I’d been flying solo over the Gulf of Mexico at ten thousand feet for about an hour when I looked to the back of the twin prop plane and noticed that the green duffle bags sitting on top of the high octane fuel bladder were no longer floating but resting firmly on the deck and I knew it was time to calculate the fuel. The volatile fuel and the 268 kilos of cocaine should have served as a reminder of how dangerous this trip was but to me the fact that the fuel had been used up meant that the boring, twelve hour flight was coming to an end. I was not a pilot but I had picked up enough flying on the job.  I had been making these drug runs ever since I had been kicked out of the US Air Force at seventeen and four years later at twenty one, I thought of them as a routine flights.

It was early Spring and it had been a tough year for me and this trip was going to win me back some respect and would restore my reputation as “El brother”, the nickname I had proudly earned since my father had moved the family to Miami from New Jersey.  Back in December of the previous year, I had been surprised in a Los Angeles apartment, when a couple of guys posing as cops had put a gun to my head and I had given up over half a million dollars in cash while I cried like a little girl and begged for my life. My friend, mentor and big brother had gotten his mother and aunt killed back in Colombia over the stolen money and was told that his wife and kids would be next. He had gone to face death and I had slipped East to Florida to do other business with my father. I had been scared really but at the time denial had me seeing blurred and I couldn’t read fear on a billboard if I tried and so I had conveniently gone to make some drug runs. My mentor, Guille, who had taught me so much and whom I loved like a brother, had been shredded to pieces by bullets in Medellin. He wasn’t given a chance as he barely made it out of the airport.  At the start of 1983, smack in the middle of the drug trade, setting an example was worth more than half a million dollars.

But that’s not all, a month later, I was in a “kitchen” in the Amazon overseeing the processing of 150 kilos of cocaine that we would piggy back on one of the upcoming smuggling runs. The kilos belonged to my dad and to some of his closest friends each of whom had chipped in for the bulk buy and consequent shipment. The kilos had turned into 200 by the time the “cooking” had been finished and I had failed to do anything about it. I had been sent down to the dense jungle in the middle of who knows where from Miami all alone and the heavily armed “cooks” intimidated me and I had played dumb as soon as I realized what had happened. I had made it up to Miami and when the drugs arrived a few weeks later I denied that I knew anything about the merchandize having been cut—deluded, just as my self esteem had been deluded.  And so for a quarter of 1983 I had been beating myself up relentlessly for being such a botch, which was why the trip was important. This trip was about saving face; I would erase the two embarrassing events from mine, everyone else’s but especially my dad’s mind and everything, including my reputation, would go back to normal.

“I think it’s time to go under the radar”, I said loud enough to wake up the sleeping pilot and when he was groggily yawning, I added, “Are we gonna make it before dark?” He stretched and put on his headphones and started checking the gauges.

“We’ll stay up a little longer”, he said as he paused for a while and then added, “Shit, we’re tight on fuel."

About an hour later we hit the outskirts of Fort Myers flying at about 500 feet with the sun at our back and in no time we were half way towards Okeechobee lake at 300 feet well below the radar and flying over perfectly cut patches of land with the last bit of sun blanketing the different shades of green below. I put on my shoes; tied the laces; and put on my favorite leather jacket, a vintage bombardier I had bought at an Air Force base in Texas; and I snugged my nickel plated .38 between my belt and I felt the shame and guilt, which had haunted me for eleven hours of flying over deep blue ocean, vanish into the cold steel. Back then my mind was mucked from years of booze, cocaine and constant adrenaline and the only thing on my mind was that soon the load would be delivered and I’d be going to some strip joint to get drunk before finding some pretty dancer to spend the night with. But that would never happen.

Right before the gloom of dusk we started to bank left for a 360 degree turn to check our tail and before we got to 270 degrees the hairs on the back of my neck stood out as I felt a dead finger reach for my spine. I couldn’t see it but I sensed it; I felt it. It was the same cold finger that used to reach for my neck when I was a ten year old kid in my old neighborhood racing my bike through the cemetery. Right past nine o’clock a short distance to my left and about 100 feet above us, a rumbling Army Black Hawk helicopter chopped its blades and pounced at our helpless bird with its flat, green killer beak. I had known about these magnificent choppers since my Air Force days when it was born and I saw its deadliness as all my senses went into overdrive. I lost the killer Hawk from sight past six o’clock but the thundering remained and I wasn’t sure if it was from the helicopter, the plane and drugs I was sitting on or from my own heart that was beating at a hundred miles an hour. I frantically wiped my finger prints from whatever I had touched; I tightened up my shoe laces with a double knot; I took a half full gallon jug of drinking water and strapped it to my belt; and, I made sure the door that opened to the wing was unlocked-- though I don’t remember if I planned it out or if it all just happened on its own.

After a few minutes that rushed for ever, I saw the landing strip next to a canal. Across from the water a citrus grove gripped the earth like giant umbrellas and I knew they would keep me safe. The plane hit the earth and in no time I was clinging to the door with one foot on the wing while we taxied down the grassy strip. I could see the Hawk and the starving heads looking out its side. Our plane swerved to the right and I was already out and running before it had come to a complete stop. About a hundred yards later, I looked back to see a marshal tackle down the pilot and another, less fat marshal chasing after me and I knew he’d never catch me; I would see my stripper after all.

But the helicopter soon took off and sprung to chase and the dead finger then weighed a ton on my back as the “Lord’s prayer” popped into my head in Spanish as it had so many times before when I had smelled death. “Padre Nuestro que estas en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre…,” echoed in my brain and I ran as fast as I could and I dove head first into the canal and for a fraction of a second everything went numb and quiet. I came back for air and the nightmare woke again. The cold water had slapped me across the face and had jolted the fight and flight from me in one shocking swoop. I went under the water a second time and it was quiet again, like a dream. I loosened my belt and let the .38 sink to the bottom of the canal; I took out my wallet and let it sink under too and I felt the half empty jug of water slip to the surface as if it had had a mind of its own and for some reason I followed this half full/half empty jug of water and soon I was on the surface once again. I waited for my next move but my mind was blank; my thoughts, like the jug of water had floated away.  I backstroked slowly to the edge with my ears underneath the water where it remained calm and I squinted at the underbelly of the stunning Hawk that looked so majestic and I climbed out of the canal into the waiting cuffs of the US customs agent who didn’t even get his shoes wet to catch me.

The Marshal walked me slowly back to where the plane was. “How’d you catch him,” the fatter marshal yelled as he sat on the back of the six-foot pilot.

“This dumb son of a bitch just stopped running and turned back,” he yelled and though I couldn’t see it, I could sense his smirk.

When night crept in the thundering had eased into a whizzing and my thoughts were back only having wished that they had stayed and I had kept running if anything because the shame and guilt had gotten heavier and thicker than ever before.

I was read my Miranda rights and we were shoved into the belly of the Hawk and forced to sit down though it wasn’t necessary. I was staring at its size and the hundreds of different buttons, levers, switches and the instrument lighting when the engines and three-thusand-plus horses roared again. How long had I wished to get close to one of these predators and there I was inside one, breathless and holding back tears, but not the tears of being cuffed behind my back but the tears of chronic failure and the tears of broken dreams—the helicopter mechanic that I’d never be, the mechanic I had left at Lackland Air Force Base when I messed up by not following military rules. Again, it’s only a guess now that I know myself a little better but back then I had no idea why I was crying. We lifted off and I kept turning my head to marvel at the cockpit and the hundredths of lights that had come to life like a Christmas tree on a cold December night. The fat agent who would never have caught me grabbed me by the collar and gritted through his teeth, “If you move from that seat and try to take us down you little shit, I’ll shoot you right where you sit,” and I turned and lowered my head if only to get away from his awful breath and to make sure he didn’t see the tears welling up inside.

“Man, I ain’t trying to do nothing,” I muttered back and I slumped to the gloom of night and I let the tears come down and for some reason they tickled as they travelled down my cheeks and curved around my jaw before they disappeared to join the water still drenching from my bombardier. They were quiet tears, passive tears; they were private tears and somehow felt like loving tears though I didn’t understand why or how since I had cowered yet again. But what I did know was that I was glad that no one could see my tears—but especially my dad.

The chopper dropped us off at some air field and we were then taken to a county jail for the night. The next morning we were driven to South Florida to be arraigned at the Federal Courthouse. A few days later, I was denied bond and Wesley, the six foot pilot, had weaseled out on bail.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two: The Boy