Cocaina by Magnus Linton

Author:Magnus Linton [Linton, Magnus]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), POL000000, TRU003000, SOC004000
Amazon: B00BQST1KU
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2013-03-25T07:00:00+00:00

THE WAR ON DRUGS

from Nixon to Obama

‘Everyone here is a whore to statistics. We’re fighting over criminals.’

— GUSTAVO GUEVARA, GOVERNMENT PROSECUTOR

HEAVILY ARMED HELICOPTERS carrying 30 soldiers plus a prosecutor advance rapidly over Colombia’s hilly green landscape. Operation Third Star has begun. Major Quiroga and his men have been allocated a Black Hawk and two Bell 212s. The aircraft are now crossing over the mountains that conceal many of the cocinas in the nation, though exactly how many is anyone’s guess.

‘That’s coca,’ says Juan Carlos Rivera, one of the soldiers, gesturing with his gun to one of the light-green slopes, which quickly passes by below. He only wants to point it out. It is not just any poor man’s cultivation plot they are looking for today, but a cocina, a lab where highly concentrated cocaine is produced — the final export product, known as cocaine hydrochloride (HCl).

‘Worst-case scenario, there will be people at the target site who are armed and will open fire.’ Rivera seems somewhat concerned about how the day’s mission will go, but then lowers his sunglasses and gazes out into the distance.

This is the front line of the war on drugs. Around 165 tonnes of cocaine are seized every year in Colombia, more than in any other country, and every year the narcotics squad and the DEA destroy more than 2000 labs. Today’s military target — if it is found — has, like almost everything else, come to police attention by way of a well-paid tip-off, and the DEA and military intelligence have concluded that the information is probably correct. The lab was reported with coordinates provided: it is located within a radius of one kilometre from the little village of Mulatos Arriba, in the municipality of Sansón. According to the informant, the lab is quite large, with 40 employees. Guerrillas are not on site at the moment, but the outfit has its own security force of eight guards.

Operation commander Major Quiroga clears his throat. ‘The lab we’re targeting today has people working on the premises right now. We’ll be there in half an hour.’

But Quiroga is overly optimistic. The whole morning was a washout, a storm keeping them from setting out at the appointed time, and it is already 2.00 p.m. By 5.00 p.m. it will start to get dark, so if the lab has not been discovered by 3.00 p.m. they will have to pack it in for the day. If that happens, not only will they have missed out on a major bust, but they will also have revealed to the lab owner that the police are on his tracks, which will simply make him pack everything and set up business elsewhere. ‘Today, there are labs that only operate three or four months in any one place before moving,’ says Quiroga. ‘That way, they avoid discovery and losing their investments.’

Running a HCL lab is both simple and complex. Provided that there is access to coca paste and all the necessary chemicals, no more than an

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