They
called it the “witching hour,” the time from
8:00 P.M.
to
1:00 A.M.
, when the smugglers seemed to come out of
the woodwork. Like cockroaches, they said, when the sun went down the smuggler
came out.

In
the basement of
Miami
Air
Traffic
Control
Center
, three men were looking for them. These
men, two Customs Service agents and one Coast Guard petty officer, were manning
the radar screens of the
Joint
Tactical
Drug
Interdiction
Information
Center
, known as JTDIIC, where all air traffic in
the southeast
United States
was kept under watch. On the two
twenty-four-inch radar screens in the boxlike room the JTDIIC, call sign
SLINGSHOT, combined radar data from Federal Aviation Administration radars,
aerostats—balloon- borne radars located in Florida, the Bahamas and Puerto
Rico—and military radar units to form a composite picture of the hundreds of
aircraft from North Carolina to New Orleans, including the eastern Gulf of
Mexico, the eastern Caribbean and northern Cuba. They could scan aircraft,
receive coded identification and flight data information, gain access to flight
plans and Customs pre-declarations, talk with air-traffic controllers and
vector in Customs Service or Coast Guard interceptor aircraft to trail a
suspect aircraft.

In
reality SLINGSHOT didn’t watch each and every aircraft out there—impossible for
three men. Computers processed the information on the screens and squelched or
eliminated aircraft not suspected of anything illegal or following suspect
flight profiles. So, as far as possible, commercial airliners, local flights,
aircraft cleared or talking with air-traffic control or aircraft on established
airways and flying at normal route altitudes and airspeeds were electronically
removed from the screen.

Theoretically,
that left only the bad guys.

Theoretically.

Aircraft
from foreign departure points were supposed to inform Customs of their arrival
time and destination and to file flight plans when entering the coastal ADIZ,
the Air Defense Identification Zones—huge blocks of airspace some as much as a
hundred and fifty miles wide along the edges of North America’s borders that
were scanned by the military to warn of any hostile aircraft approaching the
continent.

Since
it was illegal to fly anywhere in the huge
Bahamas
island chain at night, aircraft flying to or
from the
Bahamas
after sunset were immediately suspect. Of course, any plane flying very
low to the water or obviously trying to skirt the fixed radar sites along the
coast were suspect.

Despite
this being the witching hour it seemed to be shaping up to be a pretty quiet
evening. Jose Gusman, a Customs Service GS-13 from
Hialeah
, yawned sleepily as he rolled a cursor
across his screen onto a red square on his radar screen. The red indicated that
the return was not “squawking,” transmitting any coded identification signals.
He hit a button on his console and a small data block of numerals flashed on
the screen: “UNK TR 4.” The return was an unknown, but from its altitude,
airspeed and signal-strength information the computer had assigned it a track
reliability of 4, which meant that it probably wasn’t an aircraft at all—more
likely an isolated thundercloud or a flock of birds.

Gusman
turned his attention away from the newcomer but did not forget about it—the
computer was known to be wrong, this thundercloud could turn into a real plane.
“Must be a storm brewing out there, I’m getting a lot of fuzz,” he said to his
partner, Stan Wexfall.

“I
got one that’s definitely not fuzz,” Wexfall said. “Take a look over
Santa Clara
.”

Gusman,
reconfiguring his scope, knew where to look—central
Cuba
.
Santa Clara
was the location of a major Cuban airport
and, more importantly, an air-navigation checkpoint on the
South America
to
Florida
smuggling run. But it was also a major
air-traffic corridor, used every day, all day, by dozens of aircraft—but only
for airlines friendly with the Castro regime. “1 got him now,” Gusman said. “No
mode four or mode C.”

“Weird.
Not transmitting any standard air-traffic control codes,” Wexfall said, zooming
his scope in to an area thirty miles around the newcomer, “but flying right
over central
Cuba
at night. The Cuban Air Force usually gets nervous about night
flights—they scream bloody murder when we launch patrols near them at night.”
Wexfall looked over at Gusman. “Military?”

“Gotta
be,” Gusman replied. “The Cubans wouldn’t let an unidentified plane just fly
around like that. We’ll have to call the Air Force or Navy to get a readout on
him—we can’t display military IFF codes on our sets.” Gusman picked up his
coffee cup and went over to a desk that had a computer terminal and printer and
logged onto the system. “I’ll ask Navy if they got any codes on this guy.”

A
few minutes later they received a response via the computer terminal: “Bingo.
Message from naval intelligence: this guy is squawking military modes and
codes.”

“Thought
so.”

Wexfall
continued to watch the target as it progressed northward. Suddenly: “Hey, look
at this!”

The
target symbol had changed from red to green as it crossed the northern
coastline of
Cuba
—the aircraft had begun transmitting standard
U.S.
identification codes. Wexfall said, “Now
he’s showing normal modes and codes. Bacchus 204 Delta. Altitude twelve
thousand five hundred, airspeed two-forty, dead on the airway.” Gusman turned
to the computer terminal again, this time to get a copy of any flight plans the
newcomer may have filed.

This
guy was smarter than most. A lot of smugglers, either unaware of the extensive
surveillance network in south Florida or just willing to take a chance, never
activated their IFF radios or attempted to contact anyone by radio. Such
activities were prima facia evidence of smuggling and they become fair game for
Customs and Coast Guard interceptors.

But
smugglers were getting savvy to procedures. It was a simple matter for them to
file the proper entry-request forms and use their radios, thereby greatly
increasing their chances of safely entering the country. And once over land
they could pretty much navigate unmolested.

“Filed
for entry yesterday, processed, verified and approved,” Gusman said. “Departed
Santa Marta
,
Colombia
, three hours ago. Destination
St. Petersburg
. Two passengers carrying bank records and
accounting materials.”

Heads
turned toward Gusman when he read “
Colombia
.” Flights from
Colombia
and
Bolivia
, the drug producing and export centers of
the Western world, were tops on the list of countries watched by Customs.

Gusman
returned to the terminal keyboard. “I’ll run a cross-check on the port-of-entry
request and the hit list,” he said. He was excited—one of the few things that
kept people going at the job was getting involved in a major drug bust.

Gusman
entered keywords from the port-of-entry request to crosscheck with the hit
list—the names of arrests or busted smugglers with the name “Bacchus” in the
database. The system would now try to match those keywords with the files
headed “Bacchus.”

During
the search Wexfall kept track on the suspect while he turned over area-wide
surveillance to the third Coast Guard specialist. Ten minutes later Gusman
called out, “I got something. Nineteen seventy-two. Damn near identical flight
path, except back then the guy didn’t file a port-of-entry request. Early
evening flight, directly across
Cuba
, departure
Santa Maria
, reported as an in-and-out— never landed,
just flew in and flew out. Call sign: Bacchus one-seven- three X-ray November.”

“Yeah,
but he’s got a flight plan this time,” Wexfall said. “He’s cleared to enter.
He—”

The
printer clattered to life again. “Another hit. Nineteen eighty. Flights recorded
by a Bacchus aircraft,
Santa Marta
and
Cartagena
,
Colombia
, to Saint Pete,
Sarasota
and
Bradenton
. Checked out good for several weeks except
once for an apparent no-show after reporting in to
Miami
Center
. Flights discontinued soon after.” He read
on further, then added: “Manifest says he was carrying—what else?— accounting
materials.”

Wexfall
checked his screen. The target had crossed over
Cuba
and was out into the
Strait
of
Florida
on course for
St. Petersburg
, making no attempt to avoid the aerostat
site or Navy radar sites at
Key West
and still transmitting the proper I.D. codes.

“What
now, Stan?” Gusman said. “Get someone up there to check him out?”

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