The early spring sunlight shone brightly into the window of the small conference and reflected silver of Southampton water, but Jack Ropell barely noticed it, as was true of the other eight men in the room. It was twelve hours since the helicopter ride and this debriefing was to see what could be learnt from last night’s abortive attempt to catch the drug runners. Peter Romsey was in the chair. Willie the pilot was having his say.
"The chopper is great for finding them coming in because you can cover a big area quickly and have the advantage of height. The problem is that we then have to get them ashore on open ground where we can land your gorilla's to catch them."
He indicated Ropell and the others with a nod of his head. No one took any offence. It would have been a waste of time with Willie.
"That said, the helicopter is useless once they reach any sort of harbour. If they can get ashore they can disappear into the streets and alleys. Even if they have several kilos each to carry it is not too difficult. It is not as if they were bringing in something really heavy, like gold. Of course if you let me mount a light machine gun on the chopper it would be a different story."
Romsey looked at the others quizzically. Jamie Hambrowe raised a finger to indicate he wanted to speak.
"The problem is that the way we are running this we have to be in the helicopter. There is no way we can be ashore and react fast enough to any message from Willie even if he thinks he knows where their landfall will be. Then as Willie says, if we they make the shore with a few minutes lead we usually lose them. We have only caught one lot red handed in the three months we have been running this. We might have made a couple more ditch their cargoes but its not enough to deter them. We need to rethink it."
Jerry Warner was the smallest man on the team. He was a quiet person usually, but when he spoke you could be sure he had given it some thought. He shook a finger for emphasis when he spoke.
"We know they are coming in to this strip of coast because it is so well suited to their business. They pick it up from some freighter out in the channel and then go hell for leather for the shore. Why don't we have an inshore craft waiting for them so that we can catch them in a pincer movement."
Willie answered.
"We do not have anything fast enough or manoeuvrable enough and we would have to fight a bloody budget war to get that changed."
It hit Ropell like a vision.
"Yes we do."
He rose excitedly.
"We have three bloody inflatables that are locked up in the pound right at this minute. Why not use their own boats against them."
There was a sudden lifting of spirits in the room that you could feel.
"We could use two of them at any one time and cover quite a wide area. Two men in each and two in the chopper with Willie."
Willie snorted.
"We would have to cut a lot of red tape to get them released. They are evidence."
"Use them. Use all three and I will give you the extra men you need to run them."
Peter Romsey looked around at the open mouths and the looks of disbelief. He shrugged.
"Well its what you wanted isn't it. Just catch the sods."
As they stood to leave he caught Ropell's eye and indicated for him to stay behind. He told the others he would catch up with them in the canteen and turned back to see what Romsey wanted. The look on his face stopped him dead and he knew it would not be good news. Romsey put a hand on his sleeve and Ropell knew it was the hand of death.
"Your father was killed in a car accident two days ago, Jack. I had a phone call in the early hours of this morning, but you were out with the helicopter and I did not think it would be a good time to tell you. Then you all came straight into the briefing so I thought it could wait until now. I am very, very sorry."
Ropell wasn't sure how he felt. He had done his best to cut himself off from his family and had succeeded he had thought, but although he wanted to see his father as he had been at his sister's graveside, he only picture his father throwing the football to him in the back yard, laughing and smiling. The pressure on his arm increased and he realised Romsey was talking to him again.
"Do you want a few days off to go to the funeral, Jack?"
He shook his head to clear it.
"When is it?"
"In two days. On Friday."
Ropell wanted to say that he wouldn't be going to the funeral. That he didn't have any family left but instead he found himself nodding in agreement. He instinctively knew he had to do this. Whatever had been between them he knew he had to do this for his father. To not go would give his Mother a victory that he would move heaven and earth to prevent. He felt wetness on his face and realised it was tears.
"Crying for what should have been." He thought.
Romsey removed his hand.
"I took the liberty of booking you out on a flight for tomorrow. When you come back is up to you but I have also booked you a weeks compassionate leave."
Ropell lifted his head up and with a mighty effort faced the world. He nodded to Romsey.
"Thank you, sir, but I will fly back home on the Saturday. With the old man gone there will be nothing to keep me in Canada any more."
Romsey just nodded and turning left the room without saying anything further.
Ropell looked out of the window at the river going past as it had for a thousand years. He had thought he was alone when he had left Canada the last time, but with his father's death he realised he hadn't really known what the word meant. He bloody well did now, though. He wondered if his Mother would bother to attend the funeral, although he doubted it. He doubted if she had more than raised an eyebrow when she had been told. Well if the callous bitch did come she would get nothing from him. Not a word.
He thought of what the last few years must have been like for the old man. No kids and no wife. Rattling around alone in whatever house or apartment he lived in now. The lonely suppers in front of the television and immersing himself in your work to compensate for it all, and he didn't even realise he was also describing his own life.
Three weeks later and it was a repeat performance. The helicopter was swaying and bucking as it pursued the inflatable at speed. The sun had gone down some fifteen minutes before and dusk was fast approaching. The only difference was that this time they were a little further along the coast off Dartmouth. Ropell was in the co-pilot seat, strapped in tight and was in charge of the intercom, radio and the searchlight. Willie was fully absorbed with flying the chopper.
"Don't make it too obvious we are not trying to drive them away from Dartmouth."
"Alright, Jack. Relax. I won't bollix it up, old man."
Willie turned his head and grinned at him. Jack preferred he gave all his attention to keeping them above the waves and shut up so as not to distract him. Willie suddenly overshot the inflatable. It took advantage and roared of towards the shore and the mouth of the river Dart at more than seventy knots. Willie deliberately took a longer turn than was necessary before getting back in pursuit. Ropell got them back in the searchlight. One of the two men in the inflatable was bending with his back to them. With a start Ropell realised what he was doing.
"The cheeky bastard is mooning us."
He reached for the radio and thumbed the button.
"Jamie?"
Jamie Hambrowe's disembodied voice sounded in his ears.
"Yes, Jack"
"They are coming in at speed down the port side of the river. They should be with you in a couple of minutes."
He paused as the chopper lifted.
"We have just gone up to regulation height so they will think they are in the clear. Surprise them for me."
On the smugglers inflatable the two occupants were slapping each other gleefully as the searchlight faded away behind them. The first they knew of Jamie Hambrowe's approach was when the bow of his craft thudded into the side of their boat. One of them was immediately thrown off his feet and int
o the river while the other was knocked away from the wheel and into the bottom of the inflatable. Hambrowe kept the pressure on for some moments more before swerving away. Just long enough to send it off on a course at almost right angles to the river, its engines still racing. It covered the two hundred yards to the other side of the Dart like an express before smacking head on into the private dock of one of the many large private houses that line that part of the river. It reared up like a giant grey hippopotamus and fell back upside down into the water.
Hambrowe throttled down and took his craft alongside. They switched on a powerful torch and searched the darkness. The helicopter came overhead and Ropell turned the searchlight directly downwards to help illuminate the scene. Time to start the mopping up.
A month had passed and the conference room seemed a brighter place that morning. It was pouring down outside on the Hamble, but inside the room, spirits were high. In the darkness on the night of the incident, the only thing they had found had been body of a twenty two year old man who had subsequently been identified by the French police as known to them. He had a history as a petty thief and drug pusher, but had been out of sight for some time. Later they had dragged the river and had come up with a plastic wrapped package containing ten kilos of Cocaine and five kilos of rocks. The theory was that since the helicopter patrols had started the smugglers had been weighting their cargoes in case they were forced to ditch them.
A day later another body was washed up in a small bay. This too was of a young male and death was by drowning. His clothes had been French and although French police had been given photos, fingerprints and dental details, as yet he had not been identified. For Ropell and his team all the evidence had pointed to him being the other occupant of the boat.
With some effort and the good will of the owner of the private dock where the chase had ended, the incident was kept out of the papers. The idea was to leave whoever was behind sending the stuff over in the dark. So he wouldn't know if his runners had been intercepted by the authorities or if temptation had been too much for them and they had done a runner with a small fortune in uncut Cocaine. The consequence was that in the next ten days they took out two more inflatables and twenty kilos more of Cocaine. On both these occasions they had taken the crews into custody. The upshot was that one of the tabloids got hold of the story and run a banner headline, "Channel Drugs War" along with any details they had managed to glean by fair means or foul.
Predictably for the last two and a bit weeks all had been quiet. This morning conference was to decide where to go next. They were shocked when Peter Romsey told them he thought the unit had achieved all it was going to and he was now reducing it to just the helicopter and one inflatable. Ropell was even more shocked when he was old that he was being transferred to London. He was mollified when Romsey told him the reason. The police had managed to get an undercover man into one of the main suppliers of drugs in Britain. Ropell and Jamie Hambrowe were going to liase with the man in charge of the police operation. A Chief Inspector Alan Sobers. Things had also changed in the drugs world. A new force was taking over and was bringing order to it. Supply would no longer be a piecemeal affair. Big business was taking a serious interest and control. Ropell was excited at getting the liaison role and felt that this was what he had joined the service for. He kept his flat in Southampton, because his beloved sailing boat was moored there and looked around for rented property that he could afford with his London allowance. He ended up in a one bed roomed attic flat very similar to the one he had spent some happy hours in with Gussie. He wondered how she was going on with her new man.
On the same day he moved into his new London office a Liverpool court was sentencing a young man named Wayne Doolan to two years in prison for tax evasion. Ion the other side of the world in the mountains of Colombia in the church of Santa Anna, another young man was watching a beautiful young girl carry the flowers to the altar for the Day of Our lady and wondering how long he should wait before letting her father know of his interest in her. All them would have been astonished to know just how their paths would cross.