Brown, Dale - Independent 02 by Hammerheads (v1.1) Page A

Oro, a
Panamanian-registered freighter—for several days. Almost from first contact
this freighter had aroused the Coast Guard’s suspicion. It had only recently
requested a berth at Galveston, but then had waited offshore just outside the
twelve-mile limit for the last two days— ostensibly so they could make room for
her at Galveston. There was plenty of room in the protected bays and
intracoastal waterways around Galveston for the vessel to anchor and for the
skipper to grant liberty to his crew, but the skipper could choose to wait
wherever he wanted. Then, just when a berth opened up, the Numestra skipper had radioed in that he had been ordered by his
parent company to take part of his cargo first to Mobile, then turn around and
head back for Galveston. True, it was not unheard of for a freighter to wait so
far offshore for a berth or suddenly change its port of call, but such moves
had alerted the Coast Guard.
                 Previously
the Numestra had been inspected by a
Coast Guard C-130 patrol plane while it was en route from Panama, orbiting over
the freighter long enough to verify its flag, its identification and speak to
the skipper by radio about his cargo and destination. It also had been briefly
inspected by a Coast Guard Island-class patrol vessel east of Nicaragua, but
the inspection of the ship’s documents, and cargo, were cursory. The Numestra, it seemed, was carrying a
mixed cargo—remanufactured engine blocks from Mexico, coffee and rattan
furniture from Brazil, scrap metal from Venezuela and the usual ferry mix of
cars, busses and a few passengers that made up the bulk of most freighter
manifest lists—none of the ferry passengers was of American citizenship. Its
decks and holds had been crammed with sealed forty-foot cargo containers, all
with the proper seals. The Coast Guard had the authority to open the containers
for inspection if permission was granted, but an Island-class boat had only
eighteen crewmen—hardly enough to carry out an extensive search of a larger
freighter.
                 After
inspection the Numestra was released
and the Coast Guard had relayed the information to the U.S. Customs Service,
which checked with the Numestra ’s
destination ports to verify that the ship was on legitimate business and that
the proper manifests had been filed for entry into the United States.
Everything checked. The next step would be to send a Customs Service cruiser
out to inspect the ship before it reached its port—presumably to expedite
clearance through Customs but really to check the ship again for contraband
before it had a chance to off-load. But because the Numestra stayed so far offshore Customs had not yet checked it
over.
                It was soon obvious that the Numestra had no intention of docking.
Any ship so reluctant to pull into an American port immediately came under suspicion,
and so the Resolute had been sent to
shadow the freighter. When the Resolute first caught up with Numestra well
outside the twelve-mile limit it had detected several other ships hovering near
the freighter. The smaller ships had immediately scattered when the Resolute moved within ten miles of the Numestra, which told Ehrlich and his
crew that the freighter’s surface-scanning radar had at least a ten-mile range
and that the freighter was receiving guests that didn’t want any run-ins with
the Coast Guard.
                 It
also told Ehrlich that the Numestra was very probably dealing in a cargo other than scrap metal and coffee—like
drugs.
                 Since
the Resolute’s HH-65 helicopter had
no night-tracking equipment Ehrlich had requested support from Coast Guard air
units out of New Orleans as well as a fast patrol boat. The patrol boat, he was
told, could not be spared but the C-130 would cruise by twice a day in its
patrols, and a scanner-equipped Falcon jet was assigned to operate with the Resolute for a few nights while the
freighter