by Shaun Clarke
‘I wouldn’t mind if we could leave these barracks at night,’ Danny Boy said, relaxing on his camp-bed, ‘to go out and pick up a bird in Camden Town. But being stuck here, night after night, is like being in prison.’
‘Or a monastery,’ Bobs-boy said.
‘There speaks the man of God,’ said Alan in his sardonic drawl, ‘from the depths of experience.’
‘An experienced wanker, more like,’ said Ken derisively.
‘Check your own mattress,’ Bobs-boy retorted.
‘My mattress, which was stained, is now soaked night and day,’ the unembarrassed Ken came back without hesitation. ‘I’m overloaded with tip-top sperm.’
‘Have you noticed,’ Alan asked, ‘how the more those bloody instructors drone on, the more you start falling asleep and the more your head fills with horny thoughts?’
‘Boredom breeds lust,’ said Bobs-boy mock gravely.
‘I just want to get back to Princes Gate,’ Baby Face solemnly informed them, ‘and into that Embassy. That’s what we’re here for.’
‘We should be so lucky,’ Inman said, stretched out on the adjacent camp-bed. It’s not going to happen.’
‘I think we will,’ Baby Face insisted. ‘In the next day or two. I’m sure of it.’
‘Let us pray,’ GG said lugubriously.
‘Explosives,’ the Royal Army Ordnance Corps demolition expert informed them at the next lecture, ‘are almost certainly the most vital tools in any assault on a building being held by terrorists. Because that building also contains civilian hostages, the need for a precise knowledge of explosives is paramount. Obvious points of entry to such a building are doors, windows, and skylights, most of which will have to be forced with tools, weapons or, in the case of reinforced windows and skylights, with carefully calibrated quantities of explosive. As you all know by now – or should know by now – there are two types of explosive: low explosives, such as gunpowder, where the detonation is by burning; and high explosives, which the RAOC favours, where the charge is set off by an initiator. One reason we favour high explosives is that contrary to popular belief they’re relatively insensitive – which prevents premature detonation – and resistant to heat and humidity. Among the best in current use are plastic explosives such as PETN, RDX, Semtex, Amatol and TNT. For the particular purposes of the kind of siege in which you are presently involved, we have developed what is known as a frame charge. This is an explosive in strip form that can be used for blowing precision holes through doors and brickwork, though it’s infinitely more useful as an explosive shaped to a window frame for blowing out heavily reinforced windows. With regard to the way in which such a rapid-entry device is used …’
‘Did he say premature detonation or premature ejaculation?’ Alan asked when they were back in their temporary spider. ‘Or am I just going mad?’
‘I’d call it just finding your true self,’ Ken replied.
‘It’s the boredom,’ Phil explained. ‘It’s so bad, we’re hallucinating. When that RAOC prat was droning on up there, I kept fantasizing about that Debbie Harry being up on stage instead. I’ve always fancied her.’
‘Sexy,’ groaned Alan.
‘A good singer,’ Phil agreed.
‘I like her latest single,’ Bobs-boy put in. ‘I think it’s “Call me”. Otherwise, I’m not wild about her.’
‘Well, she makes me detonate prematurely,’ GG informed them. ‘It’s those lips.’
‘The only detonation I’m looking forward to right now,’ Inman said, ‘is the one that’s going to blow in the windows of that bleedin’ Embassy. I want to get in there.’
‘You just want to kill some terrorists,’ said Jock, the Blue Team’s staff-sergeant, who had just that moment entered the barracks to call the men out for more abseil training at Pearl House. ‘Though I doubt if you’d mind if they were hostages, knowing you, Inman.’
‘You wrong me,’ Inman replied.
‘I want to kill some terrorists,’ Baby Face informed them all in his deceptively innocent, schoolboyish manner. ‘I thought that’s why we’re here.’
‘You’re here to do as you’re told,’ said Sergeant Harrison, like Jock having just returned to barracks. He now stood beside his fellow team leader and said: ‘And we’re here to tell you to get off your backs and pack your kit for some abseiling. We move out in ten minutes.’
‘It’s better than nothing,’ Inman said, swinging his legs off his camp-bed. ‘Come on, men, let’s go.’
In fact, if the demolition lectures were as boring as all the others, they did at least offer a slight respite. For the men, though not permitted to practice with real explosives within the confines of the Regent’s Park Barracks, could at least tinker with defused explosive charges and detonators. This gave them something to do, other than listen to the droning voices of the green slime or instructors from the Royal Signals, Royal Engineers, REME, RAMC, RAOC, and even the Hereford and Army School of Languages, whose representative had come to teach them some basic Arabic in case they needed to talk to the terrorists.
‘I need to talk to a terrorist like I need a hole in the head,’ Phil said in the back of the Avis van that was carrying them to Pimlico for another few hours of abseil training. ‘If I hear any bastard talking in Arabic, I’ll make sure it’s his last words.’
‘Most of the hostages speak Arabic,’ Baby Face said in his quiet, solemn way, ‘so that gives you a problem.’
‘Not me, Trooper. I’ve no problem with that at all. My only interest is in saving the British hostages. To hell with the rest of them. So if any bastard speaks Arabic to me, he won’t talk for much longer.’
‘I second that,’ Ken said firmly. ‘Once we get in there, we won’t have time to decide who’s a terrorist and who’s a hostage, so I say they either get down on the floor or they get their wings clipped. You tell them to shut up and lie down or you blow them to Kingdom Come. No two ways about it. If they insist on talking and the chat is in Arabic, I’m taking no chances. A short burst from the MP5 or a double tap; they’ll get one or the other.’
‘There’s women in there as well,’ Baby Face reminded them.
‘Women terrorists?’ Bobs-boy asked.
‘No, hostages. Female hostages. I think all of them work in the Embassy and were there when the terrorists took it over. We can’t shoot women, can we?’
‘Why not?’ Inman asked gruffly. ‘Most married men want to shoot their wives, so we might be doing someone a favour if we stitch a few in the Embassy.’
‘That’s out of order,’ Danny Boy said. ‘Worse than picking on your dog instead of having it out with your neighbours.’
‘How did neighbours and dogs get into this conversation?’ Bobs-boy wanted to know.
‘Never mind,’ Danny Boy said.
In fact, he hated his neighbours. His home was on a grim Humberside council estate with his wife and two children, a boy and a girl, and he had been fighting with his neighbours for the past couple of years about his backyard fence, which they claimed clipped three inches off their own yard. Danny Boy did not give a damn about his fence – he just could not stand the fat bastard, a butcher, who lived next door, so he continued the fight just for sport. While this amused him during his rare visits home, his wife Belinda, who let the kids run wild, was highly embarrassed, having once been best friends with her neighbour, Florence, the fat slob’s wife. In truth, this knowledge only encouraged Danny Boy to keep up the aggro; it was his way of paying his slovenly wife back for letting the kids run wild, encouraged by that other slattern, Florence.
Yes, Danny Boy, who passionately loved his cat, Oscar, hated both his neighbours and had dreams of finding them cowering in the Embassy when finally he crashed in.
Not to stitch them, he thought. No, I wouldn’t go that far. Just a couple of flash-bangs, followed by a dose of CS gas and an undiplomatic reception on the back lawn, face down in the grass and trussed up like chickens. That should teach them a lesson.
‘I’ve g
ot good neighbours,’ said Ken, the Geordie. ‘Where I come from, people are friendly and helpful, and so are the folks next door. We like to share a pint, get in some darts, have a night in the amusement arcade – all husbands and wives, like. It’s a pretty good life.’
This was true enough. The only thing Ken missed when with the SAS was his life back in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where the people – at least those still with a job – believed in working hard and playing hard without being too fancy.
Ken had had a job in a brickworks until he was eighteen, then he had met a girl from Keele, sweet-faced Beryl Williams, and discovered that she was as sweet as she looked, which is why she ended up pregnant, luckily by Ken. Doing the decent thing, he had married her and set up house in Keele, near his new wife’s parents. They were as nice as she was, solid working-class, and had made terrific grandparents when the first child, Audrey, came along and was followed ten months later by Mel. By that time, Ken’s wage from the brickworks was inadequate and he decided, in a spontaneous bid to better himself, to join the Army.
After his initial training, he was posted to the Staffordshire Regiment. Surprised to discover how much he enjoyed being away from home, but bored by life in the infantry, he had decided to try his luck with the SAS, which had already developed a glamorous reputation. Surprised again to get in, he had soon found himself in Oman, which was exactly the kind of exotic location he had joined the Regiment for. Unfortunately, he was only sent there in July 1976, and in September the SAS were pulled out of the country for good. By December that same year, he had found himself in Northern Ireland, which was considerably less exotic, though it certainly taught him a lot about CRW. Now, ironically, here he was again, about to fight a battle on British soil. You just couldn’t credit it.
‘The only good life you’re going to find is right here with the Regiment,’ his good friend and fellow trooper, Alan Pyle, told him. ‘You’d be worthless without it. Working in a brickworks, for God’s sakes. Who wants to know about that?’
‘Oh, I had a good time,’ Ken replied distractedly, thinking about his many good times. ‘It wasn’t that bad, really.’
‘Sounds bloody boring to me, but one man’s meat …’
Alan had his own idea of a good time, which was going to the dogs, spending a few bob in the bookies, having a night out with the boys, or shagging his arse off. Born to decent, middle-class parents, both teachers, in Swiss Cottage, north London, and educated in private schools, including the London School of Economics, Alan had rebelled at seventeen. Having taken to drink and drugs, he dropped out of the LSE and slipped into a dreamy kind of non-existence in a sordid shared flat in Notting Hill Gate. In just such a state, he had attended an army recruiting drive for a laugh. To his amazement, when his mind was straight again, he found that he had been accepted and was in for the full term.
No longer on drugs, though with an abiding fondness for drink, he had relished the singular disciplines of life in the 2nd Battalion, Queen’s Regiment, but often found himself yearning for something more. Desperate to get away when he got a WRAC corporal pregnant during a night of sin after a drink-sodden party, he had been persuaded by a close and similarly compromised friend to apply for the SAS.
Accepted and badged, Alan had been posted straight to Northern Ireland and found, once again to his amazement, that he loved it because it was dangerous. Still single and not desperate to be married, he had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the disciplines of the Regiment, as well as into its unique social world. Since much of that world was centred around the Sports and Social Club in Hereford, he became firm friends not only with his fellow troopers, but with NCOs such as Lance-Corporal Phil McArthur and Corporal George Gerrard, both veterans of Oman and Northern Ireland, both bachelors and both good fun. Though Alan was still basically an educated, middle-class Londoner slightly removed from the other troopers, he felt at ease with men older and more experienced than himself – veterans like Phil and GG. Such men were amused by Alan’s drawled, sardonic comments and treated him kindly. They were also pleased that he genuinely respected them and did not try to put them down.
‘I joined the army to see the world,’ Ken said, ‘and here I am in the back of an Avis van, seeing only the West End.’
‘But you’ll soon be high above it all,’ Alan reminded him, ‘so appreciate what you’ve got.’
‘What I’ve got is a sore arse from sitting on those hard chairs in that freezing lecture hall. I can’t pretend it’s a hoot.’
‘You’ll come to life when you get up on that roof and do some abseiling,’ Inman assured him. ‘We’ll all wake up then.’
‘At least it’s something to do,’ said Baby Face.
He was right, for although the lessons in demolition gave them a reason to use at least their hands, tinkering with explosive charges and detonators, they failed to offer a way of letting off steam or getting rid of excess energy. Abseiling, on the other hand, was as near as they would get to adventurous physical activity while in the holding area of the Regent’s Park Barracks. Originating in Malaya as an SAS Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) used to let a soldier make a quick descent from a helicopter with the aid of a rope and harness, it was being practised rigorously by each man. It provided a means of gaining access to the various balconies of the 80-foot-high Embassy, by lowering themselves down the sides and rear of the building. For this reason, nylon abseiling ropes had secretly been tied to the chimneys of the Embassy during the first day of the siege and were still coiled up there on the roof, ready for the arrival of the SAS abseilers.
At Pearl House, which was almost as high as the Iranian Embassy, the men spent nearly all day on the windswept roof, taking apart and reassembling the abseiling equipment, then lowering themselves as rapidly as possible down the back wall, using a system considered too dangerous by even skilled mountaineers because there are many ways in which it can go wrong.
The abseiling equipment consisted of a strong nylon rope, a harness and a metal device, the descendeur, which was clipped to the harness and through which the rope was then threaded. Manipulation of the descendeur against the rope as the abseiler drops creates a ‘friction break’, enabling the wearer to control his rate of descent: slow, medium or rapid.
Though favoured by the SAS because of its convenience and speed during an assault, abseiling is in fact a highly dangerous activity that has caused many deaths among climbers, novices and veterans alike, even in non-combat situations.
Nevertheless, abseil training remained one of the few activities that allowed the men to let off excess energy when they were stood down yet again and returned from the FHA at the Royal College of Medical Practitioners to the holding area in Regent’s Park Barracks. Besides, abseiling was dangerous and most of the men had joined the SAS partly because they got a kick out of taking risks.
Unfortunately, the abseil training was usually followed either by another ‘Hyde Park’ signal calling them out on stand-by and another frustrating stand-down, or by more hours of mind-numbing lectures about subjects they had already covered time and time again.
This particular day, Day Three of the siege, after the men had repeatedly gone over the edge of the roof of Pearl House and dropped down the side of the building – sometimes all the way to the ground; at other times stopping and entering the building via balcony windows; all the time observed and applauded by admiring police constables and officers – they were driven back to their temporary barracks and allowed to get the only good night’s sleep they would have for a long time.
They were called out of bed first thing in the morning by yet another ‘Hyde Park’ alert.
9
Day Four began with a conversation between Salim and the police on the field telephone, during which the former poured out his frustrations at the lack of progress in negotiations and insisted that because of ‘British deceit’ the British hostages would now be the last to be freed. Again he insisted on speaking once more to the BBC and when again this was ref
used, he said that a hostage would have to die.
The police knew that inside the Embassy, as one terrorist stood guard over the hostages, trying to stay awake, the others, distracted by the sound of drilling as more probes and bugs were inserted in the walls, were prowling restlessly, guns lifted, expecting an attack through wall or ceiling at any time.
On the roof, the members of the SAS’s Red Team were quietly checking that their ropes were still in position. Satisfied, they tiptoed away, clambered onto the adjoining college’s roof, then made their way back down to the FHA, where the mood was increasingly tense.
‘He’s run his string out to the limit,’ Sergeant Inman said, ‘and it’s going to break any minute now.’
‘Then his kite flies away,’ Baby Face said with a faint but deadly smile. ‘We won’t have too long to wait.’
‘Dead right,’ Inman said.
The demands and offers were repeated throughout the day as the police played a cat-and-mouse game with the terrorists. Because they knew that the terrorists would be listening to the news on the radio, they called a press conference at which they avoided the word ‘terrorist’ and referred instead to ‘hostage takers’. Eventually, however, Salim’s threat to kill a hostage compelled them to bring a BBC news desk deputy editor, Tony Crabb, to the Embassy to talk to the terrorist leader.
Speaking from an upstairs window on behalf of the latter, one of the BBC hostages, Sim Harris, asked Crabb why he had not broadcast Salim’s statements. When Crabb blandly replied that there had been a ‘misunderstanding’, Harris replied: ‘You must put out the right statement; otherwise everyone here could be killed.’
Before Crabb could reply, two other hostages, PC Lock and the Syrian journalist, Mustafa Karkouti, appeared at the window to tell Crabb and the police negotiator that Salim was in deadly earnest about his threat to start the killing.
‘All right,’ the negotiator finally said. ‘I’ll personally take down Salim’s statement and make sure it’s correct.’
