Each year, an estimated 1.2 million pounds of cocaine enter our country, the bulk of it by boat over the Pacific to Mexico and then by land across the border. "The Coast Guard is the premier maritime protector of the United States," said R. Gil Kerlikowske, White House drug-policy director. Although the Navy has the power to stop suspected traffickers, Navy boardings of foreign ships could be considered acts of war. The Coast Guard is the only branch of the armed forces that can legally board vessels registered in another country and arrest criminals. That's why Coast Guard boarding teams ride along on all Navy antidrug patrols.

In 2009, the Coast Guard seized 352,863 pounds of cocaine from traffickers who used a variety of vessels: fishing boats; small, quick boats called "go fasts"; and 65-foot-long, low-lying semisubmarines. Smugglers employ separate spotter and refueling ships and communicate through coded radio transmissions. Some have even hired women to seduce U.S. sailors and learn the movements of their ships.

This fall, the Coast Guard cutter Sherman and two other ships, along with a handful of planes, had the enormous job of patrolling the vast Eastern Pacific section of the drug zone. "We're like little postage stamps on the sea," said Capt. Michael Haycock, the Sherman 's commanding officer. Carrying a crew of 166 men and women, the Sherman was on a 10-week tour of duty. Its route was directed by an international task force called JIATF-South that is headquartered in Key West, Fla. The task force oversees the detection and monitoring of potential traffickers and supports the interdiction efforts of Navy, Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Customs and Border Protection vessels and planes. "JIATF-South is the brains," Haycock said. "We're the hands."

One day in late November, crew members in the Sherman 's combat-and-control room received intelligence and directions to move south. Suspected smugglers from Colombia were said to be traveling the Eastern Pacific corridor. After racing at top speed, the cutter had gotten within 20 miles of the route of the purported traffickers by nightfall.

Now it was time for the helicopter squad to take off from the Sherman 's deck and do its part. On board the chopper was Petty Officer 3rd Class Kimberly Dechmerowski, 25, an aerial gunner. If a chase erupted, she would be the person responsible for using a sniper rifle to shoot out the engines of the drug boat without harming any of its passengers--while the boat is going 40 miles an hour or more. Adding to the pressure: Dechmerowski was on her very first patrol as a gunner.

At 7:20 p.m., the command "Warning! Go fast go fast!" roared from the Sherman 's intercom. The helicopter crew had radioed the cutter that it had spotted the white wake of its target, and the chopper and the ship shifted courses for a confrontation. The Sherman 's steel stairwells rang with the sound of running boots as personnel prepared to launch two swift Zodiac boats, each bearing a five-person boarding team armed with pistols and shotguns.

But more than a well-trained crew is needed to pull off a successful drug bust--the Coast Guard must receive permission from the proper authorities before entering another nation's waters or boarding a vessel flying a national flag. The alleged smugglers were in Panamanian territory. Fortunately, the U.S. has 27 separate bilateral agreements with nations located in the drug-transit zone--including Panama--to expedite the approval process. "Otherwise, the bad guys might get away in the time it takes to get permission," Haycock said At 9:30 p.m., the helicopter was hovering 60 feet above the 35-foot-long suspect boat. Four men were seen on board, along with many large plastic-wrapped bales.

"We flashed our blue lights to stop them," said Lt. j.g. Matt Van Ginkel, the helicopter pilot. "We tried to hail them over the radio." But the boat kept going, and its passengers began frantically throwing the plastic bales overboard. Dechmerowski leaned out of the chopper to shoot off tracer warning fire--this was the Coast Guard's way of giving the suspects one last chance to surrender. Instead, "the boat sped up and started zigzagging away," she said. The chopper followed.

Dechmerowski picked up a .50-caliber rifle, a 30-pound semiautomatic weapon. "She seemed apprehensive at first," Van Ginkel said. "Then bam-bam-bam. She blew apart the middle engine, and it started smoking. The boat stopped." A few minutes later, the Zodiac boats with the Coast Guard teams arrived to hold the suspects in place.

Unfortunately, the men had dumped their entire cargo, evidence that the authorities would need to prove they were smuggling cocaine. The Sherman reached the scene by 11 p.m., and all hands were called up on deck. Crew members hung over the railings, using searchlights and handheld floodlights to scour the water for bales. Thirteen were eventually recovered, but Cmdr. Patrick St. John, the Sherman 's executive officer, estimated twice the amount had sunk to the ocean floor. Thanks to that one bust, over $50 million worth of cocaine would not be reaching American streets. When Dechmerowski was told the figure, she was astounded and said, "Everyone has a calling in life, and I am finally serving a good purpose." Hours later, Panamanian authorities arrived to take away the suspects and the evidence. The boat's captain, Dionisio Beltran, turned out to be a much-wanted reputed smuggler.

On its fall patrol, the Sherman 's crew made several other big scores, halting a fishing boat holding 4885 pounds of cocaine and five other go fasts that Dechmerowski disabled by shooting out their engines. In total, the Sherman interdicted an estimated $1.3 billion worth of cocaine in 10 weeks.

Despite these successes, Haycock acknowledged that the flow of cocaine to the U.S. is never ending. "We're stopping drugs," he said, "but we'd be even more effective with more modern equipment." (The Coast Guard received $1.2 billion for drug interdiction in 2009.) One good sign: Cocaine's street price in our country has recently doubled, said the DEA's Nicholas Kolen, which shows that some of the traffickers' supply lines have been disrupted by antidrug patrols.

For every success, the Sherman 's crew faces plenty of frustration. Sometimes, the intelligence doesn't pan out. On the fall patrol, the cutter spent four days monitoring a Costa Rican fishing boat. Investigators at JIATF-South were fairly certain the boat had drugs. But when the Sherman 's teams finally boarded the vessel, they found nothing after searching for hours.

Questions haunted Lt. Krystyn Pecora, the Sherman 's head of operations, the next morning: Had the Coast Guard missed the drug shipment? Was the boat acting as a decoy to distract the Americans as a shipment was snuck past? Or were the men on the fishing boat truly innocent?

"All of those are possible," said Chief Warrant Officer Michael Jolly of the Sherman . "Out here everyone on both sides is very good at what they do."
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