Thirty-six Ecuadorian fishermen went to sea in March aboard two boats. Neither boat came home, both crews ended up in El Salvador, and nobody has ever charged any of them with a crime.
The Negra Francisca Duarte II was working about 170 miles off the Galapagos Islands on 17 March with 16 men aboard. Captain Hernan Flores, two weeks into the trip, described the moment to CNN.
"We heard the explosion - boom! It was the kind of blast that left my ears ringing. Right then, I felt blood running down me," he said.
The Don Maca, a 35-ton longliner chasing swordfish and albacore roughly 200 miles north-west of the same islands, was hit on 26 March with 20 men aboard. Both vessels had left Manta, the port at the centre of Ecuador's drug war, and their crews came mostly from San Mateo, Santa Marianita and Jaramijo.
Independent accounts given to CNN, the Guardian, NPR, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Post line up almost exactly. Each crew had noticed a large blue ship trailing them for a day or so and assumed it was a tuna boat. Each described small four-rotor drones, roughly pillow-sized, with a tube hanging below.
"I went flying and slammed into a diesel tank that was sitting there," said Jaime Ruben Cervantes Macias of the Don Maca. "People were shouting, 'Drone, drone, drone!' So, I jumped up quickly to take a look - and it was a drone firing at us, dropping the bomb on us."
Then came the part that has generated interest in Washington. Both crews say they took their skiffs toward the blue ship expecting rescue, and were met instead by armed men in brown camouflage who spoke English and wore US flag patches.
"From the moment we arrived on the US patrol boat, they were pointing guns at us, shouting: 'Get in, get in,'" Palacios said. "They handcuffed us, put hoods over our heads and pushed us around. We were terrified they were going to kill us."
Both groups were handed to a Salvadoran Coast Guard vessel at sea, described by the armed men as shipwreck survivors, and taken to El Salvador. They were held for days and eventually flew home to Manta, paying for the flights themselves.
The Washington Post reported in August that the attacks were part of a covert CIA operation, run separately from the Pentagon strikes on alleged drug boats that the administration announces openly. The agency gave CNN nothing: "We do not have any guidance to offer on this." US Southern Command told the Guardian it had "no information to provide regarding any US government personnel involvement in any of the incidents."
The secrecy struck even former US officials as odd. "It begs the question about why you would need to do this," one told the Post. "What would be the purpose of the secrecy?"
Lawyers for the crews argue the legal problem is not the strike alone but everything after it. "A US vessel intercepted them and forced them aboard. Once they were detained, their fishing boat was blown up," said Fernando Bastias Robayo of Ecuador's Human Rights Council. "Any apprehension followed by incommunicado detention constitutes an enforced disappearance."
Jorge Chiriboga Davalos, acting for the Negra Francisca crew, plans a US lawsuit once he can identify a defendant. He can already fix the scene: a NOAA satellite recorded a fire at the crew's logged coordinates at 3.02pm on 17 March, well inside Ecuador's exclusive economic zone.
Human Rights Watch published its own findings in July after 62 interviews, covering both attacks plus a third boat, the Fiorella, which vanished on 20 January with eight men aboard and has not been found.
"US-Ecuador cooperation on security has been too opaque and too dangerous for Ecuadorians," said HRW Americas director Juanita Goebertus. "Before more harm is done, the US Congress should demand real answers and effective safeguards."
There is a counter-argument, and the Post reported it: the seas around the Galapagos have become a smuggling corridor, and fishermen there are known to take money for running fuel out to trafficking boats. No evidence has surfaced publicly connecting either of these crews to that trade.
Back in San Mateo, the arithmetic is simpler. NPR reported that rising costs and gang extortion had already cut the Flores family fishing business down to one boat. That boat burned. The captain's nephew Jordi needs an $1,800 skin graft for his foot, and the family has been running a town bingo night to pay for it.