"If she is found guilty, Senor Barrow, what would be the sentence?"
"Hard to say, of course. Depends on mitigating evidence, if any; my own advocacy; the judge on the day. But I fear in the present mood it might be felt necessary to create an example. A deterrent. In the area of twenty years in a federal penitentiary. Thank heavens her parents are not around to see it."
Julio Luz moaned. Barrow took pity.
"Of course, the picture could be transformed if she became an informant. We call it 'plea bargaining.' The DEA does trade deals for insider information to catch the much bigger fish. Now, if…"
"She cannot," moaned Luz. "She knows nothing. She is truly innocent."
"Ah well, then… such a pity."
Luz was being quite truthful. He alone knew what the jailed young woman's father did, and he certainly did not dare to tell her. MAY SLIPPED into June, and Global Hawk Michelle silently glided and turned over the eastern and southern Caribbean, seeming like a real hawk to ride the thermals on an endless quest for prey. This was not the first time.
In the spring of 2006, a joint Air Force/DEA program had put a Global Hawk over the Caribbean from a base in Florida. It was a Maritime Demonstration Program, and short-term. In its brief time aloft, the Hawk managed to monitor hundreds of sea and air targets. It was enough to convince the Navy that BAMS, or Broad Aspect Maritime Surveillance, was the future, and it placed a huge order.
But the Navy was thinking Russian fleet, Iranian gunboats, North Korean spy ships. The DEA was thinking cocaine smugglers. The trouble was, in 2006 the Hawk could show what it could show, but no one knew which was which, the innocent and the guilty. Thanks to Juan Cortez the wonder-welder, the authorities now had Lloyd's-listed cargo ships by name and tonnage. Close to forty of them.
At AFB Creech, Nevada, shifts of men and women watched Michelle's screen, and every two or three days her tiny onboard computers would make a match-pitting the "Identi-Kit" deck layout provided by Jeremy Bishop against the deck of something moving far below.
When Michelle made a match, Creech would call the shabby warehouse in Anacostia to say:
"Team Cobra. We have the MV Mariposa. She is coming out of the Panama Canal into the Caribbean."
Bishop would acknowledge, and punch up details of the Mariposa on her present voyage. Cargo heading for Baltimore. She might have taken on a consignment of cocaine in Guatemala or at sea. Or maybe not yet. She might be taking her cocaine right into Baltimore itself or dropping it to a speedboat by dead of night somewhere in the vast blackness of Chesapeake Bay. Or she might not be carrying at all.
"Shall we alert Baltimore customs? Or the Maryland Coast Guard?" asked Bishop.
"Not yet" was the answer.
It was not Paul Devereaux's habit to explain to underlings. He kept his logic to himself. If searchers went straight to the secret place, or even made a pretense of finding it with dogs, after two or three successful discoveries the coincidences would be too neat for the cartel to ignore.
He did not want to make intercepts or hand them gift-wrapped to others once the cargo had landed. He was prepared to leave the American and European importing gangs to the local authorities. His target was the Brotherhood, and they took the "hit" directly only if the intercept was at sea, before handover and change of ownership.
As was his habit from the old days when the opponent was the KGB and its satellite goons, he studied his enemy with extreme care. He pored over the wisdom of Sun-tzu as expressed in the Ping-fa, the Art of War. He revered the old Chinese sage whose repeated advice was "Study your enemy."
Devereaux knew who headed the Brotherhood, and he had studied Don Diego Esteban, landowner, gentleman, Catholic scholar, philanthropist, cocaine lord and killer. He knew he had one advantage that would not last forever. He knew about the Don, but the Don knew nothing of the waiting Cobra.
On the other side of South America, right out over the Brazilian coast, Global Hawk Sam had also been patrolling the stratosphere. Everything it saw was sent to a screen in Nevada and then patched to the computers at Anacostia. The merchant vessels were much fewer. Trade by big carriers from South America due east to West Africa was slimmer. What there was was photographed, and though the vessels' names were usually out of sight from 60,000 feet, their images were compared to the files of the MOAC in Lisbon, the UN's ODC in Vienna and the British SOCA in Accra, Ghana.
Five matches could be given names that were on the Cortez list. The Cobra stared at Bishop's screens and promised himself their time would come.
And there was something else Sam noticed and recorded. Airplanes left the Brazilian coast heading due east or northeast for Africa. The commercials were not many and not a problem. But every profile was sent to Creech and then Anacostia. Jeremy Bishop quickly identified them all by type, and a pattern emerged.
Many of them had not the range. They would not make the distance. Unless they had been internally modified. Global Hawk Sam was given fresh instructions. Refueled at the air base on Fernando de Noronha, it went back up and concentrated on the smaller aircraft.
Working backward, as from the rim of a bicycle wheel down the spokes to the hub, Sam established they almost all came from a huge estancia deep inland from the city of Fortaleza. Maps of Brazil from space, the images sent back by Sam and discreet checks within the office of land management at Belem identified the ranch. It was called Boa Vista. THE AMERICANS got there first, as they had the longest cruise ahead of them. Twelve of them flew into Goa International Airport masquerading as tourists in mid-June. Had anyone delved deep into their baggage, which no one did, the searcher would have found that, by a remarkable coincidence, all twelve were fully qualified as merchant seamen. In truth, they were the same U.S. Navy crew that had originally brought the grain vessel now converted into the MV Chesapeake. A coach hired by McGregor brought them down the coast to the Kapoor shipyard.
The Chesapeake was waiting, and as there was no accommodation inside the yard they went straight on board for a long sleep. The next morning they began two days of intensive familiarization.
The senior officer, the new captain, was a Navy commander, and his first officer one rank down. There were two lieutenants and the other eight ran from chief petty officer down to rating. Each specialist concentrated on his individual kingdom: bridge, engine room, galley, radio shack, deck and hatch covers.
It was when they penetrated the five huge grain holds that they stopped in amazement. There was a complete Special Forces barracks down there, all without portholes or natural daylight and therefore all invisible from the outside. At sea, they were told, they would have no call to come forward from their own quarters. The SEALs would fix their own chow and generally look after themselves.
The crew would confine themselves to the ship's normal crew quarters, which were more spacious and more comfortable than they would have had, for example, on a destroyer.
There was a double-bunked guest cabin, purpose unknown. If the SEAL officers wished to confer with the bridge, they would walk belowdecks through four watertight doors connecting the holds and then upward into the daylight.
They were not told, because they did not need to know, or not yet, why the hold nearest the bow was a sort of jail to take prisoners. But they were definitely shown how to remove the hatch covers over two of the five holds to bring their contents up into action. This exercise they would practice repeatedly on their long cruise; partly to while away the hours, partly until they could do it in double time and in their sleep.