Dangerous Cargo

by Stewart Clyde

  Where Spinks went, men followed.

  “I’ve just got off a call with COBRA,” Spinks said. “It’s not a phantom call-in. We need to get a warning order out. The boys need to prep.”

  “What’s the mission?”

  “We’ve been warned off for a Direct Action Assault. There is a tanker charging up the English Channel as we speak, and they think it is full of terrorists and potentially a bomb.”

  “Holy shit,” Stirling said. He felt his heart rate increase and his mouth went dry.

  He was excited.

  He took another sip of his tea and tried to look calm in front of the CSM. Spinks just grinned at him. Must not be hiding it too well, Stirling thought.

  “What kind of bomb?” Stirling asked.

  Spinks paused and swallowed.

  “They reckon chemical or biological.”

  Stirling raised his eyebrows.

  “Where is it heading?”

  “East London. It’s also full of sugar,” Spinks said.

  “Isn’t the Tetley factory in east London?”

  Spinks nodded.

  “Just as sharp as a razor, Hunt,” Spinks winked, “exactly right.”

  Spinks looked at him.

  “What?” The CSM asked, “you look like someone just shat in your bed.”

  Stirling swallowed hard and put his cup down.

  “What’s the matter?” Spinks said, uneasy.

  “Sugar is a natural explosive Spinks.”

  The CSM shook his head, not fully understanding.

  “Did you ever hear that army prank, in the Officers’ Mess, where they throw a bag of flour into someone’s room while they are asleep?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Spinks said.

  “Well, they chuck in a bag of flour, the thing bursts and throws up this fine dust, and then they chuck in a flashbang and shut the door.”

  “Idiots,” Spinks said.

  “The primary charge - the flashbang - explodes, and then the flour ignites and explodes again. A secondary. Blows out the windows, poor sleeping bugger has his hair and eyebrows blown off. They’ve set fire to more than one mess that way.”

  “So what’re you saying?”

  “Look, I’ll show you.”

  Stirling poured out a thick coating of sugar on the counter.

  “So, imagine we are in an enclosed space,” he said, and smacked his had down hard on the counter top. The sugar and dust bounced, and some of it floated in the air. He banged it again.

  “Okay, I see it.”

  “Well, imagine we lit a match right now. If we saw it in slow motion, what we would actually see is, instead of a single instantaneous burst, is actually a series of chain reactions, as each dust particle lights the next one. So the primary charge is the match, which unsettles all the sugar particles, and that causes the secondary explosion and it happens in quick, quick succession. But, the secondary blast is much more powerful; kind of like ‘boom-KABOOM!” Stirling clapped his hands and Spinks jumped.

  “Fuck me,” he said, “maybe I should have paid more attention in science class.”

  “How much sugar is it carrying?” Stirling asked.

  Spinks puffed his cheeks and exhaled and shook his head.

  “Thirty-thousand tons,” Spinks said.

  “Enough to blanket the whole of London in the stuff …”

  Chapter Five

  Poole, Dorset

  * * *

  Soames stood at the back of the briefing room, behind a wall of uniformed Special Forces soldiers with their arms crossed, and watched. There were seventy burley men in various stages of dress sitting in rows of chairs, legs dangling off tables and standing at the back of the room.

  Soames knew the Sergeant Major. He stood on a raised platform in front of the men with a Captain he didn’t recognise. Behind them a motto was carved into a wooden ship’s propeller; ‘By Strength and Guile.’ The clock face said eight-thirty.

  Soames felt the hazy heavy-headedness of no sleep and long winter nights. And he pondered the meaning. The Special Boat Service were arguably the most elite - and most secretive - special force in the world. Some of their Special Air Service (SAS) colleagues were in the audience, and in contrast to them, the SBS received very little publicity. Soames knew they operated in the shadows, and that is why he liked them, they were like him. No-one ever saw them coming. Soames tapped a big bearded man on the shoulder in front of him.

  “Who is that Captain?” Soames asked him and pointed to the stage.

  The man half-turned his head and whispered out the side of his mouth, “Captain Hunt, Regiment’s Intelligence Officer,” and turned back to face the stage.

  “Thanks,” Soames said and rubbed his chin, and pulled at the flab on his neck, as his mind strayed. He found the young intelligence officer intriguing. He reminded him of himself, at a younger age. The way he stood, commanding, but with obvious concern for the men on his face. Intelligent, but approachable. Soames marked him out and filed the thought in the back of his mind for another time. One for the future, he thought.

  Conversations died and the room quietened as the Sergeant Major stepped forward. He nodded to Stirling on the stage next to him, and put his hands on his hips.

  “Right, good morning. As you know, the Commanding Officer is off with the boys in the sand, in Afghan. So I am in charge of this mission.”

  Some of the men nodded. Spinks cleared his throat.

  “I would like to welcome the twenty-six of our SAS cousins who have joined us for this operation. And, in case any of you might be thinking they are just making up the numbers, let me remind you, besides training we have never carried out a direct action assault on a hostile ship in the history of the British Special Forces.”

  Spinks let that sink in, there was one cough, and the room was silent as a funeral service.

  “We also have EOD to deal with anything nasty blasty,” he nodded to the detachment of bomb disposal engineers, and you all know Captain Hunt, our Int. Officer. So, welcome to the ‘Shakeyboats’ Service’.”

  A laugh rippled through the room. Soames chuckled quietly in the back.

  “This briefing isn’t going to take long. We have a lot to do. The main orders will take place tonight at nineteen-hundred hours at Royal Navy Air Station, Yeovilton. We will be departing here, in convoy, at no later than twelve-hundred hours. So that gives you three hours to prep your kit. Questions at this point?”

  A few of the blokes shook their heads. There was a tension in the room, Soames could feel it. Some men bit their nails, knees bounced up and down, others fidgeted and made notes.

  “Right, this is what we know. A tanker named MV Nisha is making her way, steady at sixteen knots, up the English Channel. She is now two-hundred miles from her intended target. This ship will be in London very soon, and is primed to detonate a chemical-biological weapon in the heart of the City. That’s in,” Spinks checked his watch, “less than thirteen hours.”

  A murmur rippled through the room.

  Spinks looked around at the faces of the men staring back at him. Soames felt his breathing shallow and his heart thump harder.

  “Look, now I know we would normally put aside at least twenty-four hours to assault planning, rehearsal, and intelligence, but the threat assessment,” he looked at Stirling who nodded, “is so severe that COBRA, the Prime Minister, has decided to assault her as soon as possible.”

  Spinks looked around the room, “Questions?”

  The men were silent.

  “After this briefing, you will be put into fire teams, get your gear ready, and prep for both manual and explosive method of entry. This is not, I repeat, this is not a rehearsal.”

  Another murmur through the audience.

  “Captain Hunt,” Spinks said and gestured to him.

  Stirling picked up an electronic clicker and pressed it. The screen showed aerial photographs of the vessel. He talked through them briefly and then brought up a schematic of the ship.

 
; “As you can see,” Stirling said and glanced at the room and then back at the screen, “the ship consists of one long hull, inside it is packed full of individual cargo holds, with a towering superstructure at the rear.”

  He used the laser pointer to circle the tower, “this is the bridge,” he said.

  “Where did the intelligence come from?” a soldier asked.

  “The int. came came from a Joint Force Operation in the Horn of Africa,” Stirling said.

  “Joint, between who?” the same soldier said.

  “Israeli intelligence and us.”

  “This plot has been linked, through reliable informants on the ground, to Bakr Bin Laden and the Saudi BinLaden Group itself, as well as al-Queda operating out of Mauritius,” Stirling said.

  “Why Mauritius?” another solider asked.

  “Sugar,” Stirling said, “it’s a natural explosive and Mauritius has a lot if it.”

  “What sort of distances are we talking here?”

  “The vessel is four-hundred and fifty feet, end-to-end. Eighty feet high at the main superstructure. So, bloody big,” Stirling said, “we expect up to sixteen terrorists with links to al-Qaeda, mostly Mauritanians with links to local terrorist groups there, that the ship picked up on the way from Djibouti.”

  The room was quiet.

  “This is the real deal. It is a lot of area to cover and to clear, to find and eliminate the threat of sixteen terrorists and a chemical weapon. Any other questions? Anything else to add?” Stirling said, and looked at Spinks. He shook his head.

  “Right then, get in your fire teams, get your gear ready for the assault, and be in the wagons ready to leave by twelve-hundred,” Spinks said.

  Soames walked out of the briefing room ahead of the soldiers and got into a waiting sedan. The chauffeur looked at him in the rearview and pulled off.

  “Whitehall, sir?”

  Soames nodded.

  “Yes, please.”

  Chapter Six

  The men went to work, serious and focussed. They loaded specialist assault gear, weapons, ammunition and boats into trailers attached to a convoy of black vans with blacked out windows. Stirling checked his kit and then re-checked it. Everyone tied an orange piece of ‘mine tape’ onto their black grip bags, and wrote their names onto it, so they could find it quickly at the other end. One of the loadies took the black grip from Stirling, strained under the weight and squeezed out a “sir” as he lumped it into the back of the van. Everyone climbed in. The camp gates opened and the convoy sped out nose to tail with blue lights flashing. The drivers were specialist Military Police and in constant radio communication with one another. A police escort led the way and forced civilian traffic to the roadside as the twenty-strong vehicle convoy of elite special forces soldiers raced past.

  The base of operations for the next twenty-four hours was an aircraft hangar, and the boys got busy preparing it for the mission. A makeshift operations centre was set up in a dark-olive canvas tent. It would be the brain of the operation. Laptops rested on wooden foldout tables, maps and satellite images were stuck to whiteboards. Sea charts and weather charts were pinned onto cork boards. After things settled down and the fire teams and their sections were squared away, a buzz went around. The formal set of orders would start soon. And the name of the mission buzzed around the hangar in hushed tones: Operation Ceto.

  The soldiers slid into banked rows of wooden benches, opposite the canvas ops tent. Spinks stood and waited at the front with his reading glasses on, and tapped a green plastic folder against his leg. Once everyone was in, they all settled down, and the Sergeant Major began the formal orders process.

  “Welcome to the O-group for Op Ceto,” Spinks said, “with the conditions, it’s fitting they named it after the mother of sea monsters,” he said over the top of his glasses to an audience of serious faces. Everybody involved in the mission was present; each fire team, the ship’s crew and captain, all of the intelligence, communications, logistics and engineering support specialists. As well as the pilots. Spinks followed procedure, which included explaining everything so that a five-year old could understand it. He started with where and when it would all happen, and included the stage of the moon and the weather conditions.

  “As you can see,” Spinks gestured at the downpour outside the open hangar doors, “it’s fucking atrocious.” A few of the boys turned and looked out as rain rattled down, lit by the spotlights on the side of the building.

  The next part of orders was the mission statement: “Your mission is to conduct a direct action assault against the MV Nisha, in order to stop the ship, search it, and apprehend all living souls onboard, by any means necessary.” Spinks said, and then repeated it.

  The mission was always said twice.

  “Execution. Phase one; a simultaneous assault from air and sea. Phase two; take control of the bridge to halt the ship. Phase three; search and apprehend all passengers and crew. Phase four; extract all prisoners to the HMS Sutherland.”

  Spinks went into detail at each phase for any ‘actions on’ points. These were contingencies should certain situations occur, like capture, or injury, or an emergency evacuation plan. He specifically talked through actions on any improvised explosive devices or bombs.

  “The ship may be boobytrapped, right?” Spinks said and looked around, “Okay. Captain Hunt will take you through Ops and Int.”

  Stirling stepped forward, “The assault will take place in international waters, off the Sussex coast. This is going to be short and sharp. Maximum surprise, maximum force. They must not have the chance to detonate the device.”

  Stirling pressed a button on the pointer and the projector screen flicked on an image of the ship.

  “Assault teams will fast rope from two Chinook helicopters, supported by two Lynx attack helicopters and four Sea Kings, carrying command and control elements. Four fire teams, each in a RIB (rigid inflatable boats) will launch from HMS Sutherland. A high speed HM Customs boat carrying Special Branch anti-terrorism officers will be right behind. The RIB teams will scale and board the starboard bow, and move through and clear the ship. Snipers on board the attack helicopters will deal with any hostile threat during the fast rope, onto this section, and this section,” Stirling said and indicated two flat areas on the roof the ship’s bridge. The roof looked narrow on the projection. The long stares on some of the faces told him they were thinking about how it would be. Fast-roping in high winds, onto the narrow roof section of an enemy vessel as it smashed through the swell in storm conditions far out to sea.

  “As the Sergeant Major said, the seaborne assault and the airborne assault will happen simultaneously. Once the target is secure, officers from the Anti-Terror Police and EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) will board, and perform a secondary, specialist sweep. Our mission is disable, clear and secure, in preparation for the second sweep. Any questions?”

  Stirling looked at Spinks and held out the clicker.

  “Right, that is it. And just so you know, because I know it is the only thing any of you want to know” he said, “Captain Baldwin’s troop will be first on target.”

  The lads boo’d and clapped and the soldiers in Baldwin’s team grinned.

  “Each of your troop leaders has been briefed and will brief you on your own fire team’s specific role. We have rehearsed this scenario, over and over, I have complete faith in each and every one of you. Get on board, disable her, and get off. Alright?”

  Metal scraped on concrete and the din of conversation drowned out other sounds as the soldiers and crew stood and moved into their fire teams. Stirling chatted to the pilots and Spinks came up behind him and patted him on the back.

  “Nice one,” was all he said.

  Stirling walked over to the hangar doors and looked out. There, huddled under the roof of a bicycle rack, he saw the three other members of his fire team. They were standing close to one another, hands in pockets, shivering and stepped from one foot to the other to warm up. He jogged throug
h the rain to join them.

  “Got one of those for me?” he asked.

  “Alright, boss? Didn’t know you smoked,” Matty said and held the box out.

  Matty was the youngest in the group, a high flying Corporal back in the Marines, he was short, wiry, with birdlike features and a sharp, direct tone. He was a man who preferred to lead by setting the example, quiet and professional.

  “Yeah, well, occasionally I do. This is one of those occasions,” he smiled.

  Stirling took a cigarette from the box, and Jamie Taylor held out a light. He dragged on it and exhaled a white cloud into the yellow light and the rain.

  “We were just discussing who was gonna be first one down the rope …” Jamie said with a grin and looked at Stirling. Jamie was from the coast, not far from the Regiment’s Poole base. He’d grown up on the hills of the coastline, and on the ocean. His father was a fisherman and immensely proud of his son. Jamie seemed to take it in his stride. His mood was always calm as the outgoing tide. He had a wide, round approachable face and his cheeks were marked with freckles.

  “Whoever it is, is likely to have his gonads shot off,” Jock said, and they all looked to Stirling.

  “Well, it’s going to be Captain Baldwin’s decision, as troop leader. I’m just one of the blokes for the op. So if no-one else wants to,” Stirling took another drag and gave a light cough, “I’ll do it,” he said.

  “No way, sir, you?” Jock said in a thick Glaswegian accent. He was short and square like a prop forward with tufts of short cropped hair and a dry sense of wit. He always claimed he’d meant to join the Special Air Service, but got the answers wrong on his application form.

  “Why not me?” Stirling said.