Narcos

by Jeff Mariotte

  Finally, they reached the jungle lab. Escobar and Gaviria had flown in that morning on a small plane; the lab had an airstrip that could be quickly disguised with potted trees, in the event of a military or government flyover, but it wasn’t big enough for cargo planes.

  The lab was crude at best. The equipment was sophisticated—lots of steel and copper and glass—but it was set up on cheap folding tables standing on a crude wooden floor, underneath a roof constructed of corrugated tin, tree limbs, and rope. Monkeys skittered around in the trees. Lean, dark-skinned men worked shirtless, wearing only shorts and maybe sandals of some kind. Most had bad teeth; all were dripping with sweat.

  When the trucks rolled into the clearing, Escobar, Gaviria, and a third man, short, bespectacled, and lighter-skinned than those laboring under that roof, stepped out of the house that would be the only structure seen from the air. Each wore a broad smile, as if greeting long-lost relatives. The rumble of multiple generators filled the air, and the smell of their exhaust mixed with the odors of ammonia and kerosene—presumably from the lab—obscuring the jungle’s usual aroma of life and decay.

  “You made it,” Escobar said as the travelers exited their trucks. “No problems?”

  “A couple of police checkpoints,” La Quica said. “Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. And three flat tires.”

  “Good. Everybody will sleep in the house, so move your personal things in there, then you can work with the locals to get the trucks unloaded.” He pointed to an area next to the existing lab that had been cleared of trees. Poles had been erected to support a roof, but the sheets of tin were leaning against one of them, not yet in place. The wooden floor had been laid out. “That’s where the new lab equipment goes. This,” he added, indicating the smaller man, “is Camilo, our chemist. He’ll show you where to stage everything, and where to put it once we’re ready.”

  “Okay, Patrón,” La Quica said. He clapped his hands. “You heard him! Personal items in the house! Ten minutes to take a piss, then get back out here to help unload the trucks!”

  Men scrambled to meet La Quica’s arbitrary deadline. No one had heard the words “ten minutes” issue from Escobar’s lips, but La Quica was, if not the head sicario, at least something like that, and his commands were understood to be El Patrón’s wishes. The only one who could have challenged La Quica for position in the sicario hierarchy was Blackie—a longtime friend to Escobar—but he had stayed back to protect the ranch and the women.

  The house had three big bedrooms, empty but for stacks of pillows and light blankets. Aguilar figured the regular laborers either lived at home and traveled to work, or camped out in the jungle nearby, because the sicarios would fill all the available space. The line for the two indoor toilets was too long, so Aguilar hurried outside and melted into the trees away from the house. While he was going, he heard several other men who’d had the same idea, splashing away.

  When the ten minutes were up, everyone was back at the trucks, and laborers from the lab had shown up to assist. The work was hot, grueling. Camilo’s help was limited to pointing and the occasional, strained, “Be careful with that!”

  “I didn’t sign on to do manual labor,” Aguilar grumbled at one point.

  “You signed on to do whatever Don Pablo says to do,” Poison reminded him. “But if you want to renegotiate terms with him, feel free. It’s easy to make bodies disappear in the jungle.”

  Poison was right; there had been no contract laying out duties, no limitations set. When you worked for Pablo Escobar, your job was to follow orders, no matter what they were. Aguilar understood.

  That didn’t mean he had to like it.

  Finally, everything was unloaded, the crates and boxes stacked on pallets laid out on the damp earth. Aguilar hoped they were finished for the day. He was so hungry he thought his stomach was going to eat him from the inside out, and he had sweated away what felt like ten or twenty kilos.

  “That’s a good start,” Camilo said, observing their progress. “Time to get the canopy up. It’ll probably rain tonight, and we can’t have all this getting soaked.”

  The groans weren’t just from Aguilar. He held his tongue this time, and let others complain. It would do no good, anyway.

  The tin was lashed to the existing poles with sturdy rope. Once it was in place and secure, branches from the trees that had been downed to create the clearing were tied to it, to disguise the installation from the air.

  “Why bother?” Pancho asked while they were fixing the branches in place. “Cocaine’s going to be legalized anyway, isn’t it? That’s what Don Pablo says.”

  “Maybe it will be,” Aguilar answered. “But that’s still only a possibility. For now, it’s not legal. There are factions in the government that have it in for Don Pablo and the other cartel heads, and they’d love to find his labs.”

  “When he’s in the legislature, things will change,” Sure Shot said. “He hasn’t spent all that money on politicians just to have them walk away from him once he’s sitting there with them.”

  His term was due to begin in a little more than a month. Aguilar wondered how their lives would change then. Would he give up the cocaine business and focus on governing? That seemed unlikely—the salary of a legislator was a fraction of what Escobar made now. But could he do both? When the spotlight of public life was upon him, when every journalist in the country would be watching his every move, how could he function?

  Aguilar hoped it would mean more time spent in Bogotá. It was a thriving city, without all the emotional resonances that Medellín had. He wouldn’t have to worry about running into relatives or old friends, wouldn’t pass by landmarks that reminded him of his former life, or of Luisa.

  The sun was getting low in the sky. As it did, the sounds of the jungle grew louder, and even more insects buzzed around the men. Aguilar was sure he’d already lost a liter of blood to the mosquitoes.

  But still, the work wasn’t finished. Camilo wanted the new folding tables set up and the equipment unpacked and arranged. He generously declared that connecting pipes and tubing and electricity could wait until morning, but everything else had to be in readiness tonight.

  Finally, working in the light provided by generator-powered bulbs, they got things organized to Camilo’s satisfaction. Scratching at new bites, hungry, and exhausted, the men headed into the house, where a meal had been laid out for them.

  On the way to their rooms, after dinner, someone mentioned the absence of the prostitutes that Escobar had promised. Most of the others shouted him down; they were beat, filthy, ready to sleep. Aguilar kept quiet. He wasn’t interested in the women, anyway—or didn’t think he was. But if they had been available, he would probably have taken advantage of the offer. This way spared him the decision.

  This is what I’ve become, he thought. Instead of choosing between right and wrong, I’m relieved to not have to face the choice.

  When his head hit the pillow, he was still trying to figure out who was more responsible, himself or Escobar. He was asleep in seconds, with the question still unresolved.

  32

  IN THE MORNING, Camilo took the men who were assigned to hook up the equipment on a tour of the existing lab, so they would understand how the process worked. The labor had gone on all night, and the air under the tin roof was thick with fumes that made Aguilar feel lightheaded.

  “We buy coca leaves directly from the farmers who grow it,” he said. His voice was high-pitched, and he spoke fast, as if the words were trying to break free from his throat before he was ready. He waved an arm at several burlap bags of leaves stacked beside the pile. “We could buy paste after it’s been manufactured from the leaves, but it’s much more expensive that way. The leaves we get cheap. They have to be stiff, like paper, brittle, or the paste is no good. The farmers deliver them to us as whole leaves, and we mulch them in this shearing machine.”

  The shearing machine was rusty, with an intake at the top and a trough at the bottom where the leave
s came out. He hoisted one of the bags, showed a fistful of leaves to the sicarios, then dumped the bag into the machine and flicked a switch. It shook and rumbled like an enormous coffee grinder, and in a couple of minutes, chopped-up leaves tumbled down the trough and into a bin.

  “We sprinkle the mulched leaves with powder cement, as a binding agent. From here, it’s washed—soaked and stirred in fuel and ether, three times—which releases the product from the pulp.” He indicated the big steel drums in which the coca was presumably soaked, then walked them down the production line as he explained the steps. “After the washing, the residue is pressed and the liquid is wrung out, leaving a solid mass of coca. We let that dry, then cook it down over the fire until it’s creamy and white, and we let that harden. Now we have the paste, which is what we’re really after. We purify it with a bath of sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate, which produces manganese dioxide. We filter that out, and impurities with it. Diluted ammonia neutralizes the sulfuric acid. When that’s dried, under the heat lamps, then it’s crushed and packaged in the waterproof casings you’ve all seen.”

  “It’s a complex process,” Gordo said.

  “Sure,” Camilo agreed. “But simple people can be trained to master it. We’ll have to hire more workers, to staff up this new section. And we’ll have to expand the airstrip to accommodate bigger airplanes. Don Pablo says there are backhoes and bulldozers on the way, over the next few days, for that part.”

  “Do the workers here have any idea how valuable the final product is?”

  Camilo looked over his shoulder, making sure that none of the laborers were listening. “They won’t if you don’t tell them.” He grinned, as if he’d just told a joke, but his tone was serious. “Now you see how things have to work. Get it all wired and plumbed as it is on this side, and let me know when you’re finished.”

  “Which means he’s going back inside,” Jairo whispered. “And leaving us out here with the bugs.”

  “He’s the chemist,” Royer replied. “He’s the most important person here. Besides Don Pablo and Gustavo, I mean.”

  “He sure thinks so,” Aguilar added, watching Camilo walk back toward the house.

  “He’s the one who knows how to mix the chemicals, who trains the workers,” Royer said. “I don’t like doing this shit either, but we know what we’re here for. We’re the hired muscle. Don Pablo doesn’t want the laborers doing this work—the jobs they’re already doing are too important, and he doesn’t want to interrupt the supply. And the new ones haven’t been hired yet. That leaves us.”

  * * *

  When the lab was set up and Camilo had inspected all the connections, checking to make sure the power was hooked up right, the men were given a light lunch. Then four of them—La Quica, Aguilar, Gordo, and Jairo—were told to take a truck into the nearest village and hire some workers. Escobar gave them some cash to hand out, and instructed them not to come back until they had twenty men willing to work shifts around the clock.

  They had passed briefly through the nearest village on their way out. It was a sleepy place, with a church on the main plaza, a small gathering of houses, a handful of shops, a dentist’s office. At that early hour, the only person in the plaza had been asleep on a bench, but three goats had been happily munching on grass.

  Now, in early afternoon, it was considerably busier. Vendors had set up carts or stands selling fruits and vegetables and paletas, lottery tickets, and newspapers. The aroma of strong coffee leaked out of a tiny restaurant. Old men sat in chairs, playing cards or chess. Dogs wandered freely, and children, naked or nearly so, played in the grass where the goats had been.

  La Quica parked the truck in front of the church and climbed onto the bed. The canopy had been taken down and the bed left open. He took a pistol from his hip and fired a shot into the air. All conversation ceased; even the children turned to stare.

  “I’m here to offer good jobs,” La Quica began. “We have a laboratory, a few kilometers out in the jungle. We need good workers, people who can stay on their feet for hours at a time, doing hard physical labor. Nobody sick or weak, just people who can keep up with a fast pace.” He put the gun away and pulled bills from his pocket, ruffled them in the air. “We pay well.”

  A few of the younger men approached the truck, hesitant to get too near. “Come on over,” La Quica said. “I’m serious. Good jobs, good pay.”

  “Doing what?” one of the men asked. They were indigenous, dark-skinned, with straight black hair gleaming like spilled ink. The man who’d asked the question scratched at his lean stomach, lifting the fabric of his light T-shirt with his hand. There was a round scar there, as if he’d been bitten by a wild animal. This was the jungle, Aguilar remembered, so perhaps he had. The man’s four upper front teeth were clad in gold, and judging by his hollow cheeks, they might have been the only teeth he had.

  “Nothing dangerous,” La Quica said. “Working in a lab.”

  “A lab?”

  “They must be from the coca lab,” another man said.

  “That’s right. You all know people who work there, right?”

  “I know people who live on scraps,” the first one said. “While the bosses get rich and fat.”

  “That’s not how it is,” La Quica argued. “The people who work there are happy to have good jobs.”

  “You don’t even know them,” another man pointed out. “Can you name even one? They’re our friends, our families. They work day and night, for next to nothing.”

  “That’s not what they tell me.”

  “You have the guns. Ask them when they’re armed, too.”

  “Look, if you don’t want jobs—” La Quica began.

  The first man cut him off. “Maybe we should take over your lab. We could run it ourselves, sell the cocaine to your boss. Make some real money. This is a poor village, and all the wealth from our coca plants goes to people living like kings in Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín.”

  Curiosity had quickly turned to anger. Aguilar was glad that Medellín had come last on the young man’s list; he didn’t know that it was Escobar’s lab, but blamed some nameless, faceless millionaire for his region’s poverty. It was, he thought, not unlike Escobar’s constant blaming of the unnamed oligarchs for Medellín’s slums.

  More young men came into the square and toward the truck, drawn by the increasingly loud voices. Some of them carried machetes, and a couple had pistols.

  La Quica rested his hand on his gun. Jairo and Aguilar climbed out of the truck, each holding an AR-15. Only Gordo, sitting in the center of the bench seat, remained inside, but he had a pistol in his hands.

  “We came to offer paying work,” La Quica said. “If there’s nobody here who wants to work, that’s fine. We’ll try another village. But if you do want work, don’t let these troublemakers scare you off. Come forward, and you’ll have our protection.”

  There were a few tense moments of silence, then four men—scrawny, unhealthy-looking—stepped toward the truck. “I’ll work,” one said.

  “Me too.”

  “Climb up here,” La Quica said. “We’re glad to have you. But understand: you won’t be able to come back here. You’ll be blindfolded on the way out, and as long as you work for us, you remain in the jungle.”

  “No problem,” one man said. The others nodded their assent.

  La Quica banged twice on the roof of the cab. “Gordo, you drive,” he said. “We’ll go to the next village.”

  Gordo slid over behind the wheel. Jairo and Aguilar got back into the cab before he pulled away, and three more men darted through the crowd, jumping onto the truck.

  Seven, at this first stop. There were two more villages along the road, and eventually the larger municipality of San Vicente del Caguán. Escobar and Camilo wanted twenty men, so they were off to a decent start.

  They made it all the way to San Vicente del Caguán before they had their twenty. When they did, they turned around and drove back through all the villages they’d passe
d, and the men from each of those villages ducked down as they went by, so they wouldn’t be seen.

  * * *

  “What’s the problem with these people?” Escobar asked when La Quica and Aguilar briefed him on their progress. “Don’t they want to work?”

  “They feel like they’re not paid enough,” La Quica said. “They’re not Stone Age people, and they know that cocaine makes lots of money for a few people. They think they could take over the labs and keep all the money.”

  “Don’t they know it takes a distribution network? Bribes to cops and customs officials? Airplanes and ships? The manufacture is the easiest part of the process.”

  “They know just enough to be dangerous,” La Quica said.

  “Dangerous? Do I have to worry about this, now? There are already paramilitary groups in some of the jungles, demanding protection payments. They haven’t found this lab yet, but they could.”

  “The crews work all night, right?” Aguilar asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are there guards out?”

  “One,” Escobar said. “But he’s mainly watching out for jungle beasts. The light and noise keeps most of them away, but there’s always the possibility, if a worker steps away for a piss or something, that he’ll be bitten by a snake or attacked by a big cat, something like that. So they have a man on duty who patrols with a light and a gun, driving off the animals.”

  “We might want to add more security for a little while,” Aguilar suggested. “Some of those guys sounded angry. Threatening.”

  “Are you volunteering, Jaguar?”

  Aguilar realized too late that he shouldn’t have opened his mouth. Still, guard duty might not be so bad. “How long will we be here?”