I chased down drugs runners in the Caribbean Sea
A small team of British and Americans were involved in an intense chase for drug smugglers who had 358kgs of cocaine. This is a first-hand account from the man who led the team in
RFA Argus and her task group have recently made a series of drug busts in the Caribbean. Here are the words from the Boat Group Commander on what happened that day:
“I was actually outside on the deck doing a lesson with my lads on a bit of equipment when I got called to the operations room at the top of the ship.
“We picked up a visual on the boat heading towards us, about 1 and a half miles. It was quite hard to see while at sea, it’s so lumpy and we are so low to the water, but we picked them up before they could see us and then we start heading towards them.
“Its always going through your head, while you’re in the chase, of all the possible situations and possibilities”
“I got called up and got the general picture of the situation, the speed, distance and worked out how we can best tackle it [the drug runners] with the captain and the ops officer.
“One of the key tactical decisions was because Argus is such a big silhouette on the horizon, we needed to get my small boat launched and gone so Argus could move out sight and not give the game away.
“On Argus, I’m a Corporal in 539 Raiding Squadron, 4 Commando, Royal Marines, we are landing craft and small boat specialists back in the UK and we’re attached to RFA Argus as part of the task group out here working with the US LEDET (Law Enforcement Detachment) on counter-narcotics operations.
“From there everyone who needed to be involved was at readiness, we did all the relevant comms checks and weapons checks and then we load the boat. I was given a bearing and to aim for and when we pushed off like late evening — about 2 hours before last light. We picked up a visual on the boat heading towards us, about 1 and a half miles. It was quite hard to see while at sea, it’s so lumpy and we are so low to the water, but we picked them up before they could see us and then we start heading towards them.
“They pinged us about half a mile away, at which point we had obviously lost our covertness, so we put the blue lights on and gone loud by then. We put our foot down.
“They turned around and headed back south and started throwing the bails overboard, which we noticed. We were quite lucky in the fact that our boat was quicker in this case — it’s not always the case — and we made good progress chasing for about five to ten minutes and caught up with them, followed along parallel with them and the LADETs do their thing.
“The team drew their weapons to take aim as a deterrence but also if there is a threat they can react to it quickly and deal with that situation. It was quite rare in this situation, as we didn’t have helicopter support, with the extra weapons above and also extra eyes.
“We had a second boat that had come out from Argus and had closed up at this point and helped in recovering the bails. That second boat had picked up an extra 11 [bails] using our trail, they also bought out the civilian life jackets so that we could transport the detainees back to Argus, which we did once all the searches and checks had been done by the LEDET.
“We got them on our craft and then took them back to Argus where they began to get processed on board, we went back out to support the LEDET while they did their research, taking down dimensions and compartment and more evidence.
“Once this had all been searched, a lightning storm was coming in so this kinda sped us up a bit, and we then recovered back to Argus.
“Its always going through your head, while you’re in the chase, of all the possible situations and possibilities. This is quite new to us, but the US Coast Guard are quite familiar with it. You want to be firm and authoritative with them but not overly aggressive, we are there to do a professional job at the end of the day.
“So it’s me as the boat group commander and a coxswain with me who drives the boat, so two of us from 539 Raiding Squadron and 3 from the LEDET (US Coast Guard). 5 of us on board altogether, in other situation it can differ depending on the intelligence and the live feed from the MPA, this will determine how many deploy. On this occasion, we knew that it was a small vessel and we were confident we could take it.”
The British team deployed in the Caribbean took part in two more drug busts that weekend, read about it here:
