The Threat

by David Poyer

  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.”

  They waited: Dan, Quintero, the pilots, the men and women around them at consoles. But no answer came.

  “Settle back in…,” the pilot was saying over his cockpit-to-cockpit, to his wingman.

  “Light in the cockpit. Flashlight, looks like. Guy’s waving at us.”

  At the same moment another speaker between Dan’s and the admiral’s chairs hissed to life. “Clear View, this is Hawk Two. That’s not the right tail number.”

  “Say again?”

  “What’s he mean by that?” Quintero snapped. “What’s he reading? Have him read back what he’s seeing.”

  The tracker pilot read off six digits, using military phonetic code. Dan jotted HK 4016 on his palm with his ballpoint. On the command center floor an analyst called out, “He’s right. That’s not Nuñez’s tail. I can go into the database here … stand by.”

  “What, he’s altered his tail number?” Dan asked Quintero. “Repainted it?”

  “The Viper has a spotlight on the port side of the nose,” someone put in. “He can illuminate.”

  “Not necessary,” Quintero said. “Who else is it going to be, flying dark out of Bucaramanga?”

  “Negative radio contact,” said the flight leader. “All right, blinking our lights, waggling our wings. As soon as he confirms, will commence a slow level turn to … Holy shit!”

  The controller’s voice: “Say again?”

  “Oh my holy shit. He just fireballed! Fuck, fuck, that hurts! Did you see that?… Clear View, this is Hawk flight leader, our A-toy just fireballed.”

  Every head in the command center snapped around. The controller said, “Flight leader, say again your last.”

  “He’s going down now … there’s a tail surface coming off. He’s on fire. Bright orange, fuel-type flame. I’m turning to port to follow him down. Stay clear of me … still falling.”

  Quintero was on the circuit now, voice taut. “Flight leader, Clear View actual. Did you shoot him down?”

  “Negative. Arming switches were off here. Confirm—off. Frank, confirm you didn’t fire.”

  The wingman attested to it in a voice as shocked and puzzled as his flight leader’s. Dan rubbed his mouth, shaken. If neither fighter had fired, who had? The only other aircraft on the plot was seventy miles away. Could a vortex from the fighters have jarred a fuel line loose? Struck a spark, where a spark could not be afforded?

  “We need more details here,” the command duty officer was telling the flight leader. Who was breathing hard, apparently in a tight turn.

  “Frank, stay clear of me to the west.… You getting anything here?”

  “Negative, flames too bright, blanked my display.”

  “I’m following him down. Clear View, take a fix on my posit … that will be crash datum. Doesn’t look like there’ll be any survivors. There’s the wing … a fuel tank or something. It’s just a fireball. There … impact. I have no idea what happened to this guy. It wasn’t anything we did. Flames on the water … We did this right, goddamn it. That’s all I can see now. Flames on the water.”

  The words hung in the cold air. Beside him Admiral Quintero was, Dan thought, as pale as he must be himself. Of course Don Juan Nuñez was a bad guy. If anyone deserved death, it was the chief of the Cali cartel. But still the voices leaping across space had conveyed the horror of watching men fall, burning.

  “Everybody with wings, in the conference room,” Quintero said, swinging down from his seat.

  He was halfway across the JOCC when one of the analysts beckoned. The admiral bent. They conferred in tones too low to overhear.

  Quintero put out a hand to steady himself. He stared at the printout the man held out.

  Dan stepped up. “What is it?”

  “This could be bad,” Quintero muttered.

  Tail number HK 4016 was a twin-engine Lear 55 owned by a company called Central Charter de Colombia, SA. It was roughly the same size and type, with the same engine location and control surface conformation, as the jet Nuñez flew. Another watchstander handed them photos of both aircraft, still damp from the printer. Dan looked from one to the other. At night they’d be indistinguishable. But he didn’t understand. What was this other aircraft doing en route to Miami, without clearance, without IFF, without radio, without lights?

  * * *

  In the conference room, the two pilots who happened to be on duty at the command center, one Customs, the other Air Guard, were telling Quintero it was impossible for the F-16s to have knocked such an aircraft down with only a close pass, when the same analyst who’d come up with the tail-number list knocked. He closed the door behind him.

  He’d contacted Medellín air traffic control. They said HK 4016 was under contract to Ecopetrol, the Colombian state-owned oil company. Then he’d called the duty desk at the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, who had managed to contact Ecopetrol.

  “All right, tell us,” Quintero said.

  They were still trying to confirm, the analyst said. But it looked like the aircraft that had just disintegrated had indeed been on its way to Florida. But not to Miami, and not to a drug conference. The embassy trade rep, routed out of bed, said it was probably en route to a meeting with the Tampa Export Association on behalf of the Corporación Invertir en Colombia, the Colombian National Investment Promotion Agency.

  “Who was aboard?” Quintero asked after a reluctant moment. Dan saw that the analyst no more wanted to tell them than they wanted to hear.

  The traffic controllers and the night desk at the embassy weren’t entirely sure yet, he said. They were still checking. But e
arly word was that the primary passenger had been the eldest son of the new president of Colombia.

  8

  The phones began ringing, and mounted to a discordant crescendo.

  Quintero ordered a cutter dispatched to the crash site. Even at flank speed, it wouldn’t arrive till midmorning, but it was the closest rescue asset between Miami and Nassau. Then he sat like a brooding gargoyle, watching the wall display as if he could by sheer will make onrushing time rewind. He took a call from Atlantic Command in Norfolk. The handset clattered when Quintero put it back in its cradle. It rang again instantly. “You take it,” he said to the duty officer. “If it’s JCS, I’ll talk. Otherwise I’ll get back to them.”

  Bloom said, “This is a disaster. A fucking disaster. Who’s going to tell the Colombians?”

  “I’d say that’d be the White House,” Quintero said. “Right, Dan?”

  Dan tried to think. “Well … it really should be State, since the initial notification will come through the embassy. I’ll let my boss know, though, so Mrs. Clayton can tell the president. He’ll want to make a consolatory call.”

  Right after he fires me, Dan thought. He didn’t think he was to blame. But you didn’t have to be responsible to be guillotined. Only junior enough.

  “It’s the CINC, on the conference room speaker,” the deputy interrupted. “The public affairs officer’s in there already. He’s getting together a release, to get our version on the street first.”

  Quintero closed his eyes. When he opened them again he looked resigned. He nodded to Dan. Then went into the room and closed the door.

  Unwillingly, but knowing he had to, Dan placed the call to Sebold’s home number. The director came awake instantly. No doubt over the years he’d been roused many times with bad news. He asked how they could be sure the fighters hadn’t fired. Whether their gun cameras were being checked. What Quintero and Dan were doing to get help to the crash site. He closed with the unadorned remark that there’d be repercussions. What they’d be, he didn’t say.