Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (6 page)

 
          
Teichert
watched the tall figure run out onto the tarmac. The guy had a John Wayne complex,
no doubt about it, he thought. A nut case—so the rumors went.

 
          
Customs Service Air Division Base, Homestead
AFB,
Florida

 
          
“This
is what we got,” Special Agent Rushell Masters said as he slipped on his
body-armor vest and secured it against his barrel chest. Six feet tall with
curly red hair, two hundred and sixty pounds and built like a professional
wrestler, Masters dwarfed his fellow agents, and the bulk of his body armor,
utility vest and lifejacket only served to enhance his massive frame. “An
unidentified cargo plane from
Colombia
is going around
Key West
radar into south
Florida
. A Coas- tie jet was chasing it when
SLINGSHOT lost contact with it. They think it may have been attacked by the
suspects.”

 
          
Masters
was briefing the five-man operations crew of his UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in
preparation for taking up the chase of the smugglers. In addition to Masters,
the crew pilot, the Black Hawk carried a copilot, two armed Customs Service
agents and two Bahamian constables. The Bahamian police were carried on-board
in case a smuggler tried to evade to the expansive
Bahamas
island chain—the U.S. Customs Service, with
no jurisdiction in the
Bahamas
, acted as high-tech taxi drivers while the
constables made the arrests.

 
          
“SLINGSHOT
has maintained radar contact on the suspects,” Masters went on, “and we have
been directed to—” Masters was abruptly distracted by a shapely woman’s leg
propped up on the sill of the Black Hawk assault helicopter.

 
          
“Get
on with it, Masters,” the woman’s voice cut in. Her words plus the sight of an
ankle holster wrapped around her calf holding a Smith and Wesson .380
semi-automatic pistol snapped him out of it and he continued his briefing as
she began to put on body armor, utility vest, shoulder holster and lifejacket.

 
          
The
diversion was Special Agent Sandra Geffar, in charge of the Customs Service Air
Division base at
Homestead
. Tall, blond, of German descent, the fifteen-year Customs Service
veteran was also a fixed- and rotary-wing pilot, an experienced investigator
and Olympic-class marksman. As she sometimes did in emergency cases such as
this one, Geffar was personally taking charge as well as acting as copilot of
the Black Hawk.

 
          
Sandra
Geffar was striking enough to make a bear like Masters trip over his tongue,
but she had also proved herself in dozens of drug arrests and drug ops. She was
more than just one-of-the-boys. Every agent in the place was supposed to be
both a pilot and an investigator, but Sandra Geffar genuinely excelled at both.
She had cut her teeth in the army as a provost marshal. Where most female GIs
in the late sixties and early seventies found themselves behind typewriters,
Geffar was volunteering and getting domestic investigations, off-base patrols,
law enforcement—building a reputation on jobs no one wanted. When not on duty
she spent time at the pistol ranges, where she beat out her eventual first
husband as a top army pistol champion. She might even have made the Olympic
shooting team except for a messy divorce.

 
          
The
treatment she received as part of her divorce only spurred her on. She secured
a warrant officer’s commission and went to army helicopter school to fill an
affirmative-action quota that she found insulting not only to herself but to
her fellow GIs as well. She used it, though, to become one of the army’s best
chopper pilots. She flew medevac missions for three years, two of them in
Thailand
during the evacuation of
U.S.
and Allied forces from
Vietnam
, and twice decorated for bravery in the
chaos that followed the American withdrawal from
Vietnam
.

 
          
During
the post-Vietnam drawdown she left the army on a Palace Chase option that gave
her preferential choice on other government jobs if she would voluntarily leave
the army before retirement. Instead of swelling the ranks of the Postal Service
or Fish and Wildlife Services as many others did, she joined the Customs
Service as an investigator. The GI Bill paid for a commercial pilot’s license
in rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, and she then joined the Customs Service’s
Mobile
,
Alabama
, air branch soon after it was opened.

 
          
The
air branch seemed tailor-made for Sandra Geffar. Drug smuggling in the
mid-seventies was booming, and the Customs Service air branch was like the
federal marshals in the Old West assigned to clean up a territory. Flying
almost every day, planning and executing surveillance and arrest operations,
interrelating with the FBI and the DEA, even going undercover—all challenges
that she met well and that called attention, however grudging, to herself.
After an assignment in
Washington
as liaison to the Secretary of the Treasury, where she married and
divorced her second husband, she returned to flying in
Miami
.

 
          
In
the eighties, with drug smuggling an increasingly hot topic, Sandra Geffar was
in the center of the action. She fought to expand the size and scope of the air
branch and was involved in negotiations between the State Department and the
government of the
Bahamas
for overflight and landing privileges, which greatly increased the
Customs Service’s area of responsibility. The payoff was almost instantaneous.
A joint Customs Service and DEA task force led by Geffar was responsible for
the largest single marijuana bust in history, a Mexican freighter off the coast
of
Bimini
carrying seventeen thousand tons of pot. Soon
after she was made chief of the Miami air branch and turned that station into
the most respected (some said feared) drug-interdiction air-unit in the
country.

 
          
Off
in the background now a Customs Service Citation business jet screamed at high
speed down the parking ramp toward the Air Force fighter base’s main runway.
The Citation was configured much like the Coast Guard Falcon, with an APG-66
radar and FLIR scanner; it was, in fact, designed to search, track and identify
smugglers’ aircraft in all weather, just like the Falcon. The Citation, call
sign Omaha Four-Zero, carried a crew much like Master's Black Hawk with the
addition of a radar intercept specialist to operate the scanners. All on-board
both aircraft, including the RIO and both pilots, carried semi-automatic
sidearms, a smaller caliber semi-automatic pistol in an ankle holster and
either a pump action shotgun, M-16 automatic rifle or Steyr semi-automatic
assault rifle.

 
          
“The
Citation will pick up the bad guy as soon as he can,” Masters continued,
chambering a round in his pistol, lowering the hammer, and holstering the
weapon. “We won’t have much time—I’ll probably be dropping the ground crew at
the landing site fast and hard. Listen up on the radios and stay alert.
Questions?” None. “Sandra?”

 
          
Geffar
completed her suiting-up. “We go in and hit them hard. These guys are obviously
well armed. The Coasties dropped the ball—now we have to go in and clean up.”
She motioned to the Bahaman policemen. “Edouard, Philip, you two stay in the
Black Hawk and cover the ground crew.” The two big constables, armed with M-16s
and wearing navy blue windbreakers with
“
U.S.
CUSTOMS SERVICE”
in bright
yellow letters, nodded, obviously excited. “The rest of you, back up your
teammate and stay alert. Let’s do it.”

 
          
The
Shorts 330 crossed between
Key Largo
and Sunset Point on the
Florida Keys
and skipped across the islands of
Florida
Bay
. Hugging the water only a few dozen feet
above the murky water, it turned northwest and headed for the black swamps and
thick forests on the southern tip of the
Florida
peninsula.

 
          
Aboard
Omaha
Seven-One

 
          
“Message
from SLINGSHOT, Admiral,” Lieutenant McAlister, piloting the Coast Guard
Dolphin chopper, radioed back to Hardcastle. “They’ve got a Citation airborne
tracking the Shorts, Omaha call sign Four-Zero, and they’ve vectored a Customs
Service Black Hawk, Omaha Four-Nine, in on the smuggler. We’ve got a heading
toward them. ETA fifteen minutes.”

 
          
“Roger.
Keep me advised,” Hardcastle replied. They had cleared the lights of
Miami
and reached the southern outskirts of the
metropolitan area, with traffic lines snarled on the Florida Turnpike.
Hardcastle had one of the dropmasters open the sliding cargo hatch on the
chopper and fasten a safety strap onto a ring on his combat rig, then he leaned
out the door, letting the warm slipstream bathe his face.

 
          
Just
like
Vietnam
. Hanging out the door—no safety belts then, just hanging out the door
as if no one ever fell out of a Huey before—was one of the small pleasures a
man learned to savor in the middle of hell. Hardcastle had been a Marine Corps
platoon leader, a cherry first lieutenant in charge of a veteran bomb disposal
unit. He had spent most of his time in Nam being bounced from ship to ship and
post to post on details ranging from jammed rifles to corroded fuses on huge
seventeen-inch rounds on Navy battleships. After two tours of duty and seeing
too many buddies lose their lives on BDU missions, hanging out a helicopter
door over the
South
China Sea
was tame
stuff.

 
          
In
fact, he had become so casual about life and death back then that, slowly and
silently, he did go a little crazy. Which had been the end of one life, and the
beginning of his next, his Coast Guard life

 
          
He
brought his attention back to the radios as the Dolphin helicopter raced over
Metro Zoo, following the turnpike south toward the
Everglades
. McAlister had just keyed the mike on the
secure radio channel: “SLINGSHOT, this is Omaha Seven-O. Request range and
bearing to suspect. Over—”

 
          
Suddenly
they heard, “Seven-One, this is
Omaha
Four-Nine.” Hardcastle recognized the voice
right away—Rushell Masters, the Customs Service Air Division’s operations
officer. “This is an active frequency. Please clear this channel. Over.”

 
          
“Four-Nine,
this is Admiral Hardcastle, Seventh Coast Guard District commander . . .”

 
          
“I
copy, sir,” Masters replied. His voice was polite but firm. “We’ve got a Black
Hawk and a Citation in the area. We won’t be able to keep track of all these
birds when the fur starts flying. Request you stay clear. Out.”

 
          
“Four-Nine,”
Hardcastle radioed back, “we believe that the suspects have shot down a Coast
Guard jet. We are over
Florida
City
. Relay your location and location of
suspect aircraft and we’ll take up a position in support. Over.”

 
          
“Ian,
I thank you for your offer but it won’t be necessary,” a new voice cut in.

 
          
“Agent
Geffar,” McAlister’s copilot said.

           
“You mean Wonder Woman—”

 
          
“Knock
it off,” Hardcastle told McAlister.