We were waiting for them at the most vulnerable strip of road, where we would be hidden until they came around a curve. As the truck made the bend, we put our plan in action. One of our cars pulled in front of their lead car and took it out with an RPG which killed the four occupants in that vehicle and stopped the eighteen-wheeler in its tracks. The driver and the guy riding shotgun would be unable to contact anyone for help, because I had a jamming device to prevent them from getting a call in or out on their CBs, short waves or cell phones.
My lead guy stepped in front of the eighteen-wheeler, pointing a rocket at the cab, freezing the driver and his partner in place.
Behind the truck, the chase car came to a stop, ejecting four armed men. They didn’t have a chance; one of my guys hit them with an RPG rocket, which killed all four at the same time.
I jumped out of my car and yelled at my guys. “Don’t forget the guards inside the truck,” I yelled, spraying the sides of the trailer to give the occupants something to do while they tried to aim their guns at my guys opening the doors. We made mincemeat of them all.
The heavy lift chopper showed up and hovered at the rear of the trailer with the cargo net. Within minutes it was full and sped off to parts unknown in Mexico.
By the time the chopper came back, we had the second cargo net fully loaded and hooked it and ourselves up for the flight.
Just as we were secured, the highway became awash with cops and cop cars.
All my men started to fire as we lifted off, and the suppressing fire was thick enough that they could not fire back until we were too far away and on our way to safety. Everything worked just as I had planned.
Back at the training field, we celebrated with some beers and ribald jokes about the cops we’d left in the dust.
I said goodbye to my crew, telling them, “I’ll be in touch.”
I went back to my boat and waited to hear from the attorney. In a few days he called to set up a meeting at my place.
“There’s nothing to discuss,” I told him, insisting we didn’t have to meet. “I have done my last deal.
He persisted, so I agreed, but I set my own plans into motion. I told Captain Bob to set in stores for a long voyage. I planned on leaving the day the attorney left the boat.
When he got aboard, he said all went well. The Mexicans knew I was putting stores up for a long trip which he said was out of the question. As far as they were concerned, I was not done until I did one more job for them.
“So forget trying to run and hide,” the attorney said.
I knew as he talked that this would never be over until I was no longer any use to them and my family and I were dead. Every word coming out of his mouth was a lie.
And so I decided as he left we would leave.. Maybe they would think I was heading to their next target
Captain Bob must have sensed my thoughts. “Where to next, boss?”
“San Diego,” I said with no hesitation. “No stops in between other than for fuel and supplies. Stay well out to sea.
“No problem. I’ll check the chart and course and put all the numbers in the autopilot. I’ve always wanted to go through the Panama Canal.”
I decided that before we approached the Canal, we needed a new boat and new identities, even Captain Bob and Karen. He arranged it all, and quicker than I thought possible, we were heading toward the Panama Canal.
My wife used the trip as a geography and history lesson for the kids, and I used the time to figure out a way to stay away from the Cartel for good.
The Panama Canal was completed a hundred years ago on August 15, 1914. For a while, I thought our Panama Canal experience was going to take another hundred years, as we had to file a mountain of paperwork, which I didn’t like one bit because this would leave a record of us having been there. Yes, we had a new boat and new identities, which increased our chances of survival, but the Cartel had spies everywhere. But short of sailing down the coast of South America and around its southern tip, I had no choice but to go through the Canal.
Few cruising boats like ours just show up and transit the Canal. A long paper trail has to be completed before getting a transit date.
After the first few days of studying the situation, Captain Bob told me that the quickest way to get through it all was to hire an agent to do the paperwork for us. He was right. Customs, immigration and the port captain needed to be visited; arrangements with the Panama Canal Commission had to be arranged to measure the boat.
Every vessel transiting the Canal is essentially treated like a cargo ship, no matter its size, except that cruising boats are on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to scheduling a transit. We had to wait two weeks to get our date for passing through the Canal.
Captain Bob took advantage of the delay to check our new vessel out and to perform necessary maintenance. We were getting bored with being confined on our boat, which we had to tie up at the Panama Canal Yacht Club. The nearest town was Colon on the Caribbean side. It has a reputation for being a tough town, with cruisers like us regularly mugged. So only Bob and I ventured into town, taking a taxi around to places recommended by the staff at the yacht club.
To pacify the kids and my wife, I bought expensive gifts, jewelry and computer games mostly.
Finally the Canal Commission sent someone out to our boat to measure its length and beam, and they also calculated its interior volume. The cost of the canal transit was $500 with an $800 security deposit which was refundable, but I didn’t have an address for them to send it to.
The day of our transit finally arrived. We were assigned an advisor who told us we had to have four 125-foot lines, four line handlers, a pilot and a helmsman. Once in the locks, we tied up alongside a tug that accompanied us through the canal. We went through the lock accompanied by two other cruising boats and a container ship, as each lock is 85 feet deep, 106 feet wide, and a thousand feet long.
We traversed three sets of locks of the two-lane Canal which work as water elevators that lift the ships to the level of Gatun Lake, 85 feet above sea level and across the Continental Divide. More locks lowered us to sea level on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Panama. In total, we traveled through six locks and 45 miles of waterways that offered spectacular views of Central American mountains covered in thick green jungle vegetation.
We journeyed toward San Diego at a leisurely pace, as I was confident no one knew where we were or better yet, who we had become.
Yet, I knew the cartel would never stop looking for me, never, and I was eager to get as far away from Mexico as I could. After a few days in San Diego I got even more nervous, as I was paranoid that someone from the Cartel would recognize me or my kids. I told Bob to stock up for a long sea voyage.
After several days at the marina a worker there caught my eye as he always had two dogs with him, two giant Schnauzers that stood by his side all day every day. I went over to talk to him and he told me about his amazing dogs.
“What’s with the dogs?” my son asked a few days later.
“They’re brother and sister;” I said. :The black male was born blind and the grey female had been taking care of it since birth. That’s why they always touch as they walk side by side. The female is like a seeing eye dog for her brother, the blind black male. She’ll never leave his side even to have puppies.”
“Do you think if I’d have been born blind that my sister would do that for me?” he asked.
“Your sister would do anything for you, son,” I said, glad that my kids were close. They were one another’s protectors, playmates, schoolmates, they meant everything to one another, and for that I was grateful.
Bob finally said he had finished outfitting our boat for another long trip, and later that night, about two in the morning, we pulled out. We were full to the brim with food and fuel and had a range of three thousand miles. We headed to Honolulu, which was about twelve hundred miles away. It was the one place I thought the Cartel would never think to find me.
Chapter 10
When we arrived in Hawaii, I looked for a place that would be easy to defend. Eventually, I found three acres on the ocean to build, and it took three months and fifty million to close.
Hawaii hsd strict rules for building on ocean front. I got an architect to design and submit the drawings, and I worked with an attorney who set up the bank account with enough money for the project in order to get the building permit for ocean land.
We built an eight thousand square foot house with a five car garage. The entire property was fenced in with an electric gate and a remote camera system to control who came in or went out.
We soon had nine full time employees, five outside including Captain Bob and Karen, and four in the house, with an accountant who wrote the checks to pay bills and the other help. We had four cars at the estate, two Bentleys for me and my wife and two BMW SUV’s for the kids. My son was by now eighteen years old and my daughter seventeen. Both of them had several credit cards and bank cards, and I never put a limit on what they could spend or how they spent it. I wanted to give them everything I could, a substitute for the normal life they deserved but didn’t have, I guess.
By this time, my wife and I were doing our own things and were not intimate anymore. Lucia had taken up with a personal trainer, focusing on tennis or working out at our home gym. I played golf and fished.
I now had my own dock right on the property where I anchored my yacht, and soon I got a sixty-five foot sport fisher and a forty-foot one as well. Captain Bob stayed busy keeping all vessels in tip top condition.
One night I was out partying with a group of guys from the country club I’d joined. I got up from the table and headed to the men’s room which was around the corner and down a hallway. I wasn’t watching where I was going and bumped into a beautiful Hawaiian girl. At first I was stunned and didn’t say a word because she looked so much like my Rihanna. My heart ached at the thought of her.
“Are you okay?” the girl asked, her large brown eyes opening wide.
“Oh, uh, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just that you look so much like someone I used to know. And that’s not a pick-up line, it’s the truth. I’m sorry.” I stepped out of her way.
“I believe you,” she said, reaching out to touch me on the arm. I thought I’d been struck by lightning.
She must have felt the spark, too, because she stepped closer. “You are really shaken up! Can I get you a drink, some water maybe?”
“Well, yes, that would be good,” I agreed and followed her to a table in a private alcove.
We talked and talked and soon it was after two in the morning. My country club friends were long gone, but I felt like a million bucks. The girl wasn’t a girl, she was all woman with lovely breasts and hips just the perfect size. Her name was Tamara, and I wanted to get up close and personal. Apparently so did she.
“Come to my place,” she offered. “I haven’t enjoyed myself like this in years. I don’t want this night to end.”
Who was I to argue?
It was the start of a beautiful friendship which quickly turned into a love affair. We couldn’t get enough of each other. That first night, I didn’t go home. We had sex so many times, I could no longer count.
Her breasts were luscious and firm, heavy but still up-tilted with nipples that tasted like a fine wine. I sucked them hard until she came before I even had time to enter her.
“I’ve never known a man like you,” she breathed into my mouth, then thrust her tongue inside in a parody of what she wanted me to do to her.
I reverently explored and caressed the length of her body until I came to the secret place between her legs. She had a bikini wax, giving me clear access to her private heat. My tongue caressed her clit until she came again, her screams so sexy that I was compelled to enter her time and time again, my world spinning away until the only things that existed were the two of us.
After a month of bliss, I suggested I get her a larger apartment, and of course, I would pay for it. She agreed and rewarded me with a blow job to end all blow jobs. After another round of kissing and coupling, we came to a simultaneous climax with me pumping hard into her until I lay spent beside her on her bed.
Tamara was even more beautiful when she was satisfied, her golden brown skin slick with perspiration, her straight black hair cascading across silk sheets. Her lips were swollen from my ferocious kisses. I would never tire of her.
I found her a condo with an ocean view and secluded parking so I could come and go undetected. I ordered a king size bed which we christened the moment the delivery guys were gone.
That bed could tell some tales.
At about three one morning I was awakened by my private phone ringing. I groped for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“This is Deputy Kinimaka. We’ve picked you son up at a shooting gallery. We’re holding him down here at the station, but I suggest you get down here right away, sir. He’s full of heroin.”
I bailed Teo out of jail. Apparently he’d been on heroin for quite some time, possibly years. I was so fucking mad at him.
“No son of mine is gonna take drugs!” I yelled at him when we got home. I helped him upstairs to his bedroom where he collapsed.
By eight that morning, the phones started to ring. “It’s the press,” Karen said. She’d been acting as head housekeeper and secretary since we got to Hawaii. “Somebody tipped them off that Teo is your son.”
I had a reputation of being generous to our new community, despite keeping a low profile.
“Get Lucia up,” I told Karen. “And Teo, too. That boy has some explaining to do.”
I waited in the dining room for them, and ate a breakfast of fresh tropical fruit with my Kona coffee.
Teo dragged himself to the dining room where Lucia fixed him a strong cup of coffee.
“How could you do this, Teo?” Lucia asked. “I always told you to say no to drugs.”
“What did you take?” I demanded. “And where did you get it?”
“I’ve been using heroin since junior high. There, are you satisfied now? Everybody does it, all my friends and probably half the school.” Teo went to a private school where all the students had every luxury a kid could dream of.
“I’ve never seen you high,” Lucia said.
“No shit. You’re never here. And neither are you, Dad. Some weeks you don’t even bother to come home! And when you are here, you’re too busy on the phone to even talk to me or my sister.”
“Is she on heroin, too?” I demanded. The thought of my little girl on drugs churned the coffee in my stomach.
Teo shrugged his too thin shoulders. “Ask her. I don’t know.” He shoved his coffee aside and pushed away from the table.
“I’m going back to bed.”
“Where’s Mariposa?” I asked Lucia. I had reverted to calling her my little butterfly when we got to Hawaii but Vicente insisted on staying Teo.
“She’s up in her room sound asleep,” Lucia said. “I just can’t imagine her taking drugs. She doesn’t even like the vitamins I try her to take. So what are we going to do about Teo?”
“We’ve got to get the drugs out of his system,” I said. “I’ll find a safe place for him to dry out.”
“I want him to have the best,” Lucia said.
“I’ll call my attorney, he’ll know what to do.”
The next day we took our son to a center that specializes in heroin addiction which is real prevalent on the islands.
When we got home, we went to find Mariposa who was in her room on her computer.
“What?” she asked as I knocked on her door.
“Can we come in?”
“Oh, great. Teo gets in trouble, and I’m the one to get a lecture!”
“We’re not going to lecture you,” I said.
“We just want to know if you had any knowledge of Teo doing drugs?” Lucia asked.
Mariposa glared at us. “Now you want to know what we’re up to! Why couldn’t you ask us what’s going on with us
sooner?
“Are you taking drugs?” I demanded.
“How dare you ask that!” She grabbed her purse and ran out the door. The sound of her car roaring down the driveway filled the silence of our home.
We just looked at each other. Then I said, “She knows or she used to use.”
That night she never came home and we were up worrying that she was set upon by foul play or a car jacker or something.
Neither we, the school or the cops heard from her all week. Thanksgiving was coming up, so we made arrangements for Teo to be home for dinner that day.
By Thanksgiving we still hadn’t heard from her. We picked Teo up and brought him home. He didn’t seem interested in helping find Mariposa.
After much kissing and hellos to Bob and Karen, Teo said he wanted to take a shower and change clothes.
“Go ahead, son. Dinner won’t be ready for another two or three hours anyhow.”
I didn’t worry about him going to his room because it was clean. The people at the rehab clinic had us search his room top to bottom and throw out anything that would remind him of his life on drugs, and believe me we found plenty.
Come five o’clock it was almost time to eat , so we let the house help go home. “Just go up and tell Teo tht dinner is ready before you go,” I asked the last maid.
I was refilling my drink when I heard the maid’s shriek.
Lucia and I ran upstairs to where the maid was cryin at the entrance to Teo’s room. She was on her knees crying and crossing herself.
When I got to the doorway, I saw my boy hanging from his bathroom door, dead with a three by five card pinned to his shirt saying “Happy Thanksgiving.”
He had taken several hangers, the kind that shirts come on from the cleaners, the bare wire kind and put the first one on the inside doorknob and twisted it so it wouldn’t come off, then attached a second one to it and then a third and then put it over the door and closed it. The hanger at the top had a loop big enough for his head to fit through.
After standing on a chair and putting his head through the loop to his neck he spun around to tighten the loop to his neck and then he simply kicked the chair away and hung himself. He was only nineteen years old.
Smugglers 3 Accidental Kingpin Page 8