Zero Option (34 page)

At the corner of the wood, fifty metres short of Point D, an extraordinary sight confronted us. Away in the distance the house was dark, but the lower half of the field between it and us was covered by mist lying in a dense white blanket. The effect was ghostly and unreal, as if Chequers had been constructed on the far shore of a milky lake.
'If that lot rises up a few feet we're buggered,' I whispered.
'It won't,' Farrell replied. 'It'll fall away and disperse as the air warms up. This often happens on a fine morning.'
'You'd better be right.'
'Watch it!' said Tony. 'There's something moving out in the middle.'
We stepped back into 'the trees to watch. Binos revealed the dark object as the head of a deer, which had popped up out of the.
fog
. I realised the animal must have been grazing with its head down, and that the top of the fog-blanket was just over the level of its back. As we stood looking, another head came up beyond the first, and the two began moving to our left.
'You hang on here,' I whispered to Whinger. 'Stay back in the wood, but keep eyes on the lodge and the drive. If you see any movement, let us know.'
'Roger,' he said softly, and we left him there.
At Point D we moved into the recess among the bushes which we'd identified during the recce. When we raised our heads we could see out over the field to our front, but if we kept down the screen of shrubs shielded us from the footpath. My plan was to stay in cover until our target appeared on the terrace, then to nip forward on to the mossy bank at the very edge of the trees and take the shot from there.
The drawback of our lying-up place was that it had no view along the footpath to right or left, and it was possible that somebody could approach without our seeing him. I therefore decided to leave the other two where they were, with the weapon, and position myself farther forward.
I pulled down the legs of the Haskins's bipod and set it on the deck, keeping the belt of ammunition in the right-hand pocket of my smock.
'What effect will the mist have on the flight of the bullet?' I asked quietly.
'Negligible,' Tony said. 'No wind, either. No lateral allowance needed. The only thing is, in half an hour the light will be pretty bright.
That could cause you to shoot a touch high.'
'Agree with that?'
I looked at Farrell, who nodded.
'OK. I'll bear it in mind. Sit tight here while I take a look up the footpath.'
I went back to the edge and took a scan with the binos. The two deer were clear of the mist and walking up towards the wood on my left. A light had come on in one of the first-floor windows of the house. Maybe the guy's up even earlier than usual, 1 thought.
Taking advantage of a lovely morning.
I looked at my watch: 0610.
I walked slowly along the edge of the wood, in the shadow of the trees, until I was seventy or eighty metres from the others. Away to the east, my right, the sun was still below the ridge, but only just, and the sky was glowing. Even as I watched I saw the fog blanket beginning to thin and break up into patches.
I was fizzing with tension, electrified. I'd already taken one dump, back at the farmhouse, but excitement brought on another, and I withdrew into the trees to deal with it. When I came out again the deer had gone, and most of the mist had vanished. Only a few wraiths still trailed across the young corn.
Suddenly Yorky's voice was in my ear again: 'Zero Chadie for Green One. Fruit Salad going down at figures zero six three zero.'
'Roger,' I answered automatically. Then the meaning of the message struck me. Jesus! It meant the guys in the Greenford operation had definitely found the hostages. It meant they were going in - and in less than fifteen minutes' time! A hit on a single-fl0or flat couldn't last more than one or two minutes. In less than half an hour from now, the whole thing should be over.
I felt my heartbeat speed up still faster with the news.
I wanted to run out into the field yelling with elation.
Thank God I kept my head, because I became aware of a noise to my left, and saw a jogger in a harlequin track suit pounding along the footpath towards me. Easing deeper into the trees as he went by, I passed a quick call along to Tony and Whinger, warning them to keep their heads down.
Now time really crawled, second by slow-moving second. Behind me the pigeons cooed relentlessly. The sun hauled itself over the eastern ridge and sent rays flashing low and long across the park. The last traces of mist vanished.
Then Whinger called, 'Discovery coming up from the right,' and the peace of the morning was spoiled by the grinding diesel engine as a routine security patrol went past. There were two coppers in the front seats, but - no doubt following orders - they were looking away from us and towards the house, rather than into the wood.
At 0626, with the Fruit Salad assault deadline four minutes off, I finally persuaded myself that we weren't going to have to fire a shot. For a moment I allowed myself the luxury of imagining the look on Farrell's face when I told him the score, and the language he would let fly. Then my little day-dream was shattered.
'Zero Charlie for Green One,' said Yorky again.
'Fruit Salad postponed.
Technical problem.'

Cumberland House is a seven-storey block of flats on the south side of Ellerton load, in the West London suburb of Greenford. There are nine flats on every floor, with each of their front doors giving on to a corridor that runs the length of the building. The rooms on that side of the block - kitchens and bathrooms - are dark and gloomy because their windows give on to those internal passages.
Access to the block is by two doors, one at either end; there are two lifts, also one at
either end
, and two staircases, east and west, as well as an external metal fire- escape on each end wall. The numbers of the apartments start from one in the east and rise to nine in the west, and incorporate the floor number as the first digit, so no. 57 is the seventh flat from the eastern end on the fifth floor.
Behind the building, on the south side, lies a scruffy, narrow open space which passes for a garden. This is bounded on its long side by a six-foot brick wall, separating it from the next street to the south, Longfield Drive, and at the eastern end an alleyway that provides a short-cut between Ellerton load and Longfield.
(Although I wasn't present during the raid, I got the following details from Fraser and from the guys who took part. Because I'd been on similar operations as a member of the SP team, I could piece together the sequence of events in what I hope is an accurate reconstruction.)
By the afternoon of Wednesday 2 June, while Tony and I were doing our recce at Chequers, SB sources had assembled a fat file of information on the suspect flat.
The freehold belonged to an oil engineer, Ernest Wilson, but he'd gone off to work in Venezuela the previous October, letting the apartment fully furnished for a year to a mancalled Bingham. Suspicion about the tenants had hardened when a Special Branch investigator discovered that the monthly rent of 400 pounds was being paid into the local branch of Lloyds Bank in cash, and in irregular amounts (in November 1,200 pounds had arrived - the first payment in more than two months).
Because of the layout of the building it was im possible to maintain a continuous close-in watch on individual apartments. Surveillance had to be main tained mostly from outside, from vans or other build ings, because any stranger lurking about the corridors or on the stairs would immediately have attracted atten tion. One known IRA player, thirty-year-old Danny Aherne, described as a travelling salesman, had been seen to enter the building several times during the last days of May. He always went in through the eastern entrance, took the lift to the seventh floor, and dis appeared into no. 72, where he had an apparently legitimate arrangement renting a bed-sit from the family that lived there. Yet the mere fact that he was resident in Cumberland House focused the police attention sharply on the block.
When the DF vans had begun tracing PIRA mobile phone calls to the area, the janitor, Stan, had un fortunately fallen ill with a viral infection and was replaced by an SB stand-in called Tom. By dallying with his mop and bucket on the top floor corridor, the new man discovered that Aherne often left no. 72 a few minutes after arriving home from a shopping trip still carrying his supermarket bag, nipped down the stairs to the fifth floor, and slipped into no. 57.
In the early evening of 1 June, with the PIRA deadline approaching, SB decided that it was essential to evacuate the occupants of no. 58 and take the flat over for their own purposes. Fortunately the only person at
home was Edith Treadgold, an elderly spinster addicted to detective novels, of which she had hundreds arranged in glass-fronted bookcases. Normally she lived there with a companion, but that day the friend had gone to stay with relations. When Miss Treadgold suddenly found herself called on by a woman detective sergeant she was at first horrified, but then openly thrilled to be caught up in a real-life drama. She needed little persuasion to pack a few things into an overnight bag, surrender her keys, go down in the lift and take the waiting taxi, which bore her off to a comfortable hotel room for the night.
One by one, a team of specialists filtered into the block, using both entrances and taking the lifts to different floors before working their way up or down to no. 58. They were surprised to find that Miss Treadgold had another addiction besides Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie: when they pulled back a sofa into the middle of the room to get at the party wall, they exposed a sizeable collection of magazines dedicated to bondage and flagellation.
By chasing up the owner of the flat through Interpol contacts, the SB had established a clear picture of the layout of no. 57. Inside the front door was a central lobby, with the kitchen off it to the left, and the bathroom and a separate toilet to the right. Beyond the bathroom, having a common wall with no. 58, was the main bedroom, which had a window on the south face of the block. Next to it was a smaller bedroom, also with a south-facing window, and next to that the sitting room and dining area, which abutted the kitchen at its inner end.
The windows were old-fashioned and made of wood, and the doors of the bedrooms opened inwards, away from the central lobby. Monitoring of the water and electricity supplies had suggested that at least four
people were living in the flat, even though none had been seen to come out, and the only known visitor was Aherne. The regular telephone line remained unused; during the past week not a single call had gone in or out.
At first the listening devices were frustrated by television sound, but at one point the eavesdroppers picked up the noise of a child crying and a woman shouting at him or her to be quiet. The sounds caught by the microphones strongly suggested that the hostages were being held in the main bedroom, so it was into that wall that the drill had started to bite.
Meanwhile two six-man teams, Red and Blue, from the Regiment's counter-terrorist unit, were standing by in their holding base at Hounslow Barracks, a few minutes' drive to the south. As always in emergencies of this kind, control remained in the hands of the police, and would do so until the final moment before an assault went in. “But during the evening the CO and the ops officer flew up from Hereford by chopper to take overall command of the military element of the operation, installing themselves in a control room established in Police Headquarters at Hendon.
Further up the chain, an open-ended meeting was in progress at COBR, the Cabinet Office Briefing Room underground in Whitehall, where the director of the SAS, a brigadier, was liaising with senior representatives of the Metropolitan Police, the Home Office and the Prime Minister's personal staff.
In no. 58 drilling continued all night.
As Yorky reported to me, the first probe, which went through at 2315, proved ineffective because its view was blocked by furniture. The second, higher up, penetrated the wall of the main bedroom by 0320, near the corner with the outer wall, but by then the room was dark and for the time being nothing could be seen. It was only at 0405, when one of the occupants got up to go to the home was Edith Treadgold, an elderly spins' to detective novels, of which she had hun in glass-fronted bookcases. Normally sleep with a companion, but that day the friend stay with relations. When Miss Tre found herself called on by a woman
So
she was at first horrified, but then caught up in a real-life drama. So., suasion to pack a few things surrender her keys, go down I am waiting taxi, which bore her room for the night.
One by one, a team
of
 
block
, using both entrances different floors. They were
surprised,
he had another addiction to Agatha Christie: whether
middle of the room exposed a sizeable bondage and flag. By chasing contacts, the layout of no lobby, with bathroom main be of the with room inner end.
The windows wood, and the doors of away from the central lobby and electricity supplies had sugges other equipment clank against lut on the roof, among the
dish ;hafts
, they sought anchor-points they could abseil down and come of no. 57.
Simultaneously the quietly up the eastern staircase to along the corridor and back where they slipped silently into no.

Snipers crawled on to the roof of a commanded a view of
Cumberland
,nt
. Their primary role was to report hostage fiat's windows, which had
One (the main bedroom), Two (
the and
Three (the sitting room). A was to watch the windows of no. 72 for When the raid went down, the snipers as cover and take out any terrorist who e from that side of the building.
Also hidden in the drive of a private house, reception van, with another six guys on board.
Their job would be to and whisk everyone away from the scene the moment the assault was all these sources quick reports flowed in over net. 'Sierra One,' called the lead sniper.
 
In position.
All curtains drawn.
No lights Zero Bravo. Wait out,' Local Control replied.
Blue Team had few preparations to make, and the leader reported, 'Blue One in position and to go.'
Again Control answered, 'loger. Wait out.'
It was the led Team who needed most time to repare. There were no easy anchor-points for their
lavatory, that
a light was switched on.
For the top brass, listening in to commentary from
the front line, events suddenly became gripping.
'There's a bumping noise,' said the Scots voice of the fibre-optic operator. 'They're moving the furniture around. There's a bed across the door - they have to move it to get out…'
The pitch of the voice rose sharply as the man said, '
The
light's on. The kid is there! It's definitely him.
He's in a camp bed. He's woken up. He's sat up and looking round.
Seems to have a black eye.
light
eye swollen.
'The woman's gone to the bathroom. Wearing white pyjamas . . . now she's coming back.
Two women.
One's small, stocky and fair. The other's tall and slim.
Not a redhead, though. Wait till I get a look at her face.
Yes, it's Tracy all right. But her hair's very dark.
Black.
Could by
dyed
. Could be a wig… No - she wouldn't wear a wig at night. Her hair's been dyed. Pass that to the teams. Don't be looking for a redhead. We don't want any identities mistaken. The guard isn't much over five foot. You can't confuse the two.'
The news precipitated immediate action. In the control room at Hendon the assault plan was finally ratified. Details were confirmed over the secure net to the Red and Blue teams, and to the assault commander, Captain Terry Morris, who, along with Staff Sergeant Bill Brassey, had set up a forward command post in another commandeered flat, across the street from the north front of Cumberland House. It was from there that the main surveillance had been conducted for the past three days; now closed-circuit television cameras were watching both entrances.
By 0515 both teams had been bussed to the site. One by one they infiltrated via the garden passage. The six guys in Red crept up the fire escape, taking care not to
346 let their MP 5s, axes or other equipment clank against the steel guide-rails. Out on the roof, among the dish aerials and ventilation shafts, they sought anchor-points for their ropes, so that they could abseil down and come in through the windows of no. 57. Simultaneously the six guys in Blue went quietly up the eastern staircase to the sixth floor, moved along the corridor and back down to level five, where they slipped silently into no.