Coincidence Read online

  On Thursday of the second week they got their first look at the drug convoy driving by. Juan had marked a spot six hundred yards from the driveway for calculating the speed of the trucks. Crouching in the tangles of ficus, tibouchina, peperomia, and passionflower at the edge of the drive, swatting mosquitoes away from their eyes so they could see, they noted that it took exactly forty seconds for the trucks to cover the distance, which meant the trucks’ speed was close to thirty miles per hour. Another four observations told them the speed was fairly consistent.

  By the time of the fifth observation, both Stefano and Esteban had arrived in Buenaventura. On this occasion, Severo followed the convoy from Cali in the SUV, keeping well back and turning into the driveway when he reached the house. Polo then took over, pulling out on a moped from a side road about a mile from the house and tailing the three vehicles a good part of the way up the back road toward Medillin.

  The tailing had been Severo’s idea. The whole operation was beginning to make him nervous. Why, he had asked, would the cartel be taking these God-forsaken, treacherous back roads? Wasn’t there a safer way to Medillin?

  “That’s just the point,” Stefano had told him. “Sure the highway is safer, but where do you think all the police are? When the drug runners started the route seven years ago, the highway hadn’t even been built. They been taking the back roads since the beginning. You know as well as I do there’s hardly any traffic on these roads. No traffic and no cops.”

  Juan outlined the details of the plan to them on the evening of the fifth observation.

  It was simple, he said. Polo would drive the SUV down the driveway at a predetermined speed, swerve onto the road, and then sideswipe the van.

  “Polo’s gonna get out of the SUV, wearing only his bathing suit,” he said. “Truck number three’ll stop behind the van. Truck number one will have to back up to the accident. All the guards will have their guns drawn. As soon as Polo sees the guns he’s gonna act scared—you got some practice acting like a coward, right, Polito?”

  “Hey!”

  “Relax! Just a joke, little hombre,” Juan said, leaning over and giving Polo’s head a hard rub with his knuckles. “So Polo here’s scared shitless—he’s gonna put his hands up and drop to his knees. Maybe he’s gonna cry, who knows?”

  Juan snickered.

  “The guards, they’re gonna see there’s no danger, there’s just this skinny little dipshit standing there half naked.

  “Severo and Esteban, you gonna be hiding on the right side of the driveway, over by those big bushes with the rubbery leaves. I’m gonna be on the left side. We all gonna have semiautomatics.

  “Stefano, you’ll be across the road, in the bushes behind the sign. You got your semiautomatic, too. Anything goes wrong, you’re ready to shoot.

  “As soon as Polo goes down on his knees, Severo’s gonna take out the guards from truck number one, Esteban’s got the guards from the van, and I’ve got truck number three. We gotta move in so fast they got no time to react to what’s happening. Got it?”

  Severo couldn’t help thinking Juan was awfully sure of himself. Oh, yeah, the guy liked to think of himself as the great mastermind, the grand schemer who anticipated the smallest detail. But what if something didn’t go according to his plan? What if something went horribly, disastrously wrong? There were so many things that could go wrong—and so many things that all had to happen exactly right. What were the odds? But he kept his misgivings to himself. He had no wish to incur Juan’s derision. Severo was the strongest of the six, a burly, barrel-chested man. Years as a heavy-equipment operator had built his muscles to peak capacity. He had met Stefano at a bar near his last construction site in Florida, a hangout for the Hispanic workers. Stefano was recruiting, and it didn’t take him long to convince Severo that he could make a lot more money turning his talents to the drug trade. Severo had been an associate ever since, helping out whenever a strong back was needed for a job.

  Even Juan had to admit that Severo could be useful, but as for his attitude, well, that was another story. Severo was a chronic worrier. He was a man of considerable imagination, but only when it came to envisioning disaster. No matter how carefully Juan planned, Severo could see danger every step of the way. What if this happened? What if that happened? Always “what if?”

  There was way too much negativity in that one, Juan thought. And he hated negativity.

  “Bueno,” Juan said. “Everyone’s gonna have to move fast at this point. Severo and I gonna put the bodies in the back of truck number three. Severo will take them down the driveway to behind the barn, where we—where you,” he corrected himself with a small snort, “will have dug a hole big enough for six. He’s gonna wait there until someone comes to help him with the funeral.

  “Meantime, Stefano’s gonna jump into truck number two—that’s the van with the coke in it—and drive it down the dirt road to the beach, where he’ll meet up with Phillip. Polo’s gonna get over his fright at the big bad men with guns and clear any crap from the accident off the road, and then drive the SUV into the barn. Esteban will drive truck number one into the barn. If either of the trucks don’t start after the crash, I can tow them in with the Jimmy. As soon as the trucks are inside, Polo and Esteban gonna go help Severo dump the bodies and fill in the hole.”

  Yeah, Severo thought. Typical Juan. He sits in the Jimmy while we do all the work. And then he gets all the credit for his brilliant plan.

  “While all this is happening, Phillip’s gettin’ the Two Wise ready. At 1:15 he’ll take the tender to the beach. When Stefano gets there, they start transferring the bales to the tender. As soon as the bodies are buried and the grave’s covered up, I’ll drive you guys” —he nodded toward Polo, Esteban, and Severo—“to the beach in the Jimmy. Esteban, you and Severo gonna help carry bales. When all the stuff’s out of the van, Polo will drive it back to the barn. I’ll drive the Jimmy. We lock up the barn and the house and then come back to the beach on the moped.

  “When we get all the bales onboard the Two Wise, we put the moped on the tender. We drop it into the water about halfway out, then haul the tender up onto the boat, weigh anchor, and head for Easter Island—six millionaires on a cruise.”

  Juan looked out the window for a few seconds, oblivious to the rain streaking down the grimy panes, smiling at this picture. Then he turned back to the others. His eyes were steely.

  “We got just over forty-five minutes to do the whole job.”

  Jesus y Maria, Severo thought. The man is loco if he thinks this is gonna work.

  In truth, all of the men except Juan and Stefano were having doubts about the viability of the plan. Forty-five minutes, start to finish? But they knew better than to question Juan. And if by some miracle it actually worked …

  The only thing left to do was practice. Every day for the next seven weeks, Juan studied the traffic pattern on the road. Only twice did a car come by near the time scheduled for the “accident.” As unlikely as it was that that would happen on the actual day, they had to be prepared. Just one carload of adventuresome tourists deciding to get off the beaten track and experience the “real Colombia,” or one old couple taking it into their heads to drive their wagon into town on a weekday instead of Saturday when the big market was open—just one fluke like that would screw everything up. It would be up to Stefano, squatting across the road amid thick ropes of thunbergia vines, to “deal with the situation,” as Juan put it. He would do so, it was understood, with his semiautomatic rifle.

  Every day for the next seven weeks, rain or shine, Severo drove the Jimmy, at thirty miles per hour, past the driveway while Polo barreled down in the SUV and skidded onto the road, missing the Jimmy by five seconds. On the actual day, Polo would start five seconds earlier.

  During those seven weeks, Severo and Esteban dug the grave hole behind the barn without complaint. They didn’t complain, even though it was backbreaking work and the heat was almost overpowering. Severo was used to hard physical labo
r in all sorts of weather, but Esteban, overweight and out of shape, was convinced each day that he’d die before they were done.

  In mid-August, Phillip flew to Puntarenas and checked into a resort hotel close to the harbor. Looking out his third-floor window, he could see the Two Wise rocking up and down in the water. For seven days he pretty much stayed in his room, binoculars pressed to his eyes, observing activity around the boat.

  On the seventh day, a Friday, an American family arrived around noontime. Phillip put on his pony-tailed cap and shades and headed down to the harbor. He always found it easy to strike up a conversation with a boat owner. Most of them enjoyed nothing more than discussing the ins and outs of their crafts with anyone who showed an interest, especially someone with a little knowledge of sailing. And that Phillip had plenty of.

  He’d grown up around boats in Miami, and had said from the time he was five years old that he was going to be a sailor. As soon as he was old enough to take the test, he had gotten his captain’s license. He had met Stefano and Juan in Miami. All three had worked at marinas—Phillip to earn enough extra money to buy a Sailfish, and Stefano and Juan to help support their mother and sisters. They had started with grunt work on boats and around the docks, then had learned enough of the basics of sailing to shuttle boats from one dock to another as required.

  Phillip had gone to college, earned a business degree, and moved on to an entry-level position with a firm in Chicago, but had continued to keep in touch with Stefano. When Stefano had called one raw February morning to ask if he’d be interested in helping him take a boat to the Virgin Islands, Phillip knew Stefano didn’t have a pleasure trip in mind. He was rattled by the idea; he had never done anything like this in his life. He was so uncomfortable with the idea of what he knew was behind the request—a drug run—that he’d simply decided to ask no questions.

  How complicit could he be, really, as long as he surmised and wasn’t absolutely sure? And Stefano had offered an almost unimaginable sum of money for a few days of doing what he loved most, sailing—and to the Virgin Islands in the middle of winter at that. In the end, he called in sick. He told his boss he had the flu and was on his way.

  He’d done a number of similar jobs over the years, usually with Stefano and Juan, occasionally with someone else he’d met on a run. After a while, he’d become comfortable enough with what they were doing to talk about it freely—and very comfortable indeed with the lifestyle it afforded him.

  As Phillip had expected, the American was eager to show off his boat. When Phillip told him he was considering buying a similar one he’d seen in Fort Lauderdale, the man invited him to come aboard so he could see another version of the Real Ship 65.

  “These are great boats, well built,” he told Phillip. “My baby here’s three years old, but they’re virtually identical. All Real Ships are equipped pretty much the same way.”

  That was exactly what Phillip had hoped.

  “They look exactly the same to me,” Phillip said as he looked around. “When we did the sea trial in Fort Lauderdale, the water was flat; how does she take the waves?”

  “Ah, she’s a regular dolphin. There’s enough of a flare on the bow to throw spray away from the boat so she stays pretty dry, too.”

  “Y’know, the anchor system was the one thing I didn’t get to see down in Florida. Does the windlass pull the anchor up okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can control it either from the pilothouse or with a deck button at the bow. It’s pretty heavy; there’s something like two hundred and fifty feet of anchor chain, but the windlass pulls it up just fine.”

  “How about fuel? Diesel pretty easy to come by down here?”

  “Well, you have to plan carefully on that score. Only places I know you can get it are here and a couple of marinas on the west coast of Costa Rica. Thirty-five hundred gallons will take you a long way, but the last thing I do after a holiday is fill her up. That prevents algae from growing in the tanks while I’m away.”

  Phillip noted that keys were in both instrument panels in the pilothouse. There was a separate instrument panel for each engine, one on each side of the wheel. Hot-wiring the engines would be a snap. The pilothouse door lock could be pried open with a screwdriver. The outside cabin walls were white fiberglass and the signage on the transom was a script vinyl—easy to remove. Everything was checking out just fine. Could it really be this easy, or was he overlooking something?

  Phillip stepped from the yacht to the dock.

  “So how far are you taking her on this trip?”

  “We’re heading up to near Managua in Nicaragua for a few days. It’s our favorite spot. Have to be back in the States on September first, so we’ll be gone for just a little under two weeks. Wish it were twice that!”

  “Have a safe trip,” Phillip said as he shook hands with the man. “And thanks again. Maybe I’ll be sailing a rig just like her soon.”

  Phillip walked down the harbor road, entered a little hole-in-the-wall bar, and ordered a Red Cap. Taking a table by the window, he took out a piece of paper and made a few notes. They’d have to strip the boat’s name off the transom and apply a new one. He liked the name Coincidence and visualized it in block letters twelve inches high. There was no practical way to change the color of the topsides, but he had figured out a way he could change the color of the cabin from white to blue. The vinyl used for signs comes in rolls about twenty feet six long. He estimated that given the cabin profile and windows, he would need eight rolls of vinyl twenty-eight inches wide for the job. He decided to put a twelve-inch blue stripe at the top of the topsides right next to the deck line.

  He gazed out the window at the line of motor yachts broadside to the dock as he considered what else he would need. Two spray bottles for water to soak the backing paper off the vinyl. A slotted screwdriver for breaking the locks. Electrical tape to hold the hotwired connection together. A handheld Global Positioning System for backup, plus extra batteries.

  Phillip’s plan was to sail due south at 180 degrees for three hundred and sixty miles, then make a left turn on a heading of 90 degrees for four hundred and thirty miles. That would take them to the cove near Buenaventura. To conserve fuel, they would travel at just over eight knots at 1900 rpm, using about ten gallons per hour. He scribbled some figures on his paper. The trip to Buenaventura would use a thousand gallons, leaving them with twenty-five hundred gallons for the trip to Easter Island. At the same speed, the remaining fuel would take them approximately two thousand miles.

  Damn, he thought. It’s twenty-two hundred miles from Buenaventura to Easter Island and, building in a reasonable safety margin, they would need an additional five hundred gallons of fuel.

  There was no way he would make the trip in that boat if they didn’t have full tanks before they left for Easter Island. Damn! Why hadn’t he thought all this out sooner? He was going to have to call Juan, and Juan was not going to be pleased.

  Looking up from his calculations, he watched the American and his family preparing the Two Wise for departure. They slipped the bow and spring lines and loosened the stern line a little. The bow thrusters took the bow away from the dock and the boat pivoted on a large fender close to the stern. The stern line was hauled in and the boat quietly pulled away.

  As Phillip had expected, Juan was not at all happy about the fuel problem. His voice on the phone was ominously quiet.

  “Man, I trusted you with taking care of the boat. How many times do I have to say it? Details, details! Details are what make or break a run. You gotta plan for everything, you gotta have no surprises. You never, never, leave something like this to the last minute. If this plan goes to hell because you screwed up …”

  Juan didn’t finish his sentence before slamming down the phone. He didn’t have to.

  The plan was now vulnerable, and none of the options looked good. Juan turned over the possibilities in his mind. Sleep was impossible until he had found a solution. If they didn’t add fuel before heading
to Easter Island, they’d probably not get there. It would be risky trying to fill up somewhere before reaching Buenaventura. The closer they were to Puntarenas, the more likely it would be that someone would recognize the Two Wise and realize it had been stolen.

  All right, then, he thought. What about buying forty-five-gallon drums of fuel and filling up the tank in the cove? That would be by far the safest place. No, that would never work. Those drums weighed a ton; there was no way to maneuver them down to the cove. They could wait until they got as far as Peru before refueling, maybe. But then the risk would not only be getting caught with a stolen boat, but getting caught with a stolen boat that was carrying a load of cocaine.

  That idiot Phillip! And that makes me a bigger idiot, Juan told himself, punching his pillow. He should never have let Stefano tell him it would be better for somebody else to handle the boat. If he’d done it himself, he’d have known they needed a larger one. Now it was too late.

  Early the next morning, after a fitful night, Juan drove along the coast road, looking for an out-of-the-way place that sold diesel fuel. He was still furious at himself. Wasn’t he the man famous for nailing down every last detail? Stefano, he was the big-picture man, all right, the one who dreamed up the ideas in the first place. But Juan, the little brother, he had always been the one to deal with the all-important details. Stefano had relied on him for that, and he had never let him down. He might not have been good at anything else in his miserable life, he thought, but he was good at that, at thinking two steps ahead of everyone else, at anticipating all the potential pitfalls in a plan, and making damn sure they didn’t happen.