How Navy swooped on traffickers

The daring 150mph helicopter chase in the Caribbean that foiled a £60m cocaine smuggling run

Special report: drugs in Britain
When it was seven miles away it came up on the radar; then, through the spray-spattered windscreen of the cockpit, they saw a distant flash of white and silver against the blue Caribbean Sea.

As the helicopter closed the distance at 150mph, the target became clear: three huge engines ploughing a white furrow through the water, dozens of barrels of fuel packed onto the open deck, the four-man crew hunkered down in the cockpit as the spray lashed back. And carefully wrapped in plastic, £60 million worth of cocaine.

It was what Lieutenant Nigel Cunningham and the crew of HMS Coventry's Lynx helicopter had been waiting for. They had taken off from the flight deck at 5pm last Monday expecting a routine patrol. They didn't get one. For weeks they had been sweeping the mangrove swamps and islands searching for gun runners and drug smugglers who use the coast as cover on their operations. Now they had the contact they had been waiting for.

Their ship had been sent to the Caribbean in November as part of the Royal Navy's Atlantic Patrol Task (North), a regular mission that for decades has 'protected and furthered British interests' in the region. Once that meant nothing more than pleasant ceremonials on the wharves of far-flung former colonies.

Now it is a far grittier enterprise. For the past 10 years the priority has been the interdiction and destruction of the huge quantities of drugs that cross the Caribbean on their way to Europe and America.

Cunningham, who took part in the mission to rescue the kidnapped British soldiers in Sierra Leone last year, spoke exclusively to The Observer last week from the communications room of HMS Coventry.

'We had only been airborne a few minutes when we saw it. As we got close it was clear it was a 'go-fast' heading towards the coast of Mexico. We told the ship and set off in pursuit.'

For the next two hours the state-of-the-art Lynx, armed with a heavy machine gun, and the supercharged powerboat played an amazing game of cat and mouse across the sea. Darkness would make it easy for the smugglers to get away and with the sun setting fast Cunningham tried a series of risky manoeuvres to bring the craft to a halt.

'It was difficult to see them,' said Cunningham, 42. 'We were heading straight into the sun and there was a lot of spray. It did cross my mind that they could be armed as we were hovering at 40ft above them.'

The crew tried to use the downdraft from the downdraught huge rotorblades to stop the speeding craft. On the Coventry the 270-strong crew got regular 'sit-reps' broadcast over the Tannoy. From the bridge Captain Philip Jones had contacted the Belizean defence forces. He knew, as did the helicopter crew, that three high-speed boats full of Belizean soldiers were heading to intercept the drug smugglers - but he also knew they were still a distance away.

Worse still, his helicopter had limited fuel, perhaps enough for another 30 minutes flying. They were already 15 minutes flight away from the Coventry and getting further away all the time. If the smugglers could hold on for another five minutes - before the Belizeans turned up - the chopper would have to turn back and the 'go-fast' could power away into the night.

But, at 6.30, the smugglers made a fatal error. Abandoning the open seas they headed west into the tangled inlets and mangrove swamps of the Belizean coast. Less than 50ft above them the helicopter swept on.

On Cunningham's instrument panel was the display from the downdraught thermal imaging cameras. 'The engines were a blaze of red on the screen. I watched them go straight through a narrow gap between two islands,' said Cunningham.

'Then they threw a hard right turn and went straight up onto a beach at full speed and jumped out in the swamp and started running.'

Within minutes the Belizean defence forces had arrived, following the beam of the downdraught spotlight onto the craft.

A tonne of cocaine was found on board with a street value of around £60m. Cunningham and his crew turned back to the Coventry. They landed with less than 10 minutes of fuel to spare.

But, although the seizure is welcome, it is unlikely to trouble the traffickers. Every few months in the Caribbean there are similar hauls. In one of the biggest, two years ago, a British frigate seized £1 billion pounds worth of drugs.

But the trade in cocaine is worth billions each year. And the big Colombian gangs who produce up to 800 tonnes of the drug annually - 80 per cent of the world's supply - can easily afford the losses.

'They have the advantage because of the sheer volume they are moving,' said Brigadier-General Alan Usher, of the Belize Ministry for National Security. 'If they need to get one shipment through they can send 10. Just one that is successful will make them a huge amount of money'.

The cocaine is often flown from Colombia in light aircraft and dropped into the sea at drop-off points that are often marked by radio buoys. Then it is picked up by the go-fasts - each one of which can be worth £1m or more. They take the drugs on into Mexico or towards Florida and the North American mainland. Some, destined for Europe or the former Soviet Union, is transferred to larger vessels out at sea.

In operation 'Aguila II' the Colombian navy seized three tonnes of cocaine and a variety of armaments last week in a series of linked raids off their Caribbean coast.

Usher said Belize had given up asking for assistance from overseas. 'We receive help from the British but that is about it.'

There are signs the Colombian coke barons have shifted their focus from the United States to Europe, where cocaine is increasingly seen as a prestige drug, prices are higher and the removal of border controls has made trafficking easier. According to a United States Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) report, the American market has been saturated.

Over the past five years, Colombia's annual production of cocaine has doubled - partly due to high yield strains of coca plants from Peru. And the smugglers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Last year, a 30-metre long submarine, designed to smuggle 30 tonnes of cocaine, was discovered in a secret workshop in Colombia. 'It's very, very frightening,' said Usher.

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