COPMMANDOS

CROUCHING silently in the Colombian jungle, SAS hero Chris Ryan counts down the seconds to a cocaine bust of EXPLOSIVE proportions.

Around Chris is the toughest drugs squad in the world-armed to the teeth with M16 ASSAULT RIFLES and GRENADE LAUNCHERS.

And they're about "knock down the door" of a cocaine-making lab . . . big time.

KABOOM! A searing blast of heat scorches Chris's cheeks as the hut VAPORISES before his eyes, sending a 3,000ft plume of smoke into the air thanks to plastic explosives planted by the Junglas-Colombia's frontline cops in the war against drugs.

"We left the coke lab a blast site of scorched metal stinking of napalm," says Bravo Two Zero hero Chris who worked with the squad for his dramatic TV series, Elite Police, about the South American cocaine trail. "Then we needed to get out fast."

GUNNING: Chris while training with Mexican cops

Nearby were gunmen of the much-feared Marxist FARC militia-owners of the lab which was making a TON of cocaine a month worth £3 MILLION - and destined for Britain's streets.

But as the baddies moved in for a gun battle, the Junglas "squad car" turned up-a Black Hawk helicopter-to pluck Chris and the others to safety. "I've never seen precision flying like it," says the 47-year-old Gulf War.

And he's never seen cops like these. "They're paramilitaries in the heart of the world's biggest cocaine producing region. And they're hot," says Chris. "They target the crops and the labs (where the raw cocaine paste is made). You always smell a cocaine lab before you see it. Inside there are vats full of chemicals-acetone, diesel, cement. They're all used to extract paste from the coca leaves and the stench is horrendous. You can see how people's noses rot."

WIPED OUT: Junglas blew up cocaine lab

Chris was filming 5,500 miles from the UK where £2.1 BILLION of cocaine is consumed each year-and he has a message for home.

"The commander of the Junglas told me the only reason we were allowed to film was to bring home to the people of Britain the truth about cocaine-and the human cost even before it gets to our shores, says Chris.

DRUGBUSTER: Chris was on Columbian cocaine lab raid

"Users should know where it comes from, how it's made, and who suffers." Like the the teams of civilian 'eradicators' sent out to pull illegal coca plants from the ground-only to be blown to pieces by landmines planted by the FARC to protect their crops.

"One of the lads in the eradication unit was paralysed destroying the plants-and in one incident FARC had put a few kilos of military- grade C4 plastic explosive under a plant. It blew up an eradicator and 12 of his colleagues. We always hear about roadside bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq, which of course are tragic. But Colombia has the largest concentration of landmines in the world." Four people a day in the country are killed by them.

HERO: Chris Ryan crouching in Columbian jungle

Next Chris went to Brazil, where tons of cocaine a year flow through the slums of cities like Rio de Janeiro. This time he trained with Rio's tough BOPE force-and wore their distinctive black uniform and skull motif on ops.

He says: "I won the confidence of the rest of the unit on the firing range. Those kids in their 20s must have looked at me coming in and thought, 'Who is this old f**t?'"

Rio's gangs use customised AK-47 assault rifles and grenade-launchers. But the 400-strong Bope urban commandos are up to the task. Their marksmen killed 1,000 criminals on the streets of the city last year alone.

Chris was soon in the thick of things in the city's favelas-shanty towns teeming with drugs gangs-astonishingly, many of them just CHILDREN. And as they tried to take one hostile favela they came under fire. "Things got hairy," he said. "I wasn't too happy. The first time we went in using an armoured car we came under contact. Rounds were banging off the vehicle. The gangs are always well prepared for the police. As soon as we entered, spotters no older than 10 set off fireworks warning their superiors.

"Bullets literally flew a couple of feet from me in there. We were under fire for a good hour-and-a-half.

Gangsters

"BOPE gave me a dossier which showed they'd taken out 14 kids, all armed, the week before I arrived. The gangsters were 12 and 13-years-old, running around with weapons, and all banged up to the eyeballs on cocaine.

"Up to 650,000 people live in each of Rio's favelas-so the quantity of drugs and money in there is astronomical."

Mexico is the channel through which most of the cocaine bound for the USA flows. When Chris joined their version of BOPE-the Policia Federal-he says: "I ended up walking about with an M16 and a pistol going through some of those slums. And I only had a tourist visa!

"I would not have hesitated to have opened up there. A hundred policemen a month are killed in Mexico. A liaison officer we were working with had his head chopped off. It turned up packed in a box of ice outside the police HQ with a message from the dealers saying 'We're in control, not you'.

"There was a story where 14 gangsters' bodies turned up without heads. Their gang then chopped off the rival gang's heads a week later. There's no end to what they will do."

Now Chris hopes his programme will make cocaine users in the UK sit up and take notice. "Despite cocaine being so addictive, some Brits see it as relatively harmless," says Chris.

"But as I discovered, the facts behind it are horrifying. And the misery it causes on its way to our streets is shocking."

BIG GUN: Chris Ryan in Columbian police helicopter

Chris Ryan's Elite Police is now available for £17.99 in a DVD box set.

This article has 8 comments