The Split

Chapter 57

Quito, Ecuador, 2034

"I can't keep risking the lives of my crew on your promises! Forget about the men, think about how expensive it is every time we lose a shipment!"

Though the light was dim, both outside and in the parlor, the equatorial levels of humidity warmed my skin and I could feel a trickle of sweat forming on my forehead. Ramon's house was large, but sparsely and poorly decorated. From personal experience, I knew that this wing of the house was the only place in it that showed signs of any of its owner's wealth.

"Santiago, Santiago," Ramon smiled at the frantic man to calm his nerves. "It will be handled soon, I promise."

I had already reached the point in these conversations where I would tune out. I was now completely fluent, but not being a native speaker, it would sometimes be too much to follow when someone was speaking quickly or with emphasis.

Santiago was loyal and capable, but I had heard these complaints too many times and I had already explained to him that we were working to fix his problem. It wasn't my call anyway.

I had kept my word two years ago in Mexico. I ran no part of the business, and my input only carried weight because of mutual respect. The crew we had stormed Bennett's compound with were back on the scene, and they were bigger than ever. "El Veintitrés" was the fastest growing cocaine operation in the entire world.

Santiago narrowed his eyes suspiciously, "When?"

"Very soon," Ramon assured him, "My brothers up North are planning something very big. We will take everything West of Puerto Penasco and then the entire peninsula itself!"

I looked over at Ramon and couldn't help but smile. Though there were some standouts in the original 23, Ramon was exceptional. In just two years I had watched him rise from being a desperate mercenary to the de facto leader of a major international organization.

The other 22 might have had an equal share of power and wealth, but he had the vision. Years ago, before ever becoming a criminal, Ramon was in the Peruvian Naval special forces. When he had gotten his share of the money from Bennett's account, he went back to his old comrades, many of them discharged and unemployed, and offered them salaries and starting bonuses to join the cause. With the surplus of money left from the transfer for any addition men, Ramon had told the men that they would get a bonus when they signed other people on.

Though I had warned against this idea, calling it a sort of pyramid scheme, it created a tipping point. Thousands of out of work soldiers flocked to our camp, and Ramon convinced the other 22 to split the men equally. A hierarchy naturally formed, with cells or teams working for captains, who worked for an individual member of the ruling body, the 23. With the soldiers' training, my team's equipment, and Ramon's tactics, El Veintitres carved up the coca fields of Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador in six months. They controlled 70 percent of the world's supply of cocaine in a time where demand was at an all time high.

A process to purify and enhance the effects of cocaine had been discovered. Injecting a mixture of accelerant chemicals into a rock of cocaine or crack cocaine, then known jokingly as "fracking", had brought cocaine's relevancy back to it's peak.

El Veintetres would not sell their product as cheaply as their predecessors, and the infuriated cartels had cut off the entire American border as a way to get the product to market. In response, Ramon put together a team to develop a fleet of highly mobile, and cost effective long-range narco subs.

Santiago had been on the first one of these shipments underwater, and since then had become in charge of the whole operation, answering only to the founders themselves. We made the money back for the first group of subs in a week and a half of shipments, and now had over twenty. For almost a year, we had done it right under the cartels' noses, going to secret harbors in the strip of land between Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico. Recently however, they had gotten wind of our operation, and had been hijacking our deliveries.