A flat-bottomed valley lay cupped in the highlands. He stood at one narrow end, looking down into it, on the lip of a low pass at the top of the draw he’d just climbed. Steep slopes rose up on either side of him, cradling the lowland all along its length.
He guessed it at about two miles long and a half mile across at its widest, with surprisingly level ground along the middle. The view was as though he had just climbed a dam and were peering over the top at the mountain reservoir behind it.
The travel would be easy through here. Then another short climb through the pass at the far end.
He started down the gentle decline to the low ground, still breathing hard from the climb in the thin air. He hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards before he saw the first blossoms.
The waist-high stems were topped with bulbous capsules the size of fists. Flowers had opened atop some of them. Others stood closed, not yet in bloom.
A field of opium poppies.
Examining the map before leaving Vega, he’d been expecting this little valley to be filled with more mountain grassland like that he’d seen when he peered through the scope at the Meadows. A find like this hadn’t occurred to him.
The field was vast. Stems and flowers caught the moonlight as far ahead as he could see, and from left to right, filling the flatland between the slopes. Somebody up here was thriving, whatever the Taliban had to say about it.
He would have to plow through or go around and pick his way along the hillsides just outside the field. Either way would be slow going. Either way would put him at risk of being seen by the field’s owners.
He stepped to the edge of the field, bending to look at the nearest stalks. He’d never seen a cultivated poppy field up close before.
The capsules were impressive, alien things, engorged with the ancient drug. He reached out and felt one, running his finger over its smooth surface.
Which wasn’t smooth. He leaned in to inspect it. What he saw made him duck down low to the ground.
Each capsule was scored with vertical lines inscribed by a blade. At the bottom of each incision was a growing white globule of latex, seeping from the plant.
The field was being harvested.
Everyone knew basically how it worked. The incisions were made at the end of the day, and the capsules were left to drain overnight. In the morning the dried latex—pure opium—was collected.
If it was to be collected in the morning, then the field would be guarded tonight. A plantation this size would be guarded well.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
He blew out a long breath. Words danced at the edge of his memory.
With walls and towers were girdled round
A hazy remembrance reached out across two nights without sleep. He was hearing voices.
Beware! Beware!
No, he was hearing voices. Squatting, he peered around behind him.
For he on honey-dew hath fed
Two orange cigarette pinpoints, moving lazily along the bottom of the slope toward the edge of the field.
And drunk the milk of Paradise
He turned back to the flowers, got on his hands and knees, and began to crawl.