14
Sendi and I sat at the edge of a steamy jungle clearing in the mountains forty miles out of Medellin and waited. Our clothes were sticking to our bodies and the deodorant had given up the fight hours ago. The shirt clinging to her body took my mind off my job for several minutes.
I had checked and rechecked the camera settings to make sure that when I took the pictures they would be perfect. Under cover of the dense foliage I had set the Nikon with its telephoto lens on its mini tripod. We were tourists on a photo safari taking pictures of the many spectacularly colored parrots that lived in the jungles of South America and the developed photos in our luggage supported this cover.
***
Our journey had been interesting to say the least. We flew into Bogotá on an airliner that should have been, and probably was, pensioned off years ago. It struggled in the thin atmosphere of the high altitude, we struggled with the livestock that seemed to part of the local aviation tradition. Scant regard was taken for air safety in this part of the world and it was with a large dose of relief that we found ourselves safely on the ground.
The vehicles available to rent at the airport were equally as ancient as the airplane. We chose one of the two ancient Land Rovers that comprised the fleet and ground our uncomfortable way through the jungle to Medellin. Our journey was one of stops and starts. If it wasn't a stop to allow the ancient and tired motor to recover from the rigors of the long mountain climbs, it was to allow the local military to pull the car apart looking for whatever they were looking for.
***
We heard, before we saw, a convoy of light trucks winding its way up the rough mountain road. They pulled up in front of the group of ramshackle buildings at the edge of a small clearing that we had been watching for the last hour and a half.
The drivers got from the trucks and helped the local workers to load bags onto the backs of the trucks. I exposed a roll of film before we walked over the ridge to our waiting Land Rover. As we walked I slipped the exposed film into an envelope addressed to Ruiz back in New York. The envelope also contained a letter explaining that the film was important evidence and that he should ensure its safety and that of subsequent films that I would send from time to time.
I knew, from my research, where the trucks would be headed, so Sendi and I drove away from the drug processing plant and set up our camera in its next location. The Natividad Coffee Company was the perfect cover for the drug pipeline. Cocaine sealed in plastic packages and placed in bags of coffee beans are not likely to be detected by the usual methods, even supposing that the customs officers were conducting anything more than a cursory search. Sniffer dogs were unable to pick up the scent of the cocaine over that of the coffee beans.
Our task was to photograph the process of transferring the drugs to the bags of coffee and making sure that the photographs contained the labels on the bags for further identification.
I had thought of climbing onto the roof of the plant and taking the photos through a skylight but decided against that because I didn't have a lot of faith in the strength of the roofing material. We chose a position that overlooked the plant and gave a clear shot through one of the windows. In this instance clear was a relative situation, the window wasn't the cleanest that I had ever seen but it would suffice.
The trucks rolled down the hill to the plant. At either end of the convoy was a jeep loaded with men loaded with guns. The convoy was now valuable and protection was increasingly apparent.
The lead jeep stopped and a man stood up in the front with a pair of binoculars with which he scanned the area. I hoped that the hide that Sendi and I had taken great pains to build would pass scrutiny. It did and the rest of the trucks pulled up in front of the plant.
Many men emerged from the building and unloaded the trucks, the operation taking no more than fifteen minutes. The bags of cocaine were carried into the plant and stacked beside the bagging machine.
The coffee beans spilled down a chute, the operator stopping the machine when the bag was about one third full. He then packed two of the plastic bags of cocaine into the bag before restarting the machine. When full, the bag was sealed and placed on a conveyor. This took it to another part of the plant where it was weighed and labeled, the number noted on the cargo manifest before the bag was taken to the loading dock.
The full bags of coffee were loaded onto large covered trucks that bore the Natividad Coffee Company name. When the shipment was completed the trucks rolled away from the plant. The next stop was a warehouse on the docks at Barranquilla.
As we drove through the port of Barranquilla I mailed the two envelopes, each containing a roll of film and an explanatory note, to Ruiz.
Barranquilla had been chosen as the exit port for a couple of very good reasons. The first was that it was one of the closest to the US. The second reason was that the local customs officials had been paid well not to check too closely the bags of coffee from the Natividad Coffee Company. In a world where money talked the voices were raised.
It was just after daybreak and the humidity was still at a bearable level as we walked from the wharf. I had taken pictures of the bags of coffee being slung aboard a rather tired looking freighter and had taken the film out of the camera and reloaded it. I placed the exposed film in one of my socks so that I could transfer it to one of the envelopes in my suitcase when we got back to our car. The film in the camera I used to take pictures of not a lot in a place where there was a lot of not a lot. I reasoned that if we were stopped and the camera checked, an almost fully exposed film would raise fewer eyebrows than a new film.
We approached the car to be confronted by three men in military uniforms. "What has Senor been doing on the wharf at this time of the day?"
"I have been taking pictures of your beautiful port and the birds that enjoy their lives here." This sounded almost as bad as it was and I wasn't confident that he would buy it. He didn't.
"Would Senor like to show me his camera?" Senor wouldn't but did as he was told. The soldier took the Nikon and opening the back pulled the film from it. "Senor should be careful where he takes pictures in future."
"Senor will." I assured him. The soldiers marched off towards the warehouse and Sendi and I both breathed a lot easier.
The Columbian phase of our operation was complete, at least it would be when the last envelop was consigned and we left the country.
The next phase was to find out where the Panamanian registered Enterprise Endeavour would make landfall in the US. We reasoned that Miami would be the first port of call, given its reputation for being a staging point in the cocaine line. (All right that's a terrible pun, and I make no apologies for it either).
Our plane landed at Miami and we checked into a hotel on the beachfront. We had a couple of days to spare while we waited for our ship to come in and we made the most of it. We were the normal tourists, walking along the beach and shopping in the malls, dining in the fancy restaurants and in Sendi's case, occasionally being recognized by some avid movie fan. Most of all we made sure that people noticed us wandering around the docks taking photographs of anything and everything. When it came time to photograph the Enterprise Endeavour we needed to been doing what we'd been doing for days so as not attract too much attention.
The local newspaper contained a list of the shipping arrivals and departures so we drove to the docks and were waiting for the Enterprise Endeavour as she steamed into port, camera at the ready.
"Do they still call it steaming when ships are diesel powered these days?" I asked Sendi.
"You're stressing bout this aren't you?"
"What makes you say that?"
"Because my love, you always make some inane comment or ask a silly question when you're tense."
"You know me too well."
"I'll never know you too well and that's what makes us perfect."
We watched from a safe distance as the stevedores started to unload the vessel. The crane swung backwards and forwards over the hold and the crane hook dropped into the hold to emerge with a sling loaded with goods. We kept a watch on the slings as they emerged, trying to keep a tally of the number of bags of coffee that were unloaded. It wasn't an easy task but one that was helped a little by the long lens on the camera that enabled me to get a close up of the slings. As far as I could tell, when the unloading had stopped, only about one third of the consignment was on shore.
We walked from the shore where we were photographing back to our car. In the car I was just about to place the film in the next envelope when I noticed a familiar looking car approaching. It wasn't the same black Ford that had followed us around America before but it was similar. It pulled to a stop beside us. I just had enough time to put the film in my sock and the envelope back in my bag when the men from the car approached. They both held out ID's that identified them as members of the DEA.
"May I ask what you two are doing here?"
"I am photographing your beautiful city." I once more hoped that the statement would work. Once more it didn't. I would have to think of a new line.
"May I?" He held out his hand for the camera. Another wasted blank film waved in the breeze. "Would you mind if we had a look at your vehicle?" I minded, not that this was any concern of his.
The search was quick. Long enough to find the envelope addressed to Ruiz and to discover a small bag containing a white powder that he opened and proclaimed to be cocaine. "Can you explain the presence of this?"
"No. We rented this car no more than an hour ago and drove it straight from the rental agency to here. If, as I expect you have, you've been following us you would have realized that there is no way that we could have bought that between then and now."
"You could always have had it on you before you rented the car."
