by Frank Perry
group of people.
From the time she was a little girl, Rachael Aston stood out in a crowd. She was five feet eleven inches tall in her early teens. She was introverted, and did not mingle much with other girls. With limited friendships, her passions revolved around riding her horse and playing the piano. Attending prep school in Connecticut, she studied hard and excelled in all subjects. She did not date anyone seriously. Her father was a partner in a New York City law practice, which influenced her career choice. When she graduated at the top of her class in high school, she had her pick of colleges, choosing Boston College. She enjoyed living away from her parents, and the city provided the intellectual stimulation to begin asserting herself. It was okay to display her intellect; she enjoyed opportunities to debate issues with students around the city. With more than 300,000 university students in close proximity, her linguistic skills were tested constantly. She loved it and developed a different persona. Her parents were delighted with her transformation. She also “blossomed” as an engaging beauty.
Brennan could hardly speak. “Rachael?” She nodded. “Hi. I’m Mark Brennan.” They shook hands.
“Did you bring any luggage?”
It took a minute for the ground crew to open the baggage compartment and set the bags on the tarmac. Minutes later, they were heading off the base for the forty mile drive north to the FBI office. Rachael had not eaten since her morning bagel and was famished, so they stopped en route at Applebee’s for a quick dinner. They reached the office after eight o’clock. Mark explained that he had made requests to the Coast Guard and the Port Authority regarding radar tracks recorded from the night before, and wanted to check to see if there was an answer yet. In the office, he introduced her to JJ who had continued to work with the Russian sailor to get a better idea of the time when the cargo sank.
Both Aleksei and his dead brother, Valeriy, had been sleeping until they were awakened at midnight. It had been about an hour later when Aleksei watched his brother die. Since the ship was effectively motionless above the seafloor in the offsetting current, the radar track would be fairly precise in pinpointing the location of the drop. He thought the cargo was drugs and blamed the Captain for his brother’s death. He also recalled a dark passenger who departed the ship after INS searched their papers. The man was gone when the FBI arrived.
Destiny
Twenty-four hours after the cargo was dumped in the ocean, Destiny was passing through the entrance to Charlotte Harbor. Captain Thomas had pulled the sled up to the stern an hour earlier due to the extremely shallow water along the gulf coast. It was thirty minutes past midnight as they passed between Boca Grande and La Costa Islands, which form the mouth of the harbor. The Captain altered course slightly, steering 90 degrees at a speed of six knots. Ten minutes later, he changed course to 150 degrees for ten more minutes when his radar indicated he was one hundred yards off the north end of Big Smokehouse Key at a depth of only two fathoms, twelve feet. He ordered the crew to release the cables tethering the sled, which had been dragging on the sandy bottom, completing his contract. Once the cable was freed, he pressed the throttles forward and altered course to 360o, heading home. He would soon have his wife’s money, and his crew had earned more than a year’s wage on this cruise, without even filling the hold with fish.
Ashore on Pine Island in the dark, men aboard a small boat watched the cargo drop. Before Destiny was a mile away, the divers had already attached their boat to the sled only feet below the surface and were cutting the missile cases loose. The SA-18 GROUSE missile was shipped in a watertight carrying case about the size of a large golf bag. Before shipment from Liberia, the cases had been wrapped in neoprene with Vulcanized seams to provide additional protection from the water. This process added buoyancy to the missile and its case, yielding a package weighing about fifty pounds, almost enough to sink. Weights had been added to the sled to compensate for the buoyancy of the missile cases. As each case was freed, they floated to the surface. Two men in the boat lifted them aboard and took four at a time to shore among the Mangroves.
They had driven to the bay along a rustic trail that could hardly be called a road. It took four trips to the sled to unload the missiles. When done, one man drove the rental truck away, while the two divers steered the dive boat to the Punta Gorda Marina. The sled and debris were left in the shallow water.
Traces
Rachael spent the night at the Hyatt Hotel near the Federal building and walked to the office at 7:30 in the morning to meet Brennan. Mark was already in the office and served her coffee saying, “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“Umm,” nodding her head while sipping. She preferred tea, but appreciated his gesture.
Brennan said, “Okay, we need to get down to the Coast Guard Navigation Center. They’ve isolated the radar traces during the timeframe when Morzh dropped the load.”
“Good, let’s go.” She didn’t finish her coffee.
The Miami Coast Guard Navigation Center was located at 909 Southeast 1st Avenue, one mile south of the Port Authority where Majiid had entered the country the day before. It took almost an hour to drive from the Federal Building. When they arrived, Mark and Rachael were met by the XO (Executive Officer), Commander Jean O’Reilly. After introductions, O’Reilly led them to the building Operations Center that was filled with radar equipment and large LCD displays on the walls.
The XO said, “As I understand it, you want to get a histogram of the time-stamped trace of the Russian ship at sea, yesterday from 0000 to 0100?”
Brennan answered, “That’s right, we’re trying to get coordinates we can use to search for cargo dropped over the side early yesterday morning.”
“Okay, we should be able to help. Our digital radar system follows all shipping traffic out to about forty miles depending on conditions. The radar data was converted to symbols showing the names of all vessels over two thousand tons displacement.”
She continued, “I had Senior Chief Abbar load the DVR with traces from the last forty-eight hours. We were able to find the Morzh during the time you identified. Okay Chief, please display the trace on Quad 2.”
The picture on the large screen in front of them showed line tracings of the Miami coastline and symbols of all major artifacts in the area: sunken ships, buoys, shallows, etc. In the center of the display was a small doughnut-shaped circle.
Abbar said, “That small circle is the path Morzh navigated until 0100 yesterday. The numbers beside the circle indicate the center lat long (latitude longitude) coordinates. That area is no more than a quarter mile wide, so it should be easy for 3D sonar to find the package at that depth, which is under two hundred feet.”
The XO added, “If it’s still there.”
Rachael asked, “What do you mean Commander?”
“Sr. Chief, please explain.”
“Well. Contraband exchanged offshore is usually transferred immediately. But, this was underwater, which is a first. So, I checked traces over the same area for a few hours. Look at this.”
As they watched the screen, a small digital clock appeared in the lower-right corner indicating time in one-second intervals. The Chief was using the fast-forward control on the DVR to speed things up, stopping as a white line approaching from the north, converged with the Morzh track.
Abbar explained, “Notice that as the second trace reaches the drop area, it also slows and circles for about fifteen minutes, then proceeds south. I think it’s reasonable to conclude the cargo was recovered by the second vessel.”
Brennan was disappointed, “Wow. That was well coordinated. How long was the cargo on the bottom?”
“No more than three hours.”
XO added, “We checked the radio log, and I think we can identify the vessel that made the pickup.”
Hunt for Destiny
It took a few minutes to identify Destiny as the suspected ship, with its homeport in Charlotte Harbor, one hundred twenty air miles west-northwest of Miami. At the speed tracked on
radar, the vessel would be entering the harbor mid-morning.
Rachael knew they should hurry, “Commander, your team has done an incredible job here, and I need to ask one more favor. Can we speak in private?”
After walking to an interior office, she continued, “Commander, this is a matter of national security. The cargo we’re tracking is not drugs, it has homeland security implications.”
She waited a moment for that to settle in then continued, “We need to get fast transport, law enforcement and communications support at Port Charlotte.”
O’Reilly said, “I’ll have a JayHawk spun up at the air station, but I’ll have to use your request as the basis. I’ll also be sending a Coast Guard officer and some seamen along for maritime law enforcement support.”
“Good, I can’t say more right now, but I’ll take responsibility.”
The Coast Guard air station was twenty miles south, so O’Reilly directed the flight to come to the maritime terminal. Rachael and Mark walked six blocks north to the landing zone, arriving as the helicopter landed. The Jayhawk is the Coast Guard variant of the HH-60 utility helicopter (military “Blackhawk”). It’s a large bird with a range of seven hundred miles flying at over 150 MPH.
When the aircraft settled on the wharf, a flight officer in an orange flight suit and helmet jumped from the side door
