Responsive Calculator

Now, three months away from earning his master’s degree in communications, Sluyter had decided to reform his ways: no more selling weed, no more all-night parties and no more human smuggling. The drive was 85 miles south to a smuggler’s stash house, and involved picking up a carload of newly arrived undocumented immigrants, passing along the most heavily patrolled smuggling route in the nation — U.S. Highway-281 — and dropping the passengers off with a connection in Houston. Sluyter had paid his way through grad school in part by smuggling dozens of undocumented immigrants into the Texas interior. But recently, Border Patrol seemed to anticipate their every move. An increasing number of drivers were getting pulled over. Sluyter felt the trips had gotten too dangerous.

Max, who was calling from the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas, wearing a silver suit and throwing down hundreds of dollars on every spin of the roulette table, had made exactly the opposite determination. If anything, he had pushed the operation beyond its limits, coordinating multiple pickups a night, even as his ranks dwindled due to intensifying police pressure and the start of fall semester. It was because of the staffing crunch that he now pleaded with Sluyter. Networks of human smugglers work on a referral system; if you miss a load, your business collapses. He was desperate. “Come on you little bitch,” Max said. “I need you.”