CONTRABANDIDOS EPISODE VIII: Shot Down

EDITOR'S NOTE: (Author's Intro) The business of hauling consumer goods (contraband) into Mexico with airplanes into grass strips avoiding the outrageous Mexican import duties has been going on ever since airplanes were put into commercial service, that is, until 1989 when Mexico repealed most 100% duties on imported goods. Known as Contrabandidos", pilots choosing this form of employment had to know the limits of their aircraft operating into extremely marginal landing strips and their own limits, operating under the most adverse conditions of unknown weather, overloaded, old unreliable aircraft without the benefit of navigation aids. Relying on the age-old method of dead reckoning navigation and pilotage, pilots had to make their own rules and follow them in order to stay alive.

These are the stories of Contrabandido Ron Fox and friends, veteran legal smugglers who lived life on the edge, and created a legacy of adventure...

This episode was lost for a while -- now found, an appropriate ending to the story. Enjoy!

SHOT DOWN!

By Ron Fox

One early morning in the spring of 1982 I was making a run to the Pineapple strip in our T-Bone. It was another dawn arrival as most of my trips were. We flew south in darkness to avoid the dreaded mexican customs service. They made it a habit to shoot down cargo-laden aircraft belonging to operators who refused to pay tribute for safe passage.

They really weren't mean people and didn't mean anything personal by it. They were just doing their jobs in the absence of any financial incentives not to. They would send in mexican undercover agents and, with the unofficial help of U.S. customs agents, locate a non-paying operator and identify his aircraft. Those aircraft would be placed under surveillance and their movements observed. Whenever they were ready to strike, a simple trap would be put into place. When they were ready and they observed their target aircraft being loaded with paper-wrapped items, they prepared their own aircraft for pursuit. They usually used a small single-engine aircraft for this purpose. When the target aircraft took off, the mexican aircraft would follow him at a discreet distance into mexican airspace. When safely into mexican airspace, out of U. S. radar range but still within the range of navigation aids, the pursuing aircraft would radio ahead and scramble the shooter for a rendezvous. The shooter was usually a light, fast twin with its cargo door removed to allow a position from which the shooter could easily shoot. He would visually identify his target, then approach him from low on the right rear out of the target aircraft's line of sight. This was so the shooter could get a clean shot at the target aircraft's right engine without danger to the pilot.

The object of the trap was not to try and kill anybody, nor to destroy the aircraft or its precious cargo, but to disable it enough to force a crash landing from which, hopefully the pilot survived and the cargo remained essentially intact. The pilot would be worth a considerable sum seeing as how it usually took between $15,000 and about $40,000 for him to buy his way out of jail. If the aircraft were still flyable following a forced landing on an airport, strip or open field, mexican customs could use it in their endeavors or sell it. The cargo would usually be transported to the original receiver the pilot was taking it to for an additional payoff. All in all, the economics of the game

were quite good for the other side. Gus hated to pay tribute unless absolutely necessary.

Our receivers were already forking out a small fortune to mexican officials. We had state governors, chiefs of police, airport commandantes, tower operators, airport workers, local police and others on the payrol just to oil the machine that made this business possible. That was their part of the deal. Gus had enough costs with aircraft maintenance, fuel, and pilots; not to mention replacing lost planes which were either captured or crashed. That's why we always flew southbound in the dark for either night arrivals or dawn arrivals. Most of our trips were dawn arrivals. Night landings were pretty tricky because the strips were only marked with highway smudge pots and mistakes were easy to make with no other visual references.

Mexican customs never shot down a northbound aircraft during daylight. For one thing, departing from Mexico they couldn't be followed. No one knew where they were. They had to be careful not to shoot down the wrong aircraft. That could be politically embarrassing. For another thing, they knew northbound aircraft were empty.

Flying in total darkness allowed us natural cloaking because as soon as we crossed the border we turned out all of our lights. No red, green and white navigation lights. No red rotating beacon. No strobes. We were invisible and couldn't be followed.

On this night, I had just leveled off at my cruising altitude of nine thousand five hundred feet. I was above a high, thin stratus layer of clouds which gave me the sensation of high speed due to the moonlight which illuminated the white layer just below me. After adjusting the throttles and prop levers to a max-range cruise setting, I was ready to turn on my boom box and replace my David Clark headset with the stereo headset of my tape deck. Since I was closely surrounded by car stereos, TV's or other electronic contraband, the only place my tape deck would fit was on the top of the bench seat right behind my head. It fit nicely with usually inches to spare. Sometimes I felt like I was in a cocoon. This was no place for a claustrophobic person. I liked to kick back and listen to Willie Nelson or Emmy Lou Harris while I ate my usual meal of a sandwich and coffee from the local 7-Eleven that I picked up on the way to the airport. Four-hour trips over water in total darkness without any ground lights can get boring. Good music helped to avoid long stretches of sensory deprivation.

I decided I would check in on the local smuggler's frequency before putting on a tape. We used what we hoped was an unassigned frequency as our smuggler's chat frequency so we could all talk to each other about strip conditions, weather or just gossip. As soon as I dialed in the frequency, the line was buzzing with chatter. Seems like Joe, (I won't use his last name because he's still alive and might be embarrassed), got himself shot down yesterday just before sundown. He was flying an old army green Beech 18 and was followed out of Brownsville by a mexican registered Cessna 210. About ninety miles south of Brownsville, a mexican Piper Aztec came up behind him and shot out his right engine with an automatic weapon of some sort. What made his predicament interesting was he had his sixteen year old brother-in-law in the airplane with him. Seems like the kid wanted to take a trip south just to see what it would be like.

When Joe lost his right engine, even full power on his left engine wouldn't keep him flying due to his overweight condition, and he started losing altitude. He headed for the beach on the eastern shore of Mexico, squawking on the frequency that he was hit and going down. He must have found himself some flat ground, because he radioed one more time that he had crashed and that he and the kid were heading north on foot. No one had heard anything from him since. After chatting for awhile with my compadres in crime, I settled back with Emmy Lou in solitude.

I had an uneventful dawn delivery and, as I was climbing to altitude northbound, I started thinking that I might be in a position to assist Joe and his kid brother-in-law. If I were to fly really low along the beach between about the place he was reported down on my way back to Brownsville, I might be able to land in the hard sand of the beach near the water's edge and pick them up. It would be a daredevil kinda thing to do. What a great story it would make! I started imagining the scenario of them being chased up the beach by Federales in a shoot-out and me setting my T-Bone down on the beach just in front of them. I could see them running up to the plane and jumping up onto the wing and

into the open door amidst the swirling sand in the prop-wash, Joe turning one last time to fire at their attackers as I gunned the engines to escape in a hail of bullets. This was nuts. I had to do it.

About a hundred-twenty miles south of Brownsville, I descended to within about fifty feet of the beach in a fast cruise. As I zoomed along the beach I kept my eyes peeled for their airplane, their tracks or them. Sometimes I got so low I could distinguish the brands of soda cans lying trapped in the scrub brush of the dunes.

Without any warning I streaked right over Joe's plane.

In an instant I streaked over another plane. Looking out my left window I saw another plane sitting in the water of a small inlet. "What the hell is this?", I thought to myself, "the Battle of Britain?".

I pulled my T-Bone up sharply to get a little altitude and, as I started a left turning orbit around the scene, I grabbed my 35mm camera and started snapping pictures. I didn't see anyone around the crash sight. Joe's plane was sitting upright on collapsed landing gear, but it was in one piece. From the tracks in the sand, it looked like the Cessna 210 had attempted a landing and ended up in the brush of a sand dune. The Piper Aztec had avoided the dunes, but was obviously going too fast on touchdown because he ran right off the spit of land into an inlet and was nose down in the water.

After taking in the scene, I turned northbound again and descended back down close to the beach. I flew all the way back to Brownsville without ever as much as seeing a footprint. Joe and the kid were nowhere along that beach, I knew that. I found out later what had happened.

It seems that after their airplane had stopped moving, Joe and the kid climbed out of it unharmed except for some minor cuts and bruises. They were sitting next to the cabin of their Beech 18, leaning against its side when the Cessna 210 tried to land close to them. When they saw it crash, they started running north up the beach. Then they heard another airplane and turned to see the Aztec crash into the water and kept running. The Federales in both planes were not hurt. At least they weren't hurt enough to prevent them from pursuing and shooting at Joe and the kid.

Hiding behind a sand dune covered with brush, Joe took the kid's .45 caliber automatic from him and told him to keep running, that he would stay and hold them back. When the kid started running again, Joe popped up and, with a .45 auto in one hand and a 9mm Ingram automatic machine-pistol in the other, started popping off shots in the general direction of the Federales causing them to take cover behind their own sand dunes.

Joe and the kid had been shot down just before sundown.

Joe stayed behind his sand dune, occasionally firing a shot to keep the Federales pinned down, until it was good and dark, at which time he started running north himself. He wouldn't see the kid again for more than six months.

Seems the kid had made his way to some fishing camp along the coast and had paid a fisherman the three hundred-dollar bills in his pocket to take him in his boat to Brownsville. He arrived before dawn the next morning. The story wasn't over yet for Joe.

Joe managed to find his way into a small town just a little inland from the coast and he went to the only hotel in town. After checking in and cleaning up, he went downstairs to the bar and began a fiesta. Buying drinks for the house and a spread of food for everyone, he partied well into the night. After waking up the next morning, he got dressed and checked out of the hotel. As he walked out onto the hotel's porch, he looked like he was right out of an old movie. There he stood in the morning light with his Ingram machine pistol in a holster at his side. He had a .45 automatic sticking out of his belt and a big belt of 9mm bullets strapped across his chest like a bandoleer. The only thing

he didn't have on which would have made the scene perfect was a mexican sombrero.

The old movie I referred to was "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", because as he stepped out onto the porch, he heard the distinctive sound of about fifty rifles and handguns being cocked all around him. The hotel was surrounded by Federales. Thinking of a different ending, Joe raised his hands.

After a severe beating for being armed and shooting at his captors, Joe was thrown in jail. I never found out how much it cost him to get out. It must have cost him a fortune because it took him more than six months to get back home.

Even though my daredevil rescue was not possible, it's still a good story.

Had I been able to find Joe and the kid running along the beach, I would probably have crashed trying to land on that beach and the story may never have been told.