White Death (6 page)

Barranquilla, Columbia, March 1969

“What?” screamed Gonzalez into the phone.

Mindful of his temper, Sterling replied evenly that, “My two men were there and watched the whole thing until they pulled her into secondary. The Customs bitch was all over her with questions we never prepped the mules to expect. She got nervous and couldn’t give good answers.”

“I’m going to kill her whole family here. Get a hit man to take her out in Miami when those bastards have finished squeezing her for information.”

“Alvaro, listen. Cops investigate murders, especially up here, and most especially a mule caught with a full load. More important, she knows nothing about our operations or us. We were very careful about that. We don’t want to attract attention.”

Alvaro’s cat went flying across the room. Somebody had to pay.

“Alvaro, I already talked to Tyrone, and…”

“How did he react?”

“He considers it a business setback and wants a little time to think about new options for transportation, now that every pregnant woman from northern Colombia will be grilled trying to enter the U.S.”

“A fucking
setback?
He considers it a fucking
setback?
Does he ever get upset? Hey, it was only 3.3 keys and our entire transport system.”

“Tyrone is smart and calm. We need that right now. He thinks we should discuss using freighters out of Cartagena.”

“Stupid idea! First, we have competition there. We’re not the
only geniuses to figure out that coke is the future. Second, it’s too damn far for overland transportation. Even with armed guards—speaking of drawing attention to ourselves—an ambush is possible. Third, we can’t bribe in a way that insulates us. The product will always be worth far more than bribes. Too much temptation. Fourth, too many people will know too much. We need to maintain control. I want a farm to arm operation.”

“I’m impressed, Alvaro. Are you taking lessons from Tyrone?”

“Fuck you and Tyrone. I’m going to get drunk. Tell Tyrone what I said and see if the Professor can do better on his second try.

“Also, we need an interim solution. I suggest we use ‘swallowers’ to keep moving some product. Tell Tyrone that each packer can carry between 700 to 900 grams. The mules generally want about two-thousand dollars to take the risk. You know, one condom egg ruptures and they die. We can work out details later.”

“Thanks, Alvaro.”

“Fuck you, Marcus.”

Tyrone thought of himself as a businessman. He owned two nightclubs on Fourteenth Street and a motel on New York Avenue, the northeastern gateway to the city, an area known to accommodate visiting male businessmen and tourists. All were good cash businesses, ideal for laundering the proceeds of his drug business. Also, he paid two pimps to keep the motel and nightclubs supplied with working girls. He chose his pimps carefully and enforced two ironclad rules: (1) No girls abused; and (2) No girls under eighteen. He even stopped by the businesses to interview the hookers from time to time. Not all of this was because he was a kind person. He had killed a few people, but took no pleasure in their deaths. Sometimes, death was necessary to protect his interests. Long ago, Jones delegated
compliance enforcement to others.

Right now, however, Tyrone was tired. He asked his assistant and one of his bodyguards to wait in the outer office with the receptionist. In addition to all of the demands of running his legitimate businesses, the drug distribution network, and keeping the IRS satisfied, he now felt like a babysitter for his two partners. Alvaro had good connections, good ideas, and some business acumen; but he was a loose cannon prone to violent and impulsive decisions. Marcus’s forte was logistics; he paid attention to details and could implement a plan, and even improvise as necessary. Tyrone knew, however, he was the smartest of the three, and the burden of overcoming this setback would largely fall on him, perhaps with help from Marcus. Alvaro was right about freighters out of Cartagena, but he offered no constructive alternative. Crossing the large expanse of open sea in small boats was out of the question. Using swallowers was just an interim solution.

Tyrone’s heroin came from Sicily and Brazil, by well-estab-lished routes, packed within legitimate merchandise. From the freighter, selected teamsters moved it onto cars or trucks and later drove to a safe garage for recovery. Unknown to U.S. law enforcement, the Sicilian Mafia was now operating in the U.S., with three of the five La Cosa Nostra families in New York. Tyrone had contracted with the Bonanno family for exclusive heroin rights in Baltimore and D.C. However, he could not piggyback on their heroin routes. Besides, the Mafia had shown little interest in cocaine. Soon-to-be-legendary drug trafficker Frank Mathews had approached the Gambino and Bonanno families to explore a partnership for heroin and cocaine, but the mafia turned him down. Not long after, Rolando Gonzalez would sell Mathews his first kilo of cocaine for twenty-thousand dollars. Mathews was doing well and could become a problem later. Right now, however, Tyrone had a more urgent concern.

They had used scheduled airliners before, and it had worked
well for marijuana when baggage handlers at both ends were bought and paid for, usually with a combination of product and cash. This had become more risky of late, as the U.S. Customs Service had expanded the use of dogs. To lose some weed was one thing, but to lose cocaine because a mixed shipment of both of them tipped off the dogs was quite another. They remained in the marijuana business because of high demand, steady revenue, and a plentiful product grown in Colombia.

Could a small plane make a direct run into Miami from an airfield near Barranquilla? Too far, not enough fuel. It was over one-thousand miles from Barranquilla to Miami. Moreover, Miami or any port of entry was far too risky. With enough fuel, could they make a long trip to somewhere else in Florida undetected by the U.S. military? Although Tyrone did not know much about general aviation (GA), he had driven past small airports all around Washington: Woodbridge; Beacon Hill; College Park; Bowie, and Leesburg to name a few. Therefore, Florida must also be full of these little airfields.

Wait
. The U.S. military, by law, had no role in civilian law enforcement. The military would relegate a small, slow aircraft to the trash as a civilian problem. So, it was back to Customs. What did they have? Not much besides fast boats.

Tyrone hit the intercom and asked his secretary to call Marcus. He wanted to know what Marcus thought of using small planes, and whether they should talk to Jorge Ortiz, one of several pilots from Batista’s old Cuban air force doing odd jobs for Marcus. If they agreed it was feasible, then they would broach the subject with Alvaro.

Miami, Florida, May 1969

With the pressing need for a solution, Marcus agreed to a meeting with Ortiz. Tyrone agreed to take the next, direct Eastern Airlines flight to Miami. In the meantime, Marcus would put Ortiz to work on a plan, with an emphasis on details and feasibility.

The next afternoon Marcus picked up Tyrone at the airport. Although amateurs about aviation matters, they outlined the basic issues in the car: (1) range and fuel; (2) payload, how much could it carry; (3) avoiding the attention of law enforcement; (4) loss percentage as a function of the number of trips due to crashes or detection; and (5) silencing any surviving pilots who might want to cut a deal with the police. This last topic would not be discussed with Ortiz, but concerned Tyrone. The unspoken consensus was captured pilots were dead men walking.

Tyrone spoke no Spanish, but was quietly amused when he heard Marcus and Ortiz talking in the rapid, clipped manner characteristic of Cuban Spanish. Ortiz was of average build, prematurely balding, and probably a few pounds heavier than during his air force days under Batista. Although nicely dressed in a
guayabera
shirt and the regulation black pants, Tyrone thought he had some rough edges buried under the smooth pleasantries in his excellent English – which was fine with Tyrone.

Ortiz had done his homework. He agreed with their assumption that no light plane would have the non-stop range; unless you used an extremely risky method of loading the back with a row of three or four twenty-five-gallon fuel tanks and
jerry-rigging a fuel pump into the main tanks as they burned off fuel. He could obtain such accessories.

“First,” said Ortiz, “a big problem is payload reduction. Aviation gas weighs six pounds per gallon, thus a max range flight with an extra hundred gallons knocks off six-hundred pounds from the useful load – more than one-half of any GA plane available. Second, accidental fuel starvation is a common occurrence because of pump malfunctions between tanks. If this happens, the pilot must trim his aircraft for best lift over drag ratio, set the autopilot on heading hold, and climb into the back and sort things out before the plane glides into the ocean, maybe five or ten minutes depending on altitude. Flying low, you’re dead.” Marcus asked him if he had ever done this before. “No,” he replied. “That’s why I’m here talking to you today.”

Ortiz quickly read their faces and said, “I have a better plan and a plane to do the job.” Both men unintentionally sat up a little straighter in their seats.

“The trip should be divided roughly in half, with a refueling point at Matthew Town on the Great Inagua Island in the southern Bahamas. The pilot departs from an airfield west of
Barranquilla
heading north for five-hundred-twenty-five miles, crossing the western tip of Haiti, and east through the Windward Passage for another one-hundred-seventy-seven miles to Matthew Town. Although a small field, it has fuel. The total trip is just over seven-hundred miles. Next, the flight heads west over the northern Bahamas then directly to Valkaria, one mile west of the Florida coast but far south of all the space activity near Cocoa Beach. The final leg is about six-hundred-and-fifty miles.

“For this proposal I recommend the purchase of two or three Piper Comanches, specifically the PA-24-250 with optional long range fuel tanks. With the rear seats removed and one pilot, the plane can carry up to five hundred pounds of product. At 65 percent power, which is not a conservative setting, it has a thousand-mile range at a speed of one-hundred-fifty-four knots
or about one-hundred-seventy-five miles per hour. The extra range gives the pilot a fuel cushion if he has to dodge storms or gets off course. The planes cost approximately thirty-thousand dollars each. What do you think?”

Both men looked slightly stunned. Tyrone finally spoke, “Marcus, I commend you for your selection of an advisor on this problem. And you, Jorge for putting all of this together in less than twenty-four hours.”

Trying to appear modest, Ortiz said, “It wasn’t that hard. I pulled out some World Aeronautical Charts and looked for planes with fair speed and good range. Even if these are not night flights, we need instrument-rated pilots who can avoid the disorientation caused by flying over open water in poor visibility. I know of one other qualified pilot who might be interested. May I ask what it pays per trip?”

The obvious question caught Marcus and Tyrone by surprise. This was supposed to be a feasibility meeting, not a done deal. Tyrone finally offered, “The pay will be excellent considering the risks. We need to talk to our other partner and get back to you on this. You fully understand the sensitivity of this matter, correct?”

“I swear on my mother’s grave to speak to nobody.”

As they parted, Tyrone heard Marcus say,
“Entiendes que sera´ su propia tumba si decides hablar de este asunto.”

“Si, comprendo.”

Tyrone decided not to ask. He heard something sounding like tomb or death and considered that Marcus was adding some emphasis to his warning.

On the way back to the airport, the men talked over the merits of the proposal and how to handle Gonzalez. They thought it had great potential for moving cocaine in quantity and a few kilos of marijuana. Ortiz had estimated five-hundred pounds of product per trip, better than they had expected. In addition, it would minimize the use of swallowers, a method nobody liked. They decided it was the best plan; but who would talk to Gonzalez?
Tyrone was blunt about Gonzalez’s prejudice against blacks, and he acknowledged his manner of superiority also irritated to him. Accordingly, the burden fell to Marcus to convince Gonzalez. They compared notes in the terminal building and agreed on how best to present it to him.

The next day, Marcus called Tyrone with the good news. Gonzalez liked it. Now, they needed to buy three planes, using three straw purchasers, and do a trial run.

Implementation

The three straw buyers bought the planes with cash and delivered them to Miami. Marcus paid each buyer three-thousand dollars for his services and told them to disappear. Ortiz planned a trial run, without drugs, in daylight to anticipate problems and evaluate the plan. He quickly thought through the three basic forms of navigation, critical for a long flight over water. Navigation by landmarks was out, except when near major landmasses such as the Bahamas or the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. The trip required a lot more of dead reckoning, but between ground-based navigation aids, no other option existed.

During his practice run, Ortiz jotted down altitudes and headings. Basically, the pilot flies low near land and high over open water to pick up navigation signals out of Barranquilla, and later from the vortac at Guantanamo,
⁵
which also had Distance Measuring Equipment (DME).

While taking on fuel in Matthew Town, Ortiz began chatting with the lineman – who was quite taken with the gleaming new Comanche.

“Do you work at nights as well?” asked Ortiz.

The young man replied that two linemen pumped fuel during the day and evening, but lived nearby and would respond to night radio calls on the local frequency.

Ortiz pressed a little harder. “How late?”

The movement of the young man’s shoulders and face answered his question.

“May I ask how much you make an hour?”

“A buck seventy-five.”

“Do you have a telephone where you live and near where you sleep?”

“Yeah, don’t use it much.”

“Sometimes I, and a few co-workers in my company, have to deliver handmade, spare parts at unusual hours to another company that operates around the clock near Miami. Obviously, we need to count on getting fuel here to finish the trip, another six hundred miles. We can’t spend the night here. If I called you from Barranquilla to say that one of us is leaving, would you go to the airport, listen to the radio, and be ready? It takes about four-and-half hours to fly here from Barranquilla.”

“How much extra would you pay us?”

“Well, what do you think would be fair for getting you out of bed late?”

“Maybe twenty dollars.” Which was more than he had hoped for.

Ortiz puffed up a little and said, “This is a time-sensitive business we operate. We can make or lose a lot of money based on our ability to supply these parts when needed. Because delays could be so costly, I will give you and your friend one-hundred dollars for late-night refueling. If you both show, to avoid arguing, then it is fifty dollars each. A deal?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Now, I need to jot down your name and phone number, as well as your friend’s name and number if you have it.”

“Yes, sir. I can give you both.”

“Please don’t brag to your friends, or I may need to reconsider our exclusive arrangement.”

With the deal sealed, such as it was, Ortiz departed for the last
640 miles. Soon, he could pick up several coastal navigation aids. Twenty miles out to sea he dropped down to two hundred feet and reduced his speed a little, while crossing the coast. Valkaria airport was easy to find. Although physically exhausted and tired of pissing into a bottle, Jorge Ortiz was elated. He had flown a dream plane more than thirteen-hundred miles with one fuel stop. He called Marcus: “It was easy.”