The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces

The narrative switches to Specialist Enrique Roman-Martinez, a human resources soldier in the 82nd Airborne who never deployed. He grows up poor in Chino, California, immerses himself in psychedelics, and enlists in 2014 to support his family and to later study pharmacy. He fails Ranger School, earns jump wings, develops compartment syndrome, and is reassigned to a desk in the 37th Brigade Engineer Battalion. On a base where the use of LSD is common, he sells tabs of acid through dead drops, orders narcotics from the dark web, and is placed on the ALERTS watch list while attending substance abuse counseling. Roman-Martinez is socially awkward and devoted to anime. He grows close to younger private Annamarie Cochell, who dates his friend, Specialist Alex Becerra. In May 2020, despite a COVID lockdown order requiring that soldiers remain within a fifty-mile radius of Fort Bragg, Roman-Martinez, Cochell, Becerra, Sergeant Samuel Moore, Private First Class Samad Landrum, and Specialists Joshua Curry, Benjamin Sibley, and Juan Avila take a ferry to camp on Cape Lookout. Roman-Martinez, angered by political flags on the beach, refuses alcohol and ingests what witnesses call a “shit ton” (226) of LSD. As a storm approaches, he grows agitated over a misplaced wallet (that he eventually finds).