Dan Oberman had told to Kennedy that Delrios was looking at a project to export his Colombian coffee to Europe. Ireland with its Tax Free Zones looked to them an ideal distribution point for the UK and continental markets. Delrios was willing to finance the setting up a trading company in Ireland for that purpose.
The idea appealed to Kennedy, who had for a long time been seduced by the irrational idea of converting the Irish, a nation of tea drinkers, to drinking coffee. It was certainly lot smarter than drinking ‘a nice cup of tea’. He could not resist the temptation when Delrios proposed visiting the coffee plantations that his organisation ran in the south of the country.
It was a one hour flight from Baranquilla, in the company’s Lear Jet, over the Cordilla Centrales to the jungle air strip nearby the coffee plantations, where Ortega’s organisation ran a large hacienda, fifty kilometres from Puerto Asis, near the frontier with Ecuador, one thousand two hundred kilometres directly to the south of Baranquilla.
Puerto Asis was a town of 80,000 people in the Province of Putumayo, a wild frontier town with its mostly unpaved streets and where men paraded with guns in their belts. The surrounding jungle was controlled by the Farc guerrillas, who watched over the largest source of cocaine production in South America with some 60,000 hectares of coca plantations.
Ortega’s source of income was not only in corruption and money laundering, but also in a hardy Andean shrub that grew notably in Peru and Colombia, it was called coca. It was from this plant that cocaine was extracted.
In Colombia the production of coca had more than doubled in recent years. It was mainly produced in the regions of Putumayo and Cacqueta, which were the strongholds of the left wing guerrilla movement, the Farc, in the mountainous jungles in the south of the country, on the borders with Peru and Ecuador; countries that also illegally exported coca paste to Colombia where it was refined into cocaine.
The Farc, which was the largest guerrilla group in the country, had 17,000 men under arms and protected the drug industry, whilst extracting a tax of some 500 million dollars a year, to buy arms and sustain their war with the Colombian government. They were not alone, nor were the left wing organisations the only culprits, right wing paramilitaries groups also owned and operated laboratories for the processing of the drug.
More than 100,000 Colombians had lost their lives and another 300,000 had fled their homes as a result of the civil war in the country and the wealthy lived in fear of kidnapping and extortion.
Colombia was the home to the world’s biggest narco-industry, accounting for 80% of the cocaine imported by the USA. After a decade of war against cocaine the supply of the drug in the USA remained abundant and its price stable.
The USA in its fight against the cocaine industry gave little consideration for democracy and human rights. At the same time as it had supplied arms to fight the drug barons, it had provided money laundering services and chemicals for the refining of the cocaine. The CIA in its struggle against drugs monitored the activities of all persons or organisations, political or otherwise, suspected of being involved in the drug industry, amongst the suspects was Ortega.
On the airstrip were several small aircraft were parked including a white and blue Bell 407 helicopter which Delrios proudly pointed out to Kennedy.
“Our latest acquisition!”
“Very nice,” replied Kennedy politely. His knowledge of helicopters being about as great as that of his knowledge on the history of pre-Columbian civilisations.
“It cost us one and a half million dollars. It’s the only way we can get around in this part of the country, there are virtually no roads, only trails.’
“Business must be good,” Kennedy remarked.
“Coffee is having a good year. Crops were bad in Brazil, bad weather. We also have emerald mines in the north, not far from Bogota, which are doing quite well, there’s plenty of money around with the American economy booming.”
Delrios did not mention the thousands of kilos of cocaine that left regularly for the USA and other destinations, which enabled them to finance the purchase of equipment and materials for their business operations as well as arms.
Peter Davy was the pilot of one of the two Lear Jets, they were owned by one of Ortega’s Swiss offshore companies for tax and other purposes. The Lear Jet had a six hour flying time, for transatlantic runs, they followed a northern route via Reykjavik, Bangor, Miami and Baranquilla, or alternatively to the south via Sint Maarten and Las Palmas to southern European destinations. The refuelling stopovers were compensated by the privacy and the availability of the aircraft. They were fitted with eight comfortable seats that could be reclined into couchettes. Normally the jet carried only four passengers for space and comfort on transatlantic runs.
Davy was a talkative Brit who was fluent in Spanish and French, fifty years old, a professional and dedicated to a business where there were more pilots than jobs. Working for Ortega was rewarding and interesting and required a pilot with the long experience of Davy. His only weakness, if it could be called that, was that he was womaniser intent on pursuing anything in a skirt.
His home was near Marseilles on one of the picturesque calanques not far from Marignan airport. Marignan was thirty-five minutes by regular flight from Zurich, the European base for the Lear Jets.
It was the first time that Kennedy had been in such a region. He had watched the last vestige of civilisation slipping away as the Lear Jet climbed from Baranquilla and headed south. Before them lay more than one thousand kilometres of jungles and mountains, stretching out on all sides, to the border with Ecuador.
Once arrived at the plantation Kennedy had an intense feeling of isolation and distance from the rest of the world. The people were different, they seemed rugged and hard. There were Indians who looked wild and the whites looked uncivilised. He stuck closely to Oberman and the pilot.
The hacienda was magnificent, just as in a Western he thought, though more exotic, green and without the dust. There were horses and what looked like cowboys though he saw few cattle. To his alarm many of the men carried arms.
That evening they ate a parilla of beef chuletas to the buzz of insects that flittered in the lighting over the terrace. In addition to Delrios, Oberman and their pilot Peter Davy, there were several men he had not met before including army officers in their uniforms. Delrios explained to Kennedy that an early visit to the coffee plantations had been organised for the next day. He then proposed that he join an army operation in the nearby jungle, as an observer, to close down an illegal coca paste factory. He assured Kennedy that there was not the slightest risk.
Kennedy wondered why the army should be used to close down a factory, he was confused by coca, was it another version of cocoa, a chocolate drink, or coke as in Coke Cola, in any case why should it be illegal. Not wanting to appear stupid he kept his questions to himself and nodded his agreement to Delrios, who snapped out orders in Spanish to one of the military men for the next day’s operation.
They set out at six thirty the next morning to the coffee plantations that lay on the surrounding hills. They turned out to be disappointing and of only mild interest to Kennedy, once he had seen that the plantations were nothing more than endless rows of uninteresting green bushes, with the berries ripening on their small branches. It was too early to be up for the likes of inspecting berries on coffee bushes. The essential was that he had seen them and could be considered an expert back in Ireland.
In the not too far distance he saw the mist clinging to the mountains and the canopy of the dense jungle that stretched like a carpet before his eyes. The view looked menacing as he imagined his plane crashing down into the endless jungle. He was no longer sure that his presence was all that important for the army operation. He had no choice as he was quickly driven to the airstrip and put aboard an army helicopter. The helicopter flew low over the jungle and thirty minutes later they circled and landed in a clearing, where they joined a small army unit ready to leave for the drug trafficker’s jungle fact
ory.
The group set out by army Jeeps over muddy laterite trails to a meeting point about an hour’s drive over the jungle covered hills to meet up with the main group. The roads were simple trails, there were few means of transport, the local population travelled mostly by river.
He was introduced to an officer who explained in a rapid Spanish to his guide the outline of the operation. Kennedy was uneasy to see how heavily armed the men were, and could not help noting how tight their jaws were, it was not the kind of rabbit shoot he was used to.
Kennedy dimly began to understand that the operation was against an illegal drug factory, but was confused by the roles of Delrios and Ortega that seemed vaguely ambiguous to him. The army was in effect protecting their interests against encroachment by right wing independent paramilitary groups that fought both the Farc and sometimes the government.
It was a complex arrangement where the territory was divided into a mosaic of rival interests, where the army whilst looking after its own business activities tried to maintain a certain status quo between the warring factions.
The English spoken by the officer in charge and the guide was difficult to follow. Kennedy wished that that Oberman or Davy had remained with him. What at first glance had seemed to be an interesting outing was beginning to take on an alarming air. The other two men had left that morning on a trip up to Baranquilla and back, to deliver some important packages for Delrios and pick up communications equipment that had just arrived from Panama.
They continued a short distance by jeep over the slippery trail to a clearing where they continued by foot. They were preceded by heavily armed soldiers who advanced cautiously towards the site of the suspected narcotics factory.
There was a sudden stutter of automatic rifle fire. The soldiers ducked and Kennedy dived into the rain sodden undergrowth and mud. There was a silence, the acrid blue smoke from the gunfire hung in the damp air, then the soldiers cautiously continued their advance towards the jungle factory. Kennedy picked himself up brushing the mud and damp leaves from his clothes, his heart beating at a speed he had never before experienced.
The makeshift camp was abandoned, as such camps usually were a couple of hours or even less before the arrival of the military. Cooking fires were still smoking. The firing had been simply a tactic to frighten those who may have remained in the camp.
There was a motley collection of makeshift huts constructed from branches and rough planks covered with corrugated iron roofs and palm fronds. In a sump dug into the earth coca paste was in preparation and the crude tools necessary lay where they had been precipitously abandoned.
Coca was cultivated by poor farmers and the leaves were harvested by Indians, transported by foot in plastic sacks to the factories where it was transformed into a crude paste. The process was simple; the coca leaves were dried and immersed in a mixture of sulphuric acid and kerosene. The mixture was left to macerate for some hours and then filtered and dried into a paste which could then be transported to the laboratories in the north of the country.
The military officer explained through a translator for the benefit of Kennedy that the jungle factory would be burnt and all the material destroyed. Kennedy nodded seriously wondering whether the whole operation had not been set up for his sole benefit.
Another factory would be set up in a day or two to replace it and business would continue as usual once the military had returned to their base.
Informants were everywhere, brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends, on both sides exchanged information on operations planned by the authorities. It was a game of hide and seek where both parties pretended not to know where the other was.
The Colombian armed forces were too small and lacked mobility as well as the means to carry out an effective combat against the narco-industry mercenaries.
The hacienda was situated amongst the vast coffee plantations that covered the nearby hills. The plantations were surrounded by the dense jungle and mountains, in a region accessible by air or a long and difficult journey overland. The plantation and its airstrip were also collection points for unrefined cocaine from the surrounding region, where poor coca growers cultivated and harvested their crops of coca leaves and transformed it into paste before it was transported north.
Police and officials were willing accomplices to the drug traffickers and the drug barons who continued to operate with impunity in the border cities with the USA. Corruption was rampant at all levels of the Latin American countries aiding and abetting the traffic of narcotics.
The coffee plantations were controlled by the Farc. Coffee was used as a cover for the much more profitable cultivation of coca, the profits of which were used for the purchase of arms and other materials in the futile struggle against the government in Bogota.
Chapter 55
A Long Journey
Offshore Islands Page 54
