The Cartel Takedown Read online

  The Cartel Takedown

  by Frank Dorn

  Copyright Johnston Media LLC 2019

  Table of Contents

  1. 1

  2. 2

  3. 3

  4. 4

  5. 5

  6. 6

  7. 7

  8. 8

  9. 9

  10. 10

  11. 11

  12. 12

  13. 13

  14. 14

  15. 15

  16. 16

  17. 17

  18. 18

  19. 19

  20. 20

  21. 21

  22. 22

  23. 23

  24. 24

  1. 1

  Brandie Cam kept the guard in a sleeper hold until he lost consciousness. She could have garroted him quicker, but not cleaner. Unnecessary messes were just one of the reasons she didn’t like killing people. She hid the unconscious guard behind a broken cellophane wrapping machine and made her way up to the steel girder roof trusses. With the suspended ceiling lights below her she could see what was happening on the factory floor while traveling in the safety of shadows.

  What was below her was puzzling. This wasn’t what a cocaine factory was supposed to look like. On the news they were always small primitive open air operations, cobbled together and filthy. This place looked like a cross between a suburban office building, a warehouse, and a high end showroom. Everything was clean. There was an army of lab workers who wore matching white face masks, blue latex gloves, and green paper coveralls and hats.

  Forklifts and electric power jacks whizzed around. There were three lines of automated conveyor systems, complete with stainless steel vats. At the end of each line, a large hopper weighed and packaged the final product. Blocks of white powder which were stacked on pallets which, once full, were wrapped in clear plastic.

  There were also guards. Lots and lots of heavily armed guards. And security cameras. She was working hard to avoid them all. Her cat burglar training gave her the strength, agility, and skills necessary to break into just about anywhere.

  But not in broad daylight, in a crowded, well lit, heavily guarded facility.

  And yet here she was. Trite cliches like “in the belly of the beast” crept into her mind. She brushed them aside and dropped silently from her ceiling perch. She was three stories up, and slowed her progress by briefly grabbing a walkway guardrail on the second floor before landing in a crouch in a dark corner near an unmarked door. Stripping off her balaclava, baggy black dungarees, and sweatshirt, she straightened the navy blue pencil skirt and matching jacket hidden beneath. Then turned her backpack inside out, transforming it into a designer purse. She stuffed her clothes inside, fluffed up her hair, threw her shoulders back, and walked through the door across the lobby like she owned the place.

  The lobby was elegant. There was a floating spiral staircase on one side that lead up to a platform on the second floor. Three armed guards were on the platform.

  Everyone ignored her. They were watching the building entrance. She came in from behind them and was therefore deemed to pose no threat. She stopped in front of two guards who stood in front of a red and white stripped door. Both men were north of six feet tall, and weighed more than two hundred pounds. They both had sub machine guns, and they had pistols and wicked looking machetes strapped to their hips. They ignored her too. She crossed her arms and frowned. The guards exchanged a glance, and one of them opened the door for her.

  Without a word she marched through the door and down a long corridor lined with plain gray steel doors. She stopped at the final door. This one was different. It was wood, and had a numerical keypad lock. She knelt, examining it, then reached into her “purse” and took out a pair of tiny forceps and a jeweler’s screwdriver. Moments later the door popped open.

  Inside was a small but luxurious office. An oversized desk took up the far end of the room. The only items on the desk were a keyboard, an elegant large flat screen monitor, and a 9mm Springfield XDm handgun. Behind the desk, an oversized leather executive’s chair was faced away from the door.

  “You’re late.” A male voice spoke with a classic British accent.

  “My apologies. I was unavoidably detained.”

  “I do not like excuses. They are bad for business. Now -”

  The chair swiveled around, and Brandie’s mouth fell open.

  “You!”

  The man staring at her wasn’t British. He was Indian-American, and seventy years old if he was a day. His name was Akhim something or other. Gudha. Akhim Gudha. Brandie had worked with him and the rest of Earl Graham’s gang in the past. He was the consummate salesman and was not above bending the truth to convince a customer to buy whatever he was selling. He was so good he had landed in a federal prison.

  Today he was dressed like a nouveau riche South American drug lord. His suit was tailored, and he sported a thick head of slicked back black hair. He stood and pointed at her. “You! You get out of here. You’ll ruin everything.”

  “Are you wearing extensions?”

  “Ignore my hair, pink lady. I’ve been setting up a sting for the past six months.”

  “So have I.”

  “I’m about to close on one of America’s biggest dealers.”

  “I’m about to take down South America’s biggest supplier!”

  Akhim collapsed in his chair. “You’re the dealer.”

  “Shit. That makes you the supplier.”

  “Shit.”

  The monitor pinged and lit up. On it was a cartoon puppy. This day was just getting better and better. The cartoon puppy was Charlie Marinova’s avatar. Charlie was another sometimes member of Earl Graham’s crew. He was a genius hacker and as amoral as the day was long.

  “I hate to break up this little reunion but you two are in trouble.”

  “Hello Charlie. What is it?”

  “Apparently while you two were respectively planning to take down the world’s biggest coke manufacturer and supplier, I was planning to take them both down.”

  “As you must now be aware, that will be difficult to accomplish given the present circumstances, even for you.”

  “And I would feel terrible were I not safely ensconced in my air conditioned apartment sipping cafe au lait. You two, on the other hand, are about to be over-run by the cavalry.”

  “How melodramatic of you.”

  “Okay, call them the motorized infantry, or you can call them the mobile clown college, I don’t care. Whatever you call them, a whole bunch of guys with guns and artillery are about two minutes out. Shooting and explosions will commence shortly. Please depart now.”

  The monitor went dark. Akhim and Brandie shared a look. He stripped off a wig revealing his thin gray hair, and pocketed the Springfield.

  Brandie was already back into her dungarees and sweatshirt. She wore the balaclava like a stocking cap. She cracked the door and saw the hallway filled with a mixture of clerks, secretaries, and heavily armed guards. Quietly she closed the door and locked it.

  Akhim was seated again, studying the ceiling. “I think we should leave through there.” He pointed up.

  The ceiling was made of cheap drop in foam tiles and flimsy metal runners. “That won’t hold us.”

  “No but the pipes those tiles are hiding will, and we can’t stay here and we can’t shoot our way out.”

  Somewhere in the far distance, a machine gun was firing. Brandie jumped on the desk and helped Akhim up. Together they lifted the chair up beside them. Brandie stepped on the chair while Akhim held it steady. She moved a tile out of the way and looked around. She tossed her purse up, then jumped.

  The pipe she caught was cast iron. It was dirty and rusty, but it held her weight and the scu
ffing and scurrying she heard sounded like creatures moving away from her. Another thought to push out of her mind. She wrapped her legs around the pipe and lowered herself upside down back through the hole. Akhim had somehow managed to lower the chair back to the floor.

  The doorknob rattled, and someone pounded on the door. Akhim froze, then jumped up and grabbed Brandie’s forearms. She held on, helping him climb up her body and grab the pipe. He was huffing and wheezing by the time he was straddling it. Brandie’s vision was dimming as she pulled herself up and pushed the tile back in place. She looked around. They were surrounded by giant spider webs and a number of PVC pipes.

  The explosion that blew the door off its hinges nearly shook Brandie free but somehow she hung on. Below her she heard voices shouting in Spanish, English, Portuguese and… was that Mayan? Incan? Who knew?

  The voices faded and after a minute Akhim turned his cell phone into a flashlight. The space was a warren of wire, cable, and pipe. “I’ll go first.” Brandie whispered and she headed for what she hoped was the nearest exterior wall.

  Gunfire and explosions grew louder and more frequent. Brandie fished her phone from her purse and used it to find her way. Akhim stayed right on her heels and she was sure they were nearing safety when her phone vibrated and dimmed.

  “Not now, Charlie.” She whispered, then looked at her screen. It said: TURN AROUND. Shit.

  She turned around and showed the screen to Akhim. He nodded and pointed to his left. Brandie headed that way and Akhim followed. They had crawled barely fifty yards when an explosion rocked their world.

  Behind them, sunlight streamed in, lighting their nether world. The ceiling above their heads was gone, as was a large chunk of the ceiling above that.

  “That would have been us.” Akhim whispered.

  “So buy Charlie a beer when we get back. We wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for him.”

  Brandie’s phone vibrated again. On her screen: I HEARD THAT.

  “Great. Can you guess what I’m thinking now?”

  DON’T BE BITTER

  “Don’t get on my last nerve. Where to now?”

  NOWHERE

  “Not an option. What else have you got?”

  HIDE

  She didn’t like that answer. She showed the screen to Akhim. He didn’t like it either. A piece of shrapnel tore through the foam panels in the ceiling below them, slicing through the nearest pvc pipe, exposing cables and wires. Brandie quickly crawled away from it but there was another explosion right in front of her.

  When the noise and dust cleared, fifty feet in front of them, the roof, pipes, cables, wires, and ceiling were gone. Below them was the warehouse filled with barrels of chemicals and bales of coca leaves.

  And injured people. And body parts.

  “Up or down?” Akhim whispered to his phone. He looked at the screen, frowned, and showed it to Brandie.

  DOWN

  “I am beginning to feel that Charlie may not have our best interests at heart.” Brandie said. Oddly, Charlie didn’t respond. Sighing, she lead the way down to the warehouse floor.

  They moved slowly, stayed hidden from the masses of guards and workers who were running around. Some were helping the wounded, others were frozen in shock. The guards were trying to get people organized. Workers were lined up around a hole in the floor out of which a ladder rose. They were climbing down as fast as they could.

  Occasionally bullets tore into the bales of coca leaves. Brandie studied the holes, then enlisted Akhim and a pallet jack to shift them around. Within minutes only the armed guards remained, patrolling the area in groups of four.

  Brandie and Akhim were surrounded by coca bales, stacked two deep and four high, with just enough space for them and their trusty pallet jack.

  “I didn’t know you knew how to run one of these.”

  Akhim smiled. “I am a man of many talents. I can also braid hair and cook a mean Bearnaise sauce.”

  “Burr what now?”

  “A tarragon-flavoured French sauce made from clarified butter, vinegar, shallots, egg yolks and herbs, often served with steak, however as I am a vegetarian I serve it with roasted eggplant or sauteed potatoes.”

  Another explosion rocked the coca nest. “What now?”

  Akhim rocked back on his heels. “The holes in the floor no doubt lead to an escape tunnel, or if we’re lucky, tunnels which will lead to safety. Unfortunately they are crowded and heavily guarded.” More bullets thudded into their cover. “But we are surrounded and there seems to be gunfire and explosions everywhere which leaves us just one alternative.”

  He waited for Brandie to ask. She didn’t, but finally her screen lit up.

  WHAT?

  Akhim smiled and stood up. “Charge!”

  2. 2

  Starbuck hated his name, but few people knew the truth of it and by now most of them were dead. He let people believe his real name was Juan Valdez, like the coffee guy in American ads from half a century ago. The tenuous coffee connection lead to the coffee chain, and that had turned into his handle. The plus side was that most people, including most in law enforcement, didn’t know his real name. The downside was he was tied to American pop culture. Ugh.

  Not that there wasn’t a lot to like about America. After all, Americans were his biggest clients and paid the highest prices for his products. That was just one of the reasons he loved Capitalism. The unseen hand of the market was large and its fingers long, but they justified drug sales. Drugs might be addictive, and disrupt social interactions, and destroy a user’s mind and body but everything had side effects. If drugs interfered with reproduction or production in general, they would disappear on their own.

  But they didn’t, so the underground industry that fueled rebels and governments alike made money. Lots and lots of it. That was the addictive part. Not the drugs, the cash and the power that obscene amounts of it could buy. Users becoming physically and psychologically addicted to his products allowed that one extra step which governments and local industries agreed to add to their jurisdictions. Governments supposedly forbidding its use had made him and many others very very rich.

  It was clever. He had to admit that. Even making the profession seem dirty made sense. It reduced competition and made traditional investors wary. It worked, but he hated it, and he hated American commercial imperialism that had infected the entire world. Almost more than he hated his nickname.

  Even more than all of that combined he hated what was happening right now. His factory warehouse was under attack. There were holes in his roof. People, his people, lay bleeding where they fell. Both the raw materials and finished product were being destroyed.

  He had picked this location carefully. It was an isolated tropical corner of the world where three countries, Columbia, Peru, and Ecuador, met along the river Gueppi. It was hot, humid, and nearly devoid of humans. The river wasn't the international border because it changed course regularly, but it served as handy marker.

  The ready availability of raw materials plus the remote and sparsely populated location, transportation the river provided, and three different governments made it an ideal place for a drug manufacturing operation.

  If the military from one country conducted a raid, his security forces made them pay, and his staff and product were simply moved across a border until they gave up and left.

  The governments of all three countries knew this. They also knew that he hired protection. His guards were better trained, better armed, and more familiar with the terrain than any troops were. Even a coordinated attack, assuming the three neighbors could set aside their differences and cooperate in staging one, would be met with stiff opposition. Worse, such an attack might just piss him off.

  The United States government did not care. They wanted to see raids conducted. To that end, Starbuck set up what he liked to call Potemkamps. Then, through trusted contacts inside each government, he notified the governments of their locations. The attacks were videotaped, the fake
camps destroyed, along with a few kilos of processed cocaine and a few bales of leaves, and the militaries left his real facilities alone.

  Keeping a large number of heavily armed guards, and the backing of a division of the Bolivian army helped, too. It was expensive, but added to his prestige as well as his opponent’s fears. Besides, he was a belt and suspenders kind of guy. Having invested a lot in his new facility, he wanted to keep it safe.

  As drug lords go, he knew he was an anomaly. He wasn't one to build mansions, buy expensive art, and surround himself with women. He was the one thing no military or government could defeat: A businessman.

  Two hundred pound bales of coca leaves were burning. It takes just under thirteen ounces of coca leaves to make just one gram of cocaine. He was spending almost a penny US currency for each gram of coke he produced, and he wholesaled it for just over two cents per gram, provided the buyer was willing to take multiple tons at a time.