Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

You’ve been on one fire-base, you’ve been on them all, Art thinks. They’re pretty much the same, Vietnam or Colombia-a clearing hacked out of the bush and leveled, then enclosed with barbed wire, then the perimeter around the base cleared to provide a field of fire.

This base is roughly bisected, Art finds out as he prowls around. Most of it is Twenty-fourth Brigade, but he comes to a gate that separates the main part of the base from what appears to be a section reserved for AUC.

He walks along the high barbed-wire fence and looks through.

It’s a training camp-Art can make out the shooting range and the straw dummies hanging from trees for hand-to-hand practice. They’re at it now, sneaking up behind the straw dummies with knives as if taking out enemy sentries.

Art watches for a while, then goes back to his quarters, a small room at the end of one of the barracks buildings, near the perimeter. The room has a window, open but screened with mosquito netting, a cot, a lamp run off the generator and, thankfully, an electric fan.

Art sits down on the cot and leans over. Sweat drips off his nose onto the concrete floor.

Jesus, Art thinks. Me and the AUC. We’re the same guy.

He lies down on the bed but can’t sleep.

It’s hours later when he hears a soft knock outside on the edge of the window. It’s the young soldier, Javier. Art goes to the window.

“What is it?”

“Would you come with me?'

“Where?”

“Would you come with me?” Javier repeats. “You asked where the people went?”

“Yeah?”

“Red Mist,” Javier says.

Art slips his shoes back on and climbs out through the window. He ducks low behind Javier and the two of them sneak along the perimeter, ducking the searchlight, until they come to a small gate. The guard sees Javier and lets them through. They belly-crawl across the fire range and into the bush. Art follows the kid along a narrow trail that leads down toward the river.

This is stupid, Art thinks. This is beyond stupid. Javier could be leading you into a trap. He can see the headlines now: DEA BOSS KIDNAPPED BY FARC. But he keeps following the kid. There’s something he has to find out.

A canoe is waiting on the riverbank.

Javier jumps in and beckons Art to do the same.

“We’re crossing the river?” Art asks.

Javier nods and waves for him to hurry.

Art gets in.

It takes only a few minutes for them to row across. They land the canoe, and Art helps Javier drag it onto the shore. When he straightens he sees four masked men with guns standing there.

“Take him,” Javier says.

“You little fuck,” Art says, but the men don’t grab him, just gesture for him to follow them west along the bank of the river. It’s a hard slog-he keeps tripping on branches and thick vines-but finally they arrive at a small clearing and there, under the moonlight, he sees where the people went.

Headless bodies are washed up on the shore like fish waiting to be cleaned. Other decapitated trunks are stuck on branches that overhang the river. Schools of tiny fish are feeding on their bare feet. Farther up on shore, severed heads have been neatly lined up and someone has closed their eyes.

“The guerrillas did this?” Art asks.

One of the masked men shakes his head then tells him the story: AUC went to the village yesterday, shot the young men and raped the women. Then they locked most of the survivors inside the village’s barn, set it on fire and made the rest watch and listen. Then they took these people to a bridge over the Putumayo, beheaded them with chain saws and threw their heads and bodies in the river to drift downstream as a warning to the villages below.

“We came to you,” Javier says, “because we thought that if you could see the truth, you would go home and tell it. The people in America-if they knew the truth… they would not send their money and their soldiers to do this.”

“What do you mean, our soldiers?” Art asks.

“The AUC here,” the masked man says, “were trained by your Special Forces.”

The man gestures to the corpses and says, in perfect English, “Your tax dollars at work.”

Art says nothing on the trip back.

There’s nothing to say.

Until he gets back to the base and finds Hobbs’ room and bangs on the door. The old man is befuddled, sleepy. He has a thin white robe wrapped around him and looks like a patient in a hospital.

“Arthur, what time is it? Good Lord, where have you been?”

“Red Mist.”

“What are you talking about?” Hobbs asked. “Are you drunk?”

But Art can see in his eyes that the man knows exactly what he’s talking about. “Do you have an op in Colombia called Red Mist?”

“No.”

“Don’t you fucking lie to me,” Art says. “It’s the Phoenix Program, isn’t it? For Latin America.”

“Get off the grassy knoll, Arthur.”

“Are we training AUC?” Art asks.

“That’s on a need-to-know basis.”

“I need to know!”

He tells Hobbs what he saw on the river. Hobbs opens a plastic bottle of water on his little side table, pours himself a glass and drinks it down. Art watches his hand tremble as he does it. Then Hobbs says, “You’re very foolish, Arthur, and surprisingly naIve for a man of your experience. Obviously FARC committed that atrocity to blame it on AUC and further alienate the local population and arouse international sympathy. It was a common ploy with the Vietcong back in the-”

“Red Mist, John-what is it?”

“You should damn well know, Arthur,” Hobbs snapped. “You used it on your little incursion into Mexico recently. In the eyes of the law, you’re a mass murderer. You’re as deeply into this as any of us.”

Art sits on the bed and slumps over. It’s true, he thinks. From that moment when we last stood in an army camp in a jungle and I sold my soul to you for revenge. When I lied and covered up, when I came to you for help in killing Adan Barrera.

He feels Hobbs sit down beside him. The man weighs practically nothing; he’s like a dead, dry leaf.

“Don’t think about straying off the reservation,” Hobbs says.

Art nods.

“I expect your full support on Plan Colombia.”

“You’ll get it, John.”

Art goes back to his room.

He peels down to his underwear, fixes himself a scotch, sits on the bed and sweats. The fan wheezes in its losing battle against the heat. But it’s trying, Art thinks. It’s fighting the good fight.

I’m just a shill for a covert war.

The War on Drugs. I’ve fought it my whole goddamn life, and for what?

Billions of dollars, trying unsuccessfully to keep drugs out of the world’s most porous border? One-tenth of the anti-drug budget going into education and treatment, nine-tenths of those billions into interdiction? And not enough money from anywhere going into the root causes of the drug problem itself. And the billions spent keeping drug offenders locked up in prison, the cells now so crowded we have to give early release to murderers. Not to mention the fact that two-thirds of all the “non-drug” offenses in America are committed by people high on dope or alcohol. And our solutions are the same futile non-solutions-build more prisons, hire more police, spend more and more billions of dollars not curing the symptoms while we ignore the disease. Most people in my area who want to kick drugs can’t afford to get into a treatment program unless they have blue-chip health insurance, which most of them don’t. And there’s a six-month-to-two-year waiting list to get a bed in a subsidized treatment program. We’re spending almost $2 billion poisoning cocaine crops and kids over here, while there’s no money at home to help someone who wants to get off drugs. It’s insanity.