Jim Popkin marvels at the story of Mauner Mahecha, a high-school educated drug smuggler who recruited members of the Colombian navy to a build a fleet of subs:
Mahecha spared no expense. He had a fat R&D budget and spent millions of dollars building each submarine. These aren’t the crude semisubmersibles that drug runners have used for years to cruise just below the ocean’s surface. Those vessels can’t dive to avoid detection and are often just cigarette boats encased in wood and fiberglass. Mahecha’s Kevlar-coated submarines, by contrast, can submerge to 60 feet, go 10 days without refueling, and glide underwater for up to 18 hours at a clip. Unbelievably, they were made by hand in the mangrove swamps of Colombia and Ecuador, in desolate outposts with no access to electricity.
(Photo: Colombian soldiers guard one of the homemade submarines found in a rural southwestern Columbia. The submersible could transport up to 8 tons of cocaine at a time, the Colombian army said. By Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty Images)
The Dish 