by Shaun Clarke
‘Twenty-two in all. Fifteen Iranians, the British caretaker, one Diplomatic Protection Group police constable, and five visitors, four of whom are journalists. The DPG constable, PC Lock, had a pistol concealed on his person and may still possess it.’
‘That could be helpful,’ the Secretary said with a hopeful smile.
‘Or dangerous,’ the Controller reminded him, then turned back to the Commissioner. ‘Do we know more about the hostages?’
‘One is Mustafa Karkouti, the European correspondent for As-Afir, the leading Beirut newspaper. Thirty-seven years old, he’s Syrian by birth, but educated in Damascus and Beirut. He was known to be pursuing the story of the hostages held by Iranian students at the American Embassy in Tehran. We also know that a month ago he attended an Islamic conference in London, to hear a speech by the Iranian Embassy’s cultural attaché, Dr Abul Fazi Ezzatti. He then fixed up a meeting with Dr Ezzatti at the Embassy for Wednesday, 30 April, at eleven a.m. He was there when the terrorists seized the building.’
‘Any use to us?’ the Secretary asked.
‘Could be. He speaks fluent English and Arabic, as well as a fair bit of Farsi.’
‘That could come in handy.’
‘Exactly. Also useful is the fact that Karkouti works out of Fleet Street and lives with his wife and child in Ealing. He therefore knows the English mentality, as well as the Iranian, which could be helpful to my negotiators.’
‘Who else?’
‘Ron Morris, a forty-seven-year-old Englishman, born in Battersea, London. Son of the station-master at Waterloo. Left school at fourteen, spent six months in a factory in Battersea, then obtained a job as an office boy for the Iranian Embassy. That was in 1947 and, apart from his two years’ National Service, he’s worked for the Iranians ever since – first as an office boy, then as a chauffeur, and finally as caretaker and general maintenance man. In 1970, when he’d been with them for twenty-five years, he was given a long-service bonus of a ten-day trip to Iran.’
‘Is he political?’
‘No, Mr Secretary. He’s a regular, down-to-earth type, not easily ruffled. Reportedly, he views himself as being above politics. Lives with an Italian wife and a cat in a basement flat in Chester Street, Belgravia. Collects replica guns. His work for the Iranians is certainly not political.’
‘So he could be useful.’
‘Yes and no. As the maintenance man, he knows every nook and cranny in the building. That knowledge could encourage him to try to escape.’
‘And the others?’
‘The Diplomatic Protection Group’s Police Constable Trevor Lock. Known as a good man. He had a standard police-issue .38 Smith and Wesson revolver holstered on the thigh and so far there’s no report that the terrorists have found it. According to a recent report, however, Lock was slightly hurt and is bleeding from the face.’
‘Have the hostages made contact yet?’
‘Yes, Mr Secretary. Ninety minutes after the seizure of the Embassy, the terrorists asked for a woman doctor to be sent in. At first we assumed this was for PC Lock, but in fact it was for the Embassy Press Officer, Mrs Frieda Mozafarian, who’s had a series of fainting fits combined with muscular spasms. Lock is apparently OK – just a little bruised and bloody.’
‘So how do we handle this?’ the Secretary asked.
The Commissioner coughed into his fist. ‘First, the police will negotiate with the terrorists. Undoubtedly the terrorists will want media coverage of their demands, so we’ll use this as a bargaining chip. As their demands won’t be directed at the British Government, but at the Iranians, we can afford to cede this to them.’
He paused, waiting for their reaction.
‘Go on,’ the Secretary said, clasping his hands under his chin and looking disingenuously benign.
‘Having met them halfway with media exposure for their demands,’ the Commissioner continued, ‘we try to talk them out, letting the affair stretch on for as long as necessary. During that period, we’ll attempt to soften them up with food, medical attention, communications, more access to the media, and the involvement of their own ambassadors and those of other friendly Middle Eastern states. We’ll also ask for the release of certain hostages, particularly those ill or wounded. This will not only reduce the number of hostages to be dealt with, but encourage the terrorists to feel that they’re contributing to a real, on-going dialogue. In fact, what we’ll be doing is buying enough time for the police and MI5 to plant miniature listening devices inside the building and also scan it with parabolic directional microphones and thermal imagers. Between these, they should at least show us just where the hostages are being held.’
‘And what happens when the terrorists’ patience runs out?’
‘Should negotiations fail and, particularly, if the terrorists kill a hostage, or hostages, clearance will be given for the SAS to attack the building.’
The Home Secretary turned his attention to the Controller, who looked handsome in his beret with winged-dagger badge. ‘Are you prepared for this?’
‘Yes, sir. The operation will be codenamed “Pagoda”. We’ll use the entire counter-terrorist squadron: a command group of four officers plus a fully equipped support team consisting of one officer and twenty-five other ranks, ready to move at thirty minutes’ notice. A second team, replicating the first, will remain on a three-hour stand-by until the first team has left the base. A third team, if required, can be composed from experienced SAS soldiers. The close-quarters support teams are backed up by sniper groups who will pick off targets from outside the Embassy and specially trained medical teams to rescue and resuscitate the hostages.’
‘You are, of course, aware of the importance of police primacy in this matter?’
The Controller nodded. ‘Yes, Mr Secretary. Coincidentally, we’ve just been preparing for a joint exercise with the Northumbria Police Force, so the men and equipment are all in place at Hereford. That’s only 150 miles, or less than three hours’ drive, away. We’re ready to roll, sir.’
‘Excellent.’ The Secretary turned to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. ‘Do you have any problems with this scenario?’
‘No,’ the Commissioner replied. ‘My views today are those of Sir Robert Mark regarding the Spaghetti House siege of 1975. Those terrorists will either come out to enter a prison cell or end up in a mortuary. They’ll have no other option.’
Some of the men smiled. The Home Secretary, looking satisfied, spread his hands out on the table. ‘To summarize, gentlemen … There will be no surrender to the terrorists. No safe conduct for the terrorists out of the country. Either this affair ends peacefully, with the surrender of the terrorists, or the SAS go in and bring them out, dead or alive. Agreed?’
The men of COBR were in total agreement.
3
As the team on the Pen-y-Fan were contending with the arduous return hike to the four-ton Bedford lorry that would take them back to Bradbury Lines, the SAS base in Hereford, another team, consisting of Staff-Sergeant ‘Jock’ Thompson, Corporal George ‘GG’ Gerrard, Lance-Corporal Dan ‘Danny Boy’ Reynolds and Trooper Robert ‘Bobs-boy’ Quayle were dressing up in heavy CRW Bristol body armour with high-velocity ceramic plates, S6 respirator masks to protect them from CS gas, black ballistic helmets and skin-tight aviator’s gloves in the ‘spider’, their eight-legged dormitory area, in the same base in Hereford. They did not take too much pleasure in doing so.
‘I hate this fucking gear,’ Corporal ‘GG’ Gerrard complained, slipping on his black flying gloves. ‘I feel like a bloody deep-sea diver, but I’m walking on dry land.’
‘I agree,’ Lance-Corporal ‘Danny Boy’ Reynolds said, adjusting the ballistic helmet on his head and reluctantly picking up his respirator. ‘This shit makes me feel seasick.’
‘I hate the sea,’ the relatively new man, Trooper ‘Bobs-boy’ Quayle, said grimly, ‘so these suits give me nightmares.’
‘Excuse me?’ Staff-Sergeant ‘Jock’ Thompson asked.
‘What, Sarge?’ Bobs-boy replied.
‘Did I hear you say that suit gives you nightmares?’
‘That’s right, Sarge, you heard me right.’
‘So what the fuck are you doing in this CT team?’ Thompson asked.
Bobs-boy shrugged. ‘I’m pretty good with the Ingram,’ he explained, ‘close quarters battle.’
‘But you suffer from nightmares.’
The trooper started to look uncomfortable. ‘Well … I didn’t mean it literally. I just meant …’
Danny Boy laughed. ‘Literally? What kind of word is that? Is that some kind of new SAS jargon?’
‘He’s an intellectual,’ GG explained.
‘Who gets nightmares,’ Danny Boy added.
‘A nightmare-sufferer and an intellectual prat to boot,’ Jock clarified. ‘And we’ve got him on our team!’
‘I didn’t mean …’ Bobs-boy began.
‘Then you shouldn’t have said it,’ the staff-sergeant interjected. ‘If you get nightmares over CRW gear, we don’t want you around here, kid.’
‘Dreams,’ Bobs-boy said quickly. ‘I meant dreams. Really nice ones as well, Sarge. Not nightmares at all. I dream a lot about scuba diving and things like that, so this gear suits me nicely, thanks.’
‘You can see how he got badged,’ GG told the others with a wink. ‘It’s his talent for knowing which way the winds blows and always saying the right thing.’
‘The only sound that pleases me is his silence,’ Jock said, ‘and I’d like that right now. Put those respirators on your ugly mugs and let’s get to the killing house.’
‘Yes, boss,’ they all chimed, then covered their faces with the respirator masks. Though this kept them from talking casually, they could still communicate, albeit with eerie distortion, through their Davies Communications CT100E headset and microphone. However, once the respirators were attached to the black ballistic helmets, they looked like goggle-eyed deep-sea monsters with enormously bulky, black-and-brown, heavily armoured bodies – inhuman and frightening.
‘Can you all hear me?’ Jock asked, checking his communications system.
‘Check, Corporal Gerrard.’
‘Check, Lance-Corporal Reynolds.’
‘Check, Trooper Quayle.’
All the men gave the thumbs-up sign as they responded. When the last of them – Bobs-boy – stuck his thumb up, Jock did the same, then used a hand signal to indicate that they should follow him out of the spider.
After cocking the action of their weapons, they introduced live rounds to the chamber, applied the safety-catch, then proceeded to the first of six different ‘killing rooms’ in the CQB House for a long day’s practice. Here they fired ‘double taps’ from the Browning 9mm High Power handgun, known as the ‘9-milly’, and short bursts from their Ingram 9mm sub-machine-guns, at various pop-up ‘figure eleven’ targets. They were also armed with real Brocks Pyrotechnics MX5 stun grenades.
The ‘killing house’ had been constructed to train SAS troopers in the skills required to shoot assassins or kidnappers in the close confines of a building without hitting the hostage. As he led his men into the building, Jock felt a definite underlying resentment about what he was doing.
The Regiment’s first real experience in urban terrorism had been in Palestine, where SAS veteran Major Roy Farran had conceived the idea of having men infiltrate the urban population by dressing up as natives and then assassinating known enemies at close quarters, usually with a couple of shots from a handgun. Though Jock had never worked with Farran, he had been a very young man in Aden in 1964 when Farran’s basic theories had been used as the basis for the highly dangerous work of the Keeni Meeni squads operating in the souks and bazaars. There, teams of men, including Jock, all specially trained in CQB and disguised as Arabs, had mingled with the locals to gun down known Yemeni guerrillas.
Loving his work, dangerous though it had been, Jock had been shocked by the extent of his boredom when, back in Britain, he had been RTU’d to his original unit, the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards, for a long bout of post-Suez inactivity. Though he subsequently married and had children – Tom, Susan, then Ralph, now all in their teens – he had never managed completely to settle down into the routine of peacetime army life.
For that reason he had applied for a transfer to the SAS, endured the horrors of Initial Selection and Training, followed by Continuation Training and parachute jumping in Borneo. Badged, he had fought with the Regiment in Oman in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, he returned from Oman to more years of relative boredom until 1976, when he was posted to Northern Ireland, where, in Belfast and south Armagh, he learnt just about all there was to know about close-quarters counter-terrorist warfare.
Posted back from Northern Ireland, Jock was again suffering the blues of boredom when, luckily for him, the Commanding Officer of 22 SAS decided to keep his CQB specialists busy by having them train bodyguards for overseas heads of state supportive of British interests. One of those chosen for this dangerous, though oddly glamorous, task was Jock, who, bored with his perfectly good marriage, was delighted to be able to travel the world with diplomatic immunity and a Browning 9mm High Power handgun hidden in the cross-draw position under his well-cut grey suit.
During those years, when most routine close protection of UK diplomats in political hotspots was handled by the Royal Military Police, the SAS were still being called in when the situation was particularly dangerous. For this reason, the need for men specially trained in close-quarters work led to the formation of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing.
In Munich in September 1972, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took over an Olympic Games village dormitory and held Israeli athletes hostage, leading to a bloody battle with West German security forces in which all the hostages, five terrorists and one police officer were killed. The shocked West German and French governments responded by forming their own anti-terrorist squads. In Britain, this led to the formation of a special SAS Counter-Terrorist (CT) team that would always be available at short notice to deal with hijacks and sieges anywhere in the United Kingdom. Those men, like their predecessors in Aden and in the CRW, had been trained in the ‘killing house’. Jock Thompson was one of them.
The CQB House is dubbed the ‘killing house’ for two good reasons. The first is that its purpose is to train men to kill at close quarters. The second is that real ammunition is used and that at least one SAS man has been killed accidentally while training with it.
Jock was mindful of this chilling fact as he led his four-man CT team into the building and along the first corridor, toward rooms specially constructed to simulate most of the situations an SAS man would encounter during a real hostage-rescue operation. The men had already been trained to enter captured buildings by a variety of means, including abseiling with ropes from the roof, sometimes firing a Browning 9mm High Power handgun with one hand as they clung to the rope with the other. This particular exercise, however, was to make them particularly skilled at distinguishing instantly between terrorist and hostage. It was done with the aid of pictures on the walls and dummies that were moved from place to place, or that popped out suddenly from behind artificial walls or up from the lower frame of windows.
This began happening as Jock and his men moved along the first corridor. Dummy figures bearing painted weapons popped out from behind opening doors or window frames to be peppered by a fusillade of bullets from the real weapons of the training team. Once the targets had looked like Russians; now they were men in anoraks and balaclava helmets.
The major accomplishment lay not in hitting the ‘terrorists’ but in not hitting a ‘hostage’ instead. This proved particularly difficult when they had less than a second to distinguish between a dummy that was armed and one that was not. To hit the latter too many times was to invite a humiliating rejection by the SAS and the ignominy of being RTU’d.
The exercise could have been mistaken for a childish game, except for one thing – like the weapons,
the bullets were real.
Completing a successful advance along the first couple of corridors, Jock’s team then had to burst into various rooms, selected from drawings of the reconstructed killing house, shown to them during their briefing.
The CT team is divided into two specialist groups: the assault group, who enter the building, and the ‘perimeter containment’ group, consisting of snipers who provide a cordon sanitaire around the scene. In this instance, Jock and his men were acting as an assault group. This meant that they had to burst into a room in pairs and instantly fire two pistol rounds or short, controlled bursts of automatic fire – the famed SAS ‘double tap’ – into each terrorist, aiming for the head, without causing injury to either fellow team members or the hostages.
Reaching their selected rooms, the four-man team divided into two pairs, each with its own room to clear. Leading Red Team, with Danny Boy as his back-up, Jock blasted the metal lock off with a burst from his Remington 870 pump-action shotgun, dropped to one knee as the lock blew apart, with pieces of wood and metal flying out in all directions, then cocked the Browning pistol in his free hand and bawled for Danny Boy to go in.
The lance-corporal burst in ahead of Thompson, hurling an instantaneous safety electric fuse before him as he went. The thunderous flash of the ISFE exploded around both men as they rushed in and made their choice between a number of targets – the terrorists standing, the hostages sitting in chairs. They took out the former without hitting the latter, delivering accurate double taps to the head in each case.
Each man had his own preselected arc of fire, which prevented him hitting one of his own men. In this instance, the two men could easily have done this when they burst from a ‘rescued’ room back into the corridor to come face to face with either another dummy or with the other team, Corporal ‘GG’ Gerrard and Trooper Robert Quayle. Likewise, when Blue Team burst out of their own ‘rescued’ room, they often did so just as a dummy popped out from behind a swinging door, or up from behind a window frame, very close to them. The chilling possibility of an ‘own goal’ was always present.