Coincidence - Alan May [7]
After dinner Melissa was on the phone letting her friends know the good news. They all offered encouragement and support, promising to write—maybe they could even visit her at some port if it was allowed. Stephanie, now that she was confronted with the reality that one of her best friends would be gone for so long, was beginning to wish she had applied to Blue Water, too. Why hadn’t she thought of doing so? Hard work, sure, but hearing Melissa go on about it, it sounded like fun.
Melissa hardly slept that night. Every time her eyelids started to droop and her body started to give in to fatigue, she was jolted awake as the thought hit her again: In just a few weeks, the adventure of her life was going to begin.
4
“That’s the plan. You in or not?”
Stefano Bortardi craned his neck, trying to get a glimpse of Esteban’s face to gauge his reaction, but all he could see at this angle was his rough hand holding a cigarette through the cell bars. This was, in fact, the view of Esteban he was used to—the way he always thought of him during their three-year friendship at the Moore Haven Correctional Facility in Glades County, Florida. It took him by surprise every time he saw the rest of Esteban Bedoya out in the exercise yard; somehow he never pictured the figure attached to that hand as quite so short, quite so heavy. There was no denying that at five six, two hundred fifty pounds, Esteban was fat.
Esteban had had a successful career as a bank robber for years until his wife, who shortly thereafter became his ex-wife, ratted on him. He had carried a gun but never used it, relying instead on his brains to get him in and out of a job with no bloodshed. He knew how to use one, though. He’d spent six years in the army before deciding that was enough discipline for him. The rebellion against discipline had taken its toll. He was younger than Stefano by several years. He had been as good looking, too, but had let himself get badly out of shape. Anyone looking at them would have assumed Esteban was much older. Stefano was of medium build, lean and fit, his black hair just beginning to gray. His only distinguishing feature was his nose, which was long and pointy. If anyone commented on it, he would say, “All the better to smell you with, my dear,” at which he roared with laughter. His education had ended after two years in the eleventh grade. He had ten years of experience in drug running and had developed a wide network of contacts around the world. It was going to be easy to get back into the business when he was on the outside again. The only reason he’d been caught the last time was that his car ran out of gas and the police stopped to offer assistance. It was one of the little detail things that had haunted him in his cell. No way would he allow a thing like that to happen again.
Over the last three years the two men didn’t lack for time to reminisce about their capers, good and bad. They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
“Well, hombre? You with us or not?” Stefano asked again.
“Whoa,” Esteban said, exhaling a mouthful of smoke. “You gonna steal a vanload of perico from the cartel, steal a boat big enough to take the coke and six guys to some island in the middle of the Pacific, and then send the stuff back here by airplane?”
“You got it.”
“You loco!”
“Maybe so. But soon I’m gonna be loco and loaded.”
“We been locked up here three years,” Esteban said. “How you know the cartel still trucking cocaína same way they used to?”
“Don’t, but what I do know is they moved it that way two weeks ago. My brother Juan seen the trucks and guards following same route from Cali to Medellin, just like