Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (10 page)

 
          
“Has
payment been received for the
llaho?”

 
          
“As
planned,
commandante.
Two million
American dollars in our Cayman Island account. Senor Gachez also sends his
condolences for the loss of our crewmen—”

 
          
“Gachez
...” said with disgust. Salazar drained the steaming hot coffee in a single
gulp. Hermosa refilled the china cup, then poured one for himself. “We
delivered four hundred kilos of high-grade to his nose-picking farmers in
Florida, cocaine worth ten times what he pays us. We take the risks and he
grows richer and fatter. We lose a new cargo plane and a top-notch crew, and
all he can say is
sorryP”

 
          
“He
sends another message,” Hermosa said. He drank his coffee, relishing the
flavor, before finishing the message. He knew his boss’ foul moods, there might
not be another chance at the rich coffee for who knew how long ... “He has been
in contact with other members of the cartel. They also seem to want to do
business with us.” “What? Do you think we’re some peasant taxi drivers? I’ll
deliver my reply in a hundred-kilo dynamite letter—

 
          
“If
I may, sir,” Hermosa said, “I would suggest you give this matter some thought.
We are not working
for
Senor Gachez
...”

 
          
“You
are damned right about that . . .”

 
          
“We
contracted with Senor Gachez alone, without any other commitments to the other
families of his cartel,” Hermosa continued. “But it is Senor Gachez with the
commitment to the cartel—if he has been approached by members of the Medellin
families, he has an obligation to provide service to them. On the other hand,
we do not. Therefore ...”

 
          
“So
we don’t let ourselves be tricked the second time,” Salazar said, leaning back
and sipping his coffee. “We were poor starving bush pilots then, we accepted
the deal with Gachez because we had little or no choice. Now we are strong, and
smarter. We state our new rates for the other members of the cartel—inflation
is two, three hundred percent in Cuba, correct? Things are bad all over, eh?”
Hermosa was riding high. Salazar was happy, he was happy. “The members of the
cartel will not allow Gachez to continue to enjoy contract rates better than
theirs—he will either have to subsidize the cartel’s payments or raise his own
contract payments ...”

 
          
“Or
if he is stupid enough,” Salazar added, “he will lie about his rates and try to
swindle the other families. Then we will have enough leverage on him to dictate
our own terms.”

 
          
“Sir,
I would caution against trying to extort Senor Gachez or any member of the
cartel,” Hermosa said. “They are, after all, powerful men. If we ask for a
reasonable mark-up for our services it will be considered nothing more than the
price of doing business. There are none better than we. They will pay.”

 
          
“You’re
right
they will pay.” Salazar
resisted the urge to take another shot of
llaho
in front of Hermosa.

 
          
Hermosa
was silent for a moment as Salazar turned over the plans for sending his bull
to the Medellin cartel. Then: “We do have another option,
commandante.
Perhaps this game has gone on too long. We do Gachez’s
bidding because he could have destroyed you . . .” “What are you saying?”

 
          
“I
am saying that you have more than enough savings to escape Haiti and get out of
this business. Gachez can’t hold a firing squad or life at hard labor over your
head. Not anymore. You can free yourself of this ...”

 
          
Hermosa
had hit too close to home, Salazar thought. It was true.

 
 
          
Two
years earlier he had taken a bribe from Gachez worth thousands of American
dollars to fly a load of cocaine on a training mission from Cartagena and drop
it north of Cuban waters. He had been offered the typical Colombian bribe,
plomo o plata
—lead or silver, a piece of
the action or a bullet in the head—an offer he could not refuse.

 
          
He
had wanted to make the drop himself but it would have appeared too suspicious
for him to take a plane out over Cuba at night. So he had planned an overwater
navigation training leg and a practice tactical mine-laying mission for student
training. His students performed well, dropping the six bundles of cocaine
sealed inside harbor mine canisters dead on target, dead on time.

 
          
For
accepting this offer he could not refuse, he was paid well, all in untraceable
money in numbered accounts. But it was a bittersweet pay-off, knowing it put
him in Gachez’ employ. And there was no way to resign or retire from service
with the Medellin cartel. You could take the money and run, but until you tried
to spend the money. Then you were dead. The cartel, and in particular Gonzales
Gachez, were just too powerful.

 
          
But
he had reversed that now. Or was about to . . .

 
          
“How
is it you’re so familiar with my savings, field captain?” Hermosa wisely chose
not to say what everyone in the cadre knew: Salazar skimmed a percentage of the
profits for himself and was not averse to skimming a few kilos off each
shipment to sell via his own connections in Haiti, the Bahamas and Mexico.
Certainly, Hermosa thought, he could not think that no one, including the
cartel, noticed such activities . . .

 
          
“I
am a
soldier,
field captain. Remember
that.”

 
          
“Please
excuse me, sir,” Hermosa said. “I did not mean to imply—” “Get out of here.”
The cocaine hit was beginning to affect him. He felt lighter, more powerful.
“Have my helicopter made ready. I will inspect the camp and make an area
patrol.”

 
          
Hermosa
was happy to get out of there and behind the thick wooden door separating
himself from Salazar, obviously high, and his throwing knives.

 
          
Gulf of Mexico
, South of
Marsh Island
,
Louisiana

 
          
0217 CST

 
          
“Position fix . . . now.”

 
          
Commander
Russell Ehrlich, skipper of WMEC 620, the Coast Guard cutter
Resolute
, sipped on a mug of coffee as
he tried to relax. The bridge of his cutter was humid with only an occasional
breeze drifting through the open steel doors. Outside the slanted
anti-reflection windows of the
Resolute
’s
bridge was darkness, with just a hint of light visible on the horizon to the
north—New Orleans, maybe even a hint of a glow from Galveston or Houston off
toward the northwest. It was a clear, beautiful winter night in the Gulf of
Mexico.

 
          
As
he scanned the darkness the navigator’s mate centered a set of electronic
crosshairs on the center of a radar blip on the bridge’s navigation radar set
and pressed a button on his control console. Immediately a series of
latitude-longitude coordinates, range and bearing, and intercept information
zipped across a small computer monitor.

 
          
“Got
it,” McConahay, the navigator’s mate, reported. McConahay was a skinny,
bespectacled ensign fresh out of the Coast Guard Academy in New London and
sea-navigation training. Ehrlich had to smile—McConahay, an electrical engineer
and math whiz out of the academy, looked out of place on the bridge. He was
clearly overawed with the hustle of activity on the bridge and seemed to have
little desire to look at the ocean at all—content to spend most of his time
making lines on his chart and updating his computers. McConahay, it seemed, was
trying to lower his rather high squeaky voice when speaking to the captain. Ah,
the
new
Coast Guard . . . “Range
thirteen miles, speed perhaps two knots, right on the bow.”

 
          
“Does
he have any company, Mr. McConahay?”

 
          
“Radar’s
showing no other ships, sir,” McConahay replied, checking the fourteen-inch
display, “but we’re at extreme radar range now. They may be hard to see or
blocked by the freighter.”

 
          
“Where’s
our air cover?” Ehrlich wondered. And to McConahay, “Fix our position with GPS,
then verify with Loran. Plot the target’s position. And I want it exact. If we
end up hauling this guy into court I want to prove six ways to Sunday that he’s
in U.S. waters.”

 
          
“Aye,
sir.” McConahay bent to work—but didn’t the skipper know that his position
fixes were
always
exact?

 
          
The
navigator’s mate saved the radar target’s position data in a memory storage
buffer, then punched up the
Resolute
's
position on the GPS computer navigator. The Global Position System used
information from a ring of geosynchronous satellites orbiting 22,500 miles
above Earth’s equator to obtain position, groundspeed and time information with
remarkable accuracy—they could record their own position within four feet and
get a fix on another radar-identified target within 100 yards.

 
          
The
Resolute,
one of sixteen
Reliance-class cutters in the Coast Guard inventory, was notable for its adv
anced electronic suite and computerized automation of almost every task aboard
ship. As a result, where most large sea-going cutters needed a crew of well
over a hundred, the 210-foot-long, 950-ton
Resolute
and her Reliance- class sisters had a crew complement of only eighty-six—with
computers and robots doing much of the scut work. From the start the
Resolute
was designed as a
search-and-rescue vessel, only recently being outfitted for law enforcement and
drug interdiction. She did carry one radar-guided Mk22 3-inch/50 cannon on her
foredeck plus grenade launchers and .50 caliber machine guns that could be brought
up on deck from the armory and mounted around the ship. She had a helipad aft
of midships large enough to land a single HH-65 Dolphin helicopter rotated in
from Coast Guard air stations around the southeast United States; her present
Dolphin was borrowed from the Coast Guard air station in Mobile, Alabama.

 
          
“.
. . Ship’s position-information updated and verified,” McConahay reported,
using a set of Plexiglas plotters on the board to mark the GPS coordinates on
the chart, then making a tiny triangle and logbook entry on the chart. “GPS
position fix on the target verified as well.” He then checked the position
readout on the third navigation computer, the Loran, for Long-Range Navigation,
a system that used timed signals from synchronized shore-based radio stations
to pinpoint their position. “Loran data recorded. Checks with GPS within a
tenth of a mile.” The navigator’s mate would update the ship’s position and
navigation computers with the more accurate GPS and use the radar and Loran to
check the GPS.

 
          
“I
don’t need the whole spiel, McConahay,” Ehrlich said wearily, “just tell me
where the hell he
is.
”

 
          
“Exactly
ten miles south of Marsh Island,” McConahay reported. “Well inside the twelve
mile limit.”

 
          
“He
got sloppy and drifted into our jurisdiction,” Ehrlich said, now excited. “All
these days of tracking that sonofabitch finally paid off. Mr. Ross, find out
where our Falcon is.”

 
          
Lieutenant
Martin Ross, the officer of the deck, nodded and clicked on his intercom to the
communications center. A moment later he reported, “Sir, comm has radio contact
with Omaha Six-One out of New Orleans. He says he’ll be on station in five
minutes.” “Five minutes? They’re already five minutes late.”

 
          
Just
then on the bridge’s speakers a voice blared out, “
Resolute
, this is Omaha Six-One on Uniform. On station in three
minutes. Over.”

 
          
Ehrlich
turned toward the voice as if he had heard a sound from the grave; then turned
angrily toward Ross. “Is he on the scrambler?” “I’ll check, sir.”

 
          
“Dammit,
he better be.”

 
          
“Uh
. . . sir?” It was McConahay.

 
          
“Hang
on, son.” To Ross: “Well?”

 
          
“He’s
on the scrambler now, sir.”

 
          
“Skipper
. . . ?”

 
          
“What
is
it, McConahay?”

 
          
“I
... I think the target is moving.”

 
          
“
What?”
Ehrlich was off his chair to
check the radar scope. “Right after Seven-One checked in, sir. Looks like he’s
heading out.”

 
          
“I
knew it! Son of a bitch was monitoring our frequencies.” He swung to Ross.
“Have the duty-crew on deck on the double. Helm, all ahead full. Let’s go talk
with him before he gets away.”

 
          
McConahay
stood up from his plotting board on the
Resolute
’s
bridge. “We’re going to move in on him? Now? It’s . . . it’s after 2:00 A.M.—”

 
          
“Are
we keeping you up, Mr. McConahay?” Ehrlich made an entry in the bridge’s
logbook. “There’s nothing in the book that says we don’t work at night. These
guys will be out of our waters in ten minutes. It’ll take us that long to catch
up to them. We move in
now.
”

           
“My engines are all ahead full,
sir,” the helmsman reported. “Showing twelve knots and increasing.”

           
“If we lose this guy I’m going to
shoot that Falcon crew. We’ve spent too much time dicking around with this guy
to let him go now.”

 
          
The
Resolute
crew had indeed been
tracking their target—a one- hundred-eighty-foot cargo ship, the
Numestra del Oro,
a
Panamanian-registered freighter—for several days. Almost from first contact
this freighter had aroused the Coast Guard’s suspicion. It had only recently
requested a berth at Galveston, but then had waited offshore just outside the
twelve-mile limit for the last two days— ostensibly so they could make room for
her at Galveston. There was plenty of room in the protected bays and
intracoastal waterways around Galveston for the vessel to anchor and for the
skipper to grant liberty to his crew, but the skipper could choose to wait
wherever he wanted. Then, just when a berth opened up, the
Numestra
skipper had radioed in that he had been ordered by his
parent company to take part of his cargo first to Mobile, then turn around and
head back for Galveston. True, it was not unheard of for a freighter to wait so
far offshore for a berth or suddenly change its port of call, but such moves
had alerted the Coast Guard.

 
          
Previously
the
Numestra
had been inspected by a
Coast Guard C-130 patrol plane while it was en route from Panama, orbiting over
the freighter long enough to verify its flag, its identification and speak to
the skipper by radio about his cargo and destination. It also had been briefly
inspected by a Coast Guard Island-class patrol vessel east of Nicaragua, but
the inspection of the ship’s documents, and cargo, were cursory. The
Numestra,
it seemed, was carrying a
mixed cargo—remanufactured engine blocks from Mexico, coffee and rattan
furniture from Brazil, scrap metal from Venezuela and the usual ferry mix of
cars, busses and a few passengers that made up the bulk of most freighter
manifest lists—none of the ferry passengers was of American citizenship. Its
decks and holds had been crammed with sealed forty-foot cargo containers, all
with the proper seals. The Coast Guard had the authority to open the containers
for inspection if permission was granted, but an Island-class boat had only
eighteen crewmen—hardly enough to carry out an extensive search of a larger
freighter.

 
          
After
inspection the
Numestra
was released
and the Coast Guard had relayed the information to the U.S. Customs Service,
which checked with the
Numestra
’s
destination ports to verify that the ship was on legitimate business and that
the proper manifests had been filed for entry into the United States.
Everything checked. The next step would be to send a Customs Service cruiser
out to inspect the ship before it reached its port—presumably to expedite
clearance through Customs but really to check the ship again for contraband
before it had a chance to off-load. But because the
Numestra
stayed so far offshore Customs had not yet checked it
over.

           
It was soon obvious that the
Numestra
had no intention of docking.
Any ship so reluctant to pull into an American port immediately came under suspicion,
and so the
Resolute
had been sent to
shadow the freighter. When the
Resolute
first caught up with
Numestra
well
outside the twelve-mile limit it had detected several other ships hovering near
the freighter. The smaller ships had immediately scattered when the
Resolute
moved within ten miles of the
Numestra,
which told Ehrlich and his
crew that the freighter’s surface-scanning radar had at least a ten-mile range
and that the freighter was receiving guests that didn’t want any run-ins with
the Coast Guard.