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.
Copyright 1998, BUSHPILOT, all rights reserved.