THE RULE OF THREE
Moonbeams cut through broken clouds over a calm Caribbean Sea and shined on a U.S. Coast Guard Cessna Citation jet flying four miles above the water, following an unknown aircraft running without lights toward the Bahamas.
“Almighty, this is Omaha,” called the Citation pilot. “Suspect aircraft now sixteen miles southwest of Great Inagua, heading three-three-zero at 185 knots at nine thousand feet. Over.”
“Roger Omaha,” replied a voice reeking of authority. “Nassau is alerted and standing by. Almighty out.”
Somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line in a remote farmhouse distinguished only by two towering antennas, a young, self-assured 30-something man, clean-shaven, with a full head of thick, untamed dark hair sat dressed in an old pair of jeans, with his favorite plain brown leather belt, and a faded blue skydiving t-shirt, presiding over a maze of sophisticated radios, listening to the Coast Guard transmissions.
Roger Nelson knew exactly what this meant—thanks to a Bahamian official he’d met and befriended when he’d bought part of a Bahamian island a while back.
“Almighty” was the code name of the American drug interdiction base station on the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “Omaha” was equipped with tracking radar that could follow aircraft from high above, and he also knew the U.S. had given helicopters to the Bahamas to help chase down drug smugglers. Roger silently thanked his friend and keyed his mike.
“Whiskey Oscar, this is Papa. Are you with me?”
“Like you’re sitting next to me!” answered a tense, excited voice.
Roger was relieved to have reestablished commo with Billy, the skittish, black-haired pilot of the 20-year-old Beechcraft Excalibur Queen Air being tailed by the Citation. They had planned to keep in contact every 30 minutes, each time changing frequencies to a lower band, both to improve clarity as their distance decreased and help lose anyone trying to listen in. The tail, however, changed Roger’s plans. Hoping his gut feeling was wrong, he keyed his mike again.
“Have you seen Wendy yet?”
“Left her fifteen minutes ago, looking fine.”
Roger checked a map on the wall and moved a marker just north of the Windward Passage, the strip of water between Cuba and Haiti.
“Slow down and turn to zero-one-zero.”
“Copy slow down and turn to zero-one-zero.”
A moment later, Roger heard the sound he’d dreaded.
“Target is slowing and turning through three-six-zero,” said the Citation pilot.
“Whiskey Oscar, return to original course, and stand by. Over.” Roger sighed, but his eyes glinted with resolve as the Citation pilot confirmed that his target had resumed its previous course.
“Whadda you got?” queried Billy’s worried voice. Roger knew that at that moment the young, green pilot had completely forgotten the fatigue of flying 2,000 miles in 20 hours without a break, that time was stretching out for him, that he was probably mashing his face against the windows looking for his tail and seeing nothing but moon and stars, then looking behind him at the 1,500 pounds of Colombian marijuana baled and stacked neatly in the seatless, Visqueen-lined fuselage.
“What should I do? What do you think?” crackled his panicky voice over Roger’s radio. “I’m gonna turn back, all right?”
“Relax,” Roger said sternly. “Stay cool and quit trying to think. Nobody at Charlie’s now anyway.”
“O.K.,” Billy replied but his voice did not sound okay, “but I’m gonna tune in their frequency, OK?”
“Not okay,” Roger snapped. “Keep your discipline, you’re all right. Above all, maintain contact with me. That is the key. Stay with me! We got options, and we’re gonna use ’em. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Billy in a still-tense but no longer panicky voice.
Roger cursed himself for letting such a novice fly this gig, but quickly ditched the hindsight scolding in favor of dealing with the situation as it was. Billy was normally a basket case flying over the ocean even without pressure. It was going to be a long night, but Roger had enough confidence for both of them—confidence in his planning and in his ability to execute it.
“Game on,” he said out loud to himself. Roger had long ago learned the “rule of three”—always have three options—and the experience to know when to switch gears. In this case, it was time for Plan B. He keyed the mike on another radio.
“Panther team, come to Papa,” he called calmly to his auxiliary team in Blairsville, Georgia—though he felt a thrill of anxiety as he did. His previous trips had always gone like clockwork, and the Blairsville backup crew had never done anything except collect its fee. “Panther team, come in. Over.”
“Panther team copies Papa,” replied a young voice Roger knew as Joel. “Over.”
“Stand by for welcome mat,” said Roger. “Over.”
“Copy standby for welcome mat,” answered Joel. “Over.”
“Roger that,” said Roger. “Stay close. Be ready. Out.”
Roger kicked back in his chair. He knew his “just-in-case-boys” were now jangled with adrenalin and reviewing every piece of their part in Roger’s carefully designed secondary plan. The veteran smuggler felt the adrenalin too; for the first time, he would see if he and his organization would measure up to a real threat.
Two hours later, Billy’s periodic radio pleas for reassurance gave way to a far more measured voice on Roger’s headset.
“Almighty, this is Omaha,” said the Citation pilot. “Suspect plane turning three-one-zero towards Bimini. Appears to be heading stateside.”
“Roger Omaha. Per Rampart, Cobra One and Cobra Two are staged in Opa Locka and West Palm awaiting dispatch.”
Roger was puzzled by Almighty’s involvement. Usually, the regional El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) handled drug, human, and weapon smuggling interdiction across the southern border. Maybe Almighty had only stumbled across the Queen Air and hoped to get lucky. If that was the case, the operation was not compromised, but Roger still needed to get Billy and his cargo safely on the ground—and with helicopters waiting for them in Florida, that validated Roger’s earlier decision to change his plans.
Right on schedule, Billy dropped down to 50 feet north of Bimini and turned west. The Citation followed, reducing its own altitude to maintain radar contact.
Billy soon crossed the U.S. coastline and, as Roger expected, Almighty handed the mission off to EPIC, which dispatched the Opa Locka and West Palm helicopters.
Roger, tracking Billy’s position by the Citation pilot’s frequent situation reports, told him to fly towards Lake Worth, 100 miles north of Homestead.
“Bingo fuel,” called the Citation pilot seconds later. “Breaking off the pursuit.”
Roger pumped a fist in his farmhouse redoubt. By ordering Billy to fly low, he’d forced the Citation pilot to burn more far fuel pushing itself through the thicker air so it could keep tracking Billy. His tactics had put the Coast Guard pilot in a box he couldn’t escape.
EPIC launched a far less capable plane to continue the pursuit—a Florida-based Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) King Air turboprop. It also initiated a rolling alert with state and local authorities as Billy neared their jurisdictions—knowing that smugglers typically traded fuel for cargo and landed near the southern coast.
These authorities were well practiced in coordinating their tactics based on this operational assumption—but Roger’s plan was specifically designed to beat these tactics. Billy continued northward, away from the regular theater of smuggler operations. Better yet, they hadn’t IDed Billy’s plane so they had no idea of its range—or of the fact that Billy not only had fuel to fly far from the coast, he had a mission commander who knew what he was doing.
Roger radioed Billy and told him to program his Loran navigation system for the Plan B destination. A few minutes later, the Queen Air crossed into Georgia and the choppers broke off their pursuit, as they had fallen hopelessly behind the faster Queen Air. Now Roger and his crew faced only the DEA King Air and whatever short-notice ground support EPIC could muster—ground support without experience at coordinating with federal drug agents.
Still, Roger knew the King Air was a formidable threat all by itself because it wasn’t just a surveillance plane with a pilot and a radio; it almost certainly had a six-man DEA “bust team” aboard, most likely comprised of armored, heavily-armed young guys eager to make their mark, but led by a drug war veteran who, like Roger, knew what he was doing. If Roger’s Plan B didn’t go off as designed, things would go to hell fast.
He didn’t have long to wait for his answer. When the Queen Air was 20 miles from Blairsville, Roger knew Billy would pick up a low-powered marine band radio that was ideal for short-range communications and call the ground crew. Right on time, Roger heard the conversation over Billy’s primary radio.
“Panther team, Whiskey Oscar. Over.”
“Panther team standing by. Over.”
“ETA ten minutes, Panther. ETA ten minutes. Over.”
“Copy ten minutes ETA, Whiskey Oscar. Out.”
Roger heard the excitement in Joel’s voice and the fear in Billy’s—and he was happy that during Billy’s original briefing he’d followed the tried-and-true operational procedure of telling his twitchy pilot only what he needed to know.
Billy thought that he was only doing a test landing to see if he was still being tracked. He’d been told to expect ground support but nothing else except to stay in the plane and wait for further instructions because Roger knew that Billy might decide to run for it after he landed if he lost contact with Roger’s stern but soothing voice.
“Whiskey Oscar, start your descent,” Roger instructed. Then he heard the King Air pilot notify EPIC of an impending landing and the likely location—followed by an EPIC advisory that local law enforcement was enroute.
“Papa, Whiskey Oscar. On final.”
“Copy Whiskey Oscar. Focus and relax. Focus and relax.”
“Copy, Papa.”
Meanwhile, the King Air pilot lagged higher up and farther back, hoping the gap would hide their engine noise and lure the ground crew into the open.
Down on the farm, Roger knew the DEA team would be locking and loading and as pumped with adrenalin as Billy and Joel and Dennis, the other Panther crewman.
Back at the airport, Sheriff Hargrove Pattimore parked his personal car behind a small hangar and waited for several deputies to join him. He didn’t know who was coming, but he relished the chance to cover his crooked tail in front of the feds. After all, he’d “rented” his facilities to several outlaw entrepreneurs in the area and it never hurt to bust somebody now and then, both for the good PR, and to put the outlaws on notice that using “his” facilities without payment was verboten—and these guys hadn’t paid. Pattimore listened to the approaching airplane and wondered if he’d get a chance to steal the load anyway.
“One minute to touchdown,” the King Air pilot reported to EPIC. “Is ground support in position?”
“Negative, Cowboy One. ETA unknown.”
Roger laughed at this good news. Joel had already told him the local muscle was waiting on the other side of the airport, so that meant the locals were incompetent, corrupt—or both.
Joel and Dennis lurked in the treeline 1,500 feet down the approach end of the runway, two small dirt bikes nearby, pointed the other direction. Like Billy, the two 19-year-olds knew only their own role in the operation. Roger had recruited them through friends not for their smuggling knowledge or criminal background (they had none) but because they grew up hunting and fishing in northern Georgia and knew its woods like the back of their hands. Just as importantly, they knew from their hunting experience when to stay calm and still—and when to explode into action.
Now they were still, like panthers waiting to strike, as they watched the dark silhouette of the descending Queen Air and tightened their grip on the tow handle of their “welcome mats,” two16-foot-long trains of two 4x8-foot plywood sheets tied together and pierced with hundreds of nails.
Billy settled below tree level. He turned on his landing lights, bounced the plane in hard and quickly turned them off. The moment he rolled past the boys, they dragged their welcome mats onto the asphalt, laid them end-to-end across the runway, then ran back to the woods and climbed on their bikes. Joel clipped his radio to his handlebars.
Behind him, the Queen Air stopped halfway down the runway.
“Whiskey Oscar to Papa,” called Billy, and Roger could hear the terror in his voice. “I’m down, landed I mean. I think they’re on me, but I can’t be sure. What do I—”
“Focus and relax, buddy,” Roger commanded calmly, “focus and relax and stay in your seat. Got it?”
“Shit! Shit!”
“Stay in your seat. Got it?”
“Got it.” Voice slightly calmer. “But what do I—”
“Just wait, Whiskey. Just wait.”
Sheriff Pattimore thought he heard the landing but dared not move until his backup arrived. Still, he pulled forward enough to see the King Air’s landing lights go on as the DEA plane dropped below the treetops—and cursed the tardiness of his men.
The King Air touched down lightly, then went dark again and the engines roared as the pilot reversed the props to slow down faster. Farther down the runway, Billy saw the King Air’s lights go out.
“They’re down! They’re down!” he shouted into his radio. “I’m outta here!”
Billy jammed the throttles to the firewall, and the two 400-horse piston engines hauled the Queen Air down the remaining runway.
Behind him, the King Air ran over Roger’s welcome mat. Nails shredded all three tires, and the crippled nose wheel dug into the asphalt, snapping the strut. The props gouged the runway and the plane screeched to a halt in a shower of sparks. In the forest near the runway, Joel and Dennis motored away, the sound of their dirt bikes drowned out by screaming turbines and tortured metal.
“Panther team to Papa,” said Joel into his radio as he followed Dennis through the woods. “Mission accomplished. Over.”
“Copy that, Panther. Great job. Out.”
Joel turned off his radio and followed Dennis, a satisfied smile curling his lips.
The Queen Air lurched from the runway into flight, stayed low and disappeared into the night.
Back on the farm, Roger heard Billy yell into the radio.
“I’m airborne! All clear, all good!” Roger pumped his fist again. Plan B had worked. Now to Plan C. He turned to another radio.
Back at the airfield, Sheriff Pattimore mistook Roger’s Queen Air for the DEA King Air making a go-around and gunned his car down the runway toward the crippled plane to make the bust and hopefully abscond with some product before the feds returned.
Over at the King Air, the DEA squad tumbled out of the side door, cursing and disoriented, dragging the pilot with them. One man tripped and fell. His submachine gun went off, sending rounds in Pattimore’s general direction. The sheriff saw the muzzle flashes and assumed that the drug smugglers were shooting at him, so he swerved off the runway and stopped, then grabbed his radio and took cover behind his car.
“Dopers got me pinned down with machine guns!” he shouted into his radio. “I need backup now!”
He peeked over the hood and saw heavily armed men around the wrecked plane and knew he was dead unless he threw them off balance—so even though he was out of range, he emptied his service revolver in their direction, then scrambled to his trunk for his shotgun and extra ammo.
The pistol rounds had the desired effect. The DEA agents hit the ground and the team leader fired back at the muzzle flashes he had seen, then ordered his men to retreat into the treeline while he laid down more covering fire.
At that moment, Sheriff Pattimore fired multiple buckshot rounds toward the DEA, adding to the urgency of their retreat and the fury of the team leader’s return fire.
The DEA team leader turned Pattimore’s car into Swiss cheese. Fuel leaked, and Pattimore ran for the woods on his side of the runway. Moments later, another round set off the fuel and the car exploded into a fireball. War had arrived in rural Georgia.
Meanwhile, the Queen Air flew serenely through the moonlight, high above and far from the fray, headed for its original destination near Rockwood, Tennessee. Roger had calmed Billy down and bucked him up by telling him his flying had lost the DEA tail.
“I feel like Sky King,” Billy had joked in response, confirming for Roger that the kid was back on a reasonably even keel.
The detour meant Billy would arrive near dawn at the airport on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, so when the horizon glowed on his right, he called Dave and Mike, the Rockwood ground crew waiting anxiously in a large white cargo van, already prepped by Roger on the new schedule.
As planned, Billy overflew the field at a high altitude so they could watch and listen for any following aircraft. After the Queen Air engine sounds faded into the distance, Mike confirmed that Billy was alone and called him in. Billy executed a quick descending turn back to the airport and landed quickly.
Now the whole team was charged up for the climax, and feeling antsy at having to finish the job in daylight. They snapped on latex gloves as Billy taxied behind a hangar and, like a NASCAR pit crew, moved without a wasted motion and started working before the plane had stopped.
Dave ran into the prop blast and dropped the air stairs, then guided Mike and his windowless cargo van back between the wing and the tail, stopped it at the threshold and climbed into the plane. With the engines still running on both vehicles, Mike set the brakes, ran around the back, grabbed four 16-gallon fuel containers from the van and set them by the wing.
Then he started catching bales from Dave and stacking them neatly in the van so they’d all fit. As the two veteran smugglers unloaded the plane, Billy sat at its controls, wound up and twitchy—again acting like a trapped animal.
Less than six minutes later, the van was full and the plane was empty. With thumping hearts and sweating bodies, Dave and Mike eyed each other proudly, then Mike dashed for the driver’s seat and Dave grabbed baby powder from his backpack and spread it on the bales to hide the smell. Then he shut and locked the doors, swept off the bumper, and gave Mike the “go” signal. Off went the van.
As Mike drove away, Dave checked his stopwatch: five minutes and 39 seconds, 21 seconds under the allotted time and just 16 seconds shy of their record. Then he plucked two fuel containers from the ground and poured them into the wing, being careful not to get shredded by the prop. He was done in a minute, repeated the procedure with the remaining fuel containers on the other wing tank, then tossed the empty containers inside the plane and jumped aboard.
“Hit it!” he yelled to Billy as he pulled the door shut and Billy taxied. Dave unslung his backpack, which had radios, a vacuum, and two crushed, empty coffee cups—the evidence of their presence.
Billy rolled onto the runway and gunned the engines and they were soon airborne. Dave put on a fresh pair of latex gloves and stripped the thick Visqueen liner that so perfectly fit the fuselage, stuffed it into a bag, sprinkled carpet freshener everywhere, then vacuumed the cabin until it was spotless.
“Is Mike clear?” he asked Billy when he was done. Billy’s eyes bulged as he realized that he’d forgotten a key element of the final phase—making sure the van had made it safely to the interstate so Roger could coordinate the unloading at its next stop. He grabbed the marine band handheld.
“Hey, buddy, how ya doing?” Billy asked.
“Gee, thanks for asking,” came the sarcasm-coated reply. “I’m good to go. Out.”
Dave shook his head at the greenhorn pilot as Billy set down the marine radio and keyed his control wheel mike.
“Whiskey Oscar to Papa, all good to go. Over.”
Down on the farm, Roger Nelson smiled at the news.
“Copy good to go, Whiskey. Good work. I’ll see you tomorrow. Out.”
Roger kicked back in his chair and looked out the window as the world woke up to a new day. He allowed himself a moment to enjoy the view, then turned back to his radios. The tricky part was over, but he still had one more thing to do before the gig was done.
“Tango, this is Papa. Over.”