Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (60 page)

 
          
Geffar
felt sick as she began her pursuit. The young boy on the airboat, who, unlike
the other kids, looked Caucasian, was clutching the airboat’s raised pilot’s
chair as the boat sped across the murky water. The man in the front of the
airboat, also a Caucasian, held a shotgun cradled in one arm while hanging on
tight. The kid could have been kidnapped, or an innocent relative of one of the
smugglers who had gone out for a ride with his uncle or father, not knowing
that he was to be a living shield against the Hammerheads.

 
          
The
course the smugglers decided to take was relatively clear of foliage for a mile
or so, so Geffar brought her Sea Lion down closer to the water, just ten feet
above the airboat. The airboat became more unstable, swishing now left, now
right, as the airflow through the boat’s directional rudders and fan was
disrupted by its rotors. The pilot yelled something at the gunman, and the
gunman promptly raised the shotgun, took quick aim, and fired at the Sea Lion—

 
          
“No,
” Geffar yelled, and yanked the
cyclic hard left, dodging away just as the gunman fired. She felt a sharp
impact somewhere on the right side of the AV-22 just behind the cockpit, and
immediately climbed a few hundred feet and checked the engine instruments.
“Check for damage on the right wing,” she called back on interphone. “I think
we took a hit.” One of her four tactical crewmen low-crawled over the sliding
cargo door on the right side and peered out through the wide window, keeping
his head clear in case another blast came through. “I see a few large black
spots on the underside of the wing and right flap,” the crewmen reported, “but
the nacelle looks okay and I don't see any fuel or fluid leaks ...”

 
          
“All
right, the plane feels okay . . . we’re going back in.” She banked right,
started searching for the airboat, found it and began a gradual descent back
toward it. When she was about a hundred feet above it, she called out over the
interphone:
“Hey,
I don’t see the boy
on the airboat! He was standing on the left side of the airboat holding onto
the seat, I don’t see him anymore. He must have fallen off . . .” Geffar
started an immediate hover, stopping her forward momentum so abruptly her
copilot’s shoulder-harness reel locked as his body was thrust forward. “Prepare
to launch the RHIB. Two-man team. I want that boy found.” Gradually she brought
the Sea Lion down to the surface of the saltwater marsh and lowered the cargo
ramp. A moment later the RHIB was in the water and GefiFar was immediately
airborne again as soon as the inflatable boat was clear. It took less than five
minutes for Geffar to relocate the airboat and take up the pursuit again.

 
          
“Do
you see him anywhere on that airboat?” she called out to her copilot.

 
          
“Negative.”
The copilot had lowered the telescopic scanner goggles and was searching the
airboat as it rushed in and out of sight beneath huge magnolias and drooping
trees. “I don’t see anything ...”

 
          
“I
have to know,” Geffar muttered.

 
          
“Two-Six,
this is boat one,” a crewman on the RHIB radioed. “We found him, seems okay
...”

 
          
Geffar
clicked on the Chain Gun pod, waited a few seconds until the stowed pod had
motored out of the fuselage and locked into position, then armed the cannon and
transferred control of the TADS/PNVS nose sensor to her targeting goggles. She
flipped the WARNING/TARGET shot mode switch, centered the aiming reticle on the
airboat and locked on the sensor so she could concentrate more on flying the
Sea Lion at low altitude. After gaining another fifty feet to be sure she
cleared a few of the larger trees, she pulled the trigger on the Chain Gun.

 
          
Perhaps
there was a glitch in the fire-control computer, the electronic system that
linked range and azimuth information from the nose sensor and air data from the
Sea Lion’s flight-control system to train the Chain Gun in its intended target;
or perhaps the gun system somehow mirrored its crew’s thoughts and feelings of
anger and revenge. But however it happened, there was no eruption of waterspouts
fifty yards
ahead
of the airboat as
designed—instead each thirty—millimeter shell hit directly in the center of the
boat. The engine exploded in a bright yellow ball of flame, the airboat skidded
sideways and flipped end-over-end, throwing the fiberglass case and one of the
smugglers through the air. The pilot, who was strapped into his seat, was
literally ripped apart by the exploding engine and slammed into the water as
the airboat spun away in flames.

 
          
“Shark,
this is Two-Six,” Geffar radioed back to the Hammerhead One platform, “mark and
record present position coordinates for Customs investigators. Surface target
struck and destroyed.” She flipped the Chain Gun switches to safe and found
that the WARNING/TARGET mode switch had been left in TARGET. She swallowed
hard, moved the switch to WARNING, and continued: “I am returning to pick up
one survivor and my RHIB. Out.”

 
          
An
ambulance met Geffar at the Hammerheads base at the
Alladin
City
headquarters ramp, but the boy that had
been tossed from the airboat and picked up in the salt marshes was able to walk
over to the ambulance. Geffar met up with Whipple and Hardy, who had landed a
half hour earlier with a cargo hold full of six children. Whipple was lying on
the open cargo ramp, letting the sun dry the perspiration off his flight suit.
Hardy was a few yards away from the Sea Lion. The rest of the crew was helping
the ground crews service the RHIB and reload the weapons pods. “You okay,
Whip?” she asked.

 
          
“Yeah.
God, what a day.”

 
          
“How’s
Scott?”

 
          
“I
sent him to the hospital to get checked out,” Whipple said, “but I think he’ll
be okay. So what’s the score so far? I’ve been lying here ever since the
Admiral told me he didn’t need us.”

 
          
“I
got one airboat, Customs got one and the sherifFs department got two,” Geffar
told him. “One boat is still being tracked by a Sky Lion and we’ve got Shark
Two-Eight moving in on him to make the intercept. We lost two airboats and two
boats. The
Cheyenne
is halfway back to
South America
by now, but we still have a Seagull on
him.”

 
          
“It
was a first-class operation,” Whipple said, staring up at the tail of his Sea
Lion from the cargo ramp. “They moved a huge amount of dope with precision and
organization . . .”

 
          
“Almost
military, wouldn’t you say?”

 
          
“I
would.”

 
          
“It
fits with what we’ve seen before,” Geffar said. “Cargo-sized aircraft,
fighters, heavy artillery, sophisticated weapons, close timing. Not your
garden-variety smugglers.”

 
          
“They’re
smart, powerful and ...” Whipple said, shaking his head, “those kids I brought
back said they came along for a
pack of
cookies.
Pathetic.”

 
          
“The
boy I picked up was kidnapped,” Geffar said, “picked him up in
Everglades
City
. Just asked him if he’d like to go for a
ride.” 'AVhat the hell do we do?” Hardy asked. “We can’t protect every kid from
being kidnapped or coaxed into riding with drug smugglers. The smugglers have
taken the guns right out of our hands ...” “No they haven’t, Will,” Geffar told
Hardy. “They didn’t stop us today. We got some of them—”

 
          
“Well,
we only got our guy because the idiot ran into the
Cape
Romano
light,” Hardy said. “Even so, if Scotty
hadn’t had the guts to slip over the side of the RHIB and jump this guy we’d
still be out there in a stand-off. We’d have had no choice but to give the guy
what he wanted—let him take the RHIB and escape.”

 
          
Geffar
looked hard at Hardy and Whipple. “You really figure it would’ve been better to
attack that
Cheyenne
? Look, we came out of this thing pretty
good. No dead kids, hundreds of kilos of cocaine seized and a bunch of
prisoners. We did good.”

 
          
“Hey,
I’m not a cold-blooded creep,” Hardy said, “but what’s to stop the next joker
from trying the same damn thing? Is every smuggler gonna have kids on board?
Snatch a kid off the street and stick him in the plane or the boat with him—”

 
          
“Maybe
they won’t try it the next time,” Whipple said. “If they know their slime-ball
buddies still get their butts shot down even with kids on board, maybe they
won’t make a trip . . .”

 
          
“Nobody
in this country would buy it. What if it was your kid that got snatched? How
would you feel then?”

 
          
“I
wouldn’t blame the Hammerheads,” Hardy said quickly. “I thought we were here to
do a job. They give us guns and planes to
stop
those scum. We committed ourselves to the job, we’ve got to do it . . "

 
          
“You
guys are tired, you’re not thinking straight,” Geffar said, shaking her head.
“We’ll talk about it later.”

 
          
Hardy
and Whipple looked at Geffar, then at each other, decided to shut up, for now.
They felt painted into a corner, between the old rock and a hard place.

 
          
They
weren’t the only ones. Geffar was a silent member of the club. She told herself
she ought to feel good about the outcome . . . after all, the smugglers had
tried to use the children to get their drugs past the Hammerheads and they’d
failed. Wasn't that the bottom line? But what about the ones that got away?
They’d be back to dump their poison another day . . .

 
          
On Board the Smuggler’s Plane, Heading
Southeast Toward
Haiti

 
          
“It
went off without a hitch, Colonel,” the pilot of the
Cheyenne
reported. He glanced out his window again
to check if the black batlike drone was still off his left wingtip—and there it
was, flying in ridiculously perfect formation, with its huge bug-eye camera
squarely fixed on him. “The Border Security aircraft were right on top of us
and they did nothing. We ignored their warnings and their attempts to divert
us, just as you said, and it worked to perfection.”

           
“I am pleased,” Colonel Agusto
Salazar replied over the scrambled telephone hookup to the plane.
“Unfortunately the performance of some of your comrades was less pleasing.
Several of our ground forces were intercepted by the Border Security forces,
and several deaths resulted ...”

 
          
“I’m
sorry to hear that, sir,” the pilot said. “We may have a similar problem
ourselves.”

 
          
“What?
Fuel reserves? Malfunction?”

 
          
“No
malfunction, sir,” the pilot replied. “But our fuel is dangerously low.”

 
          
“Climb
to a higher altitude, reduce power to best range. You have clearance to overfly
Cuba
. Plot as direct a course as possible.”

 
          
“We
have done all that, sir, but with all these brats we brought on board, plus the
empty fuel bladders in the rear, we are too heavy to continue step-climbing to
a more fuel-efficient altitude. We are slightly below the fuel curve without
reserves. Our computations show we may be forced to land as much as a hundred
kilometers short of the base. Can’t we get permission to land in
Cuba
?”

 
          
“As
I told you, that is
impossible
, ”
Salazar told him. “Castro’s politicians are trying to make it seem they are
cooperating
with the Americans. They
will not allow a known drug-smuggling plane to land. If you land in
Cuba
you will be arrested and possibly even
extradited to the
United States
. That should encourage you
to bring that plane back intact. ”