Latent Hazard

by Piers Venmore-Rowland

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ said Jeremy, who had materialised from nowhere and was standing next to Rafi. ‘Gives the impression to the other terrorists that they were successful, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Good work,’ said the Air Chief Marshal.

  The SAS command centre came online. ‘Some plans and a spare timer for a detonator were found in Kaleem Shah’s vehicle. The plans mark two buildings that were to be attacked. Both contained low-level radioactive materials; nothing really nasty, but sufficient to close the plant if released. Odd though, the timer had been tampered with. Whatever the setting, it would have gone off after about five seconds. The blue team leader saw the explosives; they weren’t packed into vests but rucksacks, just like at Bishopsgate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Colonel Gray.

  The commissioner was thoughtful. ‘Well, that explains why the bomber at Bishopsgate got caught in the blast. He thought that he’d far more time to get away. A five-second stroll from the bomb’s location to where his body was found fits in with the time delay on the fuse – so he wasn’t a suicide bomber, just a servant set up by his masters!’

  ‘Interesting,’ mused Ewan. ‘Ergo, the bombers at Aldermaston were expecting to escape!’ he went quiet for a moment – deep in thought. ‘I wonder if this attack has anything to do with the Iranians and the UK’s escalation of its Trident nuclear weapons programme – supporting Iran’s cause would have given them a safe place to hide after the attacks . . .’

  ‘Oh bloody hell!’ The Air Chief Marshal looked concerned. ‘Don’t go there! Ewan, let’s just pray that there isn’t a link between the terrorist leaders and the Iranians.’

  Ewan shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sorry, just trying to put two and two together.’

  He turned to the brigadier beside him. ‘Now for phase three; the news and the TV crews are all yours, Harold.’

  Brigadier Sparkman nodded and called a member of the Ministry’s press team, who was sound asleep. ‘I’ve arranged a press conference for you at 7 a.m. near to the Aldermaston explosion. When you’re dressed and have had a cup of coffee, I’ll brief you.’

  ‘What’s happened, sir?’

  ‘Have a strong cup of coffee, get your brain into gear and then we’ll talk,’ said the brigadier.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Colonel Gray, meanwhile, was giving orders to the SAS red and blue team leaders. ‘Arrange for the journalist’s vehicle to be removed and the area cleaned. Can you please confirm the journalist is with the MI5 operatives?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Good. They know what to do with him. Well done. How serious are the injuries your team sustained, blue leader?’

  ‘Relatively minor, sir. Corporal Evans looks a bit like a hedgehog, but he can be patched up! Corporal Winderson suffered concussion when he struck his head in the explosion, but he’s a thick-skulled bugger – give him a few hours and he’ll be right as rain.’

  ‘Thank you blue leader. All fit members of your unit are to join the red team. A helicopter is on its way.’

  Rafi looked at the clock on the wall; everything had happened so quickly. It was only 4.20 a.m., Friday morning.

  The brigadier turned to the Air Chief Marshal. ‘Press briefing arranged, sir. Our boys on the ground have been told to keep the buildings smoking as you ordered, sir.’

  Shortly after the Ops Room had become operational, the PM, the Defence Secretary, the Air Chief Marshal, Colonel Paul Gray and Ewan Thorn had gone into a conclave. It was a meeting each of them would remember for years to come. On the table in front of them was a list showing the sum total of all the special forces, marines, paratroopers and army units with urban warfare experience – plus the crack anti-terrorist personnel – that were available. The country’s defences were stretched to breaking point. The conflicts overseas and tight budgets had left a gaping hole in the numbers available. A decision had to be made. Their terrorist adversaries were highly trained and experienced in the deadly art of urban warfare and concealment; therefore they agreed that quality rather than quantity had to be the order of the day.

  The considered view was that the terrorists wouldn’t make their move in the dead of night. And the command centre didn’t want them to be tipped off by reconnaissance teams being spotted; accordingly, only cursory inspections of the properties and the surrounding areas were done.

  ‘No sign of any of the four terrorists,’ came over the speaker. ‘We will wait until all our special forces, marines and paratrooper teams are in position.’

  ‘I hope to God we’ve got this right,’ the Air Chief Marshal murmured apprehensively under his breath.

  The PM pondered quietly to himself as he listened to the discussion over the allocation of their scarce recourses. He, too, now appreciated just how overstretched they were. Resources were being allocated according to the perceived size of the latent hazard – priority was given to protecting the nuclear installations, leaving the defence of the gas and oil plants bordering on threadbare.

  ‘It’s now time to see whether the terrorists are where we think they should be,’ called out the Air Chief Marshal.

  Rafi felt a wave of apprehension flow through him. If he was wrong about the properties and they drew a blank, it was game over. The butterflies in his stomach turned into a dull ache. He looked at the screens in the Ops Room; they were focused on the nuclear installations. There was an air of twilight in the pictures from the infrared cameras which gave a distant feel as to what was going on.

  The Air Chief Marshal addressed his team. ‘Brigadier Sparkman, as discussed, you’ll coordinate the SAS and the Paras at Hartlepool, Hull and Easington.’

  Then he turned to Colonel Turner and enquired, ‘Is all in place at the Peterhead properties, St Fergus and Cruden Bay?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  His next question was addressed to Colonel Gray. ‘All ready to go at North Walsham, Bacton, Grays and Sizewell?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Ewan, is all in place at Troon, Peterhead and Great Yarmouth docks?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That leaves me with Sellafield, Prestwick and Heysham.’ The Air Chief Marshal spoke via his headphones to his SAS contact, glanced across to the video conferencing screen which linked their Ops Room with the SAS command centre and then at the screen next to it, which showed the paratroopers’ command centre.

  ‘Gentlemen, are we ready to go in five minutes?’ Affirmative replies came in.

  The die is cast, thought Rafi. He touched Kate’s shoulder.

  She was standing in front of him, gazing at the screens. She turned; her face was white with tiredness. ‘This is it,’ she said apprehensively. ‘We’ll soon find out if our hunches were right or if we’ve got it completely wrong!’

  ‘Hunches . . . I hope they’re a lot more than that!’

  ‘Your confidence is most refreshing,’ said Kate. Rafi found his hand next to hers; he gave it an affectionate squeeze. She took half a step backwards and let her body rest against his. She kept hold of his hand as she watched the three screens intently and listened to all that was going on.

  The waiting was nail-biting. There were, Rafi estimated, twenty teams of special forces, paratroopers and anti-terrorist personnel out there in the darkness, stalking their prey. Behind them provisions had been made for their support. The scope of the mobilisation made it one of the largest peacetime operations on record.

  Rafi held his breath.

  Then the five minutes were up.

  ‘Go, go, go,’ came over the speakers. The troops swung into action.

  On the screens Rafi could see the shadowy terrain over which the soldiers were navigating. Greg would have been pleased: his makeshift Ops Room was working well.

  At Heysham, a squad of paratroopers were supporting a team of three SAS soldiers. The building had been under observation for the previous five hours. There was no sign of movement and no telltale infrared heat signatures showing where the terrorist was. It was a tall property, to one s
ide of the industrial estate. It was being refurbished and sections were covered in tarpaulins. At the back of the flat roof there was a new scaffolding tower. The SAS soldiers inched forward, carefully checking for booby traps. Eventually the first SAS soldier reached the bottom of the scaffolding tower. He gave a thumbs up sign and pointed to the top of the tower.

  His signals were relayed back to the command centre, which briefed the Ops Room. It was then that Rafi heard, ‘Infrared shows the target to be lying on the scaffolding boards under the tarpaulins. He’s going to be bloody difficult to get at without giving our presence away.’

  There was a flurry of movement in a number of the small frames on the screens as the units’ progress was fed back to the Ops Room.

  The brigadier called out, ‘Terrorist located at the Hartlepool property. He’s under camouflage netting in the gully of the roof. He has a clear line of sight across to the nuclear power plant. The team on the ground is working out how best to tackle him.’

  Rafi felt his hand being gently squeezed, as if to say, ‘We weren’t wrong!’

  ‘No sign of the terrorists at Cruden Bay, St Fergus or Peterhead,’ shouted Colonel Bill Turner.

  ‘No sign of the missiles or of terrorists at North Walsham, Bacton, Sizewell and Grays,’ added Colonel Gray, abruptly. ‘Wait! A Vektor mortar and twenty shells have just been found on a motorbike parked at the back of the North Walsham property.’

  Colonel Bill Turner spoke. ‘An unattended utility van three kilometres from St Fergus has been investigated and a mortar with twenty shells has been recovered. No sign of the terrorist and nothing to report at Cruden Bay.’

  The Air Chief Marshal called out, ‘They’ve located a mortar and twenty shells in the panniers of a BMW motorbike parked in an old container on the building site at Gosforth, near Sellafield.’

  This was quickly followed by the brigadier. ‘A mortar and twenty shells have been uncovered at the Hull property.’

  Rafi’s pulse was racing. He did a quick calculation: two terrorists and their Kornet missile launchers were still unaccounted for. All four Vektor mortars had been recovered. They were almost there; just two launchers or two terrorists to neutralise. The smile on his face evaporated, as he realised it was too soon to be complacent. Just one missile hitting a nuclear target and it could be game over.

  Rafi listened to the Air Chief Marshal being briefed. The SAS soldiers at Heysham couldn’t get at the terrorist on top of the scaffolding without alerting him to their presence. After a short conference, a decision was taken and a message went back. ‘Take him out. At all costs stop him firing a Kornet missile.’

  The SAS assaulter at Heysham waited unmoving in the darkness. He had advised command that he couldn’t guarantee to immobilise the terrorist with his compact 9 mm sub-machine gun. The SAS snipers behind him also had no clear shot.

  He waited for his orders and then moved forward silently. The scaffolding tower had four main legs. He approached the furthest pair, reached into one of the pockets of his assault vest and pulled out a couple of small packages – the special services own blend of plastic explosive – which were spot on for cutting structural supports. Without a sound, he expertly set the charges, then moved back to the other pair of legs and repeated the process. He heard a person moving above him. His pulse rate stayed steady. The terrorist had no line of sight to him and the SAS soldier knew that he’d been as stealthy as a summer breeze; silently, he backtracked around the corner of the building.

  He gave the signal that he was clear of the detonation zone and waited for the order from command. When it came, he pressed the miniature magneto in his hand and felt the shock waves of the four explosions ripple through his body. Each of the tower’s legs was now missing a section. The tower remained motionless for a moment and then gravity took hold. The scaffolding wall ties had no chance of holding the load. The tower arced outwards from the building and crashed into the ground. The terrorist, who had been under the tarpaulin on the top, spilled out and did a dead cat bounce on the tarmac. Three darkly clothed SAS men descended on him and stripped him of his weaponry. The Kornet missile launcher and three missiles lay on the ground close to him.

  ‘Beware of any remote controlled devices,’ barked the commanding SAS soldier.

  In the Ops Room the capture of the Kornet launcher, its three missiles and the terrorist was greeted with cheers. The terrorist was still alive, but unconscious and looked to be in a bad state.

  Suddenly, on the screen in front of him, to his horror Rafi saw flames erupt near to the Heysham nuclear power plant. There was dense billowing smoke. Then he remembered it was the army at work, giving the impression that a terrorist attack had occurred.

  Kate was still leaning against Rafi. She felt a release of pent-up anxiety. She turned her head and looked into his eyes. ‘Your instincts were bang on. You’re a star.’

  He felt the warmth of her body. ‘More like good teamwork,’ he replied, holding her gaze with a big grin.

  The action at the Hartlepool property distracted them.

  The brigadier received confirmation that the SAS soldiers couldn’t safely capture the terrorist. ‘Has the terrorist got a clear view of the nuclear power station?’ he asked his opposite number in the command centre.

  ‘Yes, sir. Good news is that an SAS sniper has outflanked him and has him in his sights.

  ‘Take him out. Just don’t risk him firing a missile.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  A few moments later, confirmation came over the speaker.

  ‘Terrorist taken out.’

  The brigadier turned to Colonel Gray. ‘Crikey! The sappers have been busy – that was a massive explosion at Hartlepool nuclear power station; I wonder what they’ve found to blow up?’

  Rafi watched the flames darting high into the air, followed by thick smoke engulfing the area around the nuclear power station. He looked across the screens. The army’s pyrotechnic skills were being shown off at Aldermaston, and now at Hartlepool and Heysham. The TV cameras would make a meal of this!

  Daylight would reveal damage to a non-nuclear building at Aldermaston, a smoking zinc factory next to Hartlepool nuclear power station and fire and smoke coming from the abandoned visitor centre on the perimeter of the nuclear compound at Heysham.

  Rafi and Kate were on tenterhooks. Two terrorists with Kornets were still out there. The good news was that at least one of the likely targets wasn’t nuclear – the oil pumping station at Cruden Bay – but where on earth was the other target?

  ‘Nothing to report on and around the three trawlers,’ called out Ewan.

  There was a lull in the proceedings. Time ticked by slowly; the remaining two terrorists were conspicuous by their absence.

  Rafi and Kate hurried back to their office. They looked again through their paperwork, but still couldn’t find any clues as to where the missing location might be.

  Rafi was worried. Had he let the side down and missed something obvious which could have pointed them to the missing target? The very possibility haunted him.

  The Air Chief Marshal took the PM, the Defence Secretary and the head of MI5 to one side. ‘I would like your permission to mobilise the entire military. We’ve passed the point of no return. I should have asked for this hours earlier. Unfortunately, at the time I was preoccupied with coordinating the limited resources we had available. He looked at the PM. ‘Sir, we have to have a cast-iron insurance policy in place should one of these bloody missiles get through to something nuclear. Our ability to deal with a nuclear incident isn’t what it should be. We have two terrorists with Kornet missile launchers on the loose. Who knows if they now suspect that we’re on to them? We must prepare for the worst eventuality: a nuclear disaster.’

  The PM agreed and, on his authority, at 4.45 a.m. all armed services’ leave was rescinded. All personnel, including part-time territorial soldiers, all available medical and support Corps, were called to their barracks and put in a state of readiness. Every hospital
with an Accident & Emergency Department within 100 miles of a nuclear plant was told to be fully staffed up by 6 a.m. The Home Secretary was contacted and advised to catch the first flight back to London. His ETA in Downing Street was 9.30 a.m.

  Every barrack and hospital was told that this was a surprise training exercise, sanctioned by the Prime Minister to test their readiness to respond to a national emergency. The message went out to senior officers that the new Prime Minister wanted to use the exercise as a way of seeing where the problems might be and whether they had the right resources available.

  Those in command were left in no doubt that they should prepare for a sizeable disaster or conflict and that, in order for the training exercise to be effective, secrecy was of paramount importance.

  The Air Chief Marshal turned to Brigadier Sparkman and Colonel Turner who were standing close by. ‘There are contingency plans in place for attacks on nuclear installations. What I want from the two of you is a plan – we’ll call it “Operation Counterpane” – which will deal with a serious nuclear emission, contaminating, say, ten to twenty square miles of a densely populated urban area. On your agenda there need to be provisions on how to get a nuclear leak covered from the air, arrangements for an exclusion zone with a guarded perimeter, decontamination and triage units, medical facilities, an evacuation and rehousing plan, and a system to monitor the identities of all those displaced. Basically, take what is already there and make it work – big time.’

  The Air Chief Marshal was looking perturbed. ‘Probably best if you include Len Thunhurst, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, in your plans. Giles here has brought him up to speed with all our problems and he’s aware of the need for secrecy.’ He paused. ‘The transportation front is what really concerns me. We are a couple of squadrons of transport helicopters short. Without them, logistical support in an urban disaster area will be a nightmare. There’ll be blocked roads and restricted access at a time when speed will be paramount. The number of operational workhorse helicopters in the UK is far below what we’ll need.’