had told him some men were smoking marijuana near the truck down in Mexico. That would account for the dog’s reaction, but over the supervisor’s objection, the handler insisted on running the truck over the scales anyway.  The tanker was more than 7000 pounds overweight. Over the next several hours, the canine officer’s boss tried to get him to literally call off the dogs, but he refused. At this point the supervisor let the driver go and he took off for Mexico on foot. When the tanker was finally opened up, they found four tons of cocaine—the largest seizure in the history of the port. It was only the tip of the iceberg.^[3]

The truck belonged to Hidro Gaz de Juarez, a company that happened to be under surveillance at that moment by a Customs inspector named Mike Horner. What stunned Horner was the fact that the truck got as far as it did. He had already flagged Hidro Gaz on the Customs computer after an informant tipped him that these tankers—and this driver in particular—were involved in the drug trade. But when Horner checked the computer he found his warning had been erased. So had most of his other warnings.^[4]

Horner is a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam vintage and you don’t have to explain to him when to cover his ass. There had been a whiff of danger in the air for some time, and he had been secretly copying all of his files.  A few months earlier, he had picked up a tip about a group of major traffickers setting up a new operation out of Tijuana, and when he passed it on, the top man in the region demanded the names of his informants.  Horner was dismayed.  He couldn’t imagine why the District Director wanted this information, but the man insisted and Horner finally gave in. Four days later one informant was found with a tire iron in one ear and out the other, and the second was stabbed sixteen times. After that, Horner began to look at the larger picture, and all the lines were leading to the top of the pyramid.^[5]

When the tanker incident was repeated with another truck, Horner called the Inspector General’s office, and the Treasury