That evening, as the last light bled from the sky over Rancho Boa Vista, the pilot of the King Air turned into the light breeze, did his final checks and began to roll. His all-up weight was the manufacturer's maximum of 15,000 pounds. He would need 1,200 meters to get airborne, but he had over 1,500 of rolled-flat grassland. The evening star was twinkling when he lifted out of Boa Vista, and the tropical darkness descended like a theater curtain.
There is a saying that there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots. Francisco Pons was fifty and had spent years flying in and out of airstrips that would never feature in any official manual. And he had survived because he was careful.
His route was carefully plotted, no detail overlooked. He would refuse to fly in crazy weather, but that night the forecast was for a nice twenty-knot tailwind all the way. He knew there would be no modern airport at the other end but yet another strip hacked out of the bush and lit by the lights from six off-roads parked in a line.
He had memorized the dot-dot-dash signal that would be flashed at him as he approached, to confirm there were no ambushes waiting down there in the warm velvet of the African night. He would fly as usual between 5,000 and 10,000 feet, depending on the cloud layer, well below any need for oxygen. Of course he could fly through clouds all the way, if need be, but it was more agreeable to skim above the layer in moonlight.
With six hours airborne, even flying toward the east and the rising sun, even adding three hours of time change and two for another refuel from a bowser parked in the bush, he would be up and heading back over the African coast, one ton lighter with no cargo, before the African sunrise was more than a pink glow.
And there was the pay. The two pumpers in the back would be paid $5,000 each for three days and nights, for them a fortune. "Captain Pons," as he liked to be called, would collect ten times that and would soon retire a very wealthy man. But then, he was carrying a cargo with a street value in the great cities of Europe of up to a hundred million dollars. He did not think of himself as a bad man. He was just doing his job.
He saw the lights of Fortaleza under his right wing, then the blackness of the ocean replaced the dark of the jungle. An hour later, Fernando de Noronha slipped under the left wing, and he checked time and track. At 250 knots, his best cruise speed, he was on time and true heading. Then the clouds came. He climbed to 10,000 feet and flew on. The two peons started pumping.
He was heading for Cufar airstrip, in Guinea-Bissau, hacked out of the bush during the independence war fought by Amilcar Cabral against the Portuguese many years before. His watch said eleven p.m., Brazil time. One hour to go. The stars were brilliant above, the cloud layer thinning below. Perfect. The peons kept pumping.
He checked his position again. Thank the Lord for Global Positioning, the four-satellite navigator's aid, presented to the world by the Americans and free to use. It made finding a dark bush airstrip as easy as finding Las Vegas in the Nevada desert. He was still flying his course of 040°, as all the way from the Brazilian coast. Now he altered a few points starboard, dropped to 3,000 feet and caught the glitter of the moon on the river Mansoa.
To port he saw a few dim lights in the otherwise blacked-out country. The airport; they must be expecting the Lisbon flight or they would not waste the generator. He slowed to 150 knots and looked ahead for Cufar. In the darkness, fellow Colombians would be waiting, listening for the drone of the Pratt and Whitneys, a sound you could hear for miles over the croak of the frogs and the whining mosquitoes.
Up ahead, a single white bar of light flashed upward, a vertical pillar from a million-candlepower Maglite. Captain Pons was too close. He flashed his landing lights and turned away, then back in a sweeping curve. He knew the airstrip lay on a compass heading east to west. With no wind he could land either way, but by agreement the Jeeps would be at the western end. He needed to sweep in over their heads.
Wheels down, landing flaps, speed dropping, he turned onto final approach. Ahead of him, all the lights blazed alive. It was like noonday down there. He roared over the off-roads at 10 feet and a hundred knots. The King Air settled at her usual eighty-four knots. Before he could close engines and shut off the systems, there were Wranglers racing either side of him. In the back, the two peons were soaked in sweat and limp with tiredness. They had been pumping for over three hours, and the last fifty gallons sloshed in the inboard tanks.
Francisco Pons forbade any smoking on board his flights. Others permitted it, turning their craft, with the danger of petrol fumes, into flying fireballs in the event of a single spark. Safely on the ground, all four men lit up.
There were four Colombians, headed by the boss, Ignacio Romero, chief of all cartel operations in Guinea-Bissau. It was a big cargo, it merited his presence. Local natives hauled off the twenty bales that made up the ton of cocaine. They went into a pickup with tractor tires, and one of the Colombians took them away.
Also piled onto the bales were six Guineans, who were actually soldiers assigned by General Jalo Diallo. He was running the country in the absence of even a titular President. It was a job no one seemed to want. Tenancy tended to be short. The trick was, if possible, to steal a fast fortune and retire to the Portuguese Algarve coast with several young ladies. The "if possible" was the problem.
The bowser driver connected his pipes and began to pump. Romero offered Pons a cup of coffee from his personal flask. Pons sniffed it. Colombian, the best. He nodded his thanks. At ten to four, local time, they were done. Pedro and Pablo, smelling richly of sweat and black tobacco, climbed into the back. They had three more hours to rest as the main fuel tanks were used up. Then more pumping back to Brazil. Pons and his youthful copilot, who was still learning the ropes, bade Romero good-bye and went up to the flight deck.
The Wranglers had repositioned themselves so that when the searchlights came on, Captain Pons had only to turn around and take off toward the west. At five to four, he lifted off, a ton lighter now, and cleared the coast still in darkness.
Somewhere in the bush behind him, the ton of cocaine would be stored in a secret depot and carefully split into smaller consignments. Most would head north by any one of twenty different methods and fifty carriers. It was this diffusion into small packets that had convinced the Cobra the trade could not be stopped once the drug had made landfall.
But right across West Africa, the local help, up to President level, were not paid off in money but in cocaine. Converting this into wealth was their problem. They set up a secondary and parallel traffic, also heading north but in the hands of and under the control of black Africans exclusively. That was where the Nigerians came in. They dominated the in-Africa trade and merchandised their share almost exclusively through the hundreds of Nigerian communities spread over Europe.
Even by 2009 there had been a problem developing locally that would one day cause the Don to experience a red-haze rage. Some of the African allies did not want to remain mere commission takers. They wanted to graduate to being major players, buying direct from the source and turning their slim pickings into the white man's massive markup. But the Don had his European clients to service. He had refused to elevate the Africans' role from servant to equal partner. It was a sleeping feud that the Cobra intended to exploit. FR. ISIDRO had wrestled with his conscience and prayed for many hours. He would have turned to the Father Provincial, but that dignitary had already given his advice. The decision was a personal one, and each parish priest was a free agent. But Fr. Isidro did not feel a free agent. He felt trapped. He had a small encrypted cell phone. It would transmit to only one number. On that number would be a recorded voice; American accented but in fluent Spanish. Or he could text. Or he could stay silent. It was the teenager in the Cartagena Hospital who finally caused his decision.