Cartel Connection

By Don Beverly

In the second of the Jake McCall series of adventure novels, Don Beverly focuses on the smuggling activities of the Mexican cartels as they capitalize on the vacuum created along the extended and porous west coast of Florida by the politically driven obsession of law enforcement with the southwest and Rio Grande River. Unwittingly, McCall and his veteran fellow FBI agent, John Reed, unearth the existence of an extremely dangerous double agent whose obsession with assassinating the killer of his younger brother exposes him to almost certain death without their protection. The chase begins when security of the nuclear power plant at Crystal River, Florida, becomes a red herring used to distract attention from the old historic cross state barge canal used as a pipeline by the smugglers of drugs and illegals, literally beneath the condensation plumes from the plant's cooling towers. As the cartel war rages on, Jake and the other two eventually find themselves fighting for their lives on the southwest coast of Cuba and ultimately back east to Great Harbor Cay in the Bahamas. Just as you think things have settled down for McCall and his team, another unexpected event erupts and the chances of their survival threatened. All does not end well for some.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Beverly
• Release date: Mar 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9780986000904

Don Beverly

Don Beverly grew up on the shores of Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County, Florida, graduated from Vanderbilt University and the University of Florida Law School, beginning his career in Miami as a trial lawyer. He ultimately moved to West Palm Beach where he practices today, according to him, "as little as possible", while he pursues his lifelong love of writing, particularly about his own life experiences, which are numerous. Beverly, known to his beloved wife, Molly, and his many friends simply as "DB", has achieved national prominence as a lawyer, has over five thousand hours as a pilot, has won a multitude of state and national cutting horse championships, enjoys skiing when at his home in Fairplay, Colorado, and operating his high-performance airboat in the Florida Everglades. During this multi-faceted career Beverly has written many articles about his interests as well as academic subjects, including successive editions of his legal treatise, Florida Trial Evidence. He has also served as a Director on the Boards of Chris Craft, Inc., the National Cutting Horse Association, Kirkwood Ski Resort, Inc., the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, the trial section of The Florida Bar, and as frequent Chair of the Professional Ethics Committee of The Florida Bar. Beverly was named South Florida's "Best Lawyer'' in the January, 1992, issue of Palm Beach Life.In his Jake McCall Adventure Series, Don Beverly calls upon his vast personal reservoir of knowledge and experience to take a shot at the bureaucratic shenanigans which have irreparably wounded his beloved Everglades while weaving incredibly well-researched but exciting tales populated by colorful and credible characters against the backdrop of an astounding wetlands geography and environment seldom seen by humans. Beverly’s books easily earn the description "page turner", but at the same time, not always so subtly, communicate messages of national consciousness not to be disregarded.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Security expert Jake McCall is unexpectedly dispatched by Learjet to evaluate a suspected terrorist plot thought to be threatening the Crystal River nuclear power plant, located on the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent to the ill-fated old Florida cross state barge canal. In order to evade the spotlight on the western border between the U.S. and Mexico, the Mexican cartels have begun using the old navigable canal as an unattended entryway for smuggling illegal immigrants and drugs into Florida, unaware that their cartel connection is a double agent whose identity is inadvertently discovered by McCall and his associates. A coalition quickly develops between Jake's team and the double agent, a huge and powerful man known to the Mexicans only as el Toro, whose little brother had been slaughtered years prior by the cartel. El Toro's lifelong obsession to even the score with the illusive killer responsible for his brother's death leads to a series of bloody encounters which extend from the barge canal to the sleepy and Communist deprived southwestern coast of Cuba, into the Florida Keys and ultimately the Bahamas.

PROLOGUE

Not that you're wondering, but since this is just introductory and not a part of the story line, let me share with you where the idea for this book came from.

First, I always research my ideas in order to be as sure as possible my fiction writing comes across as a good, readable story rather than a fairy-tale made up of stuff no intelligent reader will believe. Good or bad, the research always takes me down a trail of facts, producing an outline around which a story can be written. Often I don't like what I learn, as was the case in researching the Mexican cartels and their emerging interface with the Islamic world, specifically Al-Qaeda and the Iranian-funded terrorist squadrons operating from Lebanon, the Hamas and Hezbollah, now focused on using the efficient cartel smuggling infrastructure to bring their terror to America.

With politicians and law enforcement obsessed with drug and human smuggling out West, a vacuum has been created in Florida where illegal smuggling has historically flourished for reasons both obvious and subtle. If we compute the length of the exposed coastline of the state from the Keys and around the peninsula from Pensacola to Fernandina Beach, the total exceeds a thousand miles, none of which is fenced, protected by electronic devices, airborne drones, Federal troops or the Rio Grande River. True, foreign illegals or drug coyotes can't simply walk in or swim the river, but that fact alone provides the Mexican cartels with a true monopoly, the human trafficking portion of which is estimated to exceed two billion dollars per year, plus the drug portion which is incalculable in tens of billions. What started decades ago as an insidious infiltration of illegals and drugs into Florida and across the western U.S. border was ultimately eclipsed by the dominant influx of drugs from Colombia by a coalition of cartels which has become the prototype for today's Mexican smugglers. The Mexican contingency is motivated by simple, impersonal and barbaric greed, without regard to politics, religion, human life or to whom their product is sold.

Within this ready-made framework, an inherent weakness in the American political fabric was recognized early on by our adversaries as the Hispanic vote became more influential and the activists chose to protect even those who, if not already criminals, become so the moment they illegally set foot on American soil, thus further motivating both the smugglers and the smuggled.

So we now find ourselves dealing with an unemployment rate which, even after filtering out as much of the fictitious mathematics as possible, still leaves behind a residual of almost ten percent. If we adapt another somewhat amorphous statistic of approximately fifteen million illegal immigrants now residing tax free in this country, that interpolates to a number which exceeds the corollary number of jobs unavailable to legal American citizens. A reversal of this statistic would eliminate unemployment, increase tax revenue and re-vitalize the rule of law upon which our country must rely for survival.

But, believe it or not, there's a bigger problem than subsidized unemployment and politicians fearful of their own electorate. The common denominator is our own unrelenting dedication as a drug-addled nation to fund our own demise. As the Mexican cartels have compounded the Colombian prototype in becoming brokers and exporters of illegal drugs and labor, the remainder of the world's criminal community has likewise recognized the insatiable American appetite for those commodities. Iran has forged an alliance with Lebanon, Israel’s next-door neighbor, and in case the world hasn’t noticed, Iran now has nuclear capabilities. By the way, the Iranians are fanatical nuts, but smart and cunning, since they’ve also established sinister relationships with the drug-producing and smuggling combines, finding a nucleus in this hemisphere of the lawless tri-border countries of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, whereby extremists can sell drugs to America, take the cash and pay for the exportation of terror back to America, using groups like Hezbollah to do the dirtiest work for Islamic fanatics who perceive Americans as infidels to be destroyed.

Add to this equation the rapidly emerging recognition by the cartels that Cuba is a sweet spot to be developed as a backdoor into America through, you got it, Florida!

All of this is woven into the CARTEL CONNECTION story, hopefully in a way that people will read and understand since, as you know, this is one hundred percent America’s fault, for we continue to spend billions per year on illegal drugs and labor, without which those growth industries would dry up.

But it ain’t gonna happen, since we now live in an addicted nation and the bad guys are proving themselves smarter than us.

America is the world’s best customer for illegal drugs and labor. The demand for both increases daily and not only our present generation, but all generations to come will be contaminated and intellectually diluted while we eagerly purchase our own destruction.

Unless we come to our senses!

That’s the way I see it. I invite you to tell me where I’m wrong. I hope and pray I am.

CHAPTER 1

Learjet 131 Hotel Juliet, this is Miami Center. You're cleared from Palm Beach to Elmore intersection, maintain 4,000 feet and expect higher to 10,000 feet then direct to Orlando VOR at flight level 230. We have your request for higher to flight level 280 and plan for vectors for descent and approach to Crystal River due to weather. 1

As the Lear 35A leveled off at its final assigned altitude of 28,000 feet for the brief flight from Palm Beach International Airport north to Crystal River, the pilot turned from his left seat in the cramped cockpit and called over his right shoulder to Jake McCall, seated alone in the rear cabin with his briefcase and laptop, open on the fold down table in front of him with all sorts of papers scattered about on the floor and the adjoining leather seats,

"Mr. McCall, I’m sure you just heard what Miami Center said about our IFR approach into Crystal River. Weather up that way’s nasty as hell and Crystal River only has a small uncontrolled airport with no IFR facilities except for a VOR approach off Ocala. Without an IFR approach at the airport we can only descend to minimums and if the airport’s still obscured we won't be able to land. We'll take a look at things when we get there but may have to go to either Gainesville or Ocala as an alternate with approach capabilities. Hard to believe the weather’s so bad only a forty-five minute flight to the northwest when it was such a gorgeous day in Palm Beach. But this time of year we get lots of these fronts moving down from the northwest and across the Florida peninsula, sucking up moisture from the Gulf and causing north Florida to have the dubious distinction of being the thunderstorm capitol of America. Long as we stay at 28,000 feet we'll be above most of the weather, but when we start down be prepared for a bumpy ride.

I've relayed your request for an approach to the Crystal River airport from the northwest in over the Gulf. They denied the request since, as you know, it would bring us into the restricted area around the nuclear power plant north of the airport in Red Level. In today's world, particularly after the disaster in Japan and all the paranoia about nuclear power, I doubt we'll be able to get as close as you’d hoped, even if the weather permitted.

How important is it for us to overfly the power plant anyway, not that it’s any of my business. But you have to understand it’ll sound pretty fishy to a young traffic controller sitting in a dark room looking at a radar screen if we made a big deal out of it."

McCall smiled grimly at the young pilot,

Thanks for the good news. Just let me know when you start down and I'll tighten my seat belt and gather up all these papers. I don't want this stuff flyin' all over the cabin if we start bouncin' around, which sounds likely.

Not a problem, responded the pilot,

We'll be painting the front on our radar when we start down. It's fast moving so Crystal River weather could change dramatically, for better or worse, by the time we get there, hopefully for the better since Center says they've received three pilot reports describing it as pretty bad. Hail has even been reported in some areas. Not the best thing for an airplane so we'll just have to be careful.

As a pilot himself, Jake nodded his understanding of the pilot’s concern and told him not to worry about it,

Just go ahead with your flight plan and we’ll both abide by what Miami Center tells us. They have our tail number and destination in the computer. I can’t go into detail but I’m sure my agency guy’ll handle the deviation electronically after Miami hands us off to Jax Center. Since the rest of this trip is only gonna take about thirty more minutes, we can probably expect something about the time you begin your descent over the Lakeland VOR. Please keep me posted.

Jake sat back in his cushioned leather seat and took a sip of the now lukewarm coffee he had brought on board from Signature Aviation before departing Palm Beach shortly before 8:00 that morning. As he relaxed a little, he thought,

Better finish my coffee or I may be wearing it if this ride gets as bumpy as the pilot predicts.

Knowing he now had less than thirty minutes left before the descent into bad weather began, he turned back to the papers which had been in the large manila envelope handed to him back at Signature when he drove into the parking lot. The envelope had been delivered by an agent from the West Palm Beach office of the FBI, who properly identified himself, requested Jake do the same, then without any further discussion simply handed over the envelope and turned to leave, saying,

Beautiful day. Have a nice flight!

The delivery only perplexed Jake further since he knew almost nothing about the reason for this sudden and seemingly urgent mission to Crystal River. He knew from his student days at the University of Florida in nearby Gainesville that the site of the Crystal River nuclear power plant was technically located south of the old and ill-fated Cross State Barge Canal and the little crossroads community of Inglis in an even smaller spot on the map called Red Level.

It all had started when Jake received an unexpected call on his cell phone the previous evening while driving home to his cabin on the twenty acres which he owned north of the rural town of Okeechobee, close to the big lake of the same name and less than a mile from the Kissimmee River to the west. He had spent the day doctoring calves with his father and grandfather at the family cattle ranch back south between Indiantown and Okeechobee. The three later drove into Indiantown for dinner at the old Seminole Inn, somewhat of a vintage relic from the days when Indiantown was forecast to become South Florida’s hub for cattle, citrus and the railroad. The railroad got built but nothing else happened since the Florida land boom of the 1920s was eclipsed by the Great Depression in 1928 and as Jake's grandfather liked to say,

The best laid plans of mice and men, and you fill in the blanks .

Jake had never quite understood the relevance of this half quote which, in his grandfather's mind, applied to anything which didn't go his way. But when things went better he had a corollary,

The good news is, then he recited anything to his liking which had survived whatever the adversity, in this case the venerable old Seminole Inn.

Notwithstanding that the hotel and dining room seemed to change ownership with what had become predictable frequency to the locals, the quality of both the steaks and current gossip remained excellent in the middle of cattle and citrus country. Jake enjoyed hard work at the ranch and the opportunity to spend dinner time with two generations of his family, both still strong and healthy and proud of their heritage as a part of Florida history started by Jake's great-grandfather in the late 1800s, during and after the Civil War.

After dinner, Jake said goodnight and promised he would be back at the ranch early the following morning. But as he drove north on Highway 710 his cell phone rang and the saga began which he was still attempting to unravel the next morning at 28,000 feet and 600 miles per hour, a world away from separating cows and calves for weaning and branding.

To conclude that Jake was puzzled by the drama and expense of the sudden flight would be an understatement, since the operating costs alone for the Lear were astronomical, particularly with him in the cabin as the sole passenger, being flown across the state of Florida to a destination which he could have easily reached, even in his old Jeep Grand Wagoneer, in less than a four hour drive on the Florida Turnpike to Wildwood and across State Road 44 through Inverness and into Crystal River. But Jake was not complaining since, notwithstanding the vagueness of his mission, traveling first class, even if only for what he presumed would be a brief trip, was nice.

He turned his attention back to the contents of the packet which had been delivered to him at Signature that morning. Until then he had only been told he would be going to the nuclear power plant in Citrus County to evaluate its sensitivity to attack across the wetlands areas surrounding the facility, precisely what Jake had been employed to do some months before when he had signed on as a security consultant to the FBI and immediately after assisting that agency and the CIA in thwarting a terrorist attack on the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo, Cuba. The genesis of that plot had taken place on American soil, in a desolate and isolated corner of Everglades National Park where Jake and his University of Florida fraternity brother, Sammy Cypress, had grown up hunting, fishing and exploring as kids.

Jake had been raised on the family cattle ranch north of Indiantown on the old Fox Brown Road, the fourth generation of McCalls to inhabit the property. Sammy was full-blooded Miccosukee Indian, living since birth on the reservation to the south. After the two had met and became fraternity brothers in college, they would frequently commute back and forth to South Florida together. They shared an inbred love and respect for the unique look and feel of the Everglades ecosystem and after becoming fast friends at the university, their joint airboat trips into the Glades became even more adventuresome and almost legendary with their college friends.

Sammy went on to get his master’s degree in education and returned to the reservation, where he taught Indian kids. Jake, on the other hand, had gone to law school, somewhat contrary to the unspoken wishes of both his father and grandfather, who had hoped he would take over the family cattle business after college.

But after a few years of trial practice in Miami, Jake had found himself taking a somewhat involuntary sabbatical in the Florida Keys. Fortunately, and notwithstanding an admonition from The Florida Bar, he was able to gracefully take his sizeable portion of the fee from the case causing all the political hullabaloo, easing into what he had intended to be only a brief respite from his chosen career. But, to say the least, a rather dramatic career change occurred suddenly after Jake awoke next to a man who had been murdered while only he and Jake had been stranded on a desolate island in Lake Okeechobee in the middle of a near hurricane. Logically, only Jake could have committed the homicide, but didn’t. In attempting to prove his innocence, Jake had befriended the investigating officer, John Reed, and after convincing Reed of his innocence, together they had solved the mystery and been virtually drafted by the FBI to assist in a related covert mission, appropriately named, Operation: Everglades.

Even more of a surprise to Jake had been the pre-existing secret involvement of Sammy Cypress in the earlier mission, originally as a consultant from his tribe to draw on their decades of airboating experience in order to design and construct a state-of-the-art airboat as a full-service security vessel in guarding the adjacent wetlands areas required as huge cooling ponds required for nuclear power plants. Assuming Jake knew more than he did, which was little, the Israeli operatives who left Jake asleep next to a murdered gun runner then mistakenly targeted him as a witness. Miraculously, these trained killers missed when they attempted to assassinate Jake in his own driveway several nights later, wounding and almost killing his dog, Hoover, for whom Jake swore and later got revenge. While in protective care of the FBI, Jake inadvertently learned enough to concoct a theory about the invasion of Gitmo by one terrorist brother who had sworn to Allah publicly that he would secure his brother’s release from the Delta Camp at Guantanamo by whatever means needed. For this invasion guns, rockets and ammunition had been secretly accumulated and stashed near Cape Sable on the extreme southern tip of the Florida peninsula, later to be transported across the Straits of Florida to the northern coast of Cuba. After forging a somewhat tenuous alliance with the Israeli secret service agents assigned to disrupt the recognized pipeline of cash for drugs for terror which threatens both America and Israel, Jake, Sammy and Deputy John Reed were dispatched deep into the Everglades to engage in an exploratory and non-confrontational search for the cache of arms.

Ultimately, and only after receiving guidance from a tough old elder from Sammy’s tribe, they discovered the arms stash. But simultaneously, they themselves were discovered. Armed with a fifty-caliber automatic weapon and Reed’s experience as a Marine in Iraq, they were forced to engage in a bloody battle in order to survive and escape the onslaught of rockets from the Lebanese terrorists who emerged from the swamp aboard their swamp buggy. The speed of the airboat, coupled with the combined resolve of the four men on it, produced a victory.

After the rest of the conspirators were captured or killed in Cuba, Jake, Sammy and Reed were all offered jobs with the FBI. Jake as a consultant in nuclear power plant security, and Reed as a special agent. Both accepted, but Sammy rejected the overture so he could return to teaching at the reservation school. And that was the how and why behind Jake’s current flight to the small airport at Crystal River and the large and well-worn manila envelope in his briefcase, simply marked CONFIDENTIAL.

But so far, this entire mission had been a mystery to Jake, even though still in its infancy. His past assignments had been rather straightforward. He had first been dispatched to Georgia to take a look at the area around the power plant near Augusta, where some thirty miles to the south the Southern Company has been commissioned to build two new reactors adjacent to the older plant at the company’s Vogle Power Station. After several days of assessing the vulnerability of the area’s wetlands, he had submitted his report and recommendations describing safeguards needed around the existing site and what additional precautions would be necessary to protect the new Westinghouse Model reactor, during and after construction.

He had then driven from Georgia back down to his cabin near Okeechobee. A few days later he and Hoover had begun commuting the twenty-odd miles to the McCall Ranch to help with the new calf crop.

Then Jake received a call instructing him to take a flight to Texas the following Tuesday in order to evaluate the environs of the Matagorda County plant, located ninety miles southwest of Houston, just outside of Bay City. The Texas job also turned out to be a fairly straightforward security audit and was what Jake understood he had signed on to do. The wetlands area surrounding the Texas plant was a dedicated wildlife conservation habitat and home to several endangered species, including Peregrine Falcons, White-tailed Hawks and a couple of Jake’s familiar favorites, alligators and bald eagles.

But neither of these previous jobs had come with the sense of urgency which accompanied the previous evening’s call, instructing him to abandon his ranch chores and report to Palm Beach International at eight o’clock the next morning, where there would be a packet of instructions and a Learjet waiting. He was only told during the brief phone call that a flight plan would be filed by the time he got to the airplane. The agent who called the previous evening suggested that Jake update himself on the geography of Citrus County as well as the abandoned Cross State Barge Canal, still maintained from the Gulf of Mexico and east to where it intersects with the beautiful Withlacoochee River.

Jake recalled from his studies of Florida history the politically charged saga of the barge canal which had been proposed to be dug across the Florida peninsula, the original concept having been the brainstorm of King Phillip II of Spain in 1567, less than a century after the discovery of America. In a succession of false starts, beginning in earnest in 1818 by Secretary of War John Calhoun and later funded to the tune of a million dollars by John F. Kennedy in 1963, the ditch was to be completed in 1971. Ironically, 1971 turned out to be the year when the project finally received the kiss of death and the original right of way ceremoniously dedicated as a greenway across the state.

1Jake’s reflective mood was interrupted by the pilot's call, surprise in his voice,

"Wanna hear something weird