Cocaine Confidential (32 page)

Maybe Barrera's arrest marked the beginning of the tide finally turning in the battle to break the coke barons' stranglehold on the world's entire cocaine market. But only time will tell.

Shortly after completing this book, I got a phone call from two British cocaine gangsters based in Spain called Jim and Tel, who helped me when I went on a research trip to their ‘manor', just south of Benidorm. Their speciality had been smuggling cocaine on small yachts across the Mediterranean.

The last straw for them came when a vessel they were sailing off the island of Menorca sank in a storm and one of their crew was drowned. The Latin American cocaine barons who'd hired them to smuggle the drugs accused Jim and Tel of stealing their cocaine and commissioned two South American hitmen based in Madrid to kill them.

‘We're in deep trouble and none of it is our fault,' said Jim nervously. ‘I think we're both going to move to somewhere like Thailand and hope that eventually the cocaine bosses will call off the hitmen and leave us in peace. But in this game anything can happen.'

Jim had these words of advice for anyone planning to try and get a slice of the cocaine business.

‘
Don't bother. There's nothing there for anyone. The good times have gone and everyone is desperate. We've got a death sentence hanging over us, even though we watched one of our best mates drown in front of our very eyes. It's not worth it
.'

•  30 September 1989
: 47,178lb/21,399kg of coke found in a Los Angeles warehouse

•  21 March 2007:
42,845lb/19,434kg of coke seized 20 miles south-west of the Panama coast aboard a motor vessel called
Gatun

•  10 March 1984
: 30,423lb/13,799kg of cocaine discovered on a train in Tranquilanda, Colombia

•  17 September 2004:
30,109lb/13,657kg of cocaine seized in the Eastern Pacific by US DEA on board fishing vessel
Lina Maria
, 300 miles south-west of the Galapagos Islands

•  13 May 2005:
30,100lb/13,653kg of cocaine uncovered on a jungle riverbank near Tumaco by Colombian Navy

•  25 May 2011:
26,500lb/12,020kg of coke found in warehouse in Cartagena by Colombian police officers

•  5 January 2001:
26,397lb/11,973kg of coke found by US Coast Guard on the
Svesda Maru
, in the Pacific Ocean about 1,500 miles south of San Diego

•  23 September 2004:
26,369lb/11,960kg of cocaine seized from the Belize-flagged vessel
San Jose
in the Pacific by USS
Crommelin

•  2 October 2002:
25,300lb/11,475kg of coke off coast of Panama discovered on board fishing vessel
Paulo
by US Coast Guard

•  27 July 1995:
24,325lb/11,033kg of cocaine intercepted 780 miles west of Peru on a ship called
Nataly One
raided by US Coast Guard

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