Gangbuster (4 page)

We did a recce a few days before and saw a stretch of wasteland we could cross unnoticed under cover of darkness and get up close to the dockside with only a
few feet between us and the point where the smuggled drugs would be brought ashore. On the big night, we got geared up in black from top to bottom, balaclavas with eyeholes, torches, guns at the ready. We’d planned a pincer movement with other teams once the drugs were ashore. Customs had a team in position, Scotland Yard’s SO11 intelligence boys were dotted round the plot.

The UK drug-dealers waiting for the booty had a fleet of refrigerated vans waiting all dolled up in the fake livery of some wholesale fishmonger’s company. They hoped to move out the cannabis under the guise of cod and herrings and deliver it to various destinations across the country.

We decided that the hit must be done on the quayside. We couldn’t risk one of the vans getting out with drugs on board. We weren’t in the business of bringing cannabis in free of charge for drug-traffickers. With the meeters and greeters assembled in front of us at the quay, it was just a question of waiting for our sturdy little boat to come chugging up the river.

Me and my fellow men in black were so close to the suspects we could hear every word they were saying as the boat finally docked and they started piling the bales on the quay. We were right under their noses but they couldn’t see a thing as we lay in the dark behind a fence and small wall, under some bushes. Spirits were high among the smugglers and their greeters as they stacked the bales. They obviously thought the worst was over and the good times were about to come. We sat waiting and listening. All the time, the guv’nor was on the radio to me through my neatly-concealed earpiece.

‘Can you see the crew?’

I gave three clicks for ‘Yes’ on the talk button.

‘Have they unloaded it all yet?’

Two clicks for ‘No’. We are communicating within feet of the bad guys but no one is talking.

Finally, the trawler was unloaded and its contraband cargo neatly stacked on the edge of the quay. Our undercover boat weighed anchor and sailed a little way up the Arun, turned down a creek and disappeared from view. We didn’t want the ship, the skipper and crewmen on site when we got the order to strike. We had a bit of time to play with. The meeters and greeters still had to lug the 2.75 tons of cannabis up the quay and into their vehicles before they could move off. They were in the middle of loading, huffing and puffing, when Chris Jameson called up on my earpiece.

‘Everything OK?’

Three clicks.

‘Can you put the hit in?’

Three clicks.

‘As soon as you’re ready, do it.’

We crept out of our hiding places, put on our Kangol hats with the chequered band, pulled out our fluorescent torches and moved in over the small wall. There was so much clonking and chattering going on as they humped the heavy bales into the vans that no one was listening for us. We were right on top of them before they realised what was happening.

‘A
RMED POLICE, STAY WHERE YOU ARE
.’

Torches straight in their faces. You’ve never seen shock like it. They could not believe it. By then a van full of hairy-arsed Old Bill had crashed through the main gates of the yard and screeched to a halt by the bales. The driver said, ‘Oh shit, I thought we were
going to get a piece of the action … but you’ve got ’em all lined up on the floor like dummies doing everything you tell them.’

I think they were all hoping for a bit of a dust-up to brighten a long night. We were delighted with the result. We’d taken out some big names on the British drug scene. There were other people waiting at the local railway station who were crooks and we nicked them too. There was a string of simultaneous arrests right across the south-east of England wiping out a big chunk of the British cannabis distribution network.

Bobby Mills was arrested as he celebrated prematurely in a London restaurant. Feviet and Locatelli, either by luck or design, had already left the country. They weren’t going to hang around to dirty their hands. But what they hadn’t realised was that for months we’d built up a dossier on them that could put them behind bars for 20 years.

Meanwhile, out in the stormy Atlantic, the Royal Navy had moved in for its own nautical assault on
Poseidon.
Under special authority from the Defence Ministry, a team from the Special Boat Section – forerunners of the SAS and every bit as tough – were lowered by helicopter to seize the swaying vessel. It was the first time since World War II that the Navy had put a ‘prize crew’ aboard a vessel in international waters, effectively an act of piracy on the high seas. The SBS took control of
Poseidon.
Then she was sailed back towards the UK by the Navy, its remaining cargo of hash impounded by Customs and eventually destroyed. The ship was sold for £1 million and the money put into public funds to help offset the huge cost of Operation Dash.

Nobody aboard
Poseidon
had offered physical
resistance to the hard bastards of the SBS as they swung aboard down the helicopter winches. No one, that is, except a former French paratrooper called Gilbert Astesan, who had grabbed the helm from Dutch skipper Peter Seggermahn as the Navy attacked. Astesan fancied he was smart enough to outrun the British Navy. He zig-zagged through the Atlantic at maximum knots trying to prevent the SBS chopper squad from boarding. But there was no way a drug-dealing freighter was going to outrun Her Majesty’s Navy. The Navy stormtroopers boarded her in appalling conditions and detained the entire crew, which included the skipper’s wife. They were winched off to a fleet auxiliary vessel to be transported back to Britain to face arrest.

The SBS lads had saved a little surprise for the swashbuckling Astesan. He was the last to be winched from the
Poseidon
’s
deck. And his adventure of a lifetime was about to begin. He was fitted with a rescue harness, winched to 100ft then taken on a gut-churning, vomit-inducing whirlwind spin over the roaring Atlantic waves in pitch darkness to teach him a lesson. Don’t mess with the Navy. It must have petrified the poor sod. It’s a funny thing, but after Astesan was brought back to England with his cronies, he had acquired the utmost respect for the Navy and the SBS.

It was one of the most incredible operations I had ever been associated with. I can only say I was as proud as punch to have been involved, and awash with pride at the heroism of those undercover guys, police and Customs, who went out into the Atlantic to bust this gang. I think about those heaving decks and 20ft waves and wonder if I would have acquitted myself with such
honour. I hope so, for the sake of SO10.

One memory of the operation still seared on my memory is that of our man Paul frantically trying to offload the bales of cannabis in nightmare conditions and trying, at the same time, to get recorded evidence for the prosecution case. He was fitted with a tiny hidden tape recorder for blow by blow commentaries. At one point, he talked breathlessly about the desperate attempts to offload the cannabis from
Poseidon
on to the slippery decks of our trawler. Then he can clearly be heard throwing up over the side. ‘Urrrghh,’ breakfast overboard. Poor sod.

Bobby Mills’ case was dealt with by me and seasoned detective Freddy Bateman, former Flying Squad, former Regional Crime Squad, and as sound as a pound. Mills was an absolute gent to deal with, one of the old school of villains. He realised just how much in the shit he was. He was nearing the end of one ten-year sentence and was now nicked for another big ’un, having been identified as the British agent for the top drug-smuggling cartel around. He was walking back into another ten-year stretch and knew it. He’d almost cracked it, almost completed his porridge; why on earth had he risked it all again? Well, he would have come out to thousands of pounds if all had gone well, I suppose that’s reason enough.

He didn’t try for deals. He told me and Freddy, ‘I’m not going to talk to you, I’m not going to tell you a fucking thing about it. But I’ll save you work and plead guilty in court.’ Being a man of his word, he duly did so. But no way in the world was he going to grass anyone up to get a lesser sentence. He could have told us a lot. He was in his mid-fifties, his criminal career was over and he was looking at prison walls for many years to
come. But he retained that old underworld code you rarely see now and we had a grudging respect for his values. You could say his life had totally gone to pot.

The rest of the gang were brought back to the UK on a British destroyer, held captive in specially equipped secure cabins for the three-day journey and minded by a Customs team who’d sailed with the Navy. We were all standing on the quay at Portsmouth Naval base when they arrived. The SBS guys came off first, all cloak and dagger. No cameras, no fuss, no celebration drink. I think they probably went for a bit of private R and R of their own as they slipped away with kitbags over their shoulders. We all went aboard then with the Customs officers and arrested the
Poseidon
mob, a real united nations bagful, an international crime corporation. They were read their rights, told what they were being arrested for, and taken off to various police stations in the South of England where they were charged with drugs offences and sent to remand prisons to await their trials.

Although Feviet and Locatelli, effectively the company chairman and managing director of this gigantic offshore venture, appeared to have slipped the net, we had enough evidence to issue an international arrest warrant. We’d managed to get photographic evidence of both men meeting up with Mills, including at Heathrow Airport, during the run-up to the
Poseidon
seizure. We had damning evidence from the surveillance teams. Locatelli was arrested a few weeks later at Madrid Airport for the
Poseidon
drugs shipment and a range of other drug-related offences. He was in the company of an Italian criminal court judge. I make no comment. Feviet was arrested later in connection with
Poseidon,
pleaded guilty in court and
received what appeared to be a paltry four-year sentence. Then it emerged that
Poseidon
was just the tip of the iceberg. He was wanted in Canada for the illegal importation of six tons of cocaine. In cash terms, that dwarfed the six-and-a-half tons of puff we had seized. The value of the coke would have gone off the Richter scale in drug-trafficking terms – hundreds of millions. The
Poseidon,
it appeared, had also been used in that smuggling operation. It illustrated just what a top villain Feviet was and why it was so vital to hunt him down. He was duly extradited to Canada and is now serving a substantial prison sentence there. Having had his boat confiscated, his drugs seized and burned, hopefully Feviet will never reap the rewards of his criminal activities.

A total of 18 people were arrested over
Poseidon,
and all but three were convicted and jailed in a series of trials lasting through until June 1995. A huge and sophisticated foreign drug cartel, with the UK as its principal target, had been taken out in what was hailed as one of the most successful joint operations ever between police and customs, a combination, I must say, that did not always sing from the same hymn sheet. With the unique involvement of the Royal Navy and SBS, it was a fantastic example of courage and cooperation in the face of the gravest danger.

The trial judge at Croydon Crown Court, His Honour Judge Devonshire, was unstinting in his praise of the undercover officers, Customs and police, who had risked their lives in that petrifying drama on the high seas. He said the rivalry between police and Customs had often been commented on but, in Operation Dash, ‘it was uplifting to see the cooperation evident in this case.’ I’d certainly had some
unfortunate run-ins with the Cuzzies over the years, and I was grateful to see a new era of collaboration.

Customs boss Dick Browne was equally fulsome in his plaudits to Mick and Paul and the courageous roles they played. And in a letter to Commander Roy Clark of the South-East Regional Crime Squad, he noted how much humour our Team 12 had shown during the long months of surveillance leading up to the quayside ambush.

‘I would like to single out DI Chris Jameson,’ he wrote. ‘His enthusiasm and professionalism greatly impressed all of us here and we have come to regard him as a credit to SERCS and to the police service in general.’

Mr Browne had heard that we’d never had a dull moment on the job. I won’t argue with that. And it still went on after the bad guys had been rounded up.

We’d all suffered a bit from the sharp tongue and acid wit of Freddy Bateman and we decided collectively to get our own back on him once the dust had settled. We hatched a little plot. One of the guys on the team knew Freddy’s family quite well and said he had a daughter who was game for a laugh. So we sent Freddy down to the south coast on some spurious inquiry to get him out of the way. Then a team of us went round to his house with a video camera and filmed a Loyd Grosman-style
Through
the
Keyhole.
Who would live in a house like this? Well, Freddy did and he was in for a shock. Camera on. One of the girls on the team went into the bathroom, ran a foamy bath and got into it, posing seductively. I got into Freddy’s marital bed, put a QPR poster above it, then his daughter clambered in beside me. ‘Let’s go into the bedroom for more clues
…’ Up from under the duvet popped Bleksley and his daughter with big cheesy grins on our faces.

At the conclusion of the job, we all sat down for a final debriefing. Chris Jameson stood up and said, ‘Before we start, we’ve got a brief instructional video for you all to watch.’ The video film rolled. All eyes were on Freddy. Cut to Chris at the front door of a nice semi saying, ‘I wonder whose house this is?’ Freddy sat bolt upright.

‘That’s my house, you bastards.’

His face was a picture as he watched the guided tour, the beauty in the bath then Blex and his daughter romping in bed. To cap it all, we’d filmed the family’s pet hamster scurrying round inside the microwave (off, of course). ‘Now, who would keep a hamster in a microwave like this?’ Revenge was sweet.