“Do you know what these buildings are for?” I asked.
“I can tell you what we think,” Monica said.
I held out the pictures so everyone could see.
Monica leaned forward and pointed. “These are barracks to house the test subjects. Beside that is the common area with kitchen, showers, and toilets.”
“At least they don’t live that bad,” Mike said.
“All around are test plantings.” Monica’s finger moved around the pictures. “Over there are accommodations for the scientists and people working for Naintosa and Pharmalin and their eating area, etcetera. Schmidt has an apartment there too. That side of the cinder-block building is the lab. Near the middle is the infirmary.”
“The infirmary is large,” Ivan said. “That says something.”
“To be able to further test after the people are sick,” I said.
Ivan nodded. “They had anticipated it.”
“What’s that gray metal building back there?” Sue asked.
Monica hesitated. “We think that’s an incinerator.”
“What?” My heart jumped.
“Like a fucking Auschwitz incinerator?” Mike looked disgusted.
“They have to discard their failed experiments somehow,” Jorge said.
That did make terrible, sickening sense on Pharmalin’s end. I wondered if the innocent people being tested on knew that was their fate?
“Those poor people,” Sue’s expression showed revulsion.
“We’ve never seen a bus with people ever come out of the compound.” Monica held up a zoomed-in shot of the incinerator.
The building itself gave off a devilish vibe, not to mention the broad, bald guard standing at attention in front of its double steel doors.
Monica pulled out more pictures and distributed them.
They were of various people in lab coats. In one of them, a fair-haired man with glasses looked familiar. I gave that picture straight to Ivan. “Is that the scientist from Dr. Roth’s video? You know, the head Pharmalin guy who said he found the actual cure for cancer and Dr. Schmidt IV became mad at him.” After we’d escaped from Vancouver and made it to Paris, we’d discovered that video on Dr. Roth’s laptop.
Ivan studied the picture. “Yes, Dr. Daniel Smith.”
The next were long-distance shots of guards with rifles, dressed in camouflage, all big and Caucasian. There was a heavy metal front gate with a guard house next to it. “Not exactly easy to get in there without being noticed.”
“Enrique thinks he may have found a way,” Monica said. “He will show you.”
The last set of pictures was of the test subjects—people with noticeable deformities: men and women with burn scars on their arms, legs, and heads, some with missing patches of hair. There were small children with misshapen facial features: small noses, ears, and lips, and oddly-shaped arms with missing stubby digits on their hands. “So sad.”
“That’s not the result of the current conditions. That is the result of glyphosate poisoning,” Monica informed us. “Enrique wanted to get pictures of people going in and out of the infirmary but couldn’t.”
Ivan nodded in recognition. “From the government spraying.”
“Yes.” Monica nodded. “Since 1994, the Colombian government, with funding from the US government and glyphosate from Naintosa, have been spraying from airplanes vast areas where coca was suspected of being grown. The rationale was to kill the plants that produce cocaine, but there’s been no regard for the poor farmers that had been forced to grow the coca by the drug traffickers. In some cases, they sprayed whole villages. The adults with the burn scars were directly in contact with the glyphosate, and the children with deformities were the result of their mothers being poisoned internally.”
I remembered us talking about it. Naintosa still denied that glyphosate was toxic.
Ivan shook his head. “Further irrefutable evidence.”
“This is evidence you guys were right,” Mike said.
When Enrique came home in the afternoon, we asked if it was possible for us to take a closer look at the compound the next morning. Jorge, Sue, and I only, would go with him, because we didn’t want too many people wandering around in the jungle at once.
The girls came home after school and said that the drop had gone well.
Sue and I hadn’t checked our e-mails since we’d been shot at in Burford, so that was our task after dinner. I was surprised that there weren’t too many messages.
My publisher had written to inform me that my book was coming out at the end of June as a “Summer Read.” They’d mailed ten advanced reader copies to me at the Burford estate. A lot of good that’s going to do me.
“My book’s coming out in five weeks,” I said to Sue.
“That’s exciting.” She looked up from her screen. “You should be really proud. I’m sure it’ll do well. Maybe we’ll be back in time for you to promote it?”
That last sentence hung in the air.
CHAPTER 29
May 22, 2003
We were up before dawn. Monica had given Sue, Jorge, and me dark-green, long-sleeved shirts and camouflage pants to wear. Each of us was equipped with a backpack that held food, water, binoculars, two extra ammunition clips, a flashlight, and emergency kit.
Enrique brought out a cardboard box containing used holsters and helped Sue and me choose ours. That day we’d wear ones that went around our belts and strapped to our thighs. For the future we chose holsters that would conceal the guns under our clothes inside our back waistbands.
I couldn’t keep down more than half an arepa and a cup of coffee yet was trying not to show how nervous I was.
Sue was having a pickle dipped in peanut butter.
“What are you eating?” I asked. “You hate pickles … and peanut butter?”
“I don’t know. I had a sudden urge. It tastes pretty good.” She swallowed the last bite. “Let’s go.”
As I holstered my gun and placed my arm through the backpack strap, I noticed Sue giving me an approving look. “What?”
“Nothing.” She cinched her backpack. “I just had a flashback. It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the last three years, especially you. Think back to when you were a disillusioned journalist fighting your internal struggles, and now look at you, in camo, packin’ a gun, and going to spy on the villains. You’ve grown a lot.”
I took a second to remember. “Yeah, right. You too … except for the internal-struggles part.” It was true, I felt like a different person.
Sue went to push my shoulder, and I stiffened at her impact.
“You’re in better shape, that’s for sure.” She put some extra weight behind her arm to show she could still move me.
That little exchange with Sue loosened me up, and I wasn’t as nervous about going into the jungle.
To our surprise there was a tunnel beneath the floorboards of the laundry-room closet. Enrique said that the last owners had been in the drug business.
The passage was cut through the dense soil, reinforced by plywood on the ceiling and two-by-fours along the sides. Roots grew down that we had to maneuver around. In two places there were wooden doors blocking access to what I assumed were other passageways. The confined space was claustrophobic.
After two hundred yards we reached a makeshift door made of palm fronds. Outside was a burned-out shell of a cocaine lab, already almost all reclaimed by the environment.
We moved along a faint path.
It had rained less than an hour ago, and the leaves dripped moisture, wetting our clothes even more than our perspiration. You could taste the water evaporating, and the scent was of orchids and disturbed, decaying vegetation. Birds chirped in the branches above in a jumble of song, and insects double the size I was used to hummed and swirled around us.
I was second from the back, in front of Jorge, who was carrying a scary-looking automatic rifle. Enrique led the way in silence with Sue right behind him.
Walking was slow
because of the density of the foliage, downed trees to climb over, and slippery roots hidden under leaves. It took about an hour before Enrique raised his hand in a motion for us to stop.
Moving up, I could just make out a wire fence about thirty yards ahead.
“Let me go see where the nearest guards are.” Enrique snaked around ferns and vines, making his way forward.
When he was a few feet from the fence he stopped. In slow motion Enrique dropped to his knees, and then he rolled under a wild fruit tree.
I tensed in anticipation and strained to see what he was watching. Memories surfaced of bullets flying through the air past us. I felt the notch in my ear.
Beams of sunlight broke through the canopy above as clouds parted. Natural spotlights illuminated bushes and trees, their moist leaves glistening. Jorge motioned for Sue and me to move back for more cover.
Enrique waited a few more moments before rising back to his knees and then to his feet. He moved with ginger steps to the wire fence. We saw the back of his black-haired head move from side to side. Then he looked up and we noticed a camera on a high fence post next to him. Once it panned away, he motioned us forward.
I should’ve felt relieved that he thought it was safe, but I didn’t.
We snuck to the fence made of razor wire, tightly woven. There was no way of separating it and climbing through. If we cut it, it was so taut that the vibration would sound around the whole perimeter. The fence was twelve feet tall, with a V at the top—too difficult to climb over.
Enrique pointed out another set of wires strung along the inside of the main fence about a foot apart, up to seven feet in height. A large mosquito went to land on the wire in front of us at eye level. It was fried to a crisp before it even landed. That made us aware of zapping sounds all along the fence line. I didn’t know how strong the voltage was and had no desire to find out.
Enrique gestured up the pole we were standing next to. The camera, red light on the side, moved in slow motion from left to right. “We’re in a blind spot,” he whispered. “They’re more concerned about people getting out than in.”
The corn stalks on the other side were taller than us, so we couldn’t see anything past them.
“Those plants have grown quickly,” Enrique said. “Follow me and I will take you to a better vantage point. Stay low.”
We waited for the camera to be angled directly away from us before moving back into the jungle.
There was no path this time, and we had to be careful not to disrupt leaves and branches that would show movement. We came to an opening between rows of vegetable plants that gave us a view inside the compound. It was just like the pictures we’d seen.
Each motion, sound, and breath we made seemed amplified in my ears.
We pulled out our binoculars; Enrique produced a camera with a sizable telephoto lens.
There were several people in white T-shirts near the barracks, sitting at three picnic tables in the shade of an oak-like tree. Sadness ran through me as I saw their forlorn faces. There were children around them, playing, oblivious to what was really happening. Scanning right, I saw two men and a woman in white lab coats talking under the awning of a building. That had to be the infirmary. A limping man with lesions on his face approached them. The woman looked perturbed but took the man inside.
Scanning farther right, the dark-gray metal building came into view. It gave off an ominous feeling. How many people have been cremated there?
A figure in white passed my view. I followed with my binoculars to see a stocky man with broad shoulders and short legs walking with a confident stride. It was Hendrick Schmidt V, going from the infirmary to … what must be the lab. There’s the little fucker. Anger rose inside me as soon as I realized it was him.
“Everybody down,” Jorge said in a strong whisper.
I was pushed to the ground from behind, as was Sue. Jorge landed on top of us.
Leaves and branches shredded above and all around, as bullets tore in. Sudden chaos enveloped us.
Jorge rolled off and we crawled as fast as we could back into the jungle.
There was an explosion of sound right behind us. Jorge had let loose with his automatic rifle, sending a spray of bullets into the compound, taking out the guard that had shot at us.
Yelling came from a distance.
“Go!” Enrique practically lifted Sue and me to our feet, and we stumbled and ran.
Jorge sidestepped behind us, rifle pointing back at the camp.
“We don’t know if they’ll follow us,” Enrique said. “But we’re not going to wait to see.”
Within a minute we could hear voices behind us. They were following, but we had a lead.
Jorge tripped and went down because he kept looking behind us, but was back up immediately.
Enrique was in the lead, guiding us.
We kept slipping on roots and scratching ourselves on branches as we stayed away from paths.
Sue twisted and flipped onto her back trying to get over a fallen log. I landed right on top and winded her. Getting back on my legs as fast as I could, I pulled her up and helped her along until she caught her breath.
Enrique stopped and pointed. “Keep going straight ahead another two hundred meters.”
How far are two hundred meters, again? I’d go by yards, because that’s what I knew from playing so much golf in the past, and hope that was close enough.
After a few steps Sue and I looked back to see Enrique, with Jorge’s help, pull on a rope that lifted three bed-spring frames with metal spikes, into the air. They slid them onto springs and pulled the frames down against the tension, latching onto a thin one-foot-high rebar pole. From there Enrique unwound thin wire just above the ground eight feet in front and about thirty feet across and tied the end to a thick bush.
Before then we hadn’t noticed any of that apparatus on the jungle floor.
Jorge came at us. “You have to keep going.”
“What is that?” Sue asked.
“A trap, in case they come directly in front of where we’re going.” Jorge motioned us forward.
Within seconds, Enrique was back with us, taking the lead. His legs took one stride to Sue’s two.
He made an abrupt stop at a stump, and we all came skidding to a halt behind him.
Jorge grabbed a dried palm frond and started wiping away any obvious tracks we’d made.
“Where is it?” Enrique stepped around the stump to a bush. Neither were what they appeared to be once he reached into a hole in the bush and the stump opened. “Flashlights on.”
As we piled inside and Jorge pulled closed the stump door, we heard agonizing screams. More than one man had been following right behind us and gotten caught in the trap.
Our flashlights bobbed as we ran through the dirt tunnel. I hit my head multiple times, filling my hair with dirt.
We continued forward until we reached stairs.
Enrique pushed a trap door up and we came out into a dimly lit, dusty room. As soon as we were all out, Enrique let the door fall back down and latched two bolts across it.
There was one door, which led us out into an alley.
Across the hard-rutted dirt was a door to another house. Enrique gave the peeling painted wood a hard rap and then opened it. An old man and woman were sitting at a kitchen table. The gentleman nodded and raised his beer bottle as we raced by.
In a bedroom there was another trap door, under a thin rug, leading to another tunnel. Flashlights back on, we kept running. The ceiling was higher and the passageway better kept than the last.
At the end we exited through a cover made of intertwined branches. That brought us out into the jungle again and then eighty yards later another altered stump and yet another tunnel.
We pushed on for a few hundred yards until we reached a padlock that was in a hole with a metal rod between it and a rusty door. Enrique reached into his pocket and produced a set of keys. He unlocked the partition, and we passed through.
A pass
age went in either direction—we went right.
This route seemed familiar. A couple of minutes later Enrique lifted yet another trap door, which opened to his laundry room.
Sue and I leaned against the washing machine to catch our breath. Even Jorge looked tired. Sue had dirt all over her face—mine was probably worse.
Monica rushed into the room. “What happened?”
“We were fired on and had to do the multi-tunnel escape,” Enrique wheezed.
“I see,” Monica said. “Is everyone all right?”
Mike and Ivan came into the doorway.
“What the hell,” Mike said.
“We were shot at and chased,” Sue said.
“I doubt they knew it was us,” I said. “And there’s no way they could trace us back here through that labyrinth.”
“We’re safe.” Enrique took a deep breath. “What’s for lunch?”
“Go clean up while Maria finishes making lunch,” Monica said. “Bring me back your dirty clothes, so I can have them washed and ready again.
I gathered Maria was the helper that we hadn’t seen yet.
Sue stripped down to her underwear as soon as we came to our room. On her way to the shower, she turned and said. “The men impaled by that bed-spring trap thing, and the guard shot at the compound … we took more lives.”
“I know.” I knew what she was getting at but wasn’t sure what to say. “It was them or us.”
She watched me for a moment as if waiting for more of a reaction and then went into the bathroom.
I was feeling numb. Had I become accustomed to all the violence? Had I stopped caring about other people? No, that wasn’t it—it was survival, for the greater good.
Everyone was in the living room, discussing what we’d seen, when the girls arrived home.
Esmeralda went straight to Ivan. “We have a response for you.”
Beyond Control Page 24