by Shaun Clarke
‘Are they right?’ the Commissioner asked.
‘Of course,’ the Secretary said with a bland smile. ‘But don’t say I told you so.’
‘Anyway, there’s little doubt,’ the Controller continued, ‘that the Arab ambassadors, while expressing their overriding concern to save life, will avoid all involvement by insisting on a safe passage out. They know we can’t give them that.’
‘But what if they do decide to take part?’ the cautious Secretary asked. ‘Whose terms do we play by? Ours or theirs?’
‘Ours,’ the Commissioner said. ‘This is happening on the streets of London. I want them to turn up in good time or, failing that, I want clear guarantees that they will be coming. I don’t want any failed promises based on our supposed guarantee of safe passage for the terrorists. They either come on our terms or not at all.’
‘I think not at all,’ the Controller said sardonically, ‘because they won’t want involvement unless they can arrange that safe passage. That would protect them from criticism. Those men have their own motives.’
‘Why don’t we avoid the ambassadors altogether,’ the Secretary asked, ‘by simply calling Salim’s bluff and letting the deadline pass?’
‘Because if no one has been killed so far,’ the Commissioner replied, ‘and I do not believe they have, then calling Salim’s bluff could actually lead to the first killing. The blame would then fall squarely on us.’
The Secretary sighed and glanced at his watch. ‘Four-forty-five,’ he said. ‘Fifteen minutes to go. Let’s have a drink, gentlemen, and see if the Arab ambassadors show up.’
‘Not a hope,’ the Controller said.
Fifteen minutes later, at exactly five p.m., with the television news showing no new developments outside the Embassy, the Commissioner phoned his on-the-ground trailer HQ to enquire if anything had happened. Putting the phone down again, he glanced at the Controller, then turned reluctantly to the Secretary. ‘My friend here was right,’ he said graciously. ‘None of the ambassadors showed up.’
The Secretary spread his hands on the table and lightly drummed his fingers. After pursing his lips, as if tasting a vintage wine, he asked: ‘And what about the terrorists? Have they responded at all?’
‘Not so far,’ the Commissioner replied.
The Secretary glanced at his watch again. ‘One minute past the deadline,’ he said. ‘Let’s give them time to think about it and see what transpires. Another drink, gentlemen?’
The response came thirty minutes later. The men of COBR were just finishing their second drink when the Secretary’s red telephone rang. Instead of reaching for it, he merely nodded at the Police Commissioner, who picked it up, listened thoughtfully, then put it down again.
‘That was our negotiator,’ he said. ‘Salim has just phoned to say that he still wants to see the ambassadors. If they’re not there in thirty minutes, another hostage will be killed and his or her body thrown onto the street.’
The Secretary sighed again. ‘Can your negotiators keep him talking?’
‘Probably not much longer.’
‘Do you think he’d speak to the Iranian Consul-General by telephone?’
‘I doubt it. I think it’s too late for that.’
‘What about the Imam of London’s Central Mosque, as was suggested before?’
‘Dr Sayyed Darsh,’ the Commissioner said. ‘A good man. His friend, the Libyan broadcaster Muhammad Mustafa Ramadan, who regularly attended prayers at the mosque, was gunned down on its steps only a few weeks ago. That incident deeply affected Darsh. For that reason, when Superintendent Bernard Hodgets of the Anti-Terrorist Squad contacted him, he initially had doubts about whether or not he should go.’
‘Why?’ the Secretary asked.
‘He believes strongly that the mosque exists to serve Muslims in London, whatever their nationality, and that it can only do so if the Imam remains neutral regarding Arab politics. However, the death of his friend, shot down on the steps of the mosque, changed that line of thinking.’
‘So he’s going to talk to the terrorists?’
‘Yes. Hodgets personally collected him from the mosque and took him to Hyde Park Police Station for what turned out to be a very long wait. An hour and a half later, at five o’clock precisely, he was taken from there, escorted through the barricades surrounding the Embassy, and plunked down in the back of a police van, which is where he is now. When the time is ripe, he’ll be taken from the police van into the police negotiating room of Alpha Control, now located in the nursery school, where he can talk to Salim by radio phone.’
‘Can he say what he wants or has he been briefed?’
‘He’s been briefed to remind the terrorists of his eminence as an Islamic cleric, then emphasize the immorality of what they’re doing in the name of Islam. He is also to reassure them that if they end their resistance and come out peacefully, no harm will come to them and that he will be present at the surrender to ensure that this is so.’
‘In other words,’ the Secretary said, ‘you’re not asking him to negotiate or bargain at all. His function is really to convey your terms for surrender.’
‘I suppose so,’ the Commissioner said.
‘And if the Imam also fails to persuade them?’
‘Then the SAS Deliberate Assault Plan will commence immediately.’
The Secretary pursed his lips and drummed his fingers once more, then sighed and stood up behind his desk. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, but I have to make a private call.’ He walked out of the room. They could hear him murmuring into a phone at the other side of the door. Eventually, the door opened and he returned to take his seat at the other side of the long desk. ‘I’ve just spoken to Mrs Thatcher,’ he said, ‘and she’s approved of our plans for an assault should the forty-five-minute deadline bring us to a negative situation. However, she wishes to remind all concerned that we cannot afford a repeat of Desert One. This operation must be successful.’
‘It will be,’ the Controller said.
The Secretary nodded. ‘May I suggest, then, that we take a short break and meet back here just before six? Personally, I’ll spend the time having a light snooze, which should settle the whisky in my stomach and enhance my thought processes.’
‘I’ll get in touch with my Blue and Red Team leaders,’ the Controller said, ‘and check that they’re prepared.’
‘I’ll stay here by the telephone and TV,’ the Commissioner said, ‘and keep in touch with events. If anything happens, I’ll call you.’
‘You do that,’ the Secretary said, then stood up and left the room with the Controller.
Forty-five minutes later, just before six o’clock, the three men, along with representatives of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, met around the same long table in the same basement room in Whitehall. Learning that the latest deadline had just passed, that no Arab ambassadors had materialized, and that so far there had been no response from the terrorists, every man in the room sensed that the time for negotiation was over.
‘If he produces unambiguous evidence that a hostage had been murdered,’ the Secretary finally announced, ‘the Deliberate Assault Plan will be put into effect. Please prepare for it.’
Instantly, the Controller phoned the SAS FHA, right next door to the Embassy, to put his Blue and Red Teams onto a ten-minute stand-by.
Before that time was up, however, a phone call from the assistant to Commander Peter Duffy, head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, informed them that at that very moment the Imam was in the police negotiating room on the second floor of Alpha Control and had just finished speaking to Salim on the radio phone.
Unfortunately, the conversation had been heated and not remotely successful, with the Imam begging Salim to wait until the ambassadors had finished their meeting in the Arab League office in Mayfair and Salim responding that if the ambassadors did not turn up in thirty minutes, he would kill not one but two hostages. When the Imam tried pleading for Salim to think again, the latter slammed
his phone down.
Even as the Imam was telling the police that he was ‘very disturbed’ by Salim’s tone of voice, the radio telephone rang again. When one of the negotiators picked it up, he was told by Salim that he had changed his mind and was not going to wait for another thirty minutes. Instead, he would kill a hostage in two minutes.
The Imam rang Salim back to quote the Prophet Muhammad to him, but Salim slammed the receiver down again.
A few seconds later, when the Imam’s phone rang again and he picked it up, at first he heard nothing but heavy breathing.
Then he heard the sound of three shots and the line went dead for the last time.
* * *
When the Secretary, who had taken the call from Commander Duffy’s assistant, put the phone down, he relayed the story to the rest of the COBR team. Shocked, they hardly knew what to say and instead turned to the television set in the corner. A news flash had just begun. The screen showed the Iranian Embassy for what seemed like an awfully long time. Eventually, the front door was opened and the eyes of a terrorist appeared above a tightly wound keffia, peering out cautiously. When the door opened further, two other men could be seen inside, tugging at something heavy, trailing it laboriously across the broken glass on the lobby floor until they reached the entrance. There they turned back into the building, pushed the heavy object out onto the street, then slammed the door.
A corpse lay like a sack of rubbish on the pavement. It was Abbas Lavasani.
13
A small group of nervous policemen dashed to where the murdered press officer lay and hoisted him onto a stretcher. After carrying him back to one of the waiting ambulances, they were able to identify the corpse. The police pathologist, while not yet able to ascertain the exact time of death, was able to establish immediately from the coldness of the body that Lavasani had been dead for hours. He had therefore not been killed by the shots heard just a few minutes ago.
‘Either there’s another dead body inside,’ the pathologist said, ‘or Salim has just killed one man and fired those second shots as part of a bluff.’
‘It makes no difference now,’ the superintendent replied. ‘Just a few minutes ago Sir David McNee, our guvnor, telephoned to say he was committing the SAS to action. It’s out of our hands now.’
This was true. At seven minutes past seven, the Controller formally took control and hurried back to the SAS FHA at the Royal College of Medical Practitioners, next door to the Embassy. There he found his men already getting into their flame-resistant underwear. The Controller took a seat at the far end of the dormitory while the men continued dressing by putting on their black CRW assault suits with flame-barrier knee and elbow pads; GPV wrap-around soft body armour with hard ceramic composite plates front and back; and specially reinforced, flame-resistant boots. Though the CRW assault suits each had an integral S6 respirator with nose-cap filter, anti-flash hood and goggles, the men would leave these hanging loose until the operation began.
When they finished dressing and were looking, as the Controller thought, suitably sinister, they opened their lockers and withdrew their personal weapons. Sitting on the end of his bed, each man thoroughly cleaned his new Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine-gun by removing the magazine, cocking the action and ejecting the 9mm round. He then stripped the weapon and cleaned the working parts by threading the metal beads of the pull-through down the barrel and then oiling the breech-block. This task completed, he reassembled the weapon, replaced the thirty-round magazine, snapped home the cocking handle and set the safety-catch. Much the same process was used for the Browning 9mm High Power handgun, the Remington 870 pump-action shotgun and, in the case of the sniper team led by Sergeant ‘Paddy’ Shannon, the L42A1 .303-inch bolt-action sniper rifle.
Even as the members of the sniper team were checking and snapping shut their steel bipods, the Red and Blue Teams were checking their webbing, spare ammunition, ISFE, CS gas and MX5 stun grenades. The Heckler & Koch magazines were worn on the left hip, the Brownings on the right, and the spare High Power magazines worn on the left thigh and right wrist, the latter for rapid magazine changes.
As each man finished his preliminary tasks, he sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the others. When the last of the men was done, the Controller stood up to give the final briefing. First he checked his watch and asked all his men to do the same.
‘It is now exactly 1915 hours,’ he said, ‘so please ensure that you all have the same time.’ As the men checked their watches, the Controller said: ‘The operation commences in five minutes. While we prepare ourselves on the roof, a police negotiator will be keeping the terrorists distracted with promises of a bus to the airport and PC Lock as his driver. You all know your tasks, but let me just summarize again.’
He paused to let those adjusting their watches do so before putting on their black, skin-tight aviator gloves, then continued.
‘Red Team is to clear the top half of the building, from second to fourth floors. Blue Team will tackle the lower half from the basement and garden upwards to the first floor, and handle evacuation procedures and the undiplomatic reception on the rear lawn.’
Glancing at Red Team’s Staff-Sergeant Harrison and Blue Team’s Staff-Sergeant Jock Thompson, he received a nod of acknowledgement from both.
‘Once on the roof of Number 16, Red Team’s Call Sign Two will lower a frame explosive down the skylight well, lay it as accurately as possible on the window frame, and blow out the skylight at fourth-floor level. Red Team’s two groups, Call Sign One and Call Sign Two, each of four men, will then abseil in separate waves from the roof. Two men from Call Sign One will continue down to the ground floor terrace to hack through the back doors and enter with flash-bangs. Call Sign Two will drop to the first-floor balcony and break in through the window with the use of explosives and, if necessary, sledgehammers. To attack the third floor, the remaining two men from Call Sign Two will descend from the roof onto a sub-roof at the rear, known as the lighting area. As all of you men have been allocated your individual tasks, I give this information solely for the benefit of Blue Team, who should know what you’re up to.’
‘I’m still worried about those windows,’ Harrison said. ‘I mean, anything we personally recommend has to be tough to get through.’
The Controller waited until the men had stopped laughing.
‘The only uncertainty about that concerns the explosive power needed. Each team is therefore being equipped with a special frame charge, approximately the same size as the windows, and packed with a carefully calibrated quantity of plastic explosive. If you plant the frames against the window surround and then explode them, I think they’ll do the job.’
He paused to let all of this sink in and to let them ask questions. There were no more questions.
‘Blue Team is in charge of the basement at garden level,’ the Controller continued, ‘along with the ground floor and first floor. Theoretically, all that should be required to get in is an explosive charge to put in the french windows overlooking the ground-floor terrace at the back and a similar bit of surgery on the first-floor front balcony window leading to the Minister’s office. As that balcony adjoins this building, access to it shouldn’t be a problem. Blue Team, supported by the Zero Delta sniper team facing the building, will also be responsible for firing CS gas canisters into the second-floor rear windows, where we believe the hostages are being held, though they might have been moved by now. The same team is responsible for evacuation of those found inside and will supervise the reception party in the garden afterwards. Any questions?’
There were still no questions, so the Controller looked directly at Sergeant Shannon, leader of the sniper team.
‘The sniper teams led by Sergeant Shannon will be divided into two groups and located in a block of flats at the rear of the Embassy and at a camouflaged position in Hyde Park, at the front. When the attack commences they will pump CS gas through the broken windows and also give the assault groups covering fire if and whe
n terrorists emerge from inside the building, either onto the balconies or through the doors. Any questions so far?’
Again there were no questions.
‘Once inside the building, you will proceed to your separate tasks as outlined in the merged Immediate Action Plan and Deliberate Assault Plan and rehearsed with the scale model of the building in the Regent’s Park Barracks. Resistance is to be met with force and you will shoot to kill. You will not attempt to distinguish between terrorist and hostage. Anyone found inside the building will be manhandled out onto the back lawn, where Blue Team will supervise their reception. This briefing is now at an end, so are there any last questions?’
‘Yes,’ Sergeant Inman said. ‘Who’s directing the operation? And from where?’
‘The whole operation will be orchestrated by a command group, led by me, operating from a sixth-floor flat overlooking the rear of the Embassy.’
‘Out of sight of the journalists,’ Jock said.
The Controller grinned. ‘I think you’ve got the picture. Any more last questions?’ There were none, so he checked his watch, then looked up and said: ‘Let’s go.’
Even as the negotiator at ground level kept talking to Salim, PC Lock and Sim Harris, keeping them distracted, the twelve-man assault team stood up and marched awkwardly out of the large room, heavily burdened with their weapons, ammunition, break-in tools, abseiling equipment and explosive frames. After making their way up the stairs, the eight members of the Red Team’s two groups emerged, via a skylight, in the fading light of evening, onto the roof of the college adjoining the Embassy. The men of the Blue Team took another route, emerging quietly onto the balcony that led from that building to Number 16. There they stopped and waited.
The time was exactly seven-twenty p.m.
Once on the gently sloping roof, the men of the Red Team made their way carefully and silently to the adjoining roof of the Embassy, codenamed ‘Hyde Park’, and spread out to go about their separate tasks. The four men of Call Sign Two, led by Lance-Corporal Phil McArthur, went immediately to kneel down by the well around the fourth-floor skylight and prepare the explosive frame to be lowered by rope. As they were doing so, the men of Call Sign One went to the rear of the building, overlooking the lawns 80 feet below. There they found the ropes still tied to the chimneys and coiled beneath them, as they had been from the first day of the siege. Slinging their sub-machine-guns over their shoulders, they proceeded to put together the three components of the abseiling equipment by clipping the metal descendeur to the harness, then slipping the recently purchased nylon rope through the descendeur. Standing on the edge of the roof, each man of the abseiling team covered his face with his respirator, hood and goggles, checked that the integral microphones and radio receivers were working, and prepared himself, psychologically and physically, to go over the side.