Word: marijuana
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Getting caught is not the only risk facing drug pilots. The peninsula is littered with planes that were overloaded with tons of marijuana and crashed while trying to take off. General Villarreal says he has found, within four months, eleven downed planes and the bodies of ten smugglers. Local fishermen tell tales of planes crashing into the sea and their crews being devoured by sharks...
...only to land in a Florida pasture being used by local politicians for a turkey shoot. The pilot was promptly arrested. But for those who make it in safely, and most do, the payoff is high. A pilot can pocket $50,000 for one trip. Ten tons of marijuana, if landed safely, immediately becomes worth $6 million wholesale, making the trip profitable even if the old plane must be abandoned on its makeshift runway in the woods...
...transport is only one of marijuana's ways north. Colombia has 1,300 miles of jagged coastline, from which it is easy enough to load 20 tons or more of grass aboard freighters, trawlers or large (often stolen) yachts. These mother ships, as they are called, are monitored by the U.S. Coast Guard at a series of "choke points" as they work their way north through the Caribbean. But American authorities have little power as long as the drug ships hover outside the twelve-mile limit of U.S. territorial waters. Using sophisticated electronic equipment, the smugglers on these mother ships...
...Winnebago lurking on the shore of Chesapeake Bay one recent weekend looked like any other mobile camper, but with the radio scanner and communication equipment inside, it resembled a war room in the Pentagon. As a command post for the onshore operations of a marijuana-smuggling confederacy, it had been monitoring the area's police for a week, preparing for a mother ship's arrival in nearby waters. The camper was in contact with small trucks and vans waiting along the coast for the merchandise. As the ship reached the southern tip of Assateague Island, five miles off Virginia...
...note giving directions for a rendezvous with a cabin cruiser. The officers dressed up as deck hands, kept the appointment with the yacht, sold three 80-lb. bales of grass, and then arrested the American buyers. For each such capture, the Coast Guard cutter gets to display a marijuana leaf on its hull...