Special Access
Page 2
Lynche cursed under his breath. “No one’s facing the camera.” He requested a closer, lower observation altitude for the final run of videotaping. “OK. I believe we can get away with a quick, low-level pass. Shoot the video and get the hell out of here.”
“Roger. Seventy-five feet. You’re incredible, Lynche. This is exactly why UAVs can’t cut it in this environment.”
“Just don't hit the spoilers, or you’ll flip us into the river. These guys don’t like having their picture taken. The FLIR suggests they still have the boat engine running, and they shouldn’t be able to hear us. We’ll be OK. But if I say, ‘Run,’ get us the hell out of here. Can you get a little closer?”
“Roger, passing 150 for seventy-five.” Hunter dipped the wing and added a little rudder. “And, Sir, you’re a little closer. Any closer, and I’m afraid we’ll hit something.”
“Steady…smile shitheads…. Come on. That’s the ticket. Oh, shit…that’s Manny! They’re loading packages onto the boat. Get us out of here. Let’s go to 2,000 feet and watch.
“Roger. 2,000. Uh, Greg, what’s that at one o’clock? I see a light source where there shouldn’t be one.”
“OK. FLIR coming around to one o’clock…searching… searching….”
“Check two o’clock on the waterline, two fingers on the right.”
“Tally ho. Shit, Hunter, you found a sub! Dumb fuck is using his flashlight to get aboard the thing. That’s incredible.”
“Reminds me of the night activity at the Texas border. Everyone couldn’t believe how much activity goes on there at night completely undetected.”
“I marked it with GPS. Won’t be hard to find again. Back to Manny and his band of merry men.”
Lynche aimed the FLIR back at the lab and the boat for the maneuver. “So far, it doesn’t look like they know we’re here. I won’t press our luck.”
Hunter increased the pitch-control lever and began a gentle climb. Leveling off at 2,000 AGL, he asked, “So who’s Manny?”
“Admiral Manuel Vasquez, Colombia’s version of Chief of Naval Operations. That looked like he was supervising the loading of bundles of cocaine. I have a hard time thinking he’s on the take. Shit. I thought he was a good one. When I was Chief of Station, we gave him a bunch of intel.”
Thirty minutes later, the gunboat pulled out of the tributary and headed back the way it came.
“Follow them,” Lynche said.
“My pleasure.” Hunter flew S turns to keep from overrunning the gunboat. An hour later, the vessel docked at what appeared to be a naval installation at the mouth of the Saldaña. No one took anything off the boat.
“Let’s head back to the field. We have to get this tape to the COS.”
After taking a circuitous route to the airfield, which allowed Lynche to tape FLIR images of oil tankers and tankers in port, Hunter landed expertly and taxied quickly to an open hangar at the far end of the field. Once the propeller stopped, he opened the clamshell canopy, and the two men stepped out of the cockpits and climbed down to the ground.
The two-main maintenance crew hooked a tow bar to the tail wheel and guided the little aircraft into the hangar, where the wings would be removed and the aircraft readied for shipment in its forty-foot sea container.
Lynche, the first one off the plane, handed a VCR tape to the awaiting Bogota Chief of Station. “John, this is probably what you’re looking for. I’d like a copy for my files. Duncan, I’ll see you back at the hotel. I’ll ring your room after I debrief.”
“That’s incredible work, Greg,” said the COS.
*
Bogota newspapers reported the freeing of twelve hostages in an isolated jungle area, where they were thought to have spent the last fifteen weeks. Ten men were killed in a shootout with National Police, and three men were charged with training FARC members in bomb making and kidnapping.
The same day the hostages were rescued, a radio station received a statement from the FARC. The group claimed it was holding nine people for ransom in addition to other hostages for a prisoner exchange. The Colombian authorities reportedly received satellite footage, probably supplied by the CIA, of the hostages’ location.
Other articles reported the Armada Nacional de al República de Colombia Commander, Admiral Manuel Eduardo Vasquez, suddenly retired for medical reasons.
The Colombian National Police and the US Drug Enforcement Agency didn’t take action against the cocaine submarine, opting to monitor the vessel and the drug smugglers’ activities before raiding the area two weeks later. Officials were astounded at the level of technology incorporated into the semisubmersible. After the sub was secured and seven men were taken into custody, an American film crew was brought in to re-enact the takedown of the Volvo-powered, 100-foot-long vessel.
*
Two American businessmen flew out of Bogota two days later on American Airlines Flight 2170, first-class. Surveillance video of the travelers going through ticketing and security couldn’t positively identify the men, as if the two knew exactly where the surveillance cameras were located. Hunter returned to his job with the US Border Patrol in Texas, and Lynche returned to his office-home near Annapolis. 007’s container arrived at the Port of Baltimore at the end of the month and was transported to a storage facility near the airport in Easton, Maryland.
It would be another three months before the Special Access Program, known as Wraith, would again be activated by the Director of Central Intelligence.
CHAP TER ONE
0900 December 7, 1984
TRAWING 2 Conference Room Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas
First Lieutenant Duncan Hunter, United States Marine Corps, and his fellow about-to-be newly minted Naval Aviators, marched into a classroom for out-processing. The six sailors and one Marine officer sat around the conference table. Before them were file folders and mounds of papers.
Hunter didn’t wait to be told to take a seat. The others followed his lead. One minute later, a Navy yeoman wearing a form-fitting dark-blue dress uniform, resplendent with ribbons, badges, and pins, entered the room and began her spiel.
“Gentlemen, I’m Petty Officer Gentry. I’m here to help you process off the air station and help you get on your way to your next duty station. Who needs a pen?”
Six sailors raised their hands.
“The first thing we’ll do is fill out a Standard Form 86, a questionnaire for national security positions. You must fill this out in its entirety before you receive your orders. The Defense Security Service will conduct a background investigation on you, since you’ll be coming into contact with sensitive information at your new duty station.
“Lieutenant Hunter, it seems you’re the special one today. Maybe it’s a Marine thing. We need two copies of your fingerprints and some additional paperwork for DSS to complete a single-scope background investigation.”
Lieutenant Hunter looked into the blue eyes of the short-haired petty officer, silently questioning the rationale for the additional paperwork. She dropped two blue FBI Standard Form 87s in front of him and handed out white OPM SF-87s to the sailors.
Deep in thought and concern, Hunter tried to understand why some of the Naval officers were going to fly more-sophisticated aircraft than he, like the EP-3 signal intelligence gathering and EA-6 jamming aircraft, and those pilots only had to fill out one white card. Thirty-year-old Phantoms were a dying breed. They were being replaced by the more-capable and agile F/A-18A, and Hunter was the last F-4 pilot in the training pipeline.
After everyone had his fingerprint cards, Petty Officer Gentry said, “Lieutenant Hunter, please be careful filling out those SF-87s. They’re the only two I have. F…B…I…. Either you’ve been very naughty, or I’d guess you’ll be doing something special.”
Six sailors leaned inward to look at the blue fingerprint cards, while Hunter’s eyes shot up toward the yeoman, who smiled and gave him a quick wink.
CHAPTER TWO
1300 February 25, 1985
Sub
-basement Three Central Intelligence Agency Washington, DC
The man in the gray suit and dark tie entered the access code into the programmable keypad, pressed down on the door latch, and entered the SCIF. From under his arm he withdrew a jumbo brown Kraft envelope and tossed it on the worktable.
Slicing through the double-wrapped cover with a sharp box cutter, he removed most of the thick package from the FBI, immediately removing the heavy clip from the two-inch-thick stack of documents.
The man scanned a blue fingerprint card that had been process, stamped, and approved by the FBI. Several ten-panel urine screens were stamped NEGATIVE, showing no trace or history of amphetamines, barbiturates, cannabis, cocaine, or opiate use during the last ten years.
A heavily marked-up questionnaire for national security positions provided the backbone for the fifty-five DSS investigator’s interviews of the subject’s acquaintances, friends, coworkers, and family, as well as copies of military, medical, and school records.
The man reached into the jumbo sleeve and spilled out two dozen photographs clipped together. “Let’s see what you look like.” He adjusted his necktie before flipping through the black-and-white 8x10 photographs of the subject in his Marine uniform, in a racquetball court, or engaged in other physical activity.
He stopped at the color photograph of the subject in a flight suit, standing on the boarding ladder of a Navy jet, helmet in hand, with a broad smile. He had short, dark hair with no receding hairline and was a handsome, lean, mean, fighting Marine Corps machine.
“Probably the perfect build, weight, and height for a fighter pilot. Not a bad little hero shot,” the man said.
After three hours’ reading and taking notes in the margins, he reached across the table for a large stamp and ink pad. Flipping open the metal cover, he took the stamp and pounded the pad three times before centering the stamp at the bottom of the cover sheet. APPROVED in red letters remained on the sheet from the ink transfer.
He initialed the page and separated the sections of the package before placing them into an accordion file folder, removed the top from a black ink marker, and wrote HUNTER, DUNCAN USMC across the top of the file flap. He slid back his chair, picked up the file folder, and placed it with similar folders in a four-drawer safe.
Those folders were culled from thousands of subjects who took a battery of simple aptitude tests across America during the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. The CIA’s Science and Technology Division was interested in the outcome of one single test—how quickly could a subject balance sixteen penny nails on the head of another. Under three minutes was noteworthy. Balancing sixteen nails on the head of one under sixty seconds made the National Clandestine Service want to take a look at the feasibility of recruitment.
Hunter, Duncan, USMC, was the first person in five years to break the code and deliver the solution in fifty-eight seconds. The man charged with identifying unusually capable, talented people for unique and time-sensitive special access programs closed the safe labeled 17 NAILS, spun the dial, and left the tiny SCIF.
CHAPTER THREE
0700 October 10, 1996
Del Rio International Airport, Del Rio, Texas
The overnight thunderstorms blew out just in time. Duncan Hunter sat back in his chair and stared into the distance, as dozens of maquiladoras on the other side of the Rio Grande disappeared over the horizon and into the haze. Aircraft mechanics slogged through the hangar dripping with sweat. In a couple hours, it would be show time.
It was another humid Thursday in Del Rio, and the US Border Patrol’s Director of Aircraft Maintenance would soon be on his way to the other end of the airfield either to bring Border Patrol aviation into the 20th century or watch it lapse back into a glorified flying club—or die altogether.
The uncertainty made Hunter nervous. For a former Marine fighter pilot, the feeling was new and a bit unsettling. There was a career resting on how well the presentation went. Depending on who one talked with, it was not a good fit having a former fighter pilot and aircraft maintenance officer with a couple of graduate degrees as the Border Patrol’s new Aircraft Maintenance Director. It was an odd choice for a new civil servant with little to no civil aviation experience.
Law-enforcement aviation and FAA regulations were completely different beasts than military flight and maintenance operations, but the GAO report suggested either the Border Patrol get some adult leadership to turn its aviation program around, or it would be shut down.
Not many applied for the job. Hunter was a surprise selection. Within the first hour of his first day, he met the crusty old Chief Pilot for the first time. Charles Rodriguez jabbed a finger into Hunter’s chest and spat, “Who the fuck do you know in the Border Patrol?”
Taken completely by surprise by the outburst from the short, heavily wrinkled man in a flight suit, Hunter coolly replied, “You try that again, and I’ll break your finger. I don’t know anyone in the Border Patrol.” He saw a rectangular nametag, a Border Patrol aviation patch, and a shoulder holster containing a 9mm Beretta.
Holstering his finger, Charles snapped, “Bullshit. You couldn’t have gotten this job without knowing someone in the Border Patrol. Who the fuck is it?”
Hunter debated his response. “Is that how you got your job, Charles? Who’d you blow to get it? I don’t know anyone in the Border Patrol. However, I do know the Attorney General, so don’t fuck with me, or I’ll make a little call and have your ass investigated.”
He turned his back on the pissed-off pilot with a gun and walked out of the pilot’s building and into his hangar. Hunter encountered a lot of hostility in the few weeks he was on the job, but, in the short time he was there, he immediately reversed the trend of aircraft crashing every other week due to pilot error or weak maintenance processes. Half the maintenance workers and the junior Border Patrol pilots quietly cheered for Hunter. The senior patrol agents in charge, like the Chief Pilot, avoided him.
Response to the outsider “non-agent” was mixed, but the leadership, including the Chief Patrol Agent and his deputy, was wholly supportive. Half the assistant Chief Patrol Agents kept Hunter at arm’s length. The other half became cheerleaders.
It was over a year since they had an aircraft crash attributed to buffoonery, and he’d been on the job only thirteen months. Hunter’s encounters with Charles Rodriguez were still strained but professional. Airplanes and helicopters were being fixed as fast as the pilots broke them. For the first time ever, all aircraft went on patrol with all systems working. Every aircraft in the Del Rio fleet was up, ready, and flyable with no deferred discrepancies. The Border Patrol leadership took notice.
The maintenance facility hummed with efficiency and professionalism, and, with the turnaround of the facility and the improved mission capability of the aircraft, the mechanics found themselves with a lot of free time. With ten crashed aircraft carcasses in the Quonset hut out back of the maintenance hangar, Hunter challenged the bored mechanics with a project.
Some of the men began overhauling a crashed Piper Super Cub. When the first overhauled airplane rolled out of the hangar, Hunter turned it into a media event highlighting the mechanics’ work—the half that supported him. The aircraft was transformed from a ragged collection of parts, including a bent frame and wings, seized engine, shredded dope and fabric—to a stunning like-new airplane.
His success embarrassed the senior pilots and the other half of the mechanics, who were buddies with Charles. The hangar no longer looked like an Army-Navy surplus store. The mechanics that worked produced like-new airplanes from carcasses that hadn’t flown in ten years, and the bright little white airplane in Border Patrol livery stunned the leadership. Other Section Air Operations begged for their aircraft to be overhauled or to be placed on the list for new Super Cubs.
When the Chief Patrol Agent asked Duncan how things were going one day in August, he replied, “I don’t understand why your guys don’t use quiet airplanes to chase illegal aliens and drug smugglers.”
That conversation set off a chain of events culminating in a flight demonstration and a quiet aircraft presentation. It was a long, bumpy road to reach that point, and it was time to get started.
Hunter checked his Seiko Dive Master. The men giving the presentation should be at their airplane at the FBO.
Driving up to the unique motorized glider, Hunter stepped out of the Border Patrol truck and walked straight toward the thin man with the full head of gray hair, knocked knees, and a smile. He was a distinguished gentleman and wore a white, long-sleeved, button-down-collared shirt with dark-gray slacks. Dull-black dress shoes completed the picture.
“You must be Greg Lynche.” Hunter gripped his hand and shook it three times before releasing it to shake the other man’s hand, which hung in the air. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this day. I appreciate your coming today.”
“Glad to finally meet you, Duncan. I feel like I’ve known you a long time.” Lynche and the other man exchanged glances as if sharing a private joke. Lynche immediately recovered and said, “This is Art Yoder.”
Once introduced, Hunter shook the hand of the six-foot-four-inch, unsmiling, solidly built companion. It had been years since he saw a flattop on anyone. Yoder sported the same dress code of white shirt with dark slacks.