by Caleb Cleek
There would undoubtedly be observers keeping watch. Once darkness settled over the face of the terrain, flashlights would give away our approach. Matt was going to have to trust the rod receptors in his eyes to detect reflected moonlight so long as he continued wearing his gas mask. The waxing moon would be directly overhead in an hour or two. It would be full in three or four days and was giving off ample light to illuminate the landscape sufficiently to navigate.
“Let’s get started,” Matt admonished, pulling his back pack around his shoulders.
We had six or seven miles to traverse over rough country before we reached Curtis’ hideout. We had planned to wait until dark to start; however, we were all anxious and the chances that somebody was keeping watch this far away from the hideout were not strong.
We fell in behind Matt, who was the most familiar with the area. Even given the rocky and hilly terrain, we made good time, covering close to two miles in the first half hour. After that, the going slowed. Matt and I still waited to don our night vision. Matt didn’t want to take his mask off and risk exposure to Jeb and I was unaccustomed to them. With the bright moon, it was still easier going for me without them.
A coyote howled in the distance. Another responded and then another. I didn’t know if all three were members of a pack and were communicating their locations with each other or if they were from different packs and were warning each other to stay in their own territories.
The sounds of predators in the night were disheartening. It reminded me that there were other predators wandering about under the cover of darkness, predators that would attack without warning. I trusted that Zack would detect them with his night vision before they were close enough to endanger us.
After two more hours, we had only covered another two miles. We traversed patches of thick growth that slowed our progress to a crawl. Thorny branches clawed at my loose clothing. I continually had to stop and release myself from their entangling clutches. Trails through mazes of bushes proved to be exceedingly deceitful and left us backtracking in search of different paths after encountering impenetrable branchy walls.
Ascending and descending steep ridges left my legs increasingly weary. Lava rocks snagged my feet as they trudged forward. I repeatedly stumbled and twice fell, landing roughly on waiting rocks. Scrapes and bruises were added to those I had already received since yesterday afternoon. The cool evening air, propelled by the light breeze blowing in my face, made me wish I had brought a jacket.
Behind me, Jeb attempted to stifle a cough he had not had earlier in the day. He stopped to shed his long sleeve shirt, claiming that walking was making him hot. Five minutes later, I could hear his teeth chatter before he put the shirt back on. I asked how he was doing and he responded that he was fine other than a headache.
Finally, the brush began to thin out. We entered a flat, open expanse. The dry grass that covered the plain reflected the moonlight, creating the appearance of water. We trudged through the shin high sea of golden weeds.
Thickets of juniper sprung up in pockets around us. The terrain leveled out ahead and to the sides. We were on the plateau and were within a mile of the abandoned ranch. Going would be easy for the rest of the trek.
Matt paused so we could plan our final approach. I retrieved my night vision goggles from my pack, and affixed the webbed strap to my head. The need for visual acuity now outweighed my discomfort. I adjusted the lenses in front of my eyes and pressed the power button. The landscape lit up around me and took on a greenish hue. Details popped from obscurity into a brilliantly bright existence. The number of stars overhead increased exponentially. I was instantly transformed from a sheep wandering blindly into a predator stalking prey under the obscuring cover of darkness. For the past day, I had lived as the hunted. Now I was the hunter. I was seeking my prey like a lion roaming the plains of Africa. If events unfolded as I hoped they would, a well placed shot would leave Curtis dead and would scatter his followers into the night.
We slowly closed in on the camp, using every bit of cover available. We followed a small dip in the landscape. In the spring, when heavy rains pelted the ground, the dip probably turned into a stream. Tonight it was just a grassy depression. When the depression turned lazily and meandered away from where we were heading, we hunched over and advanced on a lone juniper that hid us from prying eyes. Light from the house pulled us ever closer, drawing us in. I felt like a moth flying toward a fire, unable to pull myself away from the light even though I understood the danger that came with it. Its attraction was inescapable.
When we had closed to a thousand yards, we pulled up short. We knew there would be sentries. It was imperative that we find them before they saw us. It was doubtful they had night vision, but it wasn’t a certainty I was willing to bet my life on. We spent thirty minutes searching for them in vain.
“If we can’t see the sentries from here, we’re going to have to move closer,” I whispered quietly.
“We’re going to need to spread out,” Matt said. “The chances of finding them are better if we cover a wider swath.”
“They’re going to be a lot more likely to see find us if we’re spread out,” I countered.
I crawled around Jeb and Matt so that I was beside Zack. “How do you recommend we approach this?”
“These guys are amateurs. We haven’t seen anybody so far. They may only have people guarding the entrance road. There’s nowhere for them to hide out here. If they had watchers here, we would have seen them.”
Jeb nodded his head in agreement. “I don’t know what they’re thinking, leaving themselves this open.” Then his body was racked with a spasm of coughing which was more or less muffled when he buried his face in the crook of his forearm.
Zack resumed, “We’re going to work our way to the edge of the outbuildings. From there, we’re going to circle around the perimeter and make sure it’s clear. If it’s all clear, I want to leave one man on the driveway to cover us in case they have sentries along the road. The rest of us will go in and find Curtis.”
I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the plan. This was supposed to be a recon mission. Zack was used to working with Delta soldiers. We weren’t even close to being regular soldiers, much less Special Forces. We didn’t have the training or experience he was accustomed to his teammates having. He was fully capable of pulling off complex assaults. We had no experience in such matters.
I explained my concern to Zack. He nodded as I spoke, indicating he understood what I was saying. When I finished, he merely stated, “Stay on my six. We’ll be fine.”
As we got closer to the settlement, we were able to clearly see people moving around inside the house. They were all women. We didn’t see a single man among them.
A syncopated beat increased in rate and intensity as it thumped its way out of the dwelling. Six or seven women were moving in rhythmic motions to the music. The gyrations were at least half a second off from the pounding bass. The closer we got to the large picture window, the more their movements seemed to flow with the beat.
Twenty minutes later, we were at the edge of the outbuildings which surrounded the large, ranch style house in the center. By the time we reached the periphery, the music and dancing had aligned themselves. Most of the twenty-something year old girls were dancing alone. Two were dancing together, grinding away to the beat.
A single girl sat alone on a couch in the corner. She appeared to be completely engrossed with something she was fumbling with on the floor. After several seconds, her hands came into view above the coffee table between us and her. One hand had a dark object that was three or four inches long. The other had a clear tube the same length. A blue spike of flame suddenly erupted from the dark object and she held it to the clear tube. She put the tube to her lips and inhaled deeply, oblivious to what was going on around her. She continued to suck on what I now recognized to be a pipe. After she had inhaled her fill, she placed the pipe in a tray on the table. She leaned back in the couch and closed
her eyes. A smile grew across her face as euphoria crawled down her body, reaching the tips of her toes. She lay in blissful stillness for several minutes. Her fingers began tapping out the grating beat of the music on the worn fabric of the faded couch. Suddenly, she was on her feet, dancing with the two girls who had been gyrating together while she was on the couch. Their movements were flowing and coordinated, hers were jerky and ungainly. Nobody seemed to notice.
We had seen enough.
We circled the buildings to clear the perimeter. The outbuildings were covered in twelve inch wide weathered boards. It was the kind of siding you didn’t see used anymore. After decades of harvesting trees, there weren’t many left that were big enough to get boards that wide. The ancient buildings were still sturdy and in good shape. On the far side of the compound, we encountered a building with metal sides that didn’t come all the way to the ground. The front was completely open. A packed dirt road led east to what looked like a dirt runway. Closer inspection revealed that the metal pole barn served as a part time hanger. It was currently empty.
We moved to the next building, which was an old barn. The windows had been covered over with wood. Several large exhaust ducts exited from the roof. “Do you smell that?” I asked. As soon as I asked the question, I realized I was the only one without a gas mask. No one else could smell anything besides the rubber lining of his mask.
“What is it?” Matt asked.
“It smells like cat urine,” I said before peering around the corner of the barn.
“That’s what I figured,” Matt answered expectantly.
“What does that mean?” Zack asked.
“The smell, along with the exhaust fans and the covered windows, means there’s a meth lab inside this building. If they’ve built a runway and a hanger, it means it’s probably a big one.”
Chapter 41
I paused at the door of the barn before twisting the handle. Because of the remoteness of the location, I doubted it would be locked. I wrapped my fingers around the round cylinder. The cold metal sucked the warmth from my hand as effectively as a block of ice. I twisted the knob, which offered slight resistance through the internal springs. The door swung open, revealing a cavernous interior bathed in goggle-induced green. This wasn’t the first meth lab I had run across. They were all over the place in economically depressed areas like Vista County. I had never encountered anything like this one, though. This wasn’t the workspace of a backyard chemist. It was what would come to mind if you were told to imagine a college or industrial chemistry lab.
It wasn’t made up of a mismatched assortment of soda bottles, mason jars and hot plates. It was not a disorganized array of chemicals with trash strewn about haphazardly. There were no telltale boxes of cold medicine. Instead, the walls were lined with neat work counters. Shelves on the wall above the workstations were lined with what must have been tens of thousands of dollars worth of glassware. Plastic barrels were lined neatly along the far wall like formations of soldiers standing at attention. Metal shelves arrayed next to the barrels contained dozens of brown bottles which I recognized from high school chemistry as containing light sensitive chemicals.
The counters lining the wall had metal rods which were clamped together in horizontal and vertical arrangements, forming maze-like patterns protruding from the counter surface. Bottles and flasks were affixed to the rods. Glass tubes spiraled lazily from one container to another. Some containers rested in beakers full of water. Others were suspended in mid-air.
The center of the room had stainless steel appliances. There were several refrigerators, which I recognized, and there were a lot of items which were completely foreign to me. It all looked very expensive and technical.
The more I saw, the less I understood. Curtis had dropped out of high school. He didn’t have the knowledge, finances or the vision to set up something of this magnitude. The orderliness of the lab was beyond Curtis’ ability to maintain. He was involved for sure, but he was, by no means, the mastermind behind it.
I imagined that he started cooking meth here on a small scale. Eventually his production outweighed what he and his sidekicks were using. He had enough left after each production to start selling to a middle man. The buyer saw the hideaway and went in as a partner on a mega lab at Curtis’ location. The part I didn’t understand was why somebody big enough to develop this lab would keep Curtis around. He was nothing but a liability, especially when he brought all his buddies and hood rats with him. It was only a matter of time before somebody talked and brought this newly built empire crashing down in flames before it had an opportunity to become truly profitable.
The metal door quietly screeched against the metal frame when Jeb pulled it closed, cutting off all outside light. There were several sources of dim light in the back corner of the lab. They provided enough illumination for my goggles to function, but not naked eyes. Matt and Jeb were effectively blind. The light sources cast small halos for several feet and no more.
I heard a muffled banging behind me and turned to see Matt bumping into the wall as his hand groped around the doorway. Finding what he was looking for, his hand stopped searching and moved up in a well practiced motion. Two switches clicked as they closed an unseen circuit. A faint pop in the ceiling was followed by a hum. Nothing happened. Several seconds later, rows of dim lights illuminated faintly from the ceiling. Each shown like a distant lighthouse on a stormy sea, hope to those lost in obscuring gloom. I turned my goggles off and pivoted them up above my eyes as the massive bulbs heated and began to emit dim blue light.
When the light reached a bright enough level to illuminate the interior, Matt whistled softly. “It’s too bad there’s no one left to care, because this has to be one of the biggest meth labs in the country. Busting this would put our department on the map.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about Lost Hills being an arcane point on the map any longer. After yesterday, I’m afraid everyone knows where we are.” The increasing luminosity of the overhead lights brought the details of the lab into focus as the light from the burning bulbs changed from blue to yellow to a more natural white.
“What do we do with this place?” Jeb asked. “Should we burn it?”
“We’re going to leave it be,” I said in frustration. This was the find of a lifetime. Two days ago, I would have given my pension to find a lab half this size. Now, like Matt said, it didn’t matter anymore. This lab wouldn’t have the chance to pump out any more poison to kids and junkies across the western half of the continent. In a single day, its customer base had dried up. Burning it would only catch the surrounding wild lands on fire. With no one left to quench hungry flames, the fire would burn until the fall rains came. The lusty blaze would devour every resource in its path, resources that could prove to be the difference between our survival and death.
No, we would leave the lab alone and its usefulness would die with the rest of the population. It would stand for decades as a monument to the depravity of man, long after man himself had been knocked from the throne of dominance and was striving for his very survival like his Stone Age counterpart had thousands of years before.
Zack interrupted my contemplation. “As interesting as this is, it isn’t why we came. Let’s keep moving.” Everybody moved to the door. Zack grasped the interior knob with one hand as he moved the other hand to the side of the door frame and pushed the switch down. The burgeoning brightness above us died out without having ever reached its crescendo. The buzz of the high voltage ballasts also died; however, silence did not return to the night. The high pitch hum was replaced by a deeper droning. My ears strained in the darkness, searching for the source. It was coming from outside the building, of that I was sure.
We exited the building, careful to remain in the recesses of the shadows. Eight ears struggled to decipher the origin of the sound. After ten seconds, Jeb started, “That’s an airplane!”
He was right. After another twenty seconds, all doubt was gone. It was an airplane a
nd it was coming in our direction. We moved closer to the house, searching the sky for a visual confirmation to the information our ears were relaying. The thumping bass from the house quieted and died away as a song ended. We had taken cover behind a windowless shed as we continued searching for the aircraft. A voice inside the shed crackled in Spanish. Another voice responded. The second was crystal clear.
“What did they say?” I asked Matt, who was fluent in Spanish.
“The first voice asked to activate the runway lights. The second acknowledged the request.” As if confirming Matt’s translation, a string of white lights displaced the darkness along the edges of the dirt airstrip. Each end was bracketed by a row of four red lights. The rectangular border of the airstrip was plainly outlined.
As the plane drew closer, the high pitched whine of a turbine engine separated itself from the deep roar of the propeller. The sound of the aircraft changed direction as it turned from base to final approach. A landing light illuminated, giving away the exact location of the aircraft, which was now on a short final approach.
The owner of the voice in the shed exited and walked passed where we were hidden in the shadows. His dark figure momentarily eclipsed a runway light as he walked between us and the beacon, traversing the distance to the end of the taxiway.
The aircraft touched down on the dirt surface and taxied to the pole hanger. The pilot cut off the fuel supply and the earsplitting scream of the turbine engine began spooling down.
Before the propeller had stopped spinning, the radioman carried a set of wooden steps to the rear of the aircraft. The rear door opened and five men exited the plane and descended the steps to the ground. The pilot’s door opened, a metal step was kicked down, and another man exited the plane.
The music from the house had stopped. The approach and landing of the airplane had not escaped the notice of the partiers inside. Apparently, the appearance of the aircraft was a new development to them and the party spilled out of the house onto the wraparound porch.
