Owen looked at his tank pressure. It was down to 400 PSI. Owen immediately looked deeper in the area. He dug deeper into the sand and mud. The underwater cloud he created engulfed his entire head and torso. He then scanned the area one more time with the detector. The red LED remained unlit this time. It was time to go back up. After disconnecting the anchor from the T-top, the two followed the one-inch line, rising slower than the bubbles they were exhaling from their regulators. This was a safety precaution to allow the expanding air in the lungs to escape without putting excessive pressure on their internal organs. Joel was the first to break through the ocean’s surface as he spit out the rubber regulator from his mouth.
“That was great!” Joel exclaimed.
“This is what the Keys are all about kid,” Owen replied.
“Well, looks like you got a coin for your collection.”
“This one’s yours. You earned it,” Owen said, handing the gold coin to his partner.
* * * * *
Target
Ralph Linez taxied the Beechcraft 18D down the crudely marked grass strip. Rolling along at a modest pace he checked his gauges as part of the preflight run up. The orange glow from the instruments illuminated the small cockpit. As he switched on the navigation lights, a swell of red light swept back and forth against the trees lining both sides of the runway.
He spun the trim tab wheel mounted overhead to the foremost position. His payload would affect the plane’s center of gravity. As he came to the end of the strip, he passed a hand-painted sign that read Thank you for visiting The Dominican Republic. Linez applied the brakes. He felt the heavy plane mush down into the wet grass. As he pushed forward on the throttles, a quick burst of power came from each engine mounted on the wings. The plane responded by spinning about, pointing due North. Linez pushed the brakes, arching his ankles, feeling the power against the asbestos brake shoes. He held tight until the engines reached their maximum revolutions. Then he released the pedals. The plane surged forward rolling down the runway. Sluggish at first, it gained speed with every twenty feet until, with the end of the tiny strip approaching, it was aloft. The plane ascended gracefully, banking over the moonlit cresting waves that beat against the nearby shore.
Linez was a seasoned pilot. He learned to fly in Castro’s Air Force and was in command of one of the state’s MiG-15s. In 1977, he tried to make an unauthorized exit from Cuba to Key West. It was a tempting jaunt, just ninety miles to the north. Fearing defection, his squadron mates shot him down. He managed to survive after being plucked from the water by a passing state fishing vessel. He was immediately jailed where he remained until his release to Mariel Harbor in 1980. The civilian boatlift carried him to Miami. Castro figured his talents would best be served flying drugs into the United States corrupting an already overindulged American youth. While en route to Mariel, a secret policeman slipped him a piece of paper with the name Gus Greico etched on it.
Linez finished trimming the plane’s elevator controls as he adjusted the two throttles. The twin five hundred horsepower Pratt and Whitney power plants hummed in a harmonic balance as they reached their synchronized state. Linez looked at his altitude: sixty-five hundred feet. He could see the lights off the eastern tip of Cuba. He was flying over an area known to Cuban pilots as El Lugar Reservado, the quiet place. It was a flat stretch of sea known for its lack of wind, shallow water and light seas, an area of the ocean that was easy for the Castro regime to anchor bombing targets to. Linez had made many runs over the stretch below.
Linez was within a hundred miles of Key West. To the north of the southernmost American city was Cudjoe Key, the location of Fat Albert, the Aerostat B-94 tethered weather balloon, a suspended radar silo thirty thousand feet in the air. This installation afforded stability and the convenience of a direct path to the U.S. Customs control center in South Miami, enabling authorities to have an entire view of the passive Caribbean Basin, from the eastern Bahamas to the eastern tip of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The blimp was also used to beam the American propaganda, Radio Martí, to Castro’s island. Linez feared the balloon for two reasons. If he hit the wire, it would most certainly bring down his plane and, if he were high enough, it would be easy for the agents at USCS Sector to spot him on radar. The trick was to stay as close to the base of Cudjoe without coming in contact with the cable. The tethered radar was designed to look at a distant angle from its position. Because of this, the radar view of anything directly below it was almost nonexistent.
Linez put pressure on the port ailerons. The white and green three-ton plane fell on its side, making a peel-off even the legendary Pappy Boyington would have been proud of. As the domestic aircraft neared a hundred and twenty knots, Linez pulled back on the yoke. The stress of the gravity forces lowered his cerebral blood pressure. A welcomed rush of euphoria made him feel he was home again.
At five hundred feet Linez could still see the light-dotted coast of Cuba now less than twenty miles away. He banked his ship toward the El Lugar Reservado flats. As he approached the area, the moonlight reflected from the floating targets as he felt the adrenaline fill his brain, imagining he was again strafing the wooden targets. His imaginary rockets exploded on impact, sending water skyward as the plane cleared overhead. Linez pulled up as the plane’s engines charged and the spinning props labored in the rapid climb. The plane rolled over on its side and fell back to the earth. Then he increased the power, this time coming even closer to the vulnerable targets.
Gotcha, he said to himself.
In the distance Linez saw strobe lights enhancing the horizon. A quick glance at his avionic radar screen confirmed his fear: approaching aircraft. Probably MiGs. His weighted down Beechcraft was no match against these high-speed rocket equipped jets. If he was caught in this Cuban territory, Linez faced a certain prison cell.
Linez trimmed the props and leveled off flying fifty feet over the flat sea. He maintained his power increasing his velocity to one hundred and forty knots. The MiGs closed at over six hundred knots while he made a heading for the Cay Sal Banks.
As the MiGs got closer, they slowed, with one hanging off each wing tip. Linez looked over at the pilot to his left who was concealed under a flight helmet with a black face shield. The roar of the outdated jet engines were louder now as they got even closer, flying twenty feet from each of his wing tips. Linez could feel the sweat drip down his neck as they watched him, surely radioing back to Havana for instructions. He was far into Bahamian waters having left the territory of Cuba thirty miles behind, but none of that mattered now. They were in a virtual no-man’s land. No maps, no witnesses, and no problem being shot down, if for nothing else, practice. The MiGs continued on their course, surrounding the scared pilot but letting him fly free. Cay Sal quickly appeared on the horizon and was soon under the Beech-18 as it passed below. Then, without warning, the MiGs powered up. All Linez saw was blue and orange flames as the two jets ascended, banking off and heading back to Cuba. The Beechcraft rocked back and forth combating the waves of turbulence created by the jets.
Linez wiped his face and neck, drenching a small towel in the process. He was not out of the woods yet though. He still had to fly ninety miles to Islamorada, cross the Keys and head for the backcountry where, deep in Florida Bay, a shallow draft flats boat would be waiting, floating in the shallow, foot-deep waters between the Keys and Florida Gulf Coast. He would dump his fourteen duffel bags out the rear cargo hatch, watch them splash down and then fly to Homestead and land.
He activated the plane’s ailerons: left down and right up. The plane responded, banked to the northwest and leveled off. The wind hit the Beechcraft head on and Linez felt his speed compromised. To add to his concerns, he was getting light on fuel. Then he saw it, the first light of Florida, a small twinkle on the horizon. Linez leveled off, bringing the heavy plane to just fifty feet over the dark water below.
•
One hundred feet above and behind his tail, an American UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter foll
owed Linez, unaware of his pursuer. Inside the dark cockpit of the heavy chopper, a crew of five monitored every move he made. The Beechcraft was spotted leaving Cay Sal and the Blackhawk was able to tuck in behind him, maintaining a stealthy trail. The two aircraft then passed under the Cudjoe balloon, avoiding the tether cable by less than a mile.
“Sector, Bow and Arrow,” the Blackhawk radioed.
“Bow and Arrow, Sector, go ahead,” Miami C3I answered.
“Target has crossed just south of Big Pine Key and is headed north into Florida Bay.”
•
Linez tapped his finger on the plane’s main fuel gauges as his supply was getting dangerously low. He continued to follow the Keys, cruising just above the Intracoastal Waterway which curved northeast as it headed towards Miami. Then it happened. A red fuel warning light came on telling him that he only had five minutes of run-time remaining. He knew he was not going to make it so in an attempt to salvage his load, he banked the heavy Beechcraft to the east and crossed back over the Keys, this time just north of Islamorada. As the plane turned, the small amount of fuel shifted in the main tanks causing the left engine to suck a fuel line full of air, causing it to spit, sputter and shut down.
“Sector, Bow and Arrow, target has crossed back to the oceanside. We have been detected. Target is headed for open water, possibly the Bahamas.”
“Roger Bow and Arrow, Slingshot is en route to assist.”
Linez headed for Dove Key, a small island off the coast of Tavernier where he could stash his load if he survived the emergency landing.
•
On board the Blackhawk, the crew became concerned with their own fuel supply. If the Beechcraft headed across the Gulf Stream, they would have to abandon their chase.
“I don’t want to lose this guy,” the team commander said.
“Do you want him down?” the pilot asked.
“Do what you’ve got to do.”
The Blackhawk pulled closer to the Beechcraft that was at an altitude of twenty feet and running on one engine. Then, with the manipulation of his cyclic control, the stick forward, the pilot maneuvered over the top of the Beechcraft, holding the course steady for a second before applying full collective pitch. The four 27-foot blades responded by angling down and giving the maximum amount of lift possible, drawing the full amount of power from the twin T-700 General Electric engines. The Blackhawk shot straight up to an altitude of five hundred feet.
Linez didn’t know what hit him. The remaining twenty feet of altitude that separated his limping plane from the water below disappeared suddenly as the aircraft’s belly slammed into the ocean, sending explosions of white seawater two hundred feet in each direction.
* * * * *
Serial
Owen Sands’s breakfast at the Key’s Diner was less than satisfying. The short order cook had overdone the toast and his eggs were fried past recognition. He finished his meal, not saying anything, while Joel Kenyon ate a bagel and browsed through the morning edition of the Miami Herald. From behind the counter, a police scanner, running through most of the law enforcement and fire department frequencies, squawked continuously.
“Plantation to 310, see the woman at 347 Matacumbe Trace, reference to her neighbor parking on her front lawn.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of that thing?” Owen asked the waitress.
“Sure, stuff like that is lame, but every now and then you hear something good. Early this morning you guys were busy,” she said.
Not me, Owen thought to himself, having enjoyed the first night of good sleep he had in a long time.
“Bow and Arrow chased a plane all over the Upper Keys.”
“And this excites you because…” Owen asked sarcastically.
“Watch it, Owen. Don’t forget who makes your breakfast.”
“Don’t worry, the heartburn will remind me all day. I just think it’s funny that I get my smuggling briefings here at your diner.”
“That’s enough funny guy. You realize I know everything that goes on in this town, don’t you?” she said smiling and looking over at Joel. “More coffee, hon?”
Fortunately for both of them, Owen’s beeper cut the meal short. A quick phone call to Sector told them that they would be investigating a downed aircraft two miles off Tavernier.
Thirty minutes later, both men were donned in foul weather gear as the 41-foot Indian raced out of Tavernier Creek towards the open ocean through a drizzling rain. The boat cruised for a few miles before coming upon an anchored white and orange Coast Guard utility cutter. It was tied to the downed plane that was grounded on a coral shoal. Water lapped up against its partially submerged tail number that read 735-K. Owen took a minute to jot down the number and then rolled up his pants legs, kicking off his Top-Siders and jumping down to the wing. In no time he was climbing into the open door at the end of the fuselage, moving through the aircraft’s interior. There wasn’t much room to move; the impact of the crash had mangled the underbelly and the decking was buckling from the pressure of the coral hitting the bottom, made worse with every wave that rolled through. He could hardly stand the sound of the scraping of the plane against the coral rock bottom that sounded like fingernails scratching on a schoolhouse blackboard. Owen looked around as he made his way up to the cockpit, noticing that there was a small amount of blood on the inside of the windshield. Below that, seawater had saturated the delicate avionics and instruments in the dash. In the main compartment, several duffel bags were strapped to the loose floor. Next to them he spotted an empty life raft case.
Owen grabbed the case, lifting the Velcro covered strap. Inside the top flap was a white identification panel showing the raft’s manufacturing date and serial number. Then he took out his pocketknife and cut the panel from the case. The rest was easy. With the help of two Coast Guardsmen in the plane and Joel on the Indian, the men unloaded fourteen duffel bags into the cockpit of the Customs boat. As Owen climbed back onto his boat, he went straight for the helm, igniting both motors and then putting them in reverse, backing away from the downed plane. Then he took a quick reading of the wind direction and headed towards shore. Joel watched intently and was intrigued by his partner’s actions.
With the duffel bags stowed in the bow, the Indian raced over the flowing sea with the wind towards shore. Riding with the waves was a smoother ride, even with the added seven hundred pounds in the front. What was once an endless series of hard oncoming waves were now soft pillows that made the boat ride higher and faster. They continued for less than a mile before spotting an orange raft bobbing in the water ahead.
A single man sat alone, perched in a floating raft. Before Joel could alert Owen, the trained eye behind the wheel was already making adjustments, changing his course to circle to the raft.
As they came alongside the raft, Joel surveyed the drenched craft for any weapons or contraband. The occupant was Latin, in his mid-forties and looked as if he had been beaten over by a street gang.
“Are you okay?” Owen asked as he shut the loud motors down.
“Hey, I need your help,” the man said, trying to conceal his Spanish accent. “My fishing boat sank about twenty miles offshore. I’ve been adrift since last night,” he pleaded.
“What kind of boat sank sir?” Joel asked.
“It was a 32-foot Trojan sport fisher. My starboard shaft broke off and slid through the stuffing box. Before I realized what had happened, water was over the engines, filling the bilge. She went down fast man.”
“At what time did this occur, sir?” Owen asked.
“Oh, about 7:30 last night.”
Owen thought to himself. This guy was good. Figuring in the rate his raft would drift the position of twenty miles, 7:30 was just about right.
“Get that boat hook and pull him closer,” Owen instructed as Joel pulled the rod from under the gunwale and latched it onto the side of the raft. The occupant approached the stern of the Indian, steadying himself on the side of the boat as Owen then stretched out h
is hand to the battered man, pulling him up into the larger vessel. Then, Joel pulled the raft from the water and secured it over the aft engine hatch.
“¿Cómo te llamas?” Owen asked.
“Excuse me?”
“What is your name?” Joel asked.
“Linez, Ralph Linez.”
“Ralph, we are with the United States Customs Services, la policía. Do you have any identification on you sir? A driver’s license, passport or maybe pilot’s rating?”
“Yes sir,” Linez said, reaching into his wet pocket pulling out a soggy passport. A Visa corporate credit card slipped out from within the pages and fell to the deck as Joel bent over and picked it up. The name on the card was Ralph G. Linez, Miami Aerotek Corporation.
Mid Ocean Page 24