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. 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 helped capture a 100-ft.-long 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.”
The subs are also a testament to the ingenuity of traffickers working at secluded dry docks deep inside the equatorial jungle. “Pictures do not do them justice,” says Bergman. “You have to see the subs to get a perspective of how large they are and how much effort it takes to build them.” The 70-footer captured in February, for example, is a fascinating hybrid of high and low technology. It sports a large conning tower with night-vision cameras. The stern holds a 346-horsepower diesel engine and tanks that can hold 1,700 gallons of fuel — enough for the two-week run to cocaine drop-off points near Mexico and Central America. Inside are compressed-air tanks for ballast, bunk beds, GPS equipment and touchscreen controls. It can cut its engine and dive down some 30 ft. to hide from interdiction boats and aircraft.
Yet the sub is just as clearly artisanal. Its hull and tubing were fashioned from materials you can buy at Home Depot: fiberglass, wood and polyvinyl chloride. Colombian navy Lieutenant Fernando Monroy, a submariner who piloted the confiscated drug sub to the Pacific coast navy base at Bahia Malaga, says poor ventilation pushed up the temperature inside to 100F , making it hard to breathe.
In fact, one retired Colombian trafficker, who made three runs to Mexico at the helm of semisubs, described the conditions as “hellish,” with the crew subsisting on crackers, canned beans and milk. There was no toilet; the smell of excrement, cocaine and diesel fuel was overwhelming — yet they rarely stopped because it’s easier to detect stationary vessels. “Our orders were to keep moving,” the trafficker, who asked not to be identified, told TIME. “There’s always an armed person on board to keep watch over the crew and the cargo. If anyone starts to panic or mutiny, his orders are to eliminate the troublemaker.”
Monroy and other officials predict the drug mafias will make the necessary adjustments — they always do — to improve comfort, stealth, range and payload. Indeed, the advances in maritime smuggling are evident in Bahia Malaga, where impounded vessels have been lined up like museum pieces. They include go-fast boats that can travel 80 m.p.h. and outrun U.S. Coast Guard vessels
