Excerpt
It was a usual Wednesday in Laredo Texas. Mid week evenings were always slow at this border crossing from Mexico into Texas. West Coast Trucking made trips from Mexico through this checkpoint three times a week. It was always at nine in the evening. The trucker was usually hauling vegetables in an open rack body, tractor trailer. On this particular Wednesday, the trailer was loaded with green tomatoes going to a sauce processing plant in San Antonio. The driver’s trucking documents were always in order and the drug-sniffing dogs never, ever, raised their noses. The driver was never in a hurry. He usually got out of the cab in the waiting area and had a cup of coffee from his thermos. Because Bill Nelson always made the Wednesday trips, he knew the federal agents by their first names. On the second and fourth Wednesday of every month, Bill would hand his manifest to one of the agents at the truck stop. The manifest on these Wednesdays would include an extra envelope. The manifest would be returned to Bill minus this envelope.
After a little chitchat, Bill would continue on route 35 to the outskirts of San Antonio. On every second and fourth Wednesday, Bill would make a little detour off of route 35 onto a dirt road, where a small box truck would be waiting next to a barn. Bill would pull the trailer into the barn, where the men waiting would extract a lead-lined container from within the load of tomatoes. The container would then be loaded into the box truck, and Bill would continue his trip to the processing plant.