“Is that where you’re from?”
“No. I’m originally from Bogotá. I went there to live with my grandmother after my parents were killed.”
“I’m sorry,” Blake said.
Rivero drank off the dregs of his coffee and grimaced. “The story has been around so long, it has become something of a legend. He is called El Callado, the silent one, because he is a mudo, a mute. He is said to be a mestizo, one of mixed Spanish and Indian blood. According to the peasants, he was a huerfano, how do you say . . . an orphan, abandoned in the jungle. He was found near a processing lab hidden deep in the jungle as a young man and taken in by one of the drug cartels. The story says he grew up wild in the jungle where he developed great physical strength and cunning. The legend among the peasants is that his senses are highly developed; it is said that he can hear a leaf drop in the forest, can see the mites on a hawk, can smell the wild clover high in the Andes mountains - but he cannot speak. All these things made him valuable to the cartel leaders, especially his inability to betray them, and he was trained to protect their interests. According to the story, he has been trained by the cartel’s sicarios, their trained assassins, to kill silently, using only his hands. He supposedly has been used for acts of terrorism against government officials waging war against the cartel. The peasants are terrified of him, and he is said to be used to guard cocaine processing labs in the jungle and, on occasion, important shipments of cocaine and cash. This tale is the legend of El Callado.”
“And you don’t believe it?”
Rivero shook his head. “The National Police in Colombia believe it’s just a story concocted by the cartel to keep the peasants away from their operations.”
Blake tapped his cup, looking at Rivero, trying to read those inscrutable black eyes. He had the feeling Rivero wanted to say something more but was holding back. “What else can you tell me about this legend?”
“There is one thing I perhaps should mention . . .”
“What’s that?”
Sergeant Rivero hesitated, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t read too much into this part, Teniente, but . . . the peasants believe that he is jealous of the ability to speak and always . . .”
“Always what?”
“Always removes the tongue of his victims.”
Frank Kozlewski’s jaw dropped. “Are you saying this El . . . this nut is aboard this ship?”
Blake smiled to himself. The chief had a way of cutting through the crap.
“It has to be just a coincidence,” Rivero said. “There have never been any documented sightings-”
“Maybe them that saw him didn’t live long enough to document it,” the chief said.
Rivero scoffed. “We’ve run down every lead for the past ten years. There’s nothing to suggest that it’s anything other than a leyenda, a legend, a story designed to keep the peasants at bay.”
Blake thought Rivero protested too much. “Most legends have some basis in fact,” he said, twirling the coffee grounds in the bottom of his cup, studying Rivero’s face.
Rivero said nothing. A light film of sweat appeared on his forehead.
“Well, it don’t make any sense, even if it’s true,” Chief Kozlewski said. “Why would he go on a rampage and do in half the crew of the ship he was supposed to be protecting?”
“It may not make sense,” Blake said, “but according to the ship’s log, that’s exactly what happened.”
Kozlewski gaped at him. “That’s what the log says?”
Blake nodded. The chief knew what any sailor knew; the ship’s log was as close to a sacred document as you could find on a ship at sea. You didn’t enter anything into it unless it was gospel.
“But it don’t make sense. Why would he . . .”
“I don’t know,” Blake said. “Maybe the crew came across the money and tried to highjack it. Who knows? But for whatever reason, if you believe the log, someone or something called El Callado began to eliminate every member of the crew, one by one, after the ship had put to sea.”
“And a whole crew couldn’t protect itself from one lunatic?”
“With what? It’s basically an unarmed merchantman. The crew’s spread thin, scattered around the ship, standing watch in remote areas twenty-four hours a day. It wouldn’t be hard to pick them off one by one, especially if you’re trained to do that sort of thing. After he worked his way through the chief engineer, and the first mate, and the captain, my guess is the remaining crew panicked, rang up ‘All Stop’ and abandoned ship.”
“I can’t believe they’d do that,” Kozlewski said. “They had to know there was a storm moving this way.”
“I’m sure they did,” Blake said. “The storm probably seemed the lesser of two evils.”
“Good God.” Kozlewski started to take a drink of coffee and stopped, his coffee mug poised in mid-air. A puzzled look wrinkled his forehead. “So where’d he go?”
“Hard to say,” Blake said. “All the lifeboats and life rafts are gone. He could have taken one of them. Or, for that matter, if he was as crazy as he appears to be, he could have jumped over the side. Or . . .” Blake raised his eyebrows.
“Or, what, sir?” Kozlewski stared intently into Blake’s face.
“Or, he could still be aboard.”
“Holy Mother of Christ!” The chief banged his coffee mug down on the table. He looked at Rivero, then back to Blake.
“Hold it down, Chief.” The calmness in Blake’s voice belied the turmoil in his stomach. “We don’t want to panic the crew.”
Robertson approached with two sizzling platters and Blake waved him off. “Serve the others first.” The Alabaman made a U-turn, struggling to keep his balance on the heaving ship, and headed for the table where Kelly was seated.
“So what do we do now?” the Chief said in a raspy whisper.
“As soon as the crew has had some food, we’ll form search parties led by those of us with side arms. We’ll sweep the ship starting at the lowest deck aft and work our way forward. We’ll go deck by deck and hold by hold. If he’s on board, we’ll find him. But in the meantime, I don’t want anyone to go wandering off.” Blake looked across the room and watched Robertson approach the table where Kelly sat. He’d caught a glimpse of Robertson’s creation - two globes of yellow liquid quivering in a pool of white slime atop a nearly raw steak - and it had made his stomach roll. He wondered how Kelly would react to it after what they’d just seen.
“Ladies first,” Robertson said. He slid one of the platters across the table to Kelly and the other to Sparks, then stood looking down like a proud parent, wiping greasy hands on his apron.
“Just the way I like ‘em,” Sparks said loudly. Blake could see the electrician staring greedily down at his plate. He watched Kelly’s reaction. She looked down at the sunny-side up eggs shimmering atop her steak, then at Sparks’s platter. The freighter pitched up, then rolled sharply to port as Sparks sliced into the mess, puncturing an egg yolk. A look of disbelief came over Kelly’s face. She pushed away from the table and stood up.
Blake caught her halfway to the door. “Kelly?”
“I . . . I just wanted to get some air, sir.” Her eyes were wide, pleading.
Blake glanced at the platter where she’d been seated and cursed Robertson for being so stupid. “Sure,” he said. “Just don’t go far.” He looked at Doc Jones and nodded toward Kelly’s back as she wheeled and headed for the door. The corpsman nodded and followed her out.
Blake shoved his coffee cup aside and rubbed his eyes. The lack of food and sleep was beginning to get to him. He had to keep his head straight, think the situation through, establish some priorities. The possibility that some headcase might be lurking aboard worried him a lot less than the probability that his keepers were just over the horizon. He felt vulnerable, not knowing who these people were, how they operated, how far they’d go to recover this shipment. It was a world he knew nothing about, and now he realized his ignorance made him vulnerable. He had to get up to
speed and do it quickly. He couldn’t count on any help from the Carlyle. He had to learn who the players were, which ones owned this cargo, what their reaction was likely to be when they realized it was missing, and, if it came to war, how the war would be fought. And, he knew, his only resource for discovering this information was the stoic Colombian marine sitting across the table. It was time to make a clean start.
“How long have you been in the Marine Corps, Sergeant?”
“Twelve years, sir.”
“And you’re a staff sergeant?”
Rivero nodded. “Sargento vice primero.”
Chief Kozlewski raised his eyebrows.
“The equivalent rank of a petty officer first class in the U.S. Navy.”
“I hate to admit my ignorance,” Blake said, “but I didn’t even know Colombia had a marine corps.”
“It’s quite small,” Rivero said. “Five battalions. Two under the Atlantic Marine Brigade and two under the Pacific. The fifth is under the jungle battalion, part of the Western River Forces Command, where I’m from. About a 3,000-man force, total.”
“With a group that small, I guess they can afford to be picky.”
Rivero smiled, acknowledging the compliment. “They are.”
“There’s a lot about this business I don’t know,” Blake said. “You’ve been at this game a long time. Maybe you can help me sort things out.”
“Of course, Teniente. I’m here as an advisor. That’s part of my job. What would you like to know?”
The importance of being important. The merest touch of flattery could do it. “For starters, I need to know who the probable owners of this cargo are. I also need to know what they’re likely to do about it when they realize it’s missing.”
Rivero looked down at the platter of steak and eggs sliding to a stop in front of him, the eggs rippling in little waves. He pushed it over to Frank Kozlewski. “There are only two organizations large enough to control a shipment of this size, Lieutenant. One we need to worry about and the other we probably don’t.”
Blake ignored the platter Robertson shoved in front of him. “Which one owns this shipment?”
Rivero shook his head. “I thought I knew; now I’m not sure.”
“Why? Are they that different?”
“As different as two groups of people could be.” Rivero let out a breath. “The first group, the one we need to worry about, was formed twenty years ago in Northern Colombia by a thug named Miguel Ramirez.” His eyes grew dark and glossy.
Frank Kozlewski sliced into the steak, severing an egg yolk, sending a stream of amber liquid flowing down the side of the steak, pushing its way into a crimson pool of au jus. He forked a pink morsel of steak dripping with egg yolk into his mouth. Blake felt his stomach turn. He pushed his platter away and shifted to face Rivero.
“Ramirez was first arrested twenty years ago with 200 kilos of cocaine,” Rivero went on, “the largest amount ever seized in the country. For unknown reasons, the case was quickly dismissed. The police officer who made the arrest was killed several years later.”
The Colombian got a distant look in his eye. “He was a capitán then, a captain of police. He had a wife, a son, a daughter. The family was going to mass on a Sunday morning in the spring. At the last minute, the boy got out of the car and ran back into the house to get his catechism. The father turned the ignition. The boy was knocked to the ground by the explosion. He rolled over in the wet grass to see his father, his mother and his five-year-old sister engulfed in a ball of fire.” His eyes grew shiny, glasslike.
My God. He’s talking about himself.
Rivero blinked his eyes and swallowed as if coming out of a trance. “I’ve devoted my life to destroying these animals.”
No wonder this guy is a little off-the-wall. Blake’s suspicions about Rivero began to evaporate; it would be impossible to fake the look of pain and hatred he saw in his eyes. He felt a guilty sense of relief. If this Miguel Ramirez and his boys decided to come after the ship with Sergeant Rivero aboard, I wouldn’t want to be the first one out of the helicopter.
“They were the first to make massive shipments of cocaine into the United States and became incredibly wealthy almost overnight. When their wealth and power grew to astronomical heights, the government tried to crack down. Miguel Ramirez responded by declaring war against the state. His sicarios, his trained assassins, murdered hundreds of police officers and high government officials on the streets. Thousands died in bomb blasts. Even the Bogotá headquarters of the DAS, our version of your FBI, was bombed out. Our cities became war zones.”
“And the government couldn’t stop them?”
“They waited too long; Ramirez and his people were out of control by then.”
Rivero went on for a full ten minutes, describing the open warfare that had evolved between the Colombian government and the Ramirez cartel. Once he had started, he couldn’t seem to stop. Blake gazed at Rivero, at the wild look in his eyes, the small drops of white forming in the corners of his mouth, shocked at the level of obsession he seemed to have with Miguel Ramirez. Hatred for the man radiated from him like a furnace.
“You said there were two organizations,” Blake said, trying to get him focused. “What about the other one?”
Rivero seemed to come back from a long way off. He nodded. “Because of his violent methods, Ramirez was on the defensive and a new organization headed by Don Augusto Gallardo, a businessman from Cali, was formed to challenge him.
“Is this one the Cali cartel you hear about all the time?”
“No,” Rivero said. “The so-called Cali cartel gets all the press coverage while Don Gallardo’s organization, which is much larger, operates quietly behind the scenes.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Don Gallardo is a member of the aristocracy, an astute businessman. He rejected the violent methods of the butcher, Ramirez. He knew it was bad for business. Instead of murdering officials who stood in his way, he cooperated with them. He even joined the Colombian government in the fight against Miguel Ramirez by raiding his processing labs and later, helping to track him through the jungle.”
“Hold it a minute,” Blake said. “Are you saying the Colombian government used one drug cartel to wage war on another?”
“They had no choice,” Rivero said. “The Ramirez cartel brought it on themselves when they murdered a popular candidate for president at a political rally outside Bogotá. The government had to use every resource at their disposal to bring it to an end. The Colombian people were sick of the endless war, the endless bloodshed.”
“So, what does that mean?” Blake asked, eyeing Rivero warily.
“It means that my government has come to realize that fighting a drug war just isn’t worth it. It’s too costly for everyone concerned. They will have no more of it. Miguel Ramirez competed with the state, tried to become the state. The Gallardo organization cooperates with the state. They have donated money to build neighborhood police stations in the cities in a drive to suppress street crime, for example.”
“I may be a little slow,” Kozlewski said, “but what are you saying here?”
“I’m saying that the government now knows the only way to defeat Ramirez is to quietly support the Gallardo organization, to leave them alone and let them run the Ramirez cartel out of business. They’re well on the way. The Ramirez cartel’s share of the country’s $6 billion in annual cocaine exports has fallen substantially. The market share of the organization headed by Don Augusto Gallardo has already surpassed it.”
“All that from just being nonviolent?” Blake asked.
“That and being good businessmen. While the Ramirez cartel was on the defensive, the Gallardo organization concentrated on developing new markets in other parts of the world, most notably Europe, because of the price advantage. A kilogram of cocaine goes for as much as $90,000 in some European cities. Athens, for example.”
Blake let out a low whistle. It was clear now that the value of the cargo
they were sitting on was such that the owners, peaceful or not, wouldn’t let it go without putting every resource at their command into the fight to recover it, even if it meant taking on the entire Western Pacific Fleet.
“In order to serve their European markets,” Rivero went on, “the Gallardo organization expanded production into other countries, most notably Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela. The governments of these countries are more tolerant, tend to look the other way, not only because of the revenue the cocaine traffic brings in, but because they are not under the watchful eye of the United States, which remains focused on Colombia, even though the game there, so to speak, is over.”
“Jesus,” Blake said. “Are we behind the times.”
“The game changes quickly. Only a few years ago, the major worldwide routes for cocaine traffic were from Colombia, through Mexico and the Bahamas, into Florida. Today, the major flow of cocaine in the world is from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia - these are now the major producers - into Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Suriname - these are now the major repackaging and transshipment centers - for shipment to the Netherlands and Spain, as ports of entry into the European markets. Spain is surrounded by so much coastline, it’s impossible to monitor it all. It is now called The Florida of Europe.”
Blake shook his head. “Sounds like they’re taking over the world.”
Rivero nodded. “The Gallardo organization has not only displaced the Ramirez cartel as the largest drug organization in Colombia, it is the predominant cocaine-distribution organization in the world. But it is a peaceful group and the government has made it clear that it does not intend to challenge it so long as it remains peaceful and cooperates with the authorities.”
“You mean the Colombian government just lets them have a free hand?” Blake asked.
“For the most part,” Rivero said. “The government makes a show of a few seizures from time to time, but it is understood that they will not touch the leaders. No charges have ever been filed against Don Augusto Gallardo or any of his senior officers.”
“You’re saying that the drug war is over in Colombia and everyone knows it except the United States government?” Blake asked.
Point of Honor Page 10