THIEVES DISRUPT IDYLLIC FARM LIFE FOR FAST METH FIX

RED ROCK -- Gary Williams awoke one morning to find a white fog hovering in
the shallow valleys of his wheat farm, a middle-of-nowhere expanse bordered
by Noble County's dusty back roads. Meth: Shattered Lives

Methamphetamine crooks had crept into his pasture of cattle and buffalo in
the middle of the night to steal from a 38-ton tank of anhydrous ammonia.

The thieves, craving the liquid fertilizer to cook a batch of meth, hadn't
bothered to shut off the tank's valve. About $4,500 worth of ammonia
vaporized as it hissed out of the tank, drifting across the pasture toward
the home of Williams' grandparents.

His first fear was that the gas could have knocked his grandparents
unconscious, or even killed them, as they slept. But the fumes lifted by
afternoon without hurting anyone -- even the cattle knew to wait it out at
the far end of the pasture.

Still, Williams fears what might come next from the methamphetamine cooks
who prowl Oklahoma's plains of wheat, cotton and cattle in darkness and even
daylight to get their drug fix.

Rusty propane tanks, rubber hoses and gloves -- tools to extract anhydrous
ammonia from the tanks in its liquid form -- lie in ditches among the
grasshoppers and brown-eyed susans.

Thieves were hitting Williams' fertilizer tank nightly, beating a path
through the weeds, until he drained it for the offseason. He estimates
several hundred of them have stolen from him in the last three years.

One was caught with a map leading to Williams' northern Oklahoma farm from
Ardmore, almost 200 miles away in southern Oklahoma.

Law officers with night-vision goggles lurk behind trees and giant hay bales
hoping to catch the crooks, but there are only a handful of deputies and
hundreds of square miles of farmland.

Kay and Noble counties have 17 anhydrous ammonia co-ops, and many farmers
keep their own tanks.

Thieves have struck an anhydrous ammonia pipeline from Enid to Tulsa so many
times, workers buried the line's sample sites and removed release valves.

Signs posted along the pipeline and near tanks warn the area is under
surveillance by the district attorney. It doesn't seem to matter.

One Noble County test site was buried with rocky cement, but inch by inch,
thieves are scraping a hole in the hard mound.

"They're probably too scared to stay very long with cars driving by," said
Chad VanHoesen, part of a five-member drug task force for Kay and Noble
counties. "They're real spooky."

A 2000 law made it a crime to tamper with anhydrous ammonia tanks. Lawmakers
later added pipelines.

Law officers have seized about 50 meth labs in Kay and Noble counties during
the past year -- most of them in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, this rural
area's shopping hub.

Narcotics agents spend hours in Wal-Mart stores looking for people buying or
stealing meth ingredients, including cold medicine, lithium batteries,
lighter fluid and drain cleaner. They've also trained Wal-Mart employees to
spot meth cooks.

"You can go buy everything you need at Wal- Mart or a hardware store,"
narcotics officer James Leone said. "We basically go from lab to lab, 24/7."

Meth makers use anhydrous ammonia to convert pseudoephedrine from cold
medicine into a methamphetamine base.

Addicts fill coffee thermoses and even 20-ounce convenience store mugs with
anhydrous ammonia, then park and cook their drug before the fertilizer
evaporates. Residents find empty pill blister packs on the roadside.

Officers have caught a few anhydrous ammonia thieves because they passed out
after breathing too much of the vapor.

Meth hit hard in Oklahoma about five years ago. In 1997, Leone's group
busted eight labs. The next year they got 48.

Kay County deputy Bill Grose, who has busted 30 meth labs in the past two
years, has resorted to sneakiness to catch anhydrous ammonia thieves.

He sticks bits of rags in tank valves and sprays tank trailer tires with
Armor All so he can detect footprints. He checks on the tanks every few
hours so he'll know what time of day crooks are stealing.

The deputy often creeps down dusty, potholed roads at night with the lights
off on his patrol cruiser.

"It never slows down -- snow, sleet, rain -- it doesn't matter to them,"
said Grose, who pulls the graveyard shift.

He's convinced meth addicts are doing countersurveillance on him with their
own police scanners. Sometimes, he has the dispatcher give him a fake call
on the radio so the thieves will think he's left the area.

"I'm not going to catch them all, but I don't want them to be comfortable,"
Grose said. "I want them sneaking."

In this part of Oklahoma, a motorist in an unknown vehicle is presumed lost
or up to no good.

Williams notices the strange vehicles prowling around his farm and spies the
bits of hose lying near his storage tanks. He knows better now not to leave
tools near the tank -- he's lost too many that way.

"It's a pretty big nuisance," he said, standing in a field in dusty jeans
and a ball cap. "You would like to leave your stuff set on your own property
and not have it messed with just for the sake of somebody mashing up some
cold tablets to get high with their friends."

Some farmers chase after anhydrous ammonia thieves, though law officers
don't encourage it.

A farmer driving a tractor through a Kay County cotton field had to duck for
cover from rifle fire in July when he tried to get a glimpse of a thief's
license plate.

Williams put a taller barbed-wire fence around his tank. He calls narcotics
agents when he sees thieves, but he doesn't confront them.

"You never know if they're high or what," he said. "You never want to
endanger yourself."

He let his anhydrous ammonia tank go empty this winter to keep the thieves
away. Farmers normally keep tanks full year-round, buying ammonia when it's
cheapest at the local co-op. They put it in the soil in August and
September.

Williams dreads fertilizing season, when he expects droves of drug addicts
to invade his normally quiet country life.

He worries what will happen if, one day, he startles a weapon-toting thief,
or if children playing in out buildings stumble on the toxic leftovers of a
meth lab.

"It kind of makes the country a dangerous place," he said.