Buzzard Bay (13 page)

It is nearly one in the morning before I see the outline of a parked car. I come out of the ditch in front of the car and wave, but there is no reaction. When I get up to the driver’s side window, I don’t know what to expect, but then I see she is fast asleep.

Those big blue eyes open wide and remind me so much of her mother as she tries to comprehend who is knocking on her window, and then recognition comes into her face as she rolls it down.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, Mindy. Don’t open the door. I’ll get in the back so the light won’t come on. We’re going to have to drive without lights for a while, can you do that?”

“Yes,” she said, “I think so.”

I climb over the front seat and give Mindy a big hug as she tries to navigate the gravel road in the dark. I begin to relax; it feels good to be back in the good old US of A.

“It’s good to see you, Mindy. Sorry I had to put you through this.”

“Well, sometimes it would be nice to have a normal father who didn’t have me sneaking around like a kid sneaking out for the night,” but she smiles when she says it.

“Now, will you please tell me what’s going on?”

I tell her the whole story from start to finish.

We stop in Grand Forks for breakfast, and then I take over the wheel. The last words Mindy says to me before she falls asleep are, “And I thought you were such a loser, Dad.”

I mull that over in my mind, maybe she’s right, but I haven’t lost yet, my problem had always been that I didn’t know when to quit.

We stop for gas and more coffee in Fargo and then roll into Minneapolis right around supper time. We are parked in front of a bus depot when I wake Mindy up.

“Where are we?” she asks.

“At a bus station in Minneapolis,” I answer.

“I thought we were going to my place,” she sounds disappointed.

“No, Mindy, I want to be in Miami before I stop. A person can get lost there pretty easy. Right now, that’s what I want to do.”

Inside, I find a bus that is ready to leave for Palm Beach in half an hour. Palm Beach is close enough. “Do you have any American money,” I ask Mindy.

“Around two hundred,” she tells me. “I hope it’s enough for the ticket.”

“It is,” the girl behind the counter tells me. I give Mindy a big hug.

“Don’t worry about me, Dad. Please be careful, all right?”

“When this is all sorted out, we’ll spend some time together,” I tell her.

“I should be going with you, Dad.” She hugs me tighter.

I step back and hold her at arm’s length. “The best thing you can do is stay put, so I can get hold of you if I need you. Make sure you go to work tomorrow, so no one will know you helped me.” I hand her a piece of paper. “Two blocks from here there’s a Perkins restaurant. I stopped there on the way in. Just behind the restaurant there’s a phone booth,” I tell her.

“You’ll have no trouble finding it.” Phone booths are a rare item these days.

“That’s the address and name of the restaurant on this paper. I’ll try to phone you every Tuesday evening between seven and seven thirty. If I don’t phone, come back the next Tuesday, okay?”

“Okay, I will, Dad.”

I kiss her one last time and get on the bus.

It takes me two nights and a day to get into Palm Beach. As I get off the bus, that old fear invades me again. I walk through the bus station trying to blend in with the other passengers. I have not shaved since I left Curt’s thinking it might disguise my face. Now I think it attracts attention. Every person I see in the station is out to get me. The front door opens, and I walk out into the warm night air. I’m sweating, I realize, and not because of the warm humid air. It’s fear, the same fear I’d felt back in Canada. I have to learn to handle my fear better than this.

The cabs are lined up out front. I go over to one and say, “I’ve got about sixty-seven dollars in my pocket. Know any place you can take me where I can still afford to spend the night?”

“Yes, jail,” he answers, rolling up his window.

I am getting used to rejection; it has been part of my life for a long time. The next guy is more sympathetic. “Grab the no.7 bus. It stops at that bus stop over there every few minutes.” I look that way and can see a sign with some people under it.

“It’ll take you to a strip with some hotels on it.” He looks at me, “Good luck, buddy.” I suppose I did look a little down on my luck.

The next hurdle is to find the right change. Bus drivers don’t make change. After we have all that straightened out, I find the bus driver to be a pretty decent guy. I sit right behind him; we chat for a while until I see some hotel signs coming up.

“Any of these hotels reasonable and decent?” I ask him.

He laughs, “These are all reasonable, but decent is another thing. Just hold on for one more block, there’s some safer ones up there.” The driver pulled up to a stop and pointed to a sign that said ‘Aladdin’ in bright lights.

“You shouldn’t get your throat cut in that one.” he says. I thank him and get off. The hotel isn’t too bad; the bed is clean. I fall into it without taking my clothes off. I’m about as lost as I’m going to get, I think as I fall asleep.

About this same time, there is a conversation on a secure line between Miami and the Bahamas. “What do you mean you lost him? I thought your friend up in Canada told you he was flying directly to Nassau.”

“He didn’t get on the plane,” Ansly the CIA man in Miami answers. “Don’t worry, he’ll come through Miami sooner or later. It’s the only way he’s going to get to the Bahamas other than flying. I’ve got the Miami mob watching out for him. He’ll show up.”

“I hear you’ve been fucking them around,” the man in the Bahamas called the Referee says. “I doubt if they’re going to do much for you.”

“Fuck them. All they want is good shit, and I’m the only one who can get it for them,” Ansly answers

“Well, just don’t underestimate this Green fellow. He’s the one who took out Ginter, you remember?

That’s why I want him to do this job for us. I think he just might be able to pull it off,” Ansly told him.

“Have you been able to find out who sanctioned that hit anyway?” The Referee asks.

“It was either Waddell or El Presidente himself. I’m not exactly on good speaking terms with either one of them these days, so you’ll have to ask them about it,” Ansly says.

“Well, what in hell would possess Waddell to take on something that stupid?” the Referee asks.

“He might have a real stupid motive. He’s shacked up with Green’s wife.” There is silence on the Bahamas end of the line for a minute.

“This means you don’t have Green or his wife. This whole thing depends on Green coming back for his wife and then you producing his wife and telling him he has to do this work for you or he won’t see his wife again, isn’t that your plan?”

“Yes. Well, at least I know where she is, and I’m pretty sure I can produce her when the time comes,” Ansly answers.

“This plan of yours is getting weaker all the time. If you don’t get started on it damn quick, a lot of moving parts are going to collide,” the Referee tells him.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ve got it on the move. My people in Colombia say El Presidente is getting weaker by the day. If he isn’t able to come out in his own territory and run off his competition, he’s done. Then the other producers are ready to fall in behind us because we can offer them a secure market and not have to put up with the Mexican cartels,” Ansly says.

“You realize you’re on your own in this? If you want to supply the U.S. market with the same shit they’re getting out of Mexico, go for it. I only deal in quality product, and you leave the Miami market alone,” the Referee tells him and hangs up.

ELEVEN

1988

E
MILIO CHAVEZ WAS
doing exactly what he loved best. “Skimming over the Atlantic Ocean at 450 miles per hour pumped him like nothing else, even better than sex,” he thought. Too bad Zeze wasn’t here right now; he’d screw her within an inch of her life. A frown came over his face; “don’t bother with her right now,” he thought, he’d deal with that when he got back. Right now his hat was turned backward, the tape deck was rappin’, and he was rockin’. He was amused at his partner sitting beside him. Paulo wanted to come with him.

“I want to make the big bucks too,” he told Emilio. He’d sounded so brave in front of the chiquitas in the bar. Now Emilio could smell the acrid smell of marijuana drifting through the cockpit, and Paulo was very quiet.

“Scared shitless,” Emilio thought. He didn’t like Paulo smoking on his plane. Well, if it keeps him calm and quiet and out of my hair, so what. All he had to do was help unload when they got there. Outside he could see the moonlight reflecting off the ocean swell. That the moon was so bright didn’t bother him; his plane was painted a dull black, a very expensive paint really. It blended into the ocean perfectly. No one was going to see him, even the cockpit instruments were altered so no light reflected outside.

“The worst thing that could happen to me is that I run into a boat doing the same thing I’m doing,” Emilio thought, meaning someone doing something illegal with his lights turned off.

Actually he’d had some close calls over the years. Emilio thought back to his first run. Those first days weren’t running drugs; they were against the British in the Falklands. How stupid they were, they took advantage of us, but we were young and for a thousand U.S. dollars a month we risked our lives. For what, so some people who were fat could get fatter? He fumed! Emilio had been a trainee then. He thought the pilots who went out to fight the British were gods. They seemed to have lots of money and could have all the women they wanted; oh sure, some didn’t come back, but that was because they weren’t good enough.

He got his chance quick enough; Argentina was quickly running out of experienced pilots and aircraft to fly. His first run was actually in his old trainer. How he survived that first day was strictly luck. They skimmed low over water under the radar, and then all of a sudden there was the British fleet right in front of him. The other two fighters in his group were faster than him, also more experienced. All of a sudden they split off, leaving him alone heading right at a ship the size of a mountain. He’d froze until the last second; then he pulled up, actually still lower than the top deck but over the bow of the ship. He could see the startled faces of sailors on deck as he passed by.

Now he was right in among the ships so low they had trouble firing at him for fear of hitting their own. He was petrified; sure he was going to die. He turned his old trainer and headed back the way he had come, no more than a few feet above the water at times. He drove the British gunners crazy dodging incoherently all over the place. He flew right under the bow of the same ship, heading back. There was smoke and “ack, ack” exploding all over; a row of tracer bullets were in front of him and then ‘thud, thud,’ he heard as the planes shuddered under the impact, but he kept on going toward the open sea.

Two British fighters were closing in on an Argentinian fighter on his left, Emilio remembered. He watched in fascination as the Argentinian fighter dove heading right for him. The fighter missed him by inches, then seconds later Emilio had felt a shake; red flames shot past him. They got him, was all Emilio could think of. What Emilio didn’t know was that the fighter had been hit by a sea wolf missile aimed at him. The British didn’t like flying this low to the water; sometimes it was hard to tell where the sky stopped and the water started, but for Emilio the water was like his savior, and he stuck close to it. Slowly he realized that he was away from it all.

“I’m alive;” he was elated. “I’m going to make it.”

Halfway back, he realized he hadn’t fired a shot; his missile was still secure. He turned back out to sea and in the general direction of the British fleet; he fired his missile then emptied his guns. He was one of the few to come back that day and one of the least expected. He now realized how stupid he’d been to go in this aircraft; it had no place in this contest. He landed his plane and climbed down from the cockpit as if he’d been on a Sunday picnic. One of the mechanics came up and pointed.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

Emilio looked up; there was a row of holes right down the side of his plane. Emilio made two more runs, but he was smarter now; the pilots could see the writing on the wall. He did the same as the rest of them, letting his missiles go from far away and then getting the hell out of there. The war was soon over, and there wasn’t much for him to stay for. What planes Argentina had left weren’t worth flying anyway. He resigned and took a job flying a milk run from northern Argentina into Chile. Of course this was pretty boring after being in a war, so it didn’t take much persuasion from his old air force buddy to try something new.

“Don’t be stupid, Emilio,” he had told him. “I make ten thousand U.S. a trip. Just think, Emilio, that’s more than you make in a year.”

His friend was very drunk. “We risked our lives for our country in that stupid war, and what did we get for it? Nothing! Here’s a chance to make something of yourself. All you have to do is skim over the water under U.S. radar till you get to Miami, pick your spot, and tuck in behind a plane landing at Miami International. Follow behind him until you see a hanger with a yellow light right across the top of it, turn off the runway there, and taxi to the hanger. They’ll be waiting for you and let you inside. Whatever you do, don’t stay on that runway any longer than you have to. There’s one plane after another landing there.”

Emilio was exactly the type of pilot the drug cartels were looking for. He had experience flying at low level over water at night, and he had experience in tough flying situations such as the rough, short landing strips in the Colombian jungle. He was scared, but the ten grand was pretty tempting.

“A piece of cake,” his buddy told him. “I’ve done it a hundred times.”

He found it was a lot more complicated than his old buddy had let on. There were routes around some of the islands between Colombia and Florida. For instance, Cuba had made an agreement that they could fly in a certain corridor over the island.

“Stray out of that and you’re a dead duck,” they told him.

His air force training stood him in good stead. To do this kind of flying, you had to be able to use your instruments and coordinates. You had to be the best of pilots, but you had to have the training too.

Emilio soon met other pilots. They were mostly ex-air force men from all over the world, all lured by the money. Emilio soon found out that most were making more money than what they offered him. “They” were what everyone called the people who paid the money. No one seemed to care who they were as long as the money was good. Emilio’s first flight was into the Florida Everglades; he rode copilot in a Conair jet aircraft, learning the route. They landed on a narrow paved road, unloaded, fueled up, and were back in the air in an hour. This flight took about ten hours round trip. Emilio was tired, but he had his first ten thousand in his jeans and never looked back.

Most of the pilots spent their money as fast as they made it. They lived for today; in this business, there might not be a tomorrow, much the same mentality as going off to war. Emilio was different. He looked after his money. Each trip he made, a good percentage of his pay was put away.

“I’ll quit soon,” he thought. “I’ll get my own plane and fly tourists wherever they want to go.”

There were two problems with this plan. They never let anyone quit, and then he met Zeze. She used her good looks, like many poor Colombian girls, to get out of her village. Many of the pilots lived near the town she was born in. Very early in life, she learned they were willing to pay for certain favors. She was one of the lucky ones, not getting pregnant or totally addicted to drugs. She loved to have fun and spend money; she had no morals or sense of the value of money, it was made to be spent, and there was no other use for it.

he’d met Emilio in the bar one night. He was a good-looking guy and all the girls liked him but didn’t pay much attention to him; if he needed to be serviced, he’d use them and pay well for their time, but that was about it. Zeze hit him like a thunderbolt. She was vivacious, beautiful, and smarter than most of the other girls. He fell head over heels in love, and soon they were living together. It had been a turbulent relationship. At first he gave her anything she wanted, and she seemed insatiable. He began taking more runs, completely exhausting himself until he’d had enough. He put her on a budget. This lasted a week, and then she left him.

He became desperate, and when he got a chance to do the big run, he took it. It was the run into the Miami airport that his buddy talked about. The pay was astronomical, but failure meant death. When he arrived at the airport to leave that evening, he found not his old plane but a Lear jet sitting on the runway. He also found out his load was not only drugs but humans in the form of two men. Obviously, these men were not able to legally enter the states or they would have taken a domestic flight.

Emilio had seen men like this before; he’d bet his last dollar they were hit men. His orders were to get into the airport by usual methods and then wait for the two men until they returned to his plane, after which he would fly them home. There were a hundred questions on his lips, but he knew better than to ask. He’d be told when the time came and then only what he needed to know. It was a beautiful plane; they made good time twisting and turning through the safe routes, then skimming in over the water till they reached the Miami coastline.

Emilio listened on his radio until he picked up the flight he was going to follow in. It was a jumbo jet out of Amsterdam, big with lots of body to hide him from radar detection. He could see her landing lights as he accelerated the Lear in close and then eased off tucking in near enough that his two passengers began to murmur.

The Lear responded beautifully, and he skillfully stayed with the jumbo until he saw it was turning off for a terminal. He continued down the taxi lane to where it ended, then as instructed, taxied across the grass until he saw a truck with a flashing light on top. They were a long way from the main flow of the airport, now it was completely dark; they had made it. Emilio opened the door and unfolded the steps. The truck picked up the two men, and he was told to taxi his plane down a paved lane until he found a blue hangar. Once inside, his plane was immediately unloaded. He sat and ate the lunch he had brought, watching the men paint his plane with big corporate letters.

“Might as well get some sleep,” a man came and told him. “You’re not scheduled to fly out until five a.m.”

“You mean I’m leaving as a scheduled flight?” Emilio asked.

“That’s right,” the man told him, “You’re scheduled to flight no. 103 for the Dominican Republic at nine a.m.” Emilio couldn’t believe it.

This run taught Emilio a lot of things about the business he was in. He heard later that a well-known banker had been brutally murdered in Miami the same night he had been there. Emilio realized he knew too much; they’d never let him quit. He opened an account in the Bahamas, letting Zeze empty his account at home of whatever was in it. She complained and left him, but he found she always came back anyway, so he tolerated her little affairs.

As the years went by, he had many close calls but his extraordinary abilities at low flying and nerves of steel saw him through. He amassed a small fortune but over the years the nature of the business changed dramatically. Fly-by-nighters out for a quick buck caused a lot of traditional routes to be closed. New doors were constantly being opened and the ingenuity of the operators always amazing. There was so much money to be made that greed would consume the minds of even the most influential people, whole governments became corrupted.

Money poured out of the United States, yet they seemed to treat their drug problem as a small bunch of hoodlums smuggling drugs into the ghettos of the nation. There, it was out of sight out of mind but when the violence it created came to their own streets and the kids within their own walls began to become users, then and only then did ordinary citizens begin to complain and wake up the government to the fact that the very fiber of their nation was being torn apart. Then the proper authorities started to compare notes and realized how big a conglomerate they were dealing with.

The drug cartels were ruthless, well financed, and well organized. Above all, they were well connected. When a country is awakened this rudely, it can react with a vengeance. The FBI and CIA began by cleaning up their own houses and then their backyards. People on the take were weeded out and replaced with capable people trained to deal with this particular problem. Once these enforcement agencies had their internal problems under some semblance, the results of their work became apparent. Arrests were up, and the flow of drugs was curtailed dramatically. They also realized this was a short-term solution. It would only be a matter of time before the drug cartels adjusted their distribution methods.

The U.S. government now turned its attention externally. Emilio noticed these changes immediately. Safe routes over Cuba and some of the other islands were no longer safe. Experienced runners were being shot down without warning. The rules had changed.

Even in South America itself, countries were becoming hostile as the U.S. authorities spread their tentacles. When they went directly after Noriega in Panama, a huge arm of the cartel had been clipped off. In Colombia, the drug trade had largely been controlled by one man, but now it seemed that it was every man for himself, and a regulated business had now become deregulated.

Emilio had three planes now and hired pilots to make his runs, handling only a few exclusively himself because of a request, but mostly he had to admit he missed the excitement. Then within a month, he lost two planes. It was a devastating blow, both financially and reputation wise, but Emilio was resilient. He took this as a challenge and fought back. Money was not a problem, and he used it to discover new technology. He bought a specially designed Lear with radar deflector body and paint. He went out himself and found new drop-off points. The drugs were put in canvas bags and dropped off at sea to be picked up by boats later. Emilio became known as a reliable shipper and because of this his business flourished; “he’ll deliver,” and he did, for a price.