This pointed out a very serious deficiency in the border security program. The Hammerheads were the front line, the main defense against illegal smugglers and intruders. They had to act decisively— the ripple effect of any problems they encountered would create a major gap in border coverage. If the Sea Lion aircraft or Seagull drones couldn’t force a smuggler to turn around or stop, other support units had to be called into action immediately. They—the Hammerheads, and especially the person logged in as commander—was responsible for calling on those support units when a problem developed. Customs was out of position, and it was all because they didn’t act fast enough when it was discovered they could not attack the smugglers.
Hardcastle knew he had to do something. He stood up, paused for a few moments, then touched the communication screen’s transmit button. “Two-Five, this is Shark. Do not lock weapons on target—but find a way to stop that vessel. ”
“Copy that, Shark,” Two-Five responded.
Geffar had just completed the transition from vertical to forward flight mode. It took her a few moments of concentration to readjust herself as the controls switched from helicopter to airplane configuration and she let her altitude drop off almost a hundred feet as she compensated for the change. Her copilot, Maryann Herndon, was coaching her along over interphone: “Still a little low, Sandra . . . there, you got it. You might need more nacelle angle . . . that’s it. Fifty degrees is good until you get our airspeed over two hundred . . .”
Geffar raised a hand as she caught a bit of conversation between the platform and Shark Two-Five. Herndon stopped talking, but by then the radios were silent. Geffar keyed her mike button: “Shark, this is Two-Six. Status of Shark units?”
“All in the green,” Hardcastle replied. “Target two about six miles from shore. Two-Five still in pursuit.”
“Did all Shark units acknowledge not to lock weapons on manned targets?”
“Affirmative . . . Two-Five, acknowledge.”
“Two-Five acknowledges.”
Geffar continued her transition to full forward flight. What had Hardcastle said to Two-Five? Well, it would do no good to badger him on the radios. She would get a better idea of the situation soon enough . . .
“Crew, stand by. We’re moving closer to the target.”
Whipple added power and zoomed the twenty-five-ton aircraft down and across the front of the smuggler’s vessel, less than ten feet above his flying bridge superstructure and not more than thirty feet alongside. The Sea Lion’s rotors whipped the ocean into a white froth, with thick vapor streaming all around the aircraft and its prey. The Sea Lion wheeled around and flew backward, not more than fifty feet directly in front of the smuggler’s boat, directly in the smuggler’s path.
“Hey, Whip,” Hardy said cross-cockpit. “You think this is a good idea?” The smugglers tried to evade the Sea Lion, zigzagging back and forth to get away from the rotor wash and noise of the aircraft directly ahead, but Whipple matched each turn and stayed directly in front of them. “If they got guns, they can hose us real easy here.”
“Well, I got guns too.” He hit the switches on his control panel and deployed both the Sea Stinger missile pylon and the M230 Chain Gun pod, then selected head-pointing control of the Chain Gun and armed the pod.
“You can’t do that, Eric—”
“I was ordered not to lock weapons on this target,” Whipple said. “Well, I’m not locking them on target.” He waited until the sport fisher made another cut across the Sea Lion’s left side, aimed the cannon just ahead of the vessel, and squeezed the trigger. The pounding of the machine gun could be heard both over the roar of the Sea Lion and the vessel’s engines, and the sharp columns of water erupting ahead of the vessel were unmistakable. The Chris Craft dodged to its left away from the stream of thirty-millimeter shells hitting the water.
If Hardy had been apprehensive before, he was not any longer. He shouted every time the smugglers made a wild turn to escape the shooting. “Look at them run!” he shouted. “Maybe they’ll run out of gas before they reach the shore—”
“They haven’t seen anything yet.” Whipple deactivated the Chain Gun and allowed the smugglers to return to a steady course, which they promptly did. As soon as they stopped weaving back and forth Whipple began to move closer to the vessel. Still flying backward, Whipple closed the range between them to a few yards, then slowly eased in closer until the right wing was directly over the bow of the sport fisher.
The water around the vessel was so whipped up by the Sea Lion’s rotor wash that it looked as if the boat was sailing through a typhoon. The vessel was being shaken back and forth, and looked as though it might even capsize. But the vessel refused to slow down, kept at full power trying to outrun the Sea Lion.
The smugglers had been aiming for the Cape Romano lighted marker just southwest of Gullivan Bay in the western Everglades; once past the light and in the mass of tiny islands that stretched out west of the Collier-Seminole State Park, a shallow-draft boat could easily be lost in the low trees and salt water marshes. But in his evasive maneuvering, the pilot of the Chris Craft had lost track of the Cape Romano light. Actually the light was no more than a half-dozen thick wooden poles driven into the ocean bottom and lashed together at the top into a tepee-shaped structure, plus a solar-powered strobelight system installed at the top. It was an obstruction no more than fifteen feet wide, and against hundreds of acres of open ocean, the likelihood of hitting it was remote. But as the smugglers tried to get away from the maelstrom all around them, the Cape Romano light suddenly appeared directly in front of them. As the pilot tried to veer away, the stern of his boat clipped the light poles . . .
A tremendous flash of light appeared directly underneath Whipple’s right cockpit window. “We’re being fired on,” he called out over interphone, and immediately raised his collective up to the stops and zoomed skyward, gaining a thousand feet in a few seconds, then entered a tentative hover. “Station check!” he said to Hardy. “Crew, station check!” He looked over his flight and engine-readout monitors—all appeared normal . . .
He found the Chris Craft a few moments later ... a thin trail of smoke rising from somewhere in the engine-access compartments, and it appeared to be listing to starboard. Whipple keyed his radio mike. “Shark, this is Two-Five. Target two appears dead in the water and listing slightly. I’m going to launch the RHIB and investigate.” On interphone: “Prepare to launch the boat. Four-man response team.”
The RHIB occupied most of the aft portion of the Sea Lion’s cargo bay. It was lowered from its storage rack on the upper bulkhead and checked for full inflation. It was like a big fourteen-person inflatable river raft, but it had been fitted with a light metal floor, a pilot’s control console with steering wheel, throttle quadrant, compass and radio panel, and storage lockers fore and aft. A helmsman’s padded seat behind the control console covered two five-gallon fuel tanks.
The intercept and boarding team wore body armor, life jackets and visored helmets with miniature two-way voice-actuated radios installed in the helmets. Each man carried a sidearm, usually a SIG Sauer nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol with a fifteen-round clip, and except for the RHIB helmsman, each carried an M-16 rifle.
The group appeared uneasy. Two of the four men on the team were graduates of the Coast Guard’s Maritime Law Enforcement
School, an intensive four-week class. Actually, a tour-year-long school could never prepare any of them for what might happen next. Every intercept or boarding was different. The most benign scene could erupt any moment into pluperfect hell. This smuggler was cornered, a Hammerheads gunship was hovering over him and armed men were coming to board his boat . . .
Whipple brought the AV-22 down to the surface of the ocean and hovered a few feet above the gentle waves, about a hundred yards from the sport fisher. “She’s gonna roll any minute,” Whipple said on interphone. “Let’s move it.”
“Ready on the ramp,” came the reply. Hardy activated the switc
h, and the rear cargo ramp that formed the aft end of the AV-22 slowly motored down into position. Whipple eased the Sea Lion down until the aircraft settled on the ocean’s surface. “Ramp awash,” one of the crew men told Whipple as the outboard end of the ramp dipped into the water. The Sea Lion was afloat. Whipple kept the power up on the rotors for stability during the launch.
The RHIB was slid down the ramp far enough so the outboard motor’s propeller could be lowered into the water and the RHIB’s helmsman climbed on board and started the engine. After the helmsman checked the systems on board and made a radio check with the Sea Lion and the three intercept crewmen, the other crewmen climbed aboard, slid the RHIB off the ramp and into the water. Once Whipple could see that the RHIB was clear of the rotors, he raised the cargo ramp and lifted off from the surface, flying a few feet above the water and paralleling the RHIB’s course. As he moved forward, Whipple deployed both the Chain Gun and Sea Stinger rocket pods and readied them for action.
“I can’t see the driver of that boat,” Scott, one of the boarding crewmen said as he trained mini-binoculars on the Chris Craft speedboat. “Two-Five, see if you can swing around the other side and spot him.”
“Roger,” Whipple replied, and eased the Sea Lion left around the stern of the sport fisher and slowly circled it. “He’s nowhere in sight,” he reported. “I’m moving closer.”
He had come to within a hundred feet when suddenly a tall darkskinned man rushed up on deck carrying a young girl in one arm and a pistol in his other. Slung across his shoulder was a bulging nylon bag.
“Scott, I see someone,” Whipple called. “He’s got a kid, a hostage, he’s holding, a gun to her head. ”
The man swept his right arm over the girl’s head, then pointed the muzzle at her.
“I think he’s telling me to move off or he’ll kill her.”
Scott motioned to the helmsman of the RHIB to cut right toward the bow out of sight of the smuggler. He took oflf his communications helmet and began to unlace his boots.
“What the hell are you doing?” Randolph, the helmsman of the RHIB, asked him.
“Going over the side,” Scott told him, “before he sees us.”
“That's nuts, Scotty,” one of the other crewman said. “This guy’s going nowhere, he’s got no choice but to surrender—”
“Yeah, right, but what if he starts killing those kids in the meantime? We’ve got the drop on him, now’s the time to act.” The intercept crewmen had no answer for that. “After you drop me oflf swing back to the left and show yourself. Make sure he keeps his eyes on you and the Sea Lion.” Scott took oflf his gun belt, clasped the webbing in his teeth near the holster to keep the weapon out of the salt water and edged over the side of the inflatable tubes of the RHIB. When they were about a hundred feet away he slipped into the cold water and began to swim for the sport fisher. The RHIB helmsman immediately veered away, and was soon in sight of the smuggler on deck and took up a position ninety degrees to the right of the Sea Lion and about a hundred feet away, threatening but holding position.
The water was much colder than Scott had thought, and the deep chill seemed to turn his arms and legs to lead. He was a strong, well-trained swimmer, but it seemed he had to fight to keep his head above water. He choked down the rising panic in his throat and kept pushing it, the butt of his pistol slapping his face at every stroke . . .
His situation had gone to hell in ten short seconds. Alberto Runoz saw the bristling guns on the strange warplane, aimed right for him. The rubber boat filled with Border Security troops had, it seemed, come out of nowhere.
The young ones were his only way out—if he had one. The little Haitians had been easy to lure into the boat; fifty cents’ worth of food could buy a half dozen in that impoverished country. Even with no place to run, they still might be of value. Still holding the young girl in one arm, he shifted the bag full of twenty kilos of cocaine over to another shoulder, grasped the Tokarev TL-8 pistol in his left hand, and reached for the radio on the control console. He thought the radio was set to the oceanic emergency channel but it didn’t really matter—the Hammerheads were sure to be monitoring them all.
Runoz had been told by Colonel Salazar that the children were the key, which was turning out to be true, he thought, as he knelt down to hide himself from the M-16 rifles as best he could and keyed the mike:
“You Border Security guards, this is the captain of the disabled boat in front of you. I will kill these children if you do not cooperate, and then I will kill myself. Their deaths will be on your head.
“I want that rubber raft and free passage to shore. All of you but one will return to the helicopter. The one soldier will remove all his weapons and bring the raft to me. I will get on the raft with three of the youngest children to make sure of my escape. You will comply immediately. Or else ...” “Where’s Scott?” Whipple radioed to the helmsman of the RHIB. “I don’t see him.”
“He looked like he might be in trouble,” Randolph said. “I don’t see him. He was swimming pretty slow. He may not have reached the boat, or he might be hurt.”
“Well, he gave it a try, I just hope we can get back to him in time,” Whipple said. “Hold your position. Two-Six should be here in minutes. When this nut sees two Sea Lions on top of him maybe he’ll surrender ...”
Both the strange airplane and the raft with the three armed men held their positions, nobody making a move. Runoz, furious and frightened, grabbed the microphone again. “I will not play your waiting game. I want that raft now!” He dropped the microphone and transferred the Tokarev back to his right hand.
Maybe the skinny kid he’d picked out did not deserve to live, but the boat was sinking faster now... Runoz thumbed the hammer back on the Tokarev—
“Freeze . . . Hammerheads . . . freeze . . .” The voice was weak, strained, almost a whisper. Nonetheless, Runoz jumped at the sound of it, then looked over the port side of the boat. There, lying in the water supported by his lifejacket, was a Border Security Force crewman, the insignia clear and recognizable. His face was deathly white, his lips purple. He clutched a black automatic pistol in his left hand, but his arm was shaking, and it didn’t look as though he’d last many more minutes.
Runoz picked up the radio microphone. “Hey, Border Security Force. I found one of your men here. Now bring that raft over here and move that airplane at least a mile out of my sight or I’ll blow this sad asshole’s face off.” He stood at the edge of the boat, still using the little girl as a shield, his Tokarev pointed over the side at Scott. He checked to be sure the soldiers weren’t moving closer, then checked the man gasping and heaving in the water, his gun hand shaking badly. Runoz yelled over the side: “Hey, you in the water, drop your gun or I’ll finish you right away . .
Suddenly the gun steadied itself, the man in the water made a leg kick that lifted his shoulders three feet above the surface, and the gun fired and bucked once, twice, three times. Runoz was instantly flung backward across the deck, one bullet in his chest, another in his right shoulder.
He dropped the girl and grabbed at his bloody shoulder with his free left hand. But by this time Scott had reached the sinking stern of the sport fisher and had just begun to climb over the transom when Runoz saw him and raised his pistol. Scott was no more than ten feet away—even a dying Runoz could not miss.
Scott faced a Runoz with the huge, murderous-looking pistol aimed squarely at him. There was no time either to jump away or get at Runoz. Shots rang out, Scott’s body convulsed with the sound, his pistol went overboard, and he fell backward into the icy water to wait for expected death’s darkness to close over him . . .
It did not. His response had been a reflex to what he was sure was coming. But as his head broke the surface, to his amazement he found himself alive. He climbed back up over the transom and over the edge. The smuggler was slumped over the port railing of the boat, his head and neck sliced by two dozen high-powered M-16 slugs from the Hammerheads in the RHIB. Only one hun
dred feet away, the Hammerheads could not miss either.
By the time Scott had managed to crawl on board the sport fisher, the RHIB had pulled alongside and its crew boarded the stricken vessel. Quickly they found life jackets or flotation devices for the children, and several were loaded into the RHIB for transfer to the Sea Lion. Meanwhile Scott had gone below and emerged a few moments later with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and two large brown packages in his hands. Randolph met him on deck. “You okay, Scotty?”
“I’m freezing but I’ll be okay. Look here, there’s a hundred more stuffed in the V-bunks, and two more fiberglass cases still full of stuff. Three hundred kilos of cocaine—four and a half million dollars’ worth.”
“We’ll bring a portable pump over from the Sea Lion and try to keep this thing afloat until the SES or the Coast Guard comes to offload the stuff,” Randolph said. They looked out on deck and watched the children getting ready to be transferred to the RHIB for the ride to the Sea Lion. “My God, what kind of scumbags use kids on their drug runs?”
“A new mutation,” Scott said. “We got lucky. We probably wouldn’t have gotten this guy if he hadn’t hit the light. What about next time ...”
The Seagull had been recovered from McLanahan’s crew. Shark Two-Six, with Sandra Geffar piloting the AV-22, had taken over the chase.
Since taking over for the drone, they had marked and identified three other sea drops made by the smugglers. Being intercepted by Geffar’s aircraft made no difference at all to the smugglers in the plane. Geffar saw children in the port-side window, waving.
Geffar tried everything to get the pilot of the plane to stop. Warning shots with both the Chain Gun and Sea Stingers, close formation flight, putting men in the cargo doors with M-16s. The smuggler made a few evasive turns when the aircraft got very close but immediately turned back to course and could not be diverted from shore . . .
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