The Regiment

by Rusty Firmin

  Blue Team had to wait 24 hours before we could follow Red to the RCGP and it was an agonising period, hoping that nothing would happen before we got there. There wasn’t much we could do other than sit around and check and re-check our weapons and equipment.

  As the day wore on, we began to get a little bit of information about who the terrorists were. It seemed they were Iranians of Arabic extraction who came from a province in the south-west of Iran which the Iranians called ‘Khuzestan’ and they claimed as ‘Arabistan’. It seemed likely that they were being supported, one way or another, by the Iraqi government, which quite fancied getting its hands on this particular bit of oil-rich semi-desert.

  In the early hours of Friday morning we followed Red Team down to the RCGP, moving in various different police and civilian vehicles. All I had with me was the civilian clothes I was standing up in, a sleeping bag and my ops bag, which contained my weapons and ammunition, S6 respirator, black Royal Tank Regiment coveralls, Bristol body armour and ceramic plates, boots, balaclava, leather pilots’ gloves and my washing and shaving kit. Red Team had been covering the IA for the past 24 hours and now we could take over while they got some rest. It was decided at this stage that we would work 12-hour shifts between the two teams so that everyone got a chance to rest and wind down a little but, for the time being, we would all stay where we were, practically next door to the Embassy. The terrorists didn’t know it but the neighbours from hell were right next to them.

  Once we were in place, I changed into my ops kit and that was what I would live in until the operation was over, one way or another, with my MP5 and 9mm Browning Hi Power pistol and all my ammunition with me at all times. If something happened it would inevitably be at short notice and there wouldn’t be time to fuck around.

  The Red Team commander, a Fijian staff sergeant, gave us a quick brief on the IA plan and then it became our responsibility. We would have to start putting some meat on the bones. Right now, information on what was going on in the Embassy was sketchy but in the coming days, if it lasted that long, we could expect to build up a much better picture of what and who we were dealing with. This would come from our snipers and the police snipers, who were watching the outside of the building intently; from any hostages who were released and debriefed; from the police negotiators who were already establishing contact with the terrorists; and the spooks who had set up next door in the Ethiopian Embassy and who were already beginning the process of setting up technical surveillance measures. All of this information would be passed to our intelligence cell who would analyse it and strip out anything of relevance that we needed to know and pass it on to us.

  The IA at this stage was pretty simple: if they started killing hostages we would race to the front of the Embassy, smash down the door with sledgehammers and shotguns, take out as many windows as possible and go in with all guns blazing; simultaneously we would put scaling ladders up the front of the Embassy to get to the windows on the first and second floors, while other members of the team crossed the rooftops and broke in from above, fighting their way down by any means possible. What we didn’t know at this stage was that the front windows on the lower storeys had armoured glass fitted as an anti-terrorist measure and getting through this would be seriously problematic.

  Our big focus was on identifying the terrorists themselves. We needed descriptions of them and what they were wearing; we needed to know how many of them there were; we needed to know what weapons and ammunition they had; and we needed to know where in the Embassy they were. We did know that the Embassy was a large, six-storey building including the basement and that there would be a total of 54 rooms to clear once we got in there. We also needed to know about the hostages: who they were and what they were wearing, and where they were being held. As this information began to trickle in and we gained increasing clarity about the situation, we were able to refine and update the IA and thus improve the possibility of success if we did have to storm the building at short notice.

  Typically, the terrorists began to impose deadlines to try to exert pressure to get their demands met and every time a deadline approached, we would ‘stand to’ the IA until it had passed and nothing had happened.

  We used the time on standby to try to get some sleep and I was in a semi-doze, hot and uncomfortable in my ops kit and body armour, when I realised someone was gently shaking me awake. I opened my eyes to see David J and Roy who was second-in-command of Blue Team.

  ‘Rusty, we need a quick word,’ Roy told me.

  I unzipped my sleeping bag and got out to follow them into the next room so we wouldn’t disturb the other sleepers.

  ‘Rusty, I’m going to be building and setting the distraction charge with Frank Collins and a couple of other lads,’ Roy told me, ‘so we have to re-jig everything. I want you to move up and take over as third-in-command Blue Team, so you’ll be leading the guys in from the back of the Embassy to clear the basement and ground floors.’

  This was a real surprise. I was a lance corporal with three years under my belt and there were plenty of more experienced men there but that’s how the SAS works. Rank is not that important, trust, respect and aptitude are. Roy handed me several pages of notes he’d written with details of groupings, timings and callsigns on them. I had a quick look through them and told him, ‘Thanks for the heads-up; I’m up for it.’

  He patted me on the shoulder and I went back to my pit but there was no way I could sleep straight away, with my mind whirling with thoughts about this added responsibility. I looked around the room at the lads crashed out snoring on the floor and couldn’t imagine how we could possibly fail.

  When morning came I’d managed a little sleep and some of the others had clearly been as restless as I had: they were up and about already. The first incident of the day came at about 11.30am. Salim, the leader of the terrorists, was becoming increasingly angry. He had given the police a statement he wanted the BBC to broadcast but, as yet, it hadn’t gone out on air. He took Trevor Lock, the Met policeman who’d been guarding the Embassy, to the so-called talking window, along with a couple of other hostages, and began ranting and raving at the negotiators outside. He was demanding that Arab ambassadors be brought to the Embassy and that the police should guarantee safe passage for his group and the Iranian hostages out of the country. While this was going on, all of us in the holding area were on full alert. It was clear that Salim was tired and was in danger of losing control and that made him dangerous; it looked to us as if it was only a matter of time before he started to kill to get his way.

  As the day wore on, more deadlines came and went for different reasons, and each time we stood the IA to in case something happened. At some point, the negotiators told Salim that if he didn’t harm the hostages, then we wouldn’t take direct action to free them and this seemed to cheer him up and relax the tension. When Blue Team’s shift ended in mid-afternoon, we quickly changed into our civvies and headed back to RPB where we were to begin our preparations for a deliberate stronghold assault.

  While we’d been at Prince’s Gate, the pioneer platoon of the Irish Guards had got to work building a slightly scaled down replica of each floor of the Embassy out of wood and hessian in the big gymnasium at RPB. This meant that we could rehearse a clearance operation in our teams and would be familiar with the layout once we got inside. In addition to doing a stronghold assault, we had two other options to work on. One of these was a sniper option, to take out the terrorists at long range, and the second was an open-air option, in case the terrorists were moved in a bus to the airport. Consequently, in my new role as a team leader, there was a whole lot more to think about.

  The sniper option was my least favoured method. It could work but it was difficult to guarantee that we could take out all or most of the terrorists before they did serious harm to the hostages. The stronghold option, storming the Embassy building itself, was also problematic as we knew that the terrorists had had a chance to fortify it and were well armed with submachine gun
s, pistols and grenades. The bus option could work well if we could do it with enough speed. To help rehearse this, we got a coach parked at RPB and went to work. The plan was, if possible, to get Gonzo there as the driver. He would be going in bare-arsed: no weapon or body armour and actually dressed as a copper: we even got him a haircut so he could get the police peaked cap on. Gonzo is a thin, wiry guy, an ex-Para with a penchant for roll-up fags, and in his blue police uniform, he looked like a varicose vein.

  We would need to stop the coach, gain entry and then clear it at speed using maximum flash-bangs, CS gas and firepower if it wasn’t all to go horribly wrong. In training we reckoned we could gain entry to the coach in about three seconds; then I would get between Gonzo and the terrorists, acting as a human shield, while he clambered out through a side window at the same time as Gerry, Mink, Pete ‘Snapper’ Winner – a veteran of the battle of Mirbat – and the rest boarded, working their way from the front to the back, taking the hostages out and getting them ID’d and cuffed outside. The terrorists would be dealt with accordingly as we found them: the mission was to rescue the hostages.

  In training we could get this done in 60 seconds from start to finish, but in training nobody is shooting back at you. Still, it was the basis of a plan we could develop and we had the right guys to do it.

  While we had been working at RPB, the situation in the Embassy had improved. The BBC World Service had broadcast Salim’s demands verbatim and, in return, Salim had released two of the hostages: a pregnant woman and an older man who was a heavy snorer and was keeping them all awake at night. The terrorists saw the broadcast as a sign of success and were now in a good mood and we’d been able to stand down the IA for the time being.

  We returned to Prince’s Gate to begin our next shift on standby. As team leader my job now was to get myself fully briefed on the situation so I could fill the lads in before we took over from Red Team again. The rehearsals at RPB had given us more confidence and I felt, after countless repetitions in the mock-up at the gym, that I could happily walk round the Embassy blindfolded. Around 11pm, Snapper, Roy and a couple of other guys did a recce over the rooftops to see if they could find a guaranteed entry point into the Embassy. They found a skylight above a bathroom which they reckoned opened onto the main landing on the top floor. It was locked from the inside but Snapper carefully worked at the lead and was eventually able to open it. Resisting the temptation to go inside, they returned to brief Major G, knowing we had a definite way in.

  Sunday was a typical quiet sunny day in the heart of London. The terrorists were still in a good mood as a result of the broadcast and were cheered up that the Arab ambassadors they had asked to act as intermediaries had shown a willingness to do so. The police were keen to keep this mellow mood going for as long as possible. Through the day, Blue and Red Teams alternated back at RPB rehearsing the options we had developed and I was confident that however it panned out, we would be able to deal with anything they threw at us.

  The World Snooker Final was being played out in Sheffield and any down-time there was, I spent watching Alex Higgins, my favourite player, as he attempted to win it for the first time. It seemed to me that the terrorists must be pretty shattered by now and if one of them was to make a mistake, like accidentally shooting a hostage, everything could change very quickly. We knew by now that there were disagreements between the terrorists and in their fragile state it could all escalate very quickly. An added problem was that one of the hostages, Mustapha Kharkouti, was sick and had not responded to the drugs that were sent in for him and we didn’t know how Salim would deal with this. To everyone’s surprise, Salim decided to let him go.

  Kharkouti came out of the Embassy at 8.20pm and was quickly taken away for a debrief. He was able to reveal that everyone in the building was in a very shaky state and that the terrorists were getting increasingly angry at the failure of the Arab ambassadors to appear. In reality, while they had agreed to help, they weren’t prepared to co-operate with the police plan to simply keep the terrorists talking until they gave up: either they would be taking part in real negotiations or they wouldn’t play ball. He also told the police about tension between the terrorists and some of the Embassy staff who were hard-line Khomeini supporters which had already led to one dangerous flare up during the afternoon. Critically, Kharkouti was able to confirm that none of the Embassy staff were involved with the terrorists and, as we had pictures of all of them, that would make identifying the terrorists a whole lot easier when the shit hit the fan.

  Meanwhile we continued with preparation. Part of this focused on learning the faces of all of the hostages and of the terrorists, although the terrorist pictures were simple black and white photofits. Personally I focused on the terrorists but everyone does it in their own way. We now knew there were six terrorists and 19 hostages still in the Embassy and I reckoned learning six faces would be easier.

  Late on Sunday evening we learned that Salim was getting worried by sounds coming from the walls of the building. Trevor Lock tried to tell him it was mice but Salim didn’t believe him and he was right: it was yet more surveillance equipment being inserted by the spooks. ‘Poison Dwarf ’, the squadron sergeant major, told me then that COBRA, the government committee established to manage the crisis, would be meeting through the night to discuss tactics for the following day as it looked as if negotiations had reached a stalemate. I chatted with the lads for a bit before trying to rest and was relieved to see they were in their usual good humour with plenty of piss-taking going on. By now they were as ready as they would ever be to go in and rescue the hostages and we were keen to do it, but it remained a police-led operation and we were still just the back-up plan.

  Bank Holiday Monday was day six of the siege and I knew for sure by then that I wouldn’t be playing in the cup final for Westfields FC at Kidderminster. Still, that was the least of my worries and I began to think about moving the lads over to RPB to get on with some more rehearsals. I was beginning to get this jacked up when the squadron sergeant major came over and told me to put it on hold: he wanted both Red and Blue Teams at Prince’s Gate for the time being.

  At about 11am, Trevor Lock shouted from one of the windows that the terrorists were going to kill a hostage if there was no movement on getting an Arab ambassador to the Embassy to negotiate within 30 minutes. With both teams there we were ready to go and it looked like it would be the stronghold option, which by then was my least favourite. I still felt that Salim and the terrorists would eventually give up and surrender because they hadn’t actually got anywhere apart from making their point about the persecution of ethnic Arabs in Iran. Realistically, what could they hope to achieve? Of course, a terrorist under extreme stress probably isn’t rational in the accepted sense and it would be foolish to be too complacent.

  Sometime in the early afternoon, three shots were heard from inside the Embassy. This was a bad sign. There was no proof of murder yet but it looked ominous. Some time afterwards, Trevor Lock called on the field telephone which had been given to the terrorists to say that a hostage had been killed and that another would die in 30 or 40 minutes if the terrorists were not guaranteed a free passage out of the UK.

  The negotiators got to work and managed to push the deadline back to 5pm and then, a little later, to 7pm. We still had no proof that a murder had occurred – if we had, we’d have gone in earlier – but it was clear we were reaching a crisis point. To punctuate this, Johnny Mac produced a plastic frog which belonged to his baby son Paul* and started making ‘ribbit’ noises while pulling a string to make its arms and legs flap.

  *Paul McAleese was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Sangin, Afghanistan on 29 August 2009 as a serjeant in 2 Rifles. His death broke his father’s heart.

  Meanwhile, a top-class wind-up was in the offing. Wing-Nut was one of the young squadron clerks attached from the RAOC and working in the squadron headquarters group. Mel told him that we were a man short and needed him in on the assault with u
s. A set of black coveralls and body armour were found for him and Mel started teaching him room combat drills. Wing-Nut’s face was deathly pale but to be fair to him, he was game for it. He got as far as the formal pre-mission orders before Mel told him it was a wind-up.

  Now it seemed to be back to ‘hurry up and wait’. Everyone was in their black kit and tooled up but we couldn’t move until we got the word. We had a TV room at the RCGP and most of us settled down there to watch the snooker and drink tea and coffee. There was an outside line telephone and a queue developed of those who wanted to make a quick call home, but I didn’t see any panic or nervousness, just determination to get the job done and the hostages rescued.

  In between frames of snooker, I went back to the intelligence briefing area to study the faces of the terrorists on the boards. It was all about focus. The situation inside the Embassy was bad: the terrorists were exhausted, stressed, hungry and probably frightened. We on the other hand were rested, well fed and well rehearsed: we knew exactly what we had to do and we were ready to do it.

  A little before 7pm things suddenly changed dramatically. Salim had been in a shouting match with the negotiators but suddenly broke off and three more shots were heard. Not long afterwards, the front door of the Embassy opened and the body of a young man in a yellow cardigan was dumped outside like a garbage bag. Two policemen with a stretcher moved forwards to collect him and saw immediately that it was Abbas Lavasani, a young press attaché who was a fanatical pro-Khomeini supporter and had been arguing with the terrorists. He had been shot in the back of the head some time before and his body was quite cool. This raised the question of whether the last series of shots had signalled the death of another hostage but it was academic really. As soon as we heard the news I realised that the terrorists had crossed the line and we would be going in. It would be the stronghold option.