CHAPTER 29
Arnold was still hung up fighting the government over importation charges and couldn’t leave Orange County, let alone the country, so Doc returned to the Bekaa Valley to work with the Ma’ahad family. The Little One kept the money transfers flowing between the different people, coached runners, got them to their destinations on time, and found new stash houses in rural San Diego County. I took care of the financing, finding crews, making contacts for devices needed to conceal and transport large amounts of cash through customs to the Middle East, and maintained close communications with Marty, Rob, and Doc, to keep things organized and running smoothly. Marty needed a five-ton load in order to pay his overhead and make a profit, after the split with our group; so eleven thousand pounds of some of the finest, red Lebanese hashish in the country was being pressed and packaged for delivery to the boat, under Doc’s supervision. Since we were doing business with one of the most powerful hashish growing families in the country, our prices were rock bottom. Most smugglers, after product cost and transportation payoffs, paid anywhere from one hundred to one hundred fifty thousand dollars a ton out of Lebanon, especially if working with Christians. Our cost was seventy-five thousand dollars a ton, delivered, plus a front of half as much bought, which our group turned down this time in order to check out how together Marty and Rob’s flow was, before getting ourselves too financially involved. They were practically paying top dollar at one-hundred-thirtyfive thousand dollars a ton from their Christian connects, so we sold them two and a half tons, at one hundred thousand dollars each, made almost a full ton off the deal, and bought the other portion to make a full five for the boat, making everyone happy, and better off than they had been before.
The smuggling routes in Lebanon, as well as the protocols of doing business, had ancient roots, like most things in that part of the world. The majority of the people were Muslim, and their religion viewed alcohol as the demon’s tool, the way America’s dominant Christian society viewed marijuana, but hashish had been used for cooking, medicines, religious rituals, preparation for war, and barter for thousands of years by the hookah-smoking Muslims in the Middle East, particularly in the Bekaa Valley, where irrigated, openly cultivated fields of hashish plants were growing for as far as the eye could see, as the main cash crop. The elders of the family, their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers, going back many generations, had been negotiating for centuries with the powers that be, to grow, transport, and export their product out of the Valley and into the world markets. Their deep-rooted ties allowed them to travel unharmed and protected on the few main routes leading to the northern coast of Lebanon. Nothing was hidden; it was all out front and a matter of timing and circumstances, waiting for the right person to be on shift, and the right time of day or night. It was no secret that tons of hashish were trucked to the coast daily, upon main highways, to local entrepreneurs and foreign smugglers. Except for a few lifethreatening inconveniences brought about by the war, smuggling out of Lebanon was like working with a welloiled, finely tuned machine, and unless hit by an untimely bomb or caught in the middle of a longstanding feud between families over business or religious matters, things usually went pretty smoothly. Truckloads of hash leaving the Bekaa Valley for Tripoli were usually escorted by heavily armed family members, soldiers of the Lebanese Army, and at least one high ranking Syrian Army official to handle Syria's peacekeeping forces, road blocks, or any other political security matters that might be encountered along the way. Family members or associates drove the trucks to docks in the harbor where boats were loaded for the run out to the mother ship. From there, the paid off Syrian Army turned a blind eye toward the transactions happening just offshore from Lebanon’s coastline, while the transfer of thousands of pounds of hashish took place. Doc was in constant radio communication with the captain of the mother ship throughout the whole process, from an apartment in Tripoli owned by a Ma’ahad family member, to make sure things went as planned. The packaging of the hash was also a reflection of the simplistic but logical wisdom of the Arab hashish suppliers in Lebanon.
About a half kilo of loose Indicus marijuana resin pollen was poured into small, cheese cloth bags and then tied shut with a piece of string at the open end. It was then put on a rack over hot water and steam heated until the bag of pollen was moist and pliable. Then, before cooling off, it was pressed with a manually operated vice press, into an approximately 1 lb. 1 oz. solid, uniform, block of hash, ready for the international market. If a large load was to be delivered to a boat out at sea, the cheese cloth sacks were packed inside tire inner tubes, thirty to forty pounds per tube, and then resealed water tight, to make them moisture-proof for the onloading, crossing, and off loading process at sea. The lightweight, pliable, circular-shaped inner tubes also made the bags of hash easier to handle and, without worrying about water damage, thousands of pounds could be transferred from one boat to another fairly quickly with the right amount of manpower and teamwork. The whole operation from start to finish was as sophisticated and professional as any James Bond movie; only the rewards and/or consequences were for real. It was always a pleasure doing business with the honorable hashish-growing Arabs and their colleagues in Lebanon. Six weeks after Doc began working on the five tons, they were ready to load on the boat, which had been sailing slowly east into position, synchronized with Doc’s timetable for the offshore meeting, and to shake any heat or suspicion the crew or vessel might have picked up while docked in Greece for three months waiting for their connections to get it together. From Athens the boat islandhopped to Crete, and then sailed from Crete to Cyprus so that the crew and boat would be at the island for no more than a few days before the on-load of the hash took place. When the boat arrived in Cyprus, Doc flew to Limassol for a brief meeting with the captain to coordinate positions and establish the radio contact they would have with each other before, during, and after the offshore rendezvous with the hash, to ensure things went as planned. When Doc returned to the apartment in Tripoli and gave the okay, one of the family members contacted the stash house in the Bekaa Valley, signaling for the load to begin its trip to the coast. After it reached the harbor and was transferred to the on-load boats, Doc radioed the Captain in Limassol and, in code, directed him to begin his sail to the predetermined coordinates of the meeting spot between Cyprus and the coast of Lebanon, just offshore from Tripoli.
The transfer of hash and the sailboat’s exit from the Mediterranean Sea through the Straits of Gibraltar went flawlessly; and as it made its way toward Boston, it was time to regroup for the catch on this side of the Globe at drug war GROUND ZERO, the United States of America, “Land of the Free.” From my experiences handling bulk loads out of Mexico and Colombia, realizing the growing intelligence being gathered by different law enforcement agencies, it was becoming apparent that working in large, unmanageable groups would only increase the chances of our being detected by unfriendly forces. Not only were large groups becoming harder to disguise during a scam but the federal government had the power to gather information and indict participants up to five years after the last illegal, overt act had been committed. That gave agents the advantage of threatening people, long after the fact, with inhumane prison sentences, in order to scare information out of them about other suspected or targeted smugglers who hadn’t been as easily infiltrated through normal investigative methods. Although guilty pleas and the information gathered weren’t always truthful, often given by people motivated by fear to confess prematurely, or lie to avoid long prison terms, the government’s tactic had its desired negative effects. Since most people are unpredictable under that kind of pressure, the fewer loose cannons on deck the better. So, with those dangers in mind, Doc, Arnold, the Little One, and I decided to drive our portion of the five tons from Boston back to California ourselves. Arnold’s karma had been good enough to keep him out of prison because his lawyer was able to discredit one of the snitches testifying against him, which ultimately forced a plea bargain out of the prosecutor for a fine, and three years probation. He couldn’t leave the country or state of California legally, but devised a way to discreetly slip away from the confines of his restrictions for the trip back east to pick up the stash. Since hash is so compact, taking up only about an eighth as much space as its marijuana counterpart, and due to the thin, narrow, uniformed cheese cloth sacks packed tightly and evenly together, we were able to use small vehicles for the transportation of our cargo cross-country and back to the west coast. Doc drove a four-wheel drive truck fitted with a custom made camper that contained false compartments built into the floor, ceiling, and walls, designed by a friend of his and Arnold’s, to conceal the large quantities of Mexican marijuana he had been supplying to customers in the Midwest.
The Little One drove a second four-wheel drive truck, but this one had a camper shell on it and a hidden compartment under the plywood bed platform, which was furnished with a mattress, pillows, and blankets. Curtains over the side and back windows completed the look. We touched up both trucks with a few fishing and hunting decals, so they would fit in with the summer vacationer look we wanted to project on the main highways. I drove a back up car as a lead or scout vehicle, and for chasing down parts or a tow truck in case of a mechanical breakdown on the road. It was also used for transportation around town once we arrived at our destination, to avoid overexposing our trucks and campers going to meetings and conducting business. The shell, camper, and all of the vehicles were under anonymous names that couldn’t be traced back to anyone, in case we somehow picked up heat or needed to walk away from them to escape arrest. Doc, the Little One, and myself caravanned on Interstate 70 to Massachusetts, to become familiar with the route for our return trip back to California. Soon after arriving, we called Arnold, who had stayed behind to tie up loose ends with his probation officer and to avoid being out of state any longer than was necessary, arranging to pick him up at the airport in Boston the next day. When he arrived the following afternoon, we drove to Hyannis Port to meet with Marty and Rob. They were stoked, explaining everything was on schedule and the hash was to be unloaded in a couple of days just south of Martha’s Vineyard, then brought to shore in trailerables under the cover of summer weekend recreational boat traffic. They took us to the stash house where the five tons were to be delivered after the load hit land, and we arranged to meet there the following Sunday morning to weigh and divide it up. Marty gave his assurance he and Rob would be at the house early, but if by chance we arrived before they did, he showed us a spot where a key would be hidden so we wouldn’t have to hang around outside. Sunday morning came and we drove from our hotel room to the stash house located between the towns of Mattapoisett and Marion, near Buzzard’s Bay.
We pulled our trucks and car into the large yard in front of the house and went to go find Marty and Rob. Our knocks went unanswered, so I went to the spot where the front door key was supposed to be hidden, but it wasn’t there. After searching several other places I gave up looking and went back to report the news to Doc, Arnold, and the Little One. While standing around debating what to do about our predicament, we heard a vehicle coming up the driveway, and figured it was Marty and Rob finally arriving. The closer it got, the louder the engine sounded, causing us to believe that Marty and Rob were leading a truck full of hash to the house as expected, so we got ready to go to work. A lone driver in a large UHaul rental pulled up to the front of the house and parked. The guy sitting in the truck wasn't Marty, Rob, or anyone else we knew, and, by the way he was checking us out and hesitating, it was clear he didn't recognize us either. We all froze in place, staring and vibing each other out, before anyone made a move. Finally, the driver jumped out of the cab wild-eyed, and in a panicked voice asked, “Where in the fuck are Marty and Rob?” After explaining we were waiting for them too, he got pissed off. They were supposed to have met the brother earlier to escort him to the house. The driver explained he had only been here once before, and when no one showed, began looking for it by memory, and his search had taken him twice as long as it would have, had Marty and Rob been at the meeting spot as planned. You could tell the brother was just off the front lines of the operation and still shell-shocked from the activity, and in his mind, decided he had gone far beyond the call of duty with all the extra running around and exposure he had endured due to the failure of Marty and Rob to stick with the game plan.
The driver was irritated for being placed in jeopardy, and as one who has been in that position many times before, it was easy to relate to where the brother was coming from. He was so jacked he didn't want to wait another second and, opening the back of the truck, started throwing the inner tubes of hash onto the driveway. It was obvious there would be no changing his mind, so we had the Little One break into the house any way he could and I jumped into the truck and began helping the brother toss out the inner tubes, so we could get him unloaded and on his way. As soon as the Little One figured out how to get into the house, he opened the front door and he, Doc and Arnold started taking the inner tubes inside, and out of the driveway. We were throwing them out of the truck faster than they could be stacked inside the different rooms of the house, so by the time the truck was emptied there was still a mountain of inner tubes left in the middle of the driveway, in front of the small beach cottage. The driver was relieved, happy just to get this gorilla off his back. He’d done his job and wanted to leave, so we shook hands as he jumped into the cab of the truck and took off. Marty or Rob still hadn’t shown, and our main concern for the moment was to get the inner tubes out of plain sight and hidden before any unannounced guests drove up on us with the stash piled in the driveway. In spite of the danger of being busted, we were determined not to lose the load and began transferring the hash into the house as fast as possible. During all of the commotion, we had become totally focused on the task at hand, and let our guards down, but fortunately, our karma was good, and our was timing perfect. Just as the last inner tube was taken into the house, out of nowhere, a UPS truck suddenly drove up on us. We were caught completely by surprise in our preoccupation with getting the stash into the house and, until recovering from our initial shock, just stood around trying to look cool, waiting for the deliveryman to make his move.
There was electricity in the air, with all the high anxiety from the activity that had just taken place, heightened all the more by our concern that the guy would sense something illegal going on. If he did become suspicious, we could either abandon the load, or stick it out and possibly go down with it. Neither prospect was very appealing, so when the driver stepped out of the truck I got it together and walked over to greet him. My survival instincts were at an all time high as I forced myself to act as calm as possible, trying to come off as a vacationing fisherman, attempting to diffuse the tension in the air and disguise our real intent. Approaching the truck, I looked the driver straight in the eyes, searching for a clue to his true motive for coming to the house. In my mind I was asking, is he really what he seems to be; or did the driver of the Uhaul dump the load off to set us up, or had he unknowingly been under surveillance and followed by the delivery man, who is in reality a disguised FBI or DEA agent, with backup not far away, ready to close in when the signal was given? It was all very possible, and the timing of the truck’s arrival had been too critical for us not to be wary of a trap, which had everyone watching for signs of danger. Shaking hands, I immediately picked up he wasn’t a cop and had no clue as to what was going down at the house. The driver said he had a package for the resident and needed someone to sign for it. As he rummaged through the back of the truck, I looked through the front room window and, to my dismay, spotted the black inner tubes lying all over the floor, thrown there in our haste to get them off the driveway. To those of us involved, their appearance was a bust. But to our advantage, a hash scam being done right under his nose was the last thought in the mind of the UPS man, and he didn’t pick up on anything out of the ordinary. We tried to act as normal as possible, while constantly, discreetly, diverting his attention away from the window at every opportunity. Fortunately, it wasn't an important enough package to require ID, so I signed a phony name on the delivery sheet, he handed me the box, wished us good luck with our fishing trip, and then headed down the driveway.
We went into the house and smoked a couple of oilers, getting recentered and our hearts out of our throats; then began weighing our portion of the load and packing it into the trucks. Marty and Rob still hadn’t shown, and we were starting to feel much like the brother who had brought the load to the house, not seeing any advantage in waiting around for more mishaps or surprises. In a strange way, it was as if the whole trip was on automatic pilot, whether Marty or Rob made an appearance or not, and seemed self-determined and karmically destined to succeed on its own. I had worked on a lot of smuggling trips before, and they were all different, but I had never experienced one where the principle partners didn’t show to pick up their cut, which was very unsettling, and gave us all the more reason to get our hash into the trucks, hide the rest of the stash, secure the house the best we could, and for safety’s sake put as many miles between us and the area as quickly as possible. We had just finished packing the trucks when Marty and Rob finally arrived. They wanted to sit around and bullshit, but by that time we had seen too many little fuck-ups, that could have potentially caused major damage, and just wanted to get out of the state of Massachusetts before there were any more unexpected surprises. I had learned from my own experiences and from observing others in this business, that it was usually the little mistakes that brought down big scams, and seeing commitments, meetings, and methods continually overlooked and neglected, made me a little nervous because I’d paid the price for ignorance too many times in the past. We stayed at the house long enough to describe what had gone down while they were away, gave a weight count, then wished them luck and got on the road. The trip across country went smoothly, and about five or six days later, we pulled into one of our new safe houses in Pauma Valley. We unpacked the hash, and split the load, with Doc and Arnold taking their portion to a stash pad in the San Bernardino Mountains, while the Little One and I stored ours at the old avocado ranch. After our group was secured, contact was made with Marty to make sure he and Rob had made it safely out. He relayed to me everything was cool and that they were taking their hash to Canada to sell. That was good news, meaning we wouldn’t flood the west coast market and have to compete with each other, which would cut down on the amount of time we’d have to sit on the load, and increase our chances of success. Within three weeks, all eleven thousand pounds were inhaled or otherwise absorbed into the flow, without a trace or trail, turning out to be the smuggler’s ultimate dream scam.
After the hash was sold and the stash pads were cleaned, we all took much needed vacations to mellow out and re-energize ourselves. Doc and Arnold went to Park City, Utah, to do some snow skiing and my family and the Little One flew to Maui, Hawaii to get some sun and surf. After spending a couple of months on the Islands, we returned to San Diego, where we’d been living for the past year and a half, as Laguna and Orange County had become too crowded for comfort. Over the past twelve years the beach areas had changed quite a bit, and most of our brothers and sisters were migrating to outlying areas away from cities, into other states, or even out of the country to escape the relentless pursuit of the brain police and suburban sprawl that was on the rise during the seventies. In late November 1979, when we’d been back from our vacation for about a week, Marty called and wanted to get together for a meeting. He came to my house in San Diego to spend the night and tell me what was on his mind. He and Rob were stoked on the quality of the hash and how smoothly the on-load in Lebanon had gone. There were no problems turning it in Canada, and their market wanted more. Marty said everything went well, finally coming to the point that he and Rob wanted to do another scam. At first, I hesitated, until hearing what they had together, and then I began to give it some serious consideration. Evidently, Rob was a workaholic, and Marty just kind of flowed with him, so while we were kicking back, they hadn't skipped a beat, going right ahead to set up another transatlantic crossing and off-load, hoping we would work with them again in the coming summer. They had a friend who had been island hopping in the Mediterranean for the past year and was now docked in Portugal on a seventyfoot seaworthy yacht, broke, and looking for work. They hired the brother and were putting him up in Portugal, paying his bills until everything came together, to keep him committed. Another brother had turned them on to an area with a lot of coastline and boat traffic which, if done right, would absorb our illegal activities coming into U.S. territory. Ironically, the stretch of water we would attempt to infiltrate lay directly under the gaze of Annapolis, the nation's most prestigious naval academy, and our intended landing was on shores only a thirty minute car ride from the Beltway of Washington D.C., the nerve center of the most powerful nation on earth. Quite a karmic confluence for two such opposing forces, but Maryland was to be the target of our psychedelic invasion.
Marty and Rob already had several stash houses rented around the Chesapeake Bay and four, thirtyfootplus cabin cruisers docked in the area. The only piece to the puzzle not yet in place, was that the brother in Portugal didn’t want to take his million dollar yacht anywhere near the Lebanese coast. He had been in the vicinity long enough to see the war escalating and the intense international and U.S. political and military attention focused on the region. He didn’t want to jeopardize himself and his boat by possibly picking up heat, or being mistaken for a gunrunner or insurgent by either side, that might cause him to be blown out of the water with the “take no prisoners, shoot-first-ask-questions-later” tactics of both Israelis and Arabs. He had no problem with making the Atlantic crossing but wanted nothing to do with the Mediterranean leg of the journey or sailing through the narrow, twelve-mile stretch of water between the Straits of Gibraltar. It just so happened that before Doc left for home, after loading the five tons, the Ma’ahad family informed him they had access to a two-hundred-fifty foot tramp steamer that could be loaded with hashish and sent to us. With that in mind, I told Marty we had a possible solution to the problem and would get back to him in a few days after meeting with my partners and talking things over. I called everyone together and laid out what Marty wanted to do. Since the last scam had ended well, despite a few minor glitches, we felt pretty good about going for it again. There was also a certain amount of shared satisfaction in the idea of sticking it to the heartless bureaucrats who had relentlessly sought to destroy the counterculture for so many years. Putting a load of hash right on their front doorstep, past the billions of dollars worth of security devices used by the government in their ongoing political assault against us, would demonstrate that nothing could stop the FORCE stirring within the Cosmic Warriors of the sixties, and their mission as Messengers of Change. This was going to be our personal blow to the Beast, and the more we discussed it, the more stoked we became. The feeling among us was that this scam wasn’t just about money and good stash; we had already accomplished that. It was to be a challenge and statement to a government determined to control our lives, that there was no chance of them winning the battle over GODgiven rights, and the freedom to pursue responsible, personal enlightenment, regardless the amount of political muscle, or number of people killed or incarcerated, by its immoral law enforcement policies. While going over the logistics of the scam we determined that a rust bucket tramp steamer sitting off the U.S. coast would definitely be a bust, but as a working boat in the Mediterranean, it could be the perfect vessel for transporting the hash from Lebanon to the yacht in Portugal waiting to make the Atlantic crossing. Marty and Rob had their off-loads set up to accommodate twice as much as we had brought in before, so our goal was to secure ten tons of the kind red Lebanese hash for the trip back. fter our meeting, I contacted Marty and told him we were in.