The Devil to Pay Page 29

  As I jerked the butt, the gun came out of the holster and he turned to me, throwing a kick at the gun in my hand. I dropped my gun hand down and pulled the trigger as his foot came over me. The gun went off with a deafening explosion and flipped out of my hand.

  The man attacking me flew backward, clutching his groin and screaming. He started to scream again, but it stopped in his throat. He shook, convulsing, both his legs and arms twitching and shaking as if his nerves were on fire. He suddenly collapsed back, still as death. The bullet had caught him from underneath and driven up as if he had been impaled by the piece of lead.

  The pounding of feet came from the river’s edge. I scrambled for the gun that had flown out of my hand. I got it by the butt and turned, clutching it in both hands as Scar charged at me. His gun, a semi-automatic, was out, pointed at me. He pulled the trigger. It jammed—jungle humidity almost thick enough to swim in was no good for the complicated firing mechanism.

  I was still on my back, clutching the revolver in both hands, supporting it between my legs, and he was only ten feet away. I almost squealed with delight as I pulled the trigger.

  I missed.

  Sonofabitch!

  He wasn’t there when the bullet got there. He ducked down and was running for trees, trying to unjam his pistol as he ran.

  I ran the other way.

  55

  Josh and Cesar were in the boat with the outboard motor, hauling the dugout, when the shooting began.

  “Not far away,” Josh said.

  “Someone hunting?”

  “Maybe, but that sounded more like a handgun than a rifle.”

  “Should we turn back?” Cesar was jittery.

  Josh didn’t answer him but turned off the outboard and gave Cesar one of the paddles, taking the other for himself. “We can’t afford to let anyone know we’re coming; start rowing.”

  They rowed for five minutes before they saw bushes moving near the riverbank. No more shots were heard. They stared at the location where they’d seen the bushes moving. They didn’t know if it was an animal or a person and couldn’t move in any closer with the larger boat. Landfall was an area that was almost as much river as it was solid ground. Something short of what the locals called pantano, a swampy marsh or bog, full of mud and brown water oozing through the mat of swamp grass, the area was still soggy and muddy. Narrow channels appeared clear of enough vegetation for the dugout.

  Josh saw a flash of white moving through the bushes. He stood up in the boat and impulsively shouted, “Nash!”

  “You saw her?” Cesar started up, rocking the boat, and they both went back down.

  “I saw something.” He yelled again. “Nash!”

  She answered him back.

  They still hadn’t gotten a good view of her, just a movement in the brush. Josh directed the boat toward the movement.

  “It might be too muddy for her to make it to the water,” Josh said. “I’m going for her.” He climbed out of the larger boat and into the dugout, casting off to row into where he’d spotted the bushes moving.

  As he rowed, he yelled her name and she yelled back, giving him a clue of her location.

  He was almost to the bank when a scream and the sound of a shot came from the bushes. He started to call her name and stopped, not wanting to have her give away her location if someone was chasing her. He heard a splash and a moment later saw her in the muddy water. He rowed toward her as she swam. A shot came from another point along the bank. The bullet struck the wood dugout.

  He saw the man with the gun well enough to realize it was Escobar’s thug, Jorge, the man Nash called Scar.

  Josh reached for his gun and realized with a shock that he’d left it in the boat with Cesar.

  Scar fired again and the bullet hit the water by the dugout. Pistols weren’t as good as a rifle at this distance, but it didn’t take much thinking to realize he had a whole clip of ammo with which to get it right.

  Josh heard the sound of the outboard revving and turned, thinking that Cesar was making his escape. But Cesar didn’t turn the boat toward the river; he steered it straight across the water to where Scar was standing on the embankment.

  Speeding across the water, Cesar set the auto-control on the outboard so the engine kept going at full speed when he let go of the throttle. He stood up in the flat-bottom boat and held his semi-automatic in both hands, crouching and firing wildly in the unsteady boat.

  Scar turned and returned his fire. To Josh it was a scene out of a western movie—two gunmen with blazing guns firing at each other.

  Cesar flew off the boat as if a big hand had smacked him. He hit the water as the boat sped for the embankment.

  Scar turned back in the direction of where Josh was rowing to reach Nash in the water.

  The cartel gunman stood perfectly still for a moment, then slowly crumbled, dropping to his knees and falling facedown.

  Josh hauled Nash into the boat. Not waiting for her to get her breath, he continued rowing, turning the boat and heading for where Cesar had gone into the water.

  Nash stared up at him, drenched. Her voice trembled as she said, “Glad to see you. What took you so long?”

  “Thank me later.”

  “Cesar’s hit; he’s in the water. We’ve got to get him before the piranhas or caimans do.”

  They found him floating facedown and pulled him into the dugout. He had taken a bullet in his chest.

  56

  I sat in a flat-bottom boat powered by a small outboard as Josh sped it across a bay toward the river. The dugout was too small, too slow, and too hard to row. Josh had rowed us to the larger boat and gotten us aboard. He had tried to slip Cesar’s body back into the water because he was hard to handle, but I stopped him.

  “He’s my brother,” I said.

  We hadn’t gone far when we first heard the roar of helicopter motors. A moment later, olive-drab gunships—armored military choppers—flew over us heading toward the processing plant.

  “Delta Force and Colombian commandos,” Josh said. “They’ll take out the cocaine processing plant.”

  He had explained something to me about global positioning in the war on drugs, but none of it had penetrated. I was too overwhelmed with just being alive. And the loss of Cesar.

  Cesar’s head was nestled in my lap. He would never know the love I felt for him; he was the only brother I’d ever have. And he had died for me.

  Josh used a satellite phone to communicate with someone. It didn’t surprise me that Josh had something to do with the war on drugs. He was full of surprises.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  I didn’t say anything, just nodded and stared at the brown water moving by. My adrenaline surge was gone; my heart had stopped pumping frantically. I felt cold and knew I was slipping into shock.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  I lay back, still clinging on to my dead brother’s body. And closed my eyes.

  Terrible things had happened to me. In a strange sort of way, I felt cleansed … but not by the muddy river water.

  Deep in my heart, I’d always believed in biblical justice, an eye for an eye. Many times when I’d heard of some atrocity committed by some murderous bastard, my thought had been that I hoped they got their just dues … slowly and painfully.

  Not very enlightened of me, nor even very nice, but they say you feel different about muggers … after you’ve been mugged.

  57

  Back at the plantation, the place bristled with plainclothes U.S. agents and Colombian police. I had burned the lab that had produced the drug with the street name of boo, but the police were carefully sifting among the ashes and fire-and-smoke-blackened equipment to reconstruct how the two chemists had manufactured it.

  Pablo Escobar, the richest, deadliest criminal mastermind who ever lived, was dead.

  The conclusion to the hunt-and-kill drama came when U.S. intelligence forces tracked Pablo’s voice on a mobile phone call to Los Olivos, the barrio of Medel
lín, where he was king. A battle ensued and Colombian forces killed the billionaire cocaine baron. Although the official story was that Pablo had died in the gun battle, photographs later revealed that he had been executed by a shot to the head.

  Considering the number of murder squads—official and unofficial—gunning for Pablo, giving up the ghost execution style was the most likely way he would go.

  The police had recovered my purse but not my carry-on. I had a new traveling bag now, packed and ready to go. I was leaving the country, with Josh. Returning to Seattle on my part, I guess to try to pick up where I had left off—like the police in the boo lab, I needed to sift through the burnt bridges I’d left behind to see what the future held.

  I had insisted upon coming back to the plantation. And I insisted that Cesar’s body be brought back for burial. His mother was there waiting for him. His father was there, too. Up on the hill.

  I couldn’t leave without standing beside Juana as she buried her son. My brother. Juana chose what I considered to be the most appropriate spot—on the hill, overlooking the plantation, next to his father.

  Looking back on my discussions with Cesar, I firmly believed that he truly loved the plantation and the business of growing coffee. He had taken some wrong turns, had some rotten tricks played on him by life, and he had reacted in the only way he knew how. In the end, all he had left was his courage and honor, and both shined brightly.

  The morning after the funeral, I grabbed my new carry-on and got it as far as the veranda. I left it there to return to the hill. I had to talk to my father and brother alone before I left. I had to let Carlos know that he should really be proud of his son. And I needed some advice from the two of them.

  Atop the hill, I put fresh flowers on each of their graves.

  “Well, guys, another fine mess I find myself in. I have to go home.”

  Suddenly I was crying.

  I was wiping away tears when Josh found me.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded and blew my nose.

  “They’re waiting for us,” he said.

  “I’m not going.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at me, kind of nodding his head, as if I’d said something like Do you think it’ll rain? or I like catsup on my potatoes.

  “I’m not going,” I repeated.

  “You’re not going.”

  “Not going.”

  He nodded some more. “They’re down below, cops and soldiers, armed for a war, ready to take us to the airport.”

  “I just had a family conference. I’ve been asked to stay.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I nodded behind me at the two graves. “I’m staying to run the plantation. With Cesar gone, there’s no one to run it. If I go, it’ll be lost; it’s not something I can run from thousands of miles away. I promised my father I’d stay and run it, that I’d carry on his tradition of producing the finest coffee in the world. It’s going to remain chemical free and shade-grown.”

  “Nash, you can’t stay; this is Colombia—”

  “I know, I keep thinking civilized and this isn’t a civilized country. But I can and will stay. They destroyed my dream in Seattle; it’s been cleared up, I can return, but it would never be the same. I’m not going to let Pablo Escobar destroy another one of my dreams.

  “I have a deal to sell my coffee in Shanghai. Once I get established there, I’ll have the money to specialty-brand it in the States and Europe. When that happens, I’ll keep adding acreage, partnering up with other shade growers—Josh, if you keep shaking your head like that, it’s going to fall off.”

  “You’re completely insane. You can’t stay here.”

  “Yes, I can. Like you always said, it’s a beautiful country filled with wonderful people; you just have to avoid the snakes that have human heads. I want to fulfill my father’s dream, and my mother’s, too. Don’t forget she was a Peace Corps volunteer right here on Café de Oro. I know she would be angry if I turned my back and let the big growers kill the coffee plantation canopies that birds thrive on.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I can and I will—and so can you. You told me that you’re not really a cop, that you got into the business of spying on drug traffickers because they killed a friend of yours. What you told me about cutting and running from marriage and college in the States, that was all true, wasn’t it?”

  “It was true.”

  “Well, maybe it’s time you stop and take a stand.”

  “I can’t stay here; word will get out that I’m a drug agent.”

  “You can quit. Escobar is dead. Whoever takes over isn’t going to want to fight his old battles. In a few days, you’ll be old history. Besides, I need you; I can use someone clever who knows all about the import-and-export side of the business. As a former smuggler, you’re perfect for the job.”

  I wasn’t going to let the man whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with slip away.

  “You’re not sane. You talk to dead people.”

  I put my arms around him. “It’s okay; they won’t tell anybody.”

  Historical Note

  No criminal in history cast as large a shadow as Pablo Escobar. Many mafia chiefs no doubt counted their personal fortunes by the millions—none was a billionaire like Escobar. And while a tough guy like Al Capone could shake things up in Chicago, Escobar took on a nation of nearly forty million people, a country with almost unparalleled experience itself with violence.

  Three American presidents—Reagan, Bush, and Clinton—considered Pablo Escobar a threat to United States security.

  Pablo made the mistake of getting so rich and powerful, he threatened to overpower the Colombian government and send a shock wave through world politics.

  Colombian leaders tried to handle the situation themselves. The idea of having U.S. police and military forces on Colombian soil was repulsive to the proud Colombians, but when the Colombian president realized that the situation had spun out of control, he made a call for help. By that time, Pablo had been behind the assassination of three of five candidates for president of Colombia in 1989, had instigated a siege of the supreme court building in the capital in which nearly a hundred people died, including eleven supreme court justices, and had blown an airliner out of the sky with 130 people on board, including Americans. While others carried out many of the black deeds, he was there with money and advice.

  Along with these world headline–grabbing events, the murders of government officials, police officers (several hundred in the Medellín area alone), journalists, judges, and politicians became almost daily affairs.

  At one point, Pablo “graciously” had a prison built at a small town near Medellín and put himself in it as a deal with the government. He would serve a short term and be cleansed of his crimes. Before he entered the jail, he had hundreds of people in and about the town killed—literally, anyone who could in any way be a threat to him.

  The “prison” was a comfortable suite in which he had full communications equipment and assistance in running his billion-dollar cocaine business, while enjoying himself with visits from female friends and prostitutes.

  His decision to walk out of the jail (which was “surrounded” by a brigade of Colombian troops) and challenge the Colombian government for power was to be a fatal one.

  After the U.S. found out Pablo and his pals were in the market for Stinger missiles and a submarine, the unofficial policy went from assisting the Colombians to being actively involved in a hunt-and-kill mission for him.

  The NSA, FBI, CIA, DEA, the intelligence agencies of all the military establishments—army, navy, air force—became involved in an effort to feed information to the Colombians battling Pablo. And the intelligence information was supplemented by Delta Force commandos who could get on the ground and in the shooting when necessary.

  Colombia was not a country in which politics and police hunts were handled with moderation. The massive U.S. military/police/
intelligence establishment soon discovered that they were not only helping legitimate Colombian forces but inadvertently in league with the death squad Los Pepes, the group that claimed to be composed of victims’ and survivors’ families. Besides the unofficial death squad, the Search Bloc, the official team pursuing Pablo, conducted its own style of summary executions.

  Unable to get their hands on Pablo himself, the death squads went after his family, lawyers, bankers, and drug-trafficking compañeros. The idea was to isolate Pablo. When this was combined with a strategy to keep him constantly on the run, using high-tech U.S. intelligence surveillance to direct commando units, it was inevitable that something had to give.

  What gave at first were the forces lined up against him—as his pals were murdered, he’d kidnap people and have them tortured and murdered.

  There was really nothing to admire about Pablo. Rather than admiration, the fascination is more akin to what we experience at seeing a deadly snake at our feet.

  The reason that he rose so high as a criminal was only because he was more vicious than anyone else around him. He was said to be soft-spoken, intelligent, and even well-read. But he also had a total lack of conscience and the ability to order murder. To paraphrase Nash, he ordered murder as easily as the rest of us order pizzas.

  To call Pablo the world’s biggest criminal doesn’t do him complete justice. When a criminal rules a large area by force and violence and threatens the security of a nation of nearly forty million, he has transcended merely being labeled a criminal.

  Pablo Escobar was in essence an old-fashioned warlord, a brutal commander of troops who staked out a territory and ruled it as king.

  Pablo’s ultimate downfall was a criminal mind-set that the late great author Malcolm Braly, a man who spent much of his early life in prison, called the “delusions of invulnerability.”

  How many times do we hear about a criminal who made an enormous amount of money in a criminal scheme but rather than retiring well-heeled kept at it over and over until he ended up behind bars or dead?