie his feet to cinder blocks and toss him in the harbor?" Ginny offered, not taking her eyes from the potential victim.
            Winn nodded with appreciation. "Either that, or, take him along. You wouldn't guess it, but he's an able seaman."
            "Able!" Derrick cried. "More like Master Seaman!"
            "How about the time you grounded Joint when you got too close trying to see some nude babes on Black's Beach?"
            "That was an uncharted sandbar."
            "Uncharted sandbar, my hienie -- you were surfing Joint in the breakers trying to impress them." To Ginny he said, "The best part was that the 'babes' were actually two gay men couples. The guys helped him hold Joint until I could arrange a tow."
            Derrick looked morose remembering the incident. "They didn't even put any clothes on," he lamented.
            Winn smiled remembering the look of panic on Derrick's face when he finally arrived in a friend's powerboat.
            "So what's this big secret of Pierce's?" Winn said to Ginny.
            She raised an eyebrow and grinned conspiratorially. "You're not going to believe it."
            Winn shrugged. "I'm always up for a good story."
            Ginny looked at them, one, then the other. "Pierce has found evidence of aliens."
            Winn just looked at her. She was right; he didn't believe her.
            Derrick's brow was wrinkled in thought. "He found Mexicans?"
            Winn tossed his empty soda can at his friend. "She means space aliens ... besides, Mexicans aren't aliens in Mexico, you dolt."
            Derrick fended off the soda missile. "Space aliens! Way cool! Are they, like, alive?"
            "Ignore him," Winn said to Ginny. "What kind of evidence are we talking about?"
            "Artifacts," she replied, "and bones."
            "Artifacts, as in pieces of a spaceship?"
            "Apparently not quite so dramatic."
            "Nor, maybe, definitive. You haven't seen them?"
            "Just one that he managed to send me. Hold on," she said, hurrying below and returning a minute later carrying a folded cloth. She sat down with it in her lap and carefully pulled away the flaps, revealing the treasure within.
            Winn looked at her face to see if she was laughing at him. She wasn't; her eyes were wide with the wonder of it all.
            "A spoon?" he said.
            She shrugged and nodded.
            "You're kidding."
            "Nope."
            "So these aliens happen to have mouths and hands, and stopped by on earth for an afternoon picnic."
            She shrugged again.
            "What makes you think it was left behind by aliens?"
            She carefully took it and handed it to him. It wasn't so much a spoon, as a thin bar with an enlarged, rounded end. The finish was dull gray, as though made from aluminum, so he was surprised when it had practically no weight. It was as light as paper, and lacked the cold feel of metal. He looked quickly at Ginny who sat smiling expectantly at him. "Bend it," she instructed.
            He paused, uncertain, since, alien or not, it was indeed unusual, and he resisted damaging it.
            "Go ahead," she insisted. "You won't hurt it."
            He took a deep breath and tried to bend it in half. It had a slightly springy feel, like a wooden tongue depressor. He applied steadily increasing force, ready to flinch if it should snap in two. The spoon resisted up to a certain threshold, and then suddenly and smoothly bent in half, as though now made from taffy. It took him by such surprise, that he dropped it with a little shout. It fell to cockpit floor, barely making a sound when it hit.
            He looked at Ginny in shock. She just sat smiling at him. She nodded to the floor. He reached down to pick it up. "No," she said. "Just watch."
            The U-shaped spoon lay where it had fallen, and after about five seconds, began to move. With another shout, Winn jerked his feet out of the way.
            Ginny laughed. "Just watch it, already."
            He realized that the spoon was slowly resuming its original shape. After another few seconds, he couldn't tell that he had bent it at all.
            "Memory plastic," he said.
            "You think that's what it is?"
            He shook his head. "Memory plastic has to be heated to revert back to its original shape."
            Ginny asked for a hammer, and he dug a rusty facsimile out from the even rustier toolbox in the lazarette compartment. She placed the willful spoon on the cockpit seat, and instructed him to give it a whack.
            "I'm going to hit it as hard as I can without even leaving a scratch, aren't I?" he asked, mostly to reassure himself.
            She nodded.
            He shrugged and gave it his best shot, causing the spoon to bounce an inch off the seat, and, as predicted, he couldn't tell that he'd hit it. He lay it across one of the scupper holes and tried to break it in half with the hammer. It repelled the hammer like it was made from high quality steel. Wondering, he bent it in half again with simple steady pressure.
            He handed the bent alien spoon to Derrick's outstretched hand, shaking his head in amazement. "Pierce is going to be rich; he won't even need that inheritance from his daddy" he said. "Imagine what kind of personal armor you could make for soldiers with this stuff."
            Ginny just looked at him, her smile and raised eyebrow hinting that there was more than he knew.
            Derrick interrupted his next question. "I wonder what the Amazon Indians must have thought when they first saw tin foil, or rubber bands," his friend said, slowly flexing the alien object back and forth like it was Gumby. He suddenly stopped and looked at them. "Or, swords ... or guns!"
            Winn smiled at Derrick's paranoia; it was difficult extrapolating from this little curiosity -- almost a toy -- to H.G. Well's heat-ray guns zapping masses of humanity. On the other hand, how easy would it have been for those same Amazon Indians to foresee machine guns after examining a rubber band?
            Guns and killing; why did it always have to come down to that? "What was that sly grin for when I mentioned using the alien twist-master for personal armor?" he asked Ginny.
            Her grin melted into a thoughtful frown. "Pierce sent the spoon to me and asked me to contact an acquaintance he knew at NASA. Before I had a chance to meet with her, though, I had a visit from a guy in a black suit ... he wasn't literally wearing a black suit, but he acted that way. It turns out that there was a law specifically against having contact with aliens, and somehow somebody at NASA called the CIA, or NSA, or whatever clandestine government agency concerns themselves with extra-terrestrials."
            Winn had heard about this law, but.... "Wait, I thought they repealed that section in the early nineties."
            Ginny sighed. "Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations. That's right; they did. Apparently somebody at NASA wasn't told, or maybe the CIA had the whole place bugged. In any case, this guy comes knocking at my door asking for me. Something about him made me uncomfortable. His words were polite enough, but it seemed like a charade; I had a sense that his friendly manner lasted only as long as it suited him."
            "You showed him the spoon?"
            "I played dumb. I told him I was Ginny's roommate, and asked him for some identification. He showed me a picture ID from the Department of State. How generic can you get? I pretty much forgot about it, since I was running around getting supplies lined up for Pierce and making travel arrangements to get here. But two nights ago I came home and found that somebody had been in my apartment. It wasn't obvious at first, but I have this little system to remind myself which weeks are recyclable pickups, where each time I take the garbage out to the curb, I rotate this souvenir salt-shaker I have: 'Niagra Falls' to the left means no recyclables; to the right means this is the week."
            "Couldn't you have just missed a week and gotten mixed up?"
            "Niagra Falls was facing the front. It never faces the front."
            "Hmm. I take it he didn't find the spoon?"
            "I didn't even think to hide it. It looked like a spoon, so I just threw it in with the other silverware -- it seemed like an appropriate place. The dummy probably looked right at it. Of course, he wouldn't have known what he was looking for. I never told the contact at NASA exactly what I had."
            "Maybe he wasn't even looking for the spoon," Winn offered.
            Ginny wrinkled her brow. "What do you mean?"
            "Maybe he was just after information about you, and Pierce, and people you associate with ... like me. Did you have letters from Pierce lying around?"
            She put her hand to her mouth. "I never even thought of that! Yes! His letters were lying right there on my desk ... along with my flight tickets!" She glanced around the marina, as though expecting to find the agent peeking out from behind a tree.
            "Wait a second!" Derrick cried. He looked upset. "You're telling me the cops are following you?"
            Winn answered for her. "We may wish it was only the police."
            "Shit!" he cried, scrambling off Prudence and into his battered little dinghy. They watched him row madly across the harbor to the listing Joint Venture.
            Ginny looked at Winn.
            "I think our able seaman is going to have quite a wild night," he said.
            One of her eyebrows rose questioningly.
            "He's got quite a stash of pot he'll be getting rid of. If I know Derrick, he's going to let as little as possible go to waste."