Shane nodded purposefully, riveted on her CO. Wilson then turned to Macho.
“Macho, when we go back aboard, where is Shane going to bunk?”
That morning Macho had expected to pick up a guy at the airport, so, on the way back, she had given this some thought.
“We have an open bunk in my stateroom, sir. Probably there.”
“Great. Well, okay. Welcome aboard, Shane. It’s good to have you in the squadron.” Wilson stood to shake hands.
Beaming, Shane replied, “Thank you, sir!” Welcomed as a full-fledged and vital member of the Firebirds, she accepted his outstretched hand.
Macho, who had a plan in mind, then spoke. “C’mon, and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the guys. They are probably down at the pool. Do you have a swimsuit?”
Shane appeared uneasy. “Yes, I do, but….”
“Great, let’s get changed! Please excuse us, sir.”
Wilson nodded. As the women left, he sensed Shane’s unease with meeting her squadronmates in a swimsuit and wondered if he should stop them.
CHAPTER 5
At that moment, one thousand miles to the west, Enrique Martinez had to take a leak.
Pounding over the choppy seas at 80 kilometers an hour, the cigarette boat transferred continuous rapid-fire shocks to his spinal cord. They were taking a toll, especially after their mid-point “meal” aboard the trawler some forty minutes earlier. At this rate they were three hours from landfall at Banco Chinchorro, an atoll just north of the Belize coast, and the weather looked to hold. How he wanted a shower. After they’d spent hours loading product into the hold and forward sleeping compartment, the sonofabitch Pablo said the boat was out of balance and had to be reloaded.
All that work for nothing. And Pablo just stands there pointing his finger while we break our freakin’ backs.
The men had to take it all out, then load it back in. And as soon as it was secure, Pablo got spooked by headlights on the wharf and frantically motioned for them to shove off. Now!
Enrique hated Pablo and all the fancy-suited narcotraficales with their gold chains and thick-necked muscle, who pushed him and his partner, Jorge, like dogs. We are the ones taking the risk out here. Pablo and his prositutas just sat around the pool until the next shipment. Middlemen, that’s all they were, and Enrique was filled with contempt for them, all of them. Ashore the campesinos grew old before their time with the drudgery of cultivating and harvesting product, and now he and Jorge risked their lives on the open ocean or, if caught, in prison. And the pigs — like Pablo — take a big cut and do nothing. They are the ones who should be in prison, the bastards.
Enrique scanned the horizon before his face was lashed with spray. Wiping the water off with his right hand, he held the wheel with his left. Even in the open cockpit of a boat with over 40 knots of wind, he could smell the familiar odor of marijuana wafting up from the cabin door next to him.
“Jorge. Jorge!” Enrique yelled to his partner below.
Jorge stumbled to the hatch and looked up at Enrique with squinty eyes, a lighted joint in his hands. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Take the wheel. I need to piss.”
Disgusted, Jorge stepped up from the cabin and hung on to the railing as the boat pounded each swell. Once he got on deck, he flicked the half-smoked joint over the side and scanned northwest toward the bouncing bow.
“Just hold this heading. Haven’t seen anything since we left the damn barco.”
“Si. Si. Just go below and take your piss. And hurry the fuck up.”
Enrique grunted and got out of the chair as Jorge grabbed the wheel. Though the men had known each other for years and crewed these boats before, they were not friends. Their frayed nerves, due to lack of sleep, coupled with the constant pounding of the choppy sea, did nothing to improve their moods.
Eat shit, Enrique thought as he went below. He’d had enough of Jorge’s pissy attitude for today. His partner had been a complete ass to the mujer on the “trawler,” probably the ugliest woman Enrique had ever seen, but she had made them sandwiches as the boat was fueled. Cold sandwiches! Enrique thought. We are making millions of dollars, and we can’t afford at least a hot meal at sea on a decrepit fishing boat? His thoughts then returned to Pablo. He wished Pablo could at least assign one of his idiot whores to make the sandwiches so they didn’t have to look at the stomach-turning fish-wife on the trawler. Cold freakin’ sandwiches. Still, Jorge didn’t have to be mean to her. He then put the thought out of his mind,
Three more hours and he would have his wad of hundred dollar bills and a hot shower. Then a hot meal, Bistec Encebollado with vino and rum. Without Jorge, the prick. And a chica bonita for the night. Then sleep. As he swayed in the stuffy compartment to the boat’s heaving and rolling, he thought he might make sleep his first choice.
Lieutenant Mark scanned the horizon and picked up the wake. “Got it,” he murmured over the ICS, alerting the three other crewmen they had a visual on their quarry.
His co-pilot, Lieutenant Todd, studying the Forward Looking Infrared display, lifted his head. As the Helicopter Aircraft Commander of the MH-60S Seahawk, Todd wanted to work them into an optimum firing angle for the Hellfire missile hanging from the “wing” off his left shoulder. He saw a faint white smudge, about seven miles distant, that pulsed from left to right as the boat heaved up and down on the waves at high speed.
“Great, let’s fall off left and come up his starboard quarter. Take us down to fifty.”
“Roger,” Mark acknowledged and smoothly rolled the aircraft left. He allowed it to descend to 50 feet above the waves, a dangerous altitude that required his full attention to maintain.
The data link steering from the E-2 overhead was tight, and Todd toggled back to the MIDS display on the tactical page glass cockpit display. The smugglers’ support vessel, designated as track number 1182, was approximately forty miles southeast. Knowing such vessels were typically disguised as fishing trawlers, he made a mental note of a rough heading and distance to it after they completed their task here. With the track ball he “hooked” the cigarette boat, track 1147, an action that gave Mark a steering cue on his display. He then went back to the FLIR, placed the cursors on the bouncing white slash, and designated it. Once the FLIR was tracking the infrared image of the boat, he transmitted over the radio, “Tango Lima, track one-one-four-seven is captured.”
“Roger, Delta Charlie,” the E-2 controller answered. “Captured. Do you have VID?”
“Affirm, appears to be moonshine,” Todd answered, using the code word for smuggler.