The Threat (10 page)

Tourists in bright shirts and funny hats were taking pictures of each other next to a concrete buoy. A sign marked it as the southernmost point in the United States. Just past it was the JIATF fence, barbed wire, palm trees, then the Coast Guard piers. The operations center was low, gray brick, isolated on a spit of land. The colonel introduced him to the director, a recently arrived Coast Guard two-star named Quintero. Then it was up a flight of stairs, and through a steel door with card-controlled entry.

In the joint operations command center four leather command chairs faced computer-driven back-projection displays. The command duty officer and the watch team, mostly uniformed but with intelligence analysts from Customs and DEA, sat around a four-armed table crowded with computers. The beeps and murmurs of voice circuits kept on as the briefing began. Fifty-one brain-numbing PowerPoint slides, narrated by a nervous young lieutenant commander. Dan sat beside Quintero, only partially tuned in.

“JIATF East, originally Joint Task Force 4, was established when DoD became the lead agency for providing detection and monitoring throughout the transit zone. Our mission is to integrate the military's C3I capabilities to assist law enforcement agencies. We now include representatives from DEA, DIA, NSA, FBI, and the British and Dutch Royal Navies. Our area of responsibility encompasses a region comparable in size to the triangle bounded by the cities of Miami, Seattle, and New York, and includes the airspace of eighteen nations. We detect and monitor air and maritime trafficking activity in the transit zone, hand off this information to appropriate law enforcement agencies, and deconflict non-D&M counterdrug activities occurring in the transit zone.”

“D&M?” Dan muttered to Quintero. The admiral whispered back, “Detect and monitor.”

Dan was saying “Thanks” when the next slide came up.

Labeled “National Counterdrug Organization,” it showed the operational line running from the president, through the NSC, down to the cabinet secretaries: Defense, Treasury, Transportation, State. From there it went through the secretary of defense to the Joint Chiefs, where it split three ways: to JIATF East via the Atlantic Command, JIATF West via the Pacific Command, and JIATF South via the Southern Command.

Of course it didn't mean Dan Lenson was about to give any direction to the secretary of defense. But it was a beautifully clear wiring diagram, and he contemplated its elegance before leaning again. “I've got to have that slide.”

“Hey, I'll send you electrons on the whole brief.”

The rest was boilerplate—interdiction assets, baseline force laydown—but he paid attention when the ground-based-radar information came up. The main coverage was from ionospheric backscatter arrays. They could detect air targets two thousand miles away. Smaller radars on aerostats—tethered balloons—passed their pictures to the Caribbean Regional Operations Center, the room they were in. The rest of the brief was on a classified data link and the tactical analysis teams and local coordination centers that fed intel into the system.

“If there are no questions, we'll take a break,” the lieutenant commander said, obviously glad it was over. “After which we'll describe Operation Hot Handoff.”

*   *   *

Hot Handoff was the code name for the interception of the major players en route to the meeting in Miami. DoD was the lead agency, and assets would be coordinated from Key West. Cold Handoff was the stateside piece of the operation, run by the DEA Miami Field Division with assistance from Dade County, the U.S. Marshal's Service, the FBI, and Customs. Admiral Quintero briefed from his chair as the slides came up.

Usually the trackers applied sorting criteria to determine if a given aircraft was “suspect.” That meant off a legitimate air route, not filing a flight plan, not squawking a valid code, or flying an erratic course near shore. But they'd lock up Nuñez's new twin-jet Falcon the moment it popped above five hundred feet over Palonegro Airfield. The over-the-horizon radar in Texas would hand off to a Perry-class frigate, USS
Gallery,
loitering off the Venezuelan coast.
Gallery
would add its track data to the information flow. At this point the Falcon would be designated an “air target of interest,” or ATOI, and handed off to a Navy E-2C command and control aircraft as Air Force fighters launched to intercept and identify.

By the time Nuñez's pilot realized he was getting special attention, he'd have F-16s from the 125th Fighter Wing to port and starboard. They'd escort him to Homestead Air Force Base, where an arrest team from the FBI, DEA, and the Florida State Police would be waiting.

Dan got the impression of a showboat operation, involving as many agencies as possible. But it sounded workable. Unless he aborted before he left Colombian airspace, Don Juan Nuñez—the biggest trafficker in Cali, kingpin, locus, famed for years for his slipperiness, ruthlessness, and implacable vindictiveness—was American meat.

*   *   *

He checked in at the combined billeting office at the naval air station, showered, shaved, and tried to close his eyes for a couple of hours. Instead he stared at the popcorn finish of the ceiling. Wondering now if Hot Handoff was as airtight as it had sounded.

Considering when Nuñez's plane was scheduled to leave the ground, the intercept would take place well after dark. Would that be a problem? He didn't think so, considering the radar and ELINT assets that would be tracking him. On the other hand, he'd never seen an operation where everything went down as planned.

If it worked it would be an enormous coup. If President Tejeiro was serious about rooting out drug-based corruption and violence in Colombia itself, taking Nuñez down now could wreck the whole cartel.

The phone woke him minutes after he'd finally dropped off.

*   *   *

The sun was going down in flames over the Gulf. Lights popped on above the barbed wire. Armed sentries patted him down before letting him into the operations center. He approved. This headquarters would be a prime target for a bomb or raid.

The duty officers, analysts, operations specialists, sat absorbed at their consoles. The air was icy. Quintero was stretched out in one of the big elevated chairs. He pointed to the one beside him. Dan looked around for Bloom, and located him heads-down with another agent over some printouts. He checked his watch against the wall clock—2115—and tried to relax.

The big flat-panel display showed the whole transit zone, with air routes and boundaries of national seas and airspace. Dozens of aircraft flowed down the airways, each tagged by a data readout. The western boundary was the coast of Yucatán; the eastern, the scattered arch of the Lesser Antilles, Grenada, Barbados, the Grenadines, Martinique, on up to the U.S. Virgins. Colombia and Venezuela pushed up from the south, the tip of Florida down from the north. It was a godlike view of two million square miles of continent, island, and sea.

Quintero probed as to the administration's plans for the aerostats and the Customs boat fleet, since seizures were declining. “It's easy to quantify seizures. Impossible to quantify deterrence.”

“We can put numbers on it,” Dan said. “That's what I'll try to do.”

“But it doesn't give you the public support. You can't take pictures of cargos of cocaine not being seized because they're going overland.”

“The classic dilemma of deterrence. But if we can take down Nuñez, that'll give Tejeiro a chance. What about control? Any hard spots there?”

“Tactical control here works pretty well. We've got the joint bugs worked out and we're smoothing things out with the Brits and the Dutch. But nobody coordinates activity between me and JIATF West or South.”

“How much attention do you need? Hourly? Daily? Weekly?”

Quintero said he didn't need hourly coordination. Handoff procedures were established for tracks and intel that crossed the JIATF boundaries. But there were issues it would be nice to pass to a higher level, rather than trying to negotiate with his opposite number.

“We're going to start running those out of my office,” Dan told him. “I don't want to set up another command center. We've got enough command centers. But somebody's got to have the big picture.”

Quintero seemed about to say something, but didn't. Instead he started describing the data, secret Internet protocol, and covered voice circuits they were guarding. He was saying the primary coordination voice net would be UHF satellite voice link 409, when Bloom came over and cleared his throat. “He's off the ground.”

“Nuñez?”

“None other. They don't know we're listening to their airport communications. Over-the-horizon radar should report them any minute now.”

They sat watching the display. “Flight profile match,” one of the console operators called.

Quintero said, “This is terrific intel. Usually all we get is rumors, vague locations. This was spang on the money.”

An aircraft symbol popped up on the screen, west of Bucaramanga. Simultaneously they got confirmation from a Customs Service–modified P-3 patrolling off the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua. Dan was impressed. Dozens of icons winked and crept over Colombia. Somehow they'd plucked Nuñez's out of that welter and mountain return, and locked on it as it headed north.

“Subject TOI's gone black,” a grille at his elbow reported.

“No transponder return,” Bloom explained. “He's turned it off. Hoping if we're tracking him, that'll shake us off.”

“Will it work?”

“Not a chance,” Quintero said.

*   *   *

An hour later
Gallery
reported in. She held a small business-type jet, transponder off, no radars or other emitters active. It was traveling at 240 knots at forty thousand feet, northbound across the Gulf of Venezuela for the open sea. Quintero told the command duty officer to launch the ready E-2C, the plane that would control the air assets that would carry out the intercept. They'd need time to get into position in the Straits of Florida.

Dan was surprised to see that the Colombian's intended flight path, outlined in orange, led across eastern Cuba. After the overwater leg, he'd make landfall at Montego Bay, then turn slightly west for Ciego de Avila. Quintero said Castro had no problem granting flight clearance to civilian aircraft. It meant ready cash—five thousand dollars just to cross the island from south to north—and the Cubans were desperate for foreign exchange. The intercept would take place just south of point “Ursus,” where Miami-bound traffic split off from the stream continuing north to Bimini. Far enough north and offshore so that the surprised pilot, and his no doubt enraged passengers, would have too little reserve fuel to duck back into Cuban airspace.

Over the next hours Dan and Quintero drank coffee as the orange pip crept north. The F-16s launched. The E-2 vectored them. At midnight pizza came in. ATOI 3 was holding a steady course at flight level 410. Forty-one thousand feet, Quintero explained, the most economical altitude for a light jet. “A direct flight from Colombia to Miami, he's operating at the extreme limit of his range. Usually the coke flights, they come in over the Bahamas and air drop.”

“The Air Force does your interceptions?”

“Strictly speaking it's Air Guard. Usually we have either Customs Citations up with them, or sometimes the Marine OV-10s out of New River, for identification. To make absolutely sure you've got who you think you've got. But a corporate jet like this is too fast for the turboprops to catch. We're just going to have the F-16s identify. They've got night vision now anyway.”

The display showed the various aircraft closing steadily. Two moving southwest, the fighters; from the south, their quarry boring along straight and level. “Put it on the speakers,” Quintero said. A chief flicked a switch at the comm panel.

Minutes later they heard an unhurried voice. “Hawk One, contact bogey. Bull's-eye 360, thirty miles track north. Hawk One flight unplug, Hawk Two cleared fluid. Bogey course three-zero-five. Throttle back … let's take this slow. He's traveling without lights. Appears to be twin-engine private jet. I can just make out the winglets.”

“That's our boy. Can you get a tail number?”

“Not from astern. Stand by as I move up on him.”

Dan could close his eyes and see them sliding into position. Staying on the bogey's six, the blind spot on almost every aircraft ever built. Quintero said that typically the interceptors identified a drug aircraft, then returned to base while the slower, longer-legged tracker bloodhounded it to the drop point. But tonight the fighters would visually ID with night vision goggles, and escort this bogey all the way to touchdown, and the open arms of U.S. law enforcement.

The pilot again, tin-can hollow as what Dan assumed was a satellite relay bounced his signal over hundreds of miles. “Okay, there he is … got a nice glow off the engine. Throttling back to 250 knots. Hold him now bearing 295. Hawk One weapons safe.” The wingman must have rogered, though it didn't come through the speaker. “Confirm arming switches off. Initiate lock-on … lock-on.”

The command duty officer glanced their way. “Permission for close pass and visual ID?” Quintero eyed Dan, who nodded. The admiral gave a thumbs-up.

“Hawk One, this is Clear View. Shadow VID,” came over the net.

“Roger, beginning phase two. I'll pitch up and throttle back to match speed while I call him on thirty-two eight.”

An interdiction display flickered up on the right-hand display. It showed the target aircraft and the interceptors. The fighters were covering the last mile to the Falcon now. No way it could escape the much faster, more maneuverable military jets.

“Closing … closing … you're edging ahead, lose ten knots … Yeah, that rattled his drawers. Okay, Hawk One is now going Christmas tree.” The same voice seemed to move about five feet, to directly above Dan's head; emerging from a different speaker, slower, speaking to someone who might not understand English well. “Unlighted aircraft bound three-zero-zero at 240 knots, approximately twenty-three degrees north, eighty-five degrees twenty minutes west. This is U.S. Air Force interceptor off your starboard wing. Over.”