Chapter 43
We were finally pulled in from the fields as the sun started dipping over the rim of the valley. I had no idea what time it was, but guessed it was near seven. Except for a quick breakfast, I had not eaten today. I was thirsty, hungry, hot, and tired. All of us were wearing the ankle chains, so our steps were noisy with the jingle of metal-on-metal, and our steps were faltering as we trudged along, prodded by the guards. No one said anything. We were too exhausted.
One of the guards grabbed my arm and pulled me toward a tank of water. The tank was a 50-gallon drum, which had been cut lengthwise and propped up on crossed wooden legs. A grimy towel was tossed over my shoulder.
“Clean yourself up. You’re having dinner with the Lieutenant in ten minutes.”
I filled my hands with water and drank deeply. I was so thirsty I didn’t care if the water was clean or not. My head throbbed from the blows I had taken earlier, and the skin there was tender to the touch. I splashed water in my face, on my neck, and over my head. I did it again and again. Life was returning to me. I patted dry and then was grabbed by the arm and steered into the same hut as when I arrived.
Gates was seated at one end of a small table, and he motioned for me to sit across from him. “Sorry we can’t offer you something more luxurious, but we do the best we can with what we’ve got.” As hungry as I was, the fare of beans, mashed potato, ham, and biscuits looked and smelled like a gourmet meal. “Please help yourself.”
I wanted to dive into the food, feast greedily, belch, and then fall asleep. But I also didn’t want to appear desperate. So I spooned a few things onto my plate and forced myself to eat meagerly, as if to say, I’m not really hungry, but I’ll have something just to be polite.
Gates seemed amused by my show of pride. “Don’t be shy. There’s plenty.”
I paused and swallowed what I was chewing. “What happened? Why am I here?”
He smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Oh, you must mean that scene on the road. Unfortunate. Not something that we planned for. But we were able to improvise and make it work for us.” He paused for a few beats. “No matter. Stuff happens. People die. The world says you are the killer. You are a wanted man.”
Killer? I recalled hearing four shots fired in the ambush. From what Gates was saying, at least one person was shot and died. Jeff? Enid? I didn’t know. But I didn’t expect the part about me being called a killer, a wanted man. So I blurted, “What do you mean?”
“I suppose you did miss a lot of the action since you were knocked unconscious. Let me give you a quick summary of today’s events. You got in a fight with the local law. Everyone is saying, what was that Parker thinking? But then, he was just an unemployed drifter, angry at the world for his misfortune. So sad that he took out his anger by shooting the local law, leaving so much blood on the side of the road. That’s what they’ll say, or something like it. Now you’ve gone missing, and your car was seen heading south. So who do you think everyone is looking for? Not us. And where are they looking? Not here. All the attention is somewhere else, as long as you stay missing. So here you are.”
I felt another wave of nausea sweep over me. It was not from the concussion I likely suffered earlier today. It was from thinking about what I had done, the things that I had set in motion, dragging people into this mess and getting them killed. I managed to ask, “Who was shot?”
He swiftly leaned forward in his chair. “You don’t remember who you shot? So sad. Now he claims amnesia,” Gates mocked and put on a wide grin. “But who died really doesn’t matter, does it?”
I let it sink in. I was a dead man walking. If I escaped, I would likely be shot on sight by the first lawman that saw me. If I didn’t escape, I would die here.
For a brief moment, I considered that Ed Garvey would figure it out and try to find me when I didn’t contact him. But I was deceiving myself. Ed told me to go off the grid, get lost. So, here I am, lost, off the grid. He was not going to look for me. Besides, he disappeared too, taking his family on a primitive adventure. He would not even know I really had stepped in over my head for at least another week. Would the dog tag search and the hit on the dead Afghan’s fingerprint trigger a federal response? Now I hoped it would bring in the feds, in spite of the blowback that might occur. Yet I hadn’t even told Ed specifically where the dog tag and fingerprint came from. So, there really wasn’t a good place for the feds to even begin looking. I was on my own.
I wasn’t worried about Gates finding Ed. This was a crude operation run by AWOL soldiers. They probably didn’t have enough of an organization to go after him. Ed was going to be OK as long as I did not talk.
I thought for sure that Gates was going to lay into me about who else I might have talked to about his operation here. He had my cell phone and computer. I could see them on his desktop. But he didn’t say anything about that. Instead he picked up a large envelope that had been near his plate and ripped it open, then leaned back in his chair.
“Since you did not have a chance to see this, let me summarize it for you.” He was talking about the letter from Joseph Custer that had been sent to me at the motel. He scanned over it, his eyebrows rising in apparent surprise a couple of times. He flipped through a couple of additional pages, and then peered at me. “I guess Joseph Custer was worried. He found something and sent it to you. We didn’t know he did that. Somehow he dropped this in the mail before we could nab him. Too bad you did not read this yourself. You might have been able to save yourself.” He peered at me more intently. “Why didn’t you read this?”
I knew why I hadn’t read it. The lazy desk clerk had not bothered to bring it to my room until this morning. It was too late. I threw it on my dashboard, unopened, before we headed to the Sheriff’s cabin and the ambush. But I didn’t say anything about that.
“Ah, well, maybe the Post Office was just slow in delivering it. That’s probably it,” he said, grinning as if it had been part of his plan all along. The arrogant twit.
I finally asked, “What do you plan to do with me?”
“Well, Mr. Parker, you have put yourself in an awkward position. It was bad luck for all of us, including you, that you found the body and also happened to be an ex-cop. You got too nosey, so here you are. You should have just done your hiking, written your book, and forgotten about the body on the trail. I’m sure being nosey is just in your nature, being a cop and all. But now you left us with little choice. And you being a lawman actually worked in our favor in the end. You are skilled with a handgun. You clearly used that skill this morning. Not a wise move on your part, now was it?”
Up until last night, I must not have been a significant threat. I might even have been useful to them, diverting attention in the direction of Hispanics. But I had finally gathered enough pieces of information to make me a liability, one they could not afford to have running loose any longer. But how did they find out about it? Had Gates intercepted my phone calls? I doubted it. This was a crude operation. It didn’t have sophisticated eavesdropping capability.
I had suspected Enid Powell all along. Jeff called the Sheriff, and then Enid showed up. Probably the Sheriff called Enid. Enid was there at the ambush this morning. He could easily have been part of the ambush. And I had talked with the Sheriff on several occasions. But then Willow Run had an active gossip wire, and everything I did in that town seemed to end up on that wire, open for the world to hear. Yet the key people seemed to be Sheriff Tyler and Enid Powell, perhaps partners in crime.
The Sheriff was a surprise. He had played the laid-back country boy to perfection. I told him many things about what I had found. Not all of it, but enough that he knew what I was doing. So he could have arranged the ambush. Did that mean Jeff was killed in the ambush? Probably. And then I was sent to this hell. In my mind, I placed crosshairs on the foreheads of Enid Powell and Sheriff Tyler and pulled the trigger, o
ne shot for each of them.
Gates continued. “To be honest, I wanted to kill you right away and add you to the row of graves outside. But I was convinced otherwise. You could be useful later if we need to divert attention away from here, maybe have you show up in some other part of the state or the country. Can you imagine the chaos that would result? Every cop in the area would be swarming over wherever you were reported to have popped up. That would divert attention away from us. You’re our insurance policy should some one come snooping too close. In the meantime, I will use you until we are finished here.”
“And then you kill us all?”
“Mr. Parker,” he scolded mildly. “Don’t be so dramatic. Once we are done here, I really have no reason to kill you, as long as you cooperate. If you survive the labor and the lack of a decent medical plan, we can just leave you behind when we go.”
I didn’t believe his attempt to hide his intentions. I would be killed, probably along with anyone else that might be a threat. Just like Cortina Perez, Joseph Custer, Andrew Pine’s wife, and all the Afghans.
He continued. “You see, we don’t plan to be here that long. We made this operation big so that we only needed one growing season to get what we want. That’s just one year from when we started until we finish. That’s not too long to keep a secret. Now we only need another month, and all of us will be set for life.” He leaned over the table as if he was relaying a secret, though his voice was not hushed in the least. He was simply doing it for emphasis. “Do you have any idea how much money there is in opium? I’ll tell you. Billions of dollars. We won’t get it all, but we’re gonna get a bunch of it.”
“But you’ll be pushing those drugs onto Americans, teenagers, and children. And you’ve killed innocent people. Doesn’t that bother you?”
He rose and started pacing. “Those American kids are going to get their heroin somewhere anyway. There is no stopping that. If people want something, they will find a way to get it. Right now they buy their drugs, and the money goes to foreign drug lords who then finance terrorism. At least when we sell it to them, they will be buying their heroin from Americans. We are keeping that money at home in America. That can put the foreign drug lords out of business. And that helps shut down terrorism.”
What he was saying was one of the scenarios I’d considered, but had dismissed it: put the drug lords out of business to reduce terrorism. A twisted attempt at redefining his scheme as a noble cause. I had dismissed it for good reason. It was just an excuse for what these AWOL soldiers wanted: the money.
He continued. “As for those other so-called innocents, their deaths were just collateral damage in a greater cause.”
He must have seen the disgust in my expression.
“Mr. Parker. Let me tell you a story, our story. We fought hard in Iraq and Afghanistan. I watched my boys get killed. We were there for a one-year tour. Then they extended it to fifteen months, and then eighteen months. More of my boys died. Those god-damned IEDs.”
I knew that IEDs were Improvised Explosive Devices, which caused so many of the US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. IEDs were placed along patrol routes of the military vehicles. Roadside bombs. When a vehicle was near the device, it would be set off remotely. They were devastating to the vehicles and their occupants. Many died. Many were critically injured and went home less than whole. It was dirty warfare over there.
“They finally sent the remainder of us home. For what? A pat on the back, poverty-level income, and poor medical treatment when we got here.”
“But we endured that. We were told our duty had been fulfilled. The war was over for us. So we stayed in the service. Then they decided to send us back to that shitty war, back to that third world toilet, again. So we went back, and more of my boys died. That’s when we decided we were through with those hopeless wars. We deserved better for risking our lives every day for nearly three years over there.”
“You call that justification for what you’re doing?” I accusingly responded. “You went AWOL. You turned your back on your sworn duty.”
“I am a patriot!” he bellowed, pounding his fist on the table.
A guard rushed into the room. “Is everything OK, Sir?”
Gates was silent for a few seconds as he stared at me, his fist still pressed against the tabletop. His face was tight and had turned red with anger. I thought he would give me another beating. With my ankles still chained, I would be an easy target. But he did not come around to my side of the table. He simply breathed in slowly, exhaled, and went calm. “Yes, Sergeant Grimes. Everything’s OK.” The guard left.
Gates sat down, placing his elbow on the arm rests of his chair, crossing his fingers in front of him, and composing himself. “Mr. Parker, we are getting off to a bad start here. My men and I have built a thriving enterprise. We are quite proud of it, though we do not get a chance to boast about it. We have to stay under the radar. So please indulge my ego. Perhaps you have some more civil questions to ask?”
I did. While I did not want to feed his ego, I was curious enough to ask some questions anyway. “OK. How did you get home from Afghanistan?”
He uncrossed his fingers and gestured with his arms for effect as he spoke. “That’s easy. A couple of the boys who were too wounded to return to combat landed in office jobs in the army. Do you know how many guys go into the military and never see combat? Probably half the army is assigned to procurement, transportation, mechanics, weather prediction, driving, sitting behind desks generating paperwork. All necessary functions in the grand scheme, I’m sure. And very useful if you want to get stuff. So we got fake leaves of absence from our boys back here and sent ourselves back home. And then we started sending stuff to ourselves: vehicles, Quonset huts, fencing, food, fuel, anything we wanted.”
He boastfully continued. “Mr. Parker. Do you have any idea how much stuff is being shipped out for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Millions of tons of it. All the materials we need. It’s going out every day from all over the country. So a few truckloads get lost, or goods get damaged and discarded, or the paperwork goes missing. No one has time to monitor it all.”
“What about the Afghans? How did you get them here?” I asked.
“That was so much easier than we thought. Did you know, Mr. Parker, that over 100,000 prisoners have been taken in Afghanistan alone? That is something that does not make the headlines. These prisoners get swept up in military maneuvers. They all go to jail. And many of them are poppy farmers. All that experience, which we can use right here. All those prisoners, with limited places to keep them. When a few go missing over there, they are just assumed to be escapees. No big deal. The Afghan prisons are overcrowded and like sieves.”
“We then just put them in US uniforms, doped them up, wrapped their whole bodies in gauze and tape so their faces can’t be seen and so they can’t talk, and shipped them home on military transport planes as wounded GIs coming home for treatment. Once they get to US soil, we shuttled them here.”
Clearly using the Afghans as slave labor didn’t bother him in the least, but I had to ask. “Doesn’t it bother you to use humans as slaves?”
“Those are the enemy out there. I feel no remorse at all for using them to further our cause. At least they are working rather than rotting in some jail cell. Remember. I own them. Just like I own you.”
I did remember, all too well.
“Where did all the opium poppy seeds come from? You must need hundreds of pounds of them, maybe tons for all the plants you have growing here.”
He smiled broadly. “Did you know that you can buy opium poppy seeds on the Internet? Ain’t this country great? You can buy the seeds through an on-line store, but they warn you that it is illegal to actually grow them. Like, why else would someone order them? As topping for bagels? Give me a break.”
He rose from his chair, clasped his hands behind his back, and st
arted strutting around the table.
“But you’re right. We do need lots of seed. However, the army supplies that, too.”
I must have presented a very puzzled look on my face since he continued without prompting.
“You seem surprised. Well, back in Afghanistan, the military is capturing huge shipments of seeds as they try to shut down heroin production. Confiscate all the seeds, and no more heroin money is generated to feed the insurgency. So what happens to all those captured seeds? Supposedly they are destroyed. But we divert them to here on the same planes with our fake wounded GIs.”
“It’s been a good year for us. The summer was unusually warm, great for growing poppies. Some might call that luck. But luck favors the prepared mind and the prepared plan. I take it as a sign that we were destined to succeed.”
Destined to succeed? What conceit. Does he think there is divine intervention assisting him? His ego did not need any boost from me. He had more than enough already without any assistance from me. Yet I had to know more.
“So you set up your perimeter fence in the fall using Afghans as laborers. You didn’t spend the winter in this valley, did you?”
He smiled. “We brought some Afghan heroin home with us. It was enough to pay for vacationing in warm places for the whole winter. Had to show my boys the luxury they could live in for the rest of their lives if they committed themselves to this project. I am a firm believer in proper motivation of my troops. They are definitely all very motivated and all very loyal.”
“After that first shipment, we couldn’t ship any more heroin here since drug control in Afghanistan was really tightened. But that actually worked in our favor. Because then my boys had to commit to work hard here to get their free ride for the rest of their lives. They had no choice. Broke and AWOL. Again, motivation,” he said, tapping his temple to impress on me how clever he was.
“So you have built this enterprise all out of thievery, with no money out of your own pockets.”
“You bet your ass. Pretty slick, ain’t it? So here we are, sod busting to make a fortune. My father and grand dad, and all their ancestors before them were farmers. Poor farmers. They never would have guessed you could get rich by farming. They just weren’t growing the right crop.”
All during this discourse, I ate. Small bites, a little here, a little there, but eating until I was full. It felt so good to be stuffed. I could feel the strength returning to my tortured body.
Meanwhile, Gates had taken his seat. He sat there with a very satisfied-looking grin on his face. Having me as an audience had fed his ego sufficiently that I could ask about the innocent victims outside.
“The old graves out there. I suppose they are the Afghans who put up the fence and then were.….” I hesitated, then said what I intended, “Sacrificed for convenience.”
His gaze burned through me for a few seconds, seemingly angry that I had strayed from feeding his ego to accusing him. But then he decided to indulge me. “Yes. Housing them all winter was a strategic problem, so there have been those contributions to the cause,” he said as if it was a trivial matter. “Besides it was easy to get replacements in the spring to put up the huts and camouflage netting and then to plant poppies.”
“Why did Cortina Perez and Joseph Custer have to die?”
“That was really your fault. You kept pressing on the supposed Hispanic guy, so we tried to make it seem like a guy was just hurt and found his way home. But that wasn’t enough for you. You kept pushing. Then you had to draw the newspaper guy in.”
So they were dead and buried outside. I could feel the guilt building inside again. If I had not pressed, then Cortina and Joseph would still be alive. And what about Jeff? He too would be fine, not shot and left dead on the side of the road. And I would be having dinner with Allison right now, instead of hearing about Lieutenant Gates’ ill-gotten gains. I felt ill myself. I did not pull the trigger, but I had caused the deaths of several people who had unwittingly been drawn into the web I’d stepped into. At that moment, I wanted to die myself. I would gladly lie in the ground if it would bring back the dead of Willow Run.
“I considered keeping Cortina alive. You see, I have a camp full of horny GIs. But there was just one Cortina. Not enough to go around. And besides, it would be a distraction. We need to keep focus on the mission. A shame. She really was a handsome woman,” he mused.
I felt disgusted with this pompous ass. He had now unwittingly revived a reason to live. Revenge for the dead of Willow Run. I wanted to dive across the table to strangle him on the spot for killing the innocent. But that would be a dumb move. I was trapped inside a prison, surrounded by guards. This was not the time. It was better to play along, feed his ego, and choose a better time. So I changed the topic.
“I can understand why you chose here. Very isolated. The valley is perfectly shaped for this operation. You guys must have started the fire. It wasn’t coincidence.”
“Let’s just say that our association with Ranger Andrew Pine has been most accommodating. He has worked with us and provided us a fine place for our enterprise, cleared the land for us, and kept prying eyes from interfering. Of course, until you came along. But now even you have been solved as a problem.”
I had noted there was a large safe in the far corner of the room. I gestured toward it. “Is that where you keep all the drug money?”
“Why yes it is. Each shipment of drug we take out of here brings back cash and a load of supplies. The money all stays here until we are done. Then we split it up and go our separate ways.” He seemed pleased when mentioning the cash, but grew more melancholy afterward. It appeared he was not really looking forward to this enterprise ending. It would end his command. He would have no post, would have no purpose. I knew the feeling. Being unemployed had haunted me for most of the past year. But in his anguish I found another reason to survive. I wanted to hasten the end of his command, to add to his torment.
Gates was now looking at the ceiling as if he was distracted. He might be musing on the end of his days as a platoon leader. Maybe I wasn’t feeding his ego sufficiently enough to suit him. Perhaps he would indulge me by answering one more question.
“There has to be someone in town helping you. Is it the Sheriff?”
He raised his hand to stop me. “Enough. You are beginning to bore me. Sergeant Grimes!” Gates returned to his desk, and Grimes took me away quickly.
I had a lot to think about. My missteps that had caused unintended death were weighing on me. The situation I was in and how I would escape it. But not tonight. My head was throbbing, and I was exhausted. I yearned to lie down anywhere and fall into an endless sleep.
I was led to a hut. The space was filled with mattresses laid on the floor, occupied by the Afghans who had been working in the fields all around me. The hut held nothing else except the dirty ragged sleeping forms on the floor. No windows, no shelves, no furniture. Nothing. The soldier didn’t go past the entry but simply pushed me toward an empty spot in the corner. I lay down, heard the guard exit and lock the door, and was instantly asleep.