Raiding a marijuana grow in the Southern Sierras

Los Angeles Times

A few minutes after 4 a.m., agents in camouflage cluster in a dusty field in Kern County. “Movement needs to be slow, deliberate and quiet,” the team leader whispers. “Lock and load now.” They check their ammunition and assault rifles, not exactly sure who they might meet in the dark: heavily armed Mexican drug traffickers, or just poorly-paid fieldworkers camping miserably in the brush. Twenty minutes later, after a lights-off drive for a mile, the agents climb out of two pickup trucks and sift into the high desert brush. The granite faces of the Southern Sierra are washed in the light of a full moon. Two spotters with night-vision scopes take positions on the ridge to monitor the marijuana grow, tucked deep in a cleft of the canyon.

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