Anything to Declare? (35 page)

Thoughts of the laser retreated a little as the current briefing got underway. At the start, the point was made that the job would either go down that night or the following night, depending on the offshore weather. I looked over at Puddy and he winked back. The situation was this: a yacht had been loaded with a very large amount of cocaine on the southern Caribbean island of Bequia. It had spent the last couple of weeks at sea and had narrowly missed a mid-Atlantic hurricane. It was now approaching British waters and we had it on satellite. The beaching point for the drugs was to be an ex-coastguard/Excise house at Orchard Bay, on the south side of the Isle of Wight. We had known this destination for a little while as the house and its small harbour had already been under surveillance for a few weeks. There were to be three CROPs ops covering the north, the east and the west of the bay. Each CROP was to be two-manned and the remaining officers were to be transport and covert ops control. We, the CROPs teams, would operate on our own radio channel but other Customs units could listen to us to get a grasp on what was happening and what the timescales were.

So, with 150 Customs and police officers on the island that night, it looked like we were going to be the radio station of choice (though not forgetting that, because of our secret status, none of these 150 would have any idea who or where we were).

I was teamed up with Pete and we had the CROP location in the west. Mick and Shane had CROP east and Larry and Simon CROP north. Pete and I would have the first drop-off of the night as we had the longest to travel to reach the target. As for every CROPs job, we broke down all our kit, tested it, re-tested it, then put it all together again. This was to be an in-and-out job, no overnighting for us, so the kit was light. Every officer had a radio and individual call signs. This was for evidential reasons as every radio call was recorded, the transcriptions of which assisted us later in compiling our witness statements. We also carried spare batteries, large first aid kits, lots of water, camouflage kit, Mars bars, large items for self-protection and special kit. In my case, the special kit was a state-of-the-art thermal-imaging camera. This was a super piece of what we called ‘shiny kit’. But the camera did have one big drawback and that was its eight-by-eight-inch TV screen, which lit up the darkness like the brightest beacon. As such, I had to also carry a large ground sheet under which I was going to cocoon myself. Looking at the bright screen would also impair my night vision for a few seconds when I looked away. Pete was going to have to be on the ball. If our CROP was rumbled while I was using the camera, I would be temporarily blind and he would have to get me out. Not to mention the added danger that if by some chance I left that large screen exposed (even when it was switched off) then it would make a big, juicy target, as would my head, for anyone who had one of those ex-military Russian lasers.

It was a couple of miles’ patrol into our surveillance position. Ours was a new observation position that hadn’t been recced on our previous visit. It turned out that we would be precariously perched on a cliff edge with a long drop to our right and the coastal path to our left. There was just the right amount of cover to camouflage both of us, so we started making the spot a little more comfortable. In the pitch dark, in which we often worked, we had to know where all our kit was just by touch. We had to become versed in a kind of techno Braille. But we even had some things, such as knives, tied to us on bits of rope. That made them much easier to find. If I needed a weapon, I didn’t want to be relying at a time of high tension only on my sense of touch in the dark.

By 11.30 p.m., we were all in position. I was checking out the area with my thermal-imaging camera when I saw a large figure approaching CROP east. I radioed Mick and Shane the warning and they ‘went dead’, cutting all communications and lying inert. The large figure was actually one of the gang checking the area for signs of any unwanted visitors or snoopers . . . in other words, us. He started hitting the undergrowth with a stick and shining his torch into holes and bushes. Things were getting increasingly tense. In a situation like this, it was hard to know how near to let the enemy get to one of our troops without intervening. You just hoped they were braced and ready to spring to their own defence if they were discovered, but, at times like this, you had to go into such a lockdown mode that you weren’t always best prepared to jump into action.

The stick thrashing and torch searching went on for what was probably a good five minutes but felt like half-an-hour. Then, apparently satisfied, he moved away, back to the house. We all breathed again.

It got to midnight and I became a year older, balancing, as I was, on the edge of a cliff on a coastal island with professional bad guys wandering around the area looking to do damage to my poor cold, windswept body. Happy birthday to me. I knew I could have been in warmer and safer places, but probably nowhere more exciting.

By 1.20 a.m., it was game on: a yacht called the
Blue Hen
appeared in the bay. Hopefully, it would be carrying the mother lode. It had to be a big job for all this work, but we still had no idea of the exact contents. The gang in the house obviously did, though, because they started to signal the yacht with torches. The yacht moored up about 800 yards out of Orchard Bay and some of the gang members took a small boat out to meet it and help load up the drugs bales on to the yacht’s own inflatable boat. I watched everything with the thermal-imaging camera and gave a running commentary of information on movements and descriptions, passing all info down the line so the ground force could accurately plan and coordinate their attack.

One element that was beginning to hamper everyone involved – drug smugglers and law enforcers – was that the weather was progressively worsening and becoming wilder. The wind was getting up and the waves were starting to lash the coast.

After unpacking the consignment from the yacht, the gang then headed for the island. And here was where we had our first piece of good luck and their first piece of bad: the outboard motor of the inflatable died mid-journey, meaning they had to divert and land about half a mile away at Woody Bay. This new turn of events meant that they now started unloading the bales of cocaine on the beach that was directly behind Pete and me. This in turn meant that they would be using the coastal path between the house and the new beach. And this in turn meant a shitload of unexpected heat for us – we would be lying next to the new main thoroughfare to the gang’s hideout.

They started unloading the gear, and, each time a gang member went to the beach or struggled back up the cliff with a bale, they were only about six inches away from my head. We were now in the thick of it in the worst possible way. But I thought I’d be damned if one of them was going to take me out on my birthday: I decided that, if we were found, it would be a jump down the cliff and into the sea for me before I would let them catch me. And hopefully I’d grab on to one of them and take him with me.

Taking the bales up the cliff was time consuming and exhausting for them. But then one of the gang eventually mended the outboard motor of the inflatable and, in doing so, was able to transfer the remaining bales to their planned beach drop. One of the gang members (it turned out to be the boss, Tyrrell) jumped into their van to try to use it to collect the last few drugs bales. We watched the last bales being dragged up the first beach. We knew that part of the operation was nearing the end as the gang member shouted out, Ain’t any of you fuckers going to give me a hand with these last two?’ At the point when Tyrrell got in the van, word we’d all been waiting for finally came over the radios – the knock was about to be called! Now it was time for the others to have some fun.

First, our cutter, which was sitting out to sea, was ordered to get ready to take out the yacht. Next, officers were made ready for the knock. The trouble at this point was that control HQ was not getting back all the conformation responses that they needed. Then a bright spark realized why: with our CROPs control’s permission, the case officer came on to our channel and ordered all troops to get back to their channel and be ready for the knock. It was then that we realized that every Customs officer present had been sitting on the edge of their seats, listening in to our radio commentary. We had provided the tense narration for the whole night’s events. Seconds later, the knock was called and all hell let loose.

A Customs high-speed RHIB came out of the darkness of the sea and roared right up the beach (so far that it got stuck for a couple of days); our cutter slewed alongside the yacht and disgorged further officers who jumped aboard like ninja pirates; and a hundred other officers hit the target address, kicking in doors and slamming startled bad guys to the floor, arresting the gang and seizing a huge haul of Colombia’s finest marching powder worth £90,000,000. As we found out a little later, we had just watched the single biggest cocaine importation on British soil, and we had filmed it and given a full running commentary.

But the job wasn’t over yet. We still had to pull out without being seen (even by our own guys), which was easier said than done with Customs and police officers flying in every direction, looking for someone to nick. Adrenaline was high and night-time visibility was low; I didn’t want to be mistaken for a bad guy and coshed to the ground. But as we pulled back along the coastal path we received a worrying radio call. One of the gang was missing and there was a chance that he was going to be on our route out. I fired up the thermal-imaging camera again and off we went. Within 20 metres, I hit a heat source, only a light one, but it was there. Pete approached it as only an ex-commando like him could – knife first. There was a worrying silence. I watched the eerie white-glowing heat-image of him in the night-vision camera, watching to see if there would be any other similar signs of someone waiting to jump out at him.

Eventually, he re-emerged out of the dark carrying a discarded wetsuit that had still been giving off enough body heat for the camera to pick up. We radioed our find to control and then off we went again. After 20 metres, I found another heat source. Off went Pete again into the dark. With no sounds of murder, Pete returned this time with a fuel can, half full. Pete and I had a quick chat and decided to leave the search for discarded evidence to the uniforms. We set off again with Pete leading. All of a sudden, there was a sharp cry of ‘Fuck it!’ and Pete disappeared. This wasn’t a situation for the camera – nothing for it but for me to bring out a torch.

Pete was on his back, swearing like a trooper and holding his shin. He had gone arse over tit after hitting a bloody great outboard motor in the middle of the path. We radioed in the find. I sat next to Pete as he continued to rub his leg. He sighed and said, ‘Let’s get out of here, Jon, before we trip over Shergar’s body and find Lord bloody Lucan on this sodding path.’

The morning was now bright and we were finishing off cleaning our kit and getting it packed away. News of the job quickly broke and it was already all over the airwaves and TV screens by 8 a.m. There were pictures of the house and of the yacht. The gang’s hideout on the island turned out to be a seafront development bought by Tyrrell and the part of Orchard Bay where they had tried to land was the private beach to the development. The news bulletin also featured all the arrests and details of a drugs haul of huge proportions. The news organizations were used and briefed by law enforcement agencies in order, of course, to broadcast our success and to help scare off anyone thinking about trying the same sort of operation. I’d be surprised if the latter part of that worked on anyone planning a big smuggling job; one thing they had in common was that they all thought they never would get caught.

We all headed off to bed, exhausted by expending large amounts of nervous energy as much as by the physical graft of cliff climbing and gear carrying.

In the end, Operation Eyeful netted the then largest UK cocaine haul – almost half a ton of Colombian cocaine – leading to the gang receiving a total of 145 years of jail time, including the twenty-four years given to Julie Paterson, one of the longest jail sentences ever handed down to a woman drug trafficker. Paterson, who was living with Tyrrell in Parham, Antigua, but was from Norfolk, had not only prepared the
Blue Hen
yacht for sail but she had also briefed the yacht’s crew on the use of navigational equipment and advised them on landing sites. Michael Tyrrell, husband of Paterson and King Cocaine to her Queen, was sentenced to twenty-six years imprisonment. The American member of the ring, Frederick Fillingham, who was already on the run from the US authorities due to his breaking a fifteen-year parole for earlier drug-smuggling convictions, was also caught, convicted and sentenced. He was the one who had recruited the crew and also used his skills to adapt the yacht for carrying the drugs across the Atlantic.

Tyrrell, Paterson and Fillingham had been part of the gang I’d observed on the beach through my night camera; all three were later found on the island, hiding in the grounds of a local holiday complex and where, in the words of a news report, ‘they were arrested by Customs officers in the early hours . . . Assistant Chief Investigation Officer for Customs and Excise, Jim Fitzpatrick, said: “This gang tried to smuggle a huge quantity of cocaine into the UK and have received jail terms that reflect the seriousness.”’

I was later told by the officer who was handcuffed to Tyrrell in the arrest car that, as they drove him away from the scene and on to the Red Funnel ferry, Tyrrell looked out of the window and said to no one in particular, ‘I guess that this is the last time I’ll get to see the ocean.’

The officer’s reply was a grunted: ‘Not unless you take up fucking tunnelling.’

I was to later find out that this record-breaking drug bust was featured in an article on Wikipedia about Michael Tyrrell, which detailed his organization and his eventual arrest during our own Operation Eyeful. Though there was absolutely no mention, I noticed, of
my birthday.