BLACK TUNA DIARIES
PART I
The HIGH TIMES
(1974-1979)
CHAPTER 1
DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD
[Excerpts]
Everyone knows that a black cat has nine lives, but a Black Tuna only has seven, Let's start with a true accounting of how I lost life number two by firing squad in the jungles of Columbia.
Late 1977
The gun barrel painfully prodding the base of my spine was attached to an ancient M- 1 carbine. a present from my Uncle Sam to the Columbian Army. Attached to the carbine was a short, tan Indio in the uniform of the Columbian Army. He forced me into the back of a rusting step-van, parked on a dirt trail, near a clandestine airstrip, deep in the mountainous jungle of Columbia. It was over 100 degrees in the damp equatorial forest and even hotter in the moldy interior of the truck. Our entire loading crew crowded onto the van's two narrow benches, a dozen very large, fierce Guarjiran Indians, plus two pilots-Captain Beercan and Bo, an ex-NFL, player also called El Gigante. We were captured on the airstrip. The army, claiming they were not paid the customary "landing fees," said they were taking us to the nearby town of La Cienega to shoot us as a warning to others who might neglect their mordida.
Our DC-3, and its cargo of 5000 pounds of Santa Maria Gold, the most sought after marijuana in South America, sat on the airstrip guarded by a squadron of Columbian soldiers. In truth, we'd paid our "landing fees," but the owners of the busy jungle airfield had misappropriated the money. It was the rainy season, and this was the only usable landing field on the Atlantic Coast, so they'd load four or five planes a day, but only pay mordida for two or three. It was our bad luck to be on the field when the army showed up to collect past due accounts. Held at gunpoint in the equatorial sun for over four hours with nothing to drink, we were already dehydrated. Climbing into the step-van was like leaving a sauna for an oven. The last to enter, I sat by the open rear doors. Captain Beercan, in the far dark corner, was already passed out, while El Gigante. squeezed between two large Guarjirans, tried not to look scared. I was still stoned from handling 5,000 pounds of primo pot in the hot sun. To avoid thinking about the firing squad, I closed my eyes and asked myself, "Self, how in the hell did you end up here?"...