A winery near Lake Tahoe turns an FBI-UIU field operations team into its final vintage.
For almost a year, it was only a name printed in that faux French font used for medium-grade bottles of red wine. I was curious if it tasted like your average Cabernet from eastern California. No one was around to tell us anymore, and I didn’t plan on joining them.
The worst part wasn’t even being eaten alive by a Vitis cultivar after a nice glass of wine. It was the fact the grapes were always harvested before the Bureau could catch up. The Winepress wasn’t a plot to turn people into landscaping—the trail of bodies was their vineyard.
Most suspects have motivations that aren’t complicated: money, notoriety, hatred, or are bankrolled by adversarial governments. But sometimes, you are standing in front of a lonely winery in Tahoe National Forest and you aren’t even sure why. Those terrify me more.
“Major Edwards, we are prepared to breach the facility.” I took a deep breath at Captain Tran’s announcement. After five years, the Bureau finally felt I could lead a few dozen members of the Field Operations Division into the unknown.
“Knock, knock—see if anybody’s home!” In about three thrusts, the steel battering rams brought down the double-wide barn doors with a thump. Twenty well-armed operatives rushed in first before the rest of us could fit inside the cramped building.
What I remember most vividly is first seeing the two rows of wine fermentation tanks, 1,100 liters each. My mind started to divide the maximum yield of one vine before being rudely interrupted by my dry heaving. It is the only time in the UIU I’ve truly felt sick.
One operative rushed up, “Major Edwards, there’s nobody in the building.” I put myself back together and looked down a long staircase to the two floors below. Shit—we caught up to a massive part of the operation, but the figures behind The Winepress were still at large.
I sighed and thanked the operative before considering our next moves. “Folks, I want some of y’all to stay up here and keep watch. The rest of you, we’re going downstairs and making sure our friends aren’t underneath the floorboards or in the walls.”
Me and over 30 operatives headed down with axes and picks to test the rotting wooden boards. We discovered a few small sunken alcoves beneath the floors. At most there were a couple aged papers bleached entirely to white.
Shaking my head in frustration, I left my team downstairs to finish the sweep without the weight of my eyes bearing down on them. The staircase creaked loudly underneath my heavy leather boots. Then the first pipe burst.
If you have ever heard the sound of water shooting out a pipe, this wasn’t it. The sound wasn’t gushing wine—it was human screams like a whistle. My entire team covered our ears and groaned loudly as the flow of wine accelerated.
I tried to escape before my foot crashed through the last bend. I barely caught hold of the remaining steps and dragged myself onto the final landing as the staircase fell. Underneath me, the second floor collapsed, and all 32 operatives crashed into the rising tide below.
I watched as every teammate was drenched by 10,000 liters of red wine over the sound of bursting pipes. Then the grapes came. Out of mouths, chests and legs burst huge twisting vines, crackling into hardened wood until my vineyard grew into a bountiful harvest.
Never should I have kept kneeling there, but I stared. “Major, it’s time we get the hell out of here!” Captain Tran screamed as he dragged me away. I swore I saw two black figures watching me while they waded to the vines.
As we stumbled our way out of the dungeons of The Winepress, the screams—between the tanks or my own teammates, I could not tell—grew and echoed through the forest. Then it was suddenly silent. Only the squawks from the woods remained.
I stood up and tried to run back towards the opening before Captain Tran caught me, “Don’t, Major.” I wanted to struggle and break free, but I couldn’t, I knew it was over. Yet as we gasped for breath, I could still hear my team scream.
I can still hear them.