by Shaun Clarke
That afternoon a managing editor of BBC TV news was produced to stand outside the Embassy and conduct a conversation with the sound recordist, who was standing at a first-floor window with Oan-Ali aiming a gun at his head from behind the curtain.
‘This time,’ the Controller told his gathered Red and Blue Teams, ‘Salim has demanded a coach to take his fellow gunmen, the hostages, and at least one unnamed Arab ambassador to Heathrow. The non-Iranian hostages, he claims, will be released there. The aircraft will then take the terrorists, their hostages and the unnamed ambassador to an unspecified Middle East country. Once there, the hostages and ambassador will be released. Salim also wants a communiqué about his aims and grievances to be broadcast in Britain this evening.’
‘He’ll be bloody lucky,’ Jock said.
He was right. That evening the BBC gave Salim’s demands only the briefest of mentions. Though expressing his outrage through Sim Harris, the terrorist leader again took no action against his hostages.
‘I know you men are getting more frustrated at all these false alarms,’ the Controller said at another meeting in the FHA, ‘but I have at least obtained the promise that if there’s no peaceful outcome – and I doubt that there will be – then, when we’re finally committed, there’ll be no last-minute change of mind. Once we start, we don’t stop.’
‘Any increase in intelligence,’ Red Team’s experienced Sergeant Inman asked, ‘since our briefing back in Bradbury Lines?’
‘Yes. Most important was the evacuation of the BBC Television News organizer, Chris Cramer, with severe stomach cramps, at eleven-twenty a.m. yesterday. Cramer was able to confirm that PC Lock still has his pistol; that there are six terrorists – not five as initially believed; and that each terrorist carries two hand-grenades as well as small arms.’
‘Is it true, as rumour has it, that the terrorists have wired the building for a doomsday explosion?’
‘The terrorists certainly made that claim. Unfortunately, neither of the two released hostages could either confirm or deny that they actually did it. The hostages spent most of their time locked in Room 9, on the second floor, while the terrorists wandered freely about the building – so it could indeed have been so wired without the hostages’ knowledge.’
‘Does Salim still want the release of those 92 prisoners in Iran.’
‘No. He phoned the negotiators yesterday evening to say he just wanted a bus with curtained windows to carry his men and the hostages to an airport, and an aircraft to fly the rest of the party, including the Iranian hostages, to the Middle East. However, as he also wanted the ambassadors of Iraq, Algeria and Jordan, as well as a Red Cross representative, to be present during the transfer, that’s not likely to happen.’
‘Which is why we’re now examining alternatives to a fortress attack,’ Jock said shrewdly.
‘Correct, Jock,’ said the Controller. ‘Salim’s increasingly jittery and indecisive, which means he could start killing soon. If he does, we’ll be called in. Meanwhile, we’re continuing to install audio-surveillance probes and 8mm high-grain microphone probes in the walls of the Embassy.’
‘They must be able to hear the sound of the drilling,’ Inman said.
The Controller shrugged and grinned. ‘The first time we drilled, the terrorists sent PC Lock and a Syrian journalist to the window to ask the police if they were making the noise. According to the released hostage, Chris Cramer, when the police denied the charge but the noise continued, the quick-witted PC Lock told the terrorists it was the sound of a London mouse.’
This provoked a few snorts of mirth.
‘Good man,’ GG said.
‘What’s Whitehall’s attitude at the moment?’ Harrison asked. ‘Are they the ones holding us back?’
‘Yes,’ the Controller replied. ‘Reportedly, the Home Secretary, Foreign Office representative Douglas Hurd, and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir David McNee have between them opted for a policy of maximum patience. While this excludes capitulation to the terrorists’ demands, it also rules out any pre-emptive assault by us, unless a hostage is murdered.’
‘That strikes me as leaving the initiative to the terrorists,’ Inman said, sounding disgruntled.
‘Maybe. But it can also be viewed as a policy of psychological attrition under the guise of negotiation. Short of sending us in on an assault, there’s not much else they can do.’
‘But I want to go in,’ Inman insisted.
‘Too bad,’ Harrison said.
Inman looked directly at the Controller. ‘So do you think, boss, that the terrorists will surrender peacefully?’
The Controller shook his head. ‘No. It’s not in their culture. Sooner or later they’ll do some serious damage, then you’ll get your chance, Sergeant.’
At that moment a message from the FHA below came through on the Controller’s VHF/UHF handheld transceiver. When it ended, he turned to his men and said tersely: ‘Another hostage is being released right now. Let’s have a look.’
Hurrying to the edge of the roof, the men all looked obliquely at the cordoned-off area directly in front of the adjoining Embassy. It was eight-fifteen. Darkness was falling. Across the road, in Hyde Park, the canvas marquee of the press enclosure was bathed in floodlight. Picking their way through the tangle of cables and clambering boldly up the metal scaffolding around the marquee were many press photographers eager for a good shot of the emerging hostage. Closer to the Embassy, on the road at both sides of the area cordoned off by police barricades strung with coloured tapes, two 100-foot mobile gantries towered over the clutter of police vans, squad cars, trailers and ambulances. The restricted area itself, directly in front of the Embassy, was ringed with police. Isolated in the middle of the ring, but close to the front door of the Embassy, was a plain-clothes police negotiator with his civilian interpreter.
From the roof of the college, the Controller and his men were unable to see the front door of the Embassy, but they saw a lot of heads turning in that direction as a beam of light fell over the police negotiator and his colleague, indicating that the front door had just opened. A long, tense silence followed.
The Controller and his men leaned farther forward over the parapet of the college roof, straining to see who was emerging from the adjoining front door. The sound of shouting could be heard. The negotiator shouted something back and this was translated into Arabic by his interpreter.
Eventually, after what seemed like a long time, a woman came into view, walking from the hidden front door of the Embassy to the waiting negotiator. She spoke to him. A couple of police medics then rushed up to her, took hold of her by the arms and led her back to one of the parked ambulances. After being taken to hospital for a check-up, she would be passed on to the Metropolitan Police for debriefing and interrogation regarding what was happening inside the Embassy.
No sooner had the woman been rushed away than the sound of a door slamming was heard. Simultaneously, the light beaming onto the road from the front door of the Embassy blinked out. The police negotiator then hurried back to the senior officers grouped outside an HQ trailer parked at the far side of the road. When the negotiator passed on the message given to him by the released female hostage, the officers hurried away in different directions.
The Controller instantly called the HQ trailer on his hand-held transceiver, asking what was happening down below. He was informed that the woman was an Embassy secretary, Mrs Hiyech Sanei Kanji, who had been released solely in order to pass on another message from the terrorist leader. After hearing the message, the Controller passed it on to his own men.
‘If the terrorist demands aren’t broadcast,’ he told them, ‘they’ll kill a hostage.’
All the men stiffened slightly, as if galvanized, then Inman, the most enthusiastic of all, asked: ‘Does that mean we go in?’
The Controller dashed his hopes by shaking his head gravely. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Mrs Thatcher has just endorsed the agreed strategy of maximum patience. That means we stand do
wn again.’
‘Shit!’ the sergeant exploded, glancing down in disgust at the floodlit road in front of the Embassy.
Wearily, the men picked up their weapons and equipment, then made their way down from the college roof and to the FHA, from where they would be driven back to the Regent’s Park Barracks for sleep, then more training.
8
The barracks were bleak, draughty and dusty, with frequently blocked toilets and no hot water. When not sleeping on their steel-framed camp-beds, the men were subjected to a seemingly endless succession of intelligence briefings from the ‘green slime’, repeated lessons about the assault plans with the scale model of the Embassy, and further anti-terrorist training. Some of the latter was being done in other locations in London, notably abseiling from the roof of Pearl House, a police residence in Pimlico.
Frustrating though all of this retraining was, it was made even more so by the fact that, since it was being conducted in the heart of the city, most of it, apart from the abseil training, had to be confined to boring lectures, rather than the physical skills. The men suffered such lectures in the freezing cold of a large, draughty room in the barracks, most of them muttering their resentment, when not actually shivering with cold.
‘Bear in mind,’ the Royal Army Medical Corps psychologist informed them, ‘that a siege situation will always produce what is known as transference, which begins with mutual terror or revulsion and ends in mutual dependence, even friendship. Though the hostages may at first fear the gunmen, eventually they will come to feel that they are all in this thing together. Should negotiations be protracted, the hostages will come to resent the authorities outside the building and blame them for the lack of progress. From this will spring empathy, even sympathy for the terrorists, and eventually a friendship based on total dependence.
‘When this transference occurs, the behaviour of hostage and terrorist alike will become even more unpredictable and dangerous. For this reason, when you forcibly enter a building under siege, you will be compelled to treat both in exactly the same way, making no attempt to distinguish between them. For this reason, also, when you clear the building, those rescued, hostage and terrorist alike, will not be driven directly away to prison, police station or hospital, but will be subjected immediately to an appropriate reception outside the building. This means being bound hand and foot, laid face down on the ground, then interrogated until adequate proof of identity or loyalties has been received. The hostages will then be separated from the terrorists and removed for debriefing, which will include psychiatric treatment to ensure that their emotional links to the terrorists are completely broken. This is not always easy.’
‘Easier than attacking a building under siege,’ Baby Face muttered. ‘Those psychos have got jam on it.’
Baby Face was a natural soldier, a quiet, shy young man who had been born with the instincts of a killer and lived for the Regiment. Born and raised in Kingswinford, in the West Midlands, where he had led a life of almost total anonymity until reaching the age to enter the Army, he had joined up as soon as he could. Once in, he knew just what he wanted to do, which was apply for the legendary SAS. Naturally, he passed the notoriously tough Selection and Training stages with flying colours and soon found himself in Northern Ireland, where he was involved in surveillance from OPs in south Armagh and in highly dangerous CRW operations in the Catholic ghettos, using a Q car. Danny had made his first killings there, sometimes with the renowned ‘double tap’, at which he was an expert, other times in full-scale assaults with other SAS soldiers against IRA supporters in well-defended blocks of flats. Either way he had learned to shoot to kill without thinking twice.
Now, sitting in this draughty hall and compelled to listen to boring lectures, he distracted himself with thoughts of previous SAS engagements – a fire-fight with PIRA terrorists in rural Armagh; his lone killing of a Republican gunman on the roof of a housing estate in the Falls – or with thoughts of his family and friends. But the hard truth was that for him the former always took precedence over the latter.
‘Communications,’ said the lecturer from Royal Signals, Catterick, interrupting Baby Face’s reverie, ‘is possibly the most important aspect of any CRW operation. The nature of communications, or the lack thereof, can subtly sway the terrorists’ thinking and behaviour. As for the men on the ground, full and adequate communications are of vital strategic importance and therefore cannot be ignored. For this purpose we have now developed a wide range of communications equipment suitable for short-range contact in siege situations. These would include everything from the standard-issue microprocessor-based tactical radio, the PRC 319, to the Davies Communications CT100 communications harness. The latter comprises an electronic ear-defender headset with earphone for the team radio – the CT100E – and a socket for connection to the CT100L body-worn microphone. It is therefore ideal for hostage-rescue work.
‘Though the ear-defender is so designed as to restrict high-pressure sound from gunfire and grenade explosions, it allows normal speech to pass, including reception at all times from the assault team radio. It is, of course, a body-worn microphone with a front-mounted press-to-talk button which is disabled when the microphone is attached to the S6 respirator.
‘Other items of similar CRW importance might be the Davies Communications M135b covert microphone and covert ear-worn receiver; various hand-held transceivers operating in the VHF/UHF frequency range and with built-in encryption facilities, such as the Landmaster III range from Pace Communications; and the Hagen Morfax Covert SKH, or surveillance communications harness, comprising a miniature microphone and earphone. In addition we have …’
‘Dogshit,’ Inman whispered into Baby Face’s right ear. ‘That’s all any of this means to me. I’m already done in by that bastard droning on and on. What the hell are we doing sitting here when we could be on the roof of the Embassy, at least listening in? I’ve been through all this crap before and don’t need reminding.’
‘Yeah,’ Baby Face replied in his soft manner. ‘I know what you mean, Sarge.’
‘Right. I know you do. You and me, kid, we know what we want – and what we don’t want is this shit.’
‘That’s right, Sarge, we don’t. What we want is to get off our backsides and abseil down those walls. We want to get inside.’
‘Dead right, we do. We’re forced to sit here and swallow this lot when we could be out there solving the problem. Abseil down the walls, blast the windows out, chuck in a couple of good old flash-bangs, fill the rooms with a cloud of CS gas and then go in after the bastards. We’d have them lying face down on the rear lawn before they knew what was happening.’
‘I think you’re right, Sarge.’
Baby Face revered Inman as one of the best soldiers in the Regiment, despite the fact that he was also known as a troublemaker. Although he hardly looked it, Inman was two years short of forty and had put in more hard experience with the SAS than anyone apart from Staff-Sergeant Richard ‘Dead-eye’ Parker, who was now with D Squadron. He was a hard man with a low boredom threshold, which made him volatile and unpredictable when not in action. Nevertheless, he loved the Regiment, respected its best soldiers, irrespective of rank, and had a particular fondness for young Danny for that very reason. He knew that, like himself, Baby Face could not stand inactivity and wanted to get the hell out of the barracks and back to the Embassy.
Let the kid loose in that building and you just couldn’t lose, he thought to himself as he looked at the cherubic young trooper.
‘Intelligence is, of course, one of the most important aspects of a siege situation,’ the Kremlin-based green slime instructor informed them as they sagged in their hard wooden chairs in the draughty, dusty dormitory being used as a lecture hall, ‘and it is, of course, based largely on surveillance. As I’m sure you can imagine, the nature of surveillance in a siege situation is very different from that undertaken in an OP or from a Q car. As the prime difficulty in a siege situation is the building under si
ege, the major concern is to find out, before any assault is launched, what’s being said and done inside. Electronic surveillance is therefore the order of the day and for that we have a variety of highly advanced listening and viewing instruments for which brick walls and closed windows are no problem.
‘First and foremost is the Surveillance Technology Group range of systems, including an audio-surveillance lens and high-grain microphone probe, only 8mm in diameter, that can be coupled to any combination of tape recorder, 35mm camera or closed-circuit TV system and will monitor conversations through walls and other partitions, including reinforced windows. Even better is the same company’s laser surveillance system, which consists of a tripod-mounted transmitter that directs an invisible beam onto the window of the target house, collecting the modulated vibrations created on the glass by the conversation going on inside. The modulated beam then bounces back to an optical receiver which converts it into audio signals. Those in turn are filtered, amplified and converted into clear conversations which can be monitored through headphones and recorded for subsequent examination. Thermal imaging is, of course, another viable option when darkness falls and it can be …’
‘Jesus!’ Trooper Alan Pyle hissed melodramatically. ‘Will this torment never end?’
Unlike Baby Face, who spent more time thinking about fighting with the SAS than anything else, most of the younger SAS men banished the boredom of the lectures with predictably idealized thoughts of sex with wives, girlfriends, busty tabloid beauties and film and TV actresses. The more experienced hands, such as Phil and GG, tried gamely to forget sex and concentrate on their training, but the lectures were a soporific that rendered even them drowsy and so all the more prone to lustful fantasies.