Frederic Forsyth - The Cobra

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 Sao Paulo community of retired Air Force pilots and finally found Joao 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, Joao 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. Joao 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.

Under each wing, on the pylons that once supported her rocket pods, were bolt-on gun packs. Each wing was armed with a pair of 30mm Aden cannons with enough firepower to blow apart anything they hit.

The rear cockpit had not yet been converted. Soon it would have yet another reserve fuel tank and an ultra-modern communications set. The flier of this Bucc would never have a radio operator behind him; instead he would have a voice in his ear, thousands of miles away, telling him exactly where to head to find his target. But first it had to take the instructor.

"She's beautiful," murmured Mendoza.

"Glad you like her," said a voice behind him. He turned to find a slim woman of about forty. She held out a hand.

"I'm Colleen. I'll be your flying instructor for the conversion." Cdr. Colleen Keck had never flown Buccs when she flew for the Navy. In the Buccaneer's day, the Fleet Air Arm had no female pilots. She had perforce joined the regular Navy and transferred to the Air Arm. After qualifying as a helicopter pilot, she had finally achieved her ambition-to fly jets. After her twenty years, she had retired and, living nearby and on a whim, joined the enthusiasts. A former Bucc pilot had "converted" her to Bucc qualification before he became too old to fly.

"I look forward to it," said Mendoza in his slow and careful English.

The whole group returned to the inn for a party on Dexter's tab. The next day, he left them to recover and start the training. He needed Major Mendoza and the six-strong maintenance team that would be coming with him installed on the island of Fogo by the last day in June. He flew back to Washington in time for another group of identifications from Jeremy Bishop. THE TR-1 is seldom mentioned and even more rarely seen. It is the invisible successor to the famous U-2 spy plane in which Gary Powers was once famously shot down over Siberia in 1960, and it went on to discover the Soviet missile bases being built in Cuba in 1962.

By the Gulf War of 1990/1991, the TR-1 was America's principal spy plane, higher and faster, with cameras that could transmit real-time images with no need to labor home with rolls of film. Dexter had asked to borrow one to operate out of USAF base Pensacola, and it had just arrived. It began work in the first week of May.

Dexter, with help from the tireless Bishop, had located a marine designer and architect whose talent was to identify almost any ship from almost any angle. He worked with Bishop on the top floor of the warehouse in Anacostia while the Third World relief blankets piled up below them.

The TR-1 ranged the Caribbean Basin, refueling at Malambo in Colombia or the U.S. bases in Puerto Rico whenever needed. The spy plane sent back high-definition pictures of harbors and ports cluttered with merchant vessels or ships at sea.

The shipping ace, with a powerful magnifying glass, pored over the pictures as Bishop downloaded them, comparing them with the details discovered earlier by Bishop from the names given by the welder.

"That one," he would say eventually, pointing out one of three dozen in a Caribbean port, "that must be the Selene," or, "There she is, unmistakable, handy size, almost gearless."

"She's what?" asked the perplexed Bishop.

"Medium tonnage, only one derrick, mounted forward. She's the Virgen de Valme. Sitting in Maracaibo."

Each was an expert and, as in the manner of experts, each found the specialty of the other impossible to understand. But between them they were identifying half the cartel's oceangoing fleet. NO ONE goes to the Chagos Islands. It is forbidden. They are just a small group of coral atolls in the lost center of the Indian Ocean a thousand miles south of the southern tip of India.

Were they allowed, they might, like the Maldives, have resort hotels to take advantage of the limpid lagoons, all-year sun and untouched coral reefs. Instead they have bombers. Specifically, the American B-52.

The largest atoll of the group is Diego Garcia. Like the rest, it is British owned but long leased to the USA and a major air base and naval fueling station. It is so covert even the original islanders, pretty harmless fishermen, have been removed to other islands and forbidden to return.

What happened during that winter and spring of 2011 on Eagle Island was a British operation although part paid for by contributions out of Cobra's budget. Four Royal Fleet auxiliaries in succession, anchored offshore with tons of tools and equipment and Navy engineers, built a small colony.

It was never going to be a resort hotel, but it was habitable. There were rows of assemble-in-a-day flat-pack housing units. Outdoor latrines were dug. A food hall was assembled and equipped with kitchens, refrigerators and a fresh-water-producing desalination plant, all powered by a generator.