‘Interesting,’ mused Ewan. ‘Ergo, the bombers at Aldermaston were expecting to escape!’ He went quiet for a moment, lost in his own thoughts, he spoke out loud. ‘I wonder if this attack has anything to do with the Iranians and the UK Trident nuclear weapons programme…? If the terrorists were in bed with Iran, it would give them a safe place to go after the attacks… And this sort of attack could appeal to a number of the extremist Iranian politicians. A tit-for-tat attack… I wonder?’
‘Ewan, no!’ The Air Chief Marshal looked concerned. ‘Don’t even go there!’
Ewan shrugged his shoulders. ‘Old habits… Just trying to put two and two together…’
The Air Chief Marshal spoke over him. ‘Now for phase three; the news and the TV crews are all yours, Harold.’
Brigadier Harold Sparkman, who was standing nearby, nodded and phoned a member of the Ministry’s press team, who was in bed asleep. ‘I’ve arranged a press conference for you at 7 a.m. near to the Aldermaston explosion. When you’re dressed and have had a quick cup of coffee, I’ll brief you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Colonel Gray, meanwhile, was giving orders to the SAS red and blue team leaders. ‘Arrange for the vehicles to be removed and the area cleaned. Can you please confirm the terrorists are safely with MI5 operatives?’
‘Yes, sir,’ came the reply.
‘Good. Now how serious are the injuries your team sustained, blue leader?’
‘Relatively minor, sir. Corporal Evans looks a bit like a hedgehog, but he can be patched up! And corporal Winderson suffered concussion when he struck his head in the explosion, but he’s got a thick skull – give him a few hours and he’ll be right as rain.’
‘Thank you, blue leader. All fit members of your unit are to join the red team. A helicopter is on its way.’
Rafi looked at the clock on the wall; everything had happened so quickly. It was only 4.20 a.m., Friday morning.
The brigadier turned to the Air Chief Marshal. ‘Press briefing arranged, sir. Our boys on the ground have been told to keep the buildings smoking as you ordered, sir.’
Shortly after the Ops Room had become operational, the PM, the Defence Secretary, the Air Chief Marshal, Colonel Paul Gray and Ewan Thorn had gone into a conclave. It was a meeting each of them would remember for years to come. On the table in front of them was a list showing the sum total of all the special forces, marines, paratroopers and army units with urban warfare experience – plus the crack anti-terrorist personnel – that were available. The country’s defences were stretched to breaking point. The conflicts overseas and tight budgets had left a gaping hole in the numbers available. Their terrorist adversaries were highly trained and experienced in the deadly art of urban warfare and concealment. A decision had to be made – they agreed that quality rather than quantity had to be the order of the day.
The PM pondered quietly to himself as he listened to the discussion over the allocation of their scarce recourses. He, too, now appreciated just how overstretched they were. Resources were being allocated according to the perceived size of the latent hazard – priority was given to protecting the nuclear installations, leaving the defence of the gas and oil plants bordering on thread-bare.
The considered view was that the terrorists would not make their move in the dead of night. And the command centre did not want them to be tipped off by reconnaissance teams being spotted; accordingly, only cursory inspections of the properties and the surrounding areas had been done.
‘No sign of any of the four terrorists,’ came over the speaker. ‘We will wait until all our special forces, marines and paratrooper teams are in position.’
‘I hope to God we’ve got this right,’ the Air Chief Marshal murmured anxiously under his breath.
‘It’s now time to see whether the terrorists are where we think they should be,’ called out the Air Chief Marshal.
Rafi felt a wave of apprehension flow through him. If he was wrong about the properties and they drew a blank… The butterflies in his stomach turned into a dull ache. He looked at the screens in the Ops Room; they were focused on the nuclear installations. The twilight pictures, from the infrared cameras, gave a distant feel as to what was happening.
The Air Chief Marshal addressed his team. ‘Brigadier Sparkman, as discussed, you will coordinate the SAS and the Paras at Hartlepool, Hull and Easington.’
Then he turned to Colonel Turner and enquired, ‘Is all in place at the Peterhead properties, St Fergus and Cruden Bay?’
‘Yes, sir.’
His next question was addressed to Colonel Gray. ‘All ready to go at North Walsham, Bacton, Grays and Sizewell?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ewan, is all in place at Troon, Peterhead and Great Yarmouth docks?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That leaves me with Sellafield, Prestwick and Heysham.’ The Air Chief Marshal spoke via his headset to his SAS contact, glanced across to the video-conferencing screen which linked their Ops Room with the SAS command centre and then at the screen next to it, which showed the paratroopers’ command centre.
‘Gentlemen, are we ready to go in five minutes?’ Affirmative replies came in.
The die is cast, thought Rafi. He touched Kate’s shoulder.
She was standing in front of him, gazing at the screens. She turned; her face was white with tiredness. ‘This is it,’ she said apprehensively. ‘We’ll soon find out if our hunches were right or if we’ve got it completely wrong!’
‘Hunches… I hope they’re a lot more than that!’
‘Your confidence is most refreshing,’ said Kate. Rafi found his hand next to hers; he gave it an affectionate squeeze. She took half a step backwards and let her body rest against his. She kept hold of his hand as she watched the three screens intently and listened to all that was going on.
The waiting was nail-biting. There were, Rafi estimated, twenty teams of special forces, paratroopers and anti-terrorist personnel out there in the darkness, stalking their prey. Behind them provisions had been made for their support. The scope of the mobilisation made it one of the largest peacetime operations on record.
Rafi held his breath.
Then the five minutes were up.
‘Go, go, go!’ came over the speakers. The troops swung into action.
On the screens Rafi could see the shadowy terrain over which the soldiers were navigating. Greg’s makeshift Ops Room was working well.
At Heysham, a squad of paratroopers were supporting a team of three SAS soldiers. The building had been under observation for the previous five hours. There was no sign of movement and no telltale infrared heat signatures to show where the terrorist was. It was a tall property, to one side of the industrial estate. It was being refurbished and sections were covered in tarpaulins. At the back of the flat roof there was a new scaffolding tower. The SAS soldiers inched forward, carefully checking for booby traps. Eventually the first soldier reached the bottom of the scaffolding tower. He gave a thumbs up sign and pointed to the top of the tower.
His signals were relayed back to the command centre, which briefed the Ops Room. It was then that Rafi heard, ‘Infrared shows the target to be lying on the scaffolding boards under the tarpaulins. He’s going to be seriously difficult to get at without giving our presence away.’
There was a flurry of movement in a number of the small frames on the screens as the units’ progress was fed back to the Ops Room.
The brigadier called out, ‘Terrorist located at the Hartlepool property. He’s under camouflage netting in the gully of the roof. He has a clear line of sight across to the nuclear power plant. The team on the ground is working out how best to tackle him.’
Rafi felt his hand being gently squeezed, as if to say, ‘We weren’t wrong!’
‘No sign of the terrorists at Cruden Bay, St Fergus or Peterhead,’ shouted Colonel Bill Turner.
‘No sign of the missiles or of terrorists at North Walsham, Bacton, Sizewell and Grays,’ added Colonel Gray,
abruptly. ‘Wait! A Vektor mortar and twenty shells have just been found on a motorbike parked at the back of the industrial building at North Walsham.’
Colonel Bill Turner spoke. ‘An unattended utility van just over a mile from St Fergus has been investigated and a mortar with twenty shells has been recovered. No sign of the terrorist and nothing to report at Cruden Bay.’
The Air Chief Marshal called out, ‘They’ve located a mortar and twenty shells in the panniers of a BMW motorbike parked in an old container on the building site at Gosforth, near Sellafield.’
This was quickly followed by the brigadier. ‘A mortar and twenty shells have been uncovered at the Hull property.’
Rafi’s pulse was racing. He did a quick calculation: all four Vektor mortars had been recovered, two terrorists and their Kornet missile launchers were still unaccounted for… they were getting there. The smile on his face evaporated, as he realised that it was too soon to be complacent. If just one missile hit a nuclear target then it could be game over.
Rafi listened to the Air Chief Marshal being briefed. The SAS soldiers at Heysham couldn’t get at the terrorist on top of the scaffolding without alerting him to their presence. After a short conference, a decision was taken and a message went back. ‘Take him out. At all costs stop him firing a Kornet missile.’
The SAS assaulter at Heysham waited unmoving in the darkness. He had advised command that he couldn’t guarantee to immobilise the terrorist with his compact 9 mm sub-machine gun. The SAS snipers behind him also had no clear shot.
He waited for his orders and then moved forward silently. The scaffolding tower had four main legs. He approached the furthest pair, reached into one of the pockets of his assault vest and pulled out a couple of small packages – the special services own blend of plastic explosive – which were spot on for cutting structural supports. Without a sound, he expertly set the charges, then moved back to the other pair of legs and repeated the process. He heard a person moving above him. His pulse rate stayed steady. The terrorist had no line of sight to him and the SAS soldier knew that he’d been as stealthy as a summer breeze; silently, he backtracked around the corner of the building.
He gave the signal that he was clear of the detonation zone and waited for the order from command. When it came, he pressed the miniature magneto in his hand and felt the shock waves of the four explosions ripple through his body. Each of the tower’s legs was now missing a section. The tower remained motionless for a moment and then gravity took hold. The scaffolding wall ties had no chance of holding the load. The tower arced outwards from the building and crashed into the ground. The terrorist, who had been under the tarpaulin on the top, spilled out and did a dead cat bounce on the nearby grass. Three darkly clothed SAS men descended on him and stripped him of his weaponry. The Kornet missile launcher and three missiles lay on the ground close to him.
‘Beware of any remote controlled devices,’ barked the commanding SAS soldier.
In the Ops Room the capture of the Kornet launcher, its three missiles and the terrorist was greeted with cheers. The terrorist was still alive, but unconscious and looked to be in a bad state.
Suddenly, flames and dense billowing smoke erupted near to the Heysham nuclear power plant.
‘Oh, no!’ thought Rafi. Then he remembered it was the army at work, giving the impression that the terrorist attack had been successful.
Kate was still leaning against Rafi. She felt a release of pentup anxiety. She turned her head and looked into his eyes.
‘Your instincts were spot on. You’re a star.’
He felt the warmth of her body. ‘More like good teamwork,’ he replied, holding her gaze with a big grin.
Meanwhile, the brigadier had received confirmation that the terrorist at Hartlepool had a clear view of the nuclear power station. ‘Can he be safely taken out?’ he asked his opposite number in the command centre.
‘Yes, sir. a SAS sniper has outflanked him and has him in his sights.’
‘Do it. Just don’t risk him firing a missile.’
‘Yes, sir!’
A few moments later, confirmation came over the speaker. ‘Terrorist taken out.’
This was followed by the noise of a massive explosion at Hartlepool. The brigadier turned to Colonel Gray. ‘Crikey! The sappers have been busy – I wonder what they’ve found to blow up?’
Rafi watched the flames darting high into the air, followed by thick smoke engulfing the area around the nuclear power station. He looked across the screens. The army’s pyrotechnic skills were being shown off to great effect at Aldermaston, and now at Hartlepool and Heysham.
Daylight would reveal damage to a non-nuclear building at Aldermaston, a smoking zinc factory next to Hartlepool nuclear power station, and fire and smoke coming from the abandoned visitor centre on the perimeter of the nuclear compound at Heysham.
Rafi and Kate were on tenterhooks. Two terrorists with Kornets were still out there. The good news was that at least one of the likely targets – the oil pumping station at Cruden Bay -wasn’t nuclear, but what on earth was the other target?
‘Nothing to report on the three trawlers,’ called out Ewan.
There was a lull in the proceedings. Time ticked by slowly; the two missing terrorists were conspicuous by their absence.
Rafi and Kate hurried back to their office. They looked again through their paperwork, but still couldn’t find any clues as to where the missing location might be.
Rafi was worried. Had he let the side down and missed some-thing obvious which could have pointed them to the missing target? The very possibility haunted him.
The Air Chief Marshal took the PM, the Defence Secretary and the head of MI5 to one side. ‘I would like your permission to mobilise the entire military. We’ve passed the point of no return. I should have asked for this hours earlier. Unfortunately, at the time I was preoccupied with coordinating the limited resources we had available.’ He looked at the PM. ‘Sir, we have to have a cast-iron insurance policy in place should one of these damn missiles get through to something nuclear. Our ability to deal with a nuclear incident isn’t what it should be. We have two terrorists with Kornet missile launchers on the loose. Who knows if they now suspect that we’re on to them? We must prepare for the worst eventuality: a nuclear disaster.’
The PM agreed and, on his authority, at 4.45 a.m. all armed services’ leave was rescinded. All personnel, including part-time territorial soldiers, all available medical and support Corps, were called to their barracks and put in a state of readiness. Every hospital with an Accident amp; Emergency Department within 100 miles of a nuclear plant was told to be fully staffed up by 6 a.m. The Home Secretary was contacted and advised to catch the first flight back to London. His ETA in Downing Street was 9.30 a.m.
Every barrack and hospital was told that this was a surprise training exercise, sanctioned by the Prime Minister to test their readiness to respond to a national emergency. The message went out to senior officers that the new Prime Minister wanted to use the exercise as a way of seeing where the problems might be and whether they had the right resources available.
Those in command were left in no doubt that they should prepare for a sizeable disaster or conflict.
The Air Chief Marshal turned to Brigadier Harold Sparkman and Colonel Bill Turner who were standing close by. ‘There are contingency plans in place for attacks on nuclear installations. What I want from the two of you is a plan – we’ll call it Operation Counterpane – which will deal with a serious radioactive leak, contaminating, say, ten to twenty square miles of a densely populated urban area. On your agenda there need to be robust provisions on how to get a nuclear leak covered from the air, arrangements for an exclusion zone with a guarded perimeter, decontamination and triage units, medical facilities, an evacuation and rehousing plan, and a system to monitor the identities of all those displaced. Basically, take what is already there and make it work – big time.’
He was looking perturbed. ‘Probab
ly best if you include Len Thunhurst, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, in your plans. Giles here has brought him up to speed with all our problems and he’s aware of the need for secrecy.’ He paused, ‘The transportation front is what really concerns me. We are short of a couple of squadrons of heavy helicopters. Without them, logistical support in an urban disaster area will be a nightmare. There will be blocked roads and restricted access at a time when speed will be paramount. The number of operational workhorse helicopters in the UK is far below what we’ll need.’
Then the beginnings of a smile appeared on the Air Chief Marshal’s face. ‘I think I’ll have a quiet chat with a close friend of mine who runs the Royal Netherlands Air Force. Colonel Turner, you are a logistics expert, please liaise with Ewan and get him to draw up a list of the whereabouts of all private helicopter fleets around the UK. Tell the operators that all helicopters capable of carrying four or more people are subject to a requisition order for the next twenty-four hours. Their helicopters should be fully fuelled, with pilots on immediate standby and ready to join a UK task force by 06.00 hours at the latest. They will be held on call for the rest of the day. Full compensation will be paid if requested. Inconvenienced clients should only be advised that their helicopter is on loan for a rescue operation.’
As of 5.35 a.m. the Royal Netherlands Air Force’s base at Gilze-Rijen, fifty kilometres west of Eindhoven, was on full standby and over half of the Dutch military helicopter fleet had been offered to assist the Royal Air Force.
The Air Chief Marshal breathed a sigh of relief on hearing the news – the Royal Netherlands Air Force had one of the most modern fleets in Europe and its helicopters were only an hour away from the east coast of England. Twenty-nine helicopters – Chinooks, Eurocopters and Apache Combat helicopters – were on standby and a direct link had been established with their operations room. This, in one stroke, had more than doubled the number of military helicopters available. He walked over to the PM. ‘Sir the deployment of the military is likely to lay bare the level of overstretch.’
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