Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (29 page)

 
          
“It’s
a good mix, Sandra. We’ll build Hammerheads together. It’ll take both of us to make
it happen. Without either one of us it won’t happen. Martindale made that
clear.

 
          
She
looked at him, nodded slightly but offered only a “good night, Admiral,” and
walked to her car. Her feeling was still jumbled, at least mixed . . .

 
          
“
Sandy
?”

 
          
Her
attention came back to Gates.

 
          
“Something
wrong?”

 
          
“No
... I just thought I heard our King Air on final.”

 
          
“I
see ... I was wondering what Mayberry here stood for.”

 
          
“Yes.
Mayberry RFD,” she said, rising and walking over to the large map of the
Caribbean
on her office wall. “That’s the name we
gave this particular operation. One of the Cuban officers involved is named
Gomez. One of our guys heard that, nicknamed the guy Gomer and we started using
the code-name Mayberry every time someone heard this guy Gomez on the marine
band scanner.”

 
          
“Cuban
officers . . . ?”

 
          
“The
Cubans are becoming more involved in smuggling operations every year,” Geffar
said. “Never mind all their talk about cracking down on smuggling, unless it
gets so obvious it embarrasses them. We believe Gomer is captain of a Cuban
Komar-class patrol boat operating out of Veradero military base on
Cuba
’s north coast.”

 
          
“I
thought the Cubans had cracked down on that. They executed that army general,
Arnoldo Ochoa Sanchez, after being convicted for drug smuggling ...”

 
          
“A
show trial,” Geffar said. “He was very popular with the military and with the
people—there was talk of him being Castro’s successor.

           
That would have bumped Castro’s
brother Raoul out of the picture. Ochoa had to go, and in a way not to upset
the military. Hanging a drug rap on him was the best way.

 
          
“We
also started sharing intelligence data on smugglers, played right into their
hands. We told the Cubans where
we
were looking and they used our own intelligence to help
their
smugglers avoid our radar pickets and patrols. Now Cuban
gunboats are actually stationed near drug drop points at the edge of their
territorial waters. They claim the gunboats keep the smugglers away, but what
happens is the gunboat captains are paid to look the other way until we or the
Coasties show up. When we try to move in, the gunboats move in too.”

 
          
“So
what do you do with these Mayberry missions?”

 
          
“Follow
the smugglers all night, mostly,” Geffar said dryly. She pointed to specks on
the map. “Planes from
Colombia
,
Venezuela
,
Panama
, or
Peru
drop shipments here, along the Sabana
Archipelago on
Cuba
’s north shore. The smugglers pick up the shipments, always in plain
view of the Cuban gunboats, then hop around through all these tiny islands and
reefs dodging Coastie patrols. They head toward the
Bahamas
or if they’re really brave they’ll try to
zoom in toward the Keys or the
Everglades
.

 
          
“We
watch and wait for one of these bozos to try to make a break for
Florida
or the
Bahamas
. We’ve charted a lot of air and surface
activity recently that indicates they’ll try a drop some time in the next few
days. Nothing definite, but enough to focus in on this area . . . Why don’t you
come along, Ron? We’re putting together a surveillance mission to start in the
next few days. You can fly in the Nomad, which stays at high altitude and keeps
an eye on everyone on the infrared scanner and the SeaScan radar. Or you can
come with me in the Black Hawk.”

 
          
“The
Black Hawk?”

 
          
“If
the Nomad reports smugglers are heading north toward
Florida
or east toward the
Bahamas
we’ll launch the Black Hawk, track them
down. If we can we’ll vector in a Coast Guard cutter and have them stop them at
sea, but mostly we wait until they get closer to land—we usually can’t rely on
the Coasties to be around when we need them. We get authority to overfly the
Bahamas
, and we’ll carry a couple of Bahamian
constables so they can make the bust ...”

 
          
Gates’
color was not good. But he managed, “Fine. I’ll ride in the Nomad.”

 
          
It
was the first time Ron Gates had ever agreed to fly on an actual mission. In
fact, it would be his first flight on any Air Branch aircraft where he wasn’t
escorting a VIP.

 
          
“I
think it’s important for me to get some firsthand knowledge about what’s going
on. It’s about time I got in on the action.”

           
She kept a straight face, wondering
if his courage didn’t have something to do with the sudden visibility this unit
was getting in the White House.

 
          
“Okay,”
she said. “We’ll start the mission in two days, running round-the-clock
surveillance operations. The Nomad stays up for six hours—that allows plenty of
fuel in case it has to begin a chase, so clear your calendar for the whole
night. We’ll meet here at
6:00 P.M.
, two days from today. You know where the
Air Force enlisted dining hall is on base. You don’t need to go to the
briefing, but it might be interesting. I need to give you a safety briefing and
fit you out with a life jacket'—his eyes narrowed at the words “life
jacket”—“and we’ll do that out by the Nomad on the ramp. That’s the big
turboprop plane out there. Looks like a little C-130. Big radar on the belly.”

 
          
Gates
nodded, headed for the door.

 
          
Gelfar
sat alone in her office, clearing up some paperwork that had accumulated in her
absence while recovering from the Mahogany Hammock mission and going over
details of the mission in her mind. She’d had a little sport with Gates but in
reality it was not going to be a laughing matter.

 
          
With
the 250-gallon armored internal fuel tank, which took up all but six of the
helicopter’s twelve seats in the cabin, the Black Hawk had an operational
radius of about 200 nautical miles. That usually allowed a flight of 200 miles
at best endurance speed, at least an hour’s worth of hovering and maneuvering
in the target area and the return flight with almost no reserve fuel. But
flying from
Homestead
to “Mayberry” was 120 miles alone, and a
protracted chase with smugglers from way out near
Cuba
could draw deeply on fuel reserves. If the
chopper had to pursue smugglers to anywhere in the
Bahamas
Islands
chain, it would be even riskier.

 
          
Even
though the Black Hawk had the fuel to do the job, it was cutting it pretty
close. It meant that as long as the smugglers were heading north, the Black
Hawk could spend only a half-hour chasing before it would have to return to
base—if the smugglers headed south to evade, the Black Hawk would probably have
less than ten minutes’ loiter time before having to high-tail it back to
Homestead or Key West for gas. The Black Hawk was a reliable air machine, with
its two huge turboshaft engines, but flying that far away from home ground, at
night, was unnerving. Gates was lucky in his ignorance.

 
          
The
Black Hawk was not ideal for these long overwater missions but it was the only
chopper that had the range and capacity for the job—the Nomad, a big turboprop
reconnaissance plane built in Australia for radar surveillance of sea targets
instead of aerial targets like the Citations or Cheyennes, had good range but
needed a long hard-surface runway to land on. The Black Hawk was the only
choice. They would have to wait until the smugglers were very close to
Florida
or
Andros
Island
before launching it.

 
          
It
was times like this, Geffar thought, that they needed the damned Coast Guard.
The Black Hawk could land on one of their big cutters and refuel and a few
patrol boats would come in handy if they did observe a drop—

 
          
It
hit her then . . . Hammerhead One. That huge oil platform was still out there,
about forty miles southeast of
Key Largo
in the
Straits of
Florida
. Its position
could not be better: forty miles closer to both
Andros
Island
and
Veradero
,
Cuba
, than was Homestead Air Force Base. It had
sea-and-sky-surveillanee equipment set up on board, and its huge deck could
certainly accommodate a Black Hawk helicopter . . .

 
          
Or
a Sea Lion aircraft. Or both.

 
          
She’d
better see Hardcastle soon as possible.

 
          
The
White House,
Washington
,
D.C.

 
          
The Same Day

 
          
As
Sandra Geffar hurried north toward
Miami
for her important meeting with her Coast
Guard counterpart, another, more fateful meeting was just beginning in the Oval
Office.

 
          
The
President of the
United States
greeted Senator Robert Edwards, the Senate
Republican minority leader, like a long-lost brother, putting one hand over
their clasped hands. “Good to see you. Bob,” the President said. He motioned
him to the light brown leather sofa, which was arranged around the walnut
coffee table on the south side of the Oval Office along with the President’s
deep wing-back chair and a few other leather chairs. “Sandwiches and coffee.
Take a load off. Please.” Edwards shook hands with Cabinet secretaries
Preston
, Coultrane, Secretary of the Treasury Floyd
McDonough, Special Advisor on Drug Control Policy Samuel T. Massey, Senator
Mitchell Blumfeld, the senior senator from
Florida
, and finally Vice President Martindale.

 
          
Once
arranged, the White House photographer came in and, as usual, took photos of
the men gathered around the finger sandwiches and china coffee service;
although not always publicized, an official photo was taken of each and every
meeting in the White House. Coffee was poured for all by a smiling,
white-jacketed steward. A few of those having coffee reached for the delicate
china creamer with the thin blue ribbon tied on the handle—this, as every guest
to the Oval Office knew, was not the cream, not the sugar or the non-dairy
lightener, but the pot with the Irish cream liqueur. They poured various
amounts of the thick, sweet liqueur in their cups—all but Secretary Preston,
who rarely indulged in alcohol at all—as they chatted pleasantries to each
other for several minutes. It was all part of the ritual of doing business in
the White House; it had been done like this, with a few modifications, ever
since there was an Oval Office.

 
          
The
men were brushing away stray crumbs from the first few seafood sandwiches when
the President motioned to his chief of staff, who opened the door to the outer
office. Seconds later, a pretty redhead stenographer came in and quickly
situated herself a discrete distance away from the coffee table, not too far so
she couldn’t hear but far enough—a distance directed by the President through
his chief of staff—so as to not catch murmured comments between the
participants. The arrival of the stenographer signalled the end of lunch, but
everyone in the room was astute enough to see what was going on and get ready
to get down to business by the time the stenographer’s long, rose-colored
fingernails were poised over her keyboard. At a nod from the President, Vice
President Martindale sat up straight in his chair across from the President,
cleared his throat quietly, and set his coffee cup down on the table. The
delicate “CLICK” of the china cup on its saucer immediately silenced the low
murmur of voices around the table; in the stately confines of the historic Oval
Office, that tiny sound was more effective than the loudest gavel.