SMUGGLER: Barry Seal

After a refueling stop at Los Brasiles Airport in Managua and a meeting with Federico Vaughan, the cartel's man in the Nicaraguan Interior Ministry (the agency responsible for internal security), Barry Seal was eager to get back to Miami with the 1,500 pounds of cocaine. The DEA was waiting for him.

Vaughan had assured Seal that he would have no trouble leaving Nicaraguan airspace, so it must have come as quite a surprise to Barry when Nicaraguan antiaircraft gunners shot him down shortly after take off.

After Seal spent a night in jail, Vaughan helped him move the cocaine into an airport hanger for safekeeping. Then Vaughan drove Barry to a ranch southeast of Managua where Escobar and Rodriguez-Gacha were lying low after being double-crossed in Panama by General Noriega.

On June 6, Seal climbed behind the controls of Escobar's Piper Cheyenne and flew it back to Miami, without the cocaine. Later that month, he bought an old Air Force C-123k cargo plane, tail number N441OF. Barry dubbed the airplane "The Fat Lady."

Later, that same plane would entangle the Reagan White House in a scandal that became known as Iran-Contra.