Locked Up Abroad: An Alaskan's True Story of Adventure, Incarceration, and Escape.

By David Kunkel

Locked Up Abroad is a true story of a young drug dealer and his friend turned smugglers. His shoe-string caper covered 6,000 miles from Europe to Afghanistan to Greece. The high of quick money morphed into capture. A Corrupt judicial system introduced them to a hellish 200-year-old island prison fortress. The only way out of the this devil’s den was escape. Locked Up Abroad is a convincing statement of the perils of illegal drugs and unlawful activity. Only the author escaped. His companions either died in prison or are still doing time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publication Consultants
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781594332500

David Kunkel

David Kunkel, a transplanted Californian, moved to Alaska at the turn of this century. He came North to reunite with his brother who passed away soon after their reunion. David, the youngest of four brothers, is an avid traveler. Traveling for David is almost an illness. He has visited 36 countries and circled the globe twice. Before his retirement he worked as an electrical design drafter. A widower since 1987, David claims that living in Alaska gave him the needed push to write his Locked Up Abroad story.

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CHAPTER 1

1969 Altamont

Woodstock West

SHE WAS BLONDE AND BEAUTIFUL, A SECOND-YEAR COLLEGE student at Hayward State. She didn’t talk much and we had what I called strained romantic experiences, but she was beautiful and I couldn’t help wanting to be with her. She was cold, I guess, but she was so beautiful and didn’t say much—perfect girl, right? I cruised with her in my ‘56 Jaguar to Altamont Speedway in December 1969. High on red wine and mushrooms, trying to leave opiates behind and expand my mind. It was quite a concert. It should have been renamed Hell’s Angels in Cold Blood. The Angels actually punched out Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane. Mick Jagger tried to soothe the crowd just before a knife fight broke out; the beer-fueled Angels stabbed and beat a black guy when he pulled a gun in a psychotic rage. He died along with two or three other concert-goers, who were run over while in their sleeping bags by folks frantically leaving the concert. These fools were hit-and-running in hysteria.

Two days later we came home and came down. Wow, this was great, but it had to stop! I was broke. Luckily I had a car and I was cultivating some old contacts to trust and front me some weed to sell in Hawaii. I needed to make some money. I had an idea, a great idea that would certainly make my money troubles go away, at least for a while. But first small steps, and Save! Save! Save!

Here I go casting my fate to the wind, come what may. You’ve got to take a chance and believe in yourself, right?

CHAPTER 2

Hawaii

IN HAWAII IN 1969 THERE WAS NO KONA GOLD, MAUI WOWIE, OR PunaBuds. Thus, opportunity knocked and through the kindness of a close friend I’ll call David, and my partner in crime, Tom, we began taking suitcases full of Panama Red and Acapulco Gold to Oahu in the winter of 1969. David, from Mill Valley, was close to a dealer friend who fronted Tom and me the pot. My brothers Marcus and Paul had a house on the North Shore of Oahu, and had sufficient contacts who needed their craving for quality weed satisfied. We paid between $150 and $200 a pound, with each of our four suitcases containing about 40 to 50 pounds. Back then there were no dogs, no X-ray machines, and no snoopy cops to contend with as long as you looked somewhat presentable. It didn’t take long, thanks to my brothers’ friends, to move the pot, creating new friendships, new contacts for the future, and good vibes all around. My brothers got a percentage of each sale. The weather and the surf were beautiful, but it was soon time to fly home and return in about two weeks to do it all over again. We cleared about four to five grand after paying off our backer, David. We made our plans—just one more trip and we would have enough money for our big score. Our big score would require passports, shots, and some careful planning. Some close friends called it harebrained, others gutsy. We simply saw the dollar signs and an opportunity to make a score that would set us up quite nicely for the foreseeable future.

This was not a new venture for Tom. Two years earlier, on a shoestring, he and Hugh Bell, also a friend of mine, had planned and executed this type of international adventure. Unfortunately, it ended badly. Hugh was dead. Tom suffered short-term amnesia. Tom often told me he had wished for the amnesia to last longer. He felt a guilt over Hugh’s death he could not shake. The details of this tragic adventure will be revealed in due time, but first, a man without a plan is a fool. We weren’t fools and needed to further detail our plan and learn from past mistakes.

Our second trek to Hawaii went even better; life was great, the colors of Hawaii so intense. We dropped acid and watched the surfers at the Pipeline and North Shore ride some 15- to 20-foot waves. The road was lined with cars; tanned, beautiful bodies adorned the beach. This was living, man!

I was young, making money, and about to make a whole lot more. Would my karma hold out? Would Lady Luck see us through? Or would tragedy again raise its ugly head and dash the plans of another fool? We hoped not.

CHAPTER 3

East Coast

WE WERE FLUSH WITH CASH, AT LEAST, FLUSH ENOUGH TO finance our little dream. We flew home from Hawaii to the Bay area, spent some time with family and girlfriends, got our shots for yellow fever, bubonic plague, hepatitis, and a couple more. These safeguards made us sick as dogs for about four days. I guess you have to experience a disease before you can build up immunity to it.

It was time for provisions, down bags, warm clothes, and our passports finally came in the mail. Tom and I decided to take a few quality pounds of weed to his friends in Boston. Good folks we would stay with for a few days until we flew to London to begin our adventure. It was a big hit. No one had seen quality weed like this in a long time. Tom’s friends Zeke and Sara really made us feel at home. We met some great people and really spread the quality smoke around. They happily paid $300 a half pound for it. Who can blame them—after all, it was Da-Kine.

The three days in Boston literally flew by. It was actually happening. Our idea was blooming, taking flight; literally not long ago it had all seemed so far off. It seemed the detours would cut us off. So many potholes and sidetracks to overcome. Now the fear of failing or something going wrong began to dim. The light of success and realizing this adventure was growing brighter. There were enough positive signs to allow us to believe that all could work out. It would all be okay. A happy ending. There were still a lot of details to work out—our contacts in Germany, our contacts in Turkey. It all seemed so fantastic.

CHAPTER 4

Silver Bird

WE LANDED IN LONDON TOWN LATE ON FRIDAY. I SUPPOSE WE looked kind of scruffy with our backpacks and Levis. Good thing we had cash, because they were looking for a reason to be hardassed and not let us into the country. At least customs was easy. You don’t bring this stuff into Europe—you take it out of Europe. Tom’s British friends met us at Heathrow airport. Ian and Dani were really fun people. They loved any and all things American and were hospitable. Ian’s mom or mum owned a flat in London proper and was kind enough to rent it to us weekly for 120 quid or $45. Seemed fair. It was February and cold—single digits at night and not much better during the day. The pubs were open from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. Then from 10 p.m. to midnight, I must say I acquired quite a taste for Guinness draught. It was served at room temperature. Ian called it mother’s milk. After two pints I quite agreed.

First thing was to find a suitable vehicle that could be driven a long ways over terrible or nonexistent roads. Ian had a friend in Scotland with a used Land Rover so we took the train up to Scotland to a small town called Brauty-Ferry. As quaint as it was, Scotland was as sunless and dreary as England this time of year. We found our car parked and overgrown. The motor was shot, it needed brakes and a good cleanup. She was a needy ‘57 Land Rover, short wheelbase, four-cylinder, and canvas top, with the usual right-handed drive.

If you have ever had a right-hand drive car, it’s not such a big deal, but actually to drive on roads with other drivers it can be a nightmare, especially making left turns. After a while the nightmare becomes a challenge, then you actually start to get used to it. That’s when you get into trouble. Suddenly things are going smoothly and you forget what you learned and revert to how you were raised. You find yourself driving in the left-hand lane and snap! Impending collision. Relying on your reflexes, you somehow avoid a head-on collision and survive the day.

When we first saw the old Rover it was grazing in a pasture of rust. First off we needed to rent a van and drive back to Birmingham, England to buy a new motor, tires, brakes, and exhaust. Loaded with parts, we drove back to Scotland and played mechanic in single-digit temperatures. It took about a week of bloody knuckles and screaming obscenities at nobody in particular. As the neighbors’ blinds were slowly drawn we concluded our imitation of mechanics. It was all pretty basic stuff and Tom was a pretty fair mechanic. We did at one time change engines in a Volkswagen bus back in California together. All in all, the Rover ran beautifully. We were nearing our departure date fast. On our map it was laid out in red ink—six thousand miles plus to Afghanistan, with stops along the way.

Spring was still miles away. The farther east and south we would travel, the warmer it would become. We said our goodbyes to our friends in Scotland and in London. These friends we would most likely never see again. Our plans were laid out. We cast our fate to the wind.

CHAPTER 5

The Mechanic Trip

WE BEGAN DRIVING FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND AND boarded a quite large ferry to cross the English Channel. The English Channel is 22 miles across; you leave from Dover (white cliffs) and disembark in Belgium. The ferry ride was cushioned by a couple of bottles of Glen Fiddich Scotch. It was duty-free on the ferry, so with nothing much to do we drank, told lies, and flirted with a couple of fat girls from Yugoslavia. We two handsome Americans, having struck out with Shamu and her sister Willy, accepted our hangovers and awoke bleary-eyed and hungry.

A little Panama Red helped our early-morning drive and our headaches immensely. As we drove, Tom reminisced about his first travels abroad with Hugh. We were both pretty high and I listened to Tom’s relating of the summer before.

Tom and Hugh had a similar Land Rover laden with about 60 pounds of hashish. The hash was hidden in the frame, crammed in the hollow darkness, wrapped in plastic. The metal square plates cut out prior to departure, were replaced after the hash was loaded, held firm with road tar and epoxy, and smeared with mud. They didn’t know it would never see the light of day. It was a dark night; Tom and Hugh were driving west through Yugoslavia, now Bosnia. It was raining and Hugh drove with Tom sleeping in the back of the Rover.

Hugh fell asleep! He bulldozed a brick wall. Tom flew from the back, where he was sleeping, through the windscreen and landed in the mud. He awoke in a local hospital with a slight concussion. As far as Hugh Bell—he never woke again.

The Land Rover was towed to the junkyard somewhere near Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The hashish was intact inside the frame. I’m sure it still sits there today keeping the bugs high.

The sun was high now about noon or so—spring really was on its way. I thought again about Hugh, a good friend, gone for no good reason. He had left behind a wife. Our truck purred and we took turns driving and sleeping in the back, where we‘d put down a thin foam pad that made it tolerable. The bad roads fought us all the way. Luckily, the roads built on the west side of Istanbul were American built; the roads east of Istanbul were Russian built. You could really tell the difference. Tires and shocks suffered. We even lost a muffler while forging a stream in Germany.

When we got to Munich, Tom called Jurgen to arrange a time and place to meet after our return from Afghanistan with the hash. We hadn’t quite reached a fair price for the hash. Tom had been negotiating with Jurgen for about three weeks over the phone; prices fluctuated depending on quality and supply and demand. One pound of Afghan Gold was hovering between $550 and $750 a pound. By the time we would be back in Germany I was sure a