The Evening News (51 page)

"Shouldn't take more than half an hour
,”
the pilot, Underhill, had said
.”
All we have to do is refuel and file a flight plan
.”

He hesitated, then
added, "Though if Customs decide to take a look at us, it could be
longer
.”

Miguel said sharply, "We don't have to clear Customs here
.”

The pilot nodded
.”
Normally true; they don't bother with
outgoing flights. Lately, though, I've heard they've been making occasional checks, sometimes at night
.”

Though attempting to sound casual, his voice betrayed concern
.
Miguel was jolted by the information. His own and the Medellin cartel's
intelligence about the rules and habits of U.S. Customs was the reason
Opa Locka had been chosen as the airport of departure
.
Like Teterboro, Florida's Opa Locka was used by private aircraft only
.
Because of incoming flights from overseas, it had a U.S. Customs
office--a small, makeshift affair housed in a trailer, with a
correspondingly small staff. Compared with Customs departments at
important international airports like Miami, New York, Los Angeles or San
Francisco, Opa Locka was a poor relation, obliged to use less exacting
procedures than elsewhere. Usually no more than two Customs officers were
on duty, and even then only from 11 A.M. to 7 P.m. on weekdays and 10
A.M. to
6 P.m. Sundays. The present Learj
et journey had been scheduled on
the assumption that by this late hour Customs would be closed, the staff
long gone
.
Underhill added, "If anyone's in Customs and their airport radio is on
,
they'll hear us talking with the tower. After that, they may be
interested in us, maybe not
.”

Miguel realized there was nothing he could do except go back to his seat
and wait. When he was there he mentally ran over possibilities
.
If they did encounter U.S. Customs tonight, unlikely as it seemed, the
cover story was in place and they could use it. Socorro, Rafael and
Baudelio would play their parts, Miguel his. Baudelio could quickly
disconnect his controls connected to the caskets. No, the problem was not
with the cover story and all that supported it, but with the rules a
Customs inspector was supposed to follow when a dead body left the
country
.
Miguel had studied the official regulations and knew them by heart
.
Specific papers were required for each body-a death certificate, a permit
of disposition from a county health department, an entry permit from the
country of destination. The dead person's passport was not needed
,
but-most critically-a
casket must be opened, its contents inspected by a Customs officer, then the casket sealed
.
With careful foresight Miguel had obtained all the needed documents; they
were forgeries, but good ones. Supplementary were the gory traffic
accident photographs, unidentified but fitting the general story, also
the bogus press clippings, the latter stating that the bodies were so
badly burned and mangled as to be unrecognizable
.
So if a Customs man was on duty at Opa Locka and came their way, all
papers were in order, but would he insist on looking into the caskets?
Equally to the point, having read the descriptions, would he want to?
Once more Miguel felt himself tense as the Lea
r
jet landed smoothly and
taxied in to Hangar One.

Customs Inspector Wally Amsler figured that some game
plan-happy
bureaucrat in Washington must have dreamed up Operation Egress. Whoever
it was, he (or maybe she) was probably in bed and asleep by now, which
was where Wally would prefer to be instead of wandering around this
godforsaken Opa Locka Airport, which was off the beaten track in daytime
and lonely as hell at night. It was half an hour before midnight and
there were two more hours after that before he and the other two Customs
guys on special duty here could put Egress behind them and go home
.
The
grouchiness was unusual for Am
sler who was basically cheerful and
friendly, except to those who broke the laws he upheld. Then he could be
cool and tough, his sense of duty inflexible. Mostly he liked his work
,
though he had never cared for night duty and avoided it whenever
possible. But a week ago he had had a bout with flu and still didn't feel
good; earlier tonight he had considered calling in sick, though he
decided not to. And something else had been distressing him lately-his
status in the Customs Service
.
Despite doing his job conscientiously for more than twenty years, he
hadn't advanced to where he believed he should have been by his present
age, a few months short of fifty. His status was Inspector, GS-9, which
was really a journeyman grade, no
more. There were plenty of others younger than himself and with far less experience who were alread
y Senior Inspectors, GS- 11. Am
sler took orders from them
.
He had always assumed that someday he would move up to Senior Inspector
but now, being realistic, he knew his chances were remote. Was that fair?
He wasn't sure. His record was good and he had always put duty to the
Service above other considerations, including some personal ones. At the
same time, he had never pushed hard to become a leader and nothing he had
done in line of duty was spectacular; perhaps that had been the problem
.
Of course, even as a GS-9, the pay wasn't bad. With overtime, working a
six-day week, he earned about $50,000 a year and there would be a good
pension in another fifteen years
.
But pay and pension weren't, by themselves, enough. He needed to activate
his life, to do something by which, even in a modest way, he would be
remembered. He wished it would happen and he felt he deserved it. But at
Opa Locka, late at night and working Operation Egress, it wasn't likely
to
.
Egress was a program involving the random inspection of aircraft about
to depart the United States for other countries. There was no way all of
them could be checked; Customs didn't have the staff. So a blitz-type
operation was used in which a team of inspectors descended on an airport
unannounced and for the next several hours boarded foreign-destined
flights-mostly private planes. The program was often in effect at night
.
Officially the objective was to search for high-tech equipment being
exported illegally. Unofficially, Customs was also looking for currency
in excess of authorized amounts, particularly large sums of drug money
.
The latter motive had to be unofficial because legally, under the Fourth
Amendment, there could be no search for money without "probable cause
.”

However, if a lot of money was discovered during another type of search
,
Customs had the right to deal with it
.
Sometimes Egress produced results-occasionally sensational. But nothing
of that kind had happened when
Amsler
was around, a reason he wasn't
enthusiastic about the program.
Just the same, Egress was why he and two other inspectors were at Opa Locka tonight, though outbound foreign flights had been fewer than usual and it seemed unlikely there would be many more
.
One of the few was preparing to leave shortly-a Learjet that had arrived
from Teterboro and, a few minutes ago, filed a flight plan for Bogot
a
,
Colombia.
Amsler
was now on his way to Hangar One to take a look at it.

In contrast to most of southern Florida, the small town of Opa Locka was
an unattractive place. Its name derived from a Seminole Indian word
,
opatisha
wocka
locka, meaning "high, dry hummock
.”

The description fitted
,
as did a more recent one by author T. D. Allman who described Opa Locka
as an impoverished "ghetto
”
appearing like "a long-abandoned and
vandalized amusement park
.”

The adjoining airport, though busy, had few
buildings, and the area's overall dry flatness--on top of that natural
hummock--conveyed the impression of a desert
.
Amid that desert, Hangar One was an oasis
.
It was a modem, attractive white building, only part of which was a
hangar, the whole comprising a luxury terminal catering to private
aircraft, their passengers and pilots
.
Seventy people worked at Hangar One, their duties ranging from vacuuming
incoming planes' interiors and disposing of their trash, through
restocking galleys with meals and beverages, to mechanical
maintenance-minor repairs or a major overhaul. Other staffers tended to
VIP lounges, showers, and a conference room equipped with audiovisual
,
fax, telex and copying aids
.
Across an almost but not quite invisible dividing line, similar
facilities existed for pilots, plus a comprehensive flight planning area
.
It was in that area that Customs Inspector Wally
Amsler
approached the
Learjet pilot, Underhill, who was studying a printout of weather data
.”
Good evening, Captain. I believe you're scheduled out for Bogot
a
.”

Underhill looked up, not entirely surprised at the sight of the uniform
.”
That's right
.”

In fact, both his answer and the flight plan were lies. The Learjet's
destination was a dirt landing strip in the Andes near Sion in Peru and
the flight there would be nonstop. But the exacting instructions
Underhill had been given, and for which the pay would be munificent
,
specified that his departure data should show Bogot
a
. In any case, it
didn't matter. As soon as he had shed U.S. Air Traffic Control, shortly
after takeoff, he could fly anywhere he chose and no one would check or
care
.”
If you don't mind
,”
Amsler
said politely, "I'd like to inspect your
ship and your people aboard
.”

Underhill did mind, but knew it would do no good to say so. He only hoped
that his oddball quartet of passengers could satisfy this Customs guy
sufficiently to have him clear the airplane and let the flight get on its
way. He was uneasy, all the same, not for the passengers but about his
own potential involvement with whatever was going on
.
There was something unusual, possibly illegal, about those caskets, Denis
Underhill suspected. His best guess was that either they contained items
other than bodies, being smuggled out of the country, or, if bodies, they
were victims of some kind of Colombian-Peruvian gang war and were being
removed before U.S. authorities realized
it. Not for a moment did he be
lieve the story told to him at the time the charter was arranged in
Bogota
, about accident victims and a grieving family. If that was true
,
why all the cloak-and-dagger secrecy? Added to that, Underhill was sure
at least two of those people aboard the Lear were armed. Why, also, the
obvious attempt to avoid what had now happened-an encounter with U.S
.
Customs?
Though Underhill didn't own the Learjet-it belonged to a wealthy
Colombian investor and was registered in that country -he managed it, and
along with salary and expenses received a generous share of profits. He
was certain his employer knew that comers were sometimes cut with
charters that were either downright illegal or on the borderline, but the
man trusted Underhill to handle such situations and keep his investment
and his airplane out of jeopardy.
Remembering that trust and his own vested interest, Underhill decided to
use the accident victims yarn now, thereby putting himself on the record
and, he hoped, the Learjet in the clear whatever else might happen
.”
It's a sad situation
,”
he told the Customs man and went on to describe
the tale he had been told in BogotA, which-though Underhill didn't know
it-tallied with the documents in Miguel's possession
.
Amsler
listened noncommittally, then said, "Let's go, Captain.,
,
He had encountered Underhill's type before and was not impressed.
Amsler
assessed the pilot as a soldier of fortune who for the right kind of
money would fly anywhere with any cargo, then later, if trouble erupted
,
depict himself as an innocent victim deceived by his hirers. All too
often, in
Amsler
's opinion, such people were flagrant lawbreakers who
got away with it
.
They walked together from the Hangar One main building to the Learjet
55LR, parked under an o
verhead canopy. The Lear's clam
shell door was
open and Underhill preceded Inspector
Amsler
up the steps into the
passenger cabin. He announced, "Lady and gentlemen, we have a friendly
visit from United States Customs
.”