Devil's Run (35 page)

Catherine spit in his
face. He didn’t flinch, just blinked and stood upright slowly, pulling a
handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the spittle off his face. Then he
carefully folded it and replaced it in his pocket.”

“Feisty,” he said. “I
like that.” Suddenly, a thin stiletto was in his hand, produced with a
magician's skill from the sleeve of his suit jacket. He pressed the tip to her
throat. Catherine’s eyes went wide. I prayed she would not show her hands.

“Feeling less feisty now,
are we?” said Imperatrice. He pressed the knife forward and her skin sank
beneath the tip, the indentation black in the harsh light. “Most people,” he
said quietly, “don’t like to be spat upon.” He pressed harder on the knife.
Catherine leaned back as far as she could, until her head was against the cell
wall. Imperatrice kept up a steady pressure, and a tiny rivulet of blood began
running down her neck. His usually placid face contorted and his voice became a
hiss. “I hate being spat upon.” The trickle of blood grew wider as he continued
to slowly press the knife home.

“Rich!” I said, sharply.

He turned and blinked,
looking from one face to the other as if he was surprised to see us there.

“You had something you
wanted to show me?” I said.

He looked at me blankly.
Then, without looking back at Catherine, he slowly pulled the knife away from
her throat and stood up straight. The smile returned to his face and he took
two steps towards me.

“You’re right, Nick. I
do.” He looked at one of the guards. “Keep her here. Bring him.”

Without a backward
glance, he walked out the door. The guard pulled me to my feet and shoved me
after him.

I stepped through the
door into a tunnel about fifteen feet wide, part of an old mine. Naked light
bulbs hung every twenty feet or so. Here and there were patches of fresh lumber
in the shoring and metal jacks reinforcing the ceiling. Imperatrice and the
guard turned to the right, where the tunnel sloped gently away from the cell,
towards a sharp left turn thirty feet below. Reflections off the walls hinted
at brighter lights beyond.

“Watch your footing,
Nick,” said Imperatrice, “I’d hate to see you trip and fall with your hands
cuffed like that.”

Insulated cables snaked
alongside the path and around the bend ahead of us. As we approached the turn,
a steady noise grew in volume, until I realized it was the sound of rushing
water. We turned the corner and stepped out into a chamber half again as big as
a football field and nearly three stories high. Three quarters of the chamber was
manmade, but the rear portion was a natural cavern, with stalactites hanging
from the irregular ceiling. A thirty foot waterfall of impressive volume poured
from high on the cavern wall into an underground lake.

Most of the chamber’s
floor had been cleared and leveled. A one-story building of raw lumber, with
plastic sheets for windows, had been constructed the side opposite the lake.
Through the film of plastic I could dimly see three people in white clean suits
and helmets moving around. In the center, on a concrete pad, stood a much
larger version of the greenhouses I’d seen above. It was connected like an
intensive care patient to various tanks and filters, everything powered by two
generators. Wooden drums of extra rubber hosing stood nearby, alongside similar
wheels of power cables, stacks of PVC piping, and, looking somewhat
incongruous, several pallets of beer kegs. The lake was the source of water for
the greenhouse, judging by the thick hoses snaking into it. On the near shore
of the lake, the naked gantry of an elevator disappeared into the rock above.

“Quite a sight isn’t
it?” said Imperatrice. “The miners accidentally found the cavern back in the
seventies. Came as quite a shock. Not to mention a nuisance. We’ve found it
quite useful.”

“I take it this isn’t
for strawberries.”

“Oh, no, certainly not,”
he said with a laugh. “Have you figured it out yet?”

“Everything points to
cocaine, but that can’t be.”

“I assure you it is. We
grow it right there in that greenhouse. And that’s our final processing
center.” He pointed at the building with the plastic windows. “Can’t show you
that, the air is a little toxic.”

“Ether and acetone?”

“Actually, no. Those are
restricted chemicals and too difficult to get in the quantities we need. All
that record keeping. We use industrial cleaning solvent. Works just as well.”

“Hydroponic cocaine?” I
shook my head. “You’re insane.”

“Now why would you say
that?”

“It’s been tried. It
simply isn’t profitable.”

“Enlighten me.”

“If I could find the
right climate and used my entire bedroom to grow coca plants, I might
eventually get about 2 grams of coke. That’s after I used my garage, bathroom,
and kitchen, not to mention a shit load of chemicals, to process the leaves.
For a huge investment in time and money I might clear a hundred bucks. That is
if I didn’t blow up my house or have the cops all over me from the smell and
waste. On the other hand, I’d make about fifty k growing weed in the same
space, and my only problem would be explaining the gigantic water bill. For
cocaine, you’re gonna need a greenhouse the size of the Botanical Gardens just
to break even.”

“That was before Dr.
Fisher.”

“Fisher?” I thought for
a moment. “Of course. His area of expertise is genetically modified organisms.
He’s engineered the coca for you.”

“Revolutionized might be
a better way of putting it.”

“Wait until the Nobel
Committee hears about this.”

“Don’t be too hard on
the good doctor. You’d be surprised how hard it is to get anyone to fund really
radical research into GMOs, all those restrictions from the European Union and
our own government. We gave him the ability to test some theories and do some
things that would have otherwise taken years to get approval.”

“So he’s fine with being
a cocaine dealer?”

“Producer, Nick, let’s
get our terms right. And no, not really. For Dr. Fisher it’s really all about
the continued health of his wife and son. Anyway, the plant has responded quite
well to his manipulation and this artificial environment he created. Not only
do we grow it successfully, it grows faster than we ever imagined. Something to
do with gene splicing and nutrients. I don’t really profess to know.”

The airlock door of the
greenhouse opened and Fisher approached, absorbed in his tablet computer.

“Ah,” said Imperatrice,
“here is the good doctor now. Good afternoon, Professor.”

So, I thought, it was
past noon.

“Oh, yes, good
afternoon,” said Fisher, looking at Imperatrice, then at me. After a moment of
intense study, he said, “We’ve met, haven’t we?”

“Briefly,” I said. “You
were making a salad.” I turned to show him my arms. “I apologize for not
shaking hands.”

A great sadness came
into his eyes. The absent minded professor was suddenly in the moment. Deep
down he had to know his ultimate fate, and he recognized a fellow victim.

“There is no need to
apologize, sir.”

“Say goodbye,
Professor,” said Imperatrice.

“Goodbye,” he said,
uncertainly. For a moment, it seemed he might cry, but then he turned and
walked towards another one story building that stood against the rock wall,
close by the elevator.

“And what do you have
planned for him,” I said, “once he’s outlived his usefulness?”

“Not decided, yet,” said
Imperatrice, “but I’m partial to a car accident. He’s not what you’d call a
sporting man, so the choices are limited.”

“So, are we done here?”

“Oh, Lord, no. I’m
having fun. One of the downsides of a secret operation is you don’t get to show
it off. Besides, there’s a big surprise for you at the end. I guarantee you’ll
be riveted. Come along.”

The guard pushed me
towards the building. Two forklifts were parked by the door, near a row of
yellow fifty-five gallon drums. One of the forklifts held a pallet with two
more drums. The smell of kerosene was strong.

“You’re using jet fuel
from the airfield.”

Imperatrice smiled.
“It’s virtually identical to kerosene and getting that in the amounts we need
would also raise unwanted questions. We siphon a little away at a time,
charging it to our guests’ fuel bills of course. Now come along. You haven’t
much time.”

We stepped through the
door into a foyer of sorts. Directly ahead was a tunnel echoing faintly with
the sound of Latin pop music. To the right, separated from us by a cyclone
fence, was the economy version of a chain gang barracks, consisting of six bunk
beds, two sinks and two toilets. Three of the beds were occupied. Near the
entrance was a cage made of more cyclone fencing with two firing ports cut into
it. A single guard sat on a raised platform, a shotgun within easy reach.

“This is our workers
dormitory,” said Imperatrice.

“The leg shackles are a
nice touch.”

“Unfortunate, but
sometimes necessary. We’ve had some labor issues.”

“The man who froze to
death.”

“Yes. He got out
somehow. Hence the need for the new facility you recently spent time in. We
can’t have our volunteers wandering about the tonier parts of Colorado. As you
know, we had to steal his body back.”

“What exactly have they
volunteered for?”

“Someone has to process
the stuff, so we brought in experts.” He walked to a door opposite the
dormitory and opened it. “We provide all the tools, free of charge.”

It was a storage room
with a roll up door at the other end, through which I could see the elevator
gantry and part of the waterfall. On shelves to my left were different sized
plastic containers bearing warning labels and NFPA Fire Diamonds. The closest
blue plastic drums were sulfuric acid. The shelves on the right side of the
room held fifty pound white sacks that had to be sodium carbonate. Near the
back of the room were several plastic fifty-five gallon drums.

“The cleaning solvent?”
I said.

“Yes. This way,” said
Imperatrice.

We entered the tunnel.
The sound of music increased, becoming a booming annoyance when we entered a
mineshaft that had been widened into a broad chamber. Fluorescent lights
illuminated three wooden troughs, each roughly five feet by twenty and three
feet deep.

“
Pozos
,”
I said.

“You know your cocaine,
Nick. Yes, these are our coca paste pits.”

The nearest
pozo
,
lined with clear plastic sheeting, was the only one in use. In it, three
dark-skinned men in gray coveralls and rubber boots were tromping methodically
on a thick mass of wet coca leaves. Outside the trough, another man, dressed
identically, stared down at the mixture with arms folded. All four men had the
prominent cheekbones of South American Indians.

Nearby were some of the
sulfuric acid containers, a few bags of sodium carbonate, and one of the yellow
drums of jet fuel with a hand pump attached. On top of the drum was the source
of the music, a boom box style CD player.

A guard with a shotgun
sat reading a magazine, his chair tipped back against the wall. An old army
field telephone sat on the table next to him. He was startled to see
Imperatrice and sat forward.

“Are we paying you to
read?” said Imperatrice.

The man leaped to his
feet, the magazine dangling from his hand. “No, sir.”

“And do I have to listen
to this shit?” He pointed vaguely at the ceiling.

“No, sir.”

The guard walked over to
the fuel drum, laid the magazine down, and switched off the music. In the
sudden silence, the sound of the men’s sloshing feet seemed very loud.

“Do your job and read on
your own time.” said Imperatrice.

The guard walked back to
his chair, leaving the magazine on the drum. The men in the trough did not look
up during any of this, but continued working as if nothing had happened.

“Slave labor?” I said.

“I like to think of them
as guest workers, like the guy who does my lawn. These men are experts at what
they do. Pablo, our foreman here, has years of experience.”

“What do you pay them?”

“We feed them, of
course. And we don’t kill their wives and children back home. There is a small
stipend to the families. Not much, but more than they made from the cartels. We
also have one female, who does double duty, if you know what I mean, just to
keep the lid on. Have you ever seen this done, by the way?”

“Not in person.”

“It’s very interesting.
Come on.”

We walked over and stood
near the fuel drum. The foreman knelt and scooped a handful of liquid from the
sodden mess with his cupped hand, took it into his mouth and swished it like a
connoisseur of fine wine. He spat it back into the trough and picked up a wide
blue plastic bowl with both hands. In careful, controlled pours he added some
of its contents to the leaves.

“That’s our drying room,
where the leaves go after they’re picked,” said Imperatrice, pointing to a shed
at the opposite end of the cave. “No worries about tropical downpours ruining
them. We get to use almost one hundred percent of the crop here. Once the leaves
are dry, we begin the process.” He patted the drum. “Kerosene, as you
mentioned, is a key ingredient.”

There was a siphon pump
attached to the fuel drum. The seals on the pump must have been wearing out,
because a thin stream of fuel ran down the shaft, feeding a shallow puddle
gathering against the down slope rim of the drum. The overhead lights created
an oily rainbow on the surface.

“Your equipment looks a
little iffy.”

“Yes, well I’ll make
sure that gets fixed before OSHA wanders in.”

He pointed back
at the men in the trough. “Once these guys make the paste - they call it
pasta
,
by the way - we finish the process in the other building I showed you. We’re
looking at ways to automate this part. That will be tough to do and still hold
down the number of people in on our little secret.”

“When you automate this
process, what happens to them? Send them home?”

“Really, Nick? You
already mentioned our expenses. Got to cut costs where we can. Don’t get broken
up about it. We didn’t bring them here because they were expert tostada chefs.
These guys were already producing cocaine for a living. They deserve whatever
they get.”

“Just like you.”

“I’m fine with that,
really. Look at Khadafy. He ran an entire country for forty-two years. It ended
with a bullet to the head. I doubt he’d trade that deal in for fifty years of
catching the 6:17 to Penn Station and dying in bed with the mortgage unpaid.
It’s not how life ends that counts, Nick. We all die. How we die doesn’t
matter. It’s how we live. And I live well.”

“Whatever you do, this
operation still won’t be profitable.”

“It’s a proof of
concept, Nick. You really have no head for business. Besides, profit is the
difference between production costs and price, and the price of cocaine is
about to skyrocket.”

“You’re certain of
that?”

“We’re making sure.”

“Of course. That’s why
you’re murdering the producers in South America and their partners in Mexico.
Why Canfield is leading the charge on closing the border. You’re shutting out
the competition and closing them down at the same time.”

He nodded. “Supply dries
up, the price rises, and we step in at astronomical prices, the sole source of
Bolivian marching powder for the whole damn country.”