by Hamric, Zack
“Hola,” yelled Cardoza as they approached the flying boat. He was relieved to see the smiling face of John Pierre leaning out the window of the cockpit as he waved a welcome at the approaching group. A second later, that relief turned to despair as Escabado and the crewman opened up a withering barrage of fire from their hiding places in the brush on the side of the runway.
Within seconds the Hondurans were lying in pools of dark oozing blood that was quickly absorbed by the loose white sand. Cardoza was the only soldier able to get a shot off during the ambush. In the moments after he was hit, he sprayed the Albatross with his M16. Most rounds went wild, except for a few that punched through the aluminum fuselage without seeming to cause any real damage.
I was still walking in the general direction of where it looked like the Albatross had landed. Hot as hell on the interior of the island. Sun baking off the bright sand and an endless supply of no-see-ums to aggravate me along the way.
Damn it! I thought as the unmistakable sound of several automatic weapons firing rolled through the brush. I hustled quietly through the undergrowth to the edge of the runway. Three thousand, maybe four thousand feet away at the far end of the runway the Albatross began to belch out a cloud of black smoke as the pilot started the starboard engine.
Escabado keyed the mike on his VHF radio. “Pedroza, where are you?”
The captain of the rapidly approaching Bandito replied, “I’m about a mile away from the east end of the island. Awaiting your orders Jefe.”
Escabado rapidly considered his options and turned to the crewman. “If these soldiers made a call or left anybody back at their headquarters, we’ll have the Honduran navy crawling all over us. I’ll leave on the boat with the chica. You go back to the Albatross and tell John Pierre to head back to Cuba to draw the Hondurans away from us.”
“Si, Jeff,” said the crewman as he scrambled out of the brush to the waiting aircraft.
John Pierre had successfully started the port engine-no time for checklists or warmups today. He needed to get the big bird off the ground. A few seconds later the Albatross was straining against the brakes as the throttles were advanced and they began their takeoff roll. Within a few seconds, the flying boat was bumping down the uneven grass runway and rapidly gaining speed as it approached my position. Almost hidden in the distance by the dust caused by the prop wash of the Albatoss, I could see Escabado dragging Tasha by the arm toward the ocean on the east side of the island.
I stepped out onto the narrow runway just as the nosewheel of the Albatross was beginning to rotate off the runway. It was rapidly approaching, no more than two hundred yards away when I began to swing the big extinguisher underhanded in a back and forth motion. At seventy yards I swung in a full arc backwards and a second later swung the fire extinguisher underhanded and released it in a perfect arc toward the charging aircraft just as the rear wheels lifted clear of the runway. The ten-pound fire extinguisher hit the huge prop on the port side.
The results were spectacular. The prop shredded in an explosion of metal fragments and a cloud of powder from the extinguisher. No time for me to react as a section of the prop whipped towards me and buried itself quivering in the ground at my feet. A few large fragments punched through the aluminum cabin like it was tinfoil and the Albatross immediately yawed to port and dropped a wing. John Pierre fought for his life as he tried to correct the attitude of the aircraft. He almost succeeded. They barely cleared the palm trees at the end of the runway and were over the ocean as he struggled to gain altitude and stabilize the aircraft. He glanced at his copilot to ask for help with holding the controls-already too late for that. Alexandra had a jagged sliver of metal protruding from her throat. The blood flow was already slowing as she breathed her last gurgling breath.
John Pierre was fighting the heavy manual controls and just as he started to level out the wings again, he overcorrected. The Albatross entered a nose high stall that disintegrated into a violent cartwheel into the ocean. The starboard wing ripped off on impact and the tail section broke off from the fuselage. Within seconds, the only remaining sign of the aircraft was an oil slick and some floating debris that quickly disappeared into the depths of the lagoon.
Escabado roughly threw Tasha to the waiting arms of Pedroza waiting on the slippery deck of the Bandito. She was unceremoniously strapped into the rear seat and her hands secured with nylon zip-ties while Pedroza restarted the motors. “Jefe, strap in tight,” Pedroza said as he slowly backed off the beach with a faint grinding sound as the beach sand scraped away at the fifty thousand dollar paint job. When they reached deeper water, he pivoted the boat using the motors and punched them forward. The Bandito leaped onto plane like a scalded dog and within seconds they were skimming the water at over one hundred miles an hour on a direct heading back to the Lucia Marie.
As soon as I saw the results from my fire extinguisher bomb, I took off at a dead run toward the end of the airfield where Escabado dragged Tasha away. Record time-I reached the end of the runway in just under four minutes; just in time to see a go fast boat pivoting and racing away in the general direction of the Central American coast. Totally wasted from the effort, I leaned over with my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath. I wondered if I would ever see Tasha alive again.
On the way back to the Dolce Vita, I checked to see if any of the Honduran soldiers had survived. All dead, except for Cardoza who was slowly bleeding out from a chest wound. With each breath, the ragged hole in his chest slowly pulsed a mixture of blood and bubbles that ran down the side of his body into the warm sand.
“Senor,” he whispered gesturing at his shirt pocket. I reached into the pocket and retrieved a well-worn picture of a young woman wearing a simple dress and smiling at the camera in a natural smile that seemed to radiate her feelings for the man taking the picture. I held the picture up for him to see and watched as Cardoza’s eyes slowly glazed over as the life finally ebbed from his body.
CHAPTER 27
The easterly swell was running about three feet under a pale blue sky. At one hundred miles an hour, the Bandito was flying from wavetop to wavetop leaving a towering rooster tail behind as it charged toward the Lucia Marie. Despite the padded high backed seats and racing harnesses the passengers could still feel the impact hammering up through their spines and the sickening sideways impact as they caught the occasional edge in bottom of a swell. Tasha was miserable-the jarring ride and the trauma of being snatched from the island was almost overwhelming. In spite of the circumstances, she found herself appraising Escabado and Pedroza to figure out some means for her to escape. It seemed hopeless for now, but she would bide her time and wait for the opportunity to present itself.
An hour later, Tasha could feel the deceleration as Pedroza throttled back the engines and made a wide circle around the Lucia Marie. The crew was standing by the rails at the derrick waiting to hoist Bandito up into its storage rack on deck.
Pedroza idled beside the mother ship and a crewman was lowered to Bandito by the hoist where he secured the oversize nylon slings to four lift points on the deck. Within seconds, they could hear the faint whine outside the cockpit as the lift spooled in the cable and lifted them clear of the sparkling water. One more bump as they were gently lowered into the cradle and Pedroza pushed the button to raise the lexan hatch cover.
Pedroza and Escabado unstrapped and stepped onto the deck as a crewman stepped into the cockpit with a knife and stared at Tasha with undisguised lust. He reached out with the blade, casually cut the nylon wrist ties binding her and motioned for her to crawl out of the cockpit. Tasha stepped out into the bright sunlight on the aft deck momentarily dazzled by the reflection off the Caribbean water. She was surrounded by some of the dirtiest sailors she had ever seen. The stink from their unwashed bodies seemed to flow over her and would have been overwhelming if not for the freshening sea breeze that blew in from the Caribbean.
Back on Isla Cisne
Except for the few stray goats, I was the o
nly thing still living on the island. Just to be sure, I checked for any stragglers who might have been left behind at the Honduran base. Doors had been left swinging open in the breeze from their hurried exit when they heard the aircraft landing and rushed to help. Half eaten breakfasts with insects already crawling on them, waiting for men who would never see another sunrise. A lone volleyball lying in the blazing sun waiting for the next inhabitants of the island. I’d seen enough.
I grabbed a few supplies from the base that I could use-mainly bottled water and some canned food and rolled it down the dock to the Dolce Vita in a wheelbarrow I found behind the radio room. Without Tasha aboard, Dolce Vita already looked like a much lonelier place.
Without further fanfare, I started the motor and cast off the line as the bow pivoted away from the quay. Set the autopilot, hoisted the sails and set a course for Nicaragua. The only thing helping me avoid falling into a mind numbing depression was the quiet rage that completely infused me. God help these guys when I found them.
CHAPTER 28
Keller, the station chief for the DEA in Honduras was less than pleased as he strode into what until yesterday had been his office. This had been an excellent post for the past five years-very few surprises, just routine surveillance of any suspect boat traffic coming from the direction of Columbia bound for the US. In the twenty-four hours since Miller, Davis, and Rivera had arrived in Honduras, they had created complete chaos as they commandeered every resource he had available and provided very little information as to what their mission actually was.
It grated on him that there was an operation being run out of his station without him being briefed. When he had complained to Washington, they had told him in no uncertain terms to stand down and give them any requested assistance. Rivera looked up from where he had been intently monitoring the feed from the satellite. “Chief, I appreciate all the resources you guys have provided. We should be finished with our job and out of your way in just a couple of more days.”
“You guys are a pain in my ass,” Keller growled as he chewed on the long dead stump of a cigar. “I just hope whatever the hell you’re doing is important enough to make up for screwing up my little corner of the world.”
“I promise you-as soon as we finish our mission, I’ll bring you up to speed,” Miller said as he subtly eased Keller out the door and locked it securely behind him.
Davis shook his head as he remarked ruefully, “ I don’t think we’ll be having any beers at the local cantina with this guy after work.”
“Probably not, but that’s the least of my concerns,” Rivera said as he returned to the task at hand. The endless examination of the satellite feed brought him to an entirely new level of boredom. Nothing but hours of watching the images slowly unfolding in a hundred mile swath on the monitor and zooming in on the random specks that were revealed to be sailboats or small cargo vessels steaming across the Caribbean. Looking for a needle in a haystack would have been simple by comparison. Yep, just burn the friggin’ haystack, whatever is left must be a needle…
Today was particularly slow-very few targets showing up on the monitor and those quickly discarded-if it didn’t have sails, it wasn’t a target. Something just coming into view at the extreme bottom edge of the display. Zooming in to a medium magnification, Rivera found himself looking at two small islands in the middle of nowhere. A couple of more steps and he could see one island was completely uninhabited and the other seemed to have some random buildings and antennas as well as a crude landing strip running the length of the island.
Miller and Davis leaned over his shoulder to investigate what had captured his attention. “What’s that I see on the end of the runway?” asked Miller indicating some dark objects that stood out in contrast on the white sand.
The final level of zoom revealed the bodies of several unidentified dead men with weapons beside them. “Let’s zoom out a bit and get more of a ‘God’s Eye’ view,” said Miller as he manipulated the joystick. At about four clicks out, they could see the islands and about five miles of the surrounding ocean. No more than a mile away from the island they could see a sailboat heading on a southerly course and further out could see the distant wake from a powerboat moving at high speed in the same general direction. The powerboat was almost immediately lost to view as it departed from the field of view of the satellite.
They turned their attention back to the sailboat and zoomed in to see the detail. It was a forty or fifty foot sloop. Seemed to at least match the general description of the boat they had been looking for.
“Looks like one guy at the helm sailing solo. If the girl is with him, she must be below deck,” said Miller. He made one more adjustment that took them to the limit of the resolution of the telescope. At that level, they could resolve details as small as four inches. “Hard for me to tell,” said Miller squinting at the screen. “It fits the description of the sailboat and there aren’t many guys built like a linebacker in that area except for Kyle. We’ll send it to the analysts and see if they can pull any more detail out of the name on the stern-I can’t quite make it out. One thing I do see is a SSB antenna on the backstay.”
Rivera threw a questioning look his way. “SSB?”
“Single Side Band. Best way for most offshore sailors to communicate. Closer to a HAM radio than anything else. Sucks a lot of power when he transmits, but a lot of these guys constantly listen in to weather or just to keep up with other boats that are cruising offshore. Not sure if he’s powered on, but it might be worth taking a chance,” Miller said looking for agreement from the other two.
“Nothing to lose,” said Davis. “But how do you communicate with him?”
“Give me a second,” said Miller as he speed dialed a number on his cell. A quick conversation and within two minutes, the phone in the conference room rang again. Miller clicked it on speakerphone.
“Sir, this is Lt. Kendall with the NSA. We have a phone patch to an SSB transmitter set up for you.”
“I’ll give it a shot,” said Miller. “I’ve used a VHF before-no idea what proper protocols are on SSB.”
“Hailing Sailing Vessel southbound from Isla Cisne. This is Eye In The Sky. Do you copy?”
It took me a second to realize that the message coming from the SSB was directed at me. Mid-day was not usually the best time for radio-wave propogation and transmissions were often distorted beyond recognition. A quick look at the radar-nothing showing in the twenty-four mile range. A quick visual check overhead-no airplanes or contrails visible.
I took a deep breath, “Eye In The Sky, I’m reading you 5x5. State your position-I don’t have a visual on you.”
Miller thought before giving away too much information on the open airway. “Our name should give you some idea about that. Over.”
I looked up in the sky again with my binoculars-still no sign of any aircraft overhead. “I’d like a confirmation on that if you don’t mind. I’m executing a course change-please verify. Over.” With that, I turned the boat to starboard and gybed through a complete 360-degree circle. At the end of the maneuver, I was back on my previous course.
“You ever hear the song ‘Dizzy’ by Tommy Roe?” Miller asked Kyle with a smile. “I once heard that you’re a fan of 1960’s music.” Miller covered the phone and looked at Davis and Rivera. “I spent some time with Kyle a couple of years ago at an apartment he kept in D.C. The man had an entire wall covered with old albums from every band in the 60’s and 70’s. An absolute fanatic-he still owned an old turntable that he claimed to have paid ten grand for.”
It was like déjà vu. The lyrics just popped in my head- ‘I'm so dizzy my head is spinning, like a whirlpool it never ends’.
“Eye in the Sky. Thanks for that course confirmation. Given my current situation, that pretty well sums things up. Over.”
“Looks like you’re sailing short handed and may be heading into some stormy weather. Would you like to take on some additional crew? Over,” replied Miller.
I mulled
over his words over for a moment. “Thanks for the offer, but that’s a negative,” I said. “Hard to find a good crew that I can rely on. Better I just solo for now. Over.”
“Roger that, but if you don’t mind, we’ll keep an eye out for any approaching storms and try to notify you. Over,” Miller said as he finished the transmission.
“That would be appreciated. And thank you for the update. I will continue monitoring this channel if you have any further information,” I said keying off the mike.
Interesting. That conversation told me a couple of things. Whoever was monitoring me had to be with the US government. No one else had the communication and surveillance technology to be able to monitor me from above. Even a high-flying aircraft would have been visible in the crystal blue sky. The only choice that left was monitoring from one of the military surveillance satellites.
Obviously, the guy on the other end was someone who knew me personally. I wasn’t sure where that song had come from, but now I couldn’t get it out of my head. As much as I needed help, I still couldn’t stop thinking about the email from the week before that had betrayed me and almost killed me. Until I knew who was behind it, I couldn’t trust anyone.
CHAPTER 29
Aboard the Lucia Marie, Pedroza had turned south on a course directly for the Cayos Miskitos, a low-slung group of islands thirty miles off the Nicaruagan coast. The freighter appeared to be a floating derelict that should have been scrapped years before. The main crane for unloading the containers at local docks was an overlapping patchwork of welds and repairs applied over several generations.