Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  Wexfall nodded—the military was even more squeamish about sending an armed fighter up against a civilian prop-job. “Who’s on deck for this intercept?”

  “Coast Guard,” Gusman told him.

  Wexfall shrugged—they would have to do. In years past the Customs Service handled intercepts on suspected smugglers like this one, but since the entry of the Coast Guard into drug interdiction in the mid-1980s the job was often split between the two. There was no rhyme or reason to the selection—it depended on who was on deck or whose turn it was to do an intercept. It wasn’t exactly the most effective or logical way to go, but that was the way it was.

  ‘Get a Coast Guard Falcon on ten-minute standby,” Wexfall said to the Coast Guardsman seated beside him. “Then get the air interdiction duty officer on the line. He might nix this intercept but we should have a bird ready to go in case he doesn’t.”

  Miami Coast Guard Air Station, Opa-Locka Airport, Florida

  The quarter spun in the air. Lieutenant Commander Kevin Rawlins let it drop into his left hand, turned it over onto the back of his right hand with a slap, then removed his left hand. He peered at the coin with a satisfied grin. “Heads, I win.” He took the TV remote from his partner’s hand, aimed it at the TV and pushed a button. “Moonlighting's on in five minutes.”

  Let me see that quarter, his copilot, Kelly Sandino, demanded.

  Sore loser.” Rawlins dropped into an armchair and lazily extended his legs across an oak coffee table in front of the television, letting his flight boots dangle over the opposite edge. Rawlins was of average height but had long lanky legs that were sometimes a real hassle. The rest of his thin wiry frame had just refused to grow along with his legs; even his flight suit was custom-made. His fellow Coast Guard HU-25C Falcon pilots always knew when Rawlins was the last to fly the plane because the seat was set all the way back and the rudder pedals set all the way forward.

  “And don’t forget the microwave popcorn, the one without the salt,” Rawlins said.

  ‘Kiss it,” Sandino told him. Lieutenant, j.g., Kelly “Grace” Sandino, one of only seventy female pilots in the U. S. Coast Guard, was a dark-eyed beauty from Puerto Rico who somehow managed to tolerate Rawlins antics and the role of being the only female jet pilot at Opa-Locka, to become one of its best pilots, period.

  The crew was in good spirits. They had just begun the last day of a week-long alert cycle—twenty-four hours on, twenty-four off; this was their last on day before a two-week leave. Kevin was on his way to Key West for a long fishing trip, as far from a flight line as he could manage.

  The alert day had started at 4:00 P.M., nearly five hours earlier, with a routine patrol sortie. This patrol was quick and dirty—actually a flight currency trip for one of the district headquarter’s staff members, who were required to fly at least six hours every two months to hold their flight status. They had another Falcon up on patrol, and the staffer did a few practice intercepts on him, being directed at first by SLINGSHOT, the joint Coast Guard and Customs Service ground radar controller, and then by the Falcon’s own radar intercept officer. A few practice landings and the mission was over.

  They were on bravo-ten alert status the rest of the tour, which meant that if they received a call to do an intercept they had to be airborne in ten minutes or less. Miami Air Station, the busiest search- and-rescue station, had Dolphin helicopters and Falcon jets on various levels of alert, from five to thirty minutes depending on the number of airframes on station, mission requirements and warning time they could expect. Most of the rescue jets, like the search-and- rescue A-model Falcon and the drug interdiction C-model, were usually on ten-minute alert; Dolphin rescue choppers, the sleek, French-built high-tech jet helicopters, were on five-minute alert.

  Kelly Sandino had just returned two minutes later with a steaming bag of popcorn when the public address system clicked on: “Ready, alpha, report to the CQ’s office.”

  Rawlins threw the remote onto the coffee table, shuffled to his feet and grabbed a handful of popcorn as he found a phone and dialed the Charge of Quarters’ office. “Rawlins here. What’s up?”

  “SLINGSHOT’s putting you on ten-minute alert,” the CQ, one of Rawlins’ fellow pilots, replied. “They got an in-bound north of Cuba they want to take a look at.”

  Rawlins turned to Sandino, who was retying the laces on her flight boots. “Grade, get the crew together. Let’s spin ’em up. I’ll do the paperwork.”

  Sandino had the crew on board, the auxiliary power unit on and activated and the crew chief ready to supervise the engine start by the time Rawlins came on board. Their Falcon jet was a Dassault- Breguet Falcon 20 jetliner, built in France, a big sexy workhorse of an air machine. Although the official designation was HU-25C Guardian, pilots assigned to drug interdiction kept the unofficial name Falcon on account of the high-tech, combat-fighterlike surveillance equipment and tactics they used chasing drug smugglers.

  This version of the Coast Guard s newest rescue-and-patrol jet carried the APG-66 intercept attack radar, the same as on the Air Force s F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighter, which could detect targets out to sixty miles and track up to six targets simultaneously. The Falcon also carried a high-resolution FLIR, a forward-looking infrared scanner, that was able to track air targets several miles away as well as ground objects as small as a dog from a mile in the sky.

  All they needed, Rawlins had thought as he hurried up the airstairs and boarded the plane, were a few Sidewinder missiles on the wings and smugglers might think again about bringing their shit into America.

  Sandino had the switches configured, external power on, and was all strapped in ready to go. “Ready on number one,” Rawlins said as he quickly strapped in. He couldn’t help but notice how Sandino s breasts always seemed to strain against the shoulder harness. If there was ever a manpower shortage in the Coast Guard, Rawlins thought, all they had to do was make a recruiting poster starring Gracie—it didn’t matter if she was wearing a flight suit. She’d look dynamite in a poncho. Guys would be kicking down the doors to enlist.

  Snap out of it, you old letch, Rawlins admonished himself. We’ve got work to do. “Crew, stand by for engine start.”

  “Radar ready,” from Petty Officer Joe Conklin in the rear end of the Falcon by his sensor console as he moved to a window to act as safety watch during each engine start.

  “Clear on the right,” Sandino responded. “Air, power, radios, lights set. Ready on one.”

  Rawlins showed one index finger to Specialist First Class John Choy outside, then twirled it in a tight circle. After a last check around the left-engine area to clear, Choy gave Rawlins a thumbs-up and a twirling index finger.

  “Starting one.” Rawlins advanced the throttle a half-inch, engaged the starters and the six-thousand-pound-thrust turbofan screamed to life. Thirty seconds later, as soon as Choy had moved his fire-extinguisher bottle and comm cord to the number-two engine, Sandino had the right engine started. Choy jumped on board, dogged the entry airstair closed and strapped himself in near the big observation window on the port side. A minute later they had taxied the short distance to the end of Opa-Locka’s main east-west runway and were ready to go.

  The Falcon accelerated smoothly down the nine-thousand-foot runway and soon the scene outside the cockpit windows was filled with the brilliant sprawling lights of Miami as they turned south-bound over Miami Beach. “Pretty romantic, don’t you think, Gra- cie?” Rawlins remarked cross-cockpit as the dazzling panorama swept before them.

  Sandino set the newly assigned Miami Center frequency into the number one UHF radio. “Sure is,” the lady copilot replied. She shot a glance at Rawlins and smiled slyly. “Present company excluded.”

  “Don’t you think this is exciting?” Rawlins pressed, sneaking a few more glances at his copilot’s stunning profile. “Even highly stimulating? The lights, the ocean, the speed. Doesn’t it make your Latin blood hot?”

  “Know what really makes me hot, Rawl?”

&n
bsp; “Tell me, baby.”

  “Pilots who are only two thousand feet above ground and who start a five hundred foot-per-minute descent instead of climbing. Watch your altitude.” Rawlins pulled back on the control wheel and retrimmed properly for a two hundred knot climb.

  Five minutes later the Falcon was clear through Miami International’s terminal control area. “Miami Center, Omaha One-One changing to tactical frequency. Good evening.”

  The Omaha call sign was a common one for any drug interdiction air unit on an active intercept, and air-traffic-control agencies knew to clear as much airspace as possible and stay on their toes when they heard that sign. “Omaha One-One, change to company frequency, contact me on this frequency when returning,” the air traffic controller replied. Sandino switched the radio to SLINGSHOT’s scrambled frequency, and both she and Rawlins slid one headphone pad off their ears as a raucous squealing and chirping obliterated all radio sound. Now the chirping sounds subsided until only a faint crackle could be heard as the anti-eavesdropping encryption-synchronization routine matched the built-in codes on the Falcon’s radio receiver—only a radio with the built-in codes could lock out the interference.

  Rawlins knew the smugglers would soon break the codes on this system, just as they found all the federal frequencies and started intercepting or eavesdropping on them. Incredibly, many of the law-enforcement radio frequencies had been published, and it was a relatively simple process to build or steal a descrambler. They had all the advantages—especially the money—to fight the drug wars.

  Soon the slightly squeaky, distorted voice of Wexfall in the basement of Miami Air Traffic Control came back: “Omaha One-One, how copy?”

  Sandino keyed her mike button. “Four by.”

  “Roger. Stand by for your final controller.” There was a slight pause as Wexfall handed over control to the more experienced Gusman, who had the initial flight vectors set up well before he nodded to Wexfall to accept controller’s responsibility. “One-One, fly heading one-zero-zero and maintain two thousand feet, your bogey is at sixty miles and low.”

  Rawlins made a slight right turn and engaged the autopilot. “Okay, Conk, he’s at sixty miles low. Go get ’em.”

  “Roger. Stand by,” Joe Conklin replied on interphone. Now Rawlins’ digital-display monitor mounted between the pilot and copilot positions in the top center of the instrument panel activated and began pulsing as the radar began its pre-programmed search pattern, sweeping sixty degrees on either side of centerline and twenty degrees up and down. But because the target was only two thousand feet below the Falcon, Conklin narrowed the pre-programmed radar sweep to five degrees vertical and twenty degrees horizontal, putting maximum energy along the range and bearing called out by SLINGSHOT and allowing him to lock onto the target at the greatest distance.

  A few moments later the moving radar pips on the screen froze, then began tight oscillations around a square radar-target symbol. A white diamond superimposed itself on the target symbol and RADAR LOCK appeared at the top of the screen. “Radar lock on a fast-moving aircraft, low, fifty miles at ten-thirty position,” Conklin reported. A few seconds later the radar computed the target’s airspeed and altitude and began feeding range-and-bearing data to the crew on the Falcon. “Left ten degrees, closure rate two hundred thirty knots.”

  “Forty-five miles,” Rawlins confirmed as he completed a left turn to move behind the target. “Ten minutes to intercept.”

  “How about giving me the intercept this time, Kevin?” Sandino said over interphone.

  Rawlins turned to his copilot. “You’re not checked out in night intercepts—”

  “I’ve had the ground school and one simulator ride.”

  “Can’t do it until you’ve had actual rides.”

  “How am I ever going to get checked out if I don’t do actual intercepts? I’ve been on the upgrade program for a month and haven’t had one actual intercept. C’mon, Kev,” Kelly said crosscockpit. Her voice was different, lower. He looked across at her. “We’ll do it nice and easy,” she added. “You can take charge whenever you want.”

  What the hell, Rawlins decided—he was an instructor so it wouldn’t be totally against the rules to let her do the intercept. She was, after all, a good stick.

  He nodded and watched as Sandino put her hands on the control column and throttles. “I’ve got the aircraft,” she said.

  He gave the column a little nudge and felt the acknowledging nudge, then let go. “You got it,” he said. “Go get ’em.”

  Brickell Plaza Federal Building, Miami, Florida

  There seemed to be more of these late-night workdays for Rear Admiral Ian Hardcastle, commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District based in Miami. The solitude of the big empty office was a welcome interlude—and even the paperwork was a welcome diversion from the big, silent, empty bungalow he had to go home to.

  The commander of the busiest district in the Coast Guard stood up from his desk, stretched his long stringy muscles and ran a hand through salt-and-pepper hair swept back from his forehead in wavy lines. He caught his reflection in the dark office windows and saw that the blue uniform blouse and navy blue pants hung a bit looser than before—stress, lack of exercise and a few late nights at O’Mally’s Tavern . . . His blue eyes were dark in the reflection he studied, and the overhead fluorescent lights accentuated the gaunt face and deep- set, narrow eyes. Ghostly, he thought to himself. He could be straight out of one of his grandfather’s Scottish ghost stories, the ones that haunted the moors in the dead of night.

  The sandwich that had passed for dinner was a cold lump in his stomach. Stretching his aching muscles even more, he felt the occasional twinges of pain in his wrists and knuckles. Arthritis, a reminder of how old he was getting and how close to retirement he really was. Hardcastle pulled on his leather flyer’s jacket, a gift from a retired Coast Guard chief petty officer, and headed up to the roof of the eight-story office building.

  He might be getting old, but he wasn’t ready for a rocking chair. Case in point: the neat little Super Scorpion commuter helicopter parked on the roof was Hardcastle’s wheels ore all but the worst weather days. The Scorpion could carry two persons from Miami to most of Florida’s major cities at twice turnpike speeds and was small enough to fit into a two-car garage. It had taken the better part of a year to get permission from the departments of Transportation and Treasury to land the little beauty on the roof of the Federal Building, but by “bribing” other higher-ranking persons in the building with offers of free rides he was able to manage it. Rush-hour commuting was now a thing of the past and quick getaways to Orlando or the Keys became possibilities . . .

  Except now there was no one to share these getaways with. He just didn’t have much desire to go off on the weekends, and late nights at the office precluded any joy rides. Besides, most of his friends were also his ex-wife’s friends, and after their separation he saw little of them.

  He undid the tiedowns, removed inlet covers and pitot tube covers and stepped into his little eggbeater. Starting the little Super Scorpion was no more complicated than starting an automobile, and soon the engine was at idle power, warmed up and ready to go. He copied a weather report from Miami Flight Service—warm temperatures, clear skies, balmy breezes—then switched frequencies to Miami International’s control tower. Since he’d be popping up in the tower’s airspace as soon as he lifted off the roof he wanted to get clearance beforehand: “Miami tower, Scorpion two-five-six X-ray on Victor, departing Brickell Plaza helipad, destination Pompano Beach at one thousand five hundred. Over.”

  “Scorpion two-five-six X-ray, Miami Tower, good evening, Admiral.” Hardcastle had been doing this now for three years and was well known to most of the FAA controllers in south Florida. “Sir, hold your position for zero-two minutes, departing Omaha traffic from Opa-Locka will be turning over the city after takeoff. Looks like one of your boys, Admiral.”

  “Two-five-six X-ray, holding position at Brickell Plaza helipa
d.” Hardcastle shook his head, mildly exasperated at the casual slip of established radio procedures by the tower controller—their short thirty-second conversation could have yielded information to a smuggler. The only admiral that might be leaving Brickell Plaza Federal Building had to be Coast Guard. Now the smuggler would know that Omaha meant a Coast Guard plane was airborne out of Opa-Locka heading southwest over the city. Anyone with a fifty- do jlar Radio Shack VHF scanner could provide intelligence information to drug smugglers.

  But such thoughts were quickly overshadowed by another—where that Omaha jet from Opa-Locka might be going. He wished he had a descrambler on the Scorpion so he could listen in on SLINGSHOT or BLOC, the maritime radar-patrol center, but not all the brass in Miami could get one of them for a civilian bug-smasher. What was going on? A drug bust? Routine ops? A rescue?

  “Two-five-six X-ray, cleared to depart Brickell Plaza helipad, remain clear of the Miami TCA, proceed VFR to Pompano Beach. Over.”

  “Tower, I’d like to change that clearance,” Hardcastle radioed back. I d like to head on over to Opa-Locka. Can I get a clearance through the TCA?”

  “Stand by, sir.” The Terminal Control Area was a place of high- density air traffic around busy airports where air traffic was tightly controlled. It was asking a lot, Hardcastle knew, to send a small helicopter right through a TCA at night, but things quieted down significantly at Miami International right around nine P.M. and he figured he might get lucky.

  “Two-five-six X-ray, Miami tower,” the controller began, “if you can get your whirlygig off the roof and over to the airport right now, and I mean now, you are cleared across the TCA at one thousand feet. You’re going to be head-to-head with a very big, very nasty 747 in about five minutes. Over.”

  Hardcastle had the rotor clutch engaged on the Scorpion when he made his request, and the blades were spinning up to takeoff speed shortly after the controller issued the new clearance. “Two-five-six X-ray is off at this time, leaving one-fifty for one thousand feet,” he said as he set power and gently eased up on the collective. “Thanks, Chuck.”