At Avenal, drugs are typically hooped rather than swallowed. Parks’s unit regularly intercepts illegal narcotics, as well as an evolving assortment of prescription drugs. (Wellbutrin, Xanax, Adderall, and Vicodin are snorted for various off-label recreational effects. The Rogaine that appeared in a recent over-the-fence drop appears to have been sought for its intended purpose.) Rodriguez has had cell mates who’ve opted to swallow. Two died of overdose. “One, he had like six months left. I go, ‘Don’t do it, man, you’re too close to the house.’”
I ask Rodriguez how close he is to the house. Dumb question. Rodriguez is in for life. I had assumed the killing was gang-related, but it was over a girl. “It wasn’t even my girl.” Rodriguez rubs his thigh and looks away briefly, acknowledging something long past but still sharp. “I’m not the kid I was when I came in.” That was twenty-seven years ago. “I’m starting to get white hairs, man. I’m starting to go bald.” He lowers his head, to show me the bald spot or to register shame, I’m not sure which.
I don’t know what to say. I like Rodriguez, but I don’t like murder. “Dude,” I finally manage. “Was that Rogaine yours?”
HERE IS ANOTHER reason so many drug mules prefer to swallow contraband, despite the risk of an overdose. “The rectum is taboo across many of the regions where mules originate. In the Caribbean and Latin America, any use of the cavity is automatically associated with homosexuality, which can still lead to a fatal beating in many communities.” This is from an e-mail from Mark Johnson, of the UK firm rather hazily known as TRMG, or The Risk Management Group.
The rectal taboo is equally strong among Islamic terrorists. Johnson’s colleague Justin Crump, CEO of the London firm Sibylline, told me about the suicide bomber who tried to kill Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Muhammad bin Nayef in his home in Jidda in August 2009. Since little remained of the bomber’s lower torso, the location of the explosives became an item of fizzy speculation among terrorists and counterterror experts. “All the jihadist websites were saying it was a swallowed device, that he had it in his stomach.” Crump believes it was simply taped in place behind the bomber’s scrotum.
“What was interesting,” said Crump of the web postings, “was that there was a massive reluctance to say it could have been stuffed up his bottom.” He recalls examining photographs of the bombing aftermath with a source of his, a former Al Qaeda militant. “He was saying, ‘Oh, yeah, look at the way his arms came off. Definitely swallowed, definitely swallowed.’ He was really keen to head off any notion that…” Here Crump himself seemed to trip over the taboo. “… To head off the other option.”
No recorded instance exists of a suicide bomb being concealed inside a terrorist’s digestive tract. Swallowing or hooping explosives, as opposed to wearing them in a vest, would reduce the destructive potential by a factor of five or ten, Crump says, because the bomber’s body absorbs most of the blast. Bin Nayef was no more than a few feet away from an explosive the size of a grenade, but because the bomber was squatting on it, the target walked away without serious injury.
The only reason to smuggle a bomb inside one’s body would be to get it through a strict security system, as exists in most airports. Crump says it’s not worth the trouble; it’s almost impossible to bring down a plane with a cache of explosives small enough to be alimentarily smuggled. A packet the size of a cocktail wiener is about the limit of what can be swallowed without undue travail. An accomplice could push the explosive material into the bomber’s stomach in the form of a long thin tube, but the bomber would still need to swallow the timing device and somehow keep the digestive juices from rendering it inoperable.
Crump says a rectal bomb wouldn’t bring down a plane either. “At most, you’d blow the seat apart.” I showed him a Fox News piece that quoted unnamed explosives experts saying that a body bomb containing as little as five ounces of PETN could “blow a considerable hole” in an airline’s skin, causing it to crash. “Total codswallop,” said Crump. As fans of the TV program MythBusters know, even blowing out a window in flight won’t create explosive decompression. The cabin will depressurize, but as long as the oxygen masks drop, people are likely to survive. “Remember that Southwest 737?” asks Crump. “The roof panel ripped partway off and they were fine. As long as you’ve got the pilots at the controls, and the plane’s got wings and a tail, it will still fly.”
Most suicide bombers don’t achieve their goals via the explosives themselves. It’s shrapnel that kills people. The typical marketplace suicide bomb is packed with nails and ball bearings—things you can’t get past the airport metal detectors. To make a bomb that could bring down a plane, you’d need something that is, ounce for ounce, more explosive than TNT or C-4. Generally speaking, the more explosive the material, the more unstable it is. Trip and fall, or cough in the security line with a stomach full of TATP, and you may explode prematurely.
Materials found at Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan are said to have included a plan for surgically implanting a bomb in a terrorist’s body—“in the love handles,” according to an unnamed U.S. government source quoted on the Daily Beast. (Breast implants have also been tossed around as a possibility.) Crump has heard credible rumors of Al Qaeda physicians having tried out body implantation on animals. “But here again,” Crump said, “there are a lot of issues. How to detonate it. How to keep the body from absorbing most of the blast.” How to protect the explosives and the detonator from moisture.
This was comforting, but only for a moment. “Really, why bother with all that?” Crump said. “With a bit of prior observation, I can generally figure out a way to avoid going through a body scanner at most international airports.”
THE PREFERENCE IN California prisons for rectal smuggling is a little surprising given the preponderance of Latinos and African Americans—two populations that are, taken as a whole, somewhat less comfortable with homosexuality. Prison, I’m guessing, is a place where extenuating circumstances erode the stigma that otherwise attaches to extracurricular uses of the rectum.
Rodriguez speaks freely about the situation in Avenal. Rather than antagonize gay inmates, he says, gang leaders tend to employ them. “We call them ‘vaults.’ If they’re reliable, the homies will approach them—‘Hey, check it out, you want to make some money?’”
Everyone else has to practice to get up to speed. Rodriguez recalls his “cherry” assignment—the blades—as extremely painful. He says gang underlings are made to practice. I picture muscular, tattooed men puttering around the cell with soap bars or salt shakers on board. Lieutenant Parks showed me an 8 × 10 photograph of what he said was a practice item, one that landed the apprentice in Medical Services. Deodorant sticks had been pushed into either end of a cardboard toilet paper tube and wrapped in tape. “As you can see,” he said in his characteristic deadpan, “it’s a rather large piece.” (Rodriguez says it was hooped on a bet.)