Part 30 (1/2)

Everything was laid out behind the wagons ready to go at ahy time.

Once everyone had loaded up we moved into the t:rew room to find out what was going on. We were all eating our crisps apart from Slaphead, who saved his during the week for his kids. For some reason they always seemed to be the most horrible flavors like Prawn c.o.c.ktail.

Maybe the army had a deal with Smiths or the head chef had a sense of humor.

The SSM came into the crew room and said, ”About an hour ago there was a call out for four men, including the second-in-command, to go over the water. We've just received another call, Andy. I want you to be thirdin-command on it.”

He gave us a brief.

”The Israeli trade commission was. holding a conference at grid six-three-two-four-five-six, map sheet onethree-five. This morning the Islamic Jihad got into the building and is holding hostages. We are stood to, waiting for the word to move. The O.C and his group have already moved by one-zero-nine (Agusta helicopter).

Steve is waiting with the second one-zero-ninei for the second-in-command and sniper commander. The rest of us will wait for the go.”

My chest felt tight as we were driven to the heli pad; in the normal course of events I wouldn't have been tasked with the 3 i/c's job until at least my next tour. I felt honored but daunted. I didn't want to f.u.c.k up.

The second wave of slime (Intelligence Corps personnel) were waiting for us by the 109. They were an integral part of any operation ever since the Prince' s Gate siege had demonstrated the value of good and accurate intelligence. During the lead up to the actual a.s.sault, specialists from M15 had been tasked with drilling holes in the walls and inserting tiny microphones and cameras to gain a detailed picture of who was where inside the building. But the information about the construction of the building was p.i.s.s poor, and the walls turned out to be too thick for the probes to penetrate. The result was that although the blokes had a model of the construction of the building, they did not know exactly where the terrorists were.

Since then the Regiment had collated a ma.s.sive database on computer that included such essential information as the thicknesses of walls and doors in buildings that were possible terrorist targets and the designs of all military and civilian aircraft. The computer was portable, so wherever an incident occurred, we could take it with us and access the information. If we called up a certain hotel, for example, we'd get a 3D image of the interior on the screen.

Intelligence gathered on the numbers and location of people inside the building could then be added as it came to hand. Possible methods of entry could also be suggested to the computer, which would then plot the best method of moving through the building. If the design of the building was not on the database, we could punch in details such as the construction of the outside walls, the number of windows, and the location of various rooms. The computer would then ”design” the interior and provide a probability factor for accuracy, altering both as more information was added. It seemed the slime had every map, drawing, and picture of every s.h.i.+p, aircraft, and building in existence.

I liked going in the heli with Steve until he started to talk about squash. He was mad on the sport, and to make it worse, he was good at it. Squash was very popular in the Regiment; at lunchtime the courts looked like the scene at a major tournament.

We arrived at the location just outside Liverpool, a large private park with its own ma.s.sive mansion house; from the air I could see lakes and well-manicured lawns.

We landed alongside the other 109. One of the slime was there to take us to the holding area.

”It's not as good as we would want, but it will do,” he said.

On the way there we pa.s.sed scores of police, fire, and ambulance crews, all with their vehicles and their own jobs to do. The holding area turned out to be two large rooms in an old outbuilding that had been taken over and used as incident control. The rooms were more or less derelict, with concrete floors and cobwebs at the joins of the walls and a damp, musty smell of cat's p.i.s.s, but at least there was electricity.

In one corner were a couple of bogs with high cisterns and rusty metal chains.

The rooms must both have been about twenty-five meters by twenty; it was a building cut in half with a center wall and two doors.

The first priority was to meet up with jack, the squadron O.C. He was easy to spot-very tall, very wide, and with a nose that would have put General de Gaulle's in the shade.

”This is the briefing area,” he said. ”Next door will be the admin area. The I.A vehicles will be placed on that hard standing to the right; everything else on that gra.s.s area there.”

n.o.body else would be allowed to park near the ops vehicles, and the area would be kept clear of all clutter.

In the briefing area the slime and signals advance parties were sorting everything out. There was a long line of six-foot tables on which were boards that would soon have pictures of the target plus the X rays (terrorists) and Yankees (hostages).

Plans of the building were being pinned up as more information was given by the police. Steve and Jerry, the other pilot, did the sensible thing: got some tea and talked squash while they waited for their support team to arrive.

”Let's go to the main incident room and get permission to go forward and see the target,” I said.

I took a walk to the main building with the O.C and Bob, the sniper team commander. Bob was the first member of the Regiment I'd ever seen, in Crossmagien.

He had since become troop sergeant.

It seemed that the mansion had been renovated and turned into a conference center much the same as the target, which was about a kilometer away. It was very plush with deep carpets, beautiful wood, and leather furniture and a fine central staircase. The scene put me in mind of a place that a film company had taken over.

All the Gucci furniture had been moved to the side, and there were wires fixed to the floor with masking tape and running up the staircases, telephones ringing, policemen and women rus.h.i.+ng around, and, like us, people in civilian clothes with ID cards pinned to their jackets.

Every sector had its own little cordon. To come out of our holding area cordon and into another, we had to go through a police checkpoint. The slime had pinned ID cards to us. Within the main building there were other places that we needed other clearances to go into. It was chaos; everything was still getting jacked up.

The O.C introduced us to a woman police officer who was one of the incident controllers. She called the forward control point and said, ”Our friends are on their way down to see you.”

I returned to the briefing area with Bob and Jack and saw the two pilots. Squash talk had finished now and they were looking at some air photography that had just come in. Steve had decided to get his pipe out and slowly kill everyone. Each time he left it the thing would go out, so he had to relight it, causing clouds of smoke to form above him.

The squadron O.C and I got a radio each and did a quick roadie's sound check-”One two, one two”-to each other and moved off toward the inner cordon. All the radios were secure comms, so no one else could listen on our net.

We must have been stopped and checked three times at different points along the route. Once there we wanted to get as close as possible to the target. The O.C wanted to start thinking about the deliberate options, how he was going to get his teams on target and what he wanted to happen when they were there. On these phases we had the advantage over the terrorists.

Bob was looking for the best places to put his snipers.

They needed to be as far away as possible for concealment but close enough to play the kind of detail that was going to be required.

For my part, I was looking for the best Way to get the team in and control the target thirty minutes after they arrived, which was the 3 i/c's job.

We got to the control point, a group of gray police Portakabins, each with a black-and-white checked line around it. It had been raining, and our shoes were muddy. I tried to sc.r.a.pe most of it off as we entered.

The Portakabin was pretty spartan inside and freezing cold, despite an electric two-bar fire-no taxpayers' money used extravagantly here. The place smelled of coffee, cigarettes, and the stink of burned dust when an electric fire is first turned on. The windows were steamed up; people were wiping them so they could see out.

Every time somebody moved Portakabin rocked backward and forward; it hadn't been stabilized yet.

Inside were the negotiators and the world's supply of policemen.

The areas were pointed out to us on a sketch map, and then our escort turned up to take us as far as the nearest police sniper.

The boy was well and truly p.i.s.sed off. It was cold and wet, and he was lying in the mud with only a roll mat for insulation.

”I've been waiting to be stood down for the last hour,” he said.

”What have you seen?”

”Not a thing. When we arrived, all the curtains were closed, and there's been no movement anywhere.”

I said, ”If the curtains are the same as the ones in the main house, we won't be able to see much tonight either.”

We stayed for about an hour, moving around the building as much as we could. I peered through my binos, having a good look at the target.

It was a large, square Georgian building, with very clean-cut lines, much like the main mansion house itself. At the front were large double doors and windows on either side on the ground floor.

Above that there were three windows on each of the next two stories.

The roof was flat, with a little two-foot wall around the edge, but I could see two large skylights. It had a gravel driveway coming up to it, which opened up either side; around the back were outhouses and garages.

A quick word with Steve-and the slime, and I would be ready. I walked back in the mud, wis.h.i.+ng that I had brought my wellies with me.