“But their most dangerous weapon is the Sea Lion tilt-rotor aircraft,” Hermosa went on. “The Border Security Force has deployed armed Sea Lions into bases from Savannah, Georgia, to Mobile, Alabama, and they have been reported to be seen at military and civilian bases all across the United States. The two platform bases regularly carry four Sea Lion aircraft each, and the ground bases usually have one or two. The Sea Lion aircraft carry eight multi-purpose heatseeking missiles, capable against both air and surface targets, and three hundred rounds of thirty millimeter ammunition, also multipurpose. They are as fast as our turboprops but have the added advantage of vertical flight—”
“We know that, Hermosa,” Salazar said. He also disliked hearing it.
“In summary, sir, all of our southeast air operations are in jeopardy. Chances of success in continued air operations into this entire region are low—the probability of one of our large aircraft making it all the way through restricted American airspace for a successful drop is . . . perhaps one in fifty—”
“One in fifty!” a senior pilot broke in. “That’s a lie. I can take any aircraft in our inventory straight to any location in Florida. Just give me a chance, Colonel Salazar.” A number of pilots agreed out loud.
Hermosa held up his hand. “According to information from Van Nuys, the Border Security Force may not even withhold fire from aircraft or vessels carrying the children. Anyway, they have orders to use force if intruders do not respond—”
“It doesn’t matter what the orders are,” Salazar said. “None of those spineless pilots will fire on an airplane or vessel carrying those urchins.” He shrugged. “They are dead anyway. If the Americans don’t kill them they will die of starvation in this damned country—” “They take up space on the plane that could be used for cargo—” “Pick skinnier ones next time. They’re also weaker, easier to get into our plane, take up less space and weight ...”
And easier to throw out, thought Hermosa, who thought he was going to be sick. His hands holding his briefing notes trembled, beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. The Cuchillos had turned into mindless robots, capable of anything, it seemed. Salazar could probably convince them to tie their own mothers to the planes’ wings if that’s what it took to complete the mission.
“Our unit’s best pilots flew in the worst possible weather and they were intercepted by the Hammerheads,” Hermosa said. “We lost a shipment and the distribution network in Louisiana was breached. Our plane was followed back to this area, which threatens security ...”
Salazar gave him a head-shake warning and he hurried on. “I have compiled information from all intelligence reports and the conclusions are these: to avoid losses we should stop sorties into the American southeast and concentrate on finding and developing new routes over land in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, sparsely monitored and not yet patrolled by the Border Security Forces. Southern California may be another possibility, since our distribution routes are better developed there—”
“You say avoid the confusion and run?” Salazar said. “Run and hide, eh?”
“Not run and hide, sir. Withdraw and use our resources to find more secure ingress routes. We risk our manpower if we—”
“But we also make no money, Hermosa.” A knife had appeared in Salazar’s hand, and just as suddenly it was quivering in the wooden molding around the chart—missing Hermosa’s left ear by a hair. “Get out of my sight, idiot!” Hermosa did, praying that a knife wasn’t on its way to the middle of his back as he retreated.
Salazar now came to the front of the room and faced his flight commanders and pilots. His eyes blazed with theatrical intensity. He was good, and he knew it. “Forget all talk about retreat and hiding. You are the Cuchillos, the elite, the best pilots in the entire western hemisphere—no, the best in the world. We do not run and hide from the enemy. We challenge them. We defeat them . . .
“I will tell you what we will do. The platform called Hammerhead One is the Border Security Force’s main base, the center of operations for their long-range drones and the main radar monitoring our most lucrative ingress routes and distribution points. The platform protects the coast, but nothing protects the platform. I want an operation to attack this platform, to render it useless for at least the next several months or destroy it completely. During that time, we can boost our deliveries to our best distribution points in Florida. The American appetite for cocaine has not dropped an ounce in the past year—the cartels will pay us hugely for our deliveries . . . Major Trujillo!”
A tall, powerfully built pilot with burn scars on the left side of his face and a slump in his left shoulder shot to his feet.
“You are my best flight commander, my oldest and most experienced pilot. I want you to plan an operation against the Hammerhead One platform, with a secondary attack target against the aerostat unit on Grand Bahama Island. I want this attack to begin at the earliest opportunity and I want the damage to be severe. Can you do it?”
“It’s as good as scrap metal, Colonel. My staff and myself thank you for this opportunity.”
“All of you make me proud,” Salazar said to the rest of the crewmen. “You have demonstrated time and again that there is no challenge, no obstacle, that you cannot overcome. But the enemy we face now is stronger than ever. That’s why we must use all of our courage, all of our skill, to crush the opposition and complete the mission. You men are the Cuchillos. You cannot fail—”
At that moment a loudspeaker blared: “Attention. Attention. Unidentified high-speed aircraft inbound to base. All air defense units to condition red.”
The pilots ran outside as the air-attack sirens began their shrill warning. Salazar began to follow behind his men, then decided to head instead for the underground command post, probably the safest place in the Caribbean outside of Fidel Castro’s own Havana command bunker.
He found two terrified operators on duty in the dank, musty command center—it was used as a survivable alternate command center and usually manned only by a skeleton crew. “Report,” Salazar ordered.
The old-style American-made TPS-17G airport surveillance radar had just completed its warm-up cycle and was being retuned by one of the operators. “Sir, we have a report of a high-speed aircraft, identifcation and origin unknown, heading toward the base from the south at high speed.”
“I heard the warning, I want details.”
Luckily for the operator, the radar set had finished warming up and he quickly acquired the target. The short-range radar reported the target’s flight data: “Sir, the target is at two hundred feet, speed four hundred knots ... altitude decreasing, now at one hundred feet. Range eight miles and closing fast—”
“Air attack,” Salazar called out. Inside he was thanking his stars he had not run outside with the rest of his brave pilots—even a lone fighter or attack plane such as an American F-lll or British Jaguar could carry enough ordnance to decimate their flight line. “Order air defense ground units to engage the target at maximum range.”
“Should we wait for visual identification . . . ?”
“It’s not one of ours, and Haiti has nothing that flies at four hundred knots,” Salazar said. “Everything else that has not reported its arrival to me is an enemy. Destroy it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The base at Verrettes was capable of fending off everything but a sustained aerial attack. Salazar had invested mostly in older-model Soviet-made SA-7 shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles, which had been mounted on Jeeps and other small personnel carriers for better mobility around the base. He also had acquired air-to-air artillery pieces, mortars, assault weapons and armored vehicles. But his prize piece was a small surplus UH-1 Huey helicopter parked within easy running distance of the bunker and command center. The Huey, fueled, serviced and ready to go, could take him to Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands or the Bahamas. Once in hiding, he could gain access to his private Caribbean and European bank accounts.
He thought now about
the Huey and when the best time to make his escape would be as the reports began to filter in from his deployed forces:
“Range four miles,” the radar operator reported. “Still at one hundred feet, slowing to just above three hundred knots. He’s aligning himself with the main runway, just inside the runway boundaries along the main taxiway ...”
“Standard anti-runway operation,” Salazar said. “Sidestep between taxiway and runway while delivering ordnance, and you can put a crater in both surfaces every two thousand feet. One aircraft can shut down the base’s flight operations in seconds. The aircraft should not be allowed to cross the perimeter. Are the SA-7 crews in position?”
“No report yet. Sir . . . the south crew says they have visual confirmation of the target. They say . . . they report it is a Soviet fighter . . . a Sukhoi-27—”
A Soviet plane? “What the hell. . . ? Order the south crew to hold their fire. All units, track but do not engage. But if the fighter attacks our positions, order all units to open fire.”
Salazar thought about this new development for a moment before heading for the exits to make his way to the flight line. A Soviet plane overflying Haiti and his base? Could it be a visit by some of his old buddies? Although he knew the Russians had the advanced long- range Sukhoi-27 fighter based in Cuba, to his knowledge none were flown by Cuban pilots, except perhaps for training or to show off for a Cuban politician. But why was a Russian pilot taking an advanced fighter to an outlaw base in Haiti? Was he defecting? In Haiti? Did he want to sell his plane to Salazar and the Cuchillos? A Sukhoi-27 would be a valuable asset, of course, but it would attract far too much attention from the wrong people—about ten thousand very angry Russian soldiers only a hundred miles away, who would not look kindly on the loss of their plane . . .
A Jeep with a rifleman and driver, waiting for him outside the command bunker, drove him quickly to the flight line—Salazar carefully directing the driver away from potential targets such as hangars and the control tower in case it was an air attack. They parked under one of the few trees near the flight line and watched as the Sukhoi-27 crossed the airfield’s perimeter fence and began its pass.
To his and everyone else's surprise, the fighter began a series of remarkably agile turns, twists, aileron rolls and high-speed passes, all no more than a hundred meters above ground. The Sukhoi-27, combining the best features of the American F-15 Eagle and Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters, was without question one of the world’s premier fighter-interceptors, and it was putting on an amazing aerial display right in front of the astonished rebel Cuban troops. Even if the gunners with their SA-7 missiles or thirty-seven-millimeter cannons could keep up with the plane’s moves, it was unlikely that a shell or missile would even come close to the aircraft.
The fighter’s last maneuver was its most unbelievable . . . The Sukhoi-27 raced down the runway, again at no more than a hundred meters off the ground and well over three hundred nautical miles per hour, when it heeled sharply upward, its nose rising rapidly as if it was going to do another high-performance climb-out—but this time its altitude did not change. The nose kept on rotating upward and backward until it reached, then passed the vertical—and suddenly the Sukhoi-27 fighter was flying tail-first straight down the runway, with its nose inverted and pointing backward, and its twin tails upside-down but pointed forward. The fighter held this flip-flop maneuver for several seconds, its engines screaming, until the airspeed decreased to well below normal landing speed; then the fighter seemed to relax as it rotated forward, righted itself and accelerated quickly away by the end of the runway.
Salazar shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life ...”
The Russian fighter now began a lazy left turn on the downward side of the runway, ready for another pass, when Salazar’s walkie- talkie crackled to life: “Control, Squad One taxiing, ready for release.”
Salazar glanced down at the far end of the runway. Two of the Cuchillo’s four Mikoyan-Gurevich-21 “Fishbed” fighters were taxiing out of their semi-underground concrete shelters and racing down the alert taxiw'ay toward the runway. Part of any base-wide emergency was the launch of Verrette’s tiny alert force of late-model Soviet MiG-21 and French Dassault-Breguet Mirage F1C fighters, as well as turboprop Argentinian FMA Pucara and jet-powered Aero L-39 Albatros bombers to help repel invasion; as necessary, the Cuchillos’ fleet of transports and civil aircraft would be evacuated as soon as possible.
Salazar keyed the microphone button on his walkie-talkie. “All units, hold your positions. Repeat, hold your positions.”
Field Captain Hermosa came running up to Salazar’s Jeep a few moments later. “This guy appears to be putting on an air show,” Salazar said. “Why? Who is he?” He turned and looked at Hermosa, who was breathing heavily from his running. “Where have you been, Hermosa? Hiding?”
“No, sir. I have contacted the Cuban Air Force district headquarters at Camaguey, your old unit ...” Salazar gave him an evil glare when Hermosa mentioned Camaguey, the location of the unit that in effect sold him out to the government because of his smuggling activities. Hermosa swallowed, then continued: “They will not confirm or deny the activities of any Sukhoi-27 fighters operating from there.”
“The standard response,” Salazar said. “But you should have gotten that information out of them. Did you say who you were, that you were calling in my behalf?”
“I believe they are as confused about this as are we, sir.”
Salazar gave Hermosa a disdainful wave and continued to watch the Russian fighter. It had obviously spotted the MiG-2 Is at the end of the runway and had probably seen the other aircraft hidden in bluffs and bunkers all across the field; it had also stopped its airshow and was flying parallel to the main runway, maintaining a safe distance. He set the channel-select thumbwheels on his walkie-talkie at 121.5, the international VHF emergency frequency, and keyed the mike: “Unknown Sukhoi aircraft over the town of Verrettes,” he said in Spanish, “you are ordered to identify yourself. Over.”
“Kto tahm?” came the reply on the radio. The voice was young, energetic, and spoke Russian. “Shto ehtah znahchyetP”
“Unknown Sukhoi, speak Spanish if you can.” He rubbed his forehead, trying to remember some of the Russian he had learned ten years earlier during his training in the Allied Air Training Command Center in Moscow. “Vi gahvahreye pah espahnske? Ahngleyske?” “I speak Spanish,” the young voice replied in hesitant, heavily accented Spanish.
“This is Colonel Agusto Salazar, commander of the airfield you are orbiting. Identify yourself and declare your intentions.”
There was a long pause, then in English: “I speak English better than Spanish. Please repeat.”
Salazar shook his head in exasperation. In English he said, “You fool, do you understand me now?”
“Yes, I understand you.” The Sukhoi pilot’s English was excellent, almost without an accent. “Nice place you have down there. Are those MiGs all yours, or are you renting them by the hour?”
“Do not mock me. This is Colonel of Aviation Agusto Salazar, commander of the base you are orbiting. You have violated sovereign airspace. We are authorized to lire on all aircraft without warning. State your home base, intentions and armament, or depart this area immediately ...”
The man in the rear cockpit of the Sukhoi-27 Flanker fighter was typing on a small ten-by-four-inch keyboard with an eight-line LED readout. His compact, husky frame seemed almost too big for the tiny aft cockpit, which had originally been designed as a two-seat trainer; this model, however, had almost all of the flight and power controls removed from the rear and was used simply as a way to bring a crew chief on long deployments, along with a little baggage and a few toolkits.
Instead of baggage, however, this aft cockpit was packed with specialized radio gear and photographic equipment, including a satellite transceiver that could send video images as well as data from the keyboard. Pictures were taken with a digital-imaging camera, a unit that saved ima
ges on a computer disk instead of on photographic film. The computer disk was then inserted into the satellite transmitter, which would send the digital information via UHF radio to a military geostationary satellite twenty-two thousand miles away in space. The satellite would then relay the information to earth-station receivers, where the data was decoded and reassembled on computer monitors to be studied and analyzed. The crew on the Sukhoi fighter had already sent dozens of pictures back to their home base.
“Salazar ... Salazar . .. never heard of him. I don’t remember him mentioned as commander of any Haitian military units in any of our situation briefings.” U.S. Air Force Major Patrick McLanahan finished typing in the information on Salazar, along with a few other observations on the MiG-21s and other aircraft at Verrettes. “Ring a bell with you, Lieutenant Powell?”
“Nope,” First Lieutenant Roland (a.k.a. “J.C.”) Powell muttered. McLanahan almost missed the terse reply in the steady whine of the Sukhoi’s twin engines. McLanahan paused, waiting for more, then realized he wasn’t going to get anything else. The young pilot of the Sukhoi-27 wasn’t much of a talker.
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