Times were good for Carlsbad pilot John Ward as he smuggled cocaine across the U.S. for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. But the men at the other end--they worried him.
By Richard Marosi—
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer (Part 3)John Charles Ward would take flight in the half-light before dawn, when he could race down the runway without headlights and ascend into the cloaking embrace of an overcast sky.
Soaring above the crowded California freeways in the single-engine aircraft, he'd relax, pour himself a whiskey and Seven and plan his hopscotch route to Pennsylvania. Inside the plane were 242 pounds of cocaine; outside, nothing but clouds.
"There are no curbs in the sky," Ward said. "There's no place for anybody to pull you over."
Flying shipments for the Sinaloa drug cartel was Ward's best gig in years. No street dealing, packaging or other grubby chores required. He delivered cocaine to a distributor in Pennsylvania and returned with duffel bags stuffed with up to $2.8 million, keeping a few 6-inch stacks of cash for himself.
Taking off from Riverside County's Corona Municipal Airport at dawn, Ward could be back the next day, feeding twenties and hundreds into the counting machine at his home in Carlsbad.
Still, he had some nagging concerns. The Mexican distributors in Pennsylvania were trying to cut costs by hiring immigrant truckers to haul drugs from Southern California. And U.S. agents were keeping a close watch on traffickers in the historic towns of Lancaster County, Pa., a distribution hub.
Ward was an expert at covering his tracks. He usually stayed at a cottage-style motel just off the runway at Smoketown Airport, the self-described "Gateway to Pennsylvania's Amish Country." After midnight he donned black clothing and lugged cocaine-filled gym bags from the plane to his room. He avoided people, paid cash for most purchases and, if anybody asked, said he was an aircraft broker.
"The money never stopped. The product never stopped," he said. "Everything was moving continuously."
Veteran of the tradeBy the time President Nixon declared the "war on drugs" in 1971, Ward had been transporting dope to California for years. He grew weed at a farm he owned in Missouri and shipped it by truck. A few years later, responding to demand for better pot, he partnered with marijuana farmers in Mexican villages and hired pilots -- some of them Vietnam War veterans -- to fly the drugs across the border.
But they were unreliable prima donnas. So he decided to get a pilot's license. He went to Hawaii to train in crosswinds, headwinds and on island hops.
"I said to myself: 'I'm going to be the best smuggler there is. I'm going to be the one without an attitude,' " Ward said.
Over three decades, he piloted more than 50 planes, from cramped Beechcraft Musketeer three-seaters to an Aero Commander 500 that he'd jam with 1,500 pounds of marijuana. In the 1970s and '80s, he made short trips to northern Mexico, landing on runways marked by burning tires, and made long flights through the Sierra Madre, where joyous farmers rode alongside his plane on horseback, shooting pistols into the air.
Ward was scrappy and resourceful, an adrenaline junkie with a taste for the finer things. His smuggling paid for a desert estate, a sailboat named Romancing and Dom Perignon-fueled parties. He relished the challenges of aerial smuggling and devised ingenious ways to avoid detection.
He'd fly across the border skimming treetops to evade radar. He'd land in the desert, at improvised airstrips where his crews laid generator-powered runway lights. For engine troubles, he packed a tool bag with fuses and wrenches. For human problems, he tucked a 9-millimeter handgun in his waistband.
One step aheadFederal authorities, who had been aware of Ward's air smuggling since 1975, chased him in the desert sky, bugged his phones and planted tracking devices on his aircraft, some of which he found and kept behind his bar at home to show off to his drinking buddies.
In 1981, customs agents seized three of his planes at airports in Riverside County. He was convicted of drug conspiracy charges as the leader of 13 pilots and ground crew members. He served four years of an eight-year sentence, and took to the skies again.
In 1990, federal agents saw Ward's plane touch down on a landing strip near Death Valley. The ground crew unloaded 500 pounds of marijuana, and Ward flew off into the night. A government pilot gave chase with his lights out but lost him. Agents found the plane later at Banning Municipal Airport. The belly was coated with dirt, the engine still hot. But Ward was gone.
The agents caught his crew members, who fingered Ward. He faced conspiracy charges in that case and another in Riverside County. He was looking at up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
His attorney, Tom George Kontos, a former federal prosecutor from Los Angeles, negotiated a plea agreement that resulted in a year's house arrest.
Ward was forever grateful to the sharp-dressing attorney who he said was skilled at swaying judges. "He could charm the birds out of the trees," Ward said.
Kontos and Ward became close friends, attending each other's weddings and investing in a used-car business. Ward referred several traffickers to Kontos; Kontos sold Ward his house in Carlsbad, paid for with drug money.
Ward named his second son after Kontos. "He described me as the brother he never had," Ward said. "He was my hero."
'Pouring concrete'Ward and his wife lived in a large, two-story home that backed onto an ocean-fed lagoon in Carlsbad. Neighbors would see him tinkering in his garage where he was designing an airplane-towing device. They rarely got so much as a wave hello, but they figured it was the aloof manner of an eccentric amateur inventor. They had no idea that Ward buried money in his yard or flew drugs across the country.
Ward began flying for the Sinaloa cartel in 2004, teaming with Rafael Dominguez, a racehorse breeder from Riverside County who had connections to drug distributors in Southern California.
When Dominguez had a cocaine load ready for shipment, he'd phone Ward, telling him that he had lined up another job "pouring concrete."
The cocaine was the best Ward had ever tasted, and was believed to come from a drug distribution network headed by Victor Emilio Cazares, allegedly a top cartel lieutenant in Sinaloa. The bricks were labeled with a scorpion logo.
"It was uncut … a pearly color, flaky, with a candy kind of smell to it," Ward said. "People would pull your arms off for that stuff."
Ward could carry nearly 250 pounds of cocaine per flight and he charged $450 per pound, earning about $110,000 per trip, plus $5,000 for expenses.
Truckers, some with spotty records, delivered nearly double that amount for half Ward's fee.
Ward didn't like the cost-cutting and careless behavior of the East Coast distributors to whom he delivered the drugs. He'd had words with one of them, Noe Coronado, who cultivated a Culiacan clubster look -- pompadour and shiny rayon pants -- that stood out in the bluejeans-and-baseball-cap world of Lancaster, Pa.
Ward worried that Coronado's lack of discretion put them both at risk. Nevertheless, it was hard to resist the tug of another deal. "It wasn't just a smuggling job. It was my career," Ward said. "I put a lot of thought into it and tried to see where others made mistakes."
When Ward got a call about another shipment, he would drop the tools in his garage, pocket his two-way radio and grab his GPS case and overnight bag. At the door, he would kiss his wife goodbye.
"Don't ask me when I'm coming home. Don't ask me where I'm going…. I'll just see you later," he would say.
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