Outlaws Inc.: Flying With the World's Most Dangerous Smugglers
By (Author) Matt Potter
Pan Macmillan
Pan Books
1st March 2012
Unabridged edition
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
364.1336
Paperback
416
472g
An extraordinary journey into the biggest, most impenetrable trafficking network the world has ever seen. In the world's most dangerous and war-torn trouble spots, you will find a small band of men risking their lives to fly the planes that bring in desperately needed aid and supplies. But they're not heroes. These combat-hardened veterans fly giant Soviet-era superplanes which carry a dark secret: 15 tonnes worth of secret compartments which they fill with illicit payloads. Their hidden cargo is virtually impossible to detect, and these cowboys of the air will carry anything, from drugs, guns, diamonds and money to people - whatever you've got, to anywhere you want them to take it. But they pay a heavy price: crews routinely lose their lives to gun-toting pirates, terrorists, hostile state forces, jealous competitors and alcohol. Matt Potter has flown with these men, and in Outlaws Inc. he follows their incredible, action-packed story around the world. On the way he discovers a secret society populated by mecenaries, dictators, secret policemen, gangsters, businessmen and real-life Bond villains, and finds a story that is all the more terrifying for being true.
Matt Potter is a journalist, editor and broadcaster. He has reported for BBC Radio from Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia, and co-presented Radio 1's award-winning global travel shows. As a journalist, his nose for the unusual has seen his writing appear in places as diverse as the Daily Telegraph, Golf Monthly, Esquire, Sunday Telegraph, Jack, Maxim, the Irish Examiner and Q, and his stories on cocaine trafficking in Latin America have been published in Russian, Spanish and English. As a journalist in Belgrade, he broke the story of the NATO spy giving away secrets to Serb forces on the web. He speaks a handful of languages but attempts to speak at least twenty more.