IN DRUG RACE, VICTORY IS TO THE SWIFT

Faster Chase Boats Backed Up By Surveillance Copters
Have Helped Produce Record Amounts Of Drug Seizures

They could not see the enemy but knew he was coming, gliding across
the sea on a warm, starlit night.

The U.S. Coast Guard had been chasing the drug smugglers for 15 hours,
but they were fast and clever, ducking into Cuban waters to avoid capture.

Five officers put on bulletproof helmets and vests, climbed into an
inflatable boat and drove away from their mother ship, a 210-foot
cutter from St. Petersburg.

They idled in the Atlantic Ocean for three hours, waiting for updates
from a surveillance plane. Suddenly, their headsets crackled:

They're 10 miles out. They're coming at you. They're right on top of
you.

A large fiberglass "go-fast" boat, hauling thousands of pounds of
marijuana, sped into sight.

"Game on!" the Coast Guard team yelled as their boat lurched across
foaming, 2-foot waves. They raced beside the smugglers, ordering them
to stop.

Instead, the smugglers hurled 80-pound bales of marijuana, which
sailed toward the Coast Guard boat like flying cinder blocks.

As their boat jerked and swayed, the crew hunched down. In the back,
one man gripped an M-16 assault rifle and prepared to shoot.

It's a scene that, five years ago, would not have unfolded on the high
seas.

Then, drug smugglers would taunt the Coast Guard, zooming past their
cutters and waving. Their powerful boats, called "go-fasts," race
through the water at 60 to 70 mph, easily outpacing the decades-old
cutters, which travel about 20 mph.

The Coast Guard was stopping less than 10 percent of drugs entering
the United States by sea.

Frustration ultimately led to Operation New Frontier, a plan to equip
cutters with small, powerful boats and armed helicopters to chase and
destroy the go-fasts, which deliver a majority of the U.S. cocaine
supply.

The new unit quietly debuted in 1999. Helicopters soared over
go-fasts, destroying their engines with well-placed shots. Small
inflatable boats raced behind, quickly detaining the crews.

"It was landmark," said Cmdr. Karl Schultz of the St. Petersburg-based
cutter, Venturous. "It expanded our capabilities exponentially."

With the help of the new unit, the Coast Guard has seized record
amounts of drugs and broken its all-time cocaine seizure record this
year.

"I think the numbers speak for themselves," said Capt. Michael D.
Inman, chief of law enforcement for the 7th Coast Guard District,
which includes Florida and the Caribbean. "We've responded to the
smugglers' tactics and have been reasonably successful."

But the drug lords still dominate.

The Coast Guard has only eight armed helicopters, not enough to go
around. Without them, the smugglers still have a good shot at getting
away.

That was on the minds of the five Coast Guard officers as they raced
through the Atlantic Ocean last fall.

Petty Officer Bob Ovitt gripped the steering wheel on his inflatable
boat, bobbing and jerking across the ocean. Saltwater pelted his navy
blue uniform as he sped toward the go-fast.

His blue lights flashing, Ovitt pulled beside the 40-foot boat,
signaling the men to stop.

Instead, the go-fast suddenly swerved, careening into the path of the
Coast Guard boat. Ovitt jerked the wheel to avoid a collision.

It was time, the crew decided, to take out the smugglers'
engines.

Ovitt positioned his boat beside the go-fast.

Petty Officer David Moulton launched a flare, illuminating the night
sky. Another aimed his assault rifle, preparing to fire warning shots
across the bow of the go-fast.

But the explosion of light surprised the go-fast driver, who
maneuvered wildly, making it impossible for the Coast Guard to make a
clear shot.

This guy's good, Ovitt thought.

Speeding across the sea at 40 mph, the drug smugglers began hurling
tightly wrapped packages of marijuana, aiming for the Coast Guard boat.

The crew ducked, avoiding the 50- to 80-pound bales.

The go-fast was getting lighter. It picked up speed and pulled ahead.

The drug lords' boats are sleek and powerful. They're 30 to 50 feet
long with a V-shaped hull. Three to four engines, roughly 250
horsepower each, catapult the boats across the sea at 60 to 70 mph.

"Not only can they move fast," said the Coast Guard's Inman, "but they
can move fast in significant waves."

Smugglers began using the boats regularly in the mid 1990s, equipping
them with satellite phones and hand-held global positioning systems.
They began making faster and more precise runs, hauling drugs from
South America to dropoff points in the Caribbean or Pacific.

"As they evolved with faster technology," said Cmdr. Schultz, "we had
to have some way to stop them."

Ten Coast Guard officers gathered in Alabama to try a new approach.
They took turns flying leased helicopters, chasing go-fasts and
practicing their shots. At sea, they came upon five go-fasts and
stopped every one, seizing nearly 10,000 pounds of drugs and arresting
17 smugglers.

The new unit, called the Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron,
was formally commissioned last May.

Now, eight Jacksonville-based helicopters regularly deploy with the
cutters. They are the only airborne law enforcement unit trained and
authorized to fire at the go-fasts.

The smugglers know Coast Guard procedure as well as the officers do.
They always try to outfox the Coast Guard.

"They're a well-organized, well-financed enemy," said Coast Guard
Executive Officer Brad Mynatt. "As soon as we take one move, they'll
do something else."

Last fall, when helicopter pilot Josue Maldonado hovered over a go-
fast, the driver looked up and kept going.

A Coast Guard gunner, standing in the back of the helicopter, waved
his M-240 machine gun and slashed his finger across his throat,
signaling the men to stop.

The smugglers kept going.

The gunner fired three rows of warning shots in front of the go-fast,
churning up a wall of water. Then, he picked up a 50-caliber precision
rifle and fired multiple shots into the go-fast, blowing up its engines.

The five smugglers, along with about 4,000 pounds of cocaine, were
taken into custody.

"People say, "You're in the Coast Guard to save lives, not shoot at
people.' " Maldonado said. "I say, keeping drugs off the street is
saving lives, too."

So far, smugglers have not shot back at Coast Guard helicopters,
pilots say.

"I think they'd rather lose a few boats," Maldonado said, "than create
an international incident that would come down on the drug lords."

The Coast Guard crew was lagging behind the go-fast, but not giving
in.

The five men kept their black leather boots tucked into foot straps
and grabbed each other's vests for balance.

Hopefully, the smugglers would run out of gas.

Moulton was transfixed on the the silhouette of the go-fast, churning
up foamy wake on the calm seas. But with every minute, the smugglers
pulled farther ahead.

Suddenly, the go-fast began a slow arc, heading back toward the Cuban
seas.

Make an error, thought Coast Guard driver Ovitt. Make an error so I
can gain ground.

If he could get closer, the crew could try to destroy their
engines.

But time was running out.

Life at sea is rarely so exciting. The days aboard a cutter can be
dull and monotonous.

Crews work from roughly 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., then gather around a picnic
bench on the back of the ship - called the "steel beach" - where they
smoke cigarettes and watch the ocean.

The main variety of the day comes at mealtime, when crews eat chicken
and shrimp while sitting at tables bolted to the floor. Afterward,
they watch movies, play video games or write e-mails. At night, if not
on watch, crews sleep in triple-stacked bunk beds, too small for most
men to turn over.

Six to eight weeks away from family and friends can feel like a
lifetime. But returning home with a boat full of drugs makes the trip
worthwhile.

"Doing a drug bust is a small consolation to missing a baby's first
words, or seeing their first steps," Officer Mynatt said. "But you can
go to sleep satisfied that you've done a good day's work."

Crew members know that for every go-fast they stop, many more get
by.

"We've definitely stepped up our ability, but we're still just barely
making a dent into drug smuggling," said Eric Sciubba, a Helicopter
Interdiction Tactical Squadron gunner. "Basically, we're just ticking
some people off."

The Coast Guard is the lead agency for drug interdiction on the seas,
and accounts for about half of all U.S. seizures of cocaine every
year. Officers work with a task force of federal agents who collect
intelligence about smugglers and pass it along to the Coast Guard ships.

"We really came to the realization that intelligence needs to drive
interdiction," said Allison Blanchard, formerly of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy and U.S. Embassy in Colombia. "Having
Coast Guard cutters aimlessly steam around was not the best use of
resources."

Surveillance planes fly high above the Caribbean, Atlantic and
Pacific, searching for suspicious-looking boats. The smugglers are
clever, covering their boats with blue tarps during the day, making
them nearly invisible on the sea. They typically travel far outside
designated shipping lanes, hoping to avoid detection.

It's not hard. Their fiberglass boats often don't show up on
radar.

The Coast Guard has begun a more than $16-billion project to modernize
its aging ships and aircraft. The Deepwater Program, the largest
equipment overhaul in Coast Guard history, will take up to 30 years
and is supposed to provide cutters with faster engines, better radars,
and possibly unmanned surveillance equipment to patrol the seas.

They will never have enough equipment.

"We cover 6-million square miles of ocean," Maldonado said. "It's like
trying to police the United States with three patrol cars."

The Coast Guard seized $4.9-billion in cocaine during the past year, a
small fraction of the $35-billion that reached U.S. soil.

With the go-fast still in sight, the Coast Guard crew members heard a
voice over their headsets: "RTB."

Return to Base.

Their chase was over.

The go-fast had returned to Cuban waters, off limits to the
crew.

The driver, Ovitt, stopped the boat as the men stood up and stretched.
They weren't supposed to smoke cigarettes on the inflatable boat, but
several lit up in the dark. Their arms and legs ached from hunching
down.

Slowly, they traveled back to their cutter, which began retrieving
thousands of pounds of marijuana the smugglers left at sea.

"We were frustrated they got away, but the drugs didn't make it to the
U.S.," Ovitt said. "That's most important.

"So the way I look at it," Ovitt said. "We won."