Circa 1997, I was in Panama, on the Caribbean side, getting my boat ready to transit the canal to the Pacific.
I was walking from Colon’s old so-called yacht club (now long gone) through an industrial port area to get to Colon City. When I was passing about 20 fallow acres, I witnessed a training exercise by a dozen or so off-road motorbikes in green paint, each with a pair of uniformed soldiers on them. The soldiers riding on the back each carried a carbine.
While I watched from a few hundred yards away, they did a “reverse starburst,” that is, they rode into the center of the field from all points of the compass. They must have been waiting for a “go” signal. They rode into a circle formation like Indians surrounding a wagon train, made a few rotations while tightening the circle, then all stopped and laid their bikes down and formed a perimeter, guns pointing out, using their motorbikes as cover. After a minute they all pulled up their bikes, remounted, and did a starburst exit again in all directions. (It’s difficult for one man to raise a motorcycle weighing about 300 pounds, but it’s not hard for 2 soldiers, especially with practice.)
I had just witnessed a military motorcycle training exercise, and it was unforgettable. This was my initial introduction to “motorbike warfare.” A serious fighting force can “appear from nowhere” in just a minute.
Over the years I followed stories in the news, mostly coming out of Latin America, about motorbike crime. Two men on a motorbike became infamous as a very dangerous combination. The 2nd man riding on the back can hide a weapon inside his jacket, then fire it from the moving bike, or he can dismount rapidly, commit a crime, remount the bike and take off with his partner.
Assassinations took place where the rider in back would fire a compact submachine gun like a Mac-10 at a corporate executive alongside the bike in his luxury sedan. This became so commonplace that in some cities at various times, two men riding on a motorbike was outlawed.
And today this scourge continues, with armed robberies committed by criminal motorbike teams, and “urban youths” doing street takeovers, defying police orders to disperse and causing general mayhem. YouTube is full of wild videos of motorbike marauders in action.
