“Si,” said one of the youngest girls.
“What is your name?”
She was hesitant, looking at the other women. I said, “It’s okay. No one is going to hurt you. I’m not a policeman, and I’m not with the Border Patrol or Immigration. My name is Sean O’Brien. I’m here to help you. Are you held against your will?”
The girl stared at me, not sure what to say. I asked her to repeat, in Spanish, what I said so the others could understand. She did and none of the women spoke.
The youngest girl said, “My name is Maria.” She was fearful, eyes wide.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” she said in a voice just above a whisper.
I could see dread in her eyes, and it wasn’t because I felt she was afraid of me. She licked her dry lips, her eyes darting around the room.
“I know you’re being forced to have sex. That’s against United States laws. Human beings can’t be held as slaves — sex slaves or any kind of human bondage. Do you understand?”
The women each offered the slightest nod. I looked at the youngest girl. “How do they pay you?”
She reached in her jeans pocket and pulled out a condom wrapper. “We turn in these at the end of the week. They give us five dollar for every one we have.”
“Five dollars?”
She nodded.
“How much do they charge the men?”
“Farm workers twenty dollars. The men’s we meet in the hotels, houses, and the condo…maybe five hundred dollar.”
“And you are given five dollars for that?”
“Sometimes more.”
“Where is the condo?”
“I don’t know how to find it. They take us there.”
“Who takes you there? Is it Hector Ortega?”
Her eyes found mine, the whites showing. She looked at the other women. They sat straight. Too straight. I knew Ortega was in the trailer.
“I’ll write my number down,” I said, with the same inflection and audio levels. “You’ll call me. We’ll file a lawsuit against the people that run this outfit.”
I gestured for one girl to come forward. She did, and I leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Where in the trailer is Ortega?”
She looked over her shoulders, bit her bottom lip, pointed toward the back, and whispered, “Last room.”
SIXTY-SIX
I pulled out the Glock, motioned for the women to leave the trailer, and I started down the hall. The interior had been divided in at least a dozen small rooms. Most of the doors were open. I could see the same sized small beds in each room. The farther I got in the trailer, the stronger the odor of sheets and mattresses soaked in perspiration and body fluids. I could hear the air-conditioner straining in the hot sun.
I also heard a sound behind me.
I whirled around and pointed the Glock in the terrified face of a farm worker. He looked like he’d just come back from the fields, a John Deere hat on backwards, ruby red FSU T-shirt, filthy jeans smelling of green tomatoes and pesticides. He stuck his hands straight up.
I lowered the Glock. He looked over my right shoulder for a half second. It was all I needed. I dropped to the floor just as the gunfire roared in the trailer. The bullet hit the farm worker in the chest. I came up firing a shot at Ortega as he unloaded two rounds at my head. Both bullets missed my left ear and slammed into the flimsy trailer wall.
Ortega ran down the hall and out the front door. I followed. I saw other drops of blood past the fallen man. I had hit Ortega.
I ran around the side of the trailer where I knew Ortega had parked the SUV. I could see him searching frantically for the keys. I crept up behind the SUV and pointed the Glock in the window. “Hands on the wheel!”
“You fuckin’ shot me!”
“That’s the appetizer. Drop the gun and put your hands on the wheel. Now!”
He dropped his gun in his lap and slapped his hands on the steering wheel. I held the Glock in his face, reached though the open window, and lifted up his gun.
“I need a doctor!”
I looked at the gunshot wound in his right arm. “Get out of the car!”
“You’re trying to kill me!”
“I will kill you if you don’t get out of the car.”
He got out and stood in front of me holding one hand against his bleeding arm.
“Start walking!” I said.
“Where? Man, I need a doctor!”
I pushed him toward the dirt road in front of the trailers. He gripped his upper left arm and walked, blood seeping through his fingers, running down his bare arm. Farm workers watched from the edges of the road. The dog tied to a backhoe began barking.
“Shut up shithead!” Ortega yelled at the dog.
‘That macheen…sometime I see them take it out at night.’
“Stop!” I said, pushing Ortega toward the dog, a mix-breed with more lab than anything else. I kept the gun on Ortega while I rubbed the dog’s head. I looked up to where the rope was tied to the backhoe. It was then, in the late afternoon sun, that I saw it.
A long blonde hair, catching the afternoon light, glistening, hanging motionless from one of the teeth on the backhoe claw.
SIXTY-SEVEN
The strand of hair was caught in dried dirt in the tip of one dull metal tooth. “Well, what do we have here, Ortega?”
He swallowed, licked his thin lips. “I need an ambulance!”
“That is a lot of blood pouring down your arm. Must be your heart beating faster to compensate for the loss of your blood. I’d say you’re down to about five, many seven minutes before your heart starts pumping air.”
“Call 911 asshole!”
“Tell me where the bodies are buried, and I’ll call an ambulance. If you don’t, we’ll have to follow the backhoe tracks, could take a while. You and me tromping all over the south forty. I know the backhoe was used to dig graves. Where are they?”
He looked at the hair and looked back at me. The color drained from his face. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He blurted, “A half mile, down the easement, past the packing house, follow a dried-up canal to Farm 13. There’s fresh earth there. We don’t use that field. They’re buried there.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You don’t know exactly? I ought to let you die! You bastard!”
I saw Manny Lopez standing near one trailer. “Manny, take off your belt, tie it round his upper arm, right above the wound.”
Manny started the tourniquet while I held the gun on Ortega and dialed my cell with one hand. I called Dan Grant and told him what had happened and added, “Send an ambulance. Bring in forensics, the whole team, and a lot of body bags.”
I hung up and called Lauren Miles. “This will be one your folks in Quantico will talk about in classes for years to come. Bring your camera guys, that way your instructors will have illustrations when they teach the chapter on the real killing fields.”
“We’ll take choppers and be there in an hour,” she said.
Two sheriff’s deputies held Ortega under armed guard as he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
A small army of investigators and forensics people assembled at Farm 13. The former tomato field looked like it hadn’t been farmed in years. Weeds and Brazilian pepper trees sprouted over the 150 acres of sandy soil. It was easy to see where the backhoe had been. A strip of land, about fifty feet long, was disturbed, fresh-turned soil.
It was here where men in white jumpsuits and masks over their mouths and noses descended with shovels. The first body was found within five minutes. County and federal law enforcement people stood in a near circle while forensics investigators began uncovering the rest of the bodies. The dead were lined in a shallow, mass grave, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. There were seven women and two men.