“Under current law I am unable to direct our military forces to attack aircraft outside the territorial limits of the United States without a declaration of war, or to strike at suspected drug smugglers in the role as law enforcers. I agree with and respect those laws. I do nol. believe tactical military forces should be involved in drug interdiction. They are not authorized or trained in law enforcement, and the involvement of military forces trained for war offers fewer options—they are trained to destroy when destruction may not be warranted.
“Instead ... I am issuing a presidential reorganization order, effective this date, that creates a new agency that will officially and temporarily be placed under the Department of Defense. This new agency will be composed of air and sea interdiction elements of the Coast Guard and Customs Service, and will retain full authority to make arrests, conduct investigations, make searches and perform air intercepts and arrests in international airspace and on the high seas as well as within the United States. They will exist to secure the borders of the United States. As an agency of the Department of Defense they will also have authority to employ military weapons and tactics against anyone considered a threat to this nation, such authority to include attacking and destroying aircraft or vessels that penetrate or transmit American territorial boundaries without permission, or commit a crime within American coastal territories.
“This new agency will be called the Border Security Force.”
The President paused to turn a page, and to cope with the anger and frustration that had weighed so heavily on him. This was it, he thought. He had worried—agonized—over this decision for weeks. The public formation of a paramilitary organization, a unit with the powers of both the FBI, the Coast Guard and the Air Force all rolled into one. No President had gone this far since the Civil War. But he felt as though a tremendous weight had been lifted off his broad shoulders. He had acted. And just as with the Russian Kavaznya laser incident a year earlier, he found that action, decisive action, was the best response. The only sure failure was the failure to act . . .
“This new agency,” he went on, “will legally exist for the next ninety days under limited authority from me as commander-in-chief. Later today we will present a presidential reorganization plan to Congress authorizing permanent reorganization and creation of the Border Security Force. This measure must be approved by a simple majority of both houses of Congress. At the same time a bill will be presented on the floor of the Senate that will create a permanent Cabinet-level Secretary of Border Security Forces, making it a separate government department with authority in its area equal to the Department of Defense. This measure already has the support of the Senate minority leadership and key congressional leaders. I urge and expect swift passage of this measure.
The President paused, looked up from his papers directly into the camera. “In plain English, my fellow Americans, this means that the United States will no longer tolerate smugglers, terrorists, armed aggressors or any other unidentified or uninvited vessels or aircraft to cross our borders or airspace. Actually we’ve had laws on the books for years, but we have never believed we could enforce them because our borders were so vast, not to mention our bureaucracies. Well, as of today we will begin to enforce those laws.
“If you are a smuggler, if you are a terrorist, if you attempt to enter this country without permission, we will find you, and we will intercept you. You can expect to be taken into custody and placed under arrest until your identity is verified. If you attempt to evade our patrols or ignore our warnings, you will be attacked and you will be destroyed before you cross our shores.
“Some of you might be concerned about accidents, of our patrols attacking innocent persons, especially Americans traveling by air. I have shared that concern, so much so that I delayed implementing this program for several weeks. I am sorry it took the death of Commissioner Ronald Gates and five brave Customs Service agents before I acted. I have carefully reviewed the regulations to be put into effect, and I believe that this program will minimally impact on law-abiding persons who follow the rules and who are not trying to evade the law. I feel confident that this plan will work. It must work.
“We have dealt with the situation as a law-enforcement matter. No longer. We will now use the full power of the American government and all the resources at our disposal to control access to our shores and apprehend anyone trying to escape our justice. With your support, we can make this plan work. Thank you very much, and God bless you.” And God help me, he silently added.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hammerhead One Staging Platform, 0700 Hours
Six Months Later
The huge CONVERTED oil platform had undergone an amazing rejuvenation. Hardcastle was on his way to his first inspection of the platform in weeks, flying out from the Border Security Force’s new headquarters center at Alladin City, Florida, to the platform sixty miles to the southeast in the Straits of Florida. Although the new Border Security Force’s commander of the first air-operations base had been receiving daily briefings on the progress of the new base, he was told she’d be amazed at the platform’s refurbishment.
A huge thunderstorm was sitting on the horizon in front of him, but it was dwarfed for the moment by his thoughts of the breakneck days after the President’s historic announcement of the formation of the Border Security Force when the country seemed about to split itself apart, or rather the noisier opposition forces made it seem that way.
It was a miracle that the Border Security Force survived the first ninety days. It seemed every organization with access to a microphone or camera was telling America that the Border Security Force was a bad idea. Civil rights groups, aviation lobbies, commerce organizations, even travel and trade groups were going on record with their very vocal opposition. They felt that the presence of an armed border force would result in panic, a dramatic loss of trade, accidental deaths, and international condemnation. It was instantly compared to Communist internal security police and Russia’s Border Guards, paramilitary groups that were in place as much to keep their population in as to keep enemies out.
The personal attacks were even worse. Hardcastle’s divorce was fair game for nightly news broadcasts and the so-called “tabloid” news shows, and even the fact that Sandra GefiFar was a national pistol champion seemed to be a negative as reporters portrayed her as an ultra right-wing survivalist gunslinger. GefiFar, Hardcastle, Elliott, even young McLanahan, who had only appeared with Elliott once before Congress, were all carefully scrutinized by the press. The rumors were especially wild as the press quoted several “reports from unnamed sources” that Elliott and McLanahan had almost single-handedly started World War Three.
But despite the initial furor, overall public opinion about the need and usefulness of the Border Security Force was generally positive. There was little sympathy for persons who flew regularly from the Bahamas or Central America to Florida—most persons believed they were rich folks complaining that the government was interfering with their playtime. The press, assisted by numerous and frequent interviews by Hardcastle, Elliott, and GefiFar, picked up on reports that smugglers were going to bypass the southeast and import their drugs elsewhere—it simply meant that the program, at least in their estimation, was working already.
Of course, GefiFar and Hardcastle played a few tricks as well. The Sea Lion tilt-rotor aircraft with the missiles and machine guns on board was carefully hidden away, and they had explained that putting weapons on board Border Security Force aircraft was still “a ways off.” The Sky Lion drone with its benign bug-like appearance was demonstrated frequently flying over friendly fishermen and happy families on Sunday outings, wagging its wings and buzzing around good-naturedly like a friendly hummingbird; while the sinister, deadly-looking Seagull drone was also carefully left out of the news reports.
Most importantly, however, no one had died since the group was formed. All of the complaints that the Border Security Force was going to cause hundreds of deaths, millions of
dollars in damage and billions of dollars in lost revenues and lawsuits against the government began to fall on deaf ears. The polls said that most Americans favored the existence of the Hammerheads—a name that was also not too widely publicized at first—and everyone involved with the Border Security Force trotted those polls through every office on Capitol Hill.
The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, at the gentle but insistent urging of the Vice President, sent the measure to the Senate Subcommittee on Military Affairs. Many believed this was the beginning of the end of the Hammerheads—they were sure the plan would get bogged down in rhetoric and pork-barrel add-ons by the subcommittee’s members. Instead, it was a ploy by the White House to gather more high-powered support for the measure. The plan was greeted with enthusiasm by the prestigious subcommittee, which praised it lavishly before voting in the affirmative and sending it back to Governmental Affairs. It eventually went back to the full Senate, which passed the President’s Border Security Force reorganization plan on the first vote.
The House, which looked more carefully at the program’s five- billion-dollar price tag, and the opposition party in particular, which wanted to keep the White House from scoring such a dramatic victory, kept the measure in the House Committee on Government Operations right up to the maximum seventy-five day limit, then allowed it to be sent back automatically to the House floor without a vote. The opposition tried to kill the plan right then, or at least delay it past the maximum ninety-day time limit, but the provisions of Title Five, chapter 9, paragraph 911, were clear—committee approval was not necessary before presentation to Congress, only committee review. Committee discharge was not grounds for disapproval.
The full House debate on the measure then went far over the maximum ten-hour time limit—in fact, it went a full fourteen days past the debate time limit—but finally the question was called. The Speaker of the House tried one last tactic to kill the measure—a voice vote, where the Speaker’s ear would decide whether the “ayes” or “nays” carried. At the very least, the outcry that usually followed such a blatant device of the Rules of Order would push the session past the fast-approaching ninety-day limit. But the roll-call vote was quickly proposed, seconded and accomplished by a weary and frayed House of Representatives.
It was not a resounding affirmation, but it did pass. The Hammerheads became an official reality. Now, it was up to Elliott, Geffar and the rest of the Hammerheads to make the new organization a success.
That day was happening.
Hardcastle was at the controls of a former Coast Guard Dolphin helicopter. Its distinctive Coast Guard red diagonal stripes had been removed and replaced with the Hammerheads’ insignia—a hammerhead shark with wings, the same one Hardcastle had made up—on the helicopter’s nose, along with electroluminescent strip lights on the sides that highlighted the sixteen-inch-high words: FOLLOW ME.
“Shark, this is Hammerhead Two-Five,” Hardcastle called in. “Request one trip around the base, then landing on main elevator. Over.”
“Zero-Five, this is Shark. Request approved. Remain clear of southeast side. Report when ready for landing.”
The platform looked larger than before. The west side now had a row of three circular landing pads that projected out over the edge of the platform, which helped preserve deck space; each pad was large enough for a Sea Lion tilt-rotor aircraft and all other helicopters in the active military or civilian inventory. A ramp led from each pad onto the main deck. On the west side of the main deck inboard of the center landing pad was a large aircraft elevator that moved aircraft from the main deck down to the hangars and maintenance shops directly below. Ballpark lights, huge banks of high-powered sodium lights on tall poles, were arranged around the elevator and parking areas for night operations and could be raised, lowered or aimed.
In the center of the platform was the launch-and-recovery facility for the Sky Lion and Seagull drones. The Sky Lion drones, being tilt-rotor aircraft like their larger cousins, could be launched and recovered automatically just like any other chopper.
The above-deck operations building was in the center of the platform, a two-story steel-and-glass structure that served as the maintenance operations headquarters, crew lounge and pre-launch hangar for the drones. Hardcastle noticed that the Hammerhead insignia had been painted on both the north and south sides of the building, and the biggest American flag he had ever seen was flapping lazily on a roof-mounted mast.
At the apex next to the maintenance center was the electronic- landing-system transmitter. The ELS provided a side radio beam that guided the Seagull drones to the platform; once locked onto the beam the drones would follow it right into the recovery corral, where arresting cables on the deck and a large nylon mesh backstop net snared the drone.
The northeast side of the platform had a four-story air-traffic-control and security tower. This was also where most of the station’s radio, radar, data-link and sensor antennae were located. The central- and southeast sides of the platform carried the most unusual part of the entire facility—HIGHBAL, Hammerhead Initial Balloon, the aerostat radar balloon launch-and-recovery area. One hundred fifty feet long and seventy feet at its widest, it carried an RCA AN/APS- 128 sea- and air-scanning radar that could search for surface and low-flying air targets out to almost two hundred miles, and for higher-flying targets out to three hundred miles. HIGHBAL also carried data-link communications equipment for the Hammerheads’ fleet of remote-controlled drones. Using the aerostat alone, the drones could operate at patrol altitudes out to two hundred miles from the platform; if a data-link could be established between the platform and other ground- or sea-based radars, the drone’s operating range was limited only by the drone’s own fuel supplies.
HIGHBAL was flying this morning up to its maximum altitude of fourteen thousand feet—nearly three miles up. At that altitude it had a sea-scanning range of about one hundred-fifty miles and an air- target scanning range of up to two-hundred miles. Of course, the dark, towering thunderstorms off to the south and west reduced that range but most smugglers didn’t want to fly through a Caribbean thunderstorm.
“Shark, this is Two-Five,” Hardcastle called in. “I’ve completed my orientation. Ready for landing.”
“Two-Five, this is Shark,” the controller aboard the platform replied. “Cleared to land on center deck.”
“Roger. Center deck for Two-Five.”
Geffar opened the cockpit door for him as the Dolphin helicopter’s rotors spun down after landing. “Welcome aboard.”
They rode down with the Dolphin helicopter to the main hangar deck, where crewman immediately wheeled the helicopter off the elevator and began to unload the supplies she had brought. The hangar occupied one-fourth of the entire volume of the platform— three stories high and nearly an acre in total area. Three V-22C Sea Lion aircraft or four Black Hawk helicopters could be parked below. The drone shop was also there, where the small chase-and-reconnais- sance planes were serviced—the drones were stored in shelves that rose all the way to the top of the three-story ceiling, and were moved with forklifts.
They found Major Patrick McLanahan in the drone repair shop manning a control console. A Seagull drone was on a test stand, looking like some giant prehistoric flying reptile on a perch. Its large infrared TV camera swiveled around to stare at Geffar and Hardcastle as they entered.
“What happened the other night?” Geffar asked.
“The data-link between the Seagulls and the platform is weak at the extreme range of HIGHBAL,” McLanahan told them. “Bahamas Route six-four is seventy miles north of us. Both us and Caribbean Balloon were operating at max range and performance, the drone should have locked on easy.” CARABAL, the Caribbean Balloon, was a former Coast Guard aerostat located on Grand Bahama Island forty miles east of Freeport. The whole aerostat network, including the one at Cape Canaveral, the Navy’s KEYSTONE unit at Key West and the future Hammerhead Two site off the west Florida coast near Sarasota, were to allow the Hammerhea
ds to fly Seagull or Sky Lion drones anywhere from Jacksonville, Florida, in the north, to Governors Harbor in the Bahamas to the east, and to the very edge of Cuban airspace to the south. “I’ve finished a test of the drone and it seems okay. We’ll start looking at the data-link system next. Meantime I’d limit the range of an intercept to, say, sixty miles from this platform, or to the maximum range of the aerostat. Let the system work, it might be a transient fault.”
“Sixty miles won’t cover much,” Hardcastle added. “We’ll have to fill in our coverage with manned aircraft.”
Geffar and Hardcastle then went to the elevator for a ride up to the control center. Behind the rows of consoles was the senior controller, Hardcastle’s former aide, Michael Becker, who had transferred his commission to the Border Security Force along with his boss. The place was a smaller version of the command-and-control centers for such as the Strategic Air Command and the North American Air Defense Command.
Geffar and Hardcastle put on headsets and logged into the computer. Immediately one of the monitors began to scroll a list of messages, a few flagged for Geffar’s attention by Rushell Masters, the Hammerhead’s chief of air operations based at Homestead Air Force Base. She called up the communications screen on her main console monitor and dialed his office.
“Glad you called,” Masters said. “The FBI just arrested one of the cleaning women that works on the base. Said they caught her near the flight line with a VHF radio. She had a forged green card, too. They think she might have been spying on us out here and may have been relaying flight information for some time. FBI’s got her in Miami.”
“Spying for who? Colombians?”
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