Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  “I am not proposing a wholesale slaughter of civilians,” Hardcastle shot back. “I’m trying to design a way to secure this country’s borders from intruders. The main feature of the program is detection, establishing navigational corridors and restricted-use regions and a system of response, surveillance and interceptor aircraft to patrol the borders and find those who are violating the law. Attacking those intruders who ignore the laws and don’t follow the established procedures is the last resort. We don’t go into every intercept with fingers on the trigger.

  “The suspect is guilty as soon as he crosses the line into restricted airspace,” Hardcastle pressed on. “The operation begins at that instant, but we don’t go in with Sea Stinger missiles in the air. We track the suspect after he deviates from his flight plan or crosses into restricted airspace. We try to make contact with him, get him to follow our aircraft or get back within the designated airspace or routing. If he ignores our directions, we complete the intercept. We order him to follow. We direct him to land. If he still fails to respond, he is resisting arrest and must be stopped. ”

  “Suspects aren’t routinely shot for trespassing or for resisting arrest,” GefiFar said. “At least, not by law-enforcement agencies—”

  “This is not a law-enforcement action, damn it. It’s a national- security issue—”

  GefiFar shook her head. “Admiral, we’re both frustrated about the drug smuggling situation. We see scum float by us every day. We know that for every one we catch, five, six, seven slip by. But at least I realize that the answer is not to go extra-legal. This is a law- enforcement action, Admiral.

  “Sure, I’m frustrated, but the difference is, I’m willing to go an extra step to do something about it. Let’s deal with the problem. Let’s design a system that catches more of those seven or eight smugglers that get by. If it means that we put missiles and guns on Sea Lion aircraft, then so be it. ”

  The Vice President said, “I’ve seen a very impressive display of state-of-the-art hardware, true, but what has impressed me more is the devotion you all have to your jobs. But the disease seems to have spread faster than our capacity or willingness to deal with it. The government has a choice. We can rearm Customs and the Coast Guard, expanding their roles in interdiction at the expense of their primary missions, or we can create a new organization that deals specifically with drug interdiction and interdiction only.

  “Admiral Hardcastle, you addressed that question with your report and demonstration today. Frankly I didn’t believe it was possible to seal off nearly one-fourth of America’s airspace and sea approaches. You’ve shown me today, and in your report, that it is possible— economically and operationally. I have decided to take this proposal to the President for his review.”

  Hardcastle and Becker couldn’t help allowing a show of pleasure. Geffar held out her hand and Hardcastle accepted it.

  “Congratulations, Admiral.”

  The Vice President was gone for a long time. Hardcastle and GefiFar stood with Elliott and McLanahan in the Presidential Suite of the Hyatt Brickell Point, drinking cofiFee poured by an armed White House steward.

  “I have to admit, General Elliott—” Hardcastle began. Elliott held up a hand to interrupt.

  “Call me Brad, okay? I don’t much go for formality.”

  “Okay. Brad. I admit, like Long, I’m curious about you and your organization. It took a month before I even got permission to speak to you. I know you’re located in southern Nevada, little else.” “Unfortunately, I really can’t get into it too much, Ian. We flight- test different weapon systems, that’s about all I can say.” “Flight-test?” GefiFar said. “You must have done some pretty amazing whiflFerdills. Even Secretary Preston seemed a little in awe of you. Both of you.”

  “As Patrick said, we’re jet jockeys.”

  “Were you by any chance involved with that plane crash in Alaska last year?” GefiFar asked. “The big bomber? I seem to recall—” “Inspector.” Elliott’s tone of voice had changed. More like a warning. “Leave it alone.”

  McLanahan broke the tension: “Congratulations, Admiral Hardcastle. It looks like you’re on your way.”

  “You all did a spectacular job.”

  “We followed your direction,” Elliott said.

  Just then the door of the suite opened, and three Secret Service agents strode quickly into the suite, followed by the Vice President, his press secretary and personal secretary.

  “Sorry to take so long. I defy any politician to ignore a shouted question, especially one by a network anchor.” He took off his jacket, loosened his tie. “Admiral, anything else I should know?”

  “Yes . . . after the first few months in operation, our new force might not seem to have a lot to do. But then—”

  “Maybe you’d better explain.”

  “The smugglers aren’t stupid. They’re resourceful, and they have damn near unlimited funds—if they can launder the cash they accumulate. Once they discover a force the size of what we are proposing is in place, they’ll obviously try to avoid that area. So the initial stage of the unit, with one platform such as Hammerhead One, one shore base unit, six drones, six Sea Lion aircraft and ten fast patrol boats can patrol an area approximately five hundred miles. If that unit is located off Florida’s southeast coast, as proposed, it can interdict air and sea traffic for a good part of south Florida. The smugglers will begin to circumnavigate south Florida. The seeming lack of activity with the new unit will no doubt rankle a lot of critics when they try to equate the number of busts made with the amount of money spent on the program.

  “The same thing happened when the joint Customs/Coast Guard unit established the aerostat radar pickets over Arizona and New Mexico, the area where most of the overland air smugglers concentrated. That program cost a billion dollars and netted only six smugglers in six months because the smugglers avoided the area. Two of the four aerostat units were later deactivated after they had been damaged or repaired, and smuggling activity promptly resumed full force in that area.

  “That can’t be allowed to happen to the Hammerheads,” Hardcastle said, fists clenched. “As I’ve said, the south Florida area is where the highest concentration of smugglers will be found. They won’t keep traveling the area if interdiction forces are stepped up. They’ll bide their time, decrease shipment sizes, try other smuggling routes, to wait it out until public or financial pressure forces interdiction efforts to decrease. Then they’ll drift back in and set up operations as before. If we go that route.”

  “You keep mentioning this name, Hammerheads,” Martindale said. “Who the hell are the Hammerheads? You make it up?”

  “Not exactly. Back in Prohibition days the Coast Guard—then known as the Revenue Cutter Service and part of the Treasury Department, the same as the Customs Service—was given the principal responsibility for liquor interdiction all over the country. The Treasury and Customs agents were known as the ‘Revenooers’ and the Revenue Cutter men were called the Hammerheads because of the big sledgehammers they used to break open rum barrels when they made a seizure.”

  “They didn’t exactly have a great reputation,” Sandra Geffar added. Hardcastle looked at her with some surprise. “I had my office check when I first heard you use that term. The name Hammerheads was eventually given to a select Coast Guard unit that used military weapons and tactics to intercept the large mothership of smugglers known as blacks. Apparently they got the name Hammerheads not only because of the rum barrels they busted, but also because of the heads they busted.”

  “You’re well informed,” Hardcastle said, allowing a slight grin. “The Hammerheads were rescue and lifesaving men and women that had been given a dirty, unpopular job. They were up against well-armed adversaries, many of them Americans, some even representing military forces of other nations—the British, French and Dutch were notorious liquor smugglers. Most of them had never aimed a gun at another human being until ordered to do it by the government. In a real sense it was kill or
be killed for them . . . No matter what size vessel, no matter if it was damaged or on fire or sinking, they had to be ready not only to provide aid but to fight off murderous smugglers—sometimes on the same sinking boat. But what’s your point, Inspector Geffar?”

  “You’re creating another Hammerheads unit, a hundred times stronger and better equipped than their 1926 counterparts—”

  “I disagree,” Hardcastle said irritably. “Strongly disagree.”

  The two paused, looked at the Vice President.

  “I’m familiar with Admiral Hardcastle’s background,” Martindale said, glancing at the Coast Guard officer. “We go back a ways.”

  “How so, sir?” Geffar asked.

  “Vietnam. I commanded a Navy patrol squadron, some old plywood boats going up and down the deltas. Death traps. Hardcastle and his squads were frequent passengers. Admiral Hardcastle was in bomb disposal then. We were always finding mines, booby traps, old weapons or bombs—the VC were using stuff left over from the French occupation forces. Pretty dangerous stuff—it would go off if you looked at it wrong.” He paused, remembering back. “Bomb disposal. Shit detail.” The Vice President turned to Geffar. “Mahogany Hammock. Both of you lost good agents in that gun battle, right?” Both nodded.

  “It was a big surprise to us,” Geffar said. “I’ve never seen the smugglers so well armed and organized.”

  “It was the . .. incident that sort of seeded my proposal,” Hardcastle added. “I just felt neither the Coast Guard or Customs was ready to respond to such a display of firepower.”

  “And so the Hammerheads,” the Vice President said. “Control of the skies and sea. Drones and sea platforms and hybrid manned airplanes. Twenty-first-century stuff. . . Look, both of you are strong advocates of your own particular agencies. Both of you are professionals, experts. Both of you are pilots, fixed and rotary wing. Both are veterans in your particular services.” He motioned to Geffar. “Sandra’s a better shot, though.”

  “You’ve never seen me in the horseshoe pits,” Hardcastle said, but he knew Martindale was right.

  “There’s only one way Admiral Hardcastle’s proposal is going to be effective and get over some congressional and public hurdles,” Martindale said, “and that’s if we present a united front. I know cooperation between Customs and Coast Guard hasn’t always been the best, but each of you has to be willing to use your considerable influence and authority to show that we can effectively combine our forces to the benefit of our nation’s drug-interdiction effort.

  “The way I see it, most of the air and sea interdiction assets of both the Coast Guard and Customs must eventually be unified under this new Department of Border Security. That means the Customs Service Air Branch effectively disappears in five years. How do you feel about that, Sandra?”

  “My pilots are just as frustrated by the lack of leadership and the breakdown in cooperation as anyone. But this may be taken as a slap in the face by them. As Agent Long pointed out, they’ve been doing the job to the best of their ability and with their limited authority for decades. Some will feel this tells them they’ve failed.”

  “Haven’t you?” Martindale held up a hand. “Well, that didn’t come out right. My question is, can we convince them to support this new, tougher program? It will involve them more in pure drug interdiction and less in law enforcement. Don’t you think they could be happy with that?”

  Geffar nodded, a very tentative nod. “I think so, I hope so, sir.”

  “Good.” The Vice President turned to Hardcastle. “All your Coast Guard C-model Falcons, your fast patrol interceptors, most of your medium-range, Island-class boats, your radar balloons—all get turned over to the Hammerheads, and a lot sooner than five years.”

  “That’s right. Most are transferred immediately.”

  “Unfortunately, the real fight will be with Secretary Coultrane and Crandall, neither of whom like the idea of their budgets being slashed and their assets taken away to build this new drug-interdiction unit. But once the President gets behind the project, as I hope and expect he will ...”

  He glanced at Elliott and McLanahan. “Whether by hook or by crook, accidental or planned, you’ve tied up with the hottest group of aviation experimenters and test pilots since the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop. How did you manage that, Admiral?”

  “I read about General Elliott in Air Force Magazine,” Hardcastle said. “I’ve had my eye on the V-22 ever since it rolled out two years ago, and then I heard that some unit called HAWC was flight-testing it. But when I tried to call the general’s headquarters in Nevada I got a steel door slammed shut in my face. A security lid had been placed on everything to do with HAWC like I’ve never seen before . . .”

  “So that only piqued your interest,” Martindale said. “You kept on going until you got to talk with someone.”

  “Eventually.”

  “Your persistence will pay off, I think,” Martindale said ... “I want both of you to spearhead this new organization, the Hammerheads,” he said. “I need both of you. I know Admiral Hardcastle’s position.” He turned to Sandra. “Inspector Geffar? I know you’ve only been exposed to this for a very short time. You will want to know more and I’ll see to it that you get all the information you need. But I need to take your name with me back to Washington as an advocate of this organization. I need to tell the President, Commissioner Crandall, the U.S. Senate, and everyone in America that Inspector Sandra Geffar, the number-one drug buster in the U.S., is one hundred and fifty percent behind the formation of this new organization. What do you say?”

  “How much participation can I expect in planning and organizing the Hammerheads?”

  “Full and complete. As I understand it, Admiral Hardcastle’s plan initially calls for two of these air-staging platforms, one on Florida’s east coast, the other on the west coast in the Gulf. The platform we were on today will be the first one, the prototype of the Hammerheads’ new base.

  “We are looking at the founding cadre of officers for the Hammerheads right here in this room. I intend to nominate General Elliott as commander, Major McLanahan as his deputy, because of his previous close association with the general, Admiral Hardcastle, because of his extensive knowledge of the weapons, as director of development and strategy, and you, Inspector GefiFar, as head of the first Hammerheads air-staging platform, for good and obvious reasons. The Admiral will take over the second platform when it comes on line.”

  With that, he made a quick exit, cutting off unwanted flak. He figured he’d done his best by all concerned. Now it was time to get on with the program.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Valdivia, Columbia

  Several Days Later

  Seventy miles north of Medellin, Colombia, on the main north- south Sao Francisco highway running from Santa Maria on Colombia’s north coast all the way to Ipiales on the Ecuador border, was the small town of Valdivia. Until some ten years earlier, Valdivia had been known for its freshwater springs, its huge goat population— thirty goats for every man, woman and child within fifty miles—and the shrine to the Mother Mary at the place where she was reported to have visited a peasant family in the late eighteenth century. The shrine still stood, and one could still see crutches abandoned by pilgrims who came to be miraculously healed after tasting the mountain spring waters, as well as the altar that housed Colombia’s most prized relic, a rock with the imprint of a human foot that was said to be that of the Mother Mary when she alighted in Valdivia from Heaven.

  Now, the secluded grove of the shrine to the Mother Mary was little more than a prominent landmark for mysterious convoys of trucks driving north along the Sao Francisco highway from Peru and Ecuador. Go past the shrine out of Valdivia, follow the twisting, winding mountain-valley road for four miles, find the barbed-wire fence gate carefully hidden in the edge of the thick forest on the right, stop to open the gate. Whoever was working the gate’s latch would find a warning totem—a goat skinned from head to tail, bloody and torn, with a sword
through its stomach, hanging from a tree in plain sight. It was usually effective enough to deter curious villagers and pilgrims, but if not, a gunner in a tree blind, armed with a state-of-the-art, Belgian-made 5.56 millimeter FN Minimi automatic machine gun and night-vision goggles would pick off intruders and their vehicles.

  Once admitted past the outer perimeter guards and fences, every visitor was tracked electronically and visually every step of the way into the main compound. But once one reached the main compound itself, the exterior of the plant looked much like any other industrial park—a few row-houses for employees, schools for the children, neatly kept facades for administrative centers and manicured employee break-areas. All very normal, all very innocent looking.

  All a deceptive facade. In the first few years of business the plant’s owners had found it necessary to develop a cover—they had made it into a small paint and varnish manufacturing plant—and many of the props for that cover remained, including barrels of pigments and delivery trucks with the paint factory’s logo on the side. But as more and more officials were enticed by plomo o plata, lead or silver—a bullet in the head or take the bribe—the cover was found no longer to be necessary except for the rare and often well-announced government sweeps intent on “eradicating” the cocaine laboratories, mostly to show the United States in particular and the world in general their commitment to stopping drugs.

  The narcotics-distribution center at Valdivia was a sophisticated processing and packaging center. Unlike other so-called laboratories, which were usually nothing more than grass huts deep within isolated forests, the Valdivia plant was a full-scale, high-volume operation. Coca paste, or base, processed by peasant farmers from Bolivia and Peru, was shipped or flown to Valdivia usually in the form of dark gray blocks resembling builder’s bricks, or dried into a coarse gravellike mixture and hidden in pigment barrels or cement bags. In the plant the coca paste was mixed with ether and acetone, then dried to form the fine white power, the cocaine. It took one ton of coca paste to make one hundred kilograms of high-grade cocaine, and the plant produced upward of two thousand kilos every month. It was the Medellin drug cartel’s number-one processing facility.