Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (62 page)

 
          
“What?”

 
          
“An
offset aimpoint,” nearly preening. “They don’t fly at the beacon but they use
it to line up on the drop area.” Mario pointed to a long, weed-covered bog
about fifty yards away. “That’s the drop zone. They see the beacon, they can
hit the island. Then we cruise on over and pick it up.”

 
          
“Well,
they better. I’m not sticking my hand in that water, and I don’t care how much
dope is floatin’ around.” He remembered the size of the snakes he’d seen while
cruising out to the drop site—they looked like huge tree, branches, with heads
big as a man’s fist.

 
          
“Don’t
worry,” Mario said. “The Cuchillos are pros. We just hold out our hands, and
they’ll drop the shit in like ol’ Warren Moon throwin’ the bomb to a wide
receiver. Relax. It’s in the bag. We’re good as home free.”

 
          
Border Security Force Headquarters,
Aladdin
City
,
Florida

 
          
“Data
connection in progress, sir,” one of the controllers reported. Everyone looked
up at the center main-viewing monitor, one of
three twenty
-foot monitors that dominated the
Hammerheads’ com- mand-and-control center in south
Miami
.

 
          
The
center screen usually showed a picture of the southeast
United States
, focusing in on the busy drug trade routes
through
Florida
, the
Bahamas
and throughout the
Caribbean
—areas where the Border Security Force
operated balloon-borne radars and tied in with FAA and military radars to get a
composite radar picture of the region. This time, though, the center screen
showed the southern
United States
between
Mobile
,
Alabama
, and
Houston
,
Texas
.

 
          
There
was not too much to see. Brad Elliott, seated at one of the controller’s
consoles, studied the picture as information from radar sites all along the
south coast was assembled by the Hammerheads’ computers and displayed. Samuel
T. Massey, the President’s Special Advisor on Drug Control Policy, a.k.a. the
“drug czar,” shook his head. “Not a very good picture, is it, Brad?”

 
          
“The
Houston
Center
radar tie-in is pretty marginal,” Brad
Elliott replied. “I’m told we’re improving the data flow, but it’ll be a few
weeks off before we can test it. There’s also a big thunderstorm over the
target area that’s causing a lot of trouble with reception.” He turned to one
of the controllers to his right. “Plug in ROTH.” Instantly the picture changed,
the screen came alive with streams of data, pinpointing several aircraft in and
around the
New
Orleans
area, smaller aircraft flitting around the edges of the thunderstorms; it even
registered movement-information on some vessels in the
Gulf of Mexico
. “That’s the ROTH information?” Massey
said. “It really sums up the situation in that area—it’s even picking up ships
out in the Gulf. Where’s the radar located?
New Orleans
?
Baton Rouge
? Or is it an airborne?”

 
          
“How
about Bull Shoals,
Arkansas
,” Elliott said.

 
          
“
Arkansas
? That’s got to be hundreds of miles from
the coastline—”

 
          
“Exactly
five hundred ten miles from the southern
Louisiana
coastline. In fact, the location was
specifically chosen to be at least five hundred miles from the coast—the
minimum
range of ROTH-B.” He tapped
instructions into a keyboard at the console, which expanded the view on the
center monitor to the entire south-central
United States
. He then entered commands to display a red
curved wedge that extended all the way from Bermuda to the east to Los Angeles
to the west, and as far south as the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and the Lesser
Antilles of the north coast of South America.

 
          
“This
is the scan area of ROTH-B,” Elliott said. “ROTH-B, you know”—doubting that
Massey did—“stands for relocatable over-the- horizon backscatter—they call it
relocatable even though the main antenna array is nine
thousand
feet long. ROTH is a radar system that bounces radar
energy off the ionosphere to detect targets hundreds of miles away over the
horizon, up to sixteen hundred miles.” “Isn’t that ten times greater than a
normal radar? I thought radar was always line-of-sight—how can it look out
sixteen hundred miles when there’s all these mountains in the way? Hell, the
curvature of the Earth should be enough to block out the energy.”

 
          
“In
a typical radar system it would,” Elliott said. “The ROTH transmitter unit in
Bull Shoals shoots the energy well above the horizon and it doesn’t read the
reflected energy signals until it computes a specific time delay from the
reflected energy. It’s like a gigantic air hockey game—we shoot radar energy
out at various angles, getting it to scan all altitudes at longer ranges by
bouncing the radar beams off the ionosphere at different angles. The computer
picks out the reflected energy returns based on its computations of how long
that reflected energy should take to return to the receiver site. It doesn’t
work at ranges shorter than five hundred miles because you run out of angles—no
matter how you try to shoot the energy out it’ll never return to the receiver
site.”

 
          
“But
doesn’t this system obsolete your aerostats and radar sites? With a couple more
of these you could keep track of every mile of borders.”

 
          
“I
wish we could,” Elliott said. “But ROTH is new and not completely reliable yet.
It needs data on the electrical nature of the ionosphere, and fine-tuning the
radar signals to match the electrical surface of the ionosphere is tricky, far
from perfected. Plus, when there’s a disturbance in the ionosphere like a solar
flare, ROTH is all but useless. And because the time and duration of solar
flare activity is published everywhere, the smugglers know when ROTH is off the
air anyway.

 
          
“The
other problem is we’ve just now begun to develop fast enough computers to
compute target altitudes. Our altitude readouts are only good within one or two
thousand feet.”

 
          
“This
should be looked at right away,” Massey said. “Air-and-fleet defense is a top
priority, but in peacetime our security against border intrusion, and
especially against smugglers, is more important. And that’s you guys. But what
you’re talking about is a lot more money

 
          
“I
agree one hundred percent, Mr. Secretary,” Elliott said. In fact, that was one
of the reasons he had brought Massey to
Aladdin
City
— it was much easier to fight for such a
costly, far-ranging proposal such as this with the top people on your side.

 
          
“I
appreciate your decision, Brad, to let Customs in on this drug bust.”

 
          
Elliott
inwardly hated this p.r. ploy, but what the hell, if it helped the Hammerheads
. . . “We’ve got intelligence that a drop will take place in a specific area.
We’re acting on it as a law-enforcement action.” Elliott knew, like ex-Treasury
Secretary McDonough and ex-Customs Commissioner Crandall, that Massey still
believed in non-military drug interdiction organizations like the old Customs
Service.

 
          
“Zoom
in on the target area and let’s see what’s up,” Elliott told the controller
running the ROTH radar data.

 
          
The
radar information was reduced to a few dozen miles on a side, centered around
the delta swamps southwest of
New Orleans
. Aircraft were highlighted by the
computers, including one directly in the center of the display. “There he is,”
Elliott said. “We picked him up an hour ago flying over
Cuba
. He was flying the airways until crossing
our Air Defense Identification Zone, then dropped down to low altitude and is
making a beeline for the drop zone. He’s got nerve, I’ll say that for him—winds
at his altitude are gusting to fifty knots, with severe up- and down-drafts in
the thunderstorms, and he’s only a thousand feet above the water.”

 
          
“And
New
Orleans
radar can’t see him coming?”

 
          
Elliott
told the controller to switch off the ROTH radar data. A few of the air targets
remained, including a target in the center of the screen that seemed to
disappear for several seconds, then reappear. When it came back, it was marked
with an TR 5 symbol.

 
          
“This
is what
Houston
Center
radar sees,” Elliott said. “A target does
show up, intermittently, but it’s marked with that symbol. Which means the
Center radar’s computer thinks it’s not an aircraft—or at least there’s a low
probability that it’s a plane, given its speed, position and radar signal. As
it moves closer or when it’s picked up by New Orleans Approach radar, it may
eventually be identified as an intruder, but by then it would be too late to
stop it. Most controllers squelch TR 5 targets to unclutter their scopes.”
Elliott ordered the ROTH radar data replaced, and the scene changed to
highlight the target aircraft.

 
          
“So
where are your planes?” Massey asked.

 
          
“We
have two AV-22’s and three Black Hawks on the ground at a small airfield,
South Lafourche
, about forty miles south of the drop zone.
They’re under camouflage netting in case the target overflies the airport, but
our guess is he’ll stay in the clouds until just before the drop. We also had
an AV-22 trying to trail him offshore in case he made any overwater drops but
our plane couldn’t handle the weather. When the target flies past
South Lafourche
our birds will launch and begin the chase,
staying as far back as they can and still keep him in contact. They’ll be using
infrared trackers to follow him, since we’ve received word that these guys
might have radar detectors in their planes that could pick up our plane’s
tracking radar.” “Don’t the smugglers usually use ground observers that watch
for trailing planes and can warn the drop crew?”

 
          
“They
sure do. We plan on trailing the target high and as far back as we can to avoid
being spotted, but remember, we’re going after the smugglers on the ground—if
we want to have a chance to make an arrest on the ground we have to move
double-time after the drop is made. It doesn’t take long for these guys to grab
the cargo and disappear after a drop. And if the plane sees us and breaks off
before making its drop, we trail the plane. At the worst we stop a big shipment
from making it into the country. But we’re out to do much more than that . . .”

 
          
Near the Smuggler’s Drop Zone,
Dulac
,
Louisiana

 
          
“Should
only be a few more minutes,” Mario said. He was watching the yellow
interrogation light on the beacon unit—it had begun flashing more during the
last few minutes, indicating that the drop plane was using it to fine-tune its
position in preparation for the drop.

 
          
“I
can’t hear him,” Girelli said. “Shouldn’t we hear him by now?”