THE LONDON DRUG WARS (23 page)

The police observers had given a
radio commentary on this activity to John Brookes who now was sitting in a
communications room at New Scotland Yard with Arthur Bolton. Clearly these were
decoy vehicles and he directed that they be allowed to leave without being
followed. The man who‘d opened the gate had returned to the yard and stood
talking to the men remaining there. Five minutes later he took a mobile phone
from his pocket and put it to his ear. After a brief conversation he nodded to
his two companions and all three disappeared into the warehouse.

Then the waiting began. Brookes
wasn’t sure what would happen next or, indeed how long he could afford to wait.
An hour went past with no sign of movement in the warehouse and Bolton, who had
become fidgety, said, “Surely we’d better go in now sir?”

Brookes glared at him. “Don’t be
impatient Arthur. The drugs aren’t going anywhere with our people watching.
We’ve got to wait and see what happens next.”

Another hour passed and still nothing
happened, and now Brookes was beginning to worry. A few minutes later however,
Middlemiss called on the radio. “Heads up, there’s something happening.” Then,
“Two guys have come into the yard; they’re opening the gates. Yup we’re in
business, boss. There’s a silver Merc pulled straight into the yard and the
gates have been shut behind it. Three goons in it. One is shaking hands with
the old geezer in charge. Now they’ve both disappeared into the warehouse. The
two goons have taken a cardboard carton out of the boot and followed them.
There’s another guy gone out into the road. Yep, he’s a lookout; leaning
against the wall smoking. But he’s alert.”

Things went quiet again for five or
six minutes before Middlemiss called again. “Heads up everyone. The two goons
have put two cartons in the boot of the Merc. All three are getting into the
car. Heads up the mobile units, they’re on the move. Turning left out of the
yard towards Battersea Bridge. Bravo Charlie One, have you got them?”

“Yes we have them in sight.”

 One of the most difficult aspects of
covert policing is following suspects who are alert to the possibility of being
followed. To do it successfully without being spotted requires several
surveillance units, good co-ordination and a great deal of expertise to say
nothing of a fair sprinkling of good luck. Bolton’s team had the resources and
the expertise, on this occasion fortune also smiled on them. Brookes sat back
and watched Arthur Bolton as he directed his team.

Bolton had six pairs of detectives on
the ground, each pair in a nondescript-looking car or van; in reserve he also
had an observer in a helicopter on call but keeping some distance away. The
road vehicles followed the Russians car through the London traffic, frequently
changing places. One of the required skills of the co-ordinator is to correctly
anticipate the route of the target and have his units take parallel routes.
Over the next twenty minutes, the surveillance team’s expertise was stretched
to the limit as the Russians changed direction several times and doubled back
on their route.

The car travelled north across
Battersea Bridge then appeared to wander aimlessly for twenty minutes before
finally turning south and re-crossing the river over Chelsea Bridge. It then
turned east towards Bermondsey. Bolton finally called in a police helicopter. The
Met uses several, two are clearly marked with the force logo; others are not.
The one called bore only civilian registration. Once it had the Merc in sight,
the road surveillance team dropped back out of the line of sight of its
occupants.

The car eventually turned into an
alleyway beside a railway viaduct and drove straight into an arch under the
raised railway line. Through a pair of powerful binoculars the observer in the
helicopter saw a man quickly closing the huge doors to the arch behind the car.
He looked up at the helicopter which was flying at a height of a thousand feet
half a mile to the south. The pilot did not change course but kept on a
straight line travelling east. The man in the alley watched it until it passed
out of sight. He then walked up to the end of the alley where it joined the
access road. The helicopter observer looked back at the other side of the
viaduct and saw that the rear walls of the arches had no windows or doors. The
only way in and out of the premises was via the alley where the van had
entered. He conveyed this information to the surveillance vehicles below and
continued flying away from the scene.

Fred Middlemiss was by now in one of
the following cars, keeping well back from the surveillance team, and had
listened to the radio commentary. He was a native of Bermondsey and, as a
child, had played hide and seek in the alley and the surrounding area. He knew
it like the back of his hand. He told Paul Phillips, who was driving the car,
to turn into the street immediately before the alley, running parallel to it.
On either side of this street were three-storey Victorian houses, their plaster
facades now crumbling and in disrepair.

Long ago, these had housed the rich
middle classes who garaged their vehicles in the very same spaces under the
railway viaduct where the Russians’ van had gone. More recently the old houses
had been split into flats that were occupied by the not so rich. Many were now
coming to the end of their usefulness and were derelict and due for demolition.

Middlemiss
got out of the car and walked along the street. He found one house backing onto
the alley that was unoccupied; it’s sad looking windows and doors boarded up
waiting for the demolition men. He walked round to the back of the house and
found what he’d expected to find, local children had prised off the boards to a
rear window to gain entry. He scrambled in through the window and mounted the
stairs to the top floor. Through the dusty window in a rear bedroom, he could
clearly see the row of arches under the viaduct. All were shut and there was no
sign of life except for the man standing on the corner, who was talking into a
mobile phone. Middlemiss radioed his findings to the Brookes at the Yard; He
was told to stay put and report any activity.

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars in the
sea,

When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee.”

–
Lord
Byron
, The Destruction of Sennacherib.

The main briefing room at New
Scotland Yard is built like a small amphitheatre with rising tiers of seats all
facing a small stage with a large film screen and a whiteboard. In view of the
importance of the forthcoming raid on what was strongly believed to be
Bronchi’s drug ‘chemist’, DAC Groves had decided to attend the briefing
himself. He and his two senior detectives stood facing some fifty officers. A
third were detectives, the remainder wore the uniform overalls of SO 19, the Met’s
Armed Response Unit.

These were the Met’s equivalent of
the American SWAT teams so familiar to cinema-goers. With the growth of
terrorism and, more recently the trade in illicit drugs, this unit had grown in
size and experience. The group gathered in the briefing room was the elite of
the elite. Selected both for their weapons expertise and their temperament,
they spent much of their time practicing for situations such as the one they
were faced with today. They were equipped with truncheons, stun grenades,
rifles, anti-tank weapons and everything in between and they were trained in
the use of them all.

Groves called for order. Once he had
their attention, he paused for a long twenty seconds, his eyes searching out
each officer in turn.

 When he finally spoke, his words had
the impact he sought. “Ladies and gentlemen, each year in London alone,
hundreds of adolescents have their lives ruined by being lured into drug
addiction. Each year hundreds more die from drug abuse. Addicts steal,
prostitute themselves and even kill to obtain their daily fixes. Innocent
people are caught in the crossfire when the gangs fight over territory.

“Over the past
month, my teams of detectives have watched as a gang of Russian cutthroats
callously planted a bomb, killing four people and effectively removing the
opposition. Now we move on the other criminal gang before they can fill the
void left by the demise of the Yardies.”

He paused and again his eyes sought
those of each of the men before him. “We now face the Russian Mafia or Red
Mafiya as the romantics like to call them, although there is nothing romantic
about their activities. The profits made from the sale of drugs are enormous;
make no mistake, they will fight to protect their trade. They trust no-one and
are totally ruthless and torture and execute anyone who opposes them. I will
not tolerate them in London. It is they who bombed the Bridge Tavern in Brixton
and killed four people. You have been instilled with the doctrine of using the
minimum force necessary to affect your purpose. Today that may well amount to
maximum force. You will take no chances. That is not a licence to kill
indiscriminately; that is a warning of the determination of those you will
face.

“Taking out the
street dealers is like taking cups of water from a fast-flowing river; the
effect is minimal and they are replaced immediately. We need to arrest and
convict the distributors and break up their organisation. That is what today’s
operation is about; we have traced the smugglers route all the way from Warsaw
and Mexico to Marseilles and across France to this country. The French police,
who have given us a great deal of help, have closed down the smuggling chain in
their country. So have the Italians in theirs; one Italian police officer was
killed in the process.

“Detective Superintendent Brookes
will brief you on what we are about to do and your role in that. Listen
carefully to your instructions and carry them out effectively. I don’t want to
lose any of you so remember your training. And good luck.” He sat down to a
room full of silence.

The briefing took half an hour and
was thorough. There were a few nervous questions at the end, then the men
dispersed to their vehicles.

Meanwhile the
observation of the target premises continued. Mike Phillips, who had brought a
flask of coffee with him, had joined Middlemiss in the derelict house. The two
men were in constant contact with the Yard and all the officers on the
operation. They were using a radio channel reserved for such purposes and a
simple code that revealed as little as possible to any chance listener; the
last thing they needed was media helicopters hovering in the area, and the
media were known to listen in to police radio channels and were selfish enough
to put their thirst for a story above operational needs of the police.

There had been no visible activity at all in the row
of arches or the alleyway. The lookout still stood at the entrance to the
alley. The Fiat car seen to leave PC Inc
.
earlier was now cruising around the streets in the vicinity
of the alley obviously looking for police surveillance units; the Russians were
alert.

As soon as the van had disappeared
under the arch the senior detectives had got their heads together. Bolton was
for hastily getting the team together and hitting them as quickly as possible.
Brookes had said, “No, I think it’s more important that we are thorough. Put
yourself in their shoes; they won’t want to dispose of the drugs unless they
absolutely have to but they will be frightened to get caught in possession of
them. I think that they will sit and wait until they feel sure we’re not onto
them. As long as they don’t spot our surveillance team, we have time to plan.
Let’s take that time and do it properly.” Bolton had reluctantly concurred.

So the raid had been planned with
military precision. It was decided that Groves and Bolton would co-ordinate the
resources needed at the Yard and Brookes would make the tactical decisions at
the scene. So it was Brookes who had sat down to plan things with the two inspectors
who would lead the separate teams. The detectives would be led by DI Eric Brown
who’d been with Brookes since his days at Hackney. The armed response team from
SO 19 were under the command of John Barnes. In his late forties, he was
ex-army and a fitness fanatic. Barely five feet eight tall and wiry, he’d
trained his team in every aspect of street fighting with and without weapons.

The three men had first pored over
the plans of the arches and their surrounds. All the signs suggested that the
Russians would not give up without a fight. This was complicated by the fact
that the police would have to justify their actions later in the cold light of
any subsequent enquiry. The British courts and the public at large would not
sanction heavy-handed police tactics that gave criminals no chance to surrender
peacefully. The narrow stretch of water that separated the UK from continental
Europe was, in terms of the latitude given to police accountability, much wider
than it looked.

The floor plan of the arches, hastily
borrowed from the public library, revealed that each arch was an empty box.
But, there were connecting doors between each; normally kept locked, but
someone with the right keys could pass from numbers one to eight without being
seen from the alley. Barnes insisted that all eight be covered, as he would not
accept the possibility of being attacked from the rear. The only access to the
arches was from the alley; the other side of the viaduct was one solid brick
wall. The alley was a dead-end; vehicles could only access it from one end.

There were eight arches in the row
under the railway viaduct; each had huge double doors. These had been designed
to give access to the horse-drawn carriages and limousines of the rich who had
once inhabited the houses backing onto the alley. Above the doors were
fanlights designed to let some light into the dim interiors. All were grimy
from decades of neglect. Many were cracked and broken; some had been covered
with plywood and cardboard to keep out the elements. Each arch had a Judas door
set into one of the double doors.

The van had entered the fourth arch
from the street. Records showed that arches three, four, and five were rented
to a car repair shop. The name on the lease was Popov, yet another cut-out from
Bronchi who no doubt controlled the activities that went on there.

On the other side of the alley was a
high brick wall that separated it from the gardens of the row of Victorian
houses backing on to it. It was in one of these houses that Fred Middlemiss and
Bob Phillips had set up their observation post in a room overlooking the scene.
And it was to this observation point that John Brookes came to set up his
forward command post.

Brookes and his two inspectors had
finally formulated a plan of action with three elements. First, marksmen would
be placed where they had clear lines of fire covering the whole alley and the
doors to the arches. They would effectively set up and seal off a perimeter.
Secondly, once the marksmen were in place, the gang’s lookouts would be arrested
as quietly as possible. The very moment that this had been accomplished, the
search team would move in. This team would consist of detectives who would
attempt to serve the search warrants, backed up by officers from SO 19. As they
moved in, the sewer outlet, the access point of which was located at the
entrance to the alley, would be blocked with a filter that would catch any
evidence flushed down a drain.

When they were
all in position, a detective would approach and knock on the Judas door of the
arch into which the van had been driven. If those inside responded peacefully,
the detectives would search the premises. If not, they would hand over to the
Armed Response Team. This was the most dangerous part of the operation, but if
police went in with guns blazing without provocation, it might later be
difficult to justify such action in a court of law. If shots were fired at
police the rules changed, the police would take no chances and lay siege to the
whole row of arches and use whatever mean necessary to gain access.

The timing was an essential element
of the plan; if the Russians inside got wind of the police presence, they would
at the very least, try to dispose of the drugs; at worst they might prepare a
violent welcome for the police. As the Scottish Laird, Rabbie Burns had once
said, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men gan aft aglay’, and it was the
timing that was to create havoc with the plan.

Brookes gave the order for the
marksmen to take up their positions on the perimeter. Two were in the houses
looking down on the alley; others crept through the gardens and hid behind the
brick wall where they would remain out of sight until the lookouts were
arrested. When they were in position, Brookes gave the order for two police
mobiles to take out the Fiat.

In the time it had been patrolling
the area, the Fiat’s route had become predictable. One nondescript police car
waited at a junction on that route, another accelerated up behind it as it
approached the junction. At the last moment, the first vehicle shot out in
front of the Fiat, forcing it to stop. Officers from the second vehicle leapt
out and pulled the two men that it contained out of the car before they could
use their mobile phone and alert those in the arches. In the event that the car
doors were locked, one of the detectives carried a hammer to break a car
window. But the hammer had not been necessary; the car doors had not been
locked, and the two occupants were arrested without much fuss.

Sadly it was from that moment forward
that things went awry. The next part of the plan was that an attractive woman
detective would approach the Russian lookout standing at the junction of the
alley and the street and ask him for a light for her cigarette. Whilst he was
distracted, two burly detectives would climb over the garden wall and tackle
him from behind.

But, as the woman officer approached
the man, his mobile phone rang. He put it to his ear to answer it. The woman
knew that the search team was committed and would arrive in seconds. She could not
wait for him to finish his call. Thinking on her feet, she brushed the phone
out of his hands and screamed for help.

Hearing the scream, the two men leapt
over the wall and rugby tackled the man. He was powerfully built and the three
rolled about on the ground until eventually, the Russian was subdued and
arrested. Whilst her colleagues were struggling with the lookout, the woman
detective had picked up the mobile phone and switched it off. But she was too
late; the caller was a Russian inside the railway arch and he had heard the
scream and the struggle.

As the lookout was being led away,
two SO 19 Transit vans arrived at the end of the alley; they turned in and
stopped side by side, blocking the entrance. The first police to disembark took
up firing positions facing into the alley as their colleagues poured out behind
them.

Suddenly, the double doors to the
fourth arch burst open and a van shot out and turned towards them. Seeing his
exit from the alley blocked, the driver screeched the van to a halt, he and his
passenger leapt out brandishing Uzi machine pistols. They both opened fire on
the police in front of them. The police returned fire. Two policemen went down.
One was killed instantly with a bullet in his head, the other with a shoulder
wound.

The Russian who
had driven the van managed to get off only a short burst, most of which went
into the air, before he was riddled with bullets from the police marksmen. The
other was shielded by the van from the marksmen behind the garden wall, but not
from the police marksmen at either end of the alley. Before he could fire a
second burst, he was hit in the chest and the back by three high velocity
bullets and was dead before he hit the ground.