Cocaine Confidential by Wensley Clarkson Page A

of millions of dollars’ worth of coke from special pick-up points in the Caribbean to the US mainland, usually in nondescript twin-engined Cessna aircraft. Chris refers to the murders, the close shaves and the network of gangs behind the smuggling rings and how he’s survived them all with remarkable casualness. He claims he’s never had a snort of coke in his life and has no intention of ever doing so. Chris also says he once ‘helped’ America’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in exchange for immunity from prosecution but they then cut him loose because of the US’s obsession with prioritising terrorism.
    Chris vividly describes the remote landing strips he’s used in the past and how even in ‘honest’ America, crooked policemen, politicians and farmers play a vital role in making sure cocaine gets onto the streets of every town and city.
    â€˜My favourite time to fly is just before dawn, when I can speed down the runway without headlights and then simply disappear into the sky,’ says Chris. ‘That’s the bit I really like. Soaring high above the deserted islands of the Caribbean in a single-engine aircraft. Everything feels free and relaxed up there,’ he continues, pointing to the clear blue sky above us. ‘No one can get me. I am in charge of my own destiny. I like that time the best.’
    Chris’s ‘job’ flying shipments for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels is a ‘top level’ post way above the usual coke-connected sidelines of dealing, packaging and trafficking in trucks. Often he’d deliver cocaine to a distributor in Central Florida and then head to a small Caribbean island airstrip with sports bags stuffed with millions of dollars, always keeping a couple of six-inch stacks of cash for himself. ‘I’d hand over the cash to whoever and then take off for home. That was always the nicest, most relaxing flight of all.’ Within hours, Chris was back at his home in Florida, stacking the twenties and fifties into the safe at the back of his garage.
    But it’s not always plain sailing for Chris by any means. He explains: ‘The Mexican and Colombian distributors in Florida were constantly trying to cut costs by hiring immigrant truckers to haul the coke north. It used to really piss me off. I’d have flown in from somewhere and find myself handing tens of millions’ worth of coke over to some illiterate driver. I lived in constant fear that one of them would strike a deal with the Feds, who constantly monitored the freeways throughout Florida for traffickers.’
    But Chris always takes special measures to try and avoid any problems. He’s become an expert at covering his tracks wherever possible. ‘I usually stay in a rundown motel at least twenty miles from the airstrip. I also avoid people, pay cash for everything. But if anybody asks, I usually say I’m delivering planes to rich folk.’
    Ten years after President Reagan declared his ‘war on drugs’ in the mid-1980s, Chris got himself trained as a pilot after spotting a useful gap in the employment market. Initially, Chris went to a flying school in Central Florida for training in dealing with all the tricky weather conditions he knew he’d be facing. ‘I loved it the minute I got up there in skies. I just needed to find a lucrative way to make money from what I loved doing.’ He soon got to hear about the ‘cash business’, as he calls it.
    â€˜At first I flew a bit of weed north from Florida to Connecticut. But it soon became clear that the big money only came with the white powder, so I switched allegiances. I knew full well that if I got arrested I’d get much longer jail time but, boy, the money was five times as much.’ Chris then took over some of the best coke routes from smoked-up Vietnam vets, who’d dominated the dope-on-planes business in the 1970s and 1980s.
    During his