CASPER
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In recent years, the boat of choice for Colombian cocaine smugglers has been the semisubmersible, a vessel that cruises just below the ocean's surface with only its air and exhaust pipes sticking out of the water. Since the semisubs have proved so successful at dodging interdiction, it seemed inevitable that traffickers - who in the past have commandeered entire passenger jets to move their product - would upgrade to even more elusive full-fledged submarines. But narco U-boats were a murky legend of the depths, the drug-cartel version of the Loch Ness monster.
Not anymore. In February, at a clandestine shipyard near Colombia's Pacific coast, the military impounded a homemade submarine 70 ft. (21 m) long - with three tons of cocaine nearby, ready to be loaded into a storage compartment that can hold eight tons. That discovery came seven months after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) helped capture a 100-ft.-long (30 m) diesel-powered sub along a river tributary to the Pacific south of the Colombian border in Ecuador. It was about to make its maiden voyage, and though no drugs were found aboard, officials say they're certain it was a narcosub. Both busts make fairly plain that Colombian traffickers have now taken "a quantum leap in technology," says Jay Bergman, who heads the DEA's Andean division. "It's the difference between building a bicycle and building a car."
Not anymore. In February, at a clandestine shipyard near Colombia's Pacific coast, the military impounded a homemade submarine 70 ft. (21 m) long - with three tons of cocaine nearby, ready to be loaded into a storage compartment that can hold eight tons. That discovery came seven months after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) helped capture a 100-ft.-long (30 m) diesel-powered sub along a river tributary to the Pacific south of the Colombian border in Ecuador. It was about to make its maiden voyage, and though no drugs were found aboard, officials say they're certain it was a narcosub. Both busts make fairly plain that Colombian traffickers have now taken "a quantum leap in technology," says Jay Bergman, who heads the DEA's Andean division. "It's the difference between building a bicycle and building a car."