I think I ate people
Part 2 of 3
It was decided that we’d head for South America in about 2 weeks after we had come up with the capital needed to buy Coca in wholesale to make it worth the trip. This amounted to approximately $85,897.98. None of us had anything remotely close to that. It only made sense that we stage an elaborate carjacking…well, truckjacking and sell Hugo’s $270k wrecker to a Warwick RI chop shop. It’d be for $90k and the truck was fully insured anyway so his boss wouldn’t mind. In a way, we were simply cutting Robin Hood out of the equation (with him being dead and all) and rewarding ourselves..a couple of modern day peasants. This was amazingly easy to do. It turns out mobilizing an efficient guild of dangerous misfits was like trying to convince ants to munch expensive wood.
Ostensibly, Hugo had a cousin in Venezuela who was to negotiate the clandestine arrangements on that end. He had escaped Colombia following government forces putting heat on him after he single handedly wiped out a rival cartel…with a bazooka. Caesar Guttierez was a cold blooded killer who incinerated enemies with missiles…and Caesar Guttierez would become my confidante and make me into a very rich man.
Upon landing in Caracas, we were received by a couple of relatively innocuous looking characters who took us to an equally unremarkable car that was waiting outside by the taxis.
The ride to the rendezvous point was just as I had expected. Dusty, rocky, hilly winding roads cut through dense jungle while the occupants in the ’87 Subaru Legacy, with one exception, liaised loudly in Spanish. I wasn’t worried about them talking about me as I had my main bud Hugo sitting right next to me. We finally arrived at a cavernous residence that surpassed my wildest imaginations. It even superseded my vision of the bountiful life I’d lead as an accomplished drug lord. Right there in the middle of a sea of forest, it lay unperturbed with workers busy tending to exotic rose bushes and lush trimmed grass on a massive compound. The building itself came with whitewashed walls, a red tiled roof and black grills protecting massive windows ( I didn’t at the instant care from what. The sheer architectural marvel took my breathe away from the underlying obvious security measure). The compound was surrounded by an equally impressive 10 foot stone wall with live electric wire running along the whole top of it. Essentially, this was a contemporary Conquistador palace in the middle of nowhere.
Caesar himself was an unassuming fellow. At 5 ft 6 with a scruffy beard and a pudgy look, he seemed pretty harmless. Many a conversation with Hugo embedded permanently in my head advised me to toss aside this silly notion.
After the customary exchange of pleasantries, we proceeded to the east wing of the house and were ushered into a room which I presumed was the study. I liked this whole idea of diving right into business. I wasn’t looking forward to a 3 day fest of wild partying in the middle of a South American jungle paradise. (Insert asterisk here to denote insincerity)
Right as we were saddling down and starting to go over the details of the smuggling that was to be, Caesar cast a contemptuous look at the suitcase of money I had opened to impress everyone. First, the money that we had taken such pains to conjure up, wasn’t no good here..he announced. It turned out, by absolute luck, that Caesar’s cartel had recently suffered a massive blow after its makeshift drug submarine was intercepted by the Miami PD right off the coast of the Florida Keys. He was looking for new mules with a link in the States (preferably the northern part where product prices exponentially ballooned). He was willing to take a chance on his cousin and his mute friend. I quickly surmised that Pablo Escobar had to have gone to heaven and appointed himself me and Hugo’s eternal guardian angel. However way this was all possible, I was very much attuned to it and very much game. The dry run wouldn’t be completely dry ( 800 kilos of pure cocaine wet actually). I like to think of it more of a pilot trial. All expenses were to be fully paid for by the kingpin himself.
As I tried to comprehend the sheer clusterfuck of stars lining up into a linear constellation, I heard a bloodcurdling cry shoot out panicked unintelligible utterances in Spanish on a guard’s 2-way. Hurriedly, a wide-eyed Hugo explained to me that a contingent of government commandos had been spotted by lookouts advancing on the compound.
As if he had expected this the whole time, Caesar calmly spat some orders to a man on his left who sprinted out of the room and out of sight. Apparently, there was an escape plan in place and this had been utilized a number of times before. It happened when rival cartels outbid corrupt government officials so as to trim off competition. A reset button to operations could always be hit by a simple wire remittance to a secret Belize bank account — this to go hand in hand with a series of brutal killings..you know, the usual.
Before long, I found myself trekking through an underground tunnel that supposedly traversed the expansive residence, out, and into a forest clearing 4 miles away. Dusk was just setting in and the tall trees cast eerie shadows across a beaten path that the 12 men I was trailing seemed very familiar with. Everyone had a huge backpack to bear; In which I made an educated guess was full of white schedule 2 stimulant and bands of cash.
After the relatively short trek, we came upon a deserted campsite and set up for the night. A helicopter was to pinch us off the next day 9 miles to the south and everyone tried to get in as much rest as they could for the final, more arduous lap of trekking through jungle thicket.
It wasn’t long before a cacophony of snores filled the serene forest night. I found it extremely hard to join in the chorus as flashes of Anaconda cascaded throughout my neural pathways with the scene where some poor guy tries to hide behind a curtain of water atop a waterfall, but gets discovered. He then figures he’d rather jump to his ultimate demise than be snake brunch. As he hurtles towards the jagged rocks and foamy water below, the savvy reptile unwinds itself and saves him by catching him midair. It then proceeds to unsave him by hugging him too tight…and swallowing him whole.
Ultimately, I had no problem staying up and using the light from a full moon to scan the surrounding trees for ginormous snakes. Right around 2 a.m., I spied three silhouettes, then 4, 5 and before long, about 20 figures materialized, camouflaged in military fatigues and armed to the teeth with those damned ubiquitous uzis. I felt a burning sting on my neck and blacked out.
I woke up in a 4 by 6 cell with a bunk bed and a tiny window near the ceiling. Light sifted through the window and for a moment, the resulting absolutely magnificent spectrum it created helped me forget my current predicament. However, after 3 weeks, I got bored with it and started thinking bigger and more thrilling: namely scraping my wrists vigorously against the stone walls. Right as I was seriously considering this new endeavor, I got a visitor.
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