by Shaun Clarke
The abseilers looked like black-clad deep-sea divers.
By now, the four men of Call Sign Two had fixed ropes to the four sides of the large frame explosive and were lowering it down the well to the fourth-floor skylight. When the frame was dangling just above the skylight, they manoeuvred it into position by tugging gently on the ropes, then dropped it carefully over the frame of the skylight so that both frames were more or less matching. When this had been done, the men lay the ends of the four ropes gently on the roof, set the explosive charge with a timer and electronic detonator, then covered their faces with their respirators and joined the other abseilers on the edge of the roof overlooking the rear of the building.
Meanwhile, on the balcony behind protective walls at ground-floor and garden level, the Blue Team, who had already covered their faces with their respirators and goggles, waited with explosives and ladders, each man tuned into the radio frequency that would enable him to strike the moment the attack signal, ‘London Bridge’, was given.
At that very moment, the attention of Salim and his fellow terrorists was being distracted by the promises being made by the police negotiators. Each time the negotiators called, which they were now doing constantly, first making a promise, then trying to wriggle out of it, Salim would become more agitated and distracted.
The male hostages in the telex room, Room 10, overlooking Princes Gate, and the female hostages in Room 9, on the second floor, were becoming increasingly fearful as the protracted negotiations continued and Salim came close to the end of his tether.
Finally, at the request of the now very disturbed Salim, PC Lock phoned the negotiators again, asking them to get the bus to the Embassy as soon as possible because the terrorists were expecting an attack any minute. When the negotiators smoothly denied that such an attack was on the agenda, Salim wrenched the phone from PC Lock to personally complain that he could hear suspicious noises all around the building.
‘No strange noises, Salim,’ the police negotiator replied smoothly, glancing at his watch.
At that precise moment, an explosive charge blew away the reinforced skylight roof.
The attack had begun.
14
From the first day of the siege the police had made it perfectly clear that reporters and cameramen, while permitted to view the front of the Embassy, would not be given entry to any area or building affording a view of the rear, where most of the SAS assault would take place.
That evening, an ITN news director, determined not to be obstructed in this way, smooth-talked his way past the police guarding the barricade and was permitted to take a brief stroll along Exhibition Road. Halfway along the road, he stopped to have what appeared to be a casual conversation with the night porter of a block of flats which looked onto Princes Gate. One top-floor flat in particular, he learned, had a good view of the rear of the Embassy and its gardens.
Returning along Exhibition Road, the ITN man thanked the police for their courtesy, then made his way back to the immense press enclosure in Hyde Park, opposite the Embassy.
The following morning, the owner of the top-floor flat in Exhibition Road gave permission to ITN for a TV camera to be installed in his apartment, in the room that overlooked the rear of the Embassy. The problem was getting it in there.
Later that morning, shortly before noon, two men dressed in business suits and carrying suitcases covered in stickers indicating that they had travelled a lot clambered out of a black cab that had stopped at the police barricade at Exhibition Road. The businessmen explained to the police that they had just been abroad and were about to stay with a friend who lived along Exhibition Road.
The police guard kindly informed the cab driver as to how he could enter Exhibition Road by another route. The cabby thanked him and drove off, taking the businessmen with him.
About ten minutes later, the two well-travelled businessman got out of the cab, paid the driver, and carried their suitcases across the pavement to the building that overlooked the rear of the Embassy.
Like all of the blocks of flats in Exhibition Road at that time, this one was guarded by a policeman. However, when the owner of the top-floor flat told the policeman on duty that he was expecting the callers, they were allowed to enter the building with their well-travelled suitcases.
Once in the top-floor flat, the two ‘businessmen’ opened the suitcases and withdrew a lightweight ITN TV camera, micro-link equipment and a radio telephone. They set up the camera at the window, then sat behind it and waited patiently.
At seven-twenty p.m. on Day Six of the siege, the ITN news director was back in the press compound, watching his monitor. While most of the other TV cameras were focused on the front of the Embassy, he was receiving a view of the back, from a high vantage point.
As he studied the monitor, he was stunned to see what appeared to be a group of eight sinister, black-clad figures, all wearing respirator masks and carrying weapons and other equipment, emerging via a skylight on the gently sloping roof of the Royal College of Medical Practitioners and making their way stealthily across to the roof of the besieged Embassy.
The formerly secret SAS were about to appear on television all around the world.
15
At the radio signal ‘London Bridge’ Staff-Sergeant Harrison slipped on the harness and bravely stepped backwards off the Embassy roof to begin his dangerous descent down the 80-foot wall. Hanging out from the wall did not make for a comforting sensation, but Harrison gamely lowered himself down, using the descendeur to control the speed of his drop.
‘First man over,’ a voice said in his electronic headset. ‘Second man over.’
Glancing up, Harrison saw the second Red Team abseiler, Trooper Ken Passmore, about five feet above him, stepping backwards off the edge of the roof, using his booted feet for leverage as his body arched out over the fearsome drop to begin the descent. Satisfied, Harrison glanced down and saw the third-floor window about ten feet below him. Growing more optimistic and excited, he continued his descent, first passing the attic floor, then approaching the balcony window below it.
He had travelled no more than 15 feet when his rope snagged, leaving him dangling just below the attic floor, above the third-floor window.
‘Damn!’ he exclaimed into his throat mike. ‘The bloody thing’s seized up!’
‘Oh, no!’ Ken replied, his voice eerily distorted in Harrison’s earphones.
Frustrated, Harrison attempted to unsnag the harness. When he touched it, he almost burned his fingers, and cursed softly.
‘What’s happened?’ Trooper Passmore asked, now dangling a few feet above him, unwilling to drop any further until Harrison moved.
‘This new rope,’ Harrison said. ‘Bloody awful rubbish! It’s overheated because of the friction caused by my weight and then ravelled into a knot. Damn!’ he muttered, wriggling frantically 65 feet above the rear terrace and lawns, turning this way and that, his feet pressed to the wall, as he tried to disentangle himself. ‘I can’t unravel the bloody thing!’
Inching lower in his own harness to stop right above him, Ken tried to set him free. For a moment he felt dizzy, looking down at that dreadful drop, but he managed to get a grip on himself and endeavoured again to set Harrison free. Suddenly, by jerking too hard, he made his harness go into a spin and instinctively swung his feet out to prevent himself from crashing into the wall. To his horror, he heard the sound of breaking glass.
‘Shit!’ he hissed.
Glancing down, he saw that his booted foot had gone through the third-floor window, smashing the pane. The glass broke noisily, some shards raining into the room, others falling all the way down to the terrace, where they were smashed to smithereens, making even more noise.
‘Christ!’ Harrison groaned in frustration and mounting anger. ‘We’re compromised already.’ Knowing that this was true, and shocked that it had happened so quickly, he snapped into his throat mike: ‘Go! Go! Go!’
At that moment, the frame placed over the
well skylight exploded with a mighty roar, smashing the glass, shaking the whole building, and causing part of the roof to collapse, the debris raining down on the stairs joining the front and rear second floor.
Simultaneously, Sergeant Shannon’s sniper team, Zero Delta, located behind a high wall at the front of the building, began firing CS gas canisters through the broken windows.
From ground positions in front of the Embassy, other members of Zero Delta fired CS gas canisters into the second floor, smashing the windows.
While Harrison and Ken Passmore struggled in their harnesses just above the broken third-floor window, the second pair of abseilers, Inman and Baby Face, dropped down past them, not stopping until they reached the ground-floor terrace. Another pair, Phil and Alan, dropped rapidly to the first-floor balcony window.
Once on the terrace, Inman and Baby Face released themselves from their harnesses. With a swift, expert movement, the staff-sergeant swung his pump-action shotgun into the firing position and blasted the lock off the doors, causing wood splinters and dust to stream out in all directions. Kicking the doors open as Inman dropped to one knee, holding the Remington in one hand and withdrawing his Browning with the other, Baby Face hurled a couple of MX5 stun grenades into the library and rushed in even as they were exploding. Inman followed him, turning left and right, preparing to fire a double tap if he saw any movement.
Though their eyes were protected from the blinding flash by the tinted lenses in their respirators, a combination of condensation on the lenses, natural adjustment to the half-light, and the swirling smoke from the flash-bang made them view the thousands of books on the walls through what seemed like fog.
‘Not a soul here,’ Inman said as the condensation on his lenses cleared but the smoke continued swirling about them, ‘so let’s get down the stairs.’
When Inman had slung the Remington over his left shoulder and removed his sub-machine-gun from his right, they hurried out of the library and went straight to the stairs to the cellar. There they were joined by a couple of other Red Team soldiers, emerging from a cloud of swirling smoke like bizarre insect-men from another planet.
‘We have to clear the rooms downstairs,’ Inman said into his throat mike. ‘Was that your brief, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s go.’
Though aware that terrorists might be hiding in the cellar and that the entrance could be booby-trapped, they wrenched away the ladders covering the door, tugged the door open, and made their way carefully down the stairs, into the gloom below. Though there was a commotion in the Embassy above them, the cellar was deadly quiet.
‘Careful,’ Baby Face warned Inman as he took the lead going down, prepared to fire his Browning. ‘We can’t see a bloody thing down there.’
Agreeing with Baby Face, Inman, when only halfway down, hurled a stun grenade, which exploded with a thunderous crack that ricocheted eerily around the basement. Getting a brief look at the cellar in the brilliant, fluctuating illumination of the flash-bang, he saw no sign of movement and decided that it was safe to descend all the way.
Reaching the corridor at the bottom, he carefully tried the door of the first room but could not open it.
‘Locked,’ he said. ‘They’re probably all locked. Well, let’s unlock ’em.’
Taking aim with his Browning, he ‘drilled’ the lock with a couple of 9mm bullets, causing more wood splinters and dust to fly away. When the lock had been blown off, he dropped again to one knee and gave cover as Baby Face threw in a flash-bang and rushed in with the others, aiming left and right, as the grenade exploded and illuminated the room with its brilliant, phosphorescent light.
The room was empty.
‘OK,’ Inman said, still kneeling by the door, holding his Browning in the firing position, ‘let’s try the next one.’
They applied the same procedure to the next room, found it empty, and so tried the next one along, which also was empty. They repeated the SOP all the way along the corridor, clearing one room after another, but finding all of them empty.
On entering the last room, however, Inman thought he saw something moving. Instantly, he let off a burst of twenty rounds from his sub-machine-gun. This produced a catastrophic, metallic drumming sound. When the bullets stopped hitting the rolling target, he saw what it was.
‘A bloody dustbin!’ Baby Face cried out from behind him. ‘You’ve got a quick trigger finger, Sarge!’
‘Go screw yourself,’ Inman said.
Heading back up the cellar stairs and into reception, they crossed a hallway filled with the smoke from stun grenades and burning curtains. It was also filled with the noise of other members of the assault teams who, having burst into the building from the front and rear, were now clearing the rooms on all floors with a combination of flash-bangs, CS gas grenades, and all the skills they had picked up in CQB training in the ‘killing house’ in Hereford. The walls and carpets in the hallway and along the landings were singed black and shredded by a combination of grenade explosions and bullets. The smoke was darkening and spreading.
‘Christ, what a mess!’ Inman said.
He and Baby Face headed for the smoke-wreathed stairs, where they could hear the hysterical voices of female hostages. When they reached the source of the bedlam, they found soldiers forming a line and passing the women down with a speed that left little time for kindness. Most of the women seemed to be in shock, and their eyes were streaming from the CS gas. They were guided down the stairs and through the library, then out onto the lawn. Some were weeping with joy.
Though the Embassy seemed crowded with soldiers, some were still outside. Indeed, on the first-floor balcony, the plan to blast a way through the rear french windows had to be abandoned because of the risk of injuring or killing Staff-Sergeant Harrison, still struggling with Ken Passmore to break free of his harness and now in danger of being burned alive by the flames pouring out through the third-floor window.
‘Damn it, Passmore, do something!’ Harrison was bawling as both of them twisted in their harnesses, swinging in and out, scorched by the flames and choking in the smoke, vainly trying to release the jammed descendeur. ‘This bloody thing is going to be over before we get in there. ‘Come on, Passmore! Do something!’
‘It won’t budge!’ Ken shouted.
Denied the use of explosive, Alan and Phil, now on the first-floor balcony, smashed through the windows with sledge hammers and threw in flash-bangs. They were releasing themselves from their harnesses and clambering into the office of the chargé d’affaires even as the brilliant flashing from the stun grenades was lighting up the room.
At the front of the Embassy, the Blue Team, caught in the golden light of the early evening and in full view of the stunned reporters and TV cameras in Hyde Park, clambered from the adjoining balcony and along the ornate ledge until they reached the heavily reinforced windows of the Minister’s office.
Glancing sideways as he made his way along the ledge, Jock saw the police cordon in the street below and the press enclosure across the road, where a lot of TV cameras raised on gantries were focused on the Embassy and, it seemed, on him. Startled, he looked away and continued his careful advance until he came up behind the first two men.
Danny Boy and Bobs-boy, being the first at the window, saw Sim Harris staring at them in disbelief from the other side of the glass.
‘Get down!’ Danny Boy bawled through his respirator. ‘Stand back and get down!’
Though clearly stunned, the sound recordist did as he was told, standing away from the window to let Danny Boy and Bobs-boy, who were being covered by Jock and GG, place the frame charge over the window.
While they were still putting their plastic strip charges in place, a terrorist armed with a Polish-made Skorpion W263 sub-machine-gun appeared at the second-floor window of the telex room immediately above them. The man flung the window open and hurled something down.
‘Grenade!’ Jock bawled.
However, clearly th
e terrorist had forgotten to draw the detonating pin and the grenade bounced harmlessly away. That was his first mistake. His second was to expose himself at the window long enough to become a target for the SAS sniper, Sergeant Shannon, hiding across the road in Hyde Park. Aiming along the telescopic sight of his bipod-mounted L42A1 .303-inch bolt-action sniper rifle, Paddy hit the man with a single round. The terrorist staggered back, dropping his gun, then disappeared from view.
As the frame charge blew in the first-floor window, filling the air with flying glass, Jock hurled in a stun grenade. The exploding flash-bang ignited the curtains and filled the room with smoke.
Suddenly, Sim Harris reappeared, emerging ghostlike from the smoke and looking gaunt. Carefully approaching the window, he leaned out to stare disbelievingly at the SAS men in their black CRW suits, body armour, respirators and balaclava helmets.
‘What …?’
‘Get the hell out of there,’ Jock said. Ignoring the flames, he and Danny Boy grabbed Harris by the shoulders and roughly hauled him out through the smashed window, onto the balcony, where they pressed him down onto his hands and knees. ‘Stay here and keep your head down,’ Jock told him, ‘until you’re told to do otherwise. Wait till someone comes for you.’