The Tick Tock Man

22

‘Trenchard is dead,’ Maitland said. Just minutes earlier the TO7 team had heard the conversation and the shot through the sensitive radio-relay microphone secreted in the landline telephone.

Since last light the old brewery building had been flooded in invisible infrared light, allowing the surveillance teams to watch the scene through IR viewers. The falling body had been witnessed.

‘Then I’m empowered by the Home Secretary to hand over to you, Major,’ the Chief Constable said and leaned over the desk in Zulu Control to scrawl his elaborate signature on the form.

Major Miles Foxly, previously of the Coldstream Guards and now Commander of the Counter Terrorist Team, 22 Special Air Service Regiment, accepted the order. He turned to Colonel ‘Tall LloydWilliams. ‘If your chaps are set, sir, then I think we’re ready for the off.’

The colonel nodded. ‘Just one thing. Don’t mention this business about his son and the bomb to Harrison. The poor bugger’s got enough on his plate. That aspect will be down to your boys, Major. There’s not a damn thing he can do about it anyway.’

‘And your Wheelbarrow team, sir? They’re happy they can do the necessary?’

‘Captain Heathcote and Corporal Clarke,’ LloydWilliams replied. ‘Our top Belfast team. Both recently worked with your people under Harrison when he was CO of 821 Squadron.’

Foxly gave one of his stiff, reserved smiles. ‘Then, let’s go!’

The signal was received by Captain Ran Reid and Sergeant Major ‘Big Joe’ Monk on the far bank of the Kennet. Six rubber inflatables, earlier attached to guideropes spanning the river, began the process of ferrying the assault team, their equipment and expanding aluminium ladders. Under cover of darkness, they advanced in the predetermined blind spot at the rear of the building. Once Monk confirmed that the team was in position, the police negotiator rang through on the landline. It was McGirl who answered.

‘Good news from Dublin,’ the officer said. ‘They have agreed to receive you and agree to your conditions. As I speak, a helicopter is on its way. Therefore the police will need to illuminate the brewery precincts for it to make a safe landing. You should not be alarmed by these events.’

Meanwhile on the road outside the gates, Captain Heathcote, dressed in full bombsuit positioned two broad-band Lilliput jammers, one each at fifty metres on either side of the culvert where the radio-controlled tomb had been detected earlier. He began the return walk towards the bridge to be met by two Tactica trucks, one of which contained the Wheelbarrow.

‘Gone active,’ Corporal Clarke reported as the radio jammers began silently flooding the airwaves to break up any attempted triggering signal from the terrorists. This was a technical cat-and mouse game that had become increasingly tricky of late as PIRA had refined the eight-or nine-pulse firing signal down to a mere two blips.

With the ECM established, the signalman radioed Zulu Control. In theory the culvert bomb was neutralised. But then who trusted theories? Minutes later they heard the approaching sound of the helicopter, the real purpose of which was to confuse the.terrorists and disguise the noise of the robot.

The throbbing beat increased, hovering somewhere nearby, its flashing strobe the only indication of its presence against the backdrop of stars.

‘Let’s go,’ Heathcote said.

Already, the ramps were down and Clarke had the Wheelbarrow down onto the tarmac in seconds, deftly playing with the joystick to swing it round and send it trundling alone towards the culvert in front of the gates.

Heathcote glanced at his watch. Dammit, they were late. Typical bloody police.

Even as the curse silently passed his lips, the Nitesuns sprang on, startling in their brilliance even behind the screening thicket. Most were angled to illuminate a patch of the concrete forecourt, but others had been directed at the building itself. Muldoon and Doran, who had been watching through their riflesights, would have been momentarily blinded, destroying their night vision. The Wheelbarrow approached the culvert, wheezed to a halt, its mini-headlight on and telescopic arm extended to take the Pigs tick into the small brickwork tunnel.

Both men studied the TV monitor. ‘In position,’ Clarke intoned.

Heathcote agreed. ‘Fire.’

The loud crack of the exploding waterjet as it smashed into the radio-controlled power pack of the bomb was lost amid the rising crescendo of the helicopter.

‘Looks good,’ Clarke reported.

Heathcote grinned, snapped down his visor and began running awkwardly under the weight of the bombsuit. By the time he reached the culvert, Clarke had withdrawn the robot, allowing space for Heathcote to slide down into the ditch, inspect the damage and cut any remaining wires on the circuit. He raised his hand, thumb up.

Clarke immediately took control of the giant Attack Barrow that had been waiting in reserve. With a sudden jerk, it whined into life and began its determined way down the road towards the gates.

Muldoon raised the alarm and Clodagh rushed to join him at the window, the radio-signal transmitter in her hand. She pressed the button at the exact moment the robot crossed the culvert, shut her eyes in anticipation of the flash. Nothing happened.

Meanwhile Harrison sat with Sergeant Major Joe Monk in the black rubber inflatable as it was hauled across the river, secured by an overhead pulley line. The heavy bombsuit had been left behind, standing orders for once ignored. On an assault mission such as this, if anything went wrong, he would be killed regardless of any protection he wore. So, like Monk, he was dressed in black Panotex antiflash suit and hood with layered ceramic body armour and rubber respirator mask. He carried a Browning Hi-Power as his personal weapon and a canvas tool belt round his waist.

Monk would be his personal protector. His huge dark bulk and the doleful insect-eye lenses in the hood created an awesome spectacle like something from a science-fiction fantasy. He carried a 9mm MP5 Heckler & Koch sub-machine-gun clipped to his chest. Because the architecture of the building contained many open areas, he carried some of the most powerful Brock XFS-1 stun grenades along with CS gas containers.

While Heathcote and the Wheelbarrow teams made a noisy but powerful diversionary assault on the south side, Monk and Harrison would be making a silent approach at the north end.

This had been made necessary because earlier helicopter sur: veillance had detected what appeared to be antipersonnel devices in oil drums fitted to the roof. Experience of AID AN suggested this was probably exactly what they were. Whilst casualties to assaulting soldiers were acceptable, the prospect of the old building collapsing entirely in the resulting explosions was not.

The alternative, and infinitely more stealthy approach, was decided on when architect’s drawings became available which revealed the old water outfall system.

‘Zulu Control to Sunray,’ Harrison heard on the integral comms. ‘Confirm Attack Barrow now entering factory gates and is in full view ofhostiles… A shot has just been fired… Commence prelim EOD assault. Repeat. Commence prelim EOD assault.’

Major Foxly’s voice came on the net..‘Roger, Zulu. This is. Sunray. EOD and 10 Troop… GOP

The inflatable nudged the far bank. In front of him, Monk’s head nodded sideways, indicating the water. Harrison sensed the man was grinning as he rolled his large frame over the tubing gunwale and sank up to his waist in the black water that bubbled and foamed as he broke its flow.

Harrison followed, gasping inwardly as he sank into the cold liquid and felt it trickling down into his boots. He edged forward after Monk’s dark shape, watching as the man found the rusted, half-submerged rim of the outfall pipe. Then he was gone, a duck dive; just a glimpse of a broad, black and dripping backside as Monk forced his way into the eighteen-inch-diameter pipe.

Earlier a recce team had removed the grille and checked the viability of the access route. As Harrison stood shivering, waiting for Monk to clear the entrance, he had his doubts. But then these men were the experts. The trouble was they expected everyone else to be equally fearless, regardless of any natural susceptibility to vertigo or claustrophobia. There was no time to linger. The rest of 10 Troop was closing up behind him, ready to follow.

Car bombs and derelicts, he thought, and the old black dog was back, snarling and snapping at his heels.

Taking a deep breath, he plunged face down into the murk. He opened his eyes but could see nothing. Although Monk had a torch with him ahead, the sergeant major’s body virtually filled the tunnel allowing just a confusing glimmer to light Harrison’s way. Cocooned in his respirator, he was aware of the filthy water at chest level, splashing over the eye lenses each time Monk moved forward. And he could sense rather than smell the rankness of stagnant water and rusted metal.

Slowly, painfully Harrison hauled himself along, his head brushing the curved arch above him, the pitted surface grinding on the flesh of his knees through the sodden trousers. Onwards, onwards. Only fifty metres, he knew, but it seemed like as many miles.

Oh, fuck, what was that?

Monk jerked suddenly, and let out an involuntary cry of surprise as Harrison glimpsed the flash of grey matted fur and long wormlike tail. Tiny claws scrabbled over his shoulders and down his back and disappeared to terrorise the rest of the SAS follow-on team.

Harrison shut his eyes. Bombs were one thing, rats were quite another. Monk was on the move again; Harrison wriggled on after him.

Meanwhile, four storeys above his head, the emergence of the Attack Barrow on the forecourt was causing continuing panic amongst the AID AN team. McGirl was on the landline.

He had to shout to be heard above the tumultuous roar of the helicopter outside. ‘What’s going on? Get that bloody robot out of here!’

The police negotiator was unmoved, his words silkily reassuring: ‘It’s purely routine. You’ve told us you’ve planted explosives on the door. The helicopter can’t land in the vicinity until they’ve been cleared.’

‘You lying bastard! You haven’t agreed at all!’ McGirl accused.

‘Of course, if you’re prepared to disarm the devices yourself…’ McGirl slammed down the handset. He was shaking with suppressed anger.

‘What is it?’ Clodagh demanded. The entire building appeared to be trembling in the downdraught of the helicopter’s rotors.

‘It’s a trick. They’re trying to break in at the south end.’

The sudden crack of a gunshot came from the window where Muldoon stood. ‘Hit it!’ he cried.

McGirl rushed to his side.

‘Sod!’ Muldoon said. ‘It’s still moving.’

Now the Attack Barrow was close in to the building, directly beneath them. It was impossible for Muldoon to fire from that angle without exposing himself to an army sniper round.

They heard the crack and fizzle of the cutting charge as it blasted a hole through the door. Then the mechanical wheeze was quite audible as the Attack Barrow edged forward like a curious animal, its TV camera nosing in for a closer look.

It had been assumed that the south end would be similarly rigged to the north end which Harrison had reported as being a horizontal Claymore device, a cut-off pressure gas cylinder, probably packed with nuts and bolts, It was, but where the north had been triggered with a light-sensitive cell, this one had been wired to an ultrasonic car alarm from an accessory shop.

Clodagh glanced at McGirl and shook her head.

The explosion rocked the entire building.

‘CHR-I–I-ST!’ Muldoon uttered as the remnants of the Attack Barrow blasted out across the forecourt, pieces of metal clanking discordantly onto the concrete.

There was a long moment of stunned relief, despite the continuing drone of the helicopter above their heads. Clodagh and McGirl joined Muldoon at the window with an exhilarating sense of triumph.

‘Well done, Clodie,’ McGirl said. ‘That’ll make them think.’

But it was a feeling of elation that was to be short-lived. The now familiar and irritating whir of mechanical defiance reached their ears again. Around the edge of the gate peered the Wheelbarrow that had taken out the culvert bomb, its disrupter recharged and looking for business.

In the outfall pipe, Harrison suddenly found his face next to Monk’s enormous rubber-soled boots. The sergeant major was standing in the vertical brickwork shaft, his arms outstretched in order to grip the steel manhole plate and push it aside. In the confined space the grating sound as it slid over the concrete was deafening.

Then Monk was scrambling for a foothold, drawing up his full sixteen-stone bodyweight on his immense and powerful biceps. His hand reached down, offering a wrist-to-wrist fisherman’s grip to pull Harrison out of the hole.

Breathless from the exertion, the SATO crouched, panting, until the next soldier was up, ready to repeat the process with those who followed. Looking around the deserted ground floor he could see the remnants of steel footings that had once bolted machinery to the floor, now covered in debris and accumulated rubbish from tramps, vandals and glue-sniffers over the years.

Monk indicated for the first man to wait, well clear, until the north-end stairwell had been cleared, then followed Harrison as he picked his way towards the inner door that opened onto the stairwell.

Harrison stopped there and, reaching out a hand, tapped the lens of the torch hooked to Monk’s chest. The SAS soldier nodded and switched it off.

An Allen cold lamp would be used now, a small book-shaped container of grey enamel with a handle on top and a diffused fluorescent tube in the leading edge.

He closed his hand around the door handle and pulled gently.

It was locked. Monk saw the problem. The SATO couldn’t use a small explosive charge because there was a light-sensitive bomb on the other side of the door. Monk delved into his pocket for his leather wallet of standard-issue lock-picking tools. Kneeling down in the light of Harrison’s Allen lamp, he inserted one of the steel prongs and began to manipulate the tumblers.

Anxiously Harrison counted the seconds, his mind returning yet again to his son, sitting somewhere above their heads. And again he tried to push the picture from his mind.

Then from the far end of the building, they heard the sound of the second Wheelbarrow as its mechanical arm began ripping away the loose wreckage of the door to gain access.

Monk nudged him. Their inner door was now unlocked and Harrison slipped through, reaffirming as he did the positioning of the light-sensitive slave switch on the stairwell wall. He played the Allen lamp down over the bricks. There it was facing him, the blocked mouth of the cylinder, a thin crust of cement holding the lethal concoction of ironmongery and explosive. A sort of enormous and crude Claymore-type affair. A blunderbuss of horrendous destructive power, half buried in removed bricks, aimed straight at his groin as he reached up, feeling in the dim light for the linking wire.

Nothing. Just red dust crumbling under his fingertips. He spread his palms, probed around. He was starting to sweat, the lenses fugging and the smell of rubber from the respirator overpowering.

That was when he felt the tension, something rubbing against his knees. He went to kick away whatever was snagged in the material. Something stopped him. He directed the Allen lamp down his body. Half expecting a piece of old bedspring — there was a rotted mattress dumped in one corner of the entrance — his heart skidded as the light picked out the gleaming monofilament thread.

Christ, tripwire.

Monk heard the expletive in his earpiece, came forward.

‘ What is it, Tom?’

‘By my knees, a wire.’

The sergeant major knelt, his face close to the transparent nylon thread, difficult to distinguish through the perspex goggles. As Harrison played the light, he traced it back to the source. One end of the wire had been wound around a small length of wooden dowel. It was held in position by a clothes peg, itself attached to a small power unit and a separate charge of Semtex which filled a hole where a brick had been at the bottom of the stairs. Had the dowel been pulled and the jaws of the peg closed, then the circuit would have been completed.

This second boobytrap device hadn’t been in place when Harrison had left the building earlier.

‘Ease back,’ Monk instructed. ‘Real slow.’

Harrison moved one foot. The wire slacked. Then he shifted his second leg.

Monk’s mouth was parched. ‘You’re clear.’

Harrison crossed to the secondary device and, almost angrily, snipped the wire and shoved the dowel securely home. That would do no harm now; it would have to be fully disarmed later.

He turned to the light slave cell, traced the wire and cut it in two places. The Claymore device itself would have to be left until later; any antihandling mechanism might have been fitted, maybe a simple pressure switch or trembler that would trigger if disturbed. The battery power source itself was hidden somewhere within the brickwork.

Next Harrison inspected the outer doors themselves. Sure enough a simple contact-breaker had been fitted, a wire also leading… oh, God, no, only leading back to the Claymore — and the sodding thing was still live!

He swallowed hard and again cut the link.

Then he signalled to Monk that he wanted to speak to Zulu Control before going on. The SAS man settled on the steps, MP5 undipped and at the ready, while Harrison pressed the send button. ‘SATO to Zulu Control. I’m meeting with all manner of IEDs on this route. Suggest I investigate next floor before you tackle your end. Over.’

Tall Lloyd Williams came on. ‘Roger to that, SATO. We’ve just lost the Attack Barrow on the front door. The backup Mark 8 is in and starting to climb. Over.’

‘Pull back/ Harrison advised. ‘Tell them to check for a trip and a secondary. If they’ve got one it could well have survived the initial blast.’

‘Roger, SATO. Let us know what you find up there.’

‘Wilco and out.’

He joined Monk at the stairs and led the stealthy climb, using his Allen lamp and feeler-probe to check each step. Still no sound and no light came from above. No doubt the AIDAN team were confident that their defences were impregnable. Harrison had an increasingly uneasy feeling that they could well be right.

Their two heads peered over the top step of the landing, noses level with the floor. He lifted his Allen lamp and played it over the walls. The beam gleamed on the wet brickwork and the green fungal growth. Right-hand wall. Clear. Ahead. Clear. He wriggled forward on his stomach to see around the left wall of the stairwell to the far wall and the next flight.

And there it was.

The slab of plastic explosive, just a few ounces, had been tied with string which was fixed to a nail that had been hammered into the mortar. It was wrapped in parcel tape, three-inch galvanised bolts secured between the layers. Nasty. Enough to disembowel or castrate, maybe worse.

But how was it triggered?

The wire was black and difficult to identify at that distance, but he managed to trace it in the light from the Allen lamp down to the debris that littered the floor. Flattened cardboard boxes, sodden lengths of hardboard and yellowing newspapers. In fact quite a covering of junk.

Then he was back. Back in 1983, in the Ballymurphy derelict after the sniper. Just minutes before Don told him that Hughie Dougan had been caught.

Cars and derelicts.

Oh, shit!

He stared down at his elbows. They still rested on the hard concrete. Half-an-inch in front of him was a flattened cardboard box that had once contained a refrigerator.

Somehow he just knew. What other tricks had Hughie Dougan taught his daughter?

Turning to Monk, he whispered into his mike: ‘Get back down till I’ve cleared this.’

The SAS man nodded and slithered back down the steps to shield behind the wall on the lower stairwell. Confident that he was out of harm’s way, Harrison switched on his standard right angle chest torch, then stretched out his fingers to the edge of the cardboard. He eased one hand under and then the other. Gently, very gently, he began to lift. The light from his torch probed into the shadow. And there it was, the pressure mat.

It was a difficult manoeuvre, raising the large expanse of heavy cardboard clear. At one point an end flap dropped and swung perilously close to the surface of the mat. At last he was able to drop it behind him on the steps. Only then he realised that he’d been holding his breath during the entire operation.

Now he was able to identify the connecting wires and quickly snipped them before casting the mat aside.

He reported back to Zulu Control and told them what he’d found; the information was then passed on to the operators of the Wheelbarrow at the south end.

Monk was back at his side, anxious to get on, his team working up the steps behind him. But Harrison had to resist the temptation to cut too many corners, although the SAS man was clearly impatient for him to neutralise the nail bomb on the wall.

That done, they moved swiftly up the next flight, Harrison hopeful that they had cleared the last of Clodagh Dougan’s defences. But, as they turned the next corner, he was confronted by a barricade. It was formed by an old iron bedstead frame with half its springs missing and held in place by crisscrossing spars of old rotten timber. In the middle of the obstacle sat a one-gallon motor-oil can, a battery taped to the outside and wires leading from the cap, slithering away to somewhere unseen amid the clutter.

‘ShitP Monk’s voice was clear in Harrison’s earpiece.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that buried in the barricade were one or more tilt or pressure switches that would trigger the moment anything was disturbed.

Harrison shone his Allen lamp over the tangle of wood and metal, trying to work out its exact purpose. There had to be some logic in it, he told himself. But what?

‘There’s oneP Monk.said.

The mercury tilt switch had been fitted to the underside, halfway along a length of timber that had been rested on the top edge of the blocking bedstead frame. Harrison shone his lamp along it. In total five wooden spars held the barricade upright, one other also with a switch. Both out of reach.

‘If we can hold those two spars steady…’ Harrison began.

Monk saw his point, beckoned up the next SAS soldier waiting below. The sergeant major pointed to the second spar. ‘If you let it slip, we’ll end up like paint’on the wallsP

The man grimaced in his respirator and set to the job in hand. Harrison crouched down and squinted into the lamp beam for a better view of the switches. The blobs of mercury were obviously at the bottom of the capsules, the contact points nearer to him. If the bedstead was pulled away, which would have been the most likely occurrence during a hasty assault, the spars would lower and allow the mercury to touch the contacts.

If they pushed, the spars might remain safely upright, but the bedstead would land on top of the bomb itself with unknown and probably horrendous consequences.

There was only one thing for it. He waved up more troops from below and told them to hold the bedstead firm. He then proceeded to treat it like a fence, mounting it one foot at a time until he could lift one leg over. His head cracked unexpectedly against the ceiling. Cursing, he looked up. Not the ceiling. It was the narrow conduit piping that had once carried power to the lights at each landing.

It gave him an idea. Feeling in his tool belt, he extracted a length of paracord, cut it and poked it through the small gap between the conduit and the surface of the ceiling. He tied a slipknot in one end and dropped it over the spar that Monk was supporting.

The SAS man nodded, obviously smiling inside his respirator as he saw Harrison pull on the loose end and the timber securely eased upwards and tied into the vertical position, the globule of mercury safely at the bottom of its capsule.

By the time he’d repeated the process with the second spar, the edge of the bedstead which he straddled was cutting painfully into his crotch. Cramp was beginning to set in.

Awkwardly he drew over his other leg and stepped down into the barricade, checking first that he wasn’t placing his boot onto some nasty surprise. Now he could reach the oil can and swiftly cut the battery leads, then the wires to the tilt switches.

‘Don’t touch it or kick it,’ Harrison warned. ‘There could be an antilift device underneath it.’

As quickly as possible, without creating noise, the team carried away the bedstead frame and carefully removed the timber until they had a clear passage.

Harrison reported back to Zulu Control and advised that the oil can might still be active for the benefit of those following up.

Tall LloydWilliams informed him that the Wheelbarrow was making slow, but so far successful, progress at the south end and that still appeared to be the terrorists’ chief concern. So far, so good. But two more landings to clear.

In fact the next landing was devoid of obstacles. But as Harrison used his feeler-probe on the last staircase, he found the tripwire, otherwise unseen in the lamplight. Letting them think they were nearly there, that they were over the worst, getting careless in their anxiety to get it over with, to get stuck in.

He traced the wire to the side wall where the old damp bricks had been chiselled out. The space was just deep enough to allow the Mk 15 to fit. A standard PIRA coffee-jar grenade. Filled with half a kilogram of Semtex and a metal fragmentation liner, a microswitch in the base that would be released when the glass shattered. If a careless foot had caught the wire, the jar would have toppled from its shelf. Crude but devastatingly effective.

Gingerly he twisted the jar round without lifting it, until he could get to the det and cut the leads.

Just a short distance to go now and they were entering Monk’s domain. Now the SAS man took over the lead with his Number Two in support. With his back hard against the wall, he edged up the last few steps until his eyes were level with the floor of the top storey.

They’d discussed it earlier. On the south side, the stairwell came up on the right-hand side into a passage which was formed on the right by the building’s outer wall and the thin brick wall of the first of the three offices on the left. That was the room the terrorists used most, where McGirl and Clodagh rested. The middle room was where Archie was held. Next was the office Muldoon and Doran used. The layout and approximate disposition of the hostiles had been worked out by the technical experts of SO 7 and their thermal-imaging cameras designed for finding survivors in earthquake rubble.

Monk took the last few steps to bring him up into the passage. Ahead of him was a shut ‘door. That led into the open space beyond. He had no doubt it would be wired. Very possibly to explosives hidden somewhere in the darkness of the stairwell. They had no way of knowing. So the door would not be their way in.

Instinctively Monk ran his free hand over the bricks of the partition wall on his left. It would take them straight into the first office where Trenchard had been instructed to leave the landline telephone earlier.

He turned and beckoned the first men of the assault ‘brick’. One dropped to his knee, covering the door with his Remington repeater shotgun. The next two carried the frame-charge between them, secured it to the partition wall and withdrew. Then Monk and the SAS trooper with the shotgun pulled back down the stairs.

Normally a frame-charge would not be used indoors because there was a good chance the reverberating overpressure of the explosion would bring the roof down on top of them. But there was an outside window across the top passage that should relieve the massive blast of displaced air. If the theory held good, it would be a damn sight faster than breaking through the wall with sledges.

The sergeant major spoke rapidly into his mike. ‘Sunray to Zulu. In position. Request sitrep. Over.’

‘Roger, Sunray, McGirl has been told the helicopter is coming in to land.’ Diversion, get them to the windows, away from the boy. ‘At present two hostiles by south stairwell — worried about Barrow — and one each on east and west sides, approx midway. Expect Armalites and sidearms. Three minutes okay? Over.’

‘Roger. Over.’ Set.

‘Three minute countdown… now! Standby and off.’

Monk pulled back further, to be well clear of the frame-charge blast. Glanced back at the stairway now filled with black figures, poised, sweating. Knew all had heard on the net. Safeties coming off. Tense, muscles like coiled springs.

Above their heads the ceiling began to shake as the helicopter came lower, swooping in for its final descent. Into the blaze of floodlights on the concrete apron at the front of the old brewery building.

Monk looked at Harrison, now drawn back against the wall to allow the others to pass, and gave him a thumbs-up sign of reassurance.

Get it right, Harrison thought savagely. I’ve got you this far, you big bastard, now you get it right for me. That’s Archie in there. My son. Just through two thin partition walls. If he dies now, I’ll even hear his screams. Get him killed, Sergeant Major Monk, and I’ll fucking well kill you\ So get it bloody right.

The sound outside was deafening now, the big Puma swaggering out of the night sky, its downdraught blasting away the rubbish on the forecourt, the building trembling to its foundations.

‘All hostiles moved to windows on east side,’ intoned the voice of the SO7 man with the thermal-imager over the net.

Nearly there, Harrison thought, looking at his watch. Thirty seconds to go… Too long, they should be going in now. McGirl and the others have seen the helicopter, will start thinking about leaving, collecting their weapons. Collecting their insurance. Archie. Go now for pity’s sake!

The second hand dragged as though restrained by glue. ‘Fifteen, fourteen…’

‘Standby, standby.’ Monk’s voice in his ear. Patient. All the time in the bloody world.

‘One hostile leaving window for north end. SO7.’

Sod! Which hostile coming towards us, towards Archie? No way of knowing.

Eight, seven…

How fast was the bastard walking? How long would it take him to get to Archie’s cell?

Four, three…

C’mon, c’monl

Two, one.

‘FIREP Monk’s voice yelled in his ear.

Leo Muldoon was halfway across the open space of the top floor, Armalite held loosely in his hand. There was a smile on his face. You had to hand it to Pat McGirl. Hard bastard, but he knew his stuff. Had got the Brits and Dublin by the short and curlies. A flight to freedom courtesy of the bloody Royal Air Force. Not bad that. Worth a few free beers down the Falls Road that…

All he saw was a sudden pulse of light ahead of him. It came from the open door of the office where McGirl and the Dougan woman had slept. The brilliance of the light blinded him, stopped him in his tracks. Almost simultaneously the rolling boom of the frame-charge hit him, making him jump.

He recovered quickly, bringing up his Armalite into the fire position, trying to focus, the afterimage of the explosion still etched in front of his eyes. Now the smoke, tumbling out of the open office door.

A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind. No one could have got through the north-end defences without them knowing. So it was some sort of grenade, lobbed from the outside… No, the landline telephone. The bastards had filled it with explosive…

Outside, the floodlights died, pitching the place into utter darkness. It was followed by the crack of small-arms fire. He heard glass shattering, something falling onto the debris on the floor. The faint hiss and the acrid stench.

‘GAS!’ McGirl shrieked.

Muldoon dropped to his knees, threw down his Armalite and grabbed at the army-surplus gas mask in the case attached to his belt. McGirl, you fucken genius, you think of everything.

The rubber strap was only halfway over his head when the first black shadow emerged from the haze of smoke, a starburst of light dazzling from the torch fitted over the barrel of the MP5. More shadows in the smoke, jostling for position.

His hand found the Armalite, began to lift it when the two rounds slammed into his chest. As he fell back, the air above his head was filled with a hail of fire passing in both directions.

Doran had opened up with half-a-magazine while Clodagh and McGirl were pulling on their gas masks. He saw the sinister dark figures in the smoke, tracked along as they tried to reach the second door where Archie was held. Then he aimed at the telltale positioning of their gun torches before they flicked off.

He saw two go down before the CS caught in his throat and eyes, his vision suddenly lost to the stinging gas.

‘BASTARDS!’ McGirl shouted, the voice muffled in the gas mask. With his left hand he reached into his pocket and pulled out the small cylindrical transmitter. His thumb found the power key, flipped it on.

Clodagh saw. ‘No, Pat!’ She stretched out her hand.

The surface of the wall beside them disintegrated, raked with fire from the intruders. Sprays of brick dust showered over them as they flung themselves down.

Clodagh levelled her Armalite, squeezed the trigger. The weapon trembled in her hands, the short burst whistling through the intervening space. She saw the phantom figures rolling left and right, parted by her aim. But she had no idea if she’d hit anyone.

Beside her, McGirl recovered the transmitter he had dropped in his moment of panic. Power on, he checked, his thumb moving to the red fire button.

Clodagh glimpsed what he was doing. ‘Pat, for God’s sake, not now! Not the boy!’ Her words unheard.

Double-pulse, two blips.

The explosion appeared to rock the north end. For the first time, the door to the stairwell was blown open, triggering the booby trap. Another fizzling blue flash with a white core and an ear-splitting crack as the small charge was detonated. Then everything was lost in the tongue of flame and choking black smoke that tumbled out of the stairwell passage.

Harrison tried to pick himself off the floor. His ears were ringing, the excited voices in his earpiece strangely muted and echoing. Muffled words shouted into an iron pan. He knew then he was concussed. Where was he? What had he been doing? All was confusion, smoke and flame everywhere.

It started to come back, mental images, piece by piece like a cerebral jigsaw. He had been standing on the lower landing, keeping to one side. Saw the sheet of lightning as the frame-charge Ś blew. Heard its blast and felt the heart-shaking kick of displaced air that blew the entire outside window and surrounding brickwork out into the factory yard. Saw Monk running up the stairs, through the ragged smoking hole and into the first office. Harrison standing, still tight against the wall, as the SAS figures, black and anonymous, rushed past him. Swarming like ants. More and more coming from below. Maybe only twenty, but seeming like hundreds.

Then down to the stragglers, the tail-end Charlies, and he had joined them then, no longer willing to wait. Anxious to grab his son, spirit him away as the second team rescued the boy and passed him back through the smouldering aperture.

There had suddenly been a lot of gunfire and he knew something had gone wrong, sensed it. He wondered whether there had been a shortfall in CS gas. They’d discussed it earlier, how the mullioned steel windows would make a heli-assault difficult, even if the sills weren’t rigged with explosive. How it would be difficult to fire in canister rounds from the outside through the small panes…

Harrison had recalled all this as he’d followed the charging SAS men into the first office. Through the open door, he heard the ear-splitting shriek and flashes of the stun grenades and saw muzzle flashes in the darkness. Had seen two bodies on the floor. Somehow knew, just knew that they were the men charged with getting into the second office and pulling out his son.

And that had been the moment the explosion had gone off! Now he realised where he was. He was sitting on the floor of the first office where he’d been blown, struck from behind by the mighty unseen hand. The stairwell. He knew it was the stairwell and, in confirmation, smoke came belching in from the passage with the flickering light of flame behind it.

He didn’t need to be told what had happened. He knew. Maybe they’d forgotten or perhaps his warning message hadn’t got through to everyone. But in the darkness and confusion and the scramble to get up the steps, someone had accidently kicked the oil-can bomb he’d been unable to defuse. It was no comfort now to learn that his hunch about the antilift device had been right.

His senses returning, he climbed to his feet. Gunfire was still crackling out in the main area, more stuns going off like mini nukes in the blackness. He just knew it had all gone badly wrong.

A figure appeared at the frame-charge hole, his Panotex suit shredded, blood dripping from his arm. The man indicated back down the stairwell and shook his head.

No more explanation was necessary. Harrison could see the growing intensity of flickering orange light behind the wounded soldier. Could feel the rise in temperature already. All that rubbish on the stairs… the place would be an inferno in seconds. Tongues of flames greedily seeking the explosives he’d dismantled earlier.

Pitching onto all fours he wriggled across to the door that opened onto the main area. It was impossible to tell what was going on. Pitch black except for muzzle flashes, ribbons of smoke drifting through the torch beams scanning the void like searchlights. He crawled over the body of a soldier. Dead or dying, he couldn’t tell. Then another, the man’s hand reaching up, fingers around the handle of the second office door. The respirator had been shattered by the round that had smashed into his forehead and now the dead eyes stared at him. Sorry, mate, I did my best.

Harrison prised the fingers from the handle, feeling the bones resist, crackling as he tore them free.

Then the door swung open and he was in. ‘ARCHIE!’

‘Dad?’ the voice was small and tremulous in the dark.

He switched on his chest torch.

His son was spotlit in the beam, lying on the floor, still strapped to a chair by parcel tape. Shaking uncontrollably like someone in a fever.

Then Harrison saw the bullet marks on the wall below the window and the torn holes in the radiator where the stray rounds had come through the door. I ‘I–I thought I–I’d b-better get down.’

Harrison grinned at his son as he knelt. ‘Smart lad.’ His voice muffled in the respirator.

‘Careful, Dad, there’s a bomb underneath the chair!’

He stared in disbelief. Who, in God’s name could do such a thing? He reached forward, getting a better angle of light to it.

‘I-t’s radio-controlled.’

‘I’m not sure, I can’t see any aerial…’

‘In my hand.’

What? Harrison stared. Archie’s hands were strapped tight to his side, his fingertips barely below the seat on which he sat. Yet somehow he’d managed to stretch out beneath him, because now, between two fingers, was the little snake of aerial wire he’d torn away.

‘It needs an aerial doesn’t it, Dad? Like that model plane you made me?’ Harrison felt the relief ebb up inside him, couldn’t stop the hot tears in his eyes. He looked again at the package beneath the chair, looked for and found the off-switch, then pulled out the detonator. Taking the craft knife from his tool belt, he sliced through the parcel tape that bound his son and helped him to his feet.

Then the door burst open behind him. The big hooded figure, stared for a moment. It was Monk.

‘Is he all right, Tom?’ the voice said over Harrison’s comms.

‘He’s safe.’

A nod of the head. ‘ What a fuck-up! Still, looks like it’s over. We’ve identified three of the hostiles. Two dead, one wounded. I expect another body’s out there somewhere, but there’s so much smoke, it’ll take a while to confirm.’

‘That explosion…?’ Harrison began.

Monk shook his head. ‘No details yet, but the stairs are burning like buggery. We’ll have to exit out the south side.’ He turned to the dead soldier by the door and freed the spare respirator from the man’s belt. It had been destined for Archie. ‘Put this on the lad and come with me.’

Harrison pulled the contraption over his son’s head, gave him a thumbs-up and a smile of reassurance. Archie’s eyes looked back nervously through the lenses.

‘Keep close,’ Monk said. ‘ We’ll stay next to the wall’

Harrison put his arm round the boy’s shoulders and followed Monk out of the office.

Flame was now licking out of the stairwell door like a dragon’s tongue, the conflagration taking hold on the flimsy partitioning. The main area itself was now filled with dense, choking black smoke and clouds of cordite as Monk edged along the east wall, his Heckler at the ready.

The shooting had ceased, but amid the evil fog Harrison could see the sharp stabs of torchlight as SAS soldiers scoured the floor for signs of survivors, friendly or hostile.

They kept moving steadily, Monk arcing his MP5 left and right as they passed the halfway point. Harrison followed, a reassuring arm still hugging his son close to his side. Meanwhile the fire at the north end was sweeping through the office partitioning. The flame was almost white in its intensity, its heat like a furnace now, flickering sparks like fireflies drifting towards them, the force of the flames beginning to clear the smoke.

Harrison heard the sudden gunfire, saw Monk fall away, spinning as the shot tore into his shoulder. His weapon flew from his grasp.

Ahead the smoke parted momentarily and he glimpsed the south stairwell door. Just feet away stood Clodagh Dougan, light thrown by the raging fire dancing in the hair that swung around her shoulders. Armalite rising, aiming at anything that moved.

Saw him now. Not knowing who it was behind the respirator. Taking aim as she edged back towards the door and her escape route.

Harrison felt for the Browning in his holster, fumbling at the restraining strap, knowing he was going to be too late.

They all heard it then. The whirring motor and the sound of glass and debris crackling under its tiny caterpillar tracks. Clodagh Dougan turned towards the stairwell in surprise. Dazzled by the Wheelbarrow’s mini-spotlight.

Was it Heathcote at the controls or the chubby corporal? Suddenly Harrison felt he knew. It was Clarke. In his element, a kid of the electronic age, wizard at Nintendo and the arcade computer games. Reflexes like lightning.

It must have been an instantaneous decision. Harrison heard the crack of the giant Hotrod disrupter as the waterjet fired, caught the glint of light on the plastic plug as it flashed through the blackness. Seven hundred metres a second.

She couldn’t have seen it coming, smashing into her chest at that speed. It was as though she was struck by a thunderbolt from the gods. Didn’t even scream. Was just hurtled backwards into the smoke and vanished from view.

Black-gloved hands came from nowhere. They grabbed Harrison and his son, propelled them forward, the boy’s feet not even touching the ground.

Within seconds they were running down the stairs, past SAS troopers coming up. They passed Heathcote, in full bombsuit, making safe some device, but he was too busy to notice them.

Then they were out on the concrete apron beside the helicopter, respirators ripped off and gulping down fresh air. Harrison turned and glanced back. A trooper was helping Monk out of the doorway. The less fortunate were being half carried, half dragged.

Beyond the compound gates he saw the flashing lights of the ambulances pulling up. Soldiers and police officers were everywhere, stepping back as he and Archie came through.

Pippa appeared as though from nowhere in the crowd and swept her son into her arms.

Harrison looked on, feeling happy for his wife’s relief and joy, yet feeling somehow apart. It was all different now.

‘Tom, are you all right?’

It was Casey, standing and grinning at him stupidly, tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘I’m fine. Archie’s fine.’

She rushed to him, burying her head on his shoulder as he held her close. ‘God, I can’t tell you…’

‘I love you.’ Suddenly he felt elated, free.

She laughed. ‘How much, bomb man?’

‘Almost as much as I’d love a hamburger. I’m bloody starving!’