Survival of the Fastest Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by Randy Lanier

  Cover design by Chris Allen

  Cover images (top to bottom): Postcard © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo; Article: © Jon Saraceno - USA TODAY NETWORK; Portrait of Randy based on the original in IMSA Archives / International Motor Racing Research Center; Car (Blue Thunder): © Marshall Pruett Archives; Randy in car © IMS Photo Archive; Randy in crowd © John Smierciak

  Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: August 2022

  Published by Hachette Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Hachette Books name and logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2022936525

  ISBNs: 978-0-306-82645-0 (hardcover), 978-0-306-82647-4 (ebook)

  E3-20220709-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1 Coming of Age

  2 From Ounces to Pounds

  3 Launching the Operation

  4 Muscle Billy

  5 Becoming a Race Car Driver

  6 Motor Races and Gun Battles

  7 Turning Pro

  8 Welcome to the Jungle

  9 Becoming an International Smuggler

  10 Le Mans

  11 Cocaine

  12 Blue Thunder

  13 Score of a Lifetime

  14 A Barge the Size of a Football Field

  15 The Golden Gate

  16 Thunder Beats Lightning

  17 Launching the Louisiana Load

  18 A Crowning Moment

  19 The First Arrest

  20 IndyCar

  21 The International Marijuana Smuggling Association

  22 The Indy 500

  23 The Checkered Flag

  24 Crash Landing

  25 Rock Bottom

  26 Disappearing Act

  27 Busted

  28 Prison

  Epilogue

  Photos

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  Praise for Survival of the Fastest

  For Pam, Brandie, and Glen, and my mom

  and my dad, may they rest in peace.

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  “It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”

  —JOSEPH CONRAD, Heart of Darkness

  This is a true story.

  Some of the names have been changed.

  Prologue

  On October 10, 1987, at sunrise, I stepped out of the salon and onto the rear deck of my custom-built sixty-foot Hatteras, a sport fishing vessel that I named Reel Liv-In. I stared out at the Caribbean. The sunrays bounced off the sapphire ocean, like the sea was boiling with diamonds. It was one of those halcyon tropical days where you feel like nothing could possibly go wrong. Slight breeze, scent of salt water, warm humid air.

  I was anchored off the leeward side of Barbuda, the sister island of Antigua, and my three-person crew (two ship captains and a girlfriend I had with me) were readying a Zodiac, a motorized inflatable boat, to head for the grassy shallows. We were going to dive for our lunch—fresh seafood. I had my mask, my snorkel, my knife. Suddenly, I heard the sound of an engine buzzing overhead. I looked up.

  “What the fuck do you think that plane is doing?” I said, turning to my main boat captain, Slick. “Why’s that aircraft flying so low, so early in the morning?”

  “Probably tourists,” Slick said.

  The little plane disappeared over a sandy beach and some palm trees on the island. “There must be an airstrip right over there,” I said.

  We launched the Zodiac and spent the morning pulling conch off the grassy seafloor and lobster out of the crevices in the coral reef close by. Afterward, we pulled anchor, turned the Hatteras, and made for port in Falmouth Harbor, Antigua.

  I’d been on the run from the law by this time for ten months. Aside from the crew on my boat, nobody in the world knew where I was. I aimed to keep it that way. I was a fugitive, separated from my two children and their mother, Pam, my best friend. Up to this time, my life had been all about speed. I was a motor-racing international champion and an Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, crowned the next big thing at the temple of IndyCar racing. Now my life was dictated by a different kind of speed—always moving fast to stay one step ahead of the law.

  Falmouth Harbor sits on the southern edge of Antigua. To get into the harbor, you line up with markers to steer safely through an inlet. On one side is a rocky cliff, and on the other, a coral reef that can tear the guts out of your vessel if you don’t approach correctly. I was standing on the enclosed flybridge with Slick, holding binoculars as he steered the boat into this postcard beautiful harbor full of anchored sailboats. I did a full 360 with the binoculars, and that’s when I saw this gray ninety-foot patrol boat by the rocky cliff to our port side. It looked like a navy ship.

  “What do you think they’re doing here?” I said, handing the binoculars to Slick.

  “Shit,” he said, “they might want to board the vessel and see our paperwork.”

  “I don’t like this. Let’s pivot the boat. Let’s get the fuck out of here and head back out to sea.”

  The moment those words came out of my mouth, the patrol boat made its move. It motored toward the opening of the inlet, blocking the only way out of the harbor.

  “Hell no!” I screamed. “They’re here for me! Get the Zodiac in the water!”

  I was wearing baggy shorts, no shirt, and no shoes. I had no identification on me. I didn’t know where I was going. But I knew I had to get off this vessel, and there was no time to spare. I had a hundred grand in cash and a fake passport in the ship’s stateroom, but I was in too much of a hurry to get it. My crew winched the Zodiac into the water, and I climbed down into this rubber vessel. I took off, weaving through anchored sailboats. When I made it to the harbor dock, I tied up the Zodiac, climbed out, and started running, down to the end and onto a dirt road.

  As I barreled forward, I saw a cloud of dust in front of me, and through it came three Jeeps at high speed. I could see that the Jeeps were full of islander police officers with big guns. My heart started to beat so fast I felt like it was going to explode.

  Turning right, I ran up a hill, clawing at the ground for traction. The rough terrain ripped the skin off my bare feet, and the sharp points of the palmetto bushes punctured my hands. I heard the words, “Halt! Or we’ll shoot!” I was close to th
e peak of the hilltop. When I turned around, I saw police officers kneeling and aiming gun barrels at me.

  “Don’t shoot!” I shouted, lifting my hands up. “Don’t shoot!”

  I walked back down the hill, and the island policemen threw me against one of the Jeeps. One said, “You’re under arrest, mon.”

  “What’s this about!?!” I shouted. “You got the wrong guy!”

  One of the cops grabbed me by my right wrist and held it up. He looked at my right hand, which was missing a finger.

  “No, mon,” he said. “We got the right guy. You’re Randy Lanier. You’re going to jail, mon.”

  They handcuffed me and pushed me into the back of one of the Jeeps. It was a madhouse inside. These guys didn’t put their guns away; they all kept the barrels pointed at me. As we motored back to the end of the dock, I said, “Who’s in charge here?”

  “I am,” said the guy driving.

  “See that sixty-foot boat out in the harbor?” I said. “The Hatteras? You can have it and everything on it! Just let me go!”

  He didn’t say anything. Just kept driving.

  When we reached the dock, I saw them: two white guys wearing sports jackets and aviator sunglasses, with clean-shaven pale faces. They stood with feet apart and hands clasped in front. “Oh shit!” I said. These guys were central casting law enforcement USA.

  That little airplane I’d seen at sunrise, buzzing by overhead? FBI.

  Thirteen months later, after a three-month court trial, with sixty-four witnesses and ten thousand pages of testimony transcript, I awoke on the morning of my sentencing in a cell at the supermax prison in Marion, Illinois. It was December 21, 1988. Marion was, at the time, the only supermax prison in the country, designed to hold the worst of the worst. The federal government opened this nightmare place when they shut down Alcatraz. It was home in the 1990s to the likes of John Gotti and various al-Qaeda operatives.

  I was wearing a suit and tie when the US marshals came to get me that morning. They put me in a van and drove 100 mph with a squad car in front of us, its lights flashing. We were heading to the federal courthouse of the Southern District of Illinois. When we got there, I noticed officers standing on top of the building and officers surrounding the outside, all of them armed. I thought: What a fucking waste of taxpayer money.

  When the marshals brought me into the courtroom, I already knew what I was facing. I’d been convicted of all three counts charged against me, all of which carried mandatory sentences. So there was no mystery around what was about to happen. I just had to go into the courtroom to hear the judge say the words out loud. I had asked my family—Pam, my kids, my mom—to remain absent. I did not want my loved ones to have to witness this.

  “All rise,” announced the bailiff.

  My lawyer, Bob Ritchie, and I got up on our feet as James L. Foreman, United States judge of the Southern District of Illinois, walked into the room and sat down behind the bench, his silver hair side parted. He asked my lawyer if he had any final words, and my lawyer rose to address the court. All these years later, the words in the court transcript still ring in my ears.

  “Who is this man?” he asked the judge. “Who is this man that the court is called upon to sentence? It’s a complex picture. He has acknowledged his wrongdoing. He has acknowledged… that he went down a road he shouldn’t have gone.… But you know, this court knows that there is another side to Randy Lanier that has not been fully addressed. He had, obviously, a strong bond between himself and his daughter, Brandie, now eight years old.…

  “I’m not going to stand up here and say because he was a race car driver that that entitles him to any leniency.… But I think the court can also look to see if should anything happen in regard to this matter which would remove from him the specter of coming out of the penitentiary in a pine box, that there is a man here who is susceptible to rehabilitation, and susceptible to making a contribution, a positive contribution to society.… He went in the field of racing because of courage.… He had dedication.… He had things that could carry him far.”

  When he finished his appeal for mercy, Judge Foreman spoke, as my lawyer and I stood before him. “You are a very young man now,” the judge said. “You are only thirty-four, isn’t it? I guess?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “You and Ben Kramer are almost identical in age,” the judge said, referring to my lifelong business partner, now one of my codefendants. Judge Foreman moved his glasses to the end of his nose, so he could peer over them into my eyes from across the room. “The real basic purpose of punishment is the age-old, century-old idea of deterrence,” he said. “We do have a war on drugs in this country.… The best answer that anybody has been able to come up with has been severity of punishment. Whether that’s going to solve the problem or not, I don’t know. But that is what Congress has spoken to. It’s the law of the land.” It didn’t sound like he was swayed by my lawyer’s plea.

  He then read my sentence. Count 1, Continual Criminal Enterprise B: “Imprisonment for a term of life.” Count 2, Conspiracy to Distribute Marijuana: “Imprisonment for a term of forty years.” Count 3, Impeding the IRS: “Imprisonment for a term of five years.” The jury determined that my partners and I were to pay a forfeiture of $150 million. It was the largest forfeiture ever ordered in an American courtroom at that time. My share was $60 million.

  The judge peered at me again over the rim of his glasses and said that if he could give me a harsher sentence, he would. Therefore, he said, my sentences would run consecutively rather than concurrently. Meaning, technically, I was to serve the rest of my life in prison without a chance of parole, and if my sentencing was to be followed literally to the word, they were to leave my dead body behind prison bars, for another forty-five years.

  I began my sentence in the St. Louis County Jail. The guards led me to a small cell with no bed, just a bench and a blanket. When I heard the steel door to my cage slam shut behind me, I felt myself shatter into a pile of pieces for somebody to sweep off the floor. The thought of failure in my family’s eyes and the failure within myself—it was beyond heartbreaking. And I’d brought it all on myself.

  My life was no longer going to be about being a father to my two children or a husband to the love of my life. It was no longer going to be about worshipping at the altar of speed. Now my life was going to be stripped down to the bare essentials of daily survival. I was left to wonder: Would I ever find a way out, legally or illegally? Would I ever breathe a single breath of freedom again?

  I was a South Florida hippy kid who grew up with a dream. A construction worker who wanted to be a race car driver so bad I was willing to take incalculable risks. A guy who came from nothing and beat the Porsche factory racing team from Germany, the Jaguar factory team from Britain, and the Ford factory team from the US. A businessman who created an international empire outside the law because that was the only path I could find that would lead me to the place where my heart and soul told me I had to go: the winner’s podium.

  For the rest of my life, I’d hear one question over and over. Did I have any regrets? If I could do it all again, would I do it differently? To answer that one, I have to go back to the beginning, to the day I heard the sound of the Indy 500 for the first time on an AM radio. The sound of those roaring engines haunts me still, to this day.

  1

  Coming of Age

  Virginia and Florida, 1950s and 1960s

  South Florida came to define my life, but I didn’t start there. I was born in Virginia in 1954. My family had a small house in a small town called Madison Heights, where my parents grew what we ate. A far cry from private planes and luxury yachts. We had chickens, and some of my earliest memories are of going to collect the eggs. I had three brothers and one sister, and we spent lots of our time running through the miles of woods behind the house, building forts, and having battles throwing mud balls across rambling creeks. We had swings on the front and back porch, and a clothesline in the back where we wo
uld hang our laundry to dry.

  Across the street was a place called Bryant’s Market where the old-timers sat out front chewing tobacco. At age five, I started going over there to help pump gas, at the only pump there was for miles in either direction on the main road. I couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning so I could run across the street and get started. Sometimes I’d wait hours for a vehicle to pull up to the pump. I loved how every car was different. I’d observe the way they looked and smelled, delighting in the shiny chrome and the stink of the engine fumes. I was only a kid, but every time I filled a tank, I felt like a man.

  Even then, cars were at the center of my dreams.

  My mother was the most compassionate woman I’ve ever met. Her name was Elsie Maude Elliott Lanier, and she worked at a state institution for mentally and physically disabled people. Sometimes we would pick her up from work, and I would see these young people struggling to walk. It was hard for me to understand why they were the way they were. My mom cared so much for these people, and they loved her back. All her life until she retired, that’s what she did: be in service to others. My mom taught me that the greatest form of knowledge in our lives is empathy.

  My dad, Noel Edward Lanier Jr., had no formal education beyond the sixth grade, but he could read and write blueprints, and he had a job at a pipe foundry. People called him Junior, and he could build anything. All over our house, there was stuff that he made out of wood with his hands—couches, potato bins, tables, and chairs. He had a Harley-Davidson with a suicide clutch—a shifter near the tank and a clutch pedal by his foot. On Saturdays, he would take one of us kids on a ride. I would get so excited when it was my turn. The motorcycle looked so huge, and the engine was so loud. He would pick me up and put me on the back and away we’d go, riding along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Shenandoah Valley.

  It felt like heaven, holding onto my dad and riding through this valley. Speed, open air, family. What else do you need?