Free Cocaina: A Book on Those Who Make It by Magnus Linton, John Eason Page B

stacked against many of these types of trips going well. He is willing to take risks to make money, but not any risk. His father is in prison in Panama, having been caught on arrival; his brother is also in jail for the same offence, as is his godfather. But this notwithstanding, the cocaine coast is still a more attractive destination than that forced upon so many other internally displaced people, who end up having to relocate to Bogotá or Medellín for a life in the slums. Being on the lookout for abandoned cargo is relatively easy, and it isn’t really considered illegal: it’s considered a passive crime to find and retrieve a drifting load, not something one does with malice aforethought. And not even the authorities consider it feasible to demand that poor people turn in any cocaine they find.
    But to succeed in this harmless yet occasionally very lucrative activity, John Wayne needs a boat, preferably a motorboat, plus someone to work either for or with. He looks up. ‘Where does Lucho live?’
    WHEN VIEWED FROM out at sea, the coast looks like a giant oil spill has just washed up over the beaches, cliffs, and jungle. All is black and white. When the sun is behind the clouds and the rain pours down, the forest is black and the sea grey. But as soon as the sun comes out, colour returns and the sea becomes a beautiful emerald green again. The water is soft and warm, and the scent of the sea permeates the air. Life.
    Leo bites down hard on a thick fishing line, more like a rope, and proceeds to measure out how many arms’ lengths from the plastic can, a sort of float, he will attach the hook, which has a freshly caught sardine on it as bait. His friends do the same, and soon the little waves are capped with homemade fishing floats in a vast array of colours. It should not be too long before something big happens.
    But when it does, it is not what they have been hoping for.
    Leo sits, sets his paddle down like a spatula against the edge of the boat, and begins bailing out water with a decapitated plastic bottle. But he only manages three scoops before a huge steel-blue body shoots up out of the sea like a rocket.
    ‘ Hijoepucchhha! Oh my God!’
    The fish shoots up towards the sky, taking the hook, line, and sinker with it, only to plummet down helplessly with a giant splash some ten metres from the canoe. The little boat rocks from the backwash, and the other guys give congratulatory whistles. But they do not have the chance to watch how things develop, as several hooks suddenly get bites. In the middle of a circle formed by the seven canoes — each about a hundred metres from the next — blue bodies shoot up out of the water all around, like miniature explosions. Each fisherman has three buoys, and the one that Leo has a bite on spins like a bobbin, causing water to squirt up as he sits back and calmly begins to bail water again. ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Now you just have to wait. The dog will soon be tired.’
    When a marlin — they call them perros , dogs — bites down on a hook, it jumps up like a dolphin. Then it disappears beneath the surface until the water suddenly becomes ablaze with silver and black, five metres down in the bathtub-green sea. Leo watches contentedly, explaining that he usually lets it jump three or four times before hauling it in because otherwise it’s impossible to handle.
    In a few minutes the calm water is disturbed again. Soon the marlin starts flapping around in the open air before collapsing on its fin, rather than diving down with its sword in front, like a dolphin unable to complete its loop in the air.
    ‘Now it’s time,’ Leo says.
    He drifts over to the buoy and begins to haul in the line. Calmly, with his left hand, he pulls the line towards him metre by metre until the fish appears. The marlin is tired now, but still occasionally spasms. Leo swings the canoe around, bringing it closer to the fish. Like a stern master holding a leashed dog, he grips the line. Just half a