The Devil's Highway (12 page)

“How do you mean?”

Brad rubbed the spot on his arm where he’d been given his injection and frowned, but he went on. “I was happy out here, at first. I thought we were making ready for the bad times ahead that Tolbert had warned about in his book. We would show the rest of the USA how to survive the hard times. We’d be a good example, one that people everywhere could follow. Colonel Cushman liked my enthusiasm, and he started letting me have a bigger role in what was going on. Young blood, and all of that.”

“But you said you had changed your mind. What happened to change things?” Andrea asked Brad.

“Colonel Cushman came to me, and told me it was time I became a “true Redemptionist.” He made it sound like I was supposed to go through some kind of initiation. I was naturally very excited. So, about a week later, I went out with Kiker and some other men, at night, on what they kept calling a ‘special operation.’ Everything we did outside the Compound was Operation This or That, but this one was completely hush-hush. I thought what we were doing that night was going to be some kind of training exercise, but what they had planned was to initiate me into their big secret.”

“Which was?”

“A very dirty business, and it’s an ongoing thing. Cushman and his men call it Operation Devil’s Highway.”

“Something about Highway 191?” I asked.

“There’s a closed section of the old Highway 666, several miles south of the compound.”

I remembered the truck driver, Donnie Mackey, who had talked about sections of old highway, lost now in the desert sands. Brad went on:

“It’s just one stretch of many like it around the U.S, abandoned highways that no one uses. It was closed off when the Department of Transportation rerouted the highway, years ago. But the Redemption Army has been making improvements to Highway 666. They bring women and girls up from the border in vans, using the old highway, at night. They meet with people on this side of the line and sell them, just like cattle, for large sums of cash. I saw the money change hands. The men who come to these meetings look the women over, and make offers. Sometimes they sell them in lots. I saw all of this done. A lot of cash changes hands.”

Ira snorted. “Well, that solves the mystery of where Cushman’s cash flow is coming from. The dirty bastard’s a human trafficker.”

“And this is what you told Fernando Mendoza?” Andrea asked. Her voice sounded very sad.

“Yes. I told him everything I knew. He had me on audio and video tape telling him what I’ve told you. That’s why I wanted to meet with him. I knew he could get the truth out to the world.”

“Except somehow they found out you two talked, and what he knew got him killed,” Andrea said gently.

Brad nodded. “It was Johannes Kiker. He was always jealous and distrustful of me. I’m sure he had me followed, and I’m certain he killed Fernando. They were basically keeping me under house arrest, but I saw Kiker when he and another man came in from the road that night, and I saw Kiker with Fernando’s camera and other things. I knew what he’d done right then. After they got a look at what was on those tapes, I was locked up while they decided what to do with me. The Colonel thought I could be saved, but Kiker had other ideas.”

“So how often are they bringing these people in? How are they getting past the border security?”

“Cushman has a man inside the Border Guard who’s secretly a member of the Redemption Army, a guy who joined up a long time ago, back when old Colonel Tolbert was still running things. It’s always young women they bring up. They only bring the women across when this particular guard is on patrol in the right area. There are people on the other side who wait for his signal. They’re planning on bringing some more over Tuesday night.”

“How long have you been doped up, kid? This
is
Tuesday,” Hughes interjected.

“Do you know where this spot is, Brad?” Garrett asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then I guess we better be there to meet them,” Garrett said calmly.

Human trafficking, I thought with disgust. Any feeling of neutrality I might have had toward Cushman and the Redemption Army vaporized as I listened to Brad tell his story. I knew how it all happened, of course. The gangs in the cities of South America kidnap men, women and children right off the street, and literally sell them to other criminals, who move them north. Many a person who starts northward with hopes of immigrating to the USA can find themselves in this predicament.

These aren’t illegal immigrants, crossing the border willingly, but young women, press-ganged into sexual slavery, many of them children. The victims inevitably find themselves trucked to the border, like the women Brad spoke of. Terrified, they are sold like livestock to people who sell them on secret markets. The men are trafficked into low or no-paying jobs in factories that are no more than sweatshops; the women, into domestic servitude, or prostitution; the children, far worse.

Garrett looked at me. “Well, now that you have Brad here safe and sound, I suppose you’ll be going along back to Birmingham.”

I shook my head. “Not just yet, Sheriff. I think I’d better lend you a hand tonight.”

“Spoken like a true deputy,” he said with a broad smile.

Chapter 16

Colonel Cushman was hopping mad. While I had been talking with Brad and the Sheriff, Cushman had called, and demanded that Claire put him through to the Sheriff. She had obligingly patched him through to the Sheriff’s voicemail. He’d left an indignant and carefully worded rant on the voicemail, which Garrett had played for us:

“Sheriff Garrett, I am calling regarding a matter of the gravest nature. Brad Caldwell is a willing member of the Redemption Army. He was unlawfully taken from this place this morning. This call is to formally request that he be returned immediately to this compound.

I believe that you acted with the private detective Roland Longville and others to effect his abduction. I protest this action in the strongest possible terms, and demand Caldwell’s immediate return. The young man is delusional and requires care that we can provide here at the compound. Failure to comply with these demands will have dire consequences. I urge you to obey, and quickly.”

Garret tilted back his cowboy hat and shook his head. “We sure stirred up the Colonel this time.”

“I’ve never heard him so mad,” Deputy Hughes mused aloud.

“We don’t have time to worry about Cushman being miffed,” Garrett answered. “If there are people being moved up the Devil’s Highway tonight, I want to be out there to stop them. Maybe we can give him a real black eye. It’s about damned time, too.”

* * *

So it was that dusk found us in the Sheriff’s four-wheel drive, headed into the desert to the southwest of Delgado.

I took the opportunity to ask Brad some questions. One thing that had been on my mind was where he’d gotten the money he was carrying with him when he bought the car From Big-Hearted Al.

“I had saved it, once I made my decision to come out here,” he told me. “I knew that any activity in my bank account would lead my parents right to me, so I started working odd jobs and squirreling the money away.” That certainly agreed with his friends assessment of him being meticulous and thorough.
 

I leaned forward and looked out of the windshield. Ahead I could see only dust. “Are you sure this is a road, Sheriff?”

“I know it seems like we’re driving into the open desert, but the closed highway that Brad spoke of runs out here, parallel to the modern highway.” Garrett pointed ahead of us, even as it drew into view. There it was, a ghost highway closed to traffic now, not connecting with a living road. But once it had been the main thoroughfare through these parts. The Devil’s Highway, old Route 666. “You’d be surprised how covered with dust a road gets out here when it isn’t frequented by traffic.”

“Go down the highway for about two miles and pull off onto the shoulder,” Brad told the Sheriff.
 

We drew close to the meeting place, and Garrett killed the lights and pulled over. We got out of the vehicle and Brad led us to a spot about a quarter mile off the road. We were on a low hill, overlooking a big, round, natural clearing.

“If you knew about this spot, wouldn’t they go somewhere else?” Hughes asked Brad.

“The meeting place can’t be changed,” Brad told him. “It’s set up far in advance, and the two parties don’t have contact again until the women are delivered. Then, the next place is chosen, based on where Cushman’s crooked Border Guard is going to be patrolling.”

I saw dim lights, out on the desert. “There they come,” I said quietly.

There was an old moving van coming in from the desert. It drew up slowly, with just its parking lights on, and came to an idle below the hill. The insignia on the side had long worn away or been removed. There were no lights on, but two figures were inside the cab. One would be the Mexican driver, the other, Cushman’s man on the Border Guard.

“This is really the second stage of the operation,” Brad whispered to us.
 

“Money already changed hands below the border. But the people who are coming here tonight will look these women over and make offers for those they like, and Cushman gets his money back ten times over.”

“What happens to the ones they don’t like?” I asked.

“They still get sold, to whoever will take them. Kiker says there are women like this all over the US and Canada, domestic servitude, they call it. They are treated like property, and work for nothing. Completely off the radar of normal society.”

“Call it what it is—slavery,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” Brad answered quietly.

“All right, everybody, let’s move. Brad, you stay here. ” Garrett said. We rose, and started down the hill, Garrett, Hughes and me.

Chapter 17

We crept to within fifty feet of the van, and crouched behind some scrub. There was another vehicle coming, now. They’d come up the abandoned highway, same as us, but from the opposite direction. It was one of the generic-looking vans from the Redemption Army compound. Two men were inside it, too.

They killed their lights and got out. I recognized one of them—my old pal, Kiker.

As they approached, the men in the van got down, too. Sure enough, one was in the uniform of the United States Border Guard. The other was a small Hispanic man. The four men approached each other and stood in a circle, talking in low tones. Someone laughed.

“Wait until they go around to the rear of the van,” Garrett said, pulling his pistol. Hughes and I nodded and followed suit. The men’s banter abruptly ceased, and they walked together to the rear of the van.

Garrett spotlighted them with his police flash light, and shouted, “Law Enforcement! Put your hands where we can see them!” Then a lot of things happened at once.

The Mexican driver put his hands in the air. The Border Guard raised his pistol and fired at the sound of the sheriff’s voice. Kiker and his companion brought up automatic weapons and opened fire also. The ripping sound of gunfire split the night.

Garrett hit the dirt, then brought up his pistol, fired twice, then ducked again. There was a long burst of submachine fire that stitched the sand in front of us. Hughes and I hit the dirt. The shooter couldn’t get a good sight on us, so he was firing to make us keep our heads down. There was another burst, from farther away. They were running, into the darkness.

Garrett waited a few seconds, then motioned for us to rise. Cautiously, we crept forward. It took a second to understand what had happened there. But then it became starkly clear. In the bright white halogen light, lay two dead men. The Border Guard and the Mexican driver lay on the ground, blood oozing from a dozen holes in their bodies.

Hughes looked ill. “I don’t get it. They were their own men.”

“He executed them. So they couldn’t talk,” I told him. “We’d seen the border guard, and we could I.D. him, so he was no longer of any use. Kiker probably had standing orders to take him out if that ever happened.”

“Shouldn’t we go after them?” Hughes asked.

“Chasing people with machine guns in the dark is a bad idea, Hughes.” Garrett said. “Now, let’s get these people out of this van.”

Garrett unlatched the back and swung the doors open. He shined his light inside at a griyo if fearfuy young women, sweaty and bedraggled-looking. They huddled together.
 

“No tenga miedo,” Garrett told them. “le tomaremos a la seguridad.”

Garrett had Hughes commandeer the Redemption Army van, and we got the women settled inside. They were dehydrated, and very frightened, but by the time we got headed towards Delgado, they were getting the idea that we weren’t the next set of abusers in their long odyssey. They understood we were there to help.

* * *

When we got back into town, we found the Mayor and several other worthies waiting on us.

“Sheriff, Cushman has been calling my office making all kinds of accusations and threats. Is there any truth to what he’s saying? That you staged some kind of raid on the Redemption Army compound?”

“That’s true. Mayor Ferguson, meet Roland Longville. This here’s Brad Caldwell.”