Marine F SBS

by Robin James

  For my good friend Dick Gobel, with many thanks for the computer crash course!

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  1

  Something in the air was making the almost-invisible line of hairs on Leonard Dobbs’s spine tingle. He had been in Her Majesty’s Prison Service for far too many decades to be deceived by the overall aura of calm which had been pervading the atmosphere of his jail for more than a week. Prisons were not like that. It was very seldom that a day went by without a scuffle or argument of some sort, or a week without an ugly brawl. Yet recently there had been hardly a raised voice, never mind a threatening fist. It was unnerving. Parkhurst Prison, at Newport on the Isle of Wight, was hardly a finishing school for young ladies. It was one of Britain’s toughest top-security prisons, housing some of the most violent of the country’s convicted criminals, a bunch of men with their tempers generally on the shortest of fuses.

  Dobbs had taken over as Governor of Parkhurst from J.R. Marriott only three months previously. He had been moved from London’s Pentonville, another unlovely establishment housing dangerous men. During his five-year governorship there he had had murder and mayhem – and a bloody riot – to contend with. There had been frequent fights between inmates, and trouble between inmates and warders. Had he been required to describe the atmosphere he would have said it was one of constant unease. But never in all that time, or in his short period at Parkhurst, had he come across such a period of tranquillity. It was as if the entire prison had suddenly gone mellow from the effects of marijuana – which, given the fact that drugs and other undesirable commodities found their way inside the grim walls no matter how supposedly tight the security, was possible but hardly likely.

  A basically kind man whose exterior had been toughened by his vocation, Dobbs had been pleased to be moved from London to the fresh air and comparatively relaxing environment of the Isle of Wight. He and his wife and three teenage daughters had been housed in a small, comfortable detached residence close to the sea and he was looking forward to the possibility of spending the final seven years of his working life there.

  As he dropped his youngest daughter off at school on that overcast Wednesday morning in July 1995, the Governor of Parkhurst was a most preoccupied man, too concerned with a lingering premonition of imminent disaster to notice that the girl had left her satchel on the back seat of his Rover until he had almost reached the forbidding walls of the prison. Good father and family man that he was, he took the trouble to take the satchel back to the school even though it made him late for work.

  His tall, erect, trim, elegantly clad figure appeared somewhat out of place as he was let through the harsh outer doors of the jail by a warden whose uniform seemed to be in need of a good pressing. Leonard Dobbs looked more like a banker than a prison governor, and indeed there had been many times during his lengthy career when he had wondered why he had not chosen a profession such as that. Yet his personality fitted the job, for he was a man who could find a degree of compassion for almost any of his charges, however heinous their crime, and as such he ruled prisons well, always fighting the difficult, often near-impossible battle for reform.

  Once in his office that morning, Dobbs spent an hour tending to his mail and phone calls, then made his customary tour of the prison accompanied by two guards. Again he encountered what seemed to be an unnatural calm. He had brief words with several of the inmates and they were polite to him as always, for he was a respected man. But in one or two of them, especially the mass murderer Ulrich Warren, he felt sure he detected a diffidence which was put on for his benefit, as if they were trying to hide something.

  As the Governor left the carpentry room, a pair of eyes the palest of eggshell blue, eyes as cold and as hard as two diamonds, followed him out. The eyes were set in a swarthy, good-looking, fortyish face beneath a broad, wrinkled forehead suggesting keen intelligence. That face belonged to an international terrorist, Venezuelan-born Arsenio Cruz Conde, a man as infamous as Carlos the Jackal. Arsenio was known by the Spanish-speaking world as ‘El Asesino’ – the Assassin – and with great justification.

  While he preferred a ‘job’ where advanced warning was to be given before a bombing, in order to spare the lives of the innocent, or one that involved the taking out of a person who – in his view – patently deserved such a fate, nevertheless Arsenio’s powerful hands were stained with the blood of people who had inadvertently got in his way. Once committed to an act of terrorism he was merciless, and the fact that unnecessary deaths would later trouble a conscience which he would rather be without never stood in the way of his unholy thirst for money. He was a master of disguise, a man of many superbly contrived identities, an expert in several varieties of unarmed combat, and an authority on weapons and explosive devices with contacts worldwide to supply them wherever they might be needed.

  The expertise and infamy of the Assassin had led to him being contacted by the IRA to take charge of their most audacious campaign since the 1985 Brighton bombing – and that had led to his downfall. It was the reason he had begun serving a triple life sentence in Parkhurst eight months previously.

  As Arsenio watched the Governor’s erect back disappear beyond the barred door of the carpentry room, and that door was locked by a warden, he ran his hands over the smooth soundbox of the Spanish guitar he had been lovingly and superbly fashioning for weeks. His mind took him back to that fateful night in September 1993 . . .

  Early autumn had brought with it a chill which suggested a cold winter in store. At nine-thirty in the evening, as the brightly coloured houseboat was slipped off its moorings by Kevin O’Leary, a crisp wind blowing south through the streets of Chelsea brought a tingle to the Irishman’s busy fingertips. The boat, a converted barge whose fussy exterior decoration was evocative of an old-fashioned Romany caravan and whose interior was a warm and friendly blend of furnishings antique and modern, soft, pastel textiles and low, atmospheric lighting, was the property and home of thirty-year-old Rodney Mack and his wife Cynthia, the owners of a trendy interior-décor shop in Pont Street, SW1.

  As the houseboat, which in a moment of supreme optimism Rodney had christened Odyssey, drifted out into the murky waters of the Thames, Mr and Mrs Mack, attired in the evening clothes they had been wearing when about to depart for a charity dinner at seven o’clock, were lying, thoroughly trussed hand and foot, and gagged with a pair of Cynthia’s mauve silk stockings, on their huge, specially designed bed, which fitted into the prow of the boat.

  Arsenio Cruz Conde’s assault upon the Macks had been carried out with adroit precision; the first the couple had known of the fact that there was an intruder on the deck was when the main hatch had been opened and a stun grenade had been lobbed down between them. When, none the worse for the attack, several seconds later they had recovered consciousness it was to find themselves being tied up by two burly men while a third was unpacking heavy metal tubes from a large wooden crate on the Persian rug in their stateroom. Cold fingers of fear clawed at the bellies of the good couple as, realizing but not comprehending their plight, they saw that their assailants were wearing stockings over their heads; as his black-silk-socked ankles were secured with a nylon cord which bit into his flesh hard enough to cut off the blood circulation, Rodney began to tremble in terror. When, moments later, he was dumped, together with his wife, on the conn
ubial bed his trembling made the mattress shake. Cynthia was so frightened that she peed herself.

  The IRA powers that be had been unhappy with the 1990 mortar attack on 10 Downing Street. It had been ineffective and all but bungled, the main reason being that the missiles and launchers were not up to their task. Having, early in 1993, dreamed up their most audacious assault ever, they determined that this time there was going to be no error, that they would employ modern assault weapons of deadly fire-power and accuracy – and a man who could both deliver the weapons and efficiently employ them. For that reason, Arsenio the Assassin was at the wheel of the Odyssey as she drifted eastwards with the strong currents on that late-September evening. He had been employed by the IRA to mastermind the organization, overseeing and execution of a plan so breathtaking that they could not trust any of their own operatives – skilful and daring though they might be – to take charge of it. Instead, harbouring no resentment, the most accomplished pair of the IRA killer squad, Kevin O’Leary and Tim Shannon, were under the command of Arsenio – and were awed by and proud of the fact.

  In its conversion from a barge, the houseboat had been fitted with a small bridge in open plan with the stateroom itself. Wide, polished-pine steps led up into the bridge just before the door to the sleeping quarters. This was one of the reasons, during his covert but meticulous inspection of all the houseboats moored along the Chelsea Embankment and at Cheyne Walk, that Arsenio had picked the Odyssey. Another was that with her wide, flat bottom she would remain stable at the crucial moment, and recoil would not make her roll too heavily. A third was her bright and slightly eccentric appearance. Cruising down the Thames on a Saturday evening with lively music drifting from her – already, as they reached Battersea Power Station, Chris Barber’s jazz band was raucously playing Muskrat Ramble on a CD which Arsenio had brought aboard – she appeared anything but sinister, the very antithesis of suspicious.

  The trip was to be a short one; two more bridges to go under – Vauxhall and Lambeth – and they would be at their target. The bright lights of Saturday-night London twinkled on both sides of the river.

  Arsenio switched on the engine. He had no need for it while they were drifting with the swift current, but shortly it would have to be put in reverse thrust – and then full speed ahead. He felt little tension at such moments as this, when action was imminent. He was possessed of a calm which was one of the most important secrets of his success. Where other men would be doing battle with their nerves, El Asesino would have every ounce of concentration on the job in hand, his acute intelligence analysing and reanalysing, looking for the tiniest flaw, the slightest deviation from plan which could cause disaster. It was for this reason that the man had never made a mistake and why he was always several steps ahead of the world’s anti-terrorist squads. The nerves, curiously, came afterwards, when he was well clear of the scene of action. It was then that he needed comfort in the arms of a woman. Lately, she had been a vivacious little redhead, a secretary called Kirsty in whose anonymous little flat off the Cromwell Road he had installed himself and who understood him to be an advertising executive of Argentinian origin whose name was Alberto.

  ‘Take over the wheel, Kevin,’ said Arsenio. His voice was soft, yet commanded attention, the accent almost undetectable.

  ‘Tis a fine night for fireworks,’ commented O’Leary, mounting the steps. The Venezuelan turned an icy, cynical eye on him. The Irishman was clearly tense – jocular remarks on the brink of action were always a dead giveaway.

  Arsenio grunted and replied, ‘Hold her steady in the middle of the river.’

  The Irishman’s heavy hands – clad, as were Arsenio’s, in fine surgical gloves – took over the wheel as the houseboat slid under Vauxhall Bridge; Barber’s trumpet was bouncing through the final bars of Muskrat Ramble. The Tate Gallery, colourfully illuminated, was approaching on the port side. Traffic in Millbank was heavy, a slowly moving sea of light.

  In the stateroom of the Odyssey, Tim Shannon had slid wide open one of the picture windows. On his knees on the Persian rug, behind a dull-metal M72 anti-armour rocket launcher with its block of four rocket tubes, he was carefully lining up the deadly weapon to the angle which Arsenio had most carefully worked out during several trips on hired boats on this stretch of the Thames.

  ‘Load the son of a bitch,’ Arsenio told Shannon. His voice was oddly flat, his eyes icy. The chilly north wind was blowing straight into the boat, ruffling his black, wavy hair.

  ‘Four up the spout,’ muttered the IRA man, as he lifted a 66mm anti-armour rocket from its wooden case and slipped it carefully into the launcher. ‘Quads it is then.’

  Arsenio studied Shannon as he slid the rockets one by one into their tubes. Nervous. You as well as Kevin, he thought. No wonder you make balls-ups. It’s you that’s almost having babies. He nearly voiced the thought, but decided against it.

  The Odyssey, the steady chug of her engine being blown away south to Lambeth Palace Road as she passed under Lambeth Bridge, began to slow when Arsenio ordered O’Leary to put the engine in reverse thrust. By the time they drew level with their target, she would come almost to a stop. She presented a pretty sight, there in the middle of the river with all her lights blazing and the lilting jazz of Canal Street Blues drifting from her; many a motorist waylaid by traffic lights admired the brightly coloured angel of death.

  But not only were people in cars watching the Odyssey. For security on this stretch of the river was tight – far tighter than Arsenio had discovered, or even imagined. In his trips he had taken note of the security cameras affixed to the ancient brown walls which housed his target. He was well aware that the crucial moment of action would be observed and recorded, but that fact did not bother him. It would be all over in seconds and they would have escaped into the night before any pursuit would be possible. But he had not spotted the almost-hidden cameras on the undersides of both Lambeth and Westminster Bridges – cameras pointing towards each other and thoroughly covering that critical three hundred yards or so of river. Most important fact of all, there was no way of knowing that the scruffy-looking, wooden boat shed below St Thomas’s Hospital on the Albert Embankment housed an armed launch of the Special Boat Service – the SBS, the unit of the Royal Marines specializing in reconnaissance and sabotage.

  It had been decided only five months previously – in the light of intense IRA activity – that the army, rather than the river police, should be in charge of surveillance of this important stretch of the Thames. Doubly dangerous for Cruz Conde’s operation was the fact that this very evening was the time that Zaki Fernandez had picked for an inspection. This meant that the crew of patrol boat Dart were on full alert, with two frogmen in full gear on stand-by.

  Zaki Fernandez was of Greek and Spanish parentage, but had been born and raised in England as a British national. He was a formidable, experienced fighting machine who had gone right through the ranks of the army from corporal in the Light Infantry to captain of the Royal Marines and had lately been promoted to SBS major, a position in which he was much respected – and to a certain extent feared. He was six foot three and broad with it, a massive hunk of early-middle-aged manhood who by far preferred action to inspection, but such was his lot this evening.

  The single pair of eyes which watched the two TV screens to which were relayed the pictures from the bridge-attached security cameras were widely spaced, chestnut-brown, intelligent. But for the presence of Major Fernandez on the Dart they might have been bored. For in Sergeant Stride’s book this was – as it was for everyone else – a tedious turn of duty. Nothing ever happened, and the likelihood of action was slight. They had been called out once to assist in a rescue when a pleasure boat with a party on board had been sliced in two by a barge, and another time to apprehend a boat loaded with cocaine. But the possibility of such incidents was not the reason for their constant vigilance. Rather it was the historic building, the hub of the nation, which lay directly across the Thames from them: the Houses
of Parliament.

  Sergeant Stride watched the progress of the Odyssey as, slowing down and keeping to the centre of the river, she approached the western edge of the Houses of Parliament. Snatches of jazz, flung on gusts of breeze, began to meet his ears and he imagined, rightly, that they came from the brightly coloured houseboat. Well, bully for them. No doubt they were drinking, dancing maybe, canoodling, having a great time while he, dry, was obliged to sit here half the night in front of these effing TV screens. Such was the extent of the sergeant’s thoughts about the houseboat. El Asesino had been absolutely right in his calculations – stick it right under their noses and they would see it all right, but suspect it they would not. He had failed, however, to realize the strength of the opposition.

  Arsenio was on his knees on the Persian rug, making last-second adjustments to the aiming of the rocket launcher. The House of Lords was coming into view through the window. From within, here and there was a hint of light, but in effect the Lords was closed; there would be very few people inside on this Saturday night, for its business finished for three days each week from Thursday evening. The IRA wanted it more or less empty, for tonight’s attack was to be a warning. Hit it a severe blow, show their muscle power. Next time – very soon unless certain of their demands were met – they would hit the House of Lords again, sending 66mm anti-armour rockets hurtling through the high, stained-glass windows of the main chamber when the House was in session. And this time the rockets would not simply have high-explosive warheads – they would be loaded with napalm.

  The prospect of many of the country’s most distinguished elderly gentlemen and ladies being burnt to death while fire, threatening to consume the entire Houses of Parliament, raged all around them, would surely be so terrifying that the Government would at last give in to the IRA. Such was the plan.

  ‘Slow her right down,’ Arsenio called out over Max Collie’s spirited rendition of When You’re Smiling. As she came level with the House of Lords, the Odyssey was barely moving. In the police launch, Stride vaguely wondered why but it failed to alarm him. In any case, it was far too late to do anything even if it had.