Zero Option

by Chris Ryan

  The CO led offhis formal spiel by saying a few words about Norm. He confirmed that the families officer was going to contact the next of kin, and said he would let us know the date of the funeral. More cheerful news was that Pat had come through his operation fine, and that the surgeons were pleased by the way things had gone.

  Then the CO asked me to run through Operation Ostrich, which I did, with the int officer's gofer taking notes on a laptop. As I went along, the ruperts asked quite a few questions, and we took it in turns to answer.

  Their main concern was whether the defenders had seen any of us well enough to pick us out at an identity parade. To that the answer was 'Definitely not.' I reassured the int officer in particular that, with the exception of Khadduri, we hadn't met anyone face to face; in fact, I doubted whether the Libyans had actually got eyes on any of us. The fact that Norm and Pat had been hit was purely a fluke: first somebody must have seen the flashes as Pat put bursts into the camp, and sprayed rounds randomly in his direction; then we'd got caught in the searchlight.

  At the end of the debriefing the CO told us again that we'd done exceptionally well, were a credit to the Regiment, had performed a service to humanity, and sundry crap of that kind. Then he added, 'You'll be glad to hear that Gadaffi's blaming the Israelis - off the record, of course. No public announcement has been made - Khadduri wasn't supposed to be in Libya at all - but in private Gadaffi's claiming that one of his own senior officers has been killed, and saying he has evidence that Mossad carried out the assassination.'

  'Maybe somebody dropped something after all,' I said, giving Whinger an exaggerated look.

  'What's that?' The CO turned his long, narrow face in my direction, so that I got his sticking-out ears in profile against the light.

  'It was just a joke we had. Before the operation went down, Whinger suggested we should scatter a few Uzis around - or anything with “Israel” written on it - to lay a false scent.'

  'But you didn't, I hope?'

  'Of course not. As far as I know we didn't leave anything.behind except a few shreds of anonymous metal and . . . and Whatever remained of poor old Norm.'

  'What about the body?' asked the CO.

  I gestured at Tony.

  'I doubled him up on the ground with five pounds of Semtex in his midriff,' he said. 'There can't have been anything left.'

  Nobody spoke for a moment. Then the CO cleared his throat and said, 'OK. That was the right thing to do.'

  Again there was a moment's silence. Then the CO adroitly changed the subject. 'You'll be glad to hear you have a fan at Number Ten. I found this fax waiting for me when I came in.'

  He handed me a sheet of paper, which had 'FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER' embossed at the top, and, in the middle, the brief message:

  Delighted with your ornithological success.

  Congratulations, and my personal thanks.

  'Where's the champagne, then?' I demanded as I handed the note on to Tony. 'I thought the bugger would have sent a few bottles in this direction by now.'

  'We'll have a drink in the mess tonight,' said the CO.

  'Make up for lost time then.'

  The atmosphere was so good that I was tempted to press straight on to the subject of my own predicament.

  With everyone in such a genial mood this seemed the ideal moment to broach the idea of Plan Zulu. But then I thought, No - not in front of this crowd. I'd rather get the CO on his own. So, as the meeting broke up, I said to him, 'Could I grab five minutes with you, Boss?'

  'Sure.' He took a quick look at his watch. 'Ten o'clock?'

  'Fine.'

  I was outside his office a couple of minutes early, bolstered by the knowledge that, for the moment at any rate, the sun seemed to be shining out of my arse. I wasn't naive enough to suppose that our success on Ostrich would warp the Boss's judgement or make him any more inclined to take rash decisions, but the fact that I'd just done a good job would at least encourage him to give me a fair hearing. Apart from anything else, he had two boys of his own, and could hopefully understand how I felt about Tim. Also he had a good sense of humour, and a reputation for taking the occasional risk when he thought it was justified.

  Inside, I perched on one of the bog-standard chairs and looked around the room while he closed down his laptop. His bergen sat in one corner, and in another, cuffed up on a dark-blue bean-bag, lay his black Labrador, Ben, fast asleep as usual. No doubt he'd been on the ten-mile run as well, and that was him settled for the day.

  'God's boots!' the Boss exclaimed when I outlined my plar. With his elbows on the desk, he put his face between his hands and dug in his thumbs above his ears, as if to squeeze out the craziness of what he'd just heard. 'Pull the other one, Geordie.'

  'No, no. I'm dead serious. We're up to our necks in shit, and sinking. We desperately need a new initiative - and I'm convinced Plan Zulu's the one. As I told Fraser - the SB guy - there'd be virtually no risk to anyone. OK, a couple of vehicles would get damaged and the guys in the meat wagon might get rattled around a bit, but that would be all.'

  'What about our reputation? Can't you just see it in the tabloids? “SHOCK! TERROR! SAS SINKS TO GANG WARFARE TO FtLEE IP,A CHIEF”. You'd drop the whole

  Regiment in the shit, Geordie.'

  'Not if we handled it properly. Nothing need ever get out. It'll be just one more covert operation on the mainland'. There's dozens of others going on already, after all. Covert ops are bread and butter to Special Branch, just as they are to us.'

  'That's true.' At last the CO looked up, as if seeing some light at the end of a tunnel. 'I have to say, I wouldn't mind if you gave it a go. But how the hell am I going to convince the powers that be? There's the Director, for a start. I can't see him sanctioning your scheme. He'll go bananas. Then there's the Home Office and the Home Secretary, if we want the police to be involved at high level. And what about the governor of the gaol? He'll throw a major wobbly a well.'

  'I don't know,' I said. 'He might be glad to get rid of the bastard. Now that the PIRA know where Farrell is there's a chance that they'll stage a hit on the gaol. The buggers are that mad, you can't tell what they might try.'

  'The thing is, they've already got you as a lever.' The CO looked at me steadily before continuing with his list of objections: 'Ultimately, of course, there's the Prime Minister.'

  Suddenly I spotted an opening. 'In that case, why not go straight to him?' I suggested. 'It's no business of mine, but we do know he's an old friend of the tLegiment. It's not just that we did him a good turn in Libya. He's been on-side for years.' I pointed at a signed, framed photograph hanging on the wall, one of many official portraits presented by Very Important Visitors, among them Prince Charles and Princess Di.

  'Remember the time he came down to the Killing House?'

  'Of course.' The CO smiled, thinking about the day we'd given the PM and a couple of senior parliamentary colleagues a demonstration of lifting a hostage from a room in the special building used for training the counter-terrorist team. The -,vails were hung with sheets of thick rubber so that live rounds could be fired inside. As bullets had hammered close past the visitors in the confined space one of the sidekicks had hurled himself to the deck and pissed himself; but the PM had remained super-cool, and came away mightily impressed.

  'If he OK'd it, that would be all we'd need,' I said.

  'What about that fax you've just had, after all?'

  I sensed that the CO had become rather taken with my idea, so I continued enthusiastically: 'Word would pass down the chain, and everyone else would have to come on board. With Ostrich having gone down so well he might fancy another unattributable operation.'

  'Unattributable!' echoed the CO. 'I should think it bloody well would be. The least attributable operation ever mounted by the Regiment!'

  To give himselfa moment to think, he started talking about the lack of time. 'According to their last deadline, we've only got until midday on Tuesday,' he said. 'It's Thursday already.
Not much room for manoeuvre.'

  'Enough,' I said, 'if you can handle the bureaucracy, I guarantee I can manage the logistics.'

  I sat back, feeling slightly out of breath, amazed that I was talking to the colonel as if I were of equal rank, planning an operation equally between the two of us.

  The truth was, we were both caught up in the excite ment of the idea.

  'Well,' he prevaricated. 'What does Special Branch think of it?'

  'The Commander thinks I'm crazy. He doesn't realise how easy it would be, but all the same he's coming round to a position supporting me.'

  'Does he reckon the regular police would cooperate?'

  'I haven't asked him. I expect the answer's no, but as I said it would be a different matter if word came down from the top.'

  'The plan's utterly outrageous, of course. I don't think we've a hope in hell of getting it sanctioned.' The CO looked at his watch. 'I'll play fair with you, though.

  I'll run the idea through the system. It's now 1035. Give me till lunchtime, OK? Back here at one. Meanwhile, get the bones of your plan on to paper. One of the clerks will do the donkey work for you on a word- processor, but get it all down as briefly as possible in note form. We'll push it up to the Director by secure fax and see what the reaction is.'

  I walked out feeling pretty low and extremely tired. I knew the Boss was sympathetic, but he was a realist as well, and it was obvious he didn't think my idea had a chance. I could tell from the look of him that he'd only been humouring me. For a while I walked around outside, trying to clear my head, then I thought, Sod it, I'll get a plan done anyway. I've nothing to lose by that.

  In the adjutant's office I grabbed the services of a clerk called Andy, whose grammar and spelling were streaks ahead of mine, and in twenty minutes we'd hammered out the briefing. Back in the incident room I tried to raise my spirits by saying to Fraser, 'Better get your skates on, Commander. It looks like the wagon's going to roll.'

  'You're joking.'

  'Not entirely. The Boss is taking Plan Zulu seriously.

  At least, he's making enquiries at high level.'

  'Am I supposed to know about it?'

  'He knows I told you my idea, but probably it's better not to say anything until I've been back to him.

  We're meeting again at one o'clock to see if we can take it farther.'

  To fill in time I sought out Tony. I'd spun him the outline of my scheme during our day in the OP, so there was little need for further explanation. 'If this goes down,' I told him, 'I'm going to make bloody sure you're on it with me. In fact, I hope we can keep the Ostrich team together. We understand each other as well as we ever will; I know we can muster the necessary skills between us. Listen, it may be premature, but why don't we get a few things planned?'

  We settled ourselves at a table in the incident room with a road atlas and a notebook.

  'Plotting the revolution, are you?' Fraser quipped as he came past.

  'More or less. You don't mind us being here?'

  'Not at all. You're welcome to carry on.'

  Out of the blue there had come into my mind an image of the new bypass round Ludlow, the market town in Shropshire. The road was a single-carriageway but fast and open, curving gently in a wide semicircle, with several miles from one roundabout to the next and no side-turnings in between. A perfect setting for an intercept. There was a similar ring-road round Evesham, I knew - and in a way that would be a more appropriate location, since it would fit in with rumours that the prisoner was being moved to Long Lartin - but the country through which it ran was too flat and open, with too many houses in sight. Ludlow presented a wilder and therefore more attractive option.

  'This is the place,' I told Tony, indicating the northern end of the bypass. 'If the police block out other vehicles for five minutes before the convoy comes through, the entire system will be empty. We can.ram the prison van off the road anywhere here. Plenty of room to stage a mock battle, grab Farrell, and away.'

  'How do we stop him seeing too much?'

  'He won't see anything at all. First, we'll do it at night. Second, when we hit the meat wagon, our opening move is to fill the back of it with CS gas.

  That'll disable him and the guards as well.'

  'How do we get into it?'

  'We whack a hole out of the side. Power-saw with a carbon fibre blade.'

  'OK.' Tony scribbled in his notebook. 'I'm making a list. We're gonna need CS, a saw, breathing kit for ourselves… What else?'

  'Two cars. We'll draw a couple from the training pool at Llangwern - something pretty-fast and beefy.

  Some kind of a hefty van for the intercept itself.'

  'How many guys on the team?'

  'Two drivers, and at least three others: two to handle

  Farrell, one spare in case someone gets hurt.'

  'How do you pick the team?'

  'As I said, I'd like to stick to the Ostrich crowd - if the head-shed will let us. So it's us two, Whinger and Stew. That'll be the core. We need one more really.

  Maybe Yorky can spare someone.'

  Tony got up and walked around. 'How are we going to control Farrell?'

  'Handcuffs. We keep him cuffed to one of us all the time.'

  'Two pairs,' said Tony as he wrote. 'Whenever you change his guard, you want him linked to the new guy before the old one lets go. And a chain: when you're hitched to a guy, you need room to manoeuvre.'

  'OK,' I agreed. 'Two pairs and a chain. Next thing.

  He'll be cuffed to a screw in the van before we get to him. So we need bolt shears as well. And a hood to put on him.'

  'And what happens when we've got him?'

  'We drive him to a safe house and get in touch with the Pll?i to set up a rendezvous, where we exchange him for the hostages.'

  'What safe house?'

  'The legiment owns several - holiday cottages, mostly. Some of them belong to former members.

  Tucked-away places where a guy can thin out for a while if he has to disappear.'

  'Are there any available right now? I mean, it's holiday season. They could all be full.'

  'There'll have to be one. We can probably find something in the Welsh mountains.'

  'How about bugging Farrell's clothes?'

  'He'll be in prison uniform when we get him. So it'll make sense to have a set of civilian clothes for him to change into. We'll get a belt and some shoes doctored up.'

  'In that case we need to get his sizes. I'll make a note of that too.'

  We tried to plan timings, but it was practically impossible without knowing how the PItLA would react to the news that their man was out of custody - or rather, out of giol. I reckoned we should stage the exchange of prisoners as soon as possible after we'd lifted Farrell, to cut down the chance of him escaping or anything else going wrong. The best scenario I could see was that we'd get our hands on Farrell on Friday night, pass word to the PI1LA immediately, and set up the exchange for Saturday. But that was only our programme. Given the way the terrorists were inclined to piss about, there was no guarantee they would get their act together in time.

  'I don't know where they'll propose,' I said. 'They'll assume our lift is going to take place somewhere close to Birmingham. But if they're in London, as we think, they'll probably opt for a handover rendezvous somewhere around the capital.'

  'Who are we supposed to be? The other members of the team.' Tony asked.

  'Friends of mine. The rest can be former members of the Regiment, but you - well, you're just an American pal, over here on holiday. You'll be a positive help in the deception, because Farrell won't connect an American with the SAS.'

  'What's my profession, then?'

  'Peanut farmer.'

  'Thanks, pal. I'll write that down too.'

  Tony grinned before going on. 'Our clothes . . .'

  'What about them?'

  'Got to be civilian.'

  'That's right. And no weapons showing. No covert radios or other specialist gear. Whatever
back-up we have has got to be well out of sight.'

  After a salad in the sergeants' mess I was back at the CO's office for one o'clock - and from the look of suppressed excitement on his face I could see that we were in business.