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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 weregoing 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 physicalresistance 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