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Boarding Drug Sub Dangerous Business For Guardsmen

Photo from U.S. Navy

Coast Guard law enforcement officers survey the deck of the self-propelled, semi-submersible craft they seized Saturday, Sept. 13, 2008. Seven tons of cocaine were removed from the vessel.

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 16, 2008

TAMPA - When three U.S. Coast Guard investigators peered into the hatch of a semi-submarine Saturday night, they saw two knives near the crewmen, Lt. j.g. Todd Bagetis said.

It was the middle of the night when the guardsmen climbed out of a small launch boat and onto the vessel authorities said was smuggling seven tons of cocaine in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and knocked on the hatch.

"The only thing we noticed inside… was a lot of commotion, a lot of moving around, gesturing hands and, of course, we saw two knives very close to the crew members," said Petty Officer 1st Class Pedro Lucena, who headed the law enforcement detachment boarding team, which is based in Miami.

Lucena and Bagetis spoke to The Tampa Tribune via satellite phone hookup from the USS McInerney in the Pacific Ocean this morning.

The semi-submersible vessel was seized and the four crew members were arrested as part of Operation Panama Express, a Tampa-based investigation of Colombian maritime cocaine smugglers. The crew members are expected to be prosecuted in federal court in Tampa.

Lucena said that the vessel, which had been traveling at a steady clip, suddenly went into reverse. The three guardsmen grabbed onto what they could, two clutching gooseneck-shaped air-intake valves and Lucena hanging on to the hatch.

The sub also started to sink below the surface of the water, getting two to three feet down, guardsmen said.

"It's a very slippery surface," Lucena said. "We were knee high, maybe more, at one time into the water."

The vessel started making erratic side-to-side movements, trying to shake the guardsmen off the hull and into the sea, Lucena said.

Lucena said he called to the other guardsmen to hold on. He yelled in Spanish to the semi-sub crew to stop, and he tried to guide other guardsmen in a small boat to stay alongside the semi-sub in case he and the others needed to be plucked from the water.

"It was extremely scary for the boarding team and myself," said Bagetis, who is in charge of the law enforcement detachment. "At any possible time, they could have easily fallen overboard" or into the propellers. "Serious injury could have happened."

It all happened very fast, Lucena said. A few seconds, maybe a minute or two. He didn't keep time. But eventually, the semi-sub stopped. Lucena said he thinks it was the element of surprise and that the guardsmen had managed to hold on and conduct their business.

Plus, three of the four semi-sub crewmen apparently were asleep. When they left the cramped vessel, three were groggy and uncoordinated, Lucena said. The craft had been at sea about two weeks, leaving at 9 p.m. Aug. 31, heading north-northwest.

Citing an ongoing investigation, the Coast Guard would not say the vessel's point of departure or where it was headed.

Investigators say semi-submersibles have become common among Colombian cocaine smugglers.

Bagetis said the USS McInerney first detected something suspicious Thursday, using radar to locate the vessel. "We launched two small boats," each with law enforcement team members searching for the semi-sub, which was just a few inches out of the water but with a visible wake.

When they found the semi-sub, they launched white flares to light the sky and then determined the vessel had no markings and no nationality. Obtaining permission from superiors to board the vessel, team members approached and identified themselves.

After the vessel stopped, three of the crewmen came out, and the fourth was ordered to shut off the scuttle valves, which had been opened to sink the vessel, the guardsmen said.

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