Forget Me Not (Love in the Fleet) (10 page)

“Not to downplay your wealth of skills that are ineligible for your resume, Sky, but you said Daisy isn’t like the others. And I hate to tell you, buddy, but you become a different man at the mere mention of her name. I swear to God you get this dreamy-eyed, lovesick look on your face.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.” Philip chuckled. “Oh, you got it bad, man. I’ve never seen you like this over a woman before.”

Sky glanced down at his phone to see if Daisy had responded to his call or his text. Nope. Not yet. He ignored the kick in his gut when he remembered how she’d left in a huff on Sunday. He covered with the dreamy-eyed, lovesick look he’d been accused of. “Well, she’s awesome with everyone: old people, kids, animals. And everybody loves her—except my cat. And you know what’s really amazing? She doesn’t fall for my bullshit. She stares it down and sees right through it.”

“Ah, smart too,” Philip said. “I don’t know, Sky, sounds like she might be out of your league.” 

“Yeah, and you were in Hallie’s league when you first met her, right, nerd boy?”

Philip chuckled. “Score one for the Skylark.”

“Anyway, Daisy’s running from something. She’s a do-gooder, but she doesn’t leave any time for herself. What’s up with that?”

“Maybe she’s got her own demons.”

“Well, she is divorced. And I think the son-of-a-bitch did a number on her. Marine pilot. Guy had to be nuts to give up a woman like her.”

“He’s a jarhead. What do you expect?”

“And obviously stupid.”

Philip smiled. “Same difference.”

Sky scratched his head and perused the tavern again before settling his elbows on the table and leaning in. “I got something else that’s bothering me, Bill. What if I got past this thing with Daniel or whatever the hell it is.” Sky shrugged. “And what if Daisy got over the ex-husband. And, say we got serious. Say we got married or something. Can it really be good with just one woman?”

The question brought a grin to Philip’s face.

Sky leaned back, hands up in surrender. “Shit, I’m asking the wrong man. Hallie’s, like, the coolest person in the world. But still, this is for the rest of your life. That’s a hell of a long time with the same chick. How do you keep the rush from wearing off?”

Philip laughed. “Well, it pretty much starts with thinking of her as a woman instead of a
chick
, Sky. And it’s got to be the right woman. Then it doesn’t wear off. You keep making the magic happen.”

“I don’t know. That sounds easier said than done.” Sky drained his beer, set the bottle down, pushed it aside. “Okay, thanks for all the advice. I’ll think it over.”   

“And don’t forget about that growing up part while you’re thinking. You want to make squadron CO some day, it’s not going to happen in today’s Navy if you don’t clean up your act. Maybe this would be a good time to look at everything: your career, those dreams, the idea of a relationship. Come on, we’re almost thirty. Due to make lieutenant commander pretty soon. Maybe it
is
time to grow up. Settle down.”

“You think so, huh?”

“Yeah, if I were you, I’d think long and hard about it.”

“Okay.” Sky dropped his chin to his chest for only a moment. Then he looked up, smiled confidently, and said, “All right,
I’m ready.”

“Just like that?”

“Yup. Just like that.”

Philip narrowed his eyes at him. “That’s all it took?”

“Yeah. ’Cuz you said something that scared the piss out of me.” 

“What?”

“I do not want anyone mistaking me for Mick Jagger.”

Chapter 11

Jorge Gutiérrez was a disappointment to his father. As the son of a wealthy man, life had bestowed many privileges on him: clothes, cars, travel, and the best education. He was handsome, bright, athletic, clever at conversation, and a natural with the ladies. He lacked nothing. So why was he a disappointment to Giovanni Gutiérrez? Because he possessed something no son of a drug lord dared to have.

Jorge Gutiérrez had a conscience. 

From
the age of ten, he’d understood
at the gut level
exactly how his father made his money. Since then, the guilt for his father’s transgressions had eaten away at his soul on a daily basis. He attended church and prayed for forgiveness, believing nothing else could wipe away the shame of his father’s livelihood. But now even that didn’t seem to cut the guilt. 

Although he’d felt uneasy about this for more than half his life, it had been his years away at college that really showed him how the world operated. Studying business in the United States had given him an education far beyond books and classrooms. Besides his courses, he studied the people: the other students, their families, their habits, and their morals. He observed constantly, taking mental notes of the people in the streets whenever he and his friends visited cities.

When the topic of what one’s parents did for a living arose among his classmates, he’d replied simply: “My father is a businessman back home. He exports produce around the world.” Not a lie. Gutiérrez Exports did ship bananas, pineapples, and coffee, among other things.

Like cocaine.

Jorge read newspapers online, followed the news in the U.S., and learned about the scourge of drugs in the United States and Europe. Cocaine was no longer just a rich man’s drug, and Jorge was repulsed by the debauchery crack cocaine wreaked in the ghettos.

And somehow, he felt personally responsible. Especially now that those four glorious years of escape were over. It was time to go home and face the music because now he would be expected to learn the trade. It would do no good to talk his father out of it, because no matter how much he’d complained or argued with him over the years, Gio Gutiérrez laughed at his son’s ranting. He’d brushed him off and reminded him that some day he would need to get off his high horse because he
would
take over the family business ventures. That was all there was to it. Although Jorge’s four sisters had already married men in the business, as the only son, Jorge was the golden boy.

Whether he liked it or not.

While he’d always understood his father’s intentions for him, Jorge had hoped to put it off for a few more years. Not going to happen. He would start his training right now at twenty-two years of age. His papa had told him, “You will learn the business from the ground up, like I learned it. On site. You will spend the next six months in the labs, learning how coca is processed into cocaine. Once you know all there is to know about processing, then I will teach you about the export trade and how to manage business associates. I will teach you techniques I doubt you learned in your business courses at that American college. You’ll learn how to deal with those who comply…” He paused and
smiled
.
“And those who refuse to play by my rules.”

The processing plants were a widespread cottage industry with thousands of individual operations located throughout the coca producing regions of South America. His father owned roughly fifty of them. Now the future drug lord would spend half a year living and working as
el gerente
, a manager, overseeing the daily operations in the plant by day and sleeping in the barracks-style housing in the jungle at night with the other
gerentes
. Sundays he would be free to attend church and visit the local village. There would be no rich-boy activities for this Ivy Leaguer. It would be blood, sweat, and more sweat until he was ready to move up the chain of command.

Before he left for this internship, his father gave him strict orders to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut. His papa had closed with, “And none of your judgmental
mierda
about how the drug business is an evil force in the world. It has fed you and clothed you and put you through that fancy college of yours. Now show me some goddamn appreciation and respect.”

So here he was, dockside in the jungle, as bundle after bundle of the dried coca leaves were delivered by the
cocaleros
. Manual laborers had chewed the innocuous leaf for centuries, but when mixed with a few chemicals, it would end up as white powder on the glass tables of rich patrons worlds away or in the pipes of their poverty-stricken brethren. And how could he argue with his father? It
had
put the clothes on his back, the food on his table, provided the fast cars he drove, and paid for his Ivy League education. He’d just never had it quite so shoved in his face before today.

Despite the oppressive heat, Jorge shivered as the deliveries were loaded onto trucks bound for the lab. He understood the plight of the
campesinos
that grew the coca to feed their families. But at what level did guilt invade the souls of those higher up the food chain? Unfortunately, he was well aware that many a man would go against his own beliefs if money talked loud enough. And the louder money talked? The further those men would turn their backs on their principles.

His father and the other drug lords owned upwards to ten percent of the arable land. They employed everyone from farmers to lab managers to chemists to pilots to government officials to lawyers to
gerentes
to the “mules” who would transport it over land and sea, and more recently
under
the sea in makeshift submarines that had become the latest rage
.
In many cases, even the priests had been known to turn their heads to improve the lives of their parishioners.

“Come, I will show you around.” Jorge had been introduced earlier to the local manager, Juan Menendez, who escorted him from the docks to the main plant. “Of course the first step is to pay the farmers. Thousands of small farms are less suspect than if we grow the coca plants on large plantations. But coca
is
the primary crop in this country. You see? Believe it or not, we contribute a great deal to the economy.” Menendez grinned
proudly, showing off a shiny gold cap on a top front tooth. He opened the door to the long, low cinder block building, which, thank God, was air conditioned, and ushered Jorge inside.

Menendez was a stocky, deeply tanned man, with slicked back black hair and what appeared to be a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He was dressed in the khaki shirt and trousers of
el gerente.
He was well muscled, so Jorge appreciated that he did more than just manage the production plant. Obviously he was familiar with manual labor as well.

He led Jorge into one of the extraction rooms and continued with his explanation. “This is where the cocaine base processors stomp the coca leaves to macerate them. It helps extract the desired alkaloids.”

Jorge watched as ten men and women in shorts and T-shirts, all wearing earphones attached to some hidden musical accompaniment, stomped the coca leaves with their bare feet, mashing them into a thick paste. Then they scooped it up with flat shovels, like the ones people used for snow at his New England college, and deposited it into a second plastic lined pit where lime was added.

“The paste will soak in the lime for six hours until it’s in its ‘free-base form’ before being scooped up and taken to the next station. We have four other extraction rooms, so leaves are either being macerated or the
pasta
is sitting in the lime twenty-four hours a day. We never stop. Once the lime has extracted the alkaloid, the
pasta
is transferred to the ‘gas station,’ as we call it.  Come,” Menendez
said, as he led Jorge into the next room, where the air smelled strongly of petrol.

“Here,
Señor
.” He handed Jorge a surgical mask.
“You may want to wear this.”

Jorge noticed all the workers in this room wearing these masks. They may have been suitable for keeping germs out during surgery or dust out during construction, but he doubted they were keeping toxic fumes from the lungs of these workers over an eight-hour shift.

“Here we add kerosene to the slurry and mix it. This time, it will sit for the next three days, getting stirred occasionally. Then the solvent is removed by siphoning, filtering, and pressing. The liquid is then re-filtered to remove any remaining vegetable matter. Once it is fed into that machine over there, the
pasta
is further refined and processed to the white powder: cocaine hydrochloride, or HCL.” Menendez smiled, his gold tooth winking at Jorge. “ I will show you where we bale the HCL.”

They entered one last room to watch a conveyer belt cranking out the bales, covered in thick gray plastic. “We use gray for the shipments from this lab because these bales are destined to go by boat. Should the mules need to throw them overboard for any reason, the sea will camouflage them. If there is no chance of recovery, then they will fill them with bullet holes. This will ensure they sink, leaving no evidence. Ah, but what a waste that would be. He indicated the bales on the belt that were labeled with a capital P, “This particular batch is
La Perla
that was delivered last week. This is the finest cocaine available.” A proud smile lit his face. “Do you have any questions,
Señor
?”

The air seemed thicker in the packaging bay. Perhaps some of the HCL floated in the atmosphere? But at least the space didn’t stink of kerosene as the last room had. Regardless, Jorge’s lungs burned and he hungered to take a deep breath. “I do have some questions, but could we step outside, please? And get a breath of fresh air first?”

“Certainly,
Señor.”
Menendez held the door for him, then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. “No smoking inside the lab, of course.”

“Of course.” Jorge could only imagine what a stray spark might do. He was surprised smoking was allowed anywhere on the premises. The outside air was thick with humidity and the screech of cicadas. Sweat beaded on Menendez’ forehead and stained the armpits of his khaki shirt. Jorge knew he’d be given an identical khaki uniform once he checked into the managers’ barracks.

Jorge smelled something burning and turned to see smoke belching from chimneys, probably from the last room they’d visited, where the
pasta
was processed into HCL. Surely this smoke was filled with toxins from the various chemicals. Funny, he’d known the worst air pollution in the country came from the
campesinos
slashing and burning the jungle, most likely to plant more coca. But with hundreds of these processing plants pumping toxic smoke in the air as well, he realized the problem was exponentially worse than he’d suspected.

“Tell me,
El Gerente,
what becomes of the residue? From the pits. And from the machines. It seems you use quite a bit of kerosene in there, and I noticed other chemicals, as well. How do you process the residue after you extract the alkaloid?”

Menendez’ brow furrowed. “Process? What do you mean, process? Much of it evaporates in the ovens.” He pointed to the chimney that belched white smoke, then he shrugged his shoulders. “We take any liquid that is left into the jungle and dump it.”

Jorge took a fist to the stomach.
Dump it?
There had to have been a hundred liters of toxic liquids in those pits. And this operation went on around the clock?

He took a few shallow breaths. “Can’t you recycle it? Clean it and re-use it?”

“Too much trouble. But don’t worry. The chemicals are not expensive.”

Jorge slammed his eyes shut, as if that was going to block anything out or make it go away. He swallowed to counter the bile that rose in his throat.

“Now,” Menendez said, stomping out his cigarette. “Come, I will show you the final step.” They walked around the long building and continued on the path until they came to a paved swath cut out of the jungle, obviously an airstrip.

He raised his voice to be heard over the whine of a small plane preparing to take off. “The baled HCL is the
stage in which we export the product. It is not what will hit the streets, though, since many hands along the way will cut its strength and potency with everything from talcum powder to rice flour. But, as you can see, the bales are loaded onto the aircraft and transported to the coast, where they will be shipped by speed boats or in secret compartments aboard your father’s banana boats. Each bale will bring your father about a half million dollars. And once it hits the streets? It will sell for close to five million.

“So,
Señor,”
Menendez flashed his gold grillwork one last time, laughing, to ensure Jorge knew he was joking. “Are you ready to take over your father’s business now?”

Jorge’s smile wavered
as he watched the plane roll down the runway and take off for the next stop in the cocaine’s journey. “Not quite yet,
El Gerente.”

He didn’t think he’d ever be ready.