Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (103 page)

 
          
With
seven hundred fifty kilograms of cocaine delivered, they would then divert to
Arthurs Town on
Cat
Island
in the
Bahamas
, claiming engine trouble, and land on a
preselected road north of town. Waiting there was a heavily armed six-man crew
that would secure the landing site, recover the plane, remove the last two
hundred fifty kilos and the fuel bladders, scrub down the plane’s cargo hold,
spray it with a bovine hormone, phrenopherone, that was odorless to humans but
concocted to desensitize a dog’s sense of smell—in the Bahamas even traces of
cocaine detectable only by trained drug dogs was enough to get a conviction—and
load the plane up with a few hundred pounds of Colombian coffee and a few
“passengers.” They would then call Bahamian customs—if they hadn’t already
arrived by then—who would come out and inspect their “disabled” aircraft. In a
few minutes everything would appear perfectly normal.

 
          
That
was the plan . . . but, being tossed around like a kite in a stiff March breeze
only a few seconds from crashing into the
Caribbean

 
          
Sea,
feeling strength sap from his body as fast as his precious fuel was
diminishing, it seemed to the Caravan’s pilot the ambitious plan could never
work. He was also fighting off sleep as he watched the radar altimeter and
monitored his plane’s performance. He caught only five hours’ sleep in
Valdivia
after an exhausting eleven-hour flight from
Mexico
to
Colombia
, had dinner and then was off once again.
The short two-hour flight from Valdivia to Uribia in northern Colombia for
refueling was better—for some reason he felt charged- up, wide awake and alert
as a panther, and he thought the rest of the flight would be the same. Not so.
After the third hour of flight, as they neared
Haiti
, he felt his body tremble and his skin
alternate between ice cold and feverishly hot. He couldn’t get to sleep and he
couldn’t stay awake.

 
          
Now
he felt as if he was being dragged into a dark pit of sleep, and he was using
every trick in the book to stay awake. The old fighter pilot’s trick of
tickling the roof of his mouth with his tongue wasn’t working anymore. The heat
had been turned off long ago. Cold water down the pants didn’t seem to help.
“Take the controls for me, Jorge,” he told his copilot. It took a moment for
the copilot to respond—obviously he was feeling the same exhaustion—but he soon
felt the copilot’s hands on the controls. The pilot got up to find some coffee
and stretch his legs.

 
          
The
starboard cargo door was open, and the drone of the Caravan’s single
four-hundred-horsepower engine was deafening. What the pilot saw in the back of
the Caravan sent him into a rage. The two crewmen were sound asleep, snoring
loudly enough to hear over the windblast and engine noise. When the pilot gave
the first man he reached a not-too-gentle side kick, he slumped over as if he
was dead, hit his head on a fiberglass case full of cocaine and snapped awake
as if a gun had been fired on him.

 
          
“Wake
up, you idiot,” the pilot told him. “We’re only a few minutes from the drop.”
The other crewman got to his feet as well, rubbing his face and windmilling his
arms to try to get himself going. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

 
          
“I’m
sorry, sir,” the first crewman said. “We were okay until just a few minutes
ago. Now, we just . . . conked out. We’ll be okay.”

 
          
“The
time for napping is over. Stick your head out the cargo door or pinch yourself,
but get ready or you’ll go out the door with the dope.”

 
          
“Sorry,
sir. It won’t happen again. We were just—”

 
          
“I’m
not interested in your excuses. Just get back on headsets and stand by.”

 
          
“You
don’t have to yell, sir,” the loadmaster retorted. “We’ve been at this for
nearly thirty hours. We would have responded on interphone if you—”

 
          
“Dammit,
I said keep silent and do as you’re told,” the pilot snapped. “One more word
out of you, and you’re on report.” The two men faced each other, both refusing
to back down, both ready for a fight. But at a sudden swerve and precipitous
dip in the Caravan, the pilot took a firm hold on the cargo-bay roof and quickly
made his way to the cockpit.

 
          
“What’s
wrong up here?” he asked the copilot.

 
          
“Sorry,”
the copilot replied. “I tried to engage the autopilot and I thought it was
working again. We lost a few hundred feet. But I got it—”

 
          
“Like
hell.” The pilot slipped into his seat, strapped in and took the controls.
“What is going
on
here? You knew we
red X-ed the autopilot hours ago. We’re acting like amateurs. Manuel and Lidio
were sleeping in the back, and you—”

 
          
“I
know. I’m just very tired, that’s all.”

 
          
“Everyone’s
got an excuse tonight.”

 
          
The
copilot did not continue the argument. He checked his navigation charts with
the LORAN long-range navigation receiver. “I show about ten minutes to go until
the first drop.”

 
          
The
pilot checked that the correct frequency was set in the WET SNOW radio beacon
receiver mounted on his dashboard, then flicked on the coded attention-signal
switch. He left it on for five seconds without receiving a reply, then flicked
it off. “No reply yet. Are you sure of our position?”

 
          
“The
LORAN is running fine,” the copilot replied. He began dialing in several ADF
ground-navigation stations and triangulating their position on a chart.

 
          
“Well?”

 
          
The
copilot turned toward the pilot but thought better of saying anything. A few
moments later he said, “The LORAN is within two miles of our position. The
pickup crew must be asleep.”

 
          
“More
likely you turned us to the wrong heading,” the pilot said.

 
          
“Screw
you.”

 
          
“What
. . . ?”

 
          
“Look,
I’m working my butt off here. I said we’re on course and I goddamned
meant
it.”

 
          
Without
warning, the pilot reached over with his right hand and grabbed the copilot by
the throat. He was much smaller and weaker and was simply too tired to put up
much of a fight. But a few moments later, the pilot withdrew his hand, shaking
his head in puzzlement.

 
          
“What
am I doing? What the hell is going on?” He put both his hands back on the
control wheel, rubbed his eyes and stared straight ahead into the darkness. “If
I didn’t know better I’d say we were hypoxic. But we’re only at five hundred
damned feet.”

 
          
“I’m
exhausted. We all are,” the copilot said.

 
          
“We’ve
had longer and tougher missions than this before. The strain must be getting to
us.” He shook his head once again, then clicked on the code-transmit switch
once again. This time he received a green “REPLY” light immediately. The WET
SNOW receiver indicated the relative bearing to the beacon, and the pilot set
the bearing in his directional gyro and flicked the code switch back to
“STANDBY.” “Beacon received. Bearing is three-zero-zero, range thirty-two
miles.”

 
          
“Roger,”
the copilot acknowledged. On interphone he announced, “Crew, ten minutes to
first drop. Load canisters for drop one and stand by.” To the pilot he said,
“Inbound course for first drop is three-five-zero. We’ve got a five-canister
drop coming up. Planned ripple is set for fifty feet at one-hundred-twenty
knots groundspeed.”

 
          
“Turning
to heading three-five zero, descending to one hundred feet, slowing to
one-fifty,” the pilot responded. He slowly moved the control wheel right and
pulled off a little throttle. “We’ll get an update on the bearing every five to
six minutes, then every minute within ten miles, then continuously inside three
miles.”

 
          
“Roger,”
the copilot replied. “I’ve got a stopwatch running. Groundspeed looks good.
Cockpit check and fuel log ...”

 
          
The
pilot finally began to relax as the copilot ran through the pre-drop
checklists. At last, everything sounded as if it was coming together.

 
          
The
pilot flipped on his WET SNOW beacon receiver again and took another
range-and-bearing reading. Unlike the Cuchillos’ radar- equipped aircraft, he
had only a bearing needle to guide him to the drop point. The crews who used
radar with the WET SNOW system could usually make a drop within a few meters of
a target. He would be satisfied with being within one or two hundred meters. He
flicked the switch off.

 
          
“Bearing
set. Correcting for a few degrees drift . . . five miles to go.”

 
          
In
the cargo department the load crew had arranged the first five canisters on the
sled ready for the drop. The first one-hundred-kilo canister was set on the
sled’s rails, aimed out the right cargo door. At the drop signal the first
canister would be released. The canisters were roped together with twenty
meters of nylon rope. At the preplanned drop airspeed and altitude, the rope
gave the drop crew just enough time to haul the next canister onto the sled
before the preceding canister yanked it into the slipstream. This would
continue until all five canisters were out. This way they could deliver the
canisters with speed and precision without scattering drugs all over the drop
zone.

 
          
“One
minute to go.”

 
          
The
pilot nodded and switched on the WET SNOW beacon, then left it on. Now he would
make continuous corrections all the way to the drop point. He settled the big
Cessna down to fifty feet on the radar altimeter and tried his best to peg one
hundred twenty knots groundspeed—the occasional buffets of wind and up- and
downdrafts made that practically impossible. “Thirty seconds. Load crew, stand
by.”

 
          
“Load
crew ready.” The first canister was on the sled, and the two crewmen were
holding the handles on the second, ready to lift it onto the sled’s rails as
soon as the first was released. They stood, tensed and ready to go, looking out
through the cargo doors into the inky blackness beyond . . .

 
          
When
suddenly a shape appeared out of the night sky like a huge, dark spectre. It
was as menacing as a hornet with its long pointed tail and nose. Seconds later
a brilliant beam of light emanated from the apparition’s nose and hit the
load-crew square in the face, temporarily blinding them.

 
          
“Ten
seconds, load crew—”

 
          
“A
helicopter,
” one of the crewmen
yelled. “Off our right side, a chopper ...”

 
          
The
two pilots stared as the huge Black Hawk helicopter maneuvered even closer.
Running and navigation lights popped on all over the chopper, revealing the
words “U.S. CUSTOMS” painted in large black-and-gold letters. A large door was
open on the left side of the Customs Service chopper, revealing two soldiers in
life jackets and helmets, aiming M-16 rifles at the plane.

 
          
“Customs!
Where the hell did they come from?”

 
          
“Never
mind that. Drop,” the pilot ordered over the interphone. “Drop
now.
”

 
          
One
load crewman hit the foot lever to eject the first canister, ignoring the
blinding NightSun searchlight that seemed to illuminate every corner of the
Cessna’s cargo hold. The first canister slid down the rails and disappeared,
whipping the carefully coiled rope behind it. But just as the load crew was pulling
the second canister up onto the rails, the soldiers in the Customs Service
chopper opened fire, spraying the Cessna’s cargo hold with bullets. One crewman
was hit in the right shoulder and shoved back to the other side of the plane;
the other dodged the hail of bullets and jumped back away from the door.