The Omega Command
Page 36
“I’m operating on a shoestring here,” he told her. “Six agents, some locals and state cops out of New York, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a tribal policeman, and now you.”
“Well, now that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“It’s like this,” Agent Cage explained. “The growers buy homes at foreclosure sales mostly across Quebec and British Colombia as well as outside Toronto and other venues. They pretty much gut the interiors to turn them into grow houses for an especially potent strain of marijuana known as BC Bud. The head growers get all the soil laid down, seeds planted, lighting and environment set up and turn things over to immigrants to handle the tender loving care.”
“Did you say immigrants?”
“I did indeed, Ranger. Chinese mostly, totally beholden to the druggers for their very lives after being smuggled out of their home countries. A separate syndicate charges a fee to get the immigrants into Canada and then turns them over to the druggers to work off the rest with a ticket to the good old USA when the time comes. Poor bastards can see the American Dream across the border and will do pretty much anything they’re told.”
“My granddad arrested plenty of Mexican runners in the 30s bringing marijuana and black tar heroine across the border for pretty much the same reason.”
“Hardcore druggers have certainly made a life’s work out of feeding on desperation, haven’t they? By the time their pigeons realize they’ve signed onto a sham, fear keeps them in tow.” Gage shook his head, thin wisps of hair shifting with it. “Not much changes.”
Caitlin looked toward the vast expanse of land across the frozen river that looked postcard pretty and very small in the distance, thinking about another front opened in a war they were already losing. “In this case, it just gets worse.”
Chapter 3
Quebec; the present
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” Caitlin asked Beauchamp, watching the black-garbed figures heading up the walk to the front, three of them lugging the gasoline cans.
“Didn’t Agent Gage explain what the Angels do to the houses once they’re done with them, once the mold sets in?”
“Burn them to the ground. Only this house hasn’t been harvested yet. No mold yet, nothing like that. And there’s still people inside.”
“Meaning …”
“Jesus Christ,” realized Caitlin, binoculars still glued to her eyes, “they’re on to us.”
“It does seem that way, eh?”
Caitlin moved closer to the window in response. “How many immigrants we got in that house?”
Beauchamp checked his notebook, flipping back a few pages. “Seven, by my count. I recognized two of the Hells Angels, the big bald ones with those arrow tattoos painted on their skulls: the LaChance brothers. They’re from your side of the border in Michigan but wanted for murder in Canada too.”
Caitlin lowered her binoculars and watched the Mountie fumble for his cell phone. “Then how ‘bout we go arrest them?”
But Beauchamp had the phone at his ear. “We gotta call Gage first. See how he wants this handled.”
Caitlin was already on her feet, pushing the blood back into her legs, taking her mind to a distant, yet familiar place. “Only one way it can be handled, Mountie.”
“He’s not answering.” Beauchamp’s eyes flared in the room’s thin, ambient light. “I’ve heard the Rangers are the next best thing to Mounties.”
“Funny,” said Caitlin, “I’ve heard almost the same thing.”
Standing now, Caitlin pressed her binoculars back against her eyes and focused on the grow house. She caught splotchy glimpses of some of the Angels spreading the gasoline about, dousing everything in their paths. There were glimpses, too, of the biggest ones, the American LaChance brothers, smacking a few of the Chinese around, ignoring their protestations since clearly they held no more value than the lumber and furnishings about to go up in an inferno.
“They’re gonna burn those Chinese along with everything else,” Caitlin said and pushed back her jacket to expose her holstered SIG Sauer 9-millimeter pistol.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Beauchamp asked her, pocketing his phone and ripping out his pistol in its place.
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copyright © 1986 by Jon Land
cover design by Christopher Tobias
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1458-9
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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