Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (28 page)

 
          
Gachez
now scraped mud off the lower kickplates and wheel hubs as he inspected the
chain on the motorcycle. His father had his roosters; he had his motorbikes.
His father used to get bird shit all over the house knowing that someone would
immediately clean it up for him—so it as with this mud. The minute he left the
office someone would scrub the office. The more things changed, the more they
stayed the same. As it should be, he thought.

 
          
The
intercom on his desk buzzed. Well, his father never had to deal with
that!
Callers were given a glass of wine
or strong coffee and asked to wait—the length of time directly proportionate to
their rank and status. These days no one seemed to have any conception of that.

 
          
“I’m
busy,” he called out toward the speakerphone.

 
          
“Transmission
from Verrantes, Senor Gachez.” the secretary informed him.

 
          
“Put
it on.” Gachez lit a cigar but kept on tinkering with the chain on the
motorcycle. He heard the speakerphone click and snap to life as the scrambled
transceivers synchronized themselves, followed by the distorted but
intelligible voice of Colonel Augusto Salazar, late of the Cuban Revolutionary
Air Force.

 
          
“What
is it you want, Gachez?”

 
          
“I
want
to make a shipment. Tomorrow
night. We’ll have drop- coordinates available when you arrive. Set it up.”

 
          
“That’s
impossible,” Salazar said, the tension in his voice obvious. “There are Coast
Guard units surrounding this entire region—”

 
          
“I
am not interested in your problems, Salazar. Get on it.”

 
          
“It
would be very dangerous. The risks ... you would stand to lose your entire
shipment. Do you have so much you can afford to throw it away, senor?”

 
          
“We
have no problem with product, Colonel.” And it was true— they had not reduced
their production despite the recent impact on the Cuchillos’ aircraft by the
U.S. Coast Guard. After all, didn’t the product still go through? Gachez’
hand-picked distributors working south
Florida
were magicians, getting a thousand kilos of
cocaine out of the
Everglades
in less than two hours while under attack
by the United States Customs Service. The Cuchillo pilots showed some
cojones
too—the whole operation might
have been blown had those young pilots not attacked the Customs Service
helicopter.

 
          
They
did, however, suspend air deliveries until the matter had burned itself out in
the
U.S.
press. But ground deliveries from the
Valdivia
plant couldn’t keep pace with production,
and they were beginning to develop stockpiles of cocaine—as much as a full
month’s worth of production for each Cartel member.

 
          
“I’m
vulnerable as well, Colonel—I can’t be caught with large amounts of product at
this plant. I have nearly a month’s worth of product ready for delivery. I need
support immediately.”

 
          
The
abrupt silence from Salazar’s end told Gachez he had just made one of his few
mistakes, revealing any vulnerability to Salazar. He knew his hold on the Cuban
renegade officer was tenuous, although he pretended otherwise.

 
          
When
Augusto Salazar was still in the Cuban Air Force, the chief of the Medellin
Cartel could just about dictate terms to the Cuban officer. And after Salazar
fled to
Haiti
, escaping the purge of officers that were found to be involved with
drug trafficking, he very much needed Gachez’ cooperation and money to set
himself up on a huge estate in the central highlands of that tiny island
country. Salazar and his group of pilots flew for fuel money and little more.
There was no specific number of flights or tonnage that Salazar and his pilots
had to move to repay the debt with Gachez—but they would know when the debt was
paid.

 
          
In
short order, following some dramatic flights across the
Caribbean
Basin
and the southeast
United States
, the ledger book changed from red to black.
The debt that Salazar owed had been repaid in full, with interest—the
Cuchillos, Salazar’s amazing group of flyers, were that good.

 
          
Now,
it had become strictly business, and that business relied on nothing more than
money, planning and careful execution on both sides. Gachez, who knew he had
just made a slip, thought he could hear the wheels turning in Salazar’s greedy
mind. His impression was confirmed when Salazar, his voice no longer strained
and angry, said, “I cannot do it for less than seven thousand American dollars
a kilo. Half now, half on delivery, transferred by wire through your banks.”

 
          
“We
have a contract . . .” Gachez’s voice rose, despite efforts to remain cool.
“The firm agreement was five thousand a key, a million now and the rest on delivery.
Don’t try to renege, Colonel. It’s bad business. Bad for one’s health.”

 
          
“I
am paid to take risks for you and your partners, but I will not take such
extreme risks without compensation. Six per kilo, four million now, the rest
after delivery ... or you can start hitching your burros to your carts and
wheeling your product out of the jungle yourself.”

 
          
Gachez
was forced to remind himself he was not in a strong position to bargain. Five
thousand a kilo was the going rate for a cocky, know-nothing
gringo
pilot with a broken-down,
twin-engine plane— even at six thousand a kilo, he was getting a bargain from
the Cuchillos, who flew modern planes, even jets, and who were some of the
bravest, fiercest fighters he had ever seen. Plus, he needed the cooperation of
Salazar’s remaining contacts in the Cuban Navy to be sure they were nearby when
the drop was made to the Cartel’s distribution freighters. Those contacts,
those Navy gunboats and Revolutionary Defense Force patrols that just happened
to show up at a drop as the American Coast Guard was moving in to intercept the
smugglers, were truly invaluable.

 
          
“All
right,
Colonel, I will be generous in
the interests of our relationship. Six thousand a key, two when your plane
takes off from here, the rest after we are notified the transfer was made
successfully.”

 
          
In
a beat of silence Gachez worried that the bastard would try for more money.
Until the distorted voice on the speakerphone replied, “
Cerrado
. ”

 
          
“I
want the transfer made tomorrow night.”

 
          
“Be
patient, senor,” Salazar said—Gachez thought he could hear the son-of-a-bitch
laughing at him through the scrambler’s distortion. “For six thousand dollars a
kilo I can provide you with fast, accurate transportation for every gram of
your product. How much is ready for shipment?”

 
          
“The
usual,” Gachez replied. Even over the scrambled satellite transmission he was
reluctant to say exact figures. The “usual” amount shipped by the Cuchillos was
around two thousand kilos divided between four to eight twin-engine airplanes.
An entire shipment usually took a week or two to leave
Valdivia
—having a stream of eight King Air airplanes
leaving the area would attract too much attention.

 
          
“Triple
it,” Salazar said. “Nice to do business with you again, senor.” And the line went
dead.

 
          
Gachez
swore. Triple it? Would Salazar actually try to ship out six thousand kilos?
The risks in that were enormous—but the rewards could be even more so.

 
          
Of
course, using the ex-Cuban military officer was a risk in itself, an even
greater one, it seemed, each time. But it was too late to try to find another
shipping alternative—the rest of the Cartel had agreed to come in with Gachez
in using the Cuchillos. They would be
very
displeased and suspicious if Gachez dropped them now. If the other Cartel
members heard that Salazar could ship three times the usual shipment, and that
he, Gachez, had refused, it would look very suspicious indeed.

 
          
As
Gachez began to arrange a conference with the other Cartel members, he could
not help but remember the warning planted long ago about trusting outsiders.
His brothers had once fallen into that trap, and they had paid the price for
it.

 
          
Customs
Service Air Branch, Homestead AFB,
Florida

 
          
The Next Day

 
          
Senior
Inspector Ronald Gates shook his head in puzzlement at Sandra Geffar’s apparent
lack of excitement about the new Hammerheads operation and her role in it as
sketched by the Vice-President. Gates was chief of the Customs Service Air
Branch, Geffar’s nominal boss. A Harvard Law School graduate, he was thirtyish,
tall, distinguished looking, a man who looked dynamite standing in front of a
big drug seizure and telling the world how effective his troops were.

 
          
A
smart front man, but he didn’t know the difference between a Cessna-210 and a
Cessna Citation business jet, except perhaps their cost. Gates believed all
airplanes smaller than a Boeing 727 were alike and would tend to mix them up
when explaining, without benefit of script, the details of an interdiction
operation to the press or Congress, Luckily, most people listening to him
didn’t know the difference either, and he always brought along someone who
could help him out. Often that someone was Sandra Geffar.

 
          
“It
sounds like a great opportunity,” Gates was saying. “You’ll be in on the ground
floor of a whole new organization. New developments, new challenges.”

 
          
And
more glory for you? she thought but didn’t say. It was no secret that Gates
aspired to loftier positions than his present one.

 
          
“Do
you want to be a throttle jockey all your life? This is major, a whole new
Cabinet-level agency, and you’ll be one of the major players.”

 
          
“I
didn’t say I was against it, I’m just not popping my cork over it. Not yet.”

 
          
“Okay,
okay. What’s on for today?”

 
          
Geffar
began showing him about the operations in progress, briefing him on what
information they were receiving from intelligence sources and informants and
how she was planning to respond to each. There were several major projects
running, each involving suspected drug shipments from
South America
or the
Bahamas
. She showed him a map of the most current
operation, an ongoing project that was scheduled to go into operation later
that night.

           
Gates walked over to the map to
study the route of flight as she pointed out the assets and manpower she was
planning to put into action. She noted the blank face when she mixed “Black
Hawk” with “
Cheyenne
” and “Citation.” Be grateful, she told
herself. What if he tried really to run things? And so counting her blessings,
she thought of the new one suddenly given to her by the Vice-President . . .

 
          
She
and Hardcastle had left the Sheraton at the same time after the
Vice-President’s surprise announcement about the Border Security Force and who
would head its parts. Elliott and McLanahan had stayed behind. They were scarcely
noticed as they walked through the lobby and out toward
Biscayne Boulevard
.

 
          
They
had not said a word until Geffar began to head toward the hotel’s parking
garage.