Salty Sky

by Seth Coker

  10

  IN THE AIRSPACE over the Caribbean, the drawing took shape on the notepad. At the top of the page were Francisco’s initials in blue ink. From there, three branches connected down to other men’s initials. These limbs forked to more initials, and the limbs below those were no longer identified by individual initials but were labeled by a combination of roles and locations such as Peru, paste transport. Subsequent levels continued the naming convention of location and role.

  The page was a rainbow of highlights. Green highlighted occupied positions, yellow showed positions of concern, red indicated positions where changes were needed, and blue marked unfilled positions. The blue fields were largely tied to the long-neglected markets in Europe and the United States, although a few referenced China’s edges in Macau and Hong Kong.

  With a black pen, Francisco put asterisks beside his priorities. A mental aside grabbed his attention. He picked the blue pen back up and circled the family members on the tree to see whether any branch was either neglected or overloaded. Too many brothers running one branch of an operation was an invitation to insurrection that Francisco might be slow to see if he was focused on growth. As the information began to visually pop from the page, Francisco scratched over and moved initials to get the skills and loyalty balance he wanted.

  With family accounted for, he then looked at the green highlighted limbs without family member initials to see whether those running successful operations could move to a red or blue role. Did they have the skills to start a new operation or only those for maintaining an existing process? Did they develop talent in their organization to be able to replace themselves, or would their group fail without them?

  Francisco asked, “Alberto, tell me, what do you know of the Uruguayan, Alfonso?”

  “He is very …,” Alberto paused. He struggled to find the exact English words. He looked in Francisco’s eyes for permission to switch to Spanish and saw it was denied. Unable to find the precise wording, he resorted to a longer description, “He is very good at his men getting to the right spots. He employs good men.”

  “Does he have a man trained who could do this in his absence?”

  “Yes, his brother Jaime is very good.”

  “Excellent, does he have a wife and children?”

  “Yes.”

  With that, Francisco wrote Alfonso’s name over a blue highlight on a limb far removed from the one his brother Jamie would now operate. He added a note to move Alfonso’s family to one of his villas in Colombia.

  Throughout the long flight, he continued the process of reconfiguring the map of his soon-to-again-be-global operation. He promoted greens, filled in blues, and addressed reds with his long continuation of Pablo’s policy of plata o plomo by drawing either a dollar sign or bullet over the initials.

  Francisco needed this exercise to order his world. He was a good leader but a reluctant manager. He bonded well with his people and got more from them than they would have provided another boss. Although he did not admit it to others, he felt he had surpassed even El Capo in this manner. He had his people’s hearts. Machiavelli would have approved of his mastery of being both loved and feared. But he needed to force himself to deal with the tedium of daily operations. This tactical exercise of evaluating where to focus his improvements was enjoyable. But experience had taught him that the daily process of holding his people accountable was one that needed to be delegated to his inner circle.

  The return of growth would be good for his family but it needed to be thought through. If he stopped the business today, money would not be an issue for ten generations and a thousand relatives. But ambition, ambition was an eternal issue. His cousins and nephews needed to find new markets and add to the family’s grandeur rather than squabbling over its vast remains.

  He recollected a long-ago conversation with a retired Royal Air Force pilot Pablo had employed to fly the family’s Boeing 747.

  “Francisco, why do you think people everywhere speak English? It is not an easy language to learn nor a particularly beautiful language to the ear. It does not smell of sex like French or convey excitement like Italian. There are not many native English speakers compared with Mandarin, Hindi, or Spanish. So why?”

  “That is an easy question to answer. Because the norteamericanos speak English. Because to do business with them, you have to speak English.”

  “That’s an inadequate answer for a lad with your noggin. The world didn’t start with business being done in English or with the bloody Yanks. Have you ever heard the saying, ‘the sun never sets on the British empire?’”

  “Of course.”

  “Tell me why a small island in the north Atlantic should have had such an empire.”

  Quickly tired by the pilot’s Socratic style, Francisco said, “No, stop this. You tell me why you think this small country of people with bad teeth and fragile skin had an empire across the world.”

  The pilot promptly replied, “The law of primogeniture.” He looked at Francisco and saw the small roll of his eyes. “Ah, you don’t believe me, young master. You thought I was going to say because of the queen’s dominant navy. Or perhaps you thought I was an ethnocentrist and believed it was our naturally superior intelligence and appearance. But no, that would be rubbish. It was the rule of law—and particularly this law—that gave England the world’s greatest empire.”

  Despite his desire to stop the old pilot’s show of superiority, Francisco was curious to hear the reasoning. “OK. Tell me what this law is and why it made everyone speak English.”

  The old man explained. The law of primogeniture gave the family’s full inheritance to the eldest son once the father passed away. In the rest of Europe, when the father died, the inheritance was split among the sons. Therefore, many Englishmen who were raised in wealth grew up under the specter of needing to make something of themselves to avoid being impoverished once the eldest brother received his due.

  With England being a small country with modest physical resources, these men were forced to take their education and breeding into the world, colonizing it for mercantilism. In addition, the eldest son, who had full control of an undiluted inheritance, could invest the money in large projects in trade or manufacturing. By contrast, the six sons of an Italian count were each given a sixth of the count’s lands. Then, their six sons were each given a sixth of their father’s lands—enough to live without the motivation to avoid hunger but not enough to make investments to change the world.

  Francisco never researched the story’s historical accuracy, but even if it was only a fable, it held wisdom. He needed new markets to send his ever-expanding list of working-age nephews and cousins into. Let them take the lessons he had taught them, as Pablo had taught him, to new markets. Let them stand on his shoulders and help him conquer the world, or let them be gobbled up by others trying. If they stayed within the current operations, they would eat each other up with petty grievances, and eventually, there would be internal warfare. He had watched with interest as other families had turned their guns inward. He would not let this happen to his empire.

  Yes, Francisco needed to capitalize on this growth opportunity. And of course, he did not divide up his inherited or accumulated wealth, so he was willing and able to make world-changing investments. He well knew some investments were repaid in currency, while others were repaid in blood.

  The long highway drive to Savannah had alternately run through overcrowded urban areas and long stretches of barely populated farmland. As Francisco now rocketed southwest in his new G5, he wondered why more norteamericanos didn’t fly private. The minimal effort and maximum comfort on his first flight in his new jet reinvigorated him for the tasks he faced. He chose this Gulfstream because the seating arrangement allowed a cabin with a door to be built around the back couch if he desired.

  Sitting in his plush leather seat, he reflected on his brief stay in Miami. The city was so changed from before. He wondered where the Jews and blonde-haired norteamericanos had gone. Ri
ch Hispanics and Russian service workers were all he met in his explorations. He had spent the prior evening—morning, technically—behind a velvet rope at a nightclub with a grass-sod dance floor in the company of a certain type of Russian service worker. A new grass floor each night! Who thought of these things? He liked this new Miami. It cost more, but more was for sale.

  The copilot came over the intercom. “Excuse me, gentlemen. We touch down in Sanford in thirty minutes. A white Porsche Cayenne with the starter fob under the driver seat is parked at the FBO for your use this afternoon. Unless directed otherwise, I will refuel and wait for your return. With your permission, Estella will begin preparing the cabin for landing.”

  This was the type of service you should expect at $14,000 an hour. Two pilots and a stewardess manned the G5. Francisco instructed the bilingual crew to speak English in the United States. The crew, hired before the G5 was purchased, had met the men in Savannah. The pilots, career commercial carrier veterans, collected pensions from bankrupt companies. The stewardess was in her early thirties, a modern Colombian beauty with dyed blonde hair and extremely enhanced silicone breasts, extended eyelashes, and long curved fingernails. She wore a V-neck blouse, a short skirt, and stilettos. He was confident she would pay him, as the owner, special attention when he required it.

  This morning’s stop would be brief. “Alberto, where are we meeting Mr. Radcliffe?”

  “In her wife’s office.”

  “You say, ‘his wife,’ Alberto. Where will the wife be?”

  “We have made a date for her with a new client in Orlando. The client will not show for their lunch meeting.”

  “What does Mr. Radcliffe believe is our visit’s purpose?”

  “To lease the vacant storefront below his wife’s office. She owns it, but he leases it.”

  “And where are our supplies?”

  “They were delivered to the vacant storefront already inside of five-gallon paint drums. The Cuban arranged it.”

  Francisco knew all of this. And he knew Mr. Radcliffe would die by fire as he lived by fire.

  A family lawyer found Mr. Radcliffe’s identity with a few lucky keystrokes and his location with a few more intentional ones.

  Wikipedia provided a summary report of the twenty-year-old raid on Francisco’s family’s beach villa. It was under a section of thousands of pages, titled “DEA War on Drugs: Colombia 1985–1998.” Francisco was in the process of having these documents read to learn more. There were more names to learn—norteamericanos and Colombians. Exploding dreams yet, my friends. Francisco knew his family’s memory and reach must be known to be long. It was part of the mystique. It was part of the fear that protected them.

  At the time, the capital had taken credit for the raid. The government announced it had “enforced the laws of the people” and destroyed the structures. Francisco remembered an above-the-fold newspaper headline: “El gobierno destruye la villa de playa de Escobar.” It was all propaganda. The cartel’s black market income was greater than the country’s GDP. No system that taxed honest citizens could sustain a military and legal system that could destroy the cartel. The capital would need not only support from the norteamericanos but also propaganda that convinced the populace that their victories were their own and not those of the norteamericanos, who would abandon them once their own needs were met.

  In the raid report, the names of the leaders were blacked out. The names of the helicopter pilot and the explosives agents who carried out the mission were not.

  The report detailed how Mr. Radcliffe and two associates put the explosives in place. Before the charges were set, Francisco’s older brother arrived at the residence with a female companion and four bodyguards.

  A firefight ensued. Two DEA agents were fatally shot. All five Escobar men and the woman were terminated; Mr. Radcliffe and Mr. Coleman, the surviving DEA agents, carried the Colombians’ bodies into the villa. The fallen DEA agents were loaded into a new helicopter that arrived quickly, and explosives were set on the disabled helicopter. The new helicopter took off with its passengers. The charges were detonated, and the villa and disabled chopper were leveled and then engulfed in flames.

  Francisco had never known what happened to his brother yet instinctively knew his disappearance was tied to the villa and that he was dead. When the Escobars learned nothing from selectively bribing and torturing government officials, they knew it was the norteamericanos, who obviously had kept the secret from their Colombian counterparts.

  The secret was out now, and the score would be settled.

  11

  ON THE WEST bank, Cale saw his paddleboards lashed together. He eased across the channel, parallel docked, cut the engines, and tied the spring and bowlines to the dock cleats.

  On the elevated deck, Dan sat, his shirt unbuttoned, in a plastic chair at a plastic table under a Sunbrella awning. Two buckets of empty longnecks were being carried off as a new bucket replaced them. The captain and mate for a fishing charter shared the table. Their tanned faces, sun-bleached hair, and white visors were their profession’s uniform.

  Longeck in hand, Jay was a table over, talking with a couple. The man, whose back was to Cale, wore seersucker pants, Ferragamo loafers, a white polo, and wire-framed Ray Bans. His wife’s sundress was low cut and accessorized with tall heels, a straw hat, and oversized sunglasses. The couple drank juleps in highball glasses.

  Cale’s passengers departed. He managed another smile at the goddess whom he was very disappointed in; he assumed now that she was a call girl, escorting a couple of uberwealthy old guys and their bodyguards on a pleasure cruise. He stowed the paddleboards onboard and used the dock hose to wash sand out of the Whaler. A stevedore’s work was never done.

  He called Maggie. In his mind, of course; he was still sane, just a little sad below the surface. No real news. In these talks, the girls were still sixteen and tired from practice. They exchanged I-love-yous. The family would go to church in the morning and over to her parents’ for lunch and a low-key day on the lake. The Ski Nautique was out of the water, but the Jet Skis could pull the girls if they wanted. No worry, he’d behave so he could safely fly the group home tomorrow. Another I love you and I’ll see you tomorrow.

  Fans cooled the dock’s open-air bar. Cale’s passengers mingled with marines from the big base thirty miles up the road. He grabbed a bottle from Dan’s bucket and sat with Jay and the couple drinking juleps. They exchanged names, but over the background noise, he didn’t catch theirs. He did catch that this was his third marriage, her first. Plaintiff litigator, former pharmaceutical sales rep. They had his kids from wife number one every other weekend but not this weekend. The breeze, shade, Jay being Jay, Cale’s own fatigue, and Mrs. Julep’s on-display assets made the afternoon pleasantly glide into evening.

  The fishing charter crew sitting with Dan took off to prepare for tomorrow’s charter. There was a lot to do with a fat buzz in the dark: set the rigging, cut the bait, fill the ice chests, fuel the boat, clean the head, and so on. Dan flipped his chair around and split the Juleps, his chair between theirs. The Mrs.’s arm and leg now brushed Cale’s. He scooted over slightly, and she followed.

  Dan, who never knew a silence he couldn’t fill, said, “Cale, these good folks were telling us earlier that they are going to visit Colombia in January. Didn’t you work in Colombia for a few years with the DEA?”

  “Yeah. I spent time there off and on, but I was never stationed there. All the pilots were stationed domestically.”

  Mr. Julep said, “The place seems to have settled down. They just signed a treaty formalizing the peace between the government and the rebels. It seems that areas of the country that Westerners haven’t seen in decades are now open for business. One of my clients is inviting us on a couples’ trip.”

  Cale supposed “Northerners” was more accurate than “Westerners,” but he got the point.

  “From what I remember, it’s beautiful country,” he replied. “Mountains. Lots of forest—sor
t of a jungle-like forest. Mild temperatures. Maybe it’s the latitude, but I remember it seemed to be night twelve hours a day even in the summer.”

  Mr. Julep seemed intent on staying in Bogotá. “Did you know that within a week of the peace treaty happening, the US signed a free-trade agreement with Colombia too? A lot of good things are happening down there. Probably real opportunities to make money for someone familiar with the terrain.”

  Macroeconomics in a barroom? Cale didn’t engage, since no proof or specificity was required other than the strength of the speakers’ convictions—or the loudness of their voices. Also, like all DEA agents with classified records from Bogotá, he never discussed Colombia, because those they battled had long memories and ample resources. He made a mental note to call Sheila at the agency and check the scuttlebutt on both the treaty and the free-trade agreement.

  Cale changed the conversation’s direction. “I really wasn’t there long. I spent most of my career harassing hippies out of pot fields.”

  This piqued the Mrs.’s interest. She grabbed the top of Cale’s wrist with her hand and asked, “And how did you harass hippies out of fields? Did you sneak into the fields at night wearing camouflage and face paint with machine guns drawn and floodlights lighting up the night sky?”

  Cale sensed how she pictured this breathless adventure and was tempted to draw it but refrained. To him, it was more about fire ants, wet shoes, and general discomfort. Was there anything worse than wet socks? He smiled, hoping to convey the message that he couldn’t live up to those expectations.

  “Nothing so exciting for me. If I flew you over Northern California across the Sierra Mountain range, you’d see one-acre pot plots everywhere. Some of the pot plots are on private land, where the owner has no idea he is in the agricultural business, but most are in the federal forests.