Everything was laid out behind the wagons ready to go at ahy time.

Once everyone had loaded up we moved into the t:rew room to find out what was going on. We were all eating our crisps apart from Slaphead, who saved his during the week for his kids. For some reason they always seemed to be the most horrible flavors like Prawn c.o.c.ktail.

Maybe the army had a deal with Smiths or the head chef had a sense of humor.

The SSM came into the crew room and said, "About an hour ago there was a call out for four men, including the second-in-command, to go over the water. We've just received another call, Andy. I want you to be thirdin-command on it."

He gave us a brief.

"The Israeli trade commission was. holding a conference at grid six-three-two-four-five-six, map sheet onethree-five. This morning the Islamic Jihad got into the building and is holding hostages. We are stood to, waiting for the word to move. The O.C and his group have already moved by one-zero-nine (Agusta helicopter).

Steve is waiting with the second one-zero-ninei for the second-in-command and sniper commander. The rest of us will wait for the go."

My chest felt tight as we were driven to the heli pad; in the normal course of events I wouldn't have been tasked with the 3 i/c's job until at least my next tour. I felt honored but daunted. I didn't want to f.u.c.k up.

The second wave of slime (Intelligence Corps personnel) were waiting for us by the 109. They were an integral part of any operation ever since the Prince' s Gate siege had demonstrated the value of good and accurate intelligence. During the lead up to the actual a.s.sault, specialists from M15 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 building was p.i.s.s poor, and the walls turned out to be too thick for the probes to penetrate. The result was that although the blokes had a model of the construction of the building, they did not know exactly where the terrorists were.

Since then the Regiment had collated a ma.s.sive database on computer that included such essential information as the thicknesses of walls and doors in buildings that were possible terrorist targets and the designs of all military and civilian aircraft. The computer was portable, so wherever an incident occurred, we could take it with us and access the information. If we called up a certain hotel, for example, we'd get a 3D image of the interior on the screen.

Intelligence gathered on the numbers and location of people inside the building could then be added as it came to hand. Possible methods of entry could also be suggested to the computer, which would then plot the best method of moving through the building. If the design of the building was not on the database, we could punch in details such as the construction of the outside walls, the number of windows, and the location of various 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.

I liked going in the heli with Steve until he started to talk about squash. He was mad on the sport, and to make it worse, he was good at it. Squash was very popular in the Regiment; at lunchtime the courts looked like the scene at a major tournament.

We arrived at the location just outside Liverpool, a large private park with its own ma.s.sive mansion house; from the air I could see lakes and well-manicured lawns.

We landed alongside the other 109. One of the slime was there to take us to the holding area.

"It's not as good as we would want, but it will do," he said.

On the way there we pa.s.sed scores of police, fire, and ambulance crews, all with their vehicles and their own jobs to do. The holding area turned out to be two large rooms in an old outbuilding that had been taken over and used as incident control. The rooms were more or less derelict, with concrete floors and cobwebs at the joins of the walls and a damp, musty smell of cat's p.i.s.s, but at least there was electricity.

In one corner were a couple of bogs with high cisterns and rusty metal chains.

The rooms must both have been about twenty-five meters by twenty; it was a building cut in half with a center wall and two doors.

The first priority was to meet up with jack, the squadron O.C. He was easy to spot-very tall, very wide, and with a nose that would have put General de Gaulle's in the shade.

"This is the briefing area," he said. "Next door will be the admin area. The I.A vehicles will be placed on that hard standing to the right; everything else on that gra.s.s area there."

n.o.body else would be allowed to park near the ops vehicles, and the area would be kept clear of all clutter.

In the briefing area the slime and signals advance parties were sorting everything out. There was a long line of six-foot tables on which were boards that would soon have pictures of the target plus the X rays (terrorists) and Yankees (hostages).

Plans of the building were being pinned up as more information was given by the police. Steve and Jerry, the other pilot, did the sensible thing: got some tea and talked squash while they waited for their support team to arrive.

"Let's go to the main incident room and get permission to go forward and see the target," I said.

I took a walk to the main building with the O.C and Bob, the sniper team commander. Bob was the first member of the Regiment I'd ever seen, in Crossmagien.

He had since become troop sergeant.

It seemed that the mansion had been renovated and turned into a conference center much the same as the target, which was about a kilometer away. It was very plush with deep carpets, beautiful wood, and leather furniture and a fine central staircase. The scene put me in mind of a place that a film company had taken over.

All the Gucci furniture had been moved to the side, and there were wires fixed to the floor with masking tape and running up the staircases, telephones ringing, policemen and women rushing around, and, like us, people in civilian clothes with ID cards pinned to their jackets.

Every sector had its own little cordon. To come out of our holding area cordon and into another, we had to go through a police checkpoint. The slime had pinned ID cards to us. Within the main building there were other places that we needed other clearances to go into. It was chaos; everything was still getting jacked up.

The O.C introduced us to a woman police officer who was one of the incident controllers. She called the forward control point and said, "Our friends are on their way down to see you."

I returned to the briefing area with Bob and Jack and saw the two pilots. Squash talk had finished now and they were looking at some air photography that had just come in. Steve had decided to get his pipe out and slowly kill everyone. Each time he left it the thing would go out, so he had to relight it, causing clouds of smoke to form above him.

The squadron O.C and I got a radio each and did a quick roadie's sound check-"One two, one two"-to each other and moved off toward the inner cordon. All the radios were secure comms, so no one else could listen on our net.

We must have been stopped and checked three times at different points along the route. Once there we wanted to get as close as possible to the target. The O.C wanted to start thinking about the deliberate options, how he was going to get his teams on target and what he wanted to happen when they were there. On these phases we had the advantage over the terrorists.

Bob was looking for the best places to put his snipers.

They needed to be as far away as possible for concealment but close enough to play the kind of detail that was going to be required.

For my part, I was looking for the best Way to get the team in and control the target thirty minutes after they arrived, which was the 3 i/c's job.

We got to the control point, a group of gray police Portakabins, each with a black-and-white checked line around it. It had been raining, and our shoes were muddy. I tried to sc.r.a.pe most of it off as we entered.

The Portakabin was pretty spartan inside and freezing cold, despite an electric two-bar fire-no taxpayers' money used extravagantly here. The place smelled of coffee, cigarettes, and the stink of burned dust when an electric fire is first turned on. The windows were steamed up; people were wiping them so they could see out.

Every time somebody moved Portakabin rocked backward and forward; it hadn't been stabilized yet.

Inside were the negotiators and the world's supply of policemen.

The areas were pointed out to us on a sketch map, and then our escort turned up to take us as far as the nearest police sniper.

The boy was well and truly p.i.s.sed off. It was cold and wet, and he was lying in the mud with only a roll mat for insulation.

"I've been waiting to be stood down for the last hour," he said.

"What have you seen?"

"Not a thing. When we arrived, all the curtains were closed, and there's been no movement anywhere."

I said, "If the curtains are the same as the ones in the main house, we won't be able to see much tonight either."

We stayed for about an hour, moving around the building as much as we could. I peered through my binos, having a good look at the target.

It was a large, square Georgian building, with very clean-cut lines, much like the main mansion house itself. At the front were large double doors and windows on either side on the ground floor.

Above that there were three windows on each of the next two stories.

The roof was flat, with a little two-foot wall around the edge, but I could see two large skylights. It had a gravel driveway coming up to it, which opened up either side; around the back were outhouses and garages.

A quick word with Steve-and the slime, and I would be ready. I walked back in the mud, wishing that I had brought my wellies with me.

Standing near where the snipers would soon be positioned with a good view of the building, I did a quick appreciation of how I was going to implement the I.A.

We would have to travel up to the target by vehicles because of the distance from the holding area. Once we got there, did we then move on foot to get on to the target? No; there was too much open s.p.a.ce between the cover and the target. There were some woods and little hedgerows dotted around in this vast park area, but the nearest lot of cover was a row of buildings down at the bottom of the driveway.

A run up from there would take too long, expose everybody, and possibly compromise the whole operation. So it would have to be one of two things: all in by helicopter or all in by vehicle, or a combination of the two.

We had two 109s, which could take a maximum of six blokes each, which meant they couldn't get everybody on target. I wanted to hit as many parts of the building as I could at the same time so there was no time for the people inside to react, so-it was going to have to be a combination of vehicles and helicopters, depending on the latest information at the time.

The first wagons were now arriving after their Formula One race up the Me. As everybody came in, he was told where the holding area was and where he was to lay out his equipment. Soon there was a long row of blankets in a straight line; on top of all of them was all the equipment out of all the vehicles. The blokes unwrapped the MP5SDs and Welrods from their weapon bags, together with axes, crowbars, hammers, shields, half shields, full body shields, ladder sections. The only wagon that was not emptied out was the M.O.E wagon, which was full of explosives and bits of wood and polystyrene for making up charges.

They knew where they were going to sleep-the holding area. All they wanted to know now was where the bogs were and where they could get a brew.

With the arrival of the team the briefing area got busier. There seemed to be wires, radios and telephones being tested everywhere. I was sitting over the marker board, putting call signs to vehicles and telling blokes where those vehicles were going and what would happen once they got there. The more I wrote down before I gave the formal set of orders, the easier it was for me, because then everybody already had an idea of what he needed to do.

As I was writing it down, people were coming in and leaning over my shoulder: "How many vehicles needed?"

"I need two Range Rovers and two fast ropes."

Bob took his first - two snipers on the ground and showed them their positions; they would start to send information as soon as they were on the ground. In contrast with the police, our snipers had some really good kit. Not just overalls and a roll mat for us; we had camoutage DPM coveralls made of Gore-Tex; inside was a complete body duvet, which was unbelievably comfortable. They only had to wear their tracksuits underneath and could lie out in the mess all day if they had to. The only slight drawback was that the clothing was bulky; from behind, they looked like two Michelin men walking down the path. But they would be grateful for the warmth; the weather was still dull and overcast, a freezing, stinking winter day that found its way into any little gaps in your clothing.

Now I'd had my chat with Steve and the slime I was ready to fill the board in and get changed myself.

The team now knew what time orders were and what those orders were likely to consist of, plus what vehicles they had to prepare.

As well as this, the M.O.E team were looking at the information that had been given by the police. They checked, too, with the scaleys, having a quick look at what measurements and plans they had. Then they started making charges to defeat the windows, which were plastic-framed and double-glazed.

The whole place was sparked up now, with everybody involved in his own little world. The team were sorting the equipment out, coming in and out, still in their jeans.

The scaleys were sitting over their equipment, chatting away.

They, too, were in jeans and rough wear.

On ops the a.s.sault teams wore three layers of clothing: flame-r.e.t.a.r.dant underwear, very much like racing drivers wear; an NBC (nuclear, biological, and chemical) suit to protect us from the gas we would use; then flame-r.e.t.a.r.dant black coveralls. After that the bootshigh-leg cross trainers, which were also great for free fall. I put my belt kit on; this al ' so carried my Sig 9MM pistol, which strapped on halfway down my right thigh.

I just had to lower my arm and the pistol grip would meet my hand.

On my left leg I had my mags for the MP5 and Sig, again halfway down my thigh.

I had an instant sweat on; to make it hotter, on came the body armor. By now I, too, looked like the Michelin man. To top it all, there was the ops waistcoat; this carried my radio with its earpiece and throat mike-some blokes used a mike that went into their respirator, but I didn't like it-explosives, first field dressings, a knife, an ax, flashbangs, plus anything else that was task specific.

I carried a Heckler & Koch MP5, the high-powered 9MM semiautomatic and automatic weapon. The reason it had become the basic a.s.saulter's weapon was that it had a closed breech, which meant we could have a round up in the breech ready to fire, with the working parts forward-much like a self-loading rifle or an Armalite.

Most small machine guns work on the blowback principle, where the working parts come forward to initiate a round, and the gases then push back the working parts, which stay to the rear unless you pull the trigger again. The Heckler & Kochs are more reliable and have an excellent rate of fire. And they're British, of all things, Heckler and Koch being part of British Aeros.p.a.ce.

Another good feature of the MP5 is its three-round burst capability, so every time you squeeze the trigger, it just fires three rounds. Release the trigger, squeeze it again, it'll just fire three rounds. It's the first three to five rounds that are most effective on any automatic weapon.

The streamlight torch attached was zeroed to the weapon so we could use the beam for aiming as well as simply penetrating darkness or smoke. I used mine even in daylight because it was such a good aiming aid. There are little nuts and bolts to enable you to move the torch around; you zero it so you know that when the torchlight is on the target at so many meters, the rounds are going to go so high or so low from it. In a dark room Maglites also have a good blinding effect on the people you're attacking.

I had two magazines attached to the weapon: one that was in the weapon and then a bracket with another magazine just to the side of it, so I didn't have to go to my main belt kit in a rush. The weapon was slung over the body on a chest sling so I could climb buildings, jump in and out of vehicles, and do all the business that I wanted, without having to worry about it. It was one of the few times that the Regiment did actually sling weapons.

At the last moment I would put on my kid leather gloves and respirator; by then I would just be a big sweaty mess with a chest and shoulders like Arnie in a Terminator film. If I was really lucky, I could also find myself carrying the "Barclaycard," a sawn-off pump-action shotgun with the b.u.t.t taken off; it's used to take doors down by firing a "Hatton round," which takes the hinges out without damaging the people in the room. It got its name from the advert-"A Barclaycard gets you anywhere." In the beginning it came with its own holster, but that proved to be too c.u.mbersome; most of the teams just put a bungee on it and had it hanging down at their sides.

By the time of my orders group the briefing room was furnished with fold-up canvas army chairs from the wagons. Some blokes were sitting down; some were standing. People were coming in and out; I could hear all the people on the radios in the background.

They gathered around the board as I gave my I.A orders, white paper cup in one hand and a soggy roll in the other. Before us were plans of the building from all elevations, plus air photos and floor plans.

This was one occasion when there was no time for anyone to voice an opinion. There was no Chinese parliament.

I said, "These are orders for the I.A that is in place directly after these orders.

"Ground. The building has three floors. At the front there are the main double doors; these are plate gla.s.s with a plastic frame. The doors have been covered over with tablecloths so we can't see in. On each side there is a window, then a window above that per floor; these are all double-glazed with plastic frames. All the windows in the whole building have their curtains closed. From the main door there is a central staircase that has two flights per floor. On the roof there are skylights that open up into the main corridor on the top floor.

After these orders look at the plans and familiarize yourself with the rest of the outside; the front is all we are concerned with at the moment.

"Situation. Six hours ago members of Islamic jihad took over the building that was the venue for a conference sponsored by the Jewish trade commission. They are demanding the release of five of their group being held in Parkhurst prison for the attempted bombing of the Israeli Emba.s.sy. It seems that there are up to six X rays and approximately twenty-seven Yankees.

"There are no pictures yet, or information, on anyone, except that one of the X rays, X ray One, is a woman. From her voice she appears to be in her mid-twenties with a strong northern Palestine accent. Her English/American is good. All indications show that the group have split the Yankees and spread them around the building. No weapons have been seen, but it is a reasonable a.s.sumption that they have automatic weapons.

"Deadlines. Negotiations have been taking place since ten hundred hours. The first deadline is in forty-five minutes' time, at sixteen hundred hours. They want to talk with one of their group who is in Parkhurst."

I then gave the mission statement, which is always said twice: "Mission.

To rescue the hostages, to rescue the hostages.

"Execution. a.s.sault group. Red One and One Alpha, you are to fast-rope onto the roof and make an explosive entry through the skylight. Your L.O.E [limit of exploitation] is the top floor. I want a link man on the first landing to RP with Two and Two Alpha. Steve, which way are you both going to approach from?"

"From the northwest along the tree line, then low over the park."

"Okay, it will take twenty seconds for the wagons to be on target.

If you give thirty seconds to target, that will keep us together.

"Two and Two Alpha, you are to make an explosive entry into the two middle-floor windows. Two, take the left window on call sign Tango One [Range Rover]. Two Alpha on the right on call sign Tango Two-your L.O.E is the middle floor. I want link men to RP with One Alpha and to move down to the first landing and RP with Three and Three Alpha.

"Three-that's me-and Three Alpha are to make an explosive entry into the front double doors. Three will go left on call sign Tango One, and Three Alpha will take the right on call sign Tango Two. Your L.O.E is the ground floor. I want a link man to RP with Two.

"Sniper group. Sierra One and Two, you are to cover the call signs as they move in from the inner cordon.

"Sierra Three and Four, you are to move forward from the inner cordon on the standby and cover both sides and rear with G threes.

"Hostage reception. The reception area will be in the area of the main doors. Once entry has been effected you are to move forward.

"A.T.O [ammunition technical officer] and medic. You will be called forward on request. Call Sign Three will RP with you at the main entrance.

"Tango One and Tango Two. I want you to drive head-on from the start line here," I said, pointing at the map. "Once you come around the corner you will come head-on to the building. The distance is approximately one hundred fifty meters. Once on target you will cover the teams in, become casualty replacement if called; if not, become part of hostage reception. If we get a stand down from the deadline, I'll bring you forward so you can see the run-in. Any questions?"

There weren't.