Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (59 page)

 
          
His
situation had gone to hell in ten short seconds. Alberto Runoz saw the
bristling guns on the strange warplane, aimed right for him. The rubber boat
filled with Border Security troops had, it seemed, come out of nowhere.

 
          
The
young ones were his only way out—if he had one. The little Haitians had been
easy to lure into the boat; fifty cents’ worth of food could buy a half dozen
in that impoverished country. Even with no place to run, they still might be of
value. Still holding the young girl in one arm, he shifted the bag full of
twenty kilos of cocaine over to another shoulder, grasped the Tokarev TL-8
pistol in his left hand, and reached for the radio on the control console. He
thought the radio was set to the oceanic emergency channel but it didn’t really
matter—the Hammerheads were sure to be monitoring them all.

 
          
Runoz
had been told by Colonel Salazar that the children were the key, which was
turning out to be true, he thought, as he knelt down to hide himself from the
M-16 rifles as best he could and keyed the mike:

 
          
“You
Border Security guards, this is the captain of the disabled boat in front of
you. I will kill these children if you do not cooperate, and then I will kill
myself. Their deaths will be on your head.

 
          
“I
want that rubber raft and free passage to shore. All of you but one will return
to the helicopter. The one soldier will remove all his weapons and bring the
raft to me. I will get on the raft with three of the youngest children to make
sure of my escape. You will comply immediately. Or else ...” “Where’s Scott?”
Whipple radioed to the helmsman of the RHIB. “I don’t see him.”

 
          
“He
looked like he might be in trouble,”
Randolph
said. “I don’t see him. He was swimming
pretty slow. He may not have reached the boat, or he might be hurt.”

 
          
“Well,
he gave it a try, I just hope we can get back to him in time,” Whipple said.
“Hold your position. Two-Six should be here in minutes. When this nut sees two
Sea Lions on top of him maybe he’ll surrender ...”

 
          
Both
the strange airplane and the raft with the three armed men held their positions,
nobody making a move. Runoz, furious and frightened, grabbed the microphone
again. “I will not play your waiting game. I want that raft
now!”
He dropped the microphone and
transferred the Tokarev back to his right hand.

 
          
Maybe
the skinny kid he’d picked out did not deserve to live, but the boat was
sinking faster now... Runoz thumbed the hammer back on the Tokarev—

 
          
“Freeze
. . . Hammerheads . . . freeze . . .” The voice was weak, strained, almost a
whisper. Nonetheless, Runoz jumped at the sound of it, then looked over the
port side of the boat. There, lying in the water supported by his lifejacket,
was a Border Security Force crewman, the insignia clear and recognizable. His
face was deathly white, his lips purple. He clutched a black automatic pistol
in his left hand, but his arm was shaking, and it didn’t look as though he’d
last many more minutes.

 
          
Runoz
picked up the radio microphone. “Hey, Border Security Force. I found one of
your men here. Now bring that raft over here and move that airplane at least a
mile out of my sight or I’ll blow this sad asshole’s face off.” He stood at the
edge of the boat, still using the little girl as a shield, his Tokarev pointed
over the side at Scott. He checked to be sure the soldiers weren’t moving
closer, then checked the man gasping and heaving in the water, his gun hand
shaking
 
badly. Runoz yelled over the
side: “Hey, you in the water, drop your gun or I’ll finish you right away . .

 
          
Suddenly
the gun steadied itself, the man in the water made a leg kick that lifted his
shoulders three feet above the surface, and the gun fired and bucked once,
twice, three times. Runoz was instantly flung backward across the deck, one
bullet in his chest, another in his right shoulder.

 
          
He
dropped the girl and grabbed at his bloody shoulder with his free left hand.
But by this time Scott had reached the sinking stern of the sport fisher and
had just begun to climb over the transom when Runoz saw him and raised his
pistol. Scott was no more than ten feet away—even a dying Runoz could not miss.

 
          
Scott
faced a Runoz with the huge, murderous-looking pistol aimed squarely at him.
There was no time either to jump away or get at Runoz. Shots rang out, Scott’s
body convulsed with the sound, his pistol went overboard, and he fell backward
into the icy water to wait for expected death’s darkness to close over him . .
.

 
          
It
did not. His response had been a reflex to what he was sure was coming. But as
his head broke the surface, to his amazement he found himself alive. He climbed
back up over the transom and over the edge. The smuggler was slumped over the
port railing of the boat, his head and neck sliced by two dozen high-powered
M-16 slugs from the Hammerheads in the RHIB. Only one hundred feet away, the
Hammerheads could not miss either.

 
          
By
the time Scott had managed to crawl on board the sport fisher, the RHIB had
pulled alongside and its crew boarded the stricken vessel. Quickly they found
life jackets or flotation devices for the children, and several were loaded
into the RHIB for transfer to the Sea Lion. Meanwhile Scott had gone below and
emerged a few moments later with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and two
large brown packages in his hands.
Randolph
met him on deck. “You okay, Scotty?”

 
          
“I’m
freezing but I’ll be okay. Look here, there’s a hundred more stuffed in the
V-bunks, and two more fiberglass cases still full of stuff. Three hundred kilos
of cocaine—four and a half million dollars’ worth.”

 
          
“We’ll
bring a portable pump over from the Sea Lion and try to keep this thing afloat
until the SES or the Coast Guard comes to offload the stuff,”
Randolph
said. They looked out on deck and watched
the children getting ready to be transferred to the RHIB for the ride to the
Sea Lion. “My God, what kind of scumbags use
kids
on their drug runs?”

 
          
“A
new mutation,” Scott said. “We got lucky. We probably wouldn’t have gotten this
guy if he hadn’t hit the light. What about next time ...”

           
The Seagull had been recovered from
McLanahan’s crew. Shark Two-Six, with Sandra Geffar piloting the AV-22, had
taken over the chase.

 
          
Since
taking over for the drone, they had marked and identified three other sea drops
made by the smugglers. Being intercepted by Geffar’s aircraft made no
difference at all to the smugglers in the plane. Geffar saw children in the
port-side window,
waving.

 
          
Geffar
tried everything to get the pilot of the plane to stop. Warning shots with both
the Chain Gun and Sea Stingers, close formation flight, putting men in the
cargo doors with M-16s. The smuggler made a few evasive turns when the aircraft
got very close but immediately turned back to course and could not be diverted
from shore . . .

 
          
Almost
as if he were reading Geffar’s thoughts and doubts, Hardcastle called on the
secure channel: “Two-Six, what’s your status?”

 
          
“Still
in close formation with target one.”

 
          
“He’s
about three miles from shore,” Hardcastle reported. “Customs is ten minutes out
to assist in intercepting ground pickups. Two-Five is RTB with the children
from the target two intercept. Two-Seven is launching to intercept targets
three, four or five depending on which is easiest for him. We’ve got an unarmed
Sky Lion airborne to assist with the surface targets.”

 
          
“Thanks
for the update,” Geffar said. “Continue to monitor. Get two Seagulls ready to
track target one after he comes off his land drops. Two-Six will prosecute any
shore targets we see—we’ll have a better chance of making the intercept on
land.”

 
          
“Say
again, Two-Six? You want Seagulls to take over for you on the
Cheyenne
?

 
          
“Affirmative.
I’m not doing any good up here. We’ll have the Seagulls track this guy as far
as they can back to wherever he came from.”

 
          
There
was a noticeable hesitation from Hardcastle—he still felt that the airborne
smugglers should be dealt with
before
they had a chance to get over land. But he gave her a “Roger” and kept his
thoughts to himself . . .

 
          
Gullivan
Bay
was approaching rapidly. This had been a
favorite spot for smugglers for several centuries, with almost four hundred
square miles of tiny islands, inlets, marshes, bogs and invisible beaches, and
limited access to the few inhabitable places. Airboats were usually needed in
the area—there were few places to land a helicopter, much less a monster like a
Sea Lion tilt-rotor, and any boats with propellers might quickly find
themselves caught in shallow weed-choked waters. The smuggler’s plane swooped
low, only a few yards above the water, so low that even the aged bent willows
and cypress trees towered over the plane.

 
          
“He’s
throttled back to about eighty knots,” Geffar radioed back to Hardcastle on
Hammerhead One. “Looks like he’s getting ready to make a drop.”

 
          
“Roger,”
Hardcastle replied. “We’re launching a Seagull drone to intercept him on the
way out. We read your altitude as less than thirty feet. Do you confirm that?”

 
          
“That’s
confirmed,” Geffar replied. “He’s low and slow.”

 
          
“This
might be a good chance to try a shot at his rudder or one engine,” Hardcastle
said. “Even if he loses control he won’t fall very far and he’ll land in the
marshes. The damage should be minor, to everybody. I recommend giving it a
try.”

 
          
“No
... I want no other Hammerhead units even to deploy weapons if children are
nearby. We can’t risk it.”

 
          
Hearing
only silence, Geffar returned her concentration on the
Cheyenne
as it approached its drop point.

 
          
Down
below at least six airboats suddenly popped out from under the trees. “Airboats
beneath me,” she radioed. “Six . . . drop in progress. Mark and record drop
point.”

 
          
Their
operation was done with military-like precision. The airboats were just a few
feet away from the impact point as the fiberglass cases hit the marshy water.
The agile, speedy propeller-driven boats did not seem to slow down at all as
the cases were scooped up and secured at the front of each flat-bottomed craft.
As Geffar peeled away to the left and began circling the drop point, the
Cheyenne
made a hard right turn and headed back out
to sea at low altitude.

 
          
Each
airboat had one fiberglass case on board, so Geffar picked the slowest boat and
began tracking it. “Shark, do you have a radar plot on any of these surface
targets?” Geffar radioed.

 
          
“Negative,”
from Hardcastle. “We’re trying to tune out the foliage and we get intermittent
targets, but nothing the system can lock onto, and you’re at the northern edge
of coverage by KEYSTONE radar. The Customs chopper is five minutes away, and we
have one Sky Lion on the way.”

 
          
“I
suggest they try infrared to pick out the airboats among the trees. Also that
Collier
County
sheriffs block off routes 951 across
Big
Marco
Pass
, route 92 out of
Gullivan
Bay
and route 41 through the state park. These
guys are still a few miles from shore—we may be able to get some of them.” She
focused in on the airboat she was pursuing, and groaned. “On my surface
target... they’ve got a child on board there too. Don’t fire on them ...”