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LEMON JUICE KING

on his shoulder. He crashed his glider into a sheer Rio cliff. Miraculously, his glider clipped a single isolated branch and snagged on it, leaving him precariously dangling 700 metres up. A friend flew his glider close, calling, 'Marco, you okay?' There was no answer, but the friend couldn't risk going closer and getting entangled. Two helicopters flew in to rescue him, but it was a sensitive and complex mission to ensure the wind from the rotating blades didn't blow him off, into a death plunge.

I hang by one tree for four and a half hours. I need two helicopters to help me, because my position in the rock is negative [concave], so they cannot get me. After four hours, a helicopter pilot rescued me. It was like a miracle. I have no injury and they put in television, newspaper and radio.

Straight after his TV interviews, he borrowed a glider, went back up to the top of the cliff and took off again. Those who knew him weren't surprised.

The accident undoubtedly swelled his sense of invincibility, which equipped him well for drug trafficking — never showing any fear — but also making him dangerously reckless.

Blithely, he flew all over the globe with his hang-glider loaded up with blow, even to notoriously tricky countries like Australia. Twice he flew to Sydney for competitions, making double his usual trafficking fee, at $10,000 a kilo — 'Australian people love cocaine so much.' He breezed into Sydney on his first trip with 5 kilos, as part of a 12-pilot Brazilian team. 'There are 20 hang-gliders and only one has stuff — mine. But they don't check at all.' On the second trip to Sydney, he took 7 kilos, tipping a friend to bring some coke too, telling him it

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