When he had finished, and assured Dexter there was not a single one more that he had worked on, his list comprised seventy-eight ships. And by the fact he had been summoned to create ultra-secret compartments in them, every one a coke smuggler.
CHAPTER 7
IT WAS FORTUNATE FOR CAL DEXTER THAT JEREMY Bishop’s social life was as busy as a bomb site. He had spent Easter feigning jollity in a country hotel, so when Dexter apologetically mentioned he had urgent work that would need the computer genius at his data banks, it was like a ray of sunshine.
“I have the names of some ships,” said Dexter. “Seventy-eight in all. I need to know all about them. How big, type of cargo, owner, if possible, but probably a shell company. Handling agent, present charter and, above all, location. Where are they now?
“You had better become a trading company, or a virtual one, with cargoes that need transporting. Inquire of the handling agents. When you have traced one of the seventy-eight, drop the charter inquiry. Wrong tonnage, wrong place, wrong availability. Whatever. Just tell me where they are and what they look like.”
“I can do better,” said the happy Bishop. “I can probably get you pictures of them.”
“From above?”
“From above? Looking down?” Bishop asked.
“Yep.”
“That is not the angle ships are usually pictured.”
“Just try. And concentrate on those plying routes between the western/southern Caribbean and ports in the U.S. and Europe.”
Within two days, Jeremy Bishop, sitting contentedly at his array of keyboards and screens, had located twelve of the ships named by Juan Cortez. He passed Dexter the details so far. All were in the Caribbean Basin, either proceeding from it or heading to it.
Dexter knew some of those named by the welder would never show up on commercial shipping lists. They were scabby old fishing boats or tramps below the tonnage that the commercial world would bother about. Finding the last two categories would be the hard part but vital.
The big freighters could be denounced to the local customs at port of destination. They would probably have taken on a shipment of cocaine out at sea and possibly been relieved of it in the same manner. But they could still be impounded if the sniffer dogs detected residual traces in the secret hiding places on board, which they probably would.
The vessels that so frustrated Tim Manhire and his analysts in Lisbon were the smaller smugglers emerging from the mangroves and docking at timber jetties along West African creeks. It turned out that twenty-five of the “Cortez list” were logged by Lloyd’s; the rest were below the radar. Still, twenty-five taken out of use would blow a huge hole in the cartel’s shipping reserve. But not yet. The Cobra was not ready yet. But the TR-1s were.
MAJOR JOÃO MENDOZA, Brazilian Air Force, retired, flew into Heathrow at the beginning of May. Cal Dexter met him outside the doors of the customs hall of Terminal 3. Recognition was not a problem; he had memorized the face of the former fast-jet pilot.
Six months earlier, Major Mendoza had been the result of a long and painstaking search. At one point, Dexter had found himself at lunch in London with a former chief of Air Staff, Royal Air Force. The air chief marshal had considered his main question long and hard.
“I don’t think so,” he said finally. “Out of a clear blue sky, eh? No warning? I think our chaps might have a bit of a problem with that. A conscience issue. I don’t think I could recommend anyone to you.”
It was the same response Dexter had gotten from a two-star general, USAF, also retired, who had flown F-15 Eagles in the first Gulf War.
“Mind you,” said the Englishman as they parted, “there is one Air Force that will blow a cocaine smuggler out of the sky without compunction. The Brazilians.”
Dexter had trawled the São Paulo community of retired Air Force pilots and finally found João Mendoza. He was in his mid-forties and had flown Northrop Grumman F5E Tigers before retiring to help run his father’s business as the old man became frailer with age. But his efforts had not availed. In the economic collapse of 2009, the company had gone into receivership.
Without easily marketable skills, João Mendoza had gravitated to any office job and regretted ever leaving flying. And he still grieved for the kid brother whom he had almost raised after their mother died and their father worked fifteen hours a day. While the pilot had been at his fighter base in the north, the youth had fallen into the company of the gutter and died of an overdose. João never forgot and he never forgave. And the offered
fee was huge.
Dexter had a hired car, and he drove the Brazilian north to that flat county by the North Sea whose lack of hills and position on the east coast had made it, during World War II, such a natural for bomber bases. Scampton had been one of them. Through the Cold War, it had been the home of part of the V-bomber force, carrying the UK’s atomic bombs.
By 2011 it was host to a number of nonmilitary enterprises, among them a group of enthusiasts who were slowly restoring two Blackburn Buccaneers. They had the pair up to fast-taxiing level but not yet airborne. Then they had been diverted, for a fee that solved many of their problems, to the converting of a South African Bucc that Guy Dawson had flown up from Thunder City four months earlier.
Most of the Buccaneer enthusiasts’ group were not and never had been fast-jet fliers. They were the riggers and fitters, the electricians and engineers, who had maintained the Buccs when they flew either for the Navy or the RAF. They lived locally, giving up their weekends and evenings to toil away, bringing the two salvaged veterans back to the air again.
Dexter and Mendoza spent the night at a local hostelry, an old coaching inn, with dark low beams and roaring logs, with glinting horse brasses and hunting prints that fascinated the Brazilian. In the morning, they motored over to Scampton to meet the team. There were fourteen of them, all engaged by Dexter with the Cobra’s money. Proudly they showed the Bucc’s new pilot what they had done.
The main change was the fitting of the guns. In its Cold War days, the Buccaneer had carried a range of ordnance suitable for a light bomber and especially a ship killer. While a warplane, her internal and under-wing payload had been a frightening variety of bombs and rockets, up to and including tactical atom bombs.
In the version Major Mendoza examined that spring day in a drafty hangar in Lincolnshire, all this payload had been converted to fuel tanks, giving her an impressive range or hours of “loiter” time. With one exception.
Although the Bucc had never been an interceptor fighter, the ground crew’s instructions had been clear. She had now been fitted with guns.