Cosmic Banditos

by Weisbecker, A. C.

  “Jesus Christ, am I hung over,” he said. “It feels like this whole fucking place is rocking around.”

  He hadn’t figured out that we were underway.

  “I’m out of drugs. Let’s cruise on back to the Holiday Inn.”

  “We’re a day out from Panama,” I said. “This show is on the road.”

  “Where’s Robert?” Jim wasn’t listening.

  “I locked him in the ’midships cargo hold,” I said.

  “Where’s the bathroom,” Jim said. “I gotta throw up.”

  “The bathroom? You mean the head?”

  Then it hit me. It should’ve been obvious from little things they’d said in Panama, but I was either too preoccupied or too drugged to pay any attention. Neither Jim nor Robert had ever been at sea before.

  Jim walked out onto the bridge wing and scanned the unbroken horizon. He rushed back in.

  “All right, wise guy, where’s the fucking dock?”

  I tried to be casual, but there was an edge to my voice. “Uh, what exactly are your functions on this operation, you and Robert?”

  “Robert used to be with the U.S. State Department. He’s our liaison to whatever country we’re laying waste to. I’m in charge of travel arrangements and pharmaceutical quality control.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Now where’s the fucking dock?”

  “About a hundred miles behind us.”

  “Ohhh ... shit!”

  Jim ran to the bridge wing. “Robert!” he screamed.

  Robert tried to answer from the cargo bay but all he could come up with was a loud, drawn-out belch. The acoustics of the empty cargo area gave the sound a stereophonic quality, but Jim zeroed in on its source immediately. He made it to the loading hatch and peered inside wide-eyed. He was genuinely panic-stricken.

  “Robert!” he screamed. “We’re both gonna die!”

  Robert groaned, then uttered his first coherent word in a day and a half. “Good,” is what he said.

  Shadows were lengthening. The sun had dipped below the hills behind the Inn. Tourists and yachtsmen were filling up the patio and ordering sundowners. A ten-piece steel drum band was setting up. They were all local boys wearing white pants and flowered shirts. Luckily, Robert was still staring at Cap and hadn’t noticed. Robert didn’t like steel drum music.

  Jim stuck a straw in the bottle of rum and put the end in Robert’s mouth. The dark brown liquid started to disappear.

  “Good boy, yes, yes,” Jim said. He was treating Robert like an attack-trained Doberman. This I hadn’t seen before, so I inquired about it.

  “I just want to see if I could maybe control him a little,” Jim said. “Think of the possibilities.”

  “D-dat b-be one g-good idea, J-Jim.” Cap’s teeth were chattering, even though the temperature was still around eighty degrees.

  Robert bared his teeth and growled softly.

  “Good boy.” Jim started to move the bottle away from Robert. His growl deepened significantly. High Pockets started sneezing again.

  “Jesus,” Jim said. “Do ya think he’d turn on me?” He put the straw back in Robert’s mouth.

  “It’s entirely possible,” I said. “Remember what happened when we let him out of the cargo hold?”

  Jim blanched slightly. The thought seemed to sober him up a bit. He shuddered. “It was horrible. Trapped on that rust bucket with a rabid, two hundred and forty pound lunatic on the loose. And no drugs to calm my nerves.”

  “It was mostly show,” I said. “Just a lot of bellowing and frothing at the mouth.”

  It was true. Robert hadn’t had any food in about a week and no serious drugs for over a day. He ran out of steam on the aft deck while trying to strangle Julio. The crack on the skull I gave him with a belaying pin helped also.

  “You guys shaped up pretty good after you got the drugs out of your systems,” I said.

  I had put them both on a strict diet of prune juice and rum. Robert took orders quite well when he was just plain shit-faced drunk. He steered the ship well, too. He and Jim both had the uncanny ability to get their own alcohol-induced rolling, pitching and yawing into sync with the ship’s.

  We raised Riohacha, Colombia, four days after leaving Panama. We were two days later than I had told Eduardo in the note, but I suspected that nobody would notice. As dawn broke, we spotted his forty-eight-foot sportsfisherman adrift just outside the harbor mouth. As we pulled alongside, I saw that my worst fears had been realized. Nothing had changed except that the syndicate was now comatose on a yacht instead of in the Holiday Inn conference room in Panama.

  Eduardo was strapped into the big game-fishing chair, his chin resting on his chest and an upside-down bottle of Dom sticking out from the rod-holder. José was hanging precariously over the edge of the tuna tower.

  The only piece of equipment on the Don Juan that was completely reliable was the horn. It sounded like Godzilla in heat. I gave it three quick blasts. This had no effect whatsoever, so I had Julio board the yacht to see if he could revive anybody. No way.

  Robert and Jim wanted to give it a try, but I knew they’d just ransack the craft for drugs. So Julio threw us a line and we towed them into Riohacha harbor.

  Riohacha is the only sizable town on La Peninsula de la Guajira. The peninsula itself and Riohacha in particular are completely under the control of bands of semi-organized Banditos, Dope Lords and savage Guajiran Indians. The country-side is wild and lawless. The Bogota government has long since given up on the area, possibly because of the bounty on tax collectors, drug enforcement agents and military officers who try to interfere with the mammoth marijuana trade. Riohacha is reminiscent of Dodge City in the 1880s, except for the fact that Wyatt Earp would be machine-gunned to death two seconds after he hit town.

  Open gun battles between rival Dope Lords are commonplace in the streets of Riohacha, along with kidnappings, rapes and rampant traffic violations. Tourism is not exactly booming and there is, as yet, no Club Med. But with a pocketful of pesetas and a reliable high-caliber sidearm, a fun-loving guy can still have a good time. And that’s exactly what High Pockets, Robert, Jim and I proceeded to do, since Eduardo and José had misplaced nearly half of our 100,000 pound cargo and had (once they came to) taken off to look for it and shoot up some of their neighbors.

  Jim and Robert figured they’d start out where they’d left off in Panama, at least as far as drug consumption was concerned. I was seriously considering abstaining altogether, but I was under intense social pressure, so I finally gave in.

  We spent about a week in Riohacha and, according to rumors I heard later, we had a good time. Two of the five bodyguards Eduardo left behind to keep an eye on us were wounded in a barroom shoot-out one night, but I have no recollection of it. Robert was said to be at the bottom of it, so I suspect that it did happen, but neither he nor Jim can remember anything either.

  I do dimly recall how the night began. We persuaded Julio to leave the ship and accompany us on our regularly scheduled binge. He told us he’d go, but added that he never drank or took drugs. He was a religious man; a peaceful man, he said. Robert smiled knowingly and nodded, then fitted Julio with a bullet-proof vest, gave him a .45 automatic with two extra clips and took him in tow, promising that we’d keep it mellow if that’s what he wanted. Julio seemed dubious at first. Apparently the flak jacket and gun had placed some doubts in his mind about Robert’s real motives.

  Robert’s philosophy of self-defense is unique. He himself never carries a gun. He always has a hand grenade in the pocket of his polyester jacket, however. In case of trouble, he pulls the pin, drops the grenade and “lets the chips fall where they may.”

  Around midnight, Julio agreed he’d have one drink, a toast to our future good fortune. Jim prescribed a half gram of coke and a ground-up quaalude and administered it to the boy via his drink while Julio was taking a leak. Julio is about half Robert’s size, yet our bodyguards swore he did as much damage to the place as his mentor did. />
  The last image I have of that night is a very low angle shot. I believe High Pockets and I were under a table. Robert and Julio were in the process of taking on the whole bar. Then either the lights went out or I was hit by flying debris when Robert’s grenade went off.

  “It was probably the grenade,” Jim said.

  The sun was under the yardarm; the patio was almost full. Waiters were lighting torches around the perimeter and between tables.

  “A hand grenade isn’t really that weird a method of self-defense when you have Robert’s attitude,” Jim said. “He’s always severely outnumbered. It’s amazing how a violent explosion in a confined area will separate the men from the boys.”

  A few guys in the steel band started plunking on their awful instruments. Robert reacted immediately. His body stiffened and he leaned forward just a tad. Some kind of mist or steam seemed to have enveloped his head. Cap’s eyes moved slowly in their sockets in my direction. I had to look away.

  “Six or seven notes of ’Yellow Bird’ ’ll do it.” Even Jim was sounding a little worried now.

  I sensed that Jim was right. The last couple years had been difficult for all of us, especially Robert. He had begun to talk about the “good old days” when, in the State Department during the Nixon administration, he had been a hot young lawyer specializing in international law and diplomacy. A former Rhodes Scholar and second-round draft pick of the Denver Broncos, Robert felt that he may have taken a wrong turn at one of the many Crossroads of Life.

  Eduardo showed up on the dock early one morning with a dozen or so bale-laden trucks escorted by an army of Guajiran Indians. Clad in loincloths and human-bone necklaces, they were armed with MAC-10 machine pistols, M-16’s and bows and arrows.

  Most of Riohacha turned out to watch. At the time the largest bulk of marijuana ever to be on-loaded at the Riohacha public dock, it took about two hours and went without incident, except for the odd knife fight amongst the spectators.

  Eduardo provided Julio and me with five deckhands, four Colombians and one Costa Rican.

  As I approached Robert and Jim on the dock for good-byes, Robert said, “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I,” Jim agreed.

  “Whaddaya mean?” I asked.

  “You and six greaseballs on this ship.” Robert shook his head.

  “No big deal,” I said.

  “Julio’s okay, but I don’t like the look of the rest of these spies,” Jim said. “You might need help keepin’ ’em in line.”

  Robert and Jim looked at each other.

  Robert sighed. “I guess we’re gonna have to go with him.”

  “I reckon you’re right for once, asshole,” Jim said. “You got enough grenades?”

  “On the ship,” Robert replied. “Drugs?”

  Jim grinned. “I had a feeling this might happen. I got a fuckin’ major-league pharmacy stashed in the galley.”

  Robert leaped onto the Don Juan and bellowed, “All right, assholes, let’s get this show on the road!”

  I was genuinely moved. I had grown quite fond of those loonies. High Pockets and I always operated more or less solo, but this gesture cemented a partnership that would endure incredible ups and downs and prolonged stretches of outright insanity.

  Unfortunately for everyone at the Admiral’s Inn, the band’s first selection was “Yellow Bird.” On the third note Robert let out a roar that must’ve been audible in Guadeloupe. High Pockets, Jim and I had seen it coming and dove for cover. Poor Cap’s hat flew off and his chair toppled over backward, depositing him in a shallow drainage canal. Suddenly a grenade appeared in Robert’s hand. He pulled the pin with his teeth and lobbed it toward the band. It was a good throw. The grenade clattered around in one drum, bounced into another, rolled around the rim like a roulette ball, then came to rest in the bottom of the instrument.

  “Live grenade!” I yelled. The boys in the band were frozen in midnote, staring down at impending doom. Suddenly they scattered: Some jumped a low wall behind the bandstand and hit the dirt, some dove into the harbor and stroked for the mangroves, the rest sprinted for the bar or through the patio, hurdling tables. The crowd of tourists and yachtsmen reacted as one, like a school of fish. First they all started to run in one direction, then another; then they all dove under tables and chairs.

  The explosion was in B-flat. All ten drums went more or less straight up, spinning like frisbees and resonating from the blast.

  Glasses and bottles were shattered by the concussion and flying hunks of steel drums.

  Fortunately the bandstand was slightly raised and everyone was lying flat, so no one was seriously hurt.

  High Pockets, Jim and I jumped up in order to assess Robert’s mood. He was sitting down, perusing a dinner menu.

  “Robert,” I said casually, “why don’t we cruise on over to the airport?” I was planning our escape from Antigua.

  “Yeah, man,” Jim said, “forget about dinner. We’ll do up some flake on the way.”

  “Okay,” Robert said calmly. He got up and we strolled through the smoky, debris-filled patio. Dazed patrons were wandering around in shock. I could hear the owner on the phone inside the bar, frantically trying to contact the police.

  We ambled casually to our rental car, Robert in the middle, Jim and I making small talk in order to distract him from the destruction, panic and disorder he had caused.

  We ran into a major snag once we got to the car. Robert insisted on driving. High Pockets and Jim protested, but Robert’s eyes began to glaze over again.

  “Okay, sport,” Jim said.

  We piled in. Robert started the engine. “Gimme the coke,” he said.

  I had to improvise. “It’s at the airport.”

  The drive from English Harbor to the airport is normally very pleasant. Rolling green hills, sugarcane fields and quaint villages. Robert, however, found a route I was unfamiliar with. At one point we were roaring across an apparently deserted pasture. Robert kept glancing in the rearview mirror and grinning. I looked back. A large Brahma bull was at full bore and closing on us fast. He had a horrendous hard-on and was bellowing—presumably for us to stop for a quickie. Closing my eyes and sliding down in my seat, I felt a severe headache coming on.

  The next thing I remember was the accident. Robert plowed us into a lamppost and flipped the car in front of the departing passengers’ gate at Antigua International. The front of the airport was deserted, but sirens were approaching from all directions. We crawled out of the car and entered the open-air terminal.

  The building was deserted except for the customs and immigration officer, who was asleep at his desk. His phone was ringing and ringing. I had a feeling the call had something to do with us. I threw an E.C. double sawbuck onto the officer’s desk; then High Pockets, Jim and I guided Robert out onto the tarmac.

  Once again my foresight stood us in good stead. Earlier that day I had told our pilots to have the Lear ready and waiting, as I always did when Robert started drinking before breakfast.

  The boys up front sensed urgency in our movements, so they quickly fired up the engines and taxied to the runway, pausing briefly while High Pockets deposited one of his meat-loaves on the pavement.

  I looked out the window: Two police cars and an army jeep were approaching from the other end of the field.

  .“Maximum angle of climb, Harry,” I called to the pilot, using our euphemism for “Get us the fuck out of here!”

  Approximately half our takeoffs were made under this kind of duress. Harry had been a two-time ace in Vietnam and enjoyed flying for us.

  Eight minutes later we were leveled off at 46,000 feet. Jim was pouring himself a glass of Dom. Robert was stretched out on the floor, snoring, thank God. High Pockets was up front with the pilots, taking in the view.

  I whipped out my dog-eared West Indies chart and crossed off Antigua. I then examined it for islands that we hadn’t burnt out. There were still a few left. I picked one more or less at random, gave Harry the coo
rdinates, then sat back. Jim poured me a glass of bubbly. I took a deep swallow and glanced out the window at the blue Caribbean far below. Antigua was rapidly receding behind us. I slid a tape into the VCR, then lit a joint. I exhaled contemplatively, wondering if we had started a downhill slide. We had just lost our last boat, but that was nothing new. We’d had several “last boats” since the voyage of the Don Juan. Robert had trashed another base of operations, but he had done that many times before. Basically everything was as it should be. We’d have spectacular successes and comical failures. Robert would blow things up and we’d have to leave. This was the natural order of things, so there was really no obvious reason for me to wallow in pessimism.

  I have a method of pulling myself out of negativity. It is a very simple concept, a short phrase. I had another sip of champers and said it out loud: “It will be interesting to see what happens next.”

  The worldview of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order.

  Gary Zukav

  3

  Subatomic Banditos

  My life here in the jungle has changed completely since José mugged Tina and her family. I have immersed myself in the netherworld of Quantum Physics. My days are rich and rewarding, my nights filled with wondrous speculation. High Pockets and I spend hours on end in the yard staring up at the night sky whilst being bombarded by Subatomic Particles, those elusive little cosmic rascals.

  I have not yet launched myself into the study of cosmology, preferring to let macroscopic reality wait in the wings until I have absorbed, as it were, the Subatomic Realm.

  I have never felt as at peace with myself as I do now. I am contemplating starting a correspondence with Tina’s father, who is clearly a very enlightened man. The margins of his books are replete with exclamation points and question marks. Some of his question marks are particularly incisive—his skepticism about the book’s view of quarks and their behavior, for example. I suspect that Tina’s father doesn’t believe in quarks at all. It’s a moot point at best but I would like to know his reasoning anyway.