American Notes

When Miami police captured Rafael Soto, 35, running down a darkened street soaking wet one night last week, they did not buy his story that he had fallen overboard while fishing. A little after 1 a.m., a Coast Guard helicopter had spotted a speedboat running without lights toward Miami. As the craft was pursued across Biscayne Bay, three men jumped overboard in an attempt to escape. Soto is believed to be one of them. The cargo on board: 1,909 lbs. of nearly pure cocaine. With a street value of $575 million, it was the largest coke seizure by the Coast Guard to date.

The dope underground's problems were not over. Half an hour later, police in Florida City, a small town 25 miles to the south, stopped a Winnebago for a minor traffic violation and discovered 2,094 lbs. of marijuana inside. But that was only an hors d'oeuvre. Before long a second Winnebago was stopped. Inside were 31 duffel bags stuffed with more than a ton of cocaine, a record haul for town police. Admiring colleagues at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington noted that the two tons of cocaine seized in one day, with a total value of more than $1 billion, compared quite favorably with the total of twelve tons captured by all U.S. law officers in 1984.