Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (104 page)

 
          
The
second canister never made it out the cargo door. It hit the cargo deck
sideways, skipped awkwardly over the sled’s rails and wedged itself between the
sled and the bulkhead. The first canister hit the water, but the nylon rope did
not break and the canister was dragged through the water. The sudden drag
pulled the Cessna Caravan’s nose hard right and down, precariously close to the
water.

 
          
“Pull
up, pull up,” the copilot shouted, but the pilot was already struggling with
the controls. Just as he regained control of the plane, another volley of
gunfire ripped across the right cockpit windows, shattering the glass and
killing the copilot. The sudden attack diverted the pilot’s attention for a split-second,
but it was enough when flying a fifteen-thousand-pound plane at slow speed only
fifty feet above the sea—the Caravan nosed over, the nose lifted but the plane
continued to lose altitude, crashing seconds later and flipping end- over-end
for hundreds of feet across the warm
Caribbean
waters.

 
          
Border Security Force Headquarters, Aladdin
City,
Florida
“Lost contact with the target.”

           
The right-side situation-monitor on
the front wall of the
Com- mand-Control-Communications-Intelligence
Center
at Border Security Force headquarters had
zoomed in on the northeast sector of the
Caribbean
. Centered in the display was a single red
box with a cross in the center—an unidentified radar target, designated by the
controllers as an intercept target. Data readouts beside the box showed the
target’s speed, approximate altitude, heading and velocity changes—now all
suddenly read zero.

 
          
Annette
Fields was in the intelligence center of the Hammerheads C-3-1 complex, manning
the data console along with another technician. With her was Brad Elliott.
“ROTH has his airspeed at zero,” Fields said. “Altitude data is unreliable but
that reads zero too.” “Message from Bat Seven,” the technician reported. “The
Turks constables opened fire on the target.”

 
          
“What?”
from Elliott. “Get a report from them.”

 
          
The
technician listened intently, taking notes, then acknowledged. To Elliott, he
said, “They hit the target with a searchlight and observed the target beginning
a drop, sir. When the smugglers kicked out the first load, the Turks and Caicos
constables opened fire. The crew lost control of the plane and it crashed.”

 
          
“No
one ordered them to open fire,” Fields said. “We should have gone after them
ourselves.”

 
          
“The
OPBAT team is better suited for this job than we are,” Elliott said. OPBAT
stood for Operation Bahamas/Anguilla/Turks and Caicos, a U. S. Customs
operations unit that transported foreign police and military units to the scene
of drug-smuggling drops where the
United States
did not have jurisdiction. OPBAT teams regularly
made drug arrests all across the
Caribbean
by carrying foreign constables aboard Customs Service, Coast Guard and U. S.
Navy aircraft and surface vessels. It was one of the few drug-interdiction
operations not turned over to the Hammerheads after the creation of the Border
Security Force. This OPBAT operation used a Customs Service Black Hawk
helicopter to carry constables from both the Turks and Caicos and the
Bahamas
.

 
          
“The
Turks constables have every authority to do what they want—Customs is the taxi
driver,” Elliott said. “The Turks and Caicos government have always had a
straightforward attitude about drug trafficking—if they catch you, you’re dead.
Get someone else to monitor the rescue. Let’s get the status of the other
inbounds.” Fields had expanded the scale of the radar display on the monitor to
include the northern half of the
Bahamas
,
Florida
and northern
Cuba
. She highlighted a red square with an “X”
in the middle, a designated radar target moving east to west, roughly between
Andros
Island
in the
Bahamas
and
Key Largo
,
Florida
. “The other target is another twenty minutes to the Cay Sal Bank,”
Fields reported. “He’s still at ten thousand feet, should be descending soon.”
Directly behind that target was another square, this one in blue—an AV-22 Sea
Lion tilt-rotor plane, Lion Three-Three, which had picked up the target coming
across Andros Island and was now following a few miles behind and a few
thousand feet above, waiting for the opportunity to pounce.

 
          
“Why
didn’t we bust this guy in
Nassau
?” Fields asked. “Right now he looks legitimate—he’s cleared Bahamian
Customs, he’s dead on course on Bravo-646 and he has a valid flight plan to
Mexico
. But we
know
the guy is carrying drugs—”

 
          
“He
didn’t actually
clear
Customs in
Nassau
,” Elliott corrected her. “In fact, he
didn’t have to go through Customs at all. He’s on a stopover flight plan from
Jamaica
to
Cancun
with no deliveries scheduled for any
stop—only pickups and refueling. Bahamian customs doesn’t have to inspect his
plane unless they have probable cause.”

 
          
“But
we
do
have probable cause. Van Nuys
said this guy had five hundred kilos of cocaine on board. That should have been
enough—” “Wouldn’t have made any difference. We couldn’t convince Bahamian
customs to let us wire this guy or check his documents,” Elliott said. “They
told us we had to get a court order or go through their home secretary. As they
say, the fix was already in.”

 
          
“If
we busted this guy the word might get out that we’re on to this operation,”
Fields added. “Besides, if Van Nuys’ information is straight goods, this guy
will make a drop somewhere along the Keys or in
Florida
Bay
and we can get both the plane and the man
on the ground if we wait.”

 
          
“If
we can determine that the plane
dropped drugs in
U.S.
territory,” Elliott said. “Congress, the White House doesn’t want a
repeat of the Lion Two-Two incident when that smuggler was shot down over the
Gulf of Mexico
. Even with all that’s happened to the
Hammerheads, the rules are tighter than ever—even tighter than the old rules
for the use of deadly force. Which means we have to see the drop, find the
drugs, determine that the recovered container was the thing that was thrown
from the plane and then determine that the container contains cocaine or some
other illegal substance. And we have to do all this before the guy leaves
American airspace.” Elliott shook his head. “I don’t like this. We should do a
standard intercept and turn him away. We’re risking missing both the drop and
the plane.”

 
          
“We’ve
got McLanahan airborne in the E-2 with six Sky Lion drones to chase down the
ground smugglers,” Fields said, “and an AV-22 on this guy’s tail. We’re
covered. So far Van Nuys has given us good information. I think we should take
advantage of it.”

 
          
“Looks
like he’s descending,” Fields reported. “The target’s data block indicated the
plane leaving ten thousand feet; although the altitude readout was erratic, the
Hammerheads’ Relocatable Over- the-Horizon Backscatter radar system could
usually detect altitude changes and alert the operators. “Groundspeed may have
dropped off too . . . he's turning northwest. He’s starting his inbound track.
Sixty miles east of
Marathon
at this time. Lion Three-Three is turning,
maintaining contact ...”

 
          
Aboard the Inbound Smuggler’s Plane

 
          
“
Miami
Center
, Carmen del Sol Airline’s flight
nine-oh-nine Charlie, descending VFR on top to eight thousand five hundred.
Over.” “Del Sol nine-oh-niner Charlie, roger,” the air traffic controllers
replied. “Be advised, MEA in your area is eight thousand feet, limited radar
coverage until within range of Key West Approach. Over.” “Thanks for the
advisory, Center, nine-oh-niner Charlie. Eight point five will be our final. We
w'ere getting some bad winds up there.” The controller replied with two clicks
of his mike, then went on to talk to someone else.

 
          
The
pilot of the Cuchillos’ twin-engine
Cheyenne
turboprop, Major Jose Trujillo, reached up
to a special device on his instrument panel and flicked it on. Normally, Air
Traffic Control radar interrogated a plane’s IFF, its Identification Friend or
Foe system, which would reply with the plane’s assigned code and the altitude
readout from the pressure altimeter. This device allowed the pilot to transmit
any altitude data he wanted through the plane’s mode-C encoder. With the device
on, Air Traffic Control would read the plane’s altitude as eight thousand five
hundred feet, although the plane could be at any altitude.

 
          
“Position?”
Trujillo
asked his copilot.

 
          
“Coming
up in five miles,” the copilot replied. He had the WET SNOW beacon receiver on
his side of the instrument panel, intermittently activating the system to get a
bearing to the drop point, then flicking it off to prevent detection. He had
been directing the pilot to steer toward the ground crew, who were arranged
along Lower Matecumbe Key waiting for the five-hundred-kilo shipment.

 
          
The
copilot took one long, last bearing—they were right on target. He tightened his
seat and shoulder belts, looked back at the cargo crew—they had no seats but
were holding on tight to whatever they could—nodded to Trujillo and said,
“Now.”

 
          
Trujillo
pulled the throttles all the way back to
idle, hauled the plane into a steep ninety-degree right-bank and knifed the
nose down toward the dark waters below. The vertical-velocity indicator snapped
down to two-thousand-feet-per-minute descent and pegged. In seconds the plane
had descended from eight thousand to two thousand feet.

 
          
“Del
Sol niner-zero-niner-Charlie, recycle your transponder and check code
four-one-three-three. Over.”

 
          
Trujillo
had to control his voice during the
dizzying descent as he replied, “Niner-zero-niner-Charlie, roger,” He hoped the
controller wouldn’t notice the tension in his voice as the altimeter unwound
like a racing stopwatch gone wild.

 
          
“Niner-zero-niner-Charlie,
recycle your transponder once again.” “Pull
up,
” the copilot shouted cross-cockpit. They had shot through two thousand feet
with the nose still ten degrees below the horizon and the plane still at ninety
degrees bank, in an accelerated stall.
Trujillo
shoved the throttles back in to arrest the
screaming descent, leveled the wings and pulled back on the control column. At
six hundred feet the vertical-velocity indicator finally bounced off the dial
and began to creep upward. They finally leveled off at three hundred feet . . .

 
          
Aboard Lion Three-Three, in Pursuit of
Carmen
Del
Sol Nine-Zero-Nine Charlie

           
Through the Pilot’s Night Vision
Sensor goggles Ken Sherrey saw the suspect plane in front of him, a huge
Cheyenne turboprop, do a high-G wingover and plummet toward the ocean like a
rock. Sherrey pulled the left-power lever on his AV-22 Sea Lion tilt-rotor back
to reduce power, ignored the computerized warnings to change nacelle angle and
let the Sea Lion’s nose drop to pursue.