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begins a running commentary, keeping the mood light. “This, my friend, is the power of believing.”
    After the portables, not far to the northeast, the helicopter next passes Mitch’s processing plant, its jumble of uneven pipe lengths glinting silver in the sun. “We’re retrofitting it to handle the output from the Pico expansion. Putting in the coin now so that this time next year, it’ll have the most cost-efficient production of pavé bars south of Mexico. We’ll get it all back in eighteen months at full production. Markets can’t get enough.”
    Next come the leaching fields. Mitch has always thought they look like stairs to some giant’s house. Reddish, several soccer fields long, made up of finely crushed ore, they are stacked storeys high, black tubing running down each enormous step. “With this kind of mine, you want to clear the overgrowth, blast loose the ore, crush it, spread it out, then distribute a mild cyanide solution over it.” Even in Mitch’s own ears, his explanation sounds too much like a geologist’s summary. Getting a degree in the field was never his passion. More a matter of getting his father’s dream out of the way before he could go after his own. He aims for a less technical tone. “Basically, we gotta grab the gold chemically. Suck it right from the ore. Then we drain it away and catch it at the bottom.” Mitch points downhill. “But it’s not what people think. It’s harmless.” As he says this, they fly directly over the pressurized tubes, pocked with a regular series of holes, from which the cyanide solution, diluted with a steady supply of groundwater, flies into the air, creating tremendous arcs, before landing on the crushed ore. Gravity has already drawn some of the solution, with the gold it has taken from the ore, down to vast collection ponds — pools lined with a special material designed to prevent leaking.
    â€œIf people could see how well-made these are. Maybe it would shut them up.” Mitch knows that critics consider the ponds flawed, always harping about overflows during the annual rainy season, heavy metals seeping out. But anyone sitting where he is could see the system works. And where’s their evidence? If the extremists had their way, everyone in this country would be sorting coffee beans for a living. If they want to talk about overflows, how about the local coffers overflowing with his tax dollars! “From there,” he says, shaking away echoes of his opponents’ constant whining, “the gold settles at the bottom, we gather it up, melt it into bars, ship it, and there you are. Quarterly results!”
    Further along, an even rarer view: the open pit that has already made Mitch richer than he ever expected to get (not to mention his father’s much humbler expectations, God rest his soul), and which has convinced his investors that he can successfully expand. From the air the pit looks like a moon crater, multiple rust-coloured layers deep. Around the edge run crude roadways where trucks on oversized wheels bump along, carrying out yet more ore to stack on the giant’s steps.
    â€œQuite the sight, eh?”
    Carlos just stares out his window.
    â€œWait until you see what’s next,” says Mitch, though he wonders if Carlos is going to make it without tossing his cookies. The helicopter blades thwack as the pilot banks hard, bringing a mountain into view. “There she is. El Pico.”
    Mitch has never understood the name. To him, Pico looks more like a colossal tooth than a bird’s beak. Its rocky tip, sharp and exposed, widens into green, more gently sloping sides, and finally into a slowly extending base where, because of the new road and stacks of cut trees and massive drilling equipment and tractors, it isn’t easy to picture the settlement of Ixtán that Mitch knows was here before Manuel Sobero got rid of those squatters.