With Diego not having to constantly stop to search for evidence of Gina and her abductors’ trail, we made better time, covering the 8.3 miles in under six hours.

We approached cautiously as we neared the exact coordinates. Vern grabbed one of the automatic rifles, and I grabbed the shotgun.

Vern pushed aside a large branch, then stopped. He asked, “Do you smell that?”

I did. It was like sitting in an overly chlorinated hot tub ten feet from a Conoco station. “Yeah,” I said. “What is it?”

“Chemicals. I’m guessing there’s a drug lab up ahead. Probably where Gina’s call came from.”

I raced forward, gun out in front of me, and crashed through five feet of thick brush. The jungle opened up slightly, and there was what amounted to a ten-foot-square above-ground pool made from thick plastic sheeting. Surrounding the jungle “pool” were five multicolored plastic drums, and thirty feet beyond them was a small structure constructed of bamboo poles and a sagging gray tarp.

“Looks abandoned,” Vern said, sidling up next to me.

I nodded.

Gina had been here seven days ago on August 9, but she was gone now.

Vern and I padded twenty feet forward to the rectangular pool. The black plastic sheeting was elevated using tree stumps, small boulders, and several small bamboo poles. The sheeting angled downward, and there was a thin brown layer of film on top. Pockets of brown water had collected across its surface.

“It’s a coca tank,” Vern said.

I nodded at the large drums and said, “Those the chemicals we smell?”

He nodded and said, “Chlorine, gasoline, sulfuric acid, and ammonia.”

I had a rudimentary knowledge of cocaine from my time as a police officer, but most of my insights had to do with the powdered form that found its way to the street. I asked, “So how do they make it?”

Vern spent the next minute giving me a crash course on how to make cocaine in the jungle.

He said, “First you start with the leaf of the coca plant. I’d be willing to bet within half a mile of here there’s a decent amount of coca being grown. Judging by the size of this tank, I’d say between four to six acres.

“After they harvest the leaves and bring them here—I’m not sure exactly why they picked this spot; there’s probably a river somewhere nearby where they could float in all the chemicals—they dump the leaves into the vat, then soak them in chlorine and gasoline. The cocaine separates from the leaves and rises to the top of the tank. They skim the top, pour it into those large drums, and add sulfuric acid and ammonia. The cocaine separates further, then they filter this through a cloth. What’s left, the residue, is heated, and it crystallizes into a solid cocaine base. The process takes three or four days.”