Depending on the client’s wishes, the prevailing price and the availability, the center prepared various grades of product—from refined near-pharmaceutical-grade cocaine to cocaine cut or diluted with other chemicals, sometimes leaving less than a hundred grams of cocaine in a one-kilogram sample. The cocaine was measured and packaged in airtight bags—usually one-kilo size easy to conceal and transport—and prepared for shipment.
Security at the Valdivia processing center was extraordinary. The private Cartel soldiers were better equipped than the Colombian army, or most armies anywhere in South America for that matter— they could even repel air attacks with heavy-caliber, optically-aimed machine guns. Helicopters fitted with infrared scanners patrolled the sprawling fifty-thousand-acre facility, with troops especially trained and outfitted to search for any guerrillas trying to infiltrate the outer defenses and sneak inside the compound. The plant’s owners and security guards had access to the Colombian government’s custom’s files and records notifying them who had been admitted across the borders and where they were headed, so as to help them detect any intruders or possible pre-assault operatives, especially from the United States. Even with occasional flurries of activity-for-show, the Cartel barons had little to worry about from the Colombian army. Most high-ranking government officials and military leaders were on the Cartel’s payroll.
The well-concealed, ten-thousand-foot reinforced concrete runway at the Valdivia airfield could handle aircraft the size of heavy jet cargo planes, although mostly small planes were used to transport the drugs to other airfields or distribution points in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua and Brazil, for eventual shipment to the Cartel’s number-one customer—the United States.
It was transportation . . . getting the refined cocaine out of poorly patrolled, lax areas into better-guarded (for all its weaknesses) North America that Gonzales Rodriguez Gachez, the unofficial head of the Medellin drug cartel, was concerned with this morning as he sat in his office in the plant’s administrative center. Dressed in motorcycleracing leathers with tall knee-topping boots, padded elbow and hip protectors—Gachez got his own kicks from racing, not from cocaine—he bent to work adjusting the chain on his newest toy, an Italian eight-hundred-cc cafe racer.
Before the real money began pouring in his father had conducted business out of a hen house, and gauged the character of his men— and, the young Gachez was to learn later, even his children—by watching them watch the trained roosters fight. He could find out which could stomach watching the blood, the violence, the death, which tolerated it and which reveled in it; he could watch the men’s drinking, gambling and womanizing habits.
Gachez had never enjoyed the cockfights, had attended them because his father wanted him to, but he always managed to hide behind his father’s three-hundred-pound frame just as the feathers started to fly. But he was the youngest, and so not expected to have the intestinal fortitude of his elder siblings.
But Gachez learned well what else went on inside the hen house beside wagers and prize roosters torn apart—deals. Deals of all kinds, from agreements to buy a certain amount of hay for the coming winter months to marriage contracts for a father’s unwed eighteen- year-old daughter to the murder of a Brazilian cowboy trying to sell some stolen cattle. No matter how raucous it got, they always seemed able to carry on a conversation between shouts of pain or pleasure. Young Gachez watched them shake hands, pat each other’s shoulders and tip a glass of tequila or corn whiskey. Somewhere in among all the noise, a deal had been struck. And the youngest Gachez was fascinated. Along the way he also learned about friendship, loyalty and the value of alliances. He knew who his father’s enemies were, who seemed to be his real friends, though the distinctions were not always clear.
When the manufacture and sale of cocaine began to heat up, Gonzales Gachez’s older brothers were quick to get into the business, but not very careful in forming their alliances between the other wealthy families. Unlike the early West in the United States, when a rich man could own a huge ranch with little outside interference and seclude himself, owning acreage in tiny Colombia meant forming alliances, like forming tiny states or principalities. Colombian ranchers held onto their power and fortunes by banding together against rivals. The health and welfare of the alliance was important, something to be nurtured. The leader was usually the wealthiest member, but all had to profit or the alliance collapsed.
But the enormous wealth that Gonzales’ older brothers brought in from the flourishing drug trade made them think they were beyond the alliance structure. They tried to form their own private armies, bringing in Indian mercenaries from Peru and Ecuador. The outsider’s allegiance went to the highest bidder. He was without scruples, pagan, mostly not even Catholic, and Gonzales’ older brothers tended to behave more like their hirelings than traditional Colombians. They seemed to feel safer behind the guns and knives of these outsiders than with the alliance, which was many times more powerful than any mercenary army they could raise.
The wars that followed took the lives of Gonzales’ older brothers, but before the other landowners could wipe out the entire family Gonzales stepped in. He had attended a European-style university in Rio de Janeiro, could speak three foreign languages and had been in America and Europe. With shotguns literally pointing in his face, the young, handsome, articulate Gonzales Gachez persuaded the alliance to allow his family to rejoin. He did not beg, he did not plead for his life, he did not offer them money or land or anything—except loyalty. He understood that for these men loyalty, along with machismo, counted above all else.
This was twenty years ago. Now Gonzales Gachez was just over forty years of age. He had risen from that terrifying moment, standing at the business end of a twelve-gauge shotgun, to leader of the Medellin drug cartel, or so the American press liked to call it, stirring up images of strangling monopolies like the OPEC oil cartel, the crime cartels of the Roaring Twenties, the booze-and-gambling gangs of old Chicago. Gachez and his associates considered themselves businessmen, Colombian ranchers. They were patriots, allies, identifying a product, evaluating its market potential, fulfilling that need. Americans were good for half-a-trillion dollars of narcotics yearly—surely it was only smart business to see to satisfy the market of opportunity. That each of these self-styled ranchers and businessmen conspired to kill judges, lawmen, soldiers, legislators and competitors all over the world, including fellow Colombians, to ship their cargo of death was the cost of doing business. Like having a lawyer, Gachez liked to say.
Gachez now scraped mud off the lower kickplates and wheel hubs as he inspected the chain on the motorcycle. His father had his roosters; he had his motorbikes. His father used to get bird shit all over the house knowing that someone would immediately clean it up for him—so it as with this mud. The minute he left the office someone would scrub the office. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. As it should be, he thought.
The intercom on his desk buzzed. Well, his father never had to deal with that! Callers were given a glass of wine or strong coffee and asked to wait—the length of time directly proportionate to their rank and status. These days no one seemed to have any conception of that.
“I’m busy,” he called out toward the speakerphone.
“Transmission from Verrantes, Senor Gachez.” the secretary informed him.
“Put it on.” Gachez lit a cigar but kept on tinkering with the chain on the motorcycle. He heard the speakerphone click and snap to life as the scrambled transceivers synchronized themselves, followed by the distorted but intelligible voice of Colonel Augusto Salazar, late of the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force.
“What is it you want, Gachez?”
“I want to make a shipment. Tomorrow night. We’ll have drop- coordinates available when you arrive. Set it up.”
“That’s impossible,” Salazar said, the tension in his voice obvious. “There are Coast Guard units surrounding this entire region—”
“I am not
interested in your problems, Salazar. Get on it.”
“It would be very dangerous. The risks ... you would stand to lose your entire shipment. Do you have so much you can afford to throw it away, senor?”
“We have no problem with product, Colonel.” And it was true— they had not reduced their production despite the recent impact on the Cuchillos’ aircraft by the U.S. Coast Guard. After all, didn’t the product still go through? Gachez’ hand-picked distributors working south Florida were magicians, getting a thousand kilos of cocaine out of the Everglades in less than two hours while under attack by the United States Customs Service. The Cuchillo pilots showed some cojones too—the whole operation might have been blown had those young pilots not attacked the Customs Service helicopter.
They did, however, suspend air deliveries until the matter had burned itself out in the U.S. press. But ground deliveries from the Valdivia plant couldn’t keep pace with production, and they were beginning to develop stockpiles of cocaine—as much as a full month’s worth of production for each Cartel member.
“I’m vulnerable as well, Colonel—I can’t be caught with large amounts of product at this plant. I have nearly a month’s worth of product ready for delivery. I need support immediately.”
The abrupt silence from Salazar’s end told Gachez he had just made one of his few mistakes, revealing any vulnerability to Salazar. He knew his hold on the Cuban renegade officer was tenuous, although he pretended otherwise.
When Augusto Salazar was still in the Cuban Air Force, the chief of the Medellin Cartel could just about dictate terms to the Cuban officer. And after Salazar fled to Haiti, escaping the purge of officers that were found to be involved with drug trafficking, he very much needed Gachez’ cooperation and money to set himself up on a huge estate in the central highlands of that tiny island country. Salazar and his group of pilots flew for fuel money and little more. There was no specific number of flights or tonnage that Salazar and his pilots had to move to repay the debt with Gachez—but they would know when the debt was paid.
In short order, following some dramatic flights across the Caribbean Basin and the southeast United States, the ledger book changed from red to black. The debt that Salazar owed had been repaid in full, with interest—the Cuchillos, Salazar’s amazing group of flyers, were that good.
Now, it had become strictly business, and that business relied on nothing more than money, planning and careful execution on both sides. Gachez, who knew he had just made a slip, thought he could hear the wheels turning in Salazar’s greedy mind. His impression was confirmed when Salazar, his voice no longer strained and angry, said, “I cannot do it for less than seven thousand American dollars a kilo. Half now, half on delivery, transferred by wire through your banks.”
“We have a contract . . .” Gachez’s voice rose, despite efforts to remain cool. “The firm agreement was five thousand a key, a million now and the rest on delivery. Don’t try to renege, Colonel. It’s bad business. Bad for one’s health.”
“I am paid to take risks for you and your partners, but I will not take such extreme risks without compensation. Six per kilo, four million now, the rest after delivery ... or you can start hitching your burros to your carts and wheeling your product out of the jungle yourself.”
Gachez was forced to remind himself he was not in a strong position to bargain. Five thousand a kilo was the going rate for a cocky, know-nothing gringo pilot with a broken-down, twin-engine plane— even at six thousand a kilo, he was getting a bargain from the Cuchillos, who flew modern planes, even jets, and who were some of the bravest, fiercest fighters he had ever seen. Plus, he needed the cooperation of Salazar’s remaining contacts in the Cuban Navy to be sure they were nearby when the drop was made to the Cartel’s distribution freighters. Those contacts, those Navy gunboats and Revolutionary Defense Force patrols that just happened to show up at a drop as the American Coast Guard was moving in to intercept the smugglers, were truly invaluable.
“All right, Colonel, I will be generous in the interests of our relationship. Six thousand a key, two when your plane takes off from here, the rest after we are notified the transfer was made successfully.”
In a beat of silence Gachez worried that the bastard would try for more money. Until the distorted voice on the speakerphone replied, “Cerrado. ”
“I want the transfer made tomorrow night.”
“Be patient, senor,” Salazar said—Gachez thought he could hear the son-of-a-bitch laughing at him through the scrambler’s distortion. “For six thousand dollars a kilo I can provide you with fast, accurate transportation for every gram of your product. How much is ready for shipment?”
“The usual,” Gachez replied. Even over the scrambled satellite transmission he was reluctant to say exact figures. The “usual” amount shipped by the Cuchillos was around two thousand kilos divided between four to eight twin-engine airplanes. An entire shipment usually took a week or two to leave Valdivia—having a stream of eight King Air airplanes leaving the area would attract too much attention.
“Triple it,” Salazar said. “Nice to do business with you again, senor.” And the line went dead.
Gachez swore. Triple it? Would Salazar actually try to ship out six thousand kilos? The risks in that were enormous—but the rewards could be even more so.
Of course, using the ex-Cuban military officer was a risk in itself, an even greater one, it seemed, each time. But it was too late to try to find another shipping alternative—the rest of the Cartel had agreed to come in with Gachez in using the Cuchillos. They would be very displeased and suspicious if Gachez dropped them now. If the other Cartel members heard that Salazar could ship three times the usual shipment, and that he, Gachez, had refused, it would look very suspicious indeed.
As Gachez began to arrange a conference with the other Cartel members, he could not help but remember the warning planted long ago about trusting outsiders. His brothers had once fallen into that trap, and they had paid the price for it.
Customs Service Air Branch, Homestead AFB, Florida
The Next Day
Senior Inspector Ronald Gates shook his head in puzzlement at Sandra Geffar’s apparent lack of excitement about the new Hammerheads operation and her role in it as sketched by the Vice-President. Gates was chief of the Customs Service Air Branch, Geffar’s nominal boss. A Harvard Law School graduate, he was thirtyish, tall, distinguished looking, a man who looked dynamite standing in front of a big drug seizure and telling the world how effective his troops were.
A smart front man, but he didn’t know the difference between a Cessna-210 and a Cessna Citation business jet, except perhaps their cost. Gates believed all airplanes smaller than a Boeing 727 were alike and would tend to mix them up when explaining, without benefit of script, the details of an interdiction operation to the press or Congress, Luckily, most people listening to him didn’t know the difference either, and he always brought along someone who could help him out. Often that someone was Sandra Geffar.
“It sounds like a great opportunity,” Gates was saying. “You’ll be in on the ground floor of a whole new organization. New developments, new challenges.”
And more glory for you? she thought but didn’t say. It was no secret that Gates aspired to loftier positions than his present one.
“Do you want to be a throttle jockey all your life? This is major, a whole new Cabinet-level agency, and you’ll be one of the major players.”
“I didn’t say I was against it, I’m just not popping my cork over it. Not yet.”
“Okay, okay. What’s on for today?”
Geffar began showing him about the operations in progress, briefing him on what information they were receiving from intelligence sources and informants and how she was planning to respond to each. There were several major projects running, each involving suspected drug shipments from South America or the Bahamas. She showed him a map of the most current operation, an ongoing project that was scheduled to go into operation later that
night.
Gates walked over to the map to study the route of flight as she pointed out the assets and manpower she was planning to put into action. She noted the blank face when she mixed “Black Hawk” with “Cheyenne” and “Citation.” Be grateful, she told herself. What if he tried really to run things? And so counting her blessings, she thought of the new one suddenly given to her by the Vice-President . . .
She and Hardcastle had left the Sheraton at the same time after the Vice-President’s surprise announcement about the Border Security Force and who would head its parts. Elliott and McLanahan had stayed behind. They were scarcely noticed as they walked through the lobby and out toward Biscayne Boulevard.
They had not said a word until Geffar began to head toward the hotel’s parking garage.
“It’s a good mix, Sandra. We’ll build Hammerheads together. It’ll take both of us to make it happen. Without either one of us it won’t happen. Martindale made that clear.
She looked at him, nodded slightly but offered only a “good night, Admiral,” and walked to her car. Her feeling was still jumbled, at least mixed . . .
“Sandy?”
Her attention came back to Gates.
“Something wrong?”
“No ... I just thought I heard our King Air on final.”
“I see ... I was wondering what Mayberry here stood for.”
“Yes. Mayberry RFD,” she said, rising and walking over to the large map of the Caribbean on her office wall. “That’s the name we gave this particular operation. One of the Cuban officers involved is named Gomez. One of our guys heard that, nicknamed the guy Gomer and we started using the code-name Mayberry every time someone heard this guy Gomez on the marine band scanner.”
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