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details and credit cards — everything he needed to identify himself online. A laptop was in front — he was installing a Windows update — and a security alert button to one side. He planned to work for a few hours, then sleep through the day, heavy blackout curtains shutting daylight out even as the world prepared to come crashing in.

6.47AM
Helicopters swoop in low, the first passing over the rhinoceros statue to land in the middle of the courtyard. The second comes in near the giraffe statue, touching down on the manicured lawn.
The rotor wash is incredible, throwing up waves of tiny limestone chips around the courtyard. It spangs off windows, scours the paintwork on the Rolls-Royce.
“What the hell is that?” says Wayne Tempero, lurching to his feet, running for the door. Dotcom rouses himself but does not get up; the sound of a helicopter so close to the house is concerning and puzzling.
Tempero was a key player in the mansion team. He had more than two decades of experience in the personal protection business, training in his hometown of Dunedin with the legendary Geoff “Tank” Todd. The instructor’s skills are not only sought after by the SAS but also in such demand that special forces soldiers from around the world come to New Zealand for his specialist training. He worked as a bouncer and a meat worker in Dunedin’s freezing works while honing the skills which would see him protecting the royal family of Brunei and Ernesto Bertarelli, the Italian-born Swiss billionaire, and Kim Dotcom and his family.
Casually dressed but body-armoured, the police spill from the helicopter and raise their weapons to charge towards their designated parts of the house. They’ve practised this using maps and aerial photographs, but little else. The mission was too secret to go rooting through council files where detailed building plans were kept.

6.48AM
Tempero comes barrelling out of the staff quarters opposite the main house and straight into the muzzle of a gun carried by the man in black. “Good as gold,” he says, and lies down flat. Plastic cuffs go around his wrists.
It was later claimed the armed officer was shouting “police” at the top of his lungs but, with the noise of the two helicopters roaring around the rooftops of the house, it was impossible to hear anything. Tempero saw only a large gun in civilian clothes.
One team races in through the main door and up the staircase to Dotcom’s room. Inside, Dotcom has heard the banging and is alarmed.

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