First Response

BIGGIN HILL AIRPORT (4.43 p.m.)

Pete Hawkins’s mobile buzzed and he took it out of his pocket. It was Alex Murray. ‘How’s it going, Jim?’ asked Murray. Hawkins had been given the nickname ‘Jim’ on his first day at SAS Selection by a grizzled sergeant major who had recently reread Treasure Island.

‘The coach is here and we’re running through as many scenarios as we can. Is there any way we can make that emergency door at the back easier to open?’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Murray. ‘What about a video feed?’

‘A couple of the airport’s technical guys are rigging something up as we speak. They’ve already spoken to a guy called Lumley in the SOR.’

‘Excellent,’ said Murray. ‘In the meantime, here’s another wrinkle for you. They’re insisting on the windows being blacked out. On the positive side, that means they won’t know they’re in the hangar until it’s too late.’

‘And on the downside, we’ll be shooting blind,’ said Hawkins. ‘Shit.’

‘I know. The thing to remember is that in all cases the hostage is on the left side of the bomber. So on the port side the hostage will be next to the window. On the starboard side, the hostage will be on the inside.’

‘I’m not sure that helps if the windows are blacked out,’ said Hawkins. ‘I was never happy at shooting through the windows anyway.’

‘How are you getting on there?’ asked Murray.

‘The bottleneck is the door, obviously,’ said Hawkins. ‘If the door is open we can get a man in straight away but he then blocks the men behind him. He can take out the first two targets immediately but it’s at least a second before he can get to the next row. Flash-bangs might slow things down but that slows us getting in, too. If we can get in through the back emergency exit, we can have a man there take out the rear two. But we haven’t been able to get through that door in less than three seconds. Best will in the world, at the moment we’re looking at four seconds to neutralise all nine targets and we both know that’s not good enough.’

‘Keep at it, Jim. See if you can shave off a second or two. At the moment the hope here is that, once they see there’s no way out, they’ll surrender.’

‘They’re fucking jihadists, Captain. It doesn’t work like that. These idiots want to die. And the more they take with them, the more credit they get.’

‘I hear you, Jim. But let’s stay optimistic, shall we?’

‘The lads had a couple of thoughts, boss. Any way we could rig up some knock-out gas, pump it into the coach and put everyone to sleep?’

‘It was discussed but there isn’t enough time and even if there was we’d be putting the driver to sleep, too.’

‘It could be activated once they’d parked in the hangar,’ said Hawkins.

‘But nothing works instantaneously and if they realised what was happening they’d probably detonate.’

‘Okay. What about arming the driver? We’re using one of our guys, right? Give him a gun, he could take out the bad guys on the starboard side as we move down the aisle shooting port. It might shave some time off.’

‘My worry would be that if one of the bombers searched the driver and found a gun that could create its own set of problems.’

‘To be honest, without that extra gun I think we’re screwed.’

‘Okay, I’ll get that sorted,’ said the captain. ‘Start rehearsing with an armed driver and see how it works out.’

Hawkins put the phone away. Arming the driver would give them an edge, but he knew that, no matter how often they rehearsed the scenario, there was no way they could take out all the suicide bombers before at least one would have the opportunity to press the trigger. And if that happened, everyone on the bus would die, including the SAS troopers. All the men in the hangar knew the risks, but if they were given the order to storm the coach with guns blazing, that was what they would do.