Ghost in the Rocks

Wildlife biologist Whip Sawtell is conducting a wildlife monitoring project using trail cameras in the rugged mountains of southeastern Arizona and adjacent New Mexico. While night surveilling a mountain pass along Mexico Highway 2 near the Mexican border east of Douglas, Arizona, Sawtell sees an unfamiliar, ghost-like animal. Shots are fired at Sawtell from across the border, but he isn't sure why. Dan Quinn, a US Fish and Wildlife Service Law Enforcement Officer, is working undercover in the same area, looking for illegal wildlife traffickers. Sawtell and Quinn join forces and find an illegal animal trap. They are concerned that someone is trying to trap a mountain lion or possibly a roaming jaguar. Jaguars are a politically sensitive subject in Arizona and New Mexico.

Sawtell's friend, Charlie Davis, disappears in Old Mexico, so Sawtell goes to look for him. Wildlife biologist Cat Bonner agrees to check his trail cameras for a week or two. Sawtell finds Charlie in Mexico, but not the rest of his archaeology team.

A radical environmental group called "454" hijacks a flatbed truck carrying a jaguar trapped illegally in Mexico and bound for the US. During the hijack, the cat escapes in northern Mexico and follows a ridge in the Sierra Madre Mountains toward Sawtell's southeastern Arizona project area. A week after the jaguar escapes, Sawtell and Davis follow an old Mayan White Road in the Yucatan jungle to an area of cleared rainforest and find the trap likely used to capture the jaguar, and a whole lot more.

In Arizona, Cat Bonner observes a young jaguar walk through a mountain pass and then be captured in a live trap. Two rogues discover Cat as she watches the pass and open fire. She returns fire in self-defense. The next day, Cat wonders where the shooters came from. She finds two Wyoming pickup trucks parked at the base of Chiricahua Ridge in New Mexico. Before she moves the trucks across the border to hide them in Old Mexico, Cat finds a canvas sack of mineral ore in one of the pickups. She takes one rock with her and then ascends the ridge on foot, dodging a drone that appears to be looking for her, to see if the trail camera in the mountain pass recorded the shootout. Employing desert survival skills, she walks twenty miles out of the desert mountains to meet her friend, geologist Bub Meeks. Meek declares the mineral to be a rich copper ore. They wonder: Is the ore from Mexico, Arizona or Wyoming?

Sawtell and Davis get a look at the industrial development in a protected part of the Yucatan rainforest where the jaguar was trapped. Sawtell and eco-terrorists from "454" follow a truck from the industrial area to a shady-looking Cancun warehouse. Their discovery that adulterated alcohol made from corn is being sold at tourist resorts in Cancun deepens the mystery. Are the industrial development in the forest and the illegal alcohol connected?

Randall Crossman, who is wanted for several crimes in Wyoming, years ago escaped the state in a small plane and disappeared into Mexico. Sawtell suspects Crossman has resurfaced in Mexico and may be associated with the industrial development and a fraudulent mining scheme in Arizona. Crossman flees Mexico ahead of a police raid. Mexican police find an illegal industrial operation in the rainforest and then a warehouse full of illegal product in the city but do not capture Crossman. Cat and Whip discover that Crossman is headed to the US, probably making his way to Wyoming. They suspect Crossman and his two sons have been working on a mining scam in the Copper Mountains near Thermopolis, Wyoming that may tie into the happenings in Arizona. Sawtell and Quinn follow Crossman into the Copper Mountains in a Wyoming snowstorm to discover the truth.