Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (43 page)

 
          
“You
mean draw them out?”

 
          
“I
don’t care
how
you do it, but I want
it done. The Hammerheads charge ten thousand dollars and confiscate the
airplane or vessel? I will pay the fine
plus
five thousand dollars and provide a boat for anyone with the courage to try
it.” Still no takers—except for one hand raised in a corner of the office. The
Cartel leader walked up to him. “What’s your name?”

           
“Carlos,” a very young man answered.
“Carlos Canseco.”

 
          
“How
old are you, Carlos?”

 
          
“Nineteen,
Senor Gachez.”

 
          
“Nineteen.”
He gave the boy an affectionate slap on the cheek, wrapped an arm around his
shoulders and led him to the front of the room.
“Here
is a man. His bravery puts you all to shame. He will receive
ten
thousand dollars and a house for his
courageous behavior.” He turned to the young man.
“Bueno.
We will have a Puerto Rican registered speedboat ready for
you in
Freeport
tomorrow night. And if you make it to
shore, as I am confident you will, I will give you an extra
five-thousand-dollar bonus.”

 
          
Canseco
looked as if he might explode with pride.If Gachez had been wearing a ring the
boy might have knelt and kissed it, Cerredo thought glumly.

 
          
Hammerhead
One Staging Platform

 
          
The Next Morning

 
          
Becker
found Hardcastle asleep at his desk. “Morning, sir. Figured I’d find you here.”

 
          
“What
time is it?” Hardcastle asked, massaging his neck.

 
          
“Six-thirty.
The morning chopper will be landing any minute. I made sure there was room for
you on it for the return trip.”

 
          
“Hell,
Mike, I go on duty in twelve hours. I might as well stay.” He turned toward his
window and stared wordlessly out into the gray morning skies.

 
          
“You’re
off
duty. I logged you off for the
next two days.”

 
          
“I
appreciate the thought, Mike, but I can’t—”

 
          
“It’s
official.”

 
          
Hardcastle
turned and saw that the leave form Becker was holding up had his own name on
it.

 
          
“The
Jay Hawk will wait until you’re on board. You’ve been hitting it harder than
ever, sir,” Becker told him. “The Inspector and you . . . well, sir, pardon me,
but I think you need to step back a little ...”

 
          
“Dammit,
Becker, I don’t need you to—” Hardcastle stopped himself, ran a hand over his
eyes and across the night’s stubble on his face—“all right, all right, yes, I
feel frustrated because I think we’re not doing enough, so I stay on board this
platform and the more I stay on board the more frustrated I get.”

 
          
Becker
nodded. “It’s a matter of time, sir. You know that. Meanwhile, Sandra’s in
charge of operations here. But you’re head of plans, weapons ... I mean, the
Vice-President said it... you two have to make it work. It’s your baby, sir.
She’s never denied that. Hey, if I’m out of line, sir ...” Hardcastle
half-smiled and waved him off. “I’ll be up on deck waiting. And I know Daniel
would sure like to see you."

 
          
“Becker?
Thanks, buddy. See you on deck.”

 
          
It
was a Saturday, and Hardcastle and his son took advantage of it.

 
          
Hardcastle
was the guest of the
University
of
Miami
’s baseball team at a pre-game breakfast
before the first game of the season. Although a freshman and still mostly a
bench-warmer or utility player, Daniel was considered an up-and-coming
infielder with an impressive batting average and better than average fielding
skills. Hardcastle put on a warm-up suit and jogging shoes and participated
with the team in a two-mile run, then led them in a few calisthenics and
warm-up drills later that morning. Afterward he stood with the coaches in the
tower to watch batting and fielding practice and later was invited into the
dugout to watch the game against the
University
of
Georgia
.

 
          
Daniel
was put in the game in the sixth inning after a minor injury to the Hurricanes’
second baseman and played well. His range around second base was excellent and
he went one-for-two at bat with a double and a long fly-out before being
rotated out of the lineup during a late-inning pitching change. For Hardcastle,
it was hard to believe how fast his son had grown up . . .

 
          
Over
dinner they talked like long-lost best friends or brothers, not as father and
son. Daniel held nothing back, including fellow-students’ reactions to him as
the son of the creator and a chief officer of the Hammerheads. Over coffee Daniel
asked his father if they could go out to Key Biscayne and see a V-22 Sea Lion
and Hardcastle readily said yes.

 
          
“This
thing is
amazing,”
Daniel Hardcastle
said as they walked around the huge aircraft in its hangar just outside the
Hammerheads’ operational headquarters. The Sea Lion at
Alladin
City
was one of the non-platform-based alert
aircraft configured to take off within minutes and loaded with extra fuel
tanks, a Hughes Chain Gun in the port pod and six Sea Stinger missiles in the
reloadable starboard pod. “What’s her top speed?”

 
          
“About
two hundred and fifty knots in airplane mode,” his father told him. “About one
hundred knots in helicopter mode. It can even go about forty knots in
reverse."

 
          
Daniel
walked quickly around the strange aircraft, pointing out things he recognized
and asking about what he did not: “Looks like an FLIR turret, right? Infrared
TV, steerable intercept I.D. lights ... a radar?
Is
that a radar?”

 
          
“Multi-mode
APG-176,” Hardcastle said. “Sea scan, air targets, ground mapping, navigation
and terrain avoidance. It even picks up things like power lines, flocks of
birds and large wind shifts to warn of dangerous wind shear conditions near
thunderstorms. The guns and missiles use the TADS/PNVS system. Translation:
Target Acquisition and Sight, Pilot Night Vision Sensor. It’s the same
fire-control system used on the Apache attack helicopter.”

 
          
“Radical,”
Daniel said, then stopped, as Hardcastle knew he would, at the sleek
aerodynamic Chain Gun pod, which looked something like a baby albino whale
strapped on the Sea Lion’s port side. “You really put guns on this sucker,
huh?” Hardcastle did not reply. Daniel turned toward him, a more somber
expression on his young face. “Shoot anyone yet?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Would
you? If you found someone trying to—'

 
          
He
never got to finish the sentence. A horn blared outside the hangar where the
Sea Lion was parked. Lights outside on the ramp snapped on. Hardcastle was
about to head into the operations building when several crewmen walked into the
hangar and began to climb inside the V-22.

 
          
“They
don’t seem to be in so much of a hurry,” Daniel said, expecting a firehouse
rush of men to their stations.

 
          
“The
Alladin
City
crew is the third response crew. If the
drones and Sea Lions out on the platform are busy they’ll send a drone from
Marathon
or aircraft from
Homestead
. If they need more support, they’ll launch
aircraft from here.” He moved across to the right side of the V-22 to the
pilot’s side. “What’s up, Adam?” he asked the Sea Lion pilot, Adam Fontaine, as
he began to activate external power to monitor the radios.

 
          
“CARABAL
has picked up a fast-moving boat coming out of Bimini, heading somewhere north
of
Fort
Lauderdale
. They’re not launching any drones from Hammerhead One—they said it’s
too far away for reliable data-link control—so they want aircraft on standby.
We’re in better position to respond than
Marathon
or
Homestead
so we’ve been moved up in backup priority.”

 
          
“Is
he following the entry corridor?”

 
          
“No.
They said the guy was usually inside the corridor—between Alice Town and Fort
Lauderdale you can’t help but be in the entry corridor—but it’s SLINGSHOT's
guess that the guy's not following any corridor routing.”

 
          
“No
Customs clearance notification?”

 
          
“That’s
what triggered the alert,” Fontaine said. “He went through Customs in the
harbor at Alice Town, but when they back- searched his registration the make
and the model didn’t jive.” “What’s his destination?”

 
          
“Some
rinkydink marina along the inland waterway. I wouldn’t expect him to show up
there, though. Sounds like a runner to me— not a very smart one, but still a
runner.”

 
          
Hardcastle’s
eyes narrowed with anger and some frustration. “We should go get this guy right
now. I wonder what the problem is on the platform?”

 
          
“Geffar
apparently wants to leave it to Customs,” Fontaine said. “They’re saying small
potatoes, not worth a Sea Lion sortie—”

           
“What? The whole damned idea behind
the Hammerheads is to prevent slugs like that from even entering our waters. If
he’s not challenged before he gets to shore we might never catch him without a
large-scale hunt—and then it’ll
really
cost.” The pressure inside was building. “Who’s on the duty console?”

 
          
“Geffar’s
on board the platform,” Fontaine said, “but I think Annette Fields is on the
desk.” A former Drug Enforcement Agency regional director, she was one of the
first non-Coast Guard or Customs Service officers to join the Hammerheads. And
because of her skill and expertise at commanding urban-scale enforcement
operations she was immediately trained as a shift commander for a Hammerheads
air-staging platform. She was in line to be the deputy of Hammerhead Two when
it was completed.

 
          
Hardcastle
impatiently motioned to Fontaine to trade places, and moments later Hardcastle
was sitting in the Sea Lion’s cockpit with a headset on. “Shark, this is Bravo.
How copy?”

 
          
“Bravo,
this is Shark,” the controller aboard Hammerhead One replied immediately. “Copy
five-by. Stand by for Kitty.” A few moments later Fields came on the channel.
“Bravo, this is Kitty. How are you, tiger? Are you at headquarters?”

 
          
“I’m
with Shark Two-Three,” Hardcastle told her. “I want to put together an air
sortie against the target heading north of your position. Do you have a machine
out there ready to go?”

 
          
A
slight pause, then: “Not really, tiger. The target’s outside HIGH- BAL’s
drone-range restriction and we only have one Victor-22 available—the other went
down this morning. Alpha wants to keep it on deck unless we get an air target
and let Customs have the northbound target. We’ve got an SES from
Fort Lauderdale
, call-sign Five-One, preparing to get
underway to intercept, ETA twenty minutes.”

 
          
“Twenty
minutes?” Hardcastle muttered to no one in particular. “It’ll take an hour for
him to get in position. The
idea
here
is to stop the sons-of-bitches
before
they get in, not after.” On the radio Hardcastle said, “We’re going to launch
Two-Three after him, Shark.”