Brown, Dale - Independent 02

by Hammerheads (v1. 1)

  “My organization!” Gachez told the infuriating ex-Cuban officer. “If there is a leak, colonel, it is in your organization.”

  “My men are totally loyal to me,” Salazar said. “They are the best pilots in the world and proud Cuban soldiers. They would never betray their loyalty to me or their country.”

  “I have heard how you enforce your loyalty,” Gachez said. “A mock trial, a knife in the back by so-called outraged patriots. Yours is a gang of terrorists, senor, and you prey on your own just as you do on others. But that is of nc concern to me as long as our contracts are followed and security is maintained. Look elsewhere, however, for security leaks. It may be coincidence that the Coast Guard has a patrol in the Caribbean at this particular time. In any case, no one knows where the drops will be made at the time of takeoff except me. I alert the entire network on the day of the drop but I advise no one that a drop will be made at their location until minutes before the drop is made.”

  “You can still have a serious breach—”

  “Perhaps so, colonel,” Gachez interrupted. “Yet / did not devise a complicated plan for a massive twenty-thousand-kilo delivery—you did. I never draw charts or carry maps—you do. Tell me—how long ago was this mission of yours planned, and how closely does that coincide with the arrival of the American patrols?”

  Salazar’s smile faded. There was really no way to put the blame on either side without finding the informant himself, of course. Gachez’s words, however, made sense. But a spy in the Cuchillos? Impossible .. .

  “The mission must be cancelled,” Field Captain Enrique Hermosa decided. “It is our only option.”

  Salazar shook his head as he ran a short, thin throwing knife across an oiled gray-green whetstone. Hermosa stared at his superior, then once again went over to the chart. “Our latest reconnaissance flight shows the Coast Guard cutter between the eastern edge of Cay Sal Bank and Mangrove Cay on Andros island. The cutter carries an aerostat radar balloon that has a radar range of nearly two-hundred kilometers ...”

  “I heard you, captain,” Salazar said, wiping the blade clean and replacing it in its sheath in his right riding boot. They were meeting with the Antonov-12 cargo plane’s crew of three pilots, flight engineer, senior loadmaster, two assistant loadmasters, two armed soldiers and gunner for the plane’s 23-millimeter anti-aircraft gun mounted in the tail blister. The crew was sipping tequila and whiskey provided by Gachez as they examined the proposed route.

  “I also heard you report the transmissions we were able to intercept between this vessel and an aircraft,” Salazar continued, “which you presume to be a Customs Service or Coast Guard tracking plane also operating in the vicinity.” Hermosa nodded. “You have surmised therefore that this plane is working in conjunction with the cutter.”

  Hermosa was about to speak but Salazar raised a hand. “Hermosa, if the U.S. Customs Service and Coast Guard both are operating in this area they must have received intelligence about our operation. It is also strange that our agent in Florida City chooses this particular time to go incommunicado on precisely the day I need to know the aircraft status at Homestead Air Force Base.”

  “Our agent went to ground the day the American Vice President came to Miami, sir. There were Secret Service agents at every toll booth from Fort Lauderdale to Homestead. His forged green card would not have held up to close scrutiny by federal authorities.” Salazar shook his head. “The Americans still haven’t forgotten the downing of their patrol aircraft and Customs assault team. If they’ve received any word on our activities they will be out in force. This delivery is worth one hundred and twenty million dollars to us. I want a way to make sure it gets through.”

  “We can’t insure something like that,” the Antonov-12 pilot, Major Jose Trujillo said, “especially with a plane like the Antonov-12—it's too large and too cumbersome to fly at low altitudes and try to sneak under radar—”

  “Not that it will do us any good,” his flight engineer added. “Not with those aerostat units that can track us every kilometer we fly all across the route, no matter what altitude.”

  Trujillo downed a shot of tequila and chased it with cold beer. “We fly the mission, stay out of American airspace and hope they don’t shoot us down. What we need is air cover of our own ...”

  Salazar’s eyes widened at the pilot’s words. “What did you say, Jose?”

  “I was just remembering back to Angola, sir,” Trujillo said. “Flying escort missions for Luanda’s government, such as it was. All we had were MiG-17s and a couple of MiG-23s, but it was the best flying we’ve ever done. Wide open skies, easy ground targets—”

  “Fighter escort ...” Salazar said. “Send a fighter to accompany a drug shipment?”

  Trujillo’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. “It would be easy to plan. We have our two training MiG-21s. But we have no external fuel tanks and no weapons for them except a few hundred rounds of ammunition for the cannons—”

  “We can get weapons, spare parts and fuel tanks through the Haitian government,” Salazar said. “As military commander of the central district I have the authority—and with our offshore accounts, the transactions will be untraceable ... Yes, you have given me the answer. I think I now have a way our shipment can be made with safety ...”

  Hermosa had been ignored, overlooked in the exchange that followed, standing inconspicuously nearby, waiting for orders, pouring beer and tequila for the group. But his ear was tuned, and his busy mind was taking it all in . . . Use fighter planes as escorts for drug shipments? Shoot down Customs planes? Colonel Salazar was becoming obsessed with power. The integrity of the organization was threatened . . .

  What to do? Save him from himself. Tip oft” the Coast Guard and Customs . . . ?

  Hammerhead One Staging Platform

  Later That Evening

  Geffar settled into her seat and activated the communications monitor. It was getting easier to operate the system now after three days working with it. On the screens before her were aircraft and ships with tiny highlighted data blocks belonging to Customs Service and Coast Guard aircraft operating in their region. Three days ago it was confusing; now her fingers danced across the console keyboard, retrieving bits of information and swapping screens between the high- definition monitors and the regular screens to give herself the best possible view.

  “Omaha Three-Four is airborne,” Mike Drury, the pilot aboard the Australian-built sea surveillance airplane, radioed in. Geffar checked that his data block was transmitting—isolated thunderstorms in the area were interfering with some transmissions.

  “He’s thirty minutes late,” Hardcastle said.

  “Gates must’ve been delayed,” Geffar told him. Gates, the new Customs Service Commissioner, had been sworn in earlier that morning. He had decided to fly on the night’s mission anyway.

  Geffar shook her head in amazement, Coast Guard and Customs working together. “Why can’t we work like this all the time?” “That’s what we’re trying to get Congress to buy off on—” Hardcastle said, “You’ve got to have one commander, one person with the authority to move all the vessels, aircraft and men under his command to support an operation. I don’t have the authority to launch your Nomad or your Black Hawks, and you don’t have the authority to position my aerostats. Only a federally mandated unit with one commander in charge of all drug-interdiction assets can get this kind of support. McDonough didn’t understand that.”

  Geffar nodded, feeling more than before that the Hammerheads would work and Hardcastle was right.

  She called up the main SLINGSHOT composite radar screen of the whole south Florida/Florida Straits/Bahamas region. As she touched the transmit button on the touch-screen monitor, the data block belonging to Customs’ Nomad surveillance aircraft highlighted itself, and an additional data printout reported its exact position, flight parameters and estimated fuel endurance. “Three-Four, status check.”

  “Three-Four in the green,” Agent Mike Drury aboard the Nom
ad cargo plane replied. “We’ve got a VIP on board tonight.”

  Geffar smiled and nodded to Hardcastle, who was in the seat beside her. She clicked the channel open. “Roger that, Three-Four. Pass my congratulations to Commissioner Gates.”

  “Thank you, Sandra,” the new commissioner said over the radio.

  In the dark interior of the Nomad, Gates could be seen under the glare of subdued cabin lights. His life jacket was askew, his headset was pushed too far forward on his head, but his hair was neat and undisturbed. He was wearing a blue nylon windbreaker with a large Customs Air Branch patch over the right breast. The Nomad’s two sensor operators—Jacqueline Hoey, working the SeaScan radar, and “Buffalo Bill” Lamont, operating the Westinghouse WF-360 infrared scanner—were bathed in the greenish glare of their sea-mapping scopes.

  Hardcastle was staring at the Diamond-towed aerostat unit’s radar display. The controllers aboard the cutter had highlighted a target several times in the last few minutes. The target, represented by a red square, was just off the northern coast of Cuba heading northwest at almost six miles per minute according to the aerostat radar’s readouts. Hardcastle touched Geffar’s shoulder. “We might have something here.”

  Geffar checked the HDTV displays. “Fast-moving, flying right on the edge of the Cuban waters—he’s going over three hundred fifty knots ...”

  “Altitude five hundred feet,” Long reported, now on one of the lower-deck consoles. “A military flight?”

  “Could be.” Hardcastle punched commands into the keyboard, telling the computer to display any military air-traffic-control radio beacons from any aircraft. The radar display flickered once as the computer quickly redrew the screen, but there was no change. “No squawking military codes. He might be military but I doubt it.”

  “One of ours?”

  “No way,” Geffar said, “unless I don’t know about it. Could it be a Coast Guard Falcon?”

  “We’d be picking up his beacon if it was,” Hardcastle said. He punched in more instructions, displaying a short list. “Aircraft, Seventh District, Flight Status.” A map of the southeast United States came on one of the large screens, and flashing data blocks indicated the location of each aircraft.

  “Three Seventh District aircraft are up, and one is operating near the Bahamas,” Hardcastle reported, “but no one is anywhere near Cuba.” It could be a bizjet from Puerto Rico or the eastern Caribbean hot-dogging around Cuba—some pilots like to stay as close to shore as they can in case they get an engine problem. It could be a military flight with an inop transponder. Or . . .”

  “Or it could be a new player,” Geffar said. “Making a drop.” She magnified the view of northern Cuba. The image showed only a few sea targets sailing along the coast in the path of the plane. “Altitude down to three hundred feet,” Geffar said. “He’s making a drop, I know it.”

  “But he’s a fast-mover, not a bug-smasher,” Long said. “Doesn’t make sense ...”

  “Sense or not, the guy’s heading for Mayberry.” The fast-moving target was on a direct course for the yellow-highlighted area where drops had been made in recent weeks. Two vessels were inside that area, another a few miles away. “He’s down to one hundred feet and slowing—now down to two hundred knots and decelerating. He’s making a drop for sure.” She turned to Hardcastle. “We have any planes in the area?”

  He rechecked but he knew the answer. “The Nomad is the closest airborne. The Black Hawk is the only other that’s closer . . . unless ... the Sea Lion can make the intercept faster than the Black Hawk.”

  “We’re not authorized to use it. Not yet, anyway. Launch a plane from Homestead and put him on the guy. We’ll keep the Nomad in place in case any vessels head north toward the Keys.” Hardcastle called up his own communications screen and contacted the Customs Service Air Branch to launch a Citation chase plane.

  Geffar opened the secure channel to the Nomad. “Three-Four, this is Hammerhead One. We think a drop is going down at Mayberry. We’re watching a fast-moving aircraft on a drop profile. Stand by.”

  “Roger, Hammerhead,” Drury replied. “We’ve catalogued four vessels on station at Cay Sal Bank. They might be players too.” Geffar put a magnified view of the Cay Sal Bank on a monitor. There were four vessels within a mile of each other. The computer reported each target had remained in the same relative position since first catalogued by the preceding Nomad flight earlier in the day.

  “Hammerhead One, this is SLINGSHOT,” the joint Customs Service-Coast Guard radar ground controllers radioed. “Be advised, Omaha Four-Zero airborne.” A blinking indicator over Homestead AFB in southern Florida on the larger scale map confirmed the call.

  “Hammerhead, this is Three-Four.” It was Jacqueline Hoey, the SeaScan radar controller on board Nomad. “Target coming off Mayberry, turning north. Projecting flight path directly toward Cal Say Bank area, ETA six minutes.”

  GefiFar touched her light pen on the digital blip representing the Citation Hardcastle had just ordered be launched from Homestead and drew a line between it and the radar target of the fast-moving newcomer heading north. “If that guy continues north we should watch him. If he turns tail and runs we might not.”

  “He’s heading right for the four vessels that have been sitting on Cay Sal Bank all afternoon,” Hardcastle said. “He’s a player, all right. Whoever’s in charge of this one, they got some serious wings on their side now.”

  Customs Service Air Branch Headquarters, Homestead AFB, Florida

  The duty officer heard the ringing and picked up the phone on the intra-agency direct line from Miami headquarters. “Homestead. Davidson.”

  “Chuck, this is Willy at Brickell Plaza. I received an anonymous call. Claims Commissioner Gates is in danger and should leave the drug-drop area near Cuba soonest possible.”

  Davidson responded with the universal cop’s first line of any investigation: “Say that again.”

  “I said, guy claims that the Commissioner is in danger on that Nomad flight. He was on the horn for only about five seconds but he said Commissioner Gates’ plane may come under attack.”

  “Where? When . . . ?”

  “Nothing else. Can you get hold of GefiFar and let her know?” “Sounds like a crank to me,” Davidson said. But he had been in the Service long enough to know never to ignore even the most far-out calls. “I’ll pass it along. Do you have a tape of the call or a tracer?” “It came through the switchboard. I’ll ask. And I didn’t make a tape. I just came in for a minute, thought the call was from my old lady.”

  “Give me a call if you got a tape or a trace.”

  Davidson put in a call to the Air Division to set up a call to the platform where GefiFar and her people were staging. It would take several minutes to put the call through; communications out to the platform were shaky at best. Never mind, it smelled bogus anyway.

  Hammerhead One Platform

  “They’ve got a fast-moving jet making a drop to four vessels in Cay Sal Bank—sounds like a taxi dance to me.”

  Hardcastle called up snapshots of past area maps—the computer could store several days’ worth of images in its memory. He went back as early as when the four vessels appeared at Cay Sal, then back-tracked those four vessels as they made their way north. “Those guys first appeared from South America. Can’t see a positive origin but definitely South America. Not Cuba. Not west of Panama, either.”

  He studied the four ships as they passed through the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba. “Look—there’s more than four ships here. There’s six, maybe eight. All traveling together.” He forwarded the screens one at a time, using computer-generated markers to keep track of each vessel. “Here—breaking oflf, going past Cay Sal. Dropping oflf four. These guys heading toward the Archipelago de Sabana ...”

  “Mayberry,” GefiFar said. “Four smugglers station themselves at Mayberry, four more at Cay Sal.”

  “There’s lots of other clusters of boats out there,” Long observed. “To
o many to get an accurate fix.”

  “Accurate enough,” GefiFar said. “Eight smugglers deployed in organized clusters, stationing themselves and waiting for a drop by a high-speed plane. It’s enough to order more aircraft.”

  “I’ll get some Coast Guard vessels underway too,” Hardcastle said. “It looks like a party tonight.”

  “Don’t have them converge on Cay Sal,” Geffar told him. “Have them report in to us. We’ll try to position them in the path of that plane near some of the boats sitting out there and see if they can get within range of a drop. We’ll pick the ones that scatter after the plane passes overhead and try to intercept them.”

  “Omaha Four-Zero is three minutes away from intercept,” Long reported. “Target still proceeding north. Almost to Elbow Cay. Target showing three hundred feet and descending. He’s coming up on that cluster of boats.”

  “I’ve got a Navy Pegasus hydrofoil from Key West on the line,” Hardcastle said. “We’re putting a Coast Guard crew on board. The Pegasus can be in the area in ninety minutes. I suggest we put the Pegasus unit between the Keys and Elbow Cay. If those guys in the boats make a break for the Keys, we can try to intercept.”

  “Three-Four should be able to keep an eye on them.” Geffar turned to her communications console and touched the screen. “Three-Four, this is Hammerhead. What have you got?”

  On Board Omaha Three-Four

  “Hammerhead, this is Three-Four,” Hoey reported. “We’re taking up an orbit position near Mayberry. We have radar contact with suspects. We are descending to get a clear infrared picture of the suspects. Out.”