Shaun Attwood - The Cali Cartel: Beyond Narcos

The Cali Cartel:

Beyond Narcos

Shaun Attwood

First published in Great Britain by Gadfly Press in 2017

Copyright Shaun Attwood 2017

The right of Shaun Attwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author, except in cases of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be edited, amended, lent, resold, hired out, distributed or otherwise circulated without the publishers written permission

Permission can be obtained from

This book is a work of non-fiction based on research by the author

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Jane Dixon-Smith

For Aunt Lily and the kids

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to Emma Bagnell, Penny Kimber (proofreading), Jane Dixon-Smith (typesetting and cover formatting)

This book was written in British English, hence USA readers may notice some spelling differences with American English.

Shauns Books

English Shaun Trilogy
Party Time
Hard Time
Prison Time

War on Drugs Series

Pablo Escobar: Beyond Narcos

American Made: Who Killed Barry Seal? Pablo Escobar or George HW Bush

The Cali Cartel: Beyond Narcos

We Are Being Lied To: The War on Drugs (Expected 2018)

Un-Making a Murderer: The Framing of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey

Life Lessons

Two Tonys (Expected 2019)

T-Bone (Expected 2022)

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Contents

Chapter 1
A Soccer Game

On September 25, 1990, Pacho Herrera the youngest of the four Cali Cartel godfathers was playing soccer with his brother and bodyguards at a personal ranch called the Coconuts, on a remote piece of land surrounded by sugarcane fields. Holding cans of beer and soda, about fifty men were sitting on the grass and rows of wooden benches cheering at the players in sports uniforms on a pitch illuminated better than any stadium in Colombia. Directing one of the teams was a former pro footballer, which added to the excitement. The Tuesday-evening game had attracted an increasing number of spectators, including workers from the neighbouring farms such as cane cutters, who relished cooling off. Despite the threat from the rival Medelln Cartel, Pachos security was lax.

In the preceding days, twenty assassins sent by Pablo Escobar had drifted into the area. Travelling by bus, either alone or in small units, they had arrived unnoticed. Mostly in their late teens, they had rendezvoused at a farmhouse near the village of Santander.

Local people tended to report the arrival of strangers to the Cali Cartel, which paid taxi drivers and others to be its eyes and ears. Anyone protecting outsiders ran the risk of torture, death and the massacre of their families. But Pablo had outsmarted the Cali Cartel by sending young unarmed men covertly and renting an assembly point from a farmer known to keep his mouth shut for the right price.

Deliveries arrived at the farmhouse: a variety of military uniforms, two trucks and AR-15 automatic rifles capable of spraying a crowd with bullets in a matter of seconds. On the night of the game, Pablos men put on the uniforms and grabbed the guns. They got into two trucks with sky-blue cabins. Brown canvas over the rear of the trucks concealed them. They drove for about twenty minutes.

Clean shaven and in excellent shape, Pacho was focused on the game when the first truck parked at around 7 pm. The play continued as armed men in uniforms emerged from the darkness. As the local authorities were in the pocket of the Cali Cartel, everyone assumed that the soldiers had stopped by on a friendly basis. No one noticed the hodgepodge of uniforms and that the soldiers were mostly wearing sneakers not boots. As the soccer players were unarmed, the assassins initially aimed their guns at those in charge of surveillance and the rows of spectators.

Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam...

The AR-15s fired so fast that the shots were impossible to count. The players stopped chasing the ball. Their gaze swung to the slaughter of the spectators, some of whom flopped down in pools of blood. Those unharmed stampeded away as the guns cut down some of the players. A lady in the kitchen heard the shots and abandoned the food that she had been preparing.

Pacho, his brother and others sprinted over the field into the darkness. When they felt they had gone a safe distance, they hid in the thick of the crops. Eventually, the shots ended, indicating that the assassins had fled. Warily, Pacho and the survivors returned to the Coconuts. Yelling in Spanish, they rushed to almost twenty corpses of relatives and friends. Others were leaking blood, writhing, moaning and begging for help. With fire in his eyes, Pacho pledged revenge against Pablo.

In green military garb, police with rifles arrived, rushed around and questioned the survivors, who were dazed, injured or angry. Corpses were loaded onto a truck and transported to the morgue.

Eager to earn extra money from the Cali Cartel, the police combed the area. Two young men were discovered on a remote road. The police grew suspicious after the men claimed that they had been staying with friends and were trying to get a bus to Medelln, yet were walking in the wrong direction. In jail, interrogated by a representative of the Cali Cartel, they detailed the entire plot, including the farmhouse they had stayed at.

At the farm, the police found uniforms, weapons and vehicles. The farmers siblings claimed that their brother had vanished without telling them anything. A week later, two of the farmers brothers and a sister were found shot in the head. Pacho ordered the execution of the two hit men in the local jail, which prisoners handled with homemade knives. He dispatched his own assassins after the farmer, who remained elusive.

It took two and a half years for the cartel to catch the farmer. A helicopter transported him to a ranch belonging to Pacho. The cartel men studied the man with a bruised face as he sat at a table in a stable, holding a cigarette. They knew his fate.

The two senior godfathers arrived last. Everyone hushed. Gilberto and Miguel Rodrguez Orejuela were short stocky brothers who sported thin beards or goatees. The elder, Gilberto, was a charmer who used eloquent words even though he had not finished high school. When it came to speaking, Miguel was a Spartan who had such a sour disposition that he had earned the nickname Lemon. Displaying little emotion, the dark-eyed godfathers studied the farmer.

With an air of command, Gilberto told the captive that he was in big trouble. The farmer stared at the ground, nonchalant. Gilberto said that the farmer was delusional to have thought that he could have got away with it, and that the farmer must have believed that he was so smart and they were so stupid. Remaining silent, the farmer smoked.

Why did you help Pablo?

In a calm way that startled his captors, the farmer looked at Gilberto and admitted that he had made a mistake. He had taken money to accommodate visitors, who had left him in the dark about their intentions. Gilberto asked if the farmer knew what was going to happen to him. The farmer gazed down.