Chapter 37

Friday June 2

We finally felt that we were ready. The Pickup Truck was already sailing in the general area, with the SDV in one of the holds. We spent one last night with our families and then flew out to the Pickup Truck.

We rested and napped while we sailed closer to the oil platform. Well after dark descended, we suited up, did a last-minute check of our gear, and then prepared ourselves mentally. After midnight, we brought out the SDV and lowered it into the water with the Aircrane. Toni coaxed Hunter back into the mini-sub and launched it. At 1 a.m., we climbed into the SDV, and found our breathing gear. With one final check, Zack submerged the SDV and headed for the platform. Toni was right behind us with an electronic tether so she could follow us.

Half an hour later, our forward momentum stopped. I could see lots of light above us, distorted by the water and moving waves. Beneath us were the huge, dark shapes of the ballast part of the platform, looking like huge submarines, each with three large legs jutting up from it. Above that in front of us was another large, dark, looming shape that I guessed was one of the platform’s legs.

Zack looked back at me expectantly in the refracted light from the surface and I gave him a “thumbs up” indicating no immediate danger. Still ten feet underwater, I held my breath as I watched the dark shadows of Zack and Austin slowly rise.

After a minute at most, although it felt much longer, Zack flashed his light into the depths to signal everyone. I rose the last ten feet to the surface, spear gun at the ready, and made my way to the ladder. The tableau before me looked like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie. I felt like a microbe on an Erector Set tower. The monstrous platform was built atop nine huge legs, each at least twenty feet in diameter. The center leg on the north side of the platform held the only staircase that reached the water, as well as a small, floating dock.

The platform above our heads was solid except for a large square hole near the south end where the drill was busy boring its way into the ocean floor. Despite it being the middle of the night, the platform was still drilling. With the cost of leasing and operating a drilling platform running hundreds of thousands of dollars each day (if you didn’t buy it outright), time was literally money.

The surveillance the government had done for us confirmed that the crew changed shifts at midnight. Interviews with the former crew led us to believe that the men who got off work would all be asleep by 1:00 or 1:30, hence our 1:30 raid.

Zack watched the stairs while Austin removed his wetsuit. When he finished, Zack stripped his wetsuit off while Austin watched the stairs. I handed Zack the rope to the equipment bag and he pulled it up while I climbed out of the water, followed by my shadow, Robert. We removed our wetsuits and dressed in our BDUs with body armor. After putting on a vest and a combat harness, we donned dry work boots and the rest of our weapons. We quietly climbed the stairs, waiting near the top while the rest of our team exited the water onto the small landing to do the same.

I was on point with Robert on my right and Zack on my left. “Still clear,” I whispered into my radio.

We crouched on the stairs below the stairwell-sized opening through the deck. Above us, a metal railing blocked three sides of the opening, and a chain spanned the fourth side to keep someone from accidentally falling down the stairs.

“One person coming our way from the right,” I warned, feeling Robert pulling me back so I was behind him. He knelt on the steps ahead of me while I stood ready with my paintball gun over his right shoulder. Zack and Austin made their way off the stairs onto the platform above us to find someplace to hide. Austin had his mini crossbow ready, and Zack had his K-Bar.

“From my right side in three, two, one, now,” I counted down as I followed the source of trouble that reached the opening above us.

“Que...” was the only sound the guy made, besides a quiet, grunt as Zack slammed the guy’s head into a steel wall. Fortunately, the constant noise from the drilling covered it.

“Still quiet,” I assured everyone, so they knew we hadn’t been discovered yet. Austin checked the guy’s pulse and used one of the auto-injectable syringes of sedative on him to make sure he stayed out for at least two hours. Then he hogtied him with the heavy zip ties we brought. If we weren’t done in two hours, they would surely know we were here, and it wouldn’t matter if our prisoners were still quiet. We dragged the guy down one flight of stairs to the landing and left him there, shackled to the railing. After counting heads to make sure everyone was on the dock, Robert tossed the guy’s machete and it hit the water below us with a “plunk.”

“One down, fifteen or more to go,” Zack let everyone know. We were hoping that we only had to deal with sixteen Cartel enforcers, but had to assume the other hundred men aboard the drilling rig were hostile.

By the time the guy was secure, everyone except Toni and Leonard were up with us. Toni was still on the bottom landing with Hunter, letting him sniff and spritz to reward him for being good while cooped up in the mini-sub. Leonard was there, waiting for us to take over control of the rig. Then he’d make sure everything was running properly until we got a crew here. The skeleton replacement crew was still aboard the Pickup Truck waiting to come over in the Zodiacs we had ready for them. They would approach from the side opposite the other platform so they weren’t seen.

I only felt six more sources of active danger, but I could still feel the other nine whom I assumed were asleep. Zack left two people guarding the stairs and the rest of us continued, just like in our practice runs. Zack led seven others toward the radio shack and the control room. I led the rest towards the crew’s quarters. I could feel that we had two guards to deal with when we got there.

When we got to the ladder that led down from the top level, we left three people hiding while they guarded the ladder. So far, everything was going the way we had practiced it. We made it down a level to the door that was the entrance to the hallway in the crew’s living quarters without encountering anyone else. I could feel one guard just inside the door, and another farther down the hall, probably at the far end of the hallway.

I was encouraged because if the Cartel guarded the men who were sleeping, it meant that the men were here involuntarily, and the guards were here to keep the men on the platform, not to keep others off.

After I snuck a quick peek through the small window in the door, the others did the same. Austin and Brianna would use their paintball guns in hopes of stunning or knocking the far guard out. If not, Robert was ready with his compound bow. He used fiberglass arrow shafts and bronze arrowheads.

Jacob and I had our paintball guns ready for the nearest guard. “Team two in position and ready. We have two guards to deal with,” I radioed. Now we waited for Zack’s team to get into position, ready to take the bridge and radio room.

“Bridge team ready with one guard,” Zack radioed a couple anxious minutes later.

“Radio room ready, also with a single guard,” Berto radioed a minute later.

“Team two still ready,” I confirmed.

“On my count, three, two one, go!” Zack ordered.

Silas opened the door, staying behind it and out of our line of fire.

“DEA, we have a warrant,” I warned the closest guard, but not loud enough for anyone in one of the rooms down the hall to hear. I doubt that he heard more than “DE” before he was hit with the paintballs. He was close enough that they stunned him enough for me to cover his mouth while Jacob administered the auto-injectable syringe of sedative and secured him with the zip ties. By the time Jacob had finished, the guy was out cold.

The guard down the hall wasn’t as fortunate. The paintballs stunned him, but not enough, so Robert put an arrow in his chest and quieted him permanently.

“Bridge secure,” Zack reported.

“Radio room secure,” Berto ordered.

“Hallway outside of the sleeping quarters secure,” I reported.

“Stairwell team, accompany Leonard to the bridge,” Zack ordered.

While we waited for Leonard to get to the bridge, I positioned people outside the doors of the four rooms where the eight Cartel guards were sleeping and marked the four doors. I also made sure that the three remaining guards who were awake weren’t alarmed about anything.

“The rooms of the eight sleeping Cartel men are guarded. The two cartel men on the top deck are unalarmed. One is still patrolling the perimeter slowly and the other is stationary. The final one of the eight that should be on duty seems to be asleep somewhere else on this floor, maybe the infirmary,” I informed everyone.

“The bridge is now manned and guarded. Jim, find that last guard down there and then join me to go topside,” Zack radioed. Robert followed me as I made my way through the narrow corridors. On the way, we met four workers that we had to secure. Gratefully, they didn’t seem to be very concerned about warning the Cartel guards. They seemed to be afraid, and maybe even a little thankful. We left them bound and sedated, stuffed into any small room we could find.

Sure enough, the eighth Cartel guard was asleep in the infirmary, sitting in a chair that reclined slightly with his feet up on the workstation. He never knew what hit him when Robert and I sedated and secured him. Five minutes later, we found Zack. He had left two people on the bridge and two in the radio room before sending the others to help secure the sleeping quarters.

We climbed the stairs up to the top level capturing two more workers that we left sedated like the others. Once we were near the top of the stairs, I determined where the two remaining guards were. One would walk right by us in about three minutes. The other was in some sort of tower, about fifty feet away.

I found a spot and hid where neither the guard in the tower nor the patrolling guard could see me. Zack and Robert covered the tower guard while we waited for the patrolling guard to pass me. The top deck was busy with lots of men moving around doing different jobs. Even though it was the middle of the night, the lights provided sufficient illumination to see what you were doing.

One worker came from a different direction and finally noticed me when he was only a couple feet away. His eyes widened in surprise, and widened further when he saw the gun. “No, Señor, no uses la Pistola,” he whispered anxiously.

“Pistola de bolas con pintura,” I whispered back, pointing at the gun, and then motioning for him to be quiet. I motioned for him to go down the stairs and breathed again when he went quietly.

He was just going down the stairs when the guard walked by. With the guard looking at the descending worker, he was easy to knock out. “My guard is secure. The tower guard is the final one,” I radioed as I sedated and began hogtying my man.

The tower guard collapsed when Robert hit him with the first arrow. Zack hit him three times with paintballs. Robert rushed to the tower to check on him while Zack and I made our presence known on the main deck. Within a couple of minutes, it was clear that the workers were glad to be free of the Cartel. They were, however, worried about their families in Matamoros. The Cartel kept an eye on them and had threatened to kill them if the men didn’t do a good job on the drilling rig.

While my Spanish was passable, Zack’s Spanish was much better than mine was and he quickly calmed them down, promising that we would find a way to get their families back. Several men insisted that we NOT use the Mexican Army troops as too many of them were on the payroll of the Cartels and the Cartel would find out.

Back down on the first deck, the four rooms where the Cartel guards were sleeping were raided one at a time, and all eight guards were captured and immediately hogtied and sedated.

The skeleton crew aboard the Pickup Truck was brought aboard to help operate the platform. Since we only had enough men to shut the platform down, the willingness of the current crew to continue working allowed us to continue drilling. Along with the replacement crew were ten handlers and their dogs to guard the platform while we went to the second platform.

Toni brought Hunter up to search for drugs, a mostly superfluous undertaking now. The workers eagerly showed us the storage areas for the drugs, as well as thousands of guns.

When the Cartel guards finally regained consciousness, it was time to get some answers. I’d asked several workers about the other platform, and they were all sure that there were no Cartel workers over there. The Cartel had a hard enough time finding men willing to fly out here for two weeks at a time that they couldn’t get men for both platforms. Besides, they only needed one platform to conduct their illicit business.

The head Cartel guy even gave up the number of the account that the money they got for the oil went into each month. I immediately went online to check the account, but someone had already emptied it since the last oil pickup two weeks ago.

The Zodiacs had returned with more DEA and ATF agents, and we left the platform in their capable hands and those of my handlers while we took the Zodiacs over to the second platform. The Pickup Truck was angling closer to the second platform but wouldn’t come alongside until we verified that there were no Cartel guards on the other platform.

Arriving by Zodiac was much noisier than via submarine, and the crew heard us coming and told us to stay away. Since I didn’t feel any danger from the platform, we told them we were from the DEA and gave them a number to contact. Several minutes later, they finally let us come aboard unchallenged.

“We had a sneaking suspicion that they were smuggling,” the head guy said. “Unfortunately, we also knew that making comments like that could get us dead.”

ATF and DEA agents were soon swarming over the second platform as well, along with half of my handlers and their dogs. By the time they finished, they hadn’t found so much as a single joint on the second rig. “Alcohol, weapons, and drugs will get you kicked off a rig and blacklisted faster than anything,” the top man on the rig explained.

Mindful of the government’s suggestion that they would sell me everything for a reasonable offer, I returned to the first platform and spoke with Leonard about how much everything was worth. “Each drilling rig is worth at least $500 million. Add in the tract lease, the FSO (Floating production, storage, and offloading facility), and more than a million gallons of oil already aboard the FSO, two billion will probably be the opening bid the government sets. With all the bad press from the BP blowout, it might go for less, but I doubt it. Oil companies know people keep buying gasoline,” he explained.

“Two billion?” I sputtered. He just nodded amusedly.

“If you do buy it, I insist that everything be maintained properly and safely,” he warned. “I won’t drill if I don’t think it’s safe. I know these rigs cost a hundred thousand dollars a day to lease and to operate, but the safety of everyone aboard is my primary concern. The safety of the platform is my secondary concern. How much profit you make on the oil we pump is way down on my list of priorities.”

“As it should be,” I agreed. “I’m not sure I want to tie up two billion dollars in a new venture, especially since I don’t know the first thing about drilling for oil,” I admitted. “I’ll still look at it, though,” I promised.

“If you keep it, you’ll need to do something about the undocumented workers. Only twenty-two of the men on this platform want to go home. The rest want to stay and work, especially for an American company. Someone needs to light a fire under the Mexican government, though, and get their families away from the Cartel,” he reminded me.

Zack left Austin in charge of the troops we left on the first rig and Sean in charge of everyone on the second rig. He and Robert accompanied me back to the Pickup Truck that was now positioned next to the rig where DEA and ATF agents were loading pallets of cocaine, pot, and weapons aboard the ship for transport back to New Orleans where they would deal with it.

I called Roland White to let him know about the Mexican workers aboard the platform, the danger they would be in if they returned, and the danger their families would be in once the Cartel learned about the raid.

Zack got a phone call an hour later and answered a lot of questions with one or two-word answers. “Let me ask, and I’ll call you back,” he said and hung up.

“If we tell the Mexican government, they’ll send the Army. Enough members of the Army are in the pockets of the Cartel that the family members will be dead before the Army gets there. They want to know if we think we can sneak in at night and extract the families,” he explained.

“Rats,” I replied, and then found Leonard again. “How many of these men are single, and how many have families that are in danger?” I asked.

“Fifty-seven men are single, including the ones who want to return to Mexico. That leaves forty-three families in danger,” he said after looking over the list of personnel he had spent much of the day compiling. I thanked him and turned back to Zack.

“Forty-three families,” I repeated.

“We don’t have that many Zodiacs, although we could probably get more quickly,” Zac surmised.

“All we have to do is get the people to the airport. We can fly everyone out. They should all be able to make the flight to the ranch. We don’t have customs at the ranch,” I suggested.

“I still don’t know how we’ll get that many families to the airport without the Cartel finding out,” Zack sighed. “Let me ask Berto. He grew up along the border and still has relatives in Mexico. Maybe he can suggest something,” Zack offered.

Berto did have a solution, but we had to act quickly. He called and told his father about the problem, receiving assurances that everything would be ready for us. I called the ranch and talked to the head pilot who also agreed to facilitate part of the solution by chartering two 727 jets for us to use.

We explained to the security team what we intended to do. Lest we be too obvious, we limited the team to four people. Only Robert, Robert’s cousin Jeff, and Berto would accompany me when we staged the raid. Zack would ferry us to the beach and would return the Zodiac so there would be no sign of our arrival. One of the helicopters flew us into New Orleans where the C-20 met us, and flew us to Brownville where we napped, waiting for our Blackhawk to make the flight from the ranch.

At 2300 Saturday, we boarded the Blackhawk at a nearby military base. It took us east, and then south over the Gulf. I had to close my eyes because the pilot was skimming the surface of the Gulf less than five feet above the biggest swells. Two miles offshore from Matamoros, we eased the Zodiac into the water and climbed in. As we turned the bow west towards the beach, the Blackhawk left. It would land and refuel before returning for Zack after he dropped us off at the beach.

Zack guided us unerringly to our beach rendezvous and the four of us climbed out and waded ashore. Our ride was waiting nervously for us, and we quickly climbed into the beat-up Chevy while Berto and the driver, one of his cousins, hugged. Twenty minutes later, we were inside his cousin’s home where their large family greeted and hosted us graciously. Having slept in far worse places while hunting or in the military, their living room floor worked fine for us to sleep.

We were awake and ready to go by 0600. Each of us went with a different member of the family to our assigned church and assigned bus. Berto’s cousin had rented four old buses, like school buses, yesterday and left one in the parking lot of each of the four different churches that the men’s families attended. Some families arrived in cars while others walked to church. By 0700, everyone who was supposed to be aboard my bus was there. I could only shake my head at the sight of ninety-seven people crammed into one bus, along with any belongings that didn’t fit in the storage compartment.