“Plus the kids are a liability throughout the flight. The drugs are dumped overboard—the kids stay. They’re a range and weight liability from start to finish.” McLanahan scowled at his computer, then tossed it on the table. “I’d say get an SES or Coast Guard vessel out to that vicinity and get under that Cheyenne, because he’s coming down any—”
“We got something going down on target one,” the senior controller reported. Hardcastle and McLanahan glanced up at the image of the Cheyenne on the TV monitor. “He’s slowed way down, under one-fifty. Thought I saw a hatch open . . . there it goes ...”
The short airstair hatch and curved upper hatch on the plane had popped open. Both door sections vibrated violently in the plane’s slipstream, threatening to break off the fuselage at any moment.
“They’re still at fourteen thousand feet? That’s strange. Are they making a drop?” Hardcastle was saying. “Are there any boats in the . . . Holy Mother of God ...”
Hardcastle and McLanahan were on their feet, jaws gone slack as they watched without believing what they were seeing . . . One of the children had just been thrown from the open hatch of the Cheyenne.
It got worse. One of the girls, her long hair pulled straight back in the slipstream, was clutching frantically at the cable that held the bottom half of the airstair. Her fight only lasted a few moments, and suddenly she was gone.
“Mark and record position, mark and record ... oh God, cut off broadcast to shore!” Hardcastle knew that sometimes it was possible for people with satellite dishes to intercept their v ideo signals from the platform, and it was very possible that politicians or other visitors at the Alladin City base might be watching the Seagull drone’s transmissions. “Get all available Sea Lion units airborne immediately, I want—” His last order was cut off in a near-shout as another youngster went plummeting to his death, thrust out the open hatch of the plane like the fiberglass cases of drugs that had already been tossed out. The last child, older and bigger than the others—was the one in the cockpit, the one they first saw with the Seagull’s camera—was not thrown far enough away from the plane and hit the fuselage and horizontal stabilizer—each sickening impact clearly seen by those in the command center. The Cheyenne swung hard left after the last impact on the left stabilizer, and the Seagull initiated an automatic breakaway and veered hard left away from the Cheyenne. The video picture was, thankfully, lost from view.
Hardcastle barely made it back to the commander’s console and quickly sat down, feeling strength wash out of him. He had to take a deep breath to force his words out: “Instruct the Seagull drone to begin an orbit over that position,” he said in a shaky voice. “Infrared scan at five hundred feet. Get every available Coast Guard unit out to that area immediately. Get . . . get ...” His words faded like an old phonograph winding down, and he could do nothing else but stare in utter disbelief at the computer monitor before him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Swamps South of Dulac, Terrebonne County, Louisiana
One Week Later
Scattered through the swamps and bayous between the small town of Dulac and the northern part of Lake Boudreaux, Louisiana, a hundred armed men, most with shotguns and hunting rifles, sat motionless in flat-bottomed bass boats. They seemed rather tolerant of the heavy downpour they were experiencing, a thunderstorm with the biggest, fattest raindrops anyone had ever seen. The thunderstorm seemed to provide them some sense of relief, as if believing that only they would ever be out on a night like this, that only they could take the worst Mother Nature could dish out. These men of Dulac and this backwoods area of Terrebonne County used the bad weather, and their knowledge of the southern Louisiana swamps, to protect themselves from those who would take advantage of them as well as those who would dare to come to the swamps and try to arrest them.
The local’s small bass boats surrounded a large, fast airboat—a flat-bottomed craft propelled with a large aircraftlike propeller and steered with aircraftlike control surfaces—which served as the command vessel for this operation. The leader of the group, a smuggler named Girelli, flicked his cigarette at a dark, slithery shape gliding across the murky water. “Jesus,” he murmured, his Staten Island accent as strange to the locals as a Martian’s. “This place gives me the creeps.”
Girelli turned to a man beside him who had a radio headset pressed to one ear. The radio itself, big as an ice chest, was in a waterproof canvas bag in the middle of the airboat, with a rigid rubber antenna extending far above the airboat’s fan; it had a navigational beacon in it as well as a powerful descrambling radio receiver. “What’s the story, Mario?”
“I can’t hear anythin’,” the guy said. “I ain’t heard anythin’ for hours.” The radio was a tactical backpack radio transmitter used in Vietnam by Air Force and Army combat air controllers who parachuted behind enemy lines on WET SNOW missions and set up the beacon at presurveyed points. Air Force and Navy bombers would use the beacon signals as navigational and bombing checkpoints and offset aimpoints to strike their targets—the beacon would appear as thick and thin lines now on a radar scope, corresponding to the agreed-on code used for each mission . .. now the radio could be had at almost any surplus store for practically nothing. Mario was selected for this smuggling run because of his familiarity with the beacon system as a combat air controller in Vietnam. But instead of directing air raids along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they were going to use the war surplus beacon system to precision-drop Colombian cocaine to waiting smugglers . . .
“How do we know these guys took us to the right place, eh?” Girelli asked. One of “these guys,” a man named George Debeaucha- let, assigned as the smuggler’s escort, ignored the two outsiders’ remarks. “We could be miles from the drop point.”
“These guys ain’t dumb, Tony,” Mario said. “They’re getting paid good money to cooperate. We don’t show with this stuff, these guys are gator food.”
Girelli looked uneasily around him, trying not to look as apprehensive as he felt. The locals, mostly Cajun-speaking, burly fishermen and trappers, came out of nowhere when Debeauchalet took the two smugglers alone to this section of the Lake Boudreaux swamps of south Louisiana. How these guys could navigate through the endless swamps, islands, overhanging mangroves and unmarked mud trails Girelli could never figure out. But they had met precisely on time, two or three men per boat, without either Mario and Girelli knowing they were nearby. Fortunately the Yankee smugglers were assured that the cops, local FBI or local DEA boys didn’t possess the same skill.
Each boat had one of Girelli’s heavily armed men on board, both to ensure the local’s cooperation and to add to the considerable firepower as well as to help disperse the shipment as fast as possible after the drop. Each man carried either an AR-15 rifle modified for fully automatic fire or a Uzi or some other small automatic weapon. It would be much tougher to catch twenty escaping smugglers than one or two. But the presence of Girelli’s soldiers alongside the scruffy locals didn’t help ease his apprehension. “These guys could probably toss us over the side, take the stuff and disappear.”
“Hey. They know the score,” Mario said. “The cartels and the Cuchillos own these guys. And their families, too. They do their thing, they get paid big bucks. We don’t show, all these bozos swallow swamp scum. Now shut up. I’m trying to listen.”
The group fell silent. After a few moments Mario removed the headphones and looped them over his neck. “Nothin’ yet. It’s still early. A few more minutes, we should hear.” He switched a level on the radio to VOX and picked up a microphone: “Duncan, this is Mario. Radio check.”
“Yo mama,” came the reply. Mario laughed and set the microphone back on its clip. Duncan was another member of the smuggling gang stationed fifteen miles south of the drop zone, along the path of the inbound plane. He would watch and listen for any signs of pursuit as the drop went down, and warn the drop-zone crew.
“Pretty good thinking, the cartel movin’ the drop site over to Louisiana,” Girelli
said. “Just think: three million dollars’ worth of blow. Three million. And we make three hundred grand for a couple days’ work.”
“A hundred of which we fork over to these good ol’ boys, remember.”
Girelli spat overboard. “These inbreeds do the job, they can have the dough. It’s their own fault they bring half the county—we only asked for twenty guys.”
“I just wonder how those flyboys—what do they call ’em, the Blades or something?—how will they get past the Hammerheads?” Mario said. “The Heads got this whole area closed off, don’t they?” “You butthole,” Girelli said. “What do you think we’re sitting in this swamp for? The Heads don't have the whole Gulf closed off. They just do Florida and the Caribbean and over that way. They don’t have none of them oil platforms out this way. The nearest place they got to land is seventy miles away.”
“I know that, dickbrain”—he didn’t know any of that but he didn’t want to admit it—“I mean, they got those radar planes too. you know, the prop-jobs with the radar flyin’ saucers on them. They can see planes cornin’ for a hundred miles. I heard it on TV.”
“That’s why we’re sittin’ here in a damned thunderstorm, Mario,” Girelli said. “Those radars can’t see through thunderstorms.” “They can’t? How do you know that?”
“Radar can’t see through water. Didn’t you pay no attention in school? All’s a radar sees in a thunderstorm is a big white cloud. And the planes stay away from thunderstorms, too. Too much bouncin’ around in a thunderstorm.”
“So how are the Blades gonna make a drop in this shit then?”
“How is, the Blades got brass balls. Also, they know the Heads can’t fly in this stuff, so that’s when they come. These Cuchillos, they ain’t afraid of nothin’. Besides, the Heads don’t come out here. Most of the dope goes through Florida, so that’s where the Hammerheads operate.” He had to laugh. “Them Heads are good against spicks and wetbacks but they don’t wanna take on good oX American runners.”
Girelli nudged Mario. “You know what else I heard? In case the Blades do get caught, you know what they’ve done to keep from gettin’ shot down? Carry kids on their planes. You believe that?” If Girelli could have seen Mario’s face, he would have seen that his partner didn’t think too much of that. “And that ain’t the half of it. In case they run low on fuel and don’t think they can make it back, you know what they do?”
“You . . . you’re not—?”
“They toss the little ones right outta the plane.” Girelli made a whistling sound, stomped a foot in the water pooling up in the bottom of the airboat. “You believe that?”
“That ain’t funny,” Mario said. “I got kids. Anybody that uses kids like—”
“Business, pal. It’s business.”
“I guess that’s how the Blades fly in shitty weather like this—they got no sense except gettin’ the job done,” Mario said, changing the subject.
“You think about makin’ the big score, you can do anything.”
The two became silent again, then Mario put the headphones back on, listening intently. He turned to Girelli. “I think I hear somethin’.” He reached for the top flap on the transmitter case.
“Wait,” Girelli reminded him. “Get a definite code first.”
“I know, I know, let me listen."
The signal seemed to fade out, then disappear. Mario was only slightly worried—he was told the loss of signal was part of the search routine as the incoming plane lined up on the right course. A few moments later the signal returned, this time stronger. Mario counted the clear, sharp pulses he heard. “I got it. It’s the right code.” He lifted the top flap of the radio and pressed a rubber-covered button. This time when the signal returned it illuminated a yellow light on top of the transmitter. He turned a key on the radio that locked the navigational beacon in the ON position. The yellow light came on once more, then was out.
“They’re comin’,” he announced. “First contact is about fifty miles out, they said in the briefing. That means a rendezvous in about ten minutes.”
“And that radio does it all? We don’t need to set up flares for a drop zone or nothin’?”
“This baby does everything,” Mario replied, recovering the transmitter with its protective canvas top. “These Cuchillos will drop the stuff right in our laps. I watched these guys work on another drop— these guys are good. They go balls to the wall and they can still drop a dime from a hundred feet in the air. They use the beacon as an offset aimpoint—”
“What?”
“An offset aimpoint,” nearly preening. “They don’t fly at the beacon but they use it to line up on the drop area.” Mario pointed to a long, weed-covered bog about fifty yards away. “That’s the drop zone. They see the beacon, they can hit the island. Then we cruise on over and pick it up.”
“Well, they better. I’m not sticking my hand in that water, and I don’t care how much dope is floatin’ around.” He remembered the size of the snakes he’d seen while cruising out to the drop site—they looked like huge tree, branches, with heads big as a man’s fist.
“Don’t worry,” Mario said. “The Cuchillos are pros. We just hold out our hands, and they’ll drop the shit in like ol’ Warren Moon throwin’ the bomb to a wide receiver. Relax. It’s in the bag. We’re good as home free.”
Border Security Force Headquarters, Aladdin City, Florida
“Data connection in progress, sir,” one of the controllers reported. Everyone looked up at the center main-viewing monitor, one of three twenty-foot monitors that dominated the Hammerheads’ com- mand-and-control center in south Miami.
The center screen usually showed a picture of the southeast United States, focusing in on the busy drug trade routes through Florida, the Bahamas and throughout the Caribbean—areas where the Border Security Force operated balloon-borne radars and tied in with FAA and military radars to get a composite radar picture of the region. This time, though, the center screen showed the southern United States between Mobile, Alabama, and Houston, Texas.
There was not too much to see. Brad Elliott, seated at one of the controller’s consoles, studied the picture as information from radar sites all along the south coast was assembled by the Hammerheads’ computers and displayed. Samuel T. Massey, the President’s Special Advisor on Drug Control Policy, a.k.a. the “drug czar,” shook his head. “Not a very good picture, is it, Brad?”
“The Houston Center radar tie-in is pretty marginal,” Brad Elliott replied. “I’m told we’re improving the data flow, but it’ll be a few weeks off before we can test it. There’s also a big thunderstorm over the target area that’s causing a lot of trouble with reception.” He turned to one of the controllers to his right. “Plug in ROTH.” Instantly the picture changed, the screen came alive with streams of data, pinpointing several aircraft in and around the New Orleans area, smaller aircraft flitting around the edges of the thunderstorms; it even registered movement-information on some vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. “That’s the ROTH information?” Massey said. “It really sums up the situation in that area—it’s even picking up ships out in the Gulf. Where’s the radar located? New Orleans? Baton Rouge? Or is it an airborne?”
“How about Bull Shoals, Arkansas,” Elliott said.
“Arkansas? That’s got to be hundreds of miles from the coastline—”
“Exactly five hundred ten miles from the southern Louisiana coastline. In fact, the location was specifically chosen to be at least five hundred miles from the coast—the minimum range of ROTH-B.” He tapped instructions into a keyboard at the console, which expanded the view on the center monitor to the entire south-central United States. He then entered commands to display a red curved wedge that extended all the way from Bermuda to the east to Los Angeles to the west, and as far south as the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and the Lesser Antilles of the north coast of South America.
“This is the scan area of ROTH-B,” Elliott said. “ROTH-B, you know”—doubting that Massey did—�
�stands for relocatable over-the- horizon backscatter—they call it relocatable even though the main antenna array is nine thousand feet long. ROTH is a radar system that bounces radar energy off the ionosphere to detect targets hundreds of miles away over the horizon, up to sixteen hundred miles.” “Isn’t that ten times greater than a normal radar? I thought radar was always line-of-sight—how can it look out sixteen hundred miles when there’s all these mountains in the way? Hell, the curvature of the Earth should be enough to block out the energy.”
“In a typical radar system it would,” Elliott said. “The ROTH transmitter unit in Bull Shoals shoots the energy well above the horizon and it doesn’t read the reflected energy signals until it computes a specific time delay from the reflected energy. It’s like a gigantic air hockey game—we shoot radar energy out at various angles, getting it to scan all altitudes at longer ranges by bouncing the radar beams off the ionosphere at different angles. The computer picks out the reflected energy returns based on its computations of how long that reflected energy should take to return to the receiver site. It doesn’t work at ranges shorter than five hundred miles because you run out of angles—no matter how you try to shoot the energy out it’ll never return to the receiver site.”
“But doesn’t this system obsolete your aerostats and radar sites? With a couple more of these you could keep track of every mile of borders.”
“I wish we could,” Elliott said. “But ROTH is new and not completely reliable yet. It needs data on the electrical nature of the ionosphere, and fine-tuning the radar signals to match the electrical surface of the ionosphere is tricky, far from perfected. Plus, when there’s a disturbance in the ionosphere like a solar flare, ROTH is all but useless. And because the time and duration of solar flare activity is published everywhere, the smugglers know when ROTH is off the air anyway.
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