Smugglers 3 Accidental Kingpin (7 page)

I took out a 9-mm
, one of theirs, and said, “I made up my mind. If I kill you, the cops will never stop looking for us. So it would be wise to leave you here alone. But I was never that smart.” I shot one in the head with his own gun.

The other one begged and pleaded, saying he had kids, tried to roll around, but I shot him anyhow, first in the face as he was pissing his pants
, then in the top of his head.

I had the two men drop me off at my hotel. I changed into a suit and went to the airport and caught my flight to Mazatlan and the boat.

The attorney called and set up another meeting. Before he hung up I asked, “Did you get it?”

He replied, “All is well. Don’t worry.”

When he arrived at my boat, we sat across from one another.

“You are
paid in full,” he said. “My clients got four times more than they expected. They are very happy. In fact they are so happy that they want you to do one more job, and they will pay you whatever you want. This job will be the last one. They also want you to teach their lead man how to do it.”

“
You said I was free and clear if I did just one deal,” I said.

”
Yes but you killed two cops. They didn’t count on that. Now the law will never stop looking for us. Just show the man how and leave.”

I
knew I didn’t have a choice but to agree. They would kill me and my family, so I had to buy some time to get my escape plans together.

“OK
,” I said. “One last deal to show them how to do it and I’m free to leave.

“They will pay you
,” he said.

“Are you kidding me? I have hundreds of millions of dollars so I don’t want any money! I just want to be left alone, and after this I will be! Come hell or high water! So which place?”

He didn’t answer at first.

“Do you know which place they want me to do next?” I asked.

“El Paso.”

“El Paso?
Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

He nodded.

“Holy shit!” The DEA evidence warehouse in El Paso was notorious for having several hundred million dollars of confiscated drugs just waiting to be liberated. “It’s guarded worse than Fort Know,” I said.

“Yeah
, but if anybody can do it, you’re the guy.”

I sat quietly for a long moment, thinking about El Paso. The job was intriguing, and he knew it.

“OK,” I finally said. “Send a man to tap the phones, and I’ll meet up with him in a week to a month to see if it can be done.”

CHAPTER
9

About a month later I had a second meeting at my boat with their attorney.

“That place cannot be taken at night
,” I said, “or any other time because there are always ten or fifteen cops around. The only way is to take them out is when they are on the road to the incinerator. I just can’t abide thinking about all those drugs going up in flames,” I said. “A job like this will entail lots of killings and I’ll need lots of equipment. Expensive equipment.”

He nodded, so I rattled off what I’d need. “A
dual blade heavy lift helicopter with six men in bullet proof SWAT gear and four RPG’s with eight rockets for them and six M16’s with six clips each and six side arms with two clips each.”

The attorney didn’t blink, so I continued.

“If they can supply that, I can do this deal. Call me when they have the list complete.”

Over the next several weeks they
hemmed and hawed about the heavy lift helicopter, trying to get me to tell them what I needed it for. I simply told them my plan would not work without it.

Finally they said they had it all together
, including the copter.

I told them I needed six men
who were soldiers of fortune with former careers in the military, and I needed a training place in the desert. A place with a bunk house, a cook house and a gun range. I told them I would need this for a month once we were all there. I would also need one million dollars in cash to give out as I saw fit.

When all six men
arrived, I assembled them and said, “Thank you for putting up with the blindfolds and secrecy. You will each get a thousand dollars just to listen to me. Those of you who decide to stay and do this thing will get ten thousand dollars, and if we are successful, you will each get two hundred thousand at the end.”

Six pair of eyes stared
steadily at me. “I take it you want to hear more. First, if you decide to say “no” when you find out what it entails, I will give you the one thousand dollars and have you taken back to your car with no hard feelings. But if you decide to stay and go through the training, and you change your mind, your people will never hear from you again.”

I looked from one man to the other.
They barely blinked.

“Okay.
So here’s the deal. We are going to kill a minimum of six cops. We are going to steal drugs. We will have any equipment or guns we need. We will be hung by a tether five hundred feet in the air. If you decide to stay, the ten thousand dollars in cash will be delivered to anybody you choose with a note from you that will read:
don’t tell anybody about this and don’t try to contact me. I will be home in six weeks with two hundred thousand dollars
.

“
There are no cell phones, no cameras, no alcohol or drugs and no fights. If you are caught with or do any of these things, I will kill you, and the Mexicans will kill your families, so be sure you are in all the way. I’ll be back in one half hour for your decision.” I headed to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

When I got back
, I queried each one. All decided to stay. I then had them drop their cell phones in a bucket of water and told them to write down who they wanted to get the ten grand, with the address of where to deliver it.

“
Your bunks are over there in that building,” I said, pointing in the right direction. “The cook is American and will make anything you want! By the way, you can have beer but nothing stronger or you don’t want to be here. “

In the morning at seven
, I ate breakfast with them. Once we were finished with bacon, eggs and hash browns, I started briefing them.

“
We are going to rob the DEA and kill six or more of them. A heavy lift helicopter with a cargo net is our escape. We will fill it with drugs first, but we will have all the tools to get away. If you are afraid of heights this is not the deal for you.

I looked around and seeing no objections, I continued. “
You are going to find yourselves five hundred feet in the air hanging from the copter by a tether. We will each have an M16 and a Glock 17 side arms and two RPs and four rockets each. We’ll also have two stinger ground-to-air missiles. The cargo nets will hold up to ten thousand pounds each. Don’t forget we need to have room for our weight. We will have SWAT team bullet proof suits and white hockey masks to distinguish ourselves from the enemy. We’ll wear rubber gloves so we can’t be recognized or traced. Each of us we will have hands free CBs that only talk to each other. If we have time we will take two loads and go with the last load.

“
Now, has anybody changed their mind after hearing the rest of the story?”

“Well
,” one of them said, “I might change my mind knowing that we may only get to kill six DEA cops.”

All the mercenaries laugh
ed.

“After
you finish up your coffee, if you don’t have any questions,” I continued, “we will get fitted for our SWAT gear and harnesses for the hook up to the cargo net. The spring loaded hooks will be on your back and long enough for you to reach and hook them up. I’ll be with you all the way there and back. The seamstress is here, so who’s first for a fit up?”

“Is she cute?” one of them asked.

“Yes, for a seventy-year-old grandmother,” I answered with a straight face.

“I’ll go last,” he laughed.

I clapped him on the back, heartened that my team had a good sense of humor.

After two weeks of training with all the equipment and flying around at fiv
e hundred feet on the cargo net, like the dirty dozen, we were ready to go.

We
had hours not days once we got the word from our wiretap man that the DEA was moving confiscated drugs to the incinerator.

I finally got the call saying
our target was on the move.

Our job started now.

We knew that the DEA had two men in the trailer with full tactical gear and M16s and side arms and four fully armed men in the lead car and the same in the chase car.

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.

W
e 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.