Three Minutes Page 8

  “Right, left, right left right!”

  A courtyard of incorruptibles. It had been a long and winding ride here from the day he’d decided to find a way to survive while Liz was slowly disappearing. When he needed something solid to hold on to, to keep from falling apart. A contrast as much as a crutch. And his need for it grew stronger with the realization that no matter how loudly he screamed, he was never going to get it into her head to stop killing herself. He’d realized he had access to a tool that other parents of children battling addiction did not. Power. He could meet with experts, very clever people, and surround himself with them. He had the power to change things. Even though his political rivals initially tried to use Liz against him. Politics. Throw shit and try to avoid getting hit by any shit yourself. But then it all flipped. He’d done the opposite of what they expected—went public with all of it, didn’t deny a thing, didn’t hide or neglect it. Revealed everything about a daughter who didn’t want to live. About the Crouse project, which was in its early stages. And his private hell ironically became a professional asset—his credibility and passion were never questioned—America’s war against drugs became Speaker of the House Crouse’s war against drugs.

  “Right . . . turn!”

  The Crouse Room at the NGA. It was there that it all began. Spy satellites deployed all around the world in order to gain control over production, supply, the behavior of the drug profiteers. But that feeling of just watching, without being able to participate or intervene, had paradoxically increased. The sharper the satellite images became, the closer they got, the more obvious it became that they were little more than spectators. Because almost all drug production took place in extremely corrupt countries, the project staff could raise the alarm as much as they wanted and still nothing happened. The intelligence gathered in the Crouse Room made no impact beyond its doors. Then, after a few years of ineffectual satellite reconnaissance, the Crouse Force was born. Honest police forces that would be trained and positioned near markets where a culture of bribery protected the drug barons. And they would start with the biggest of them all, Colombia.

  “Company . . . halt!”

  An agreement was made with the Colombian government, and one hundred and fifty-five candidates were taken to the United States for training in advanced techniques for narcotics policing, all at the US government’s expense. Their task was to destroy the means of production and prevent deliveries. Future members of the Crouse Force were given very high salaries in order to stave off corruption—ten times a Colombian policeman’s salary. And because it worked so well here, it exerted pressure on other drug-producing states to create similar forces.

  “At ease!”

  The soldiers shook off the dirt, adjusted their equipment, went back to where they were before.

  He’d seen this exercise several times before—the same movements against imaginary enemies—both here and in the United States, an illusion meant to convince. But it wasn’t enough. At night, those hellish images pushed their way back inside, invading his bed, they . . . he glanced up at the panoramic window. They were still standing there: Colonel Victor Navarro and his subordinate officers. Speaker Crouse started to rush toward the slightly narrower, higher building that housed the officers’ headquarters at the heart of the compound. The stone stairs echoed as he climbed up the slightly wider staircase, his hand on the soft, wooden railing that tickled his palm. He almost ran into the officers’ club over the red carpet, rounding a serving cart bearing beautiful, hand-painted glasses and heavy, well-stocked bottles, passed by a line of officers, didn’t stop until he reached the window and the back of the regimental commander whose eyes were on the courtyard Crouse had just left.

  “Navarro?”

  The colonel turned in surprise toward the panting Crouse.

  “Sir?”

  “That stuff down there, in the courtyard, that’s fine. If you like that sort of thing. I don’t. I like results. And I don’t want to watch any more marches.”

  Combat Platoon 1 had performed their theatrics, only a thin veil of dust was left, and everything seemed so clear from up here.

  “The results of all those exercises, all that training and education. The latest crackdown—that’s what I want to see! The consequences of the marching!”

  “Sir, that’s not really advisable.”

  “I’ll decide what’s advisable.”

  “Enemy territory, sir. It’s absolutely impossible to guarantee your safety if we take you there. We’re talking about the jungle. The world of terrorist guerrillas. And they know it much better than we do. I cannot recommend that you go out there.”

  After the performance came lunch—they wandered around the courtyard, sauntered toward the dining room, laughing and smoking, their imaginary enemy sure to stay away until everyone had been fed.

  “The latest crackdown—what was it?” Crouse didn’t raise his voice—that rarely had the same impact—instead he stepped closer, stared into the colonel’s eyes.

  “A cocina. A cocaine kitchen.”

  “Where?”

  “At the edge of the Serranía de la Macarena National Park. Around where the Río Guaviare changes into the Río Guayabero. Not quite the Amazon, but still very remote, an area where the rain forest meets the savannah.”

  “Distance?”

  “Two hundred and eighty kilometers south of Bogotá.”

  “Travel time?”

  “Four or five hours. By car.”

  “Good. Take me there.”

  Until now Roberts had been standing as usual. Right next to Crouse but not interrupting. But now he did just that, interrupted. Two steps forward, covering his mouth with his hand as he whispered into Crouse’s ear. “Sir, could you step aside with me for a moment? I’d like to speak with you.”

  “I know what you’re going to say. The same thing you said yesterday after I watched people rolled into a mass grave. And the thing about graves—the people in them will never go home to their families. Those we saw yesterday, Roberts, on the computer screens, buried for drugs . . . every single one of them has someone who misses them. And I can’t just keep watching that on a screen.”

  “Sir, I have to insist. Can you come with me?” Roberts nodded toward a corner of the grandiose room, behind Navarro’s desk, in front of a wall hung with two crossed bayonets.

  “Sir, we talked about it yesterday. And I explained to you I didn’t have time to get the security detail I needed together. And you promised me, sir, that under those conditions you would stay confined to the garrison area. On such short notice, we won’t even be able to get the planes we need to do the necessary radio jamming. The jungle has ears, sir, and those who are listening report what they hear.”

  “I also remember saying that if that’s what there is, that’s what you have. One hour, Roberts. Then we head out. I’m damn tired of drills and uniforms marching in unison. I want to see this fight against death with my own eyes.”

  Roberts was standing in front of a very powerful man, who also happened to be his boss, and this was usually as far as he went with his arguments. He had come to understand the authority of Crouse’s grief and guilt. But not now. This didn’t feel good. He had to make himself understood.

  “Tim, dammit!” He had never called the speaker by his first name. And certainly never sworn at him. Now he whispered again with his back to Navarro.

  “Listen to me—this is the same area where they just found a mass grave filled with two thousand unidentified bodies. And last weekend in this region, Meta, there were twenty-eight deaths reported in the drug war. That’s just what we know of—fifteen beheaded on a sidewalk in La Macarena, eight riddled with bullets in a taxi, five mutilated in a car.” Roberts grabbed his employer, pulling on the bulletproof vest he’d made Crouse wear, despite his protests. “I gave this to you before we stepped off the plane. This was enough for the airport, for the trip here, and inside this regiment’s walls. But you can put on ten more of these and it won’t make a di
fference. Out there, this—” Now he pulled on the vest again, a bit harder, and Crouse’s shirt as well. “—this crap is no more than makeup that gives you a false sense of security. My God, Tim, you might as well take it off right now if you don’t understand that! What you seem to have made up your mind about, you’re doing for your own sake. If we head out there, you’re risking not just your own life—you’re risking other people’s lives!”

  Speaker Crouse looked at him, aware that this man, who was willing to sacrifice his own life for him, meant well. But still his bodyguard was speaking only half-truths. He wasn’t allowing for the fact that that same weekend the Crouse Force had apprehended Andrés Julio Ramos, supreme leader of the drug cartel Xetas, in another part of Colombia. That’s what the Crouse Model was about: apprehending, wiping out the biggest parasites, and now Ramos was accused of murder, torture, and money laundering. We get them. Step by step. But every time they bust somebody, there were other groups ready to fight to fill the power vacuum left behind. We have to do it again. And again. Until nobody is left to fight.

  “Roberts, nobody knows what we’ll find out there. And it’s your job to protect me from it. That’s what you’re getting paid for. I assume you plan to continue doing your job.”

  “I . . .”

  “And don’t ever call me Tim again.”

  There was a rumble outside the panoramic window drowning out further conversation. Four tanks had rolled into the courtyard for the next performance and the crystal and china rattled.

  Crouse waited while it petered out, then shouted toward the officers. “Victor?”

  Victor Navarro turned around. “Sir?”

  “One hour.”

  The colonel, commander of this regiment, had a self-assured and powerful way of moving, shaped by the kind of gravel down in the barrack’s courtyard.

  “In one hour . . . what, sir?”

  “We depart. From here.”

  Frank Roberts held on tight to the wooden handle of the machete while using it to hack away at the lianas and thick branches that stood in front of him like an organic curtain—he wanted a clear view while he worked, he was limited enough as it was by the irritating moisture that was creeping along his back and gathering in a puddle beneath the holster on his shoulder. He’d already left his blazer in the front seat, but it didn’t matter—the oppressive heat, the buzzing insects, the complete stupidity of standing out here exposed to every kind of risk scrambled every square inch of his brain, making it difficult to think clearly.

  An abandoned guerrilla camp. Located somewhere inside the area of the Serranía de la Macarena National Park, surrounded by the rainforest.

  They wandered among trash strewn about as if on the outskirts of a shanty town: slashed tires, rusty gas cans, empty food containers, beer cans, pieces of cloth hanging between overgrown trees, and that godforsaken mud that lurked in the grass, which your shoes slid on and sank into. A place where no one lived anymore, a place humanity had abandoned.

  Roberts looked around. The military had formed one ring sixty meters out with the cocina at its center—like the protective skin of a human body—and with four trucks and one armored vehicle, and fifteen Colombian soldiers deployed in between, everything that Roberts could gather and vouch for at such short notice. Inside that was a smaller ring, twenty-five meters from the center, like a ribcage—fourteen Colombian special police. Then the third and innermost ring, woven around the heart, Speaker Crouse and Colonel Navarro inside the cocina—twelve American security agents from the Diplomatic Security Service for hand-to-hand combat.

  They were more than an hour from La Macarena, the nearest sizeable town. More than two hours to the nearest major city. A long, long way from any other soldiers or police officers, from any additional protection or support.

  The tall grass had been trampled into the mud, and a slight breeze wafted for a moment across his forehead and cheeks. Roberts passed through three layers of protection and reached the cocina at the center, positioned himself between the benches and plastic barrels and glass containers and low vats of galvanized sheet metal, just behind Crouse, who stood listening to Navarro.

  “The latest crackdown, sir—just as you requested. Three weeks ago. We used the expertise of all seven platoons. Combat Platoon 1—Colombian police specially trained to lead a crackdown within the legal process, including arrests, detentions, investigations—started reconnaissance of our objective, based on information from a DEA informant. One week before the crackdown. The sixth cocina we’ve taken down based on information from the same informant! According to reports, he’s infiltrated deep into the PRC, to the inner circle.”

  A flock of brightly colored parrots flew away in terror in the distance, chirping and chattering, a red, yellow, and green swarm against a clear blue sky, and one of the captains took a few steps forward and whispered “big cat” into Crouse’s ear.

  “Combat Platoon 2, liaison—combat soldiers like all the others, but with special training in communications—placed at base station for retrieval and linkage to satellite images, while Combat Platoon 7, air—trained for deployment by helicopter and small aircraft—conducted overflights and documented the site with both regular and infrared cameras.”

  Crouse took a lap around the simple building, knocked on the metal ceiling, kicked the dirt floor. It didn’t look like much. But this was the source. The root. This was where the long chain began. What a fucking centennial—manufacturing and transportation and sales made possible by corrupt police and military officers, and customs and justice officials who protected the wrong side. A trillion dollars a year—the cocaine trade’s sales when a measly 5 percent of the product was seized, while 95 percent reached consumers. Figures illustrating the problem and the solution—educate and spend more than the other side. They might not destroy it today. But tomorrow. In a generation, maybe two, maybe three.

  “Sir, this way.” Navarro gestured toward a straggly path, they headed down it, with Crouse ducking the cut off lianas and split branches. The jungle shrank around every cavity, making green walls and a roof for the eternal darkness. At the end of the path they reached the river, beautiful and very wide. Crouse guessed it was at least three hundred feet across, but it could just as easily be double that. On the other side of the water stood a high plateau, completely dry in the burning sun, and behind that the sky above an even greener roof.

  “Combat Platoon 4, marines—trained to operate in small and large boats, dive and conduct underwater attacks, stop and force underwater vehicles to surface—they launched twenty kilometers to the north in a motorized rubber raft, five soldiers on board, and headed downstream, this way.” Colonel Navarro took a step and kicked a few round stones at the river’s edge, a muffled splash as the glistening surface was pierced and became blurry. “They disembarked five kilometers upstream, hid the raft, and then floated the rest of the way fully equipped for battle. They did the last five hundred meters underwater and continued on to the riverbed, to here, where we’re standing now. They went ashore at dusk and cut off the most obvious escape route.”

  Another path back, an older one, and they fought against overgrown squares of ants in motion and the godforsaken spheres of flies and mosquitoes around their heads, which made it hard to see. Crouse stumbled a couple of times as he stepped over the thick carcasses of trees that were slowly being bleached by the sun. They approached the cocina from the back, zigzagged around other trees—around Brazil nuts fifty meters high—and Crouse couldn’t help but go up to them, run his hand over their powerful trunks, and then he continued on, stepping back into the abandoned cocaine kitchen, toward the colonel’s low voice, hovering between a bass and baritone.

  “This whole area, everything around us, was booby trapped. We knew that from our DEA informant. So our offensive was launched by Combat Platoon 6, explosives—trained to do more than blow things up from the air, they’ve developed explosives that generate so much heat that large quantities of cocaine simply burn up. S
ometimes it’s more about elimination than securing evidence. The platoon located and neutralized all the mines—you can still see the craters out there, it made a hell of a lot of noise. And then, with the mines gone, they attacked. We went in full force. Until all camp personnel were captured or killed.”

  Crouse’s gaze had followed where Navarro pointed to the cocaine kitchen door, toward the mines that were no longer there, and when he turned back he was struck by something for the first time. Twenty suitcases. All made from identical, brown leather. Stacked in a corner.

  “You think they travel a lot?”

  Navarro had seen what caught Crouse’s attention. “Something like that. There have been similar piles in a couple of other cocinas we’ve taken out. Suitcases in the middle of the jungle? We still don’t know why they’re lying here. Can’t be for the transportation of drugs, they’re too small, we’re talking about deliveries that weigh several tons.”

  The colonel lifted up one of them, opened it. Completely empty. “We let the dogs go through them. Nothing. No trace of cocaine.”

  A few burners, which could be found in just about any camping kitchen, stood next to a couple of big tin pots filled with a sticky mass—three weeks earlier it had been on its way to becoming cocaine when an enemy attack interrupted the process and it was now coated with a layer of dead insects, dust, sand, mold. A somewhat looser batter was bubbling in a cast-iron pot to the right. Crouse waited for the next bubble to burst. When it did, he was met by a distinct smell, or rather a stench. It had fermented. That’s what it smelled like, overly fermented beer or some sort of mash he might have forgotten in his dorm room way back when he used to brew moonshine in an old bucket out of stale bread, apples, and water.