Zero Option (36 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
In Greenford a breathless
wait
ensued as Aherne disappeared into the building. In less than a minute the reserve team had secured both entrances and fire- escapes, but there was no sign of the player. By then SP technicians had replaced the fish-eye peephole in Miss Treadgold's front door with another fibre-optic lens, which gave them
a
xvide view down the corridor, and enabled them to keep watch on the entrance to no. 57.
Everyone expected Aherne to show up there, but minutes passed without anyone getting eyes on him.
Had he gone up to his own flat? Was he skulking on the staircase or in the lift? If he was at large somewhere, there was a chance he might appear just as the Blue guys were taping their charge to the front door to blow it in.
'Zero Bravo for Sierra One,' called Control. 'Any change in the windows on the top floor?'
'Negative,'
came
the answer.
'All the same.'
At last the suspect came back into view. 'Blue One,'
the Blue leader reported. 'He's walking along our corridor, west to east… He's left a shopping bag against the wall outside the door of fifty-seven. Now he's gone on to the” far end.'
Again he vanished. In forward control, Terry was left with a difficult decision. The bag might conceivably contain a bomb. More likely it held supplies for the people in the flat
Should
he ignore it? Should he get Blue to remove it? Should he wait or go?
At 0644 the sniper leader called, 'Sierra One, movement in window figures two. The curtains have been opened.'
'Zero Bravo,' Control answered. 'What about the others?'
'No change.'
'R oger. Wait out.'
'lked One,' came a call from the leader on the roof.
'We've definitely been compromised. There's a crowd gathering in the street out the back. They've got us marked down.'
'Zero Bravo.
loger
. All stations remain on listening watch.' Then a minute later came, 'All right. Ignore the bag. We're going in. I'm being handed control. All stations into position.'
The Blue leader slid out into the passage and silently taped a length of det cord down the line of the hinges on the front door of no. 57. At the same time all six members of the Red team came down the south wall on their ropes, squeezing the handles of their pretzels to descend, and then letting go so that the devices locked up when their feet were just above the fifth-floor windows. Down in the street the crowd was swelling rapidly, but it was too late for anybody there to intervene.
Both leaders reported themselves ready. Then Terry called, 'All stations, wait out . . . I have control . . .
Standby, standby… GO! GO! GO!'
The Blue leader, hanging back in the open entrance to no. 58, closed the clacker in his left hand. BOOM!
The door of no. 57 burst inwards and disintegrated.
Smoke and dust filled the corridor. The Blue team piled through the opening.
In the same couple of seconds the Red team dropped the final few feet, smashed all three windows with fire axes and piled into the rooms. The two into the main bedroom, Geoff Hope and John 1Kyle, instantly identified Tracy in a single bed against the left-hand wall, and Tim in the camp bed at its foot. Another bed had been pulled across the door, blocking it. As the female terrorist sat up in it, reaching for a cabinet beside her, a quick double-tap in the head put her flat on her back. Blood flew out over the pillows and ran down the pale wall.
While Geoffwent down on one knee to give cover, John dragged the bed away so that the door would open.
'Get down! Get down!' he yelled at Tracy.
Geoffyanked her roughly out of bed, forced her on to the carpet and knelt with a knee in her back. 'Don't look over there!' he yelled. 'Look that way!' With his other hand he grabbed Tim and flattened him on the floor as well.
Before the door was open, two more double-taps cracked off in the other bedroom. When John burst into the hall he found it full of smoke, with his two black-clad mates from P,
ed
team down on one knee, covering the guys from Blue. Two terrorists lay dead in the small bedroom, one on the floor, one sprawled across a bed. It took just seconds more for the lads to rip open the cupboards, turn over the beds and sofa and case the bathroom and kitchen to make sure there were no more PIRA in residence.
'Zero
Bravo
for all stations,' called Control. 'Secure?'
'Blue One,' replied the Blue leader. 'We have three dead X-rays on the location.
Two men, one woman.
The flat is now secure.'
'Red One,' said Fred Daniels. 'Confirm flat secure.'
'Tango One,' said the boss of the reserve team. 'One suspected X-ray detained in hard arrest. He tried to do a runner when he heard the explosion. We got him on the stairs.'
'Zero Alpha. Roger,' replied the main Control, cutting in. 'All stations, evacuate the building.'
John set Tim on his feet, seized a blanket, rolled him in it and picked him up in his arms. 'Come on, love,' he said to Tracy. 'We've got to go.'
Later he told me she'd gone into shock at this point and didn't seem able to move. When Geoff had lifted her to her feet she nearly fell straight back over, so rigid had she become. Then she appeared to wake up; still without making a sound, she snatched up a dressing gown, stepped into a pair of slippers and ran out on to the landing, with John and Tim following close behind her.
Already the corridor was full of people from the
357 other flats, some excited, most angry, demanding to know what in God's name was going on. The assault had been so swift that no policeman had yet reached the fifth floor.
One of the Blue team had grabbed the lift and was holding the door open. While John, Tim and Tracy rode down, the rest took the stairs at a run. At ground level the hostage reception wagon was already outside the door. Within seconds, rescued and rescuers were packed into it with all their equipment, and heading clear of the scene.
Running with the Haskins was no joke. The rifle was not only heavy, but awkward too. Farrell was in no shape to run far, either- and being cuffed to Tony didn't help him. Whinger caught up with us after a hundred yards and offered to take the rifle, but I panted that I was OK. Nevertheless, the temptation to head out on to the.
edge
of the open field was strong - the going would be far better along the footpath. But it would strike an obvious false note with Farrell if we revealed ourselves prematurely, and to keep our RV and complete the exchange we positively needed to get away.
We struggled on as best we could, dodging between trees, scrambling over fallen trunks, ripping through brambles, until at last we reached the northern point of the wood. Now we had no option but to break cover; we were on the edge of the field in which the chopper was due to put down. As we paused to recover our breath I could hear the thudding beat of its rotor in the distance.
By now several sirens were wailing from the direction of the house, and my earpiece was full of rapid exchanges, most of them
calls
for the police to seal off the surrounding roads.
I pushed out through the screen of leaves and scanned up the sloping grass field that rose gently to our left. The ground was clear. The chopper was still out of sight behind the nearest hill, but the sound of its engine was growing rapidly.
'You two carry on,' I said to Tony.' 'We'll cover you till the
chopper's
in. Go for it!'
I launched the pair with a flick of the hand and watched them run out awkwardly, Farrell dipping on his lame left leg. I'd intended that Whinger and I should follow them after a few seconds, but at the moment I scrambled to my feet I realised that I was getting something different in my earpiece.
'Zero Charlie for Green One,' Yorky was saying.
'Bananas.
I say again - bananas.'
Of course it was what I'd been dying to hear. But I'd been so engrossed in our own scenario that my mind was entirely at Chequers.
The mssage made me stop dead. I hit my pressel and said, 'Green One. Confirm that.'
'Zero Charlie,' Yorky repeated.
'Bananas.
All good.'
I let out an almighty yell - no words, just a con tinuous noise so loud that it made Whingerjump. Tony heard it, too. He looked round for an instant and stumbled.
Before I could get myself back together I heard the abrupt reports of small-arms fire. Jesus Christ! Rounds were going down across the field in front of me. The helicopter was in sight now, a blue
,and
-white Jet- Ranger, lifting over the skyline and heading our way.
But also in sight a little posse of men had appeared suddenly out of a dip, and
were
running towards our pair. I saw by their irregular DPM overalls and lack of headgear that they were PIRA. The one in the lead was carrying a pistol; the other two had sub-machine guns and were firing from the hip as they ran. They were already within thirty or forty yards of their target.
Instantly I hit my pressel and called, 'Green One.
Three armed X-rays on helicopter pick-up point.
tl.equest
immediate backup.'
As I spoke, Tony and Farrell suddenly went down.
They didn't lust fall over, they were hammered to the ground, and one of them let out an almighty roar. Jesus!
Had Tony been shot? I yelled out, but it was not enough to distract the leading PIRA guy, who bore down on the struggling heap, obviously intent on finishing off the man he'd wounded.
There wasn't time to get the cumbersome Haskins loaded and aligned. As an instant deterrent I whipped out my Sig and began spraying rounds at the leader. But the action was taking place more than a hundred yards off, and at that distance the shots were all over the place.
In any case I had to keep high, for fear of hitting one of my own men. The leader ducked but continued towards the two on the deck, using them as cover.
Whinger was firing now, but the guy kept advancing.
By the time my magazine ran out he was within a few feet of the fallen couple. He stopped and deliberately extended his right arm, the pistol canted downwards at point-blank range.
By then I'd thrown myself down on the turf outside the wood and got a fresh round into the breech of the Haskins.
Feverishly I flicked the bipod into position.
The range was barely a hundred metres. Aim low, aim low! I told myself. But before I could bring the sight to bear I heard two shots from the PIRA man's pistol crack out, and with a surge of dismay I thought I'd lost my closest, staunchest friend.
The PIRA gunman was still rooted a couple of yards from the fallen pair. Holding my breath, I brought the cross-hairs of the sight on to his torso and, without waiting another instant, fired. I didn't even notice the recoil.
But -Jesus! I-'d missed. Then instantly I remembered: I'd fiddled the sight to make certain Farrell couldn't hit the Prime Minister.
Amazingly, the PIKA guy was standing on the same spot, now looking my way. In a second I had another round up the spout and aimed one body's width to his left. This time the five-oh bullet blew the man away.
The impact lifted him backwards off his feet and threw his body on to the ground as if it were made of rags and cardboard.
His mates checked and looked around for a moment, uncertain where the shots had come from. Then the threat of that fearsome firepower evidently became too much for them, and they turned tail and began running back across the field. I loaded a third round, swivelled to my left and touched offanother shot at the higher of the two. A burst of chalk and flint chips exploded from the ground above his.right shoulder. A second later, before I could load again, he'd vanished into dead ground over a ridge.
The Jet-Ranger had been in a hover - the pilot evidently not fancying what was going on below him and when he saw the contact erupt he had started to climb. By the time I'd fired my last shot he'd banked hard and was pulling off to a safe distance. I was getting so carried away that I almost loaded another round and let drive at him too. I was sure the Haskins was capable of bringing the chopper down. But within seconds another helicopter was on the scene - a Puma, drab military olive in colour, which swept over the wood from our left, swung round to the far side of the hilly field, hovering just beyond the skyline, and disgorged a shower of black-clad guys who fast-roped down out of our sight. The ensuing crackle of small-arms fire told me they'd caught the two fleeing PIKA operatives in the open. Moments later a voice came on the net saying, 'Black Three. Two X-rays dead in vicinity of pick-up point. Area secure.'
By now I'd loaded a full magazine into my pistol. I left the Haskins on the edge of the wood and sprinted forward to the tangle of bodies in the middle of the field. Both were lying face down. Expecting the worst, I pulled Tony over first. He gave a groan. He was very much alive.
It was Farrell who'd got a double-tap through the temple. As I rolled him on to his back I saw that the whole left-hand side of his skull had been opened up.
The mess of blood and brains took me straight back to the corridor in Libya.
Farrell - dead! I could hardly take it in.
Tony was pale and in severe pain. It was he who'd gone down first, with a bullet through the left upper arm. Once both of them were on the deck, Farrell, struggling to break free of his shackle, had yanked the wounded limb all over the place. There was a lot of blood sprayed about the grass. My first action was to get a tourniquet on to Tony's arm above the wound.
Then I called over the radio for urgent casevac.
'Green One.
We have two more dead X-rays on the same field, with me. No live X-rays seen. One of our guys is wounded. Get that Puma here soonest. We're only about four hundred metres east of where the QR.F landed.'
'Let's have these fucking cuffs off you,' I said to Tony. 'Where's the key?'
Without speaking he patted the breast pocket of his smock with his right hand. I felt inside, brought the key out, unlocked the cuffs and gently took them off his wrist. I knew I shouldn't move Farrell's body before the scene of crimes officer arrived to make his assessment, but I couldn't help straightening out the cuffed arm.
'Better,' Tony muttered, with an attempt at a smile.
'What happened?
Did the guy try to top you and hit Farrell by mistake?'
'No way.
He went straight for Farrell like a lunatic.
Put the muzzle of the pistol right on him.'
'What a bunch ofarseholes!' I said. 'Only death can stop them feuding. OK, Tony. Hang on. That chopper will be here any second. Stay with him, Whinger.'
I stood up unsteadily and moved a couple of steps to look at the other dead terrorist. Immediately I recognised the short, grizzled grey hair. 'Christ! It's that bugger from the railway yard.
Marty Malone.
Old Foxy'l] be chuffed to bollocks. This was the one he wanted most.'
The man was wearing a DPM smock. The huge round had gone straight through his right arm and on through his torso, and his pistol had fallen to the ground. Instinctively I bent to pick it up, but then thought, No, the SOCO will want it left where it fell.
Looking at the far side of the body I saw that the exit wound was as big as a saucer. The left back ribs gaped open, and blood, scraps of lung and pieces of bone had been sprayed ten metres on to the grass beyond.
In my earpiece Yorky was saying, 'Zero Charlie for Green One. Geordie, the med team's on its way to you.
Who's hurt?'
'It's Tony.
Bullet through the upper arm.
I've contained the bleeding.
He could be worse.'
'OK.
The guys will be with you in seconds. What's happened to Farrell?
Is he still with you?'
'Affirmative.
But he's dead.'
I looked down at Tony and said, 'Hear that? The chopper's on its way.'
His eyes were shut, but he nodded.
I knelt beside him, feeling stunned now that the situation was over. When I turned my head sideways I realised that the sun was shining on my cheek. The warmth seemed to bring me back to reality.
'Yorky,' I called. 'Is the Prime Minister OK?'
'The Prime Minister's in roaring form. He's ordered champagne for breakfast, and he's invited you to join him.'
'Don't be stupid.'
'He has. I mean it.'
'Christ, I can't. I've got to see Tim.'
'I know. We've said as much, and he understands.
I'm sure he'll ask you again.'
'He put on a bloody good act, anyway.'
'Come on, lad!' Yorky sounded delighted. 'You didn't think that was him, did you?'
'Who was it, then?', 'Scrubber Jenkins, wearing a poncy wig and two flak
jackets, one on top of the other. He was shitting himself too.
'
'Why?'
'You might have hit him by mistake.'
'It wasn't me on the rifle, Yorky. It was Farrell.'
'Farrell! Jesus! How the heck did that come about?'
'I told him he had to do the shoot or I'd top him.'
'God almighty! Yer daft bat! He might have killed the PM.'
'Not a chance. I twisted the sight off twenty clicks to the right during the night.'
'Jesus, Geordie… I didn't hear that. Never mention it again or you'll be up to your neck in shit.' And with that Yorky went off the air.
The seconds ticked slowly past. My mind was full of puzzles, and after another minute I called in again.
'It was another PIRA guy who topped Farrell,' I said.
'What the hell were they up to?'
'Drug money, as we thought,' Yorky replied. 'I heard Fraser talking about a bank account the Firm discovered in the Cayman Islands. Farrell had eight million dollars in it.'
'Eight million!'
'Yeah. He'd been creaming off coke deals for years.
If he'd escaped today he'd have done a runner.'
'Where to?'
'Three guesses.'
'Colombia?'
'You
got it. He was planning to cut out and make a fresh start there.'
'So the PIRA never really wanted him back?'
'Only to top him.'
'In that case, I've been a pawn to their game all the way through.'
'More or less.'
'Fucking hell! The devious, twisting bastards.'
'Never mind, Geordie. If you're talking chess, it's checkmate to you. You've cleared the bloody board.
King, quen, bishops - the lot.'
SIXTEEN
After
a hit like that, all the lads are supposed to head straight back to camp. There, they sit down and calm down, and with a solicitor each one goes through every event that's occurred, every move made, every shot fired. The point of this routine is to prevent anybody talking to the police while they're still fired up with adrenalin and might say something out of place. As soon as the police get a chance they quiz you like there's been a murder, and you need to be careful.
So usually the first evening is spent having a monster piss-up, and everyone gets mongolised; and then, next morning, there is a proper debrief.
But in my case all that went out of the window.
Because of the special circumstances an exception was made, and I was given permission to see my family straight away.
'Take the chopper,' Yorky told me. 'Go with the casualty. They're taking him straight to
'What's happened to them?' I was so hyped up that I immediately became suspicious. 'Did they get injured in the recovery?'
'No, no. tkelax. It's just that Tracy's exhausted. She's had more than enough for the time being.'
'OK, Yorky. Thanks. Have you called Doughnut and Stew back in?'
'Done that.
They're on their way.'
'Great.
I'll leave Whinger here on the ground to deal with the SOCO.'
'Fair enough.
One more thing.
You can't walk into the hospital in your DPMs - too high profile. There's a pair of plain police overalls on board the chopper. Slip them over the top during the flight.'
'Will do.'
I was still kneeling in the middle of the field, trying to chill out, unable yet to believe the nightmare was over.
'The Haskins is still on the edge of the wood,
Whinge. You'll need to collect it and take it with you.'
'No bother. I'll get it now.'
Away he went. As I looked for the last time at larrell's body, my mind took off on a fast re-run of all the aggravation he'd caused me: Kath's death, the night he'd appeared at the farm outside Belfast, my own attempts to top him, the firefight in the Colombian jungle - and now all this. My loathing for him still burned, but for the hundredth time I wondered how people like him and Marty Malone could let their whole lives be shaped - and cut short - by an irrational hatred of people they don't know, people they haven't even seen. How could anyone be so twisted by religion and history?
Tony gave a grunt, trying to sit up, but I made him lie down again, saying, 'You lost a lot of blood. Just wait for the chopper.'
'Geordie?' he murmured.
'I'm here.'
'Have you got Tim back?'
'Not
yet. But he's safe.'
'Tracy?'
'Safe as well.'
'Thank God!'
Unable to speak, I gave him a gentle thump on his good shoulder. Luckily Whinger chose that moment to return with the Haskins and launch one of his rhyming
summations. 'Bacon and eggs,' he said.
'Where?'
'The dregs.'
He pointed at the bodies. Despite the gore around us, the mention of food had suddenly made me feel starving.
'Talking of eggs, I could eat four easily,' I said.
'Maybe six.'
The too.
And a few slices of ham with them.
And a few pints of Stella along with it.'
The PIRA helicopter had vanished, but I could still hear an aircraft engine, and a minute later the QtkF Puma lifted over the horizon, heading for us. As it came in to land a few yards away I crouched down beside Tony to shield him from the blast of the down-draught.
I could see several of our guys in the cabin, and they stayed put, giving thumbs-up signs, while two medics whipped out with a stretcher. The nature of Tony's wound was pretty obvious, from the tourniquet and the blood on his DPMs, so I didn't try to tell them what to do, and in a few moments they had him expertly trussed, ready to be loaded. As soon as the stretcher was safely in I gave Whinger a wave and followed aboard.
The flight lasted only fifteen minutes. I slipped into the overalls somebody handed me, and looked down at the sunlit scene below. The time as still barely
0730,
and on the motorways the morning rush hour was building up. As we skimmed over thousands of houses and roads jammed with crawling cars, I thanked my stars that I wasn't in the Granada, with Farrell very much alive and kicking, on our way to a doubtful rendezvous under the flightpath out of Heathrow. One more near-miss on the M25 and I'd have gone round the twist.
The Puma was too big to land on the hospital's helipad, so it put down on a playing field, where an
ambulance was waiting. I rode in the back with Tony the few yards to the casualty entrance, and suddenly there we were, back in the world of stainless steel, green gowns, starched white caps and smells of disinfectant. I found myself thinking of Pat, with all the pins sticking through his thigh. I realised I hadn't given him a thought in days, and now I resolved to check he was doing all right. Almost certainly Tony would end up alongside him in Wroughton.
They took Tony straight into theatre, and for a minute I was left alone in a waiting room. Then a nurse, a pretty blonde woman, appeared and said, 'Sergeant Sharp?'
'That's me. Where are they?'
'I'll take you up.'
She led the way up a short flight of steps and along a corridor. I followed, uncomfortably aware that in those ultra-hygiffnic surroundings I cut a peculiar figure. My boots were smeared with mud, and it was three days since I'd shaved. Thank God they couldn't see the Sig in its holster under my arm.
The nurse walked so fast that I almost had to run to
keep up with her. 'Are they all right?' I asked.
'Well, they've had a pretty bad time.'
I didn't like the sound of that, but I asked no more questions.
We went through some swing-doors into what looked like a private ward, with single rooms leading off it to either side. A uniformed copper was hovering, and out of an office came a woman in a smart, dark-blue uniform. Dimly I realised that this was the matron - but one hell of a matron: young, chic, and with a dazzling smile.
'Your wife's there, in number one,' she said, pointing at the nearest door.
I ignored the mistake and said, 'Is she OK?'
Before the matron could answer, a terrible noise burst through the door - half a scream, half a hoarse roar, inarticulate, but unmistakably Tracy's voice.
I was through the door like a rocket. A doctor in a white coat was standing in the middle of the room with his back to me. Facing him, perched on the edge of the bed in white pyjamas and robe, was Tracy. Her appearance gave me a terrible jolt. Her hair had gone black - of course, no one had warned me of that - and her face was as white as her pyjamas, and screwed up with tension. She looked ten years older, the ghost of the girl I knew.
I came to a halt, rooted by shock. Then she saw me.
With another awful cry she sprang offthe bed, knocked the doctor spinning, rushed at me and flung her arms round my neck. When I hugged her to me she felt like a sackful of bones.
