Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (58 page)

 
          
Hardcastle
knew he had to do something. He stood up, paused for a few moments, then
touched the communication screen’s transmit button. “Two-Five, this is Shark.
Do not lock weapons on target
—but find a
way to stop that vessel. ”

 
          
“Copy
that, Shark,” Two-Five responded.

 
          
Geffar
had just completed the transition from vertical to forward flight mode. It took
her a few moments of concentration to readjust herself as the controls switched
from helicopter to airplane configuration and she let her altitude drop off
almost a hundred feet as she compensated for the change. Her copilot, Maryann
Herndon, was coaching her along over interphone: “Still a little low, Sandra .
. . there, you got it. You might need more nacelle angle . . . that’s it. Fifty
degrees is good until you get our airspeed over two hundred . . .”

 
          
Geffar
raised a hand as she caught a bit of conversation between the platform and
Shark Two-Five. Herndon stopped talking, but by then the radios were silent.
Geffar keyed her mike button: “Shark, this is Two-Six. Status of Shark units?”

 
          
“All
in the green,” Hardcastle replied. “Target two about six miles from shore.
Two-Five still in pursuit.”

 
          
“Did
all Shark units acknowledge not to lock weapons on manned targets?”

 
          
“Affirmative
. . . Two-Five, acknowledge.”

 
          
“Two-Five
acknowledges.”

 
          
Geffar
continued her transition to full forward flight. What had Hardcastle said to
Two-Five? Well, it would do no good to badger him on the radios. She would get
a better idea of the situation soon enough . . .

 
          
“Crew,
stand by. We’re moving closer to the target.”

 
          
Whipple
added power and zoomed the twenty-five-ton aircraft down and across the front
of the smuggler’s vessel, less than ten feet above his flying bridge
superstructure and not more than thirty feet alongside. The Sea Lion’s rotors
whipped the ocean into a white froth, with thick vapor streaming all around the
aircraft and its prey. The Sea Lion wheeled around and flew backward, not more
than fifty feet directly in front of the smuggler’s boat, directly in the
smuggler’s path.

 
          
“Hey,
Whip,” Hardy said cross-cockpit. “You think this is a good idea?” The smugglers
tried to evade the Sea Lion, zigzagging back and forth to get away from the
rotor wash and noise of the aircraft directly ahead, but Whipple matched each
turn and stayed directly in front of them. “If they got guns, they can hose us
real easy here.”

 
          
“Well,
I got guns too.” He hit the switches on his control panel and deployed both the
Sea Stinger missile pylon and the M230 Chain Gun pod, then selected
head-pointing control of the Chain Gun and armed the pod.

 
          
“You
can’t do that, Eric—”

 
          
“I
was ordered not to lock weapons on this target,” Whipple said. “Well, I’m not
locking them on target.” He waited until the sport fisher made another cut
across the Sea Lion’s left side, aimed the cannon just ahead of the vessel, and
squeezed the trigger. The pounding of the machine gun could be heard both over
the roar of the Sea Lion and the vessel’s engines, and the sharp columns of
water erupting ahead of the vessel were unmistakable. The Chris Craft dodged to
its left away from the stream of thirty-millimeter shells hitting the water.

 
          
If
Hardy had been apprehensive before, he was not any longer. He shouted every
time the smugglers made a wild turn to escape the shooting. “Look at them run!”
he shouted. “Maybe they’ll run out of gas before they reach the shore—”

 
          
“They
haven’t seen anything yet.” Whipple deactivated the Chain Gun and allowed the
smugglers to return to a steady course, which they promptly did. As soon as
they stopped weaving back and forth Whipple began to move closer to the vessel.
Still flying backward, Whipple closed the range between them to a few yards,
then slowly eased in closer until the right wing was directly over the bow of
the sport fisher.

 
          
The
water around the vessel was so whipped up by the Sea Lion’s rotor wash that it
looked as if the boat was sailing through a typhoon. The vessel was being
shaken back and forth, and looked as though it might even capsize. But the
vessel refused to slow down, kept at full power trying to outrun the Sea Lion.

 
          
The
smugglers had been aiming for the
Cape
Romano
lighted marker just southwest of
Gullivan
Bay
in the western
Everglades
; once past the light and in the mass of
tiny islands that stretched out west of the
Collier-Seminole
State Park
, a shallow-draft boat could easily be lost
in the low trees and salt water marshes. But in his evasive maneuvering, the
pilot of the Chris Craft had lost track of the
Cape
Romano
light. Actually the light was no more than
a half-dozen thick wooden poles driven into the ocean bottom and lashed
together at the top into a tepee-shaped structure, plus a solar-powered
strobelight system installed at the top. It was an obstruction no more than
fifteen feet wide, and against hundreds of acres of open ocean, the likelihood
of hitting it was remote. But as the smugglers tried to get away from the
maelstrom all around them, the
Cape
Romano
light suddenly appeared directly in front
of them. As the pilot tried to veer away, the stern of his boat clipped the
light poles . . .

 
          
A
tremendous flash of light appeared directly underneath Whipple’s right cockpit
window. “We’re being fired on,” he called out over interphone, and immediately
raised his collective up to the stops and zoomed skyward, gaining a thousand
feet in a few seconds, then entered a tentative hover. “Station check!” he said
to Hardy. “Crew, station check!” He looked over his flight and engine-readout
monitors—all appeared normal . . .

 
          
He
found the Chris Craft a few moments later ... a thin trail of smoke rising from
somewhere in the engine-access compartments, and it appeared to be listing to
starboard. Whipple keyed his radio mike. “Shark, this is Two-Five. Target two
appears dead in the water and listing slightly. I’m going to launch the RHIB
and investigate.” On interphone: “Prepare to launch the boat. Four-man response
team.”

 
          
The
RHIB occupied most of the aft portion of the Sea Lion’s cargo bay. It was
lowered from its storage rack on the upper bulkhead and checked for full
inflation. It was like a big fourteen-person inflatable river raft, but it had
been fitted with a light metal floor, a pilot’s control console with steering
wheel, throttle quadrant, compass and radio panel, and storage lockers fore and
aft. A helmsman’s padded seat behind the control console covered two
five-gallon fuel tanks.

 
          
The
intercept and boarding team wore body armor, life jackets and visored helmets
with miniature two-way voice-actuated radios installed in the helmets. Each man
carried a sidearm, usually a SIG Sauer nine millimeter semi-automatic pistol
with a fifteen-round clip, and except for the RHIB helmsman, each carried an
M-16 rifle.

 
          
The
group appeared uneasy. Two of the four men on the team were graduates of the
Coast Guard’s Maritime Law Enforcement

 
          
School,
an intensive four
-week
class.
Actually, a
tour-year-long
school
could never prepare any of them for what might happen next. Every intercept or
boarding was different. The most benign scene could erupt any moment into
pluperfect hell. This smuggler was cornered, a Hammerheads gunship was hovering
over him and armed men were coming to board his boat . . .

 
          
Whipple
brought the AV-22 down to the surface of the ocean and hovered a few feet above
the gentle waves, about a hundred yards from the sport fisher. “She’s gonna
roll any minute,” Whipple said on interphone. “Let’s move it.”

 
          
“Ready
on the ramp,” came the reply. Hardy activated the switch, and the rear cargo
ramp that formed the aft end of the AV-22 slowly motored down into position.
Whipple eased the Sea Lion down until the aircraft settled on the ocean’s
surface. “Ramp awash,” one of the crew men told Whipple as the outboard end of
the ramp dipped into the water. The Sea Lion was afloat. Whipple kept the power
up on the rotors for stability during the launch.

 
          
The
RHIB was slid down the ramp far enough so the outboard motor’s propeller could
be lowered into the water and the RHIB’s helmsman climbed on board and started
the engine. After the helmsman checked the systems on board and made a radio
check with the Sea Lion and the three intercept crewmen, the other crewmen
climbed aboard, slid the RHIB off the ramp and into the water. Once Whipple
could see that the RHIB was clear of the rotors, he raised the cargo ramp and
lifted off from the surface, flying a few feet above the water and paralleling
the RHIB’s course. As he moved forward, Whipple deployed both the Chain Gun and
Sea Stinger rocket pods and readied them for action.

 
          
“I
can’t see the driver of that boat,” Scott, one of the boarding crewmen said as
he trained mini-binoculars on the Chris Craft speedboat. “Two-Five, see if you can
swing around the other side and spot him.”

 
          
“Roger,”
Whipple replied, and eased the Sea Lion left around the stern of the sport
fisher and slowly circled it. “He’s nowhere in sight,” he reported. “I’m moving
closer.”

 
          
He
had come to within a hundred feet when suddenly a tall darkskinned man rushed
up on deck carrying a young girl in one arm and a pistol in his other. Slung
across his shoulder was a bulging nylon bag.

 
          
“Scott,
I see someone,” Whipple called. “He’s got a kid, a hostage,
he’s holding, a gun to her head.
”

 
          
The
man swept his right arm over the girl’s head, then pointed the muzzle at her.

 
          
“I
think he’s telling me to move off or he’ll kill her.”

 
          
Scott
motioned to the helmsman of the RHIB to cut right toward the bow out of sight
of the smuggler. He took oflf his communications helmet and began to unlace his
boots.

 
          
“What
the hell are you doing?” Randolph, the helmsman of the RHIB, asked him.

 
          
“Going
over the side,” Scott told him, “before he sees us.”

 
          
“That's
nuts, Scotty,” one of the other crewman said. “This guy’s going nowhere, he’s
got no choice but to surrender—”

 
          
“Yeah,
right, but what if he starts killing those kids in the meantime? We’ve got the
drop on him, now’s the time to act.” The intercept crewmen had no answer for
that. “After you drop me oflf swing back to the left and show yourself. Make
sure he keeps his eyes on you and the Sea Lion.” Scott took oflf his gun belt,
clasped the webbing in his teeth near the holster to keep the weapon out of the
salt water and edged over the side of the inflatable tubes of the RHIB. When
they were about a hundred feet away he slipped into the cold water and began to
swim for the sport fisher. The RHIB helmsman immediately veered away, and was
soon in sight of the smuggler on deck and took up a position ninety degrees to
the right of the Sea Lion and about a hundred feet away, threatening but
holding position.

 
          
The
water was much colder than Scott had thought, and the deep chill seemed to turn
his arms and legs to lead. He was a strong, well-trained swimmer, but it seemed
he had to fight to keep his head above water. He choked down the rising panic
in his throat and kept pushing it, the butt of his pistol slapping his face at
every stroke . . .