Anything to Declare?

by Jon Frost

  It was the case officer on the investigation that saved my bacon when he delivered the news that, unbelievably, the defence barrister for a number of the arrested smugglers had decided that the cat litter was to be kept as evidence! This was 30 tons of moisture-intolerant rock dust, which would have to be stored in dry conditions at taxpayers’ expense. And the reason given for this was that the defence team might want the jury to see the original concealment in person. Why on earth did the defence think that we spent lots of money on taking pictures and videos of the concealment from every available aspect? Maybe they thought we just did it for fun. However, we played along rather than give them some excuse to object to the investigation. We didn’t want to fall at the final hurdle.

  My problem now was how to move 30 tons from South Wales to the East Midlands so we could store it for the court case. In the end, we made use of that great secret weapon that is always at the forefront of the war against drugs – the forklift truck. Yep, I had it all lifted into a convoy of large articulated, curtain-sided lorries. It took three days, with bentonite dust spilling everywhere and filling the air. I inhaled so much of the shit that when I sneezed clay fired out of my nose – or at least the bits that hadn’t already started to harden in my nostrils. By the time we had finished, I was sneezing out clay bullets.

  Strange, I thought, how I’d spent most of my career identifying, questioning, searching, interviewing, following, arresting and charging people who, for recreation, spent their days inhaling various illegal and expensive substances for pleasure . . . and here I was snorting nothing more exotic than cat-crap dust.

  As I drove at the head of the three articulated-lorry convoy that was carrying evidence of the largest heroin seizure yet made in the UK, I thought about how it was a bloody good job that I didn’t have a feline pet of my own waiting for me when I got home. There was the possibility that it would try to shit on my bentonite-stuffed nose. And because by now I was so thoroughly sick of anything to do with cats I would have booted it squarely up the arse.

  24. No. 1 with a Cocaine Bullet

  On an undercover CROPs job on the Isle of Wight, we’d had a run-in with some crime squad officers on the island who nearly cocked up an investigation of ours. The surveillance on the mainland was being conducted by both Customs and police, but on different targets. There were regular daily briefings between the case officers and the ground commanders of both groups so that everybody knew their jobs, so avoiding any ‘blue on blues’, which was the police codename for what the Army called ‘friendly fire’ or, in other words, shooting your own.

  On the Monday, it was agreed that Customs CROPs would deploy on the island to carry out recces and close-target recon. There were to be no other Customs or police surveillance officers anywhere near: just ourselves and our back-up teams. CROPs work is dangerous at the best of times so we didn’t need our airwaves messed up by any surveillance boys. From surveillance of the previous two days, we were 90 per cent sure that all the main targets were on the mainland and hadn’t yet got to the island.

  We deployed at one o’clock in the morning. It was dark, cold and clear and, thankfully, there was no moon to give away our movements. One of our teams was closing in on part of the target address to check out the household security system when a call came through saying that a car had unexpectedly swung into the long drive of the target premises, almost illuminating the team with its headlights. They dived for cover and sent out a danger message over the radio. All the teams, including mine, stopped dead in their tracks, and then we disappeared into the nearest undergrowth. Could this be the target or one of the gang turning up without warning? We all knew we could really be screwed here.

  The car stayed in the same position for a few minutes, giving one of our teams the opportunity to get its registration and note that there were three people in the car, all males. No weapons could yet be seen. The team radioed the details to our ground crew who ran checks on the car reg. And, lo and behold, it was a police surveillance car from the regional crime squad that was working alongside us. It couldn’t have been a mere mistake or a wrong turn, because they would have to have taken a ferry to get to the island. The following morning, the three officers were standing in front of both their own and our governors for what we called ‘an interview without coffee’ and what everyone else called ‘a right fucking bollocking’. Blue on blue, indeed.

  Ultimately, that mission had turned out a good result. And a month later we were now heading back out to the Isle of Wight for what would turn out to be our biggest job yet – Operation Eyeful. We had no idea yet but a record-breaking 400 kilos of cocaine worth £90 million was heading our way. It was appropriate in a way that it was being brought to the Isle of Wight because the island had a rich history of smuggling; as well as taking salvage goods from shipwrecks, historically the locals had also made a living from smuggling goods from France. But, this time, they were coming from a bit further afield.

  What we did know was that it was being organized by a big-time smuggling ring run by a drug trafficker called Michael Tyrrell and his British wife Julie Paterson aka the ‘Cocaine Queen’. Tyrrell was from the West Indian island of Antigua and was well known there and in the United States for his criminal activities, especially with an associate called Frederick Fillingham, although the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had been unable to touch him. Paterson was no decorative gangster’s moll – she owned a yacht charter company and was a yachtswoman herself with three Atlantic crossings under her belt.

  Between the three of these characters, they seemed to have everything sewn up: Tyrrell had the drug connections; Paterson owned a yacht charter service; and Fillingham was a boat builder and sailor. The perfect combo for drug-smuggling operations by sea then.

  We’d had the drug organization under surveillance for months. Whenever they were in the UK, Tyrrell and Paterson were kept under close surveillance and were observed buying equipment in preparation for their next big job. It would be interesting to see if a trafficker who had managed to elude the mighty power of the DEA would have as much success against a small island called Britain. We did once have the world’s greatest Navy fleet so we’d have to see if our rich maritime history was deep enough in our DNA to be able to bring the Cocaine King and Queen to book.

  My involvement began humbly enough with my driving our CROPs Land Rover down to Southampton. It was the day before my birthday, so I wasn’t too happy. I soon cheered up as I saw my mate and colleague, Puddy, waiting for the Red Funnel line ferry to the island. He was his normal chirpy self. ‘Hello, me old mucker. What the fuck are we doing in this God-forsaken place?’

  He was quite right. Large commercial docks are not the places that romantic stories about smuggling are made of. We knew the job we had been called back to the island to carry out was going to go down soon and CROPs were an essential part of the operation, but we didn’t know much else. I would love to say that the ferry trip was smooth, but it wasn’t. Puddy scowled at the waves: ‘If this keeps up it’s going to be one bastard of a night for a boat landing.’ And he was to be proved right.

  We joined up with the rest of our merry band of CROPs officers at a secret location. Only the people who needed to know knew that we were there and what our mission was: CROPs was always a very secretive part of an investigation. Very few people could identify us, even in the broader investigation team. Outside the investigation, hardly anyone in Customs and Excise even knew of the cadre’s existence. We did jobs that people didn’t talk about. It was as rare as snooker ball fur for us to appear in court. Even in the drugs-drop aircraft job we did before, all the jury knew of us when it came to court was that the pictures had been taken by an officer ‘in a position to observe’. There was no specific mention of CROPs. And, in this latest instance on the Isle of Wight, it was so bloody secretive that even we didn’t know yet what it was; we weren’t in a position to observe anything, not even our own involvement.

  Once we were all gathered a
nd the kit had been unloaded, we got together for a briefing. Before the briefing started, my mind drifted back to the last annual CROPs meeting we’d had a few months earlier. We were told that the bad guys had just learned how to be a little worse by improving their CROPs-officer-hunting techniques. Previously, the better gangs had employed soldiers and ex-Marines to hunt us down, but now things had got more dangerous, thanks in part to the Cold War. The officer taking the annual briefing produced a very strange piece of kit for us to look at: Russian by design and manufacture and definitely military, our colleagues in military intelligence had managed to get it on the black market. They had known of its existence but never before been able to get their hands on one. It was, to put it bluntly, an OP hunter – designed to identify observation positions or even hidden tanks or artillery spotters. And, since the end of the Cold War, there had been no more need for this technology so someone had started selling them off to the criminal underworld. And what exactly was this piece of kit that, months later, I was still thinking about and even fearing?

  It was a device with a computer-controlled passive laser that would scan 180 degrees to its front in search of a reflective surface, which was the kind of telltale surface not usually found in the countryside. This surface could be a camera lens, a tank sight, a weapons scope, etc. Once the device identified a target, the passive laser would concentrate its search down to the exact position of the reflection and zoom in so as to build up a picture of the reflective surface. If it was a nonmilitary target, the laser scanner would then restart the scan. But, if it was what it classed as a legitimate target, the operator would engage the secondary, full-power, non-passive laser. Using the scan and targeting, the main laser would lock on to the target and fire. This main laser was very powerful. And, we were told, if the laser locked on to a camera, scope or binoculars being used by a CROPs officer, it was powerful enough to burn a hole right through the lens, the device you were holding and then your head in a single shot. If all the other dangers and indignities of CROPs work weren’t enough, we now had the thought of possibly facing something that could burn you an arsehole in the back of your head.

  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 outboar
d 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.