Bad Batch.
November of 1992.
I followed closely behind Larry, watching each subtle change in his pace, his posture, and reflecting it in my own. It was the dead of night, our path illuminated by distant floodlights and the occasional beam of a flashlight. Larry took us on a meandering path through the brush, one that he had plotted during the day. He would pause every hundred feet or so and flick his flashlight on and off, causing a reflective strip of tape to shine and show us the way forward. Security was tightest in a cone surrounding the only dirt road to this warehouse. One had to travel straight up the mountainside to reach it from any other direction, and so the threat was minimal. Our approach came from the back, up a perilous valley and through a thick swath of jungle.
Larry paused, and I paused, on the edge of the woods, where the jungle had started creeping up on the back of the building. Our movements were cloaked by the sound of insects chittering, and the loud thrum of generators running inside the factory. But it was always best to be cautious.
He waited there for several seconds, just out of a beam of light coming from a cracked window, and then he gave the signal.
We were both adept free climbers. I took the path to the right of the window, hoisting myself up on the sill and using nearby branches to scale the wall. I broke a sweat immediately – it was a balmy night. I made it to the second story window before my hands got too sweaty to grab the bricks. Larry was right behind me. He peeked into the window once, twice, three times, while we hung there, suspended, like frogs on the wall.
He started meticulously pulling fragments of glass from the broken windowsill, and I did the same. We slid the pieces into the bags on our backs. When it was safe to go through without getting shredded, I climbed in first, getting my footing on the beams that made up the ceiling of the factory. Larry came in behind me.
We were in the air, some forty feet above the operation. It was the size of a gymnasium, and gutted, with lines of tables filling the floorspace. Just below us, a short staircase led up to the operations area, where a single office held one of our targets.
It was loud enough to speak to one another without being overheard, but Larry and I were silent for a long time. We hung there, limbs growing sore, and observed.
It was a cocaine processing factory, run by one of the Salvador Seven, a man called Mateo. He was in the little office, occasionally looking up to watch what was happening on the factory floor. He had goons all around, armed with assault rifles, patrolling the aisles in endless circuits. It seemed they were between shipments but judging by the growing pile of wooden crates near the front of the room, they would need to send some off soon.
I fixated on the most unsettling aspect of this operation – the workers who sorted the drugs were children, all of them nude, wearing paper-thin aprons. Some were so small that they were standing on boxes to reach the tables. Even from our perch up above, I could see how red their eyes were, how the skin cracked on their hands.
It was hard to watch, but it was my job. I looked at Larry sometimes, hoping he had some reassurance about what we were doing here – hoping he would say we would shut this place down and help those kids – but he gave no indication that he noticed me.
He finally said, in a whisper, "Seems pure. If they have multiple factories, they could be coming out of any one of them."
I wanted to say something about the kids, but suddenly the scene below changed. Now the goons were grabbing boxes and taking them out through the front doors. A truck started up outside, headlights aching through the windows.
"Come on, we need to follow that truck," Larry said.
We made our way out the same way we made it in, only through another window on the side of the building. Larry led the way down into the jungle, and we sat there, waiting, while the truck was loaded. It would take that road south, and then double back, making a meandering path down the mountain – and we would take the straight route down.
When they finished loading, we started our descent.
Larry had made a path for this, too, and the tape led us down several steep cliffs, where he had left ropes suspended. His path stopped where the dirt road ended, and the concrete began. It went off in several directions here. We waited in the jungle again, because there were three cars parked and waiting on the concrete.
The truck with the shipment arrived, paused for a moment, and then followed one of the cars south, to another winding road heading out of the mountains.
"I'm going to follow them, see how our drugs are getting to Cuba. You stay here, see what else you can find out about Mateo."
And just like that, Larry was gone.
I waited for a short time, wondering if he meant he was going to Cuba, or if he meant he was going to find out what port they were using, and then deciding it didn't really matter. I was going to be alone for a while either way. I made my way back up the mountain, having some trouble without Larry to guide me. It was several hours before I made it back to the factory.
Dawn was rapidly approaching, and from my perch in the ceiling, I watched Mateo shut his operation down for the night. He came out of his office and patrolled the aisles, commenting on things in Spanish, sometimes stopping to whack one of the kids on the back of the head.
He got to the end of the line, near the front doors, and said something loudly in Spanish, and then waved his arms. The rows of children left their stations and lined up, and one of the goons stepped forward to distribute meager payments to them as they left the building.
I made my way to the front, curious, and watched the kids disperse into the jungle, not bothering with the road. I wondered if Mateo worried one of the kids would talk to the police, and then decided it didn't really matter. He was probably paying them off. For a group like the Salvador Seven to become so powerful, there had to be authorities looking the other way.
Mateo left in a jeep, met by two other vehicles that had come to guard the place during the day. He greeted them through his window and drove off.
Now dawn was in full effect and my head throbbed at the fresh light. It was not as safe to run around in the ceiling like this, so I made my exit on the back of the building. Our shitty little house was a several-mile hike through the jungle from here, bound to take hours, but it gave me time to think.
It would be impossible to infiltrate a band of brothers, especially when drugs were involved. And the amounts of cocaine I had seen added up to big money. They weren't going to be taking risks.
So, how were we going to complete this mission?