24th January 2012
All Aboard the Cocaine Express
“Twenty-one metres long and constructed mainly of fibreglass, the craft had room for a six-member crew and 6,435 litres of diesel fuel. It was equipped with bunk beds, a ballast mechanism, a global positioning system, a 346-horsepower diesel engine, “scrubbing” devices to clean the air, a conning tower and a periscope with a night-vision camera. One estimate put the cost of constructing such a sophisticated device in the remote backwoods of South America at about $5 million. But that’s pocket change when measured against the anticipated value of the vehicle’s intended cargo — up to eight tons of pure cocaine, worth about $160 million wholesale in Dallas, Texas.
