Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (64 page)

 
          
“Cocaine,
all right. Low purity. Maybe thirty percent. Looks like they had about twenty
to thirty kilos here.”

 
          
“Twenty
to thirty kilos? That’s all?” Masters looked over to the other side of the
island, where Customs and Hammerheads investigators were dragging battered and
burned corpses from the wreckage of the Black Hawk helicopter.

 
          
“This
stufPs like gold nowadays, Rush,” the I-Team member said. “There’s probably a
couple million bucks’ worth lying here.”

 
          
“Take
the stick,” Masters told his copilot, then put his head back in his seat and
stared up into space, trying to fight back frustration. When he looked out
toward the island again six bodies had been lined up on the edge of the bog, so
badly ravaged by the crash that they merged with the mud all around them. He
recognized a few orange life vests, a few gnarled fingers or helmeted heads
blackened by the fires, but mostly . . .

 
          
“Goddamn,”
he muttered, squeezing his eyes closed to shut out the sight. “Goddamn . . .”

 
          
Over
the
Gulf of Mexico

 
          
Twenty Minutes Later

 
          
“Unidentified
twin-engine cargo plane, this is the United States Border Security Force on
GUARD. Reverse course and follow. Respond. Over.”

 
          
The
escaping smuggler’s cargo plane, an old Soviet-made Antonov- 24 twin-engine
cargo plane, had made it through the thunderstorm on its way out and was now at
eighteen thousand feet heading southeast across the Gulf of Mexico. Right
beside it, less than fifty yards a way, was a Hammerheads AV-22 Sea Lion,
call-sign Lion Two-Two. Lion Two-Two had tried to intercept the cargo plane as
it came into the
U.S.
, but the turbulence and lightning inside the thunderstorm drove the
AV-22 away. It had returned, though, as soon as the smugglers moved south. The
chase was on again.

 
          
The
Sea Lion pilot, Hank McCauley, checked his navigation display against a
moving-map diagram on one of his cockpit displays. “Just east of Alpha-321 and
approaching Alpha-39,” he said. He turned to his copilot, Janice Hudkins. “Try
the BSF frequency again, the aerostat on that new platform, Hammerhead Two,
might pick us up.”

 
          
Hudkins
had been trying for several minutes but with no success. There were no bases
within radio range. The Border Security Force aerostat radar balloon at
Mobile
had been lowered and stowed because of the
thunderstorm winding through the
Gulf states
, and the storm was disrupting
high-frequency communications. The only other possibility was the newest
Hammerheads air-staging platform off
Florida
’s west coast, NAPALM, fifty miles west of
Naples
. With its aerostat operating, they might
move within radio range at any moment.

 
          
“NAPALM,
this is Lion Two-Two on ten-ten,” Hudkins radioed. “If you read me go ten-ten.
Over.” No response.

 
          
“What
are we going to do, Mick?” Hudkins asked. “We don’t have the gas for a long
overwater chase like this. We go bingo in five minutes and we’re three hundred
miles from a non-liquid runway.”

 
          
“Masters
said these guys shot up one of their choppers,” McCauley said. “We’ve got a
bead on him—I’m not going to let him go. These guys are smugglers. Their
buddies on the ground
shot down
a
Black Hawk helicopter, a Customs chopper. You were in Customs, Hudkins

 
          
“What
if they’re carrying children—?”

 
          
“They’ll
kill them anyway. We’re
not
responsible for what they do.
They
committed the crime. I’ll chase this guy until we got to turn back.”

 
          
Hudkins
kept trying to reach someone on the radios. As she did, she watched as McCauley
deployed the Sea Stinger missile pod. “Hank ...”

 
          
“I’m
going to fire a warning shot,” McCauley said. “Keep trying to reach someone.”
As he talked she could see him slowly moving in position to align the
port-side-mounted missile pod with the cargo plane’s starboard engine nacelle.
He had not yet selected any missiles or armed the fire-control system.

 
          
Once
he was in position, he again punched up the navigational display. They were
almost equidistant from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Florida, Cuba and the
Mississippi Delta; at least three-hundred miles separated them from any
sizeable landfall. They were at least forty miles off the nearest trans-Gulf
airway and well out of UHF and VHF radio range of any shore stations.

 
          
“We’re
bingo, Hank,” Hudkins said. “We should start heading back. The weather’s pretty
bad north of us. Let’s head east toward
St. Petersburg
or
Miami
. We’ll have a little tailwind that way.”
McCauley continued on course, directly behind the cargo plane. “Hank . . . ?”

 
          
McCauley
looked at Hudkins, then back at the cargo plane “Get me the approach plate for
St. Petersburg
out of the FLIP bag. It’s in the lower
storage compartment behind my seat.”

 
          
“Hank
. . .”

 
          
“We
could all use a cup of coffee, too ...”

 
          
“Hank—-’’

 
          
“Cream
and sugar for me.” He turned, lowered the targeting-and- attack visor over his
eyes and powered up the targeting-and-attack display system with the pilot’s
night vision sensor computer and the Sea Stinger missile pod.

 
          
Border Security Force Headquarters,
Aladdin
City

 
          
The
ROTH radar had been tracking the chase every moment. Elliott and Drug Czar
Massey were watching the center computer monitor, waiting for contact with the
pursuing Sea Lion aircraft.

 
          
“No
response yet, Brad,” the controller reported. “The NAPALM aerostat’s been
lowered to five thousand feet because of high winds. Two-Two’s at NAPALM’s
extreme range now.”

 
          
“You
can’t talk with your crew up there?” Massey asked.

 
          
“The
high-frequency radio was our only hope, but there seems to be a lot of
interference,” Elliott said. “He’s in the radio dead zone of the Gulf right
now—out of range of just about all our line-of-sight radio stations. The new
air-staging platform west of
Naples
can’t reach him.”

 
          
“Will
the AV-22 follow that plane all the way to its landing base?”

 
          
“He’s
got to be low on fuel,” Elliott said. “He might hang on for a couple more
minutes but then he’s got to break off.”

 
          
“So
. . .” Massey said unhappily. “One helicopter destroyed, six dead and the
smugglers get away . . . ?”

 
          
“We
got the drugs, we got several of the smugglers. This isn’t a matter of an eye
for an eye, not yet, anyway. It’s—”

 
          
Suddenly
the data block surrounding the escaping smuggler’s radar icon began to blink.
The controller called out, “Altitude alert on target one, sir,” he told
Elliott. “Groundspeed zero, altitude . . . rapidly decreasing altitude . . .
contact lost, sir. Contact lost with the target.”

 
          
“What
about Two-Two?”

 
          
But
they could see for themselves—Lion Two-Two, which had been within a mile of the
suspect only a few seconds earlier, was now turning eastbound and heading for
Florida. “Dammit, what
happened?”
Elliott demanded, although he already knew.

 
          
Massey
studied the big screen for a moment, then turned to Elliott. “I think it’s
obvious,” he said in a low voice. “It appears your pilot decided not to let
this one get away.”

 
          
Hammerhead
Two Air Staging Platform

 
          
Two Weeks Later

 
          
Sixty
miles southwest of
Sarasota
the green Black Hawk helicopter with the distinctive white top called
Marine Two, escorted by two AV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft belonging to the Border
Security Force, churned the still morning air with their cacophony. The low,
sleek chopper flew at high speed directly to its destination, a huge flat-
topped sea platform that resembled an iron-covered island surrounded by a sea
of blue.

 
          
Marine
Two stayed at eight thousand feet until just three miles from the platform,
then swooped in, flared a few feet above the landing area and hit the steel
deck of the platform hard—because of terrorist threats surrounding the visit to
the platform by the Vice President of the United States they were not bothering
to perform a slow leisurely approach to landing, nor would there be any
orientation orbits of the huge facility.

 
          
“Welcome
aboard, Mr. Martindale,” Elliott greeted the Vice President.

 
          
“From
what little I’ve seen, Brad, this platform is amazing.” “Mostly what’s different
from Hammerhead One is the size. She’s a beauty though, I agree.”

 
          
Martindale
noticed Sandra GefiFar and Ian Hardcastle nearby and greeted them. He shook
hands with Hardcastle. “How are you, Ian? Excited about this? You’re seeing
your plan swing into full throttle today.”

 
          
“I
think it’s great, sir,” Hardcastle said. The interchange was short, rehearsed,
and a bit strained. Martindale then took GeflFar’s hand warmly.

 
          
“I
want to let all of you know right away that the President sends his best on the
opening of your second air operations facility. He recognizes what you’ve all
done and what you’re going through, and he sends his congratulations on this
next important step in the building of the Border Security Force as a major
national defense and law-enforcement unit.”

 
          
Elliott
smiled appropriately. “The platform crew is assembled in the briefing room on
the third level. Please follow me.*” “The opening of Hammerhead Two, the Border
Security Force’s newest air operations platform,” the Vice President told the
audience assembled in the platform’s briefing theater, “is a time of
celebration. The American people are proud of you, of the Hammerheads. Because
of your efforts, we are really beginning to win the war on drugs. The opening
of this base, and the opening three months from now of platform number three
oflf the coast of
Mobile
,
Alabama
, is an endorsement of you and your efforts.

 
          
“Your
unique mission and reaction to the challenges you face were outlined in reports
when the idea of this unit was conceived nearly two years ago. Ian Hardcastle
predicted some opposition, distrust, even animosity. Some of it exists today.
But Hardcastle and GefiFar have had and have an answer. Remember why you are
here ... to protect the United States from intruders, to control access to
America’s frontiers, to seek out, identify, and intercept suspected criminals
and terrorists, and to defend those frontiers with military force if necessary.
Remember that
America
’s borders were once weak, virtually defenseless, wide open to smugglers
and murderers. Drugs flowed across our borders, in spite of the efforts of
those of you who were once Coast Guardsmen or Customs Service investigators or
Drug Enforcement Agency agents. Because of
your
efforts, that’s no longer true.
America
is in your debt ...”