Red Notice

35

Ashton had sent the call about Laszlo Antonov up the chain of command, and within fifteen minutes Woolf had been briefed. The home secretary was alerted and she, in turn, alerted her French counterpart. Woolf was given permission by the rapidly assembling COBRA to put the counter-terrorist team on standby. They needed a contingency plan this side of the tunnel.

Within a few minutes of their beepers going off, the first members of Blue team were arriving in the Lines. Inside twenty-five the full crew had assembled and were busy moaning about being called away from much more important business.

‘I had a fucking full house, kings on sevens.’ Jockey was the unofficial president of the poker club, the horseracing club and the snooker club. He had it as bad as a Premiership player. He’d bet on where a fly would land, or which drop of rain running down a window would be first to the sill. ‘The only decent hand I’ve had and I had to fucking fold it.’

‘You think you’ve got problems?’ Keenan was busy texting his disappointment. ‘I got numbers off a couple of the cutest joggers you’ve ever seen in your life while I was out running this morning. Well, the daughter, anyway. They were both coming round to my place later on. I tell you, I was a racing certainty for a threesome.’

‘Never mind.’ Bryce seemed to be the only happy member of the team this morning. ‘I’ll give my mate in A Squadron a call — he can pop round and fill in for you.’

‘Just try it,’ Keenan growled, ‘and you’ll be the one getting filled in.’

Bryce laughed. ‘I don’t know what you’re all moaning about. I for one am fucking delighted we got called in. The missus dragged me around a furniture shop last night. Today was going to be one long nightmare session with a hammer, a screwdriver, an Allen key and a shedload of flat-pack cupboards that won’t fit together. Now she’s going to have to do it all on her jack. The longer this job lasts the better.’ He gave a broad smile and let rip a huge fart for emphasis.

‘Right.’ Gavin entered the crew room and the team fell silent. ‘Let’s brief and get the show on the road. Posh Lad is on Eurostar to Paris and X-ray One is on the same train.’

There was a general murmur as the team looked about and realized Tom wasn’t with them.

‘Why the stupid fucking idiot is on the train will be explained after the job. The fact is they should be in the tunnel by now. The French will hit it in Paris, or maybe before it reaches the city. I don’t know and don’t care. That’s their problem.

‘However, we’ve got to have a contingency plan in place at Folkestone just in case things go tits up. As far as we know, X-ray One is not aware that he’s been pinged, but he’s already left one body on the train and he won’t hesitate to add a few more to his tally if he thinks he’s cornered. Tom is sending a sit-rep once he’s out of the tunnel, so we might know more then.’

‘Fuck me.’ Jockey looked about him, making sure he had an audience. ‘How did Posh Lad know Laszlo was on the train? Do they teach psychic powers at Eton as well as how to use a fish knife and be prime minister?’

Jockey got the laughs he was after. Even Gavin gave it a couple of seconds before he reasserted control. ‘OK, listen in. I’m leaving in the heli now, with the advance party for the holding area. The whole team is to fast-drive to the Folkestone hangar. The grid reference and satnav co-ordinates are on the office board.’

All key locations were regularly recced by the Regiment in case of an incident. The past twenty years’ construction of new locations — airports, ferry ports, important government buildings — had all included a holding area for the Regiment, or what was known in the real world as UKSF. In other locations, holding areas had been identified for use when needed.

‘OK, Blue team, any questions?’ There shouldn’t have been. Call-outs were continually rehearsed. All kit would have been packed in the vehicles and the men ready to move. If not, they shouldn’t have been in the Regiment.

Gavin waited two seconds before continuing. ‘If all goes well on the train, and Tom hasn’t fucked up by the time you get to Folkestone, the French will have lifted Laszlo. Remember to make your blues visible and drive safely. I don’t give a shit about you lot, but I want those wagons back in one piece. I signed for them.’

They ran out of the crew room and towards their vehicles. Gavin and the three signallers who were attached to the team threw their ready-bags and comms kit onto a Transit that would take them to the helipad where a Dauphin was waiting with its rotors turning.

Also on his way from Regimental HQ to the heli pad was a member of ‘the Slime’. Intelligence Corps personnel were referred to as Green Slime because of the unfortunate colour of their berets. The Slime set-up in Hereford was an integral part of any operation.

The Prince’s Gate siege in 1982 had demonstrated the value of good and accurate intelligence. During the lead-up to the actual assault, specialists from MI5 had been tasked with drilling holes in the walls and inserting tiny microphones and cameras to gain a detailed picture of who was where inside the building. But the information about the construction of the place was piss-poor, and the walls turned out to be too thick for the probes to penetrate. The result was that, although the team had a model of the construction of the building, they did not know exactly where the X-rays or Yankees were located.

Since then, the Regiment had collated a massive database that included such essential information as the thickness of walls and doors in every building that was a possible terrorist target, and the designs of all military and civilian aircraft and shipping. The database was portable, so wherever an incident occurred they could take it with them and access the information. If they called up a certain hotel, for example, the Slime were able to pull up 3D images of the interior on screen, or do 360-degree pans from any given point.

Intelligence gathered on the numbers and locations of people inside the building could be added as it came to hand. Possible methods of entry could be suggested to the computer, which would then plot the best method of moving through the building from that point.

If the design of the building was not on the database, the teams could punch in details such as the construction of the outside walls, the number of windows and the location of particular rooms. The computer would then ‘design’ the interior and provide a probability factor for accuracy, altering both as more information was added. It seemed the Slime had every map, drawing and picture of every ship, aircraft and building in existence. There would be a second wave of Slime with their box of tricks, accompanied by a team of signallers, in the road party.

8 Flight AAC (Army Air Corps) had a fleet of four Dauphins and two Gazelles, and their sole job was to support the Regiment. Painted in civilian colours, the AS365 N3 Dauphins blended in with normal civilian air traffic and could transport the SAS covertly around the UK. They could also be used during counter-terrorism operations to get assault groups on top of buildings or when the holding area was so far away the attack had to be airborne. Up until 2008 the Regiment had used Agusta 109s. Two of them had been ‘liberated’ from the Argentinians during the 1982 Falklands conflict. The 109s could carry a maximum of seven assaulters; the Dauphins could take nine at a squeeze.

Gavin’s job as the 3i/c was to get to the incident ahead of the team. He’d start liaising with the police, who’d be ready to close down the tunnel entrance and contain whatever was happening in there if things went badly and the train stopped before it reached France.

Once the team arrived and moved into their holding area, they had to have fully functioning comms up and running within thirty minutes of the first wagon’s arrival. Gavin had to give a set of orders covering all eventualities. Using whatever information he had gathered from the police, his next task would be to work out the Emergency Response. The ER wouldn’t be much, but it was a plan. It would then be built on as more information was gathered for the Deliberate Options, plans of attack to cover any situation that might develop.

Gavin helped the sigs guys lug their comms kit into the back of the aircraft and was about to board when Ashton beckoned him out of the rotor wash. He had to shout over the noise of the turbines: ‘What the fuck is Buckingham doing on that train?’ When Gavin had originally given him the news, he hadn’t asked for the details. There had been more important things to do.

Gavin had to lean in towards Ashton to be heard. He wasn’t going to shout. He knew he was in trouble. ‘Boss, Delphine’s leaving him. She was heading for Paris and Tom went to talk her round and bring her back.

‘I fucked up, simple as that. I let him go. But we caught a break as a result — Laszlo getting lifted, even if it is by the French. Happy days on that one.’

‘Maybe so,’ Ashton said. ‘But when this is all over, you, me and Buckingham are going to be having a little chat.’

‘Would that be with or without the coffee and biscuits?’ Gavin said.

‘Most assuredly without,’ Ashton replied. ‘Now get your arse to Folkestone.’