"They weren't there to top off their suntans."

At last there was a round of laughter. I could see Simmonds liked that, as if he'd practiced his one-liners so the timing was just right. Despite that, I was warming to the man.

It wasn't that often you got people making jokes at a briefing as important as this one.

The slide changed again to a street map of Gibraltar. I was listening to Simmonds but at the same time thinking of my infantry posting there in the 1970s. I'd had a whale of a time.

"Gibraltar is a soft target," Simmonds said.

"There are several potential locations for a bomb, such as the Governor's residence or the law courts, but our threat assessment is that the most likely target will be the garrison regiment, the Royal Anglians. Every Tuesday morning the band of the First Battalion parades for the changing of the guard ceremony. We think the most likely site for a bomb is a square that the band marches into after the parade. A bomb could easily be concealed in a car there."

He might have added that from a bomber's point of view it would be a near-perfect location. Because of the confined area, the blast would be tamped and therefore more effective.

"Following this assessment we stopped the ceremony on December 11. The local media reported that the Governor's guardhouse needed urgent redecoration" slight smile "In fact, we needed time while we gathered more intelligence to stop it needing rebuilding."

Not as good as his last one, but there were still a few subdued laughs.

"The local police were then reinforced by plainclothes officers from the UK, and their surveillance paid off. When the ceremony resumed on February 23, a woman, ostensibly taking a vacation on the Costa del Sol, made a trip to the Rock and photographed the parade. She was covertly checked and was found to be traveling on a stolen Irish passport.

"The following week she was there again, only this time she tagged along behind the bandsmen as they marched to the square. Even my shortsighted mother-in-law could have worked out that she was doing recon for the arrival of an Active Service Unit."

There was loud laughter. He'd done it again. I wasn't too sure if we were all laughing at his jokes or at the fact that he kept on telling them. Who the fuck was this man? This should have been one of the most serious briefings ever. Either he just didn't give a fuck or he was so powerful no one was going to say a word against him. Whatever, I could already tell his presence in Gibraltar would be a real bonus.

Simmonds stopped smiling.

"Our intelligence tells us that the bombing is to take place sometime this week. However, there is no sign that either McCann or Savage is getting ready to leave Belfast." He wasn't wrong. I had seen both of them, stinking drunk, outside a bar on the Falls Road just the night before. They didn't look that ready to me. It should take them quite a while to prepare for this one or maybe this was part of the preparation, having their last night out before work started.

"This is where we have a few problems," he went on. He was working now without his notes. Did that mean no more one-liners? Certainly, there was more of an edge to his voice.

"What are we to do with these people? If we try to move in on them too early, that would only leave other PIRA teams free to go ahead with the bombing. In any case, if the ASU travels through Malaga airport and remains on Spanish territory until the last minute, there is no guarantee that the Spanish courts will hand them over, not only because of the dispute with the UK on the question of whom Gibraltar belongs to but because the case against them could only be based on conspiracy, which is pretty flimsy.

"So, gentlemen, we must arrest them in Gibraltar." The screen went blank; there was only the light from the lectern shining on his face.

"And this throws up three options. The first is to arrest them as they cross the border from Spain.

Easier said than done; there's no guarantee we'll know what kind of vehicle they're in. There would be only about ten to fifteen seconds in which to make a positive identification and effect an arrest not an easy thing to do, especially if they are sitting in a car and probably armed.

"The second option is to arrest the team members once they're in the area of the square, but again this depends on advance warning and positive identification, and their all being together with the device. At the present time, therefore, we are going for the third option, and that's why we are all here."

He took a sip of his tea and asked for the lights to come back on.

He looked around for each group as he talked.

"The Security Service will place surveillance teams to trigger the PIRA team into Gibraltar. The two soldiers who have just arrived from Northern Ireland" Euan caught my eye that was him and me "must give positive IDs on the terrorists before the civil authorities will hand over the operation to the military. You two will not, repeat, not, conduct any arrest or contact action. You understand the reasons why?

The four men from your counterterrorist team will make a hard arrest only after they have planted the device.

"Once arrested," Simmonds went on, "they are to be handed over to the civil authorities. Of course, the normal protection will be given to the team from any court appearance."

He managed a smile.

"I think that's enough, gentlemen."

He looked at the commanding officer.

"Francis, I understand we fly to R.A.F Lyneham in ten minutes to link up with the Hercules?"

Just over three hours later I was sitting in a C-130 with Euan, who was busy worrying about a black mark on his new sneakers. Kev was checking the weapon bundles and ammunition and, more important as far as I was concerned, the medical packs. If I got dropped, I wanted fluid put into me as soon as possible.

We landed at about 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 3.

Gibraltar was still awake; lights were on everywhere. We moved off to the military area, where trucks were waiting with our advance party to get us away quickly and without fuss.

Our FOB--Field Operations Base--was in HMS Rooke, the Royal Navy shore base. We had requisitioned half a dozen rooms in the accommodation block and turned them into living space, with our own cooking area and ops room. Wires trailed everywhere, telephones were ringing, signalers ran around in track suits or jeans, testing radios and satellite communications links.

Over the din Simmonds said, "Intelligence suggests there could be a third member of the team, probably its commander.

Her name is Mairead Farrell. We'll have pictures within the hour, but here's some background for you. She's a particularly nasty piece of work: middle class, thirty-one, ex-convent schoolgirl."

He grinned, then told us more about her. She'd served ten years in prison for planting a bomb in the Conway Hotel, Belfast, in 1976, but as soon as she was released she reported straight back to PIRA for duty. There was a slight smile on his face as he explained that her lover, unbelievably named Brendan Burns, had blown himself up recently.

The meeting broke up, and a signaler came over and started handing out street maps.

"They've already been spotted up by Intelligence," he said.

As we started to look at their handiwork he went on.

"The main routes from the border to the square are marked in detail, the rest of the town fairly well, and of the outlying areas, just major points."

I looked at it. Fucking hell! There were about a hundred coordinates to learn before the ASU came over the border.

I didn't know what was tougher--the PIRA team or the homework.

"Any questions, lads?"

Kev said, "Yeah, three. Where do we sleep, where's the toilet, and has somebody got some coffee on?"

In the morning, we picked up our weapons and ammunition and went onto the range. The four on the counterterrorism team had their own pistols. The ones Euan and I had were borrowed--our own were still in Derry. Not that it mattered much; people think that blokes in the SAS are very particular about their weapons, but we aren't. So long as you know that when you pull the trigger it will fire the first time and the rounds will hit the target you're aiming at, you're happy.

Once at the range, people did their own thing. The other four just wanted to know that their mags were working OK and that the pistols had no defects after being bundled up. We wanted to do the same, but also to find out the behavior of our new weapons at different ranges. After firing off all the mags in quick succession to make sure everything worked, we then fired at five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five yards. Good, slow, aimed shots, always aiming at the same point and checking where the rounds fell at each range. That way we knew where to aim at fifteen yards, for example, and that was at the top of the target's torso. Because of the distance, quite a lot for a pistol, the rounds would fall lower into the bottom of his chest and take him down. Every weapon is different, so it took an hour to be confident.

Once finished we didn't strip the weapons to clean them.

Why do that when we knew they worked perfectly? We just got a brush into the area that feeds the round into the barrel and got the carbon off.

Next job was getting on the ground to learn the spots system, at the same time checking our radios and finding out if there were any dead areas. We were still running around doing that when, at 2 p.m." Alpha came up on the net.

"Hello, all stations, return to this location immediately."

Simmonds was already in the briefing area when we arrived, looking like a man under pressure. Like the rest of us, he'd probably had very little sleep. There was two days' growth on his chin, and he was having a bad hair day. Something was definitely going on; there was a lot more noise and bustle from the machines and men in the background. He had about twenty bits of paper in his hand. The intelligence boys were giving him more as he talked, and they distributed copies of the rules of engagement to us. The operation, I saw, was now called Flavius.

"Just about an hour and a half ago," he said, "Savage and McCann passed through Immigration at Malaga airport.

They were on a flight from Paris. Farrell met them. We have no idea how she got there. The team is complete. There is just one little problem--the Spanish lost them as they got into a taxi. Triggers are now being placed on the border crossing as a precaution. I have no reason to believe that the attack will not take place as planned."

He paused and looked at each of us in turn.

"I've just become aware of two very critical pieces of information. First, the players will not be using a blocking car to reserve a parking space in the target area. A blocking car would mean making two trips across the border, and the intelligence is that they're not prepared to take the risk. The PIRA vehicle, when it arrives, should therefore be perceived as the real thing.

"Second, the detonation of the bomb will be by a handheld remote control initiation device: they want to be sure that the bomb goes off at exactly the right moment. Remember, gentlemen, any one of the team, or all of them, could be in possession of that device. That bomb must not detonate.

There could be hundreds of lives at risk."

I was awoken by the noise of engines in reverse and wheels on the tarmac. It was just after 6 a.m. I had been asleep for three hours. It was still dark; the rain had eased quite a bit. I leaned over to the back.

"Kelly, Kelly, time to wake up." As I shook her there was a gentle moan. She sat up, rubbing her eyes.

With the cuff of my coat I started to tidy her up. I didn't want her walking into the airport looking wrecked. I wanted us as spruce and happy as Donny and Marie Osmond on Prozac.

We got out of the car with the bag and I locked up, after checking inside to make sure that there wasn't anything attractive to see. The last thing I needed now was a parking lot attendant taking an interest in my lock-picking kit. We walked over to the bus stop and waited for the shuttle to take us to departures.

The terminal looked just like any airport at that time of the morning. The check-in desks were already quite busy with business fliers. A handful of people, mostly student types, looked as though they were waiting for flights that they'd gotten there much too early for. Cleaners with floor waxers trudged across the tiled floors like zombies.

I picked up a free airport magazine from the rack at the top of the escalator. Looking at the flight guide, I saw that the first possible departure to the UK. was at just after five o'clock in the afternoon. It was going to be a long wait.

I looked at Kelly; we both could do with a decent wash. We went down the escalator to the international arrivals area on the lower level. I put some money in a machine and got a couple of travel kits to supplement our washing kit and went into one of the handicap-accessible toilets.

I shaved as Kelly washed her face. I scraped the dirt off her boots with toilet paper and generally cleaned her up, combed her hair, and put it in an elastic band at the back so it didn't look so greasy. After half an hour we were looking fairly respectable The scabs on my face were healing. No Prozac, but we'd pass muster.

I picked up the bag.

"You ready?"

"Are we going to England now?"

"Just one thing left to do. Follow me." I pulled at the stubby ponytail that made her look like a four-foot-tall cheerleader.

She acted annoyed, but I could tell she liked the attention.

We went back up the escalator and walked around the edge of the terminal. I pretended to be studying the aircraft out on the tarmac. In fact, there were two quite different things I was looking for.

"I need to mail something," I said, spotting the FedEx box.

I used the credit card details on the car rental agreement to fill out the mailing label. Fuck it--Big Al could pay for a few things now that he was rich.

Kelly was watching every movement.

"Who are you writing?"

"I'm sending something to England in case we are stopped." I showed her the floppy disk and backup disk.

"Who are you sending it to?" She got more like her dad every day.

"Don't be so nosy."

I put them in the envelope, sealed it, and entered the delivery details. In the past we'd used the FedEx system to send the Firm photos from abroad that we'd taken of a target and developed in a hotel room, or other highly sensitive material.

It saved getting caught with them in our possession. Nowadays, however, the system was obsolete; with digital cameras you can take pictures, plug in your cellular mobile, dial up the UK, and transmit.

We continued walking around the edge of the terminal. I found the power outlet I was looking for at the end of a row of black plastic seats where two students were snoring. I pointed to the last two spaces.

"Let's sit down here. I want to look at the laptop."

I got it plugged in. Kelly decided she wanted something to eat.

"Give me five minutes," I said.

From what I'd read earlier, I understood Gibraltar was a setup, but it still didn't explain what Kev had to do with it. It soon became clearer.

In the late 1980s the Bush administration had been under pressure from Thatcher to do something about Noraid fundraising for PIRA. With so many millions of Irish American votes on the line, however, it was a tricky call. A deal was struck: if the Brits could expose the fact that Noraid money was being used to buy drugs, it would help discredit PIRA in the USA and Bush could then take action. After all, who would complain about a US administration fighting the spread of dangerous narcotics?

When the British intelligence service started to gather data about PIRA's drug connections with Gibraltar, it seemed to present a window of opportunity. After the events of March 6, however, the window was slammed shut. Those votes were too important.

By the early 1990s the US had a new administration and the UK a new prime minister. In Northern Ireland, the peace process began. The US was told and the message was delivered at the highest level that unless it put pressure on PIRA to come to the peace table, the UK would ex pose what was happening to Noraid funds raised in America.

The failure to fight the drug war in its own backyard, by a power that preached so readily to others, would be a serious embarrassment.

Another deal was sorted out. Clinton allowed Gerry Adams into the USA in 1995, a move that was not only good for the Irish American vote but which made Clinton look like the prince of peacemakers. He also appeared to be snubbing John Major's stand against PIRA, but the British didn't mind; they knew the agenda. Behind closed doors, Gerry Adams was told that if PIRA didn't let the peace process happen, the US would come down on them like a ton of steaming shit.

A cease fire was indeed declared. It seemed that the years of covert talks that had gone nowhere were finally at an end; it was now time to talk for real. Clinton and the British government would be seen as peace brokers, and PIRA would have a say in the way the deal was shaped.

On February 12, 1996, however, a massive bomb exploded at London's newest business center, Canary Wharf, killing two and causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.

The cease fire was broken. It was back to business as usual.

But it didn't end there. Kev had also discovered that PIRA had been trying to blackmail certain Gibraltarian officials, with some success. It seemed Gibraltar was still the key to Europe. Spain was far too much of a risk. They had also targeted some important personalities in the US so they could continue to operate their drug business with impunity. One of the victims was high up in the DEA. Kev's problem was, he didn't know who.

I did; I had the photograph of his boss.

And now I knew why McGear, Fernahan, and Macauley had been in Gibraltar. Whoever the official was, they'd been there to give him a final warning and to try to blackmail him with the shipment documents and photographs to get the routes open again.

I had to get back to the UK. I had to see Simmonds.

At ten o'clock we went back down the escalator to international arrivals. I needed passports--British or American, I didn't care. I scanned the international flights on the monitor.

Chances were we were going to end up with American documents rather than British, purely because of the number of families streaming back from spring vacation.

Just like before, there were people on both sides of the railings, waiting with their cameras and flowers. Kelly and I sat on the PVC seats near the domestic carousels on the other side of the international gates. I had my arm around her as if I were cuddling her and chatting away. In fact, I was talking her through some of the finer points of theft.