Power of the Dog

Badiraguato District State of Sinaloa Mexico 1975 The poppies burn. Red blossoms, red flames. Only in hell, Art Keller thinks, do flowers bloom fire. Art sits on a ridge above the burning valley. Looking down is like peering into a steaming soup bowlhe can't see clearly through the smoke, but what he can make out is a scene from hell. Hieronymus Bosch does the War on Drugs. CampesinosMexican peasant farmerstrot in front of the flames, clutching the few possessions they could grab before the soldiers put the torch to their village. Pushing their children in front of them, the campesinos carry sacks of food, family photographs bought at great price, some blankets, some clothes. Their white shirts and straw hatsstained yellow with sweatmake them ghost-like in the haze of smoke. Except for the clothes, Art thinks, it could be Vietnam. He's half-surprised, glancing at the sleeve of his own shirt, to see blue denim instead of army green. Reminds himself that this isn't Operation Phoenix but Operation Condor, and these aren't the bamboo-thick mountains of I Corps, but the poppy-rich mountain valleys of Sinaloa. And the crop isn't rice, it's opium. Art hears the dull bass whop-whop-whop of helicopter rotors and looks up. Like a lot of guys who were in Vietnam, he finds the sound evocative. Yeah, but evocative of what? he asks himself, then decides that some memories are better left buried. Choppers and fixed-wing planes circle overhead like vultures. The airplanes do the actual spraying; the choppers are there to help protect the planes from the sporadic AK-47 rounds fired by the remaining gomerosopium growerswho still want to make a fight of it. Art knows too well that an accurate burst from an AK can bring down a chopper. Hit it in the tail rotor and it will spiral down like a broken toy at a kid's birthday party. Hit the pilot, and, well . . . So far they've been lucky and no choppers have been hit. Either the gomeros are just bad shots, or they're not used to firing on helicopters. Technically, all the aircraft are Mexicanofficially, Condor is a Mexican show, a joint operation between the Ninth Army Corps and the State of Sinaloabut the planes were bought and paid for by the DEA and are flown by DEA contract pilots, most of them former CIA employees from the old Southeast Asia crew. Now there's a tasty irony, Keller thinksAir America boys who once flew heroin for Thai warlords now spray defoliants on Mexican opium. The DEA wanted to use Agent Orange, but the Mexicans had balked at that. So instead they are using a new compound, 24-D, which the Mexicans feel comfortable with, mostly, Keller chuckles, because the gomeros were already using it to kill the weeds around the poppy fields. So there was a ready supply. Yeah, Art thinks, it's a Mexican operation. We Americans are just down here as "advisers." Like Vietnam. Just with different ball caps. The American War on Drugs has opened a front in Mexico. Now ten thousand Mexican army troops are pushing through this valley near the town of Badiraguato, assisting squadrons of the Municipal Judicial Federal Police, better known as the federales, and a dozen or so DEA advisers like Art. Most of the soldiers are on foot; others are on horseback, like vaqueros driving cattle in front of them. Their orders are simple: Poison the poppy fields and burn the remnants, scatter the gomeros like dry leaves in a hurricane. Destroy the source of heroin here in the Sinaloan mountains of western Mexico. The Sierra Occidental has the best combination of altitude, rainfall andWinslow, Don is the author of 'Power of the Dog ', published 2006 under ISBN 9781400096930 and ISBN 1400096936.