Taking the Tunnel

by James Adams

  Oh, they still listened to what he said. They still deferred to him, but he could tell that his message was no longer getting through. With men like Kelly in the wings waiting with their guns and bombs it was only a matter of time before a showdown. And he thought that this time Adams, the great survivor, might actually lose.

  He always listened to BBC Radio Ulster and this morning was no exception. The regular programming had been interrupted by the announcer relaying the PA report about the seizure of the Tunnel. He heard the news with astonishment that swiftly turned to anger.

  The rebellion has begun,” he told himself.

  He toyed with going back to Belfast but decided against it. That would be seen as a sign of weakness and a clear indication he did not know what was going on. His priority was to establish control of the situation. To do that he needed to meet with whomever of the Northern Command he could get down here at short notice.

  By the time Clive Whitmore was sitting down in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room, the first of the Northern Command had arrived at the caravan. First through the door was Gerry Kelly, dressed, Adams was disgusted to see, as if he were on holiday in the South of France, in baggy white trousers, linen shirt and a sweater tied around his neck.

  Next came Michael McDonald, the man in charge of the IRA in South Armagh. South Armagh is a traditional centre of Irish entrepreneurial activity and McDonald has gained respect in the Movement for his innovative ideas. In particular, he obtained a growth-promoting steroid for cattle, known locally as Angel Dust, which he imported in the south and then illegally exported to the north. He is a rich man, but like everyone in the area he dresses and smells as if he is a pauper.

  McDonald is small, not unlike the little Irishman who had escorted John Wayne in The Quiet Man. His face is round with the healthy rosiness of a man who spends his time outdoors. At first glance his eyes appear merry, the crinkles suggesting a man who smiles often. But a second glance reveals that his real business is killing people. His brown eyes are flat, almost opaque, and seem to show no emotion, neither happiness nor sorrow. He has killed a lot of men.

  There was no doubting his value as smuggler, fundraiser, organizer and killer, but Adams just wished he would take a bath more often. When McDonald sat down in the caravan, Kelly pointedly shuffled his chair further away as the smell of sweat and the farmyard filled the small room. Adams lit his pipe and drew deeply so that the room was filled with the perfumed smoke of the Condor tobacco.

  It was a perfect moment for the Quartermaster to enter. The man is a legend, his identity a closely guarded secret. He is responsible for the delivery of weapons and explosives to the IRA units operating in the north and on the mainland and he is the best the Boys have ever had. It was he who fixed the Libyan shipments, the largest of which had been landed just down the road at Clogher Head.

  In a group of individuals, the Quartermaster has taken eccentricity to a new art form. He takes incredible steps to conceal his identity and in fact no one inside PIRA is quite sure who knows who he really is. He always arrives late for meetings and always in disguise. Today, he was wearing a heavy dark overcoat, a fedora and a patently false beard. “Anonymity,” he had once said, “is the cloak that disguises success.” As long as he continues to deliver, his little diversions are tolerated.

  “Right: Now that we’re all here, what the fucking hell is going on?” Adams asked, determined to dominate the meeting from the start.

  “Don’t look at me, Gerry,” Kelly protested. “This has nothing to do with me.”

  “What about you, Quartermaster,” Adams said, turning to the muffled figure. “Have you delivered anything special to the mainland to set this up?”

  “Nothing.” The answer was fiat and final. “Everything this campaign needs was delivered between three and five years ago. And all of it is the standard packs. Nothing special and not enough to mount something like this.”

  “Well, what the fuck is happening!” Adams shouted. “Perhaps it’s the Prods,” suggested McDonald.

  “Oh, come on, Michael,” protested Kelly. “They couldn’t coordinate a farting competition let alone something like this. The best they can do is kill people a few at a time. Taking the Tunnel would have required real planning, a proper logistics tail and well-trained people. They couldn’t manage any of that.”

  “Well, if it’s not us and it’s not the Prods, who the hell is it?” Adams asked. “We’d better find out because you can be sure that whatever happens we’re going to get blamed. If people start to die in that bloody Tunnel, the Brits are going to be down on us like there’s no tomorrow. And there well might not be.”

  As Adams ushered the three men from the caravan, he felt slightly relieved. He took some satisfaction from the fact that there was no open revolt under way. Whatever was going on he would have time to find out the truth and orchestrate a response. That was the reality of politics, he knew, and he was very good at it.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  It had been six hours since Vincent Sum invaded the Ritchie household and he should have been gone long ago. Once Harry Ritchie had left, the house had settled into a routine: Rosemary, Becky and David stayed in the kitchen with Vincent while one Chinese watched from the front and the other from the back. Sum had turned on the kitchen radio to listen for the news. When the first broadcast about the successful takeover of the Tunnel came he was elated, certain now that White Lotus would triumph.

  But the expected message from the leadership had not appeared. He had been told to expect a message as soon as the Tunnel was taken and then they could make their escape. As the minutes had slipped into hours, he became increasingly worried. Doubt was eating away at his self-confidence and he knew with an awful certainty that he had become an inconvenient loose end, too costly to save and too easy to sacrifice.

  He could imagine Harry Ritchie sitting in some French police station telling the cops about the Chinese who had invaded his home, tortured his daughter and blackmailed him. He knew well enough how these things worked. Even as he was stuck in this kitchen, the cops would be preparing to do something to take them out. There had been no sign of any activity so far, but it was only a matter of time. And he knew that time was short.

  His imagination and the constant whining of the little girl were beginning to get on his nerves. He could almost feel the police outside creeping up on the house, hear them getting into position, sense the first few seconds of the attack. He knew the story Harry Ritchie would have told meant that there would be little quarter given. The focus of the police would be on rescuing the family and anyone who got in the way would be shot. He knew his men would fight; they would obey orders and die if necessary. But he had no intention of dying or even being captured.

  His thoughts were interrupted by another cry from Becky. Since she had lost her fingers, Rosemary had tied a tourniquet around her arm to stanch the flow of blood and wrapped a dishcloth over the stumps as a crude bandage. But the little girl was in agony, the hand a huge, throbbing mass of pain from which there was no relief. She was crying almost continuously now, her pale cheeks streaked with tears, her eyes withdrawn into her skull.

  “Can’t you shut the kid up?” Vincent Sum asked again.

  “No, I can’t,” Rosemary replied. “Can’t you see she needs treatment? Much more of this and she’s going to die. You’ve got what you want. You’ve taken the Tunnel. Why don’t you just leave?”

  “That may be the best idea I’ve heard all day,” Sum replied.

  Her words had made the decision for him. But leaving meant leaving no witnesses. First he’d deal with that whining bitch who’d made his life a misery for the past few hours. He got up from the table and moved four paces to his right until he was standing behind Becky. His left hand grabbed her blonde hair and pulled it back so that her head was stretched back and their eyes met. Her neck was perfectly white and perfectly smooth. With a swift motion, Vincent Sum drew his long-bladed knife from its sheath and brought it round to slip th
e point in underneath Becky’s left ear and draw the blade across her throat.

  Rosemary saw the movement and acted instinctively to protect her child. She lunged across the table trying to grab the knife arm and stop it in mid-swing. Surprised by the attack, Vincent Sum drew back slightly. It was enough for Rosemary’s hand to miss his forearm and grab the blade of the knife.

  She watched in horror as her hand slid smoothly along the knife’s length, cutting her palm open like a piece of raw steak on a butcher’s block. She felt no pain, just the absolute revulsion of something alien invading her flesh, a paper cut magnified ten thousand times.

  The blood poured out and she recoiled in disgust from the sight of her hand sliced open before her like a ripe tomato, the white of her sinew’s the seeds, her blood the juice. Her eyes flicked back up and she saw the knife coming around again. The Chinese had been only momentarily diverted by her intervention and the knife was arcing back towards Becky’s throat.

  The child’s eyes were looking at her, wide with terror, the plea for a mother’s help not to be denied.

  Rosie’s left hand reached out and this time there was no surprise or reflexive withdrawal. Her hand clamped on his wrists, just as the knife pierced Becky’s neck, drawing a thin string of bright red blood that trickled down the white skin. Her hand was around his wrist and she pulled with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, her bloodied right hand clamping on her left wrist, adding to the force. She grunted with the pain and effort, pulling the man away from her daughter.

  Vincent Sum reared back, pulling Rosemary across the kitchen table.

  “Butcher. Butcher, butcher.” The muttered chant was squeezed out between gasps as Rosemary struggled to maintain a hold on his arm and a grip on reality. She knew that death was only moments away as the Chinese forced her wrists around so that the knife was pointing straight at her. Sliding along the table-top she could see the knife waiting for her at the other side, ready to impale her.

  Desperate now, she knew that her own death would mean the killing of her children. As if in the distance, she heard the screams of Becky and David, their terror exaggerated by the sight of their mother bleeding. Their cries pushed her to one last act of sacrifice. She used the only thing she had left that could be fashioned into a weapon — her body.

  Twisting on the table-top, she spun around, using Sum’s arm as a lever, and dragged her body straight at him. Taken by surprise, the Chinese lurched backwards, the knife moving slightly to one side. As their bodies collided, Rosemary felt the weapon slide into her body the way a gutting knife enters the stomach of a dead fish. But there was no time to think of the pain.

  The two fell backwards towards the sink in an embrace sealed by the knife jutting from Rosemary’s side. Vincent Sum reached behind him to steady his fall and his fingers closed on the drying-up rack which tumbled down as they fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs and shattered china. The Chinese was trapped underneath, his knife stuck inside the body which was collapsed on top of him. With her left hand, Rosemary scrabbled in the wreckage around her for a weapon and her hand closed around a Sabatier knife — a present from Harry.

  Without thinking, she began the execution of the man who had tried to kill her children.

  For a right-handed person, doing anything precise with the left hand is difficult. But Rosemary was making no attempt at accuracy. There was no intent to aim, only to maim. The first blow sank through the fleshy part of his cheek and she drew the blade out with a sucking sound that made her want to vomit. A second blow sliced off the fleshy part of his nose before bouncing off his cheekbone and into the linoleum.

  Vincent Sum was screaming now, all thoughts of killing anyone banished by the immediacy of the pain. His body was being torn by the violence of the attack, the determination of his attacker. His body arched on the floor, bucking to unseat his unwelcome rider, trying to free his hands so that he could stop the agony.

  He heard a crashing sound and out of the corner of his eye he saw a small grey egg land on the floor, bounce once and roll towards him. His mind shouted “grenade” but no words came out. There was a blinding flash of light and a massive shock wave. A nanosecond later both Sum and his attacker were unconscious. The rescuers had arrived.

  Brigadier John Cassidy moved to the podium in the briefing room of the JOC at the Ministry of Defence. The different cells had been working continuously since the beginning of the crisis and it was time to update the decision-makers on the current status of the hijack.

  The room contained around thirty people. Looking around, Cassidy could see the brown, dark blue and light blue uniforms of the services with a sprinkling of civilians from the Defence Intelligence Staff and one or two genuine civilians looking out for the interests of their political masters. To his right, the five directors of the JOC cells were sitting, ready to answer specific questions if any should be asked. Behind and to Cassidy’s left was a large screen that could be used to display slides or videos while behind his right shoulder a television screen linked this room to COBRA and to the Prime Minister’s office at No. 10. Cassidy was facing a small camera mounted on the wall. He knew this would be a command performance.

  “Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “This briefing includes all information up to 1500 hours today. The attack on the Channel Tunnel, which took place at 0903 this morning, was carried out by terrorists linked to the Triads in Hong Kong. We are now satisfied that the IRA has no involvement in this matter although* as you know, inquiries are proceeding in this area.

  The family of the train driver was successfully released in an operation carried out by a special unit from Kent police. The wife was badly injured but is well enough to speak. The daughter is currently in surgery but it is certain that she has lost two fingers and will be in hospital for some time. Their son is in shock but is otherwise unhurt.

  “Interrogation of the family has revealed very little. One of the Chinese was badly injured in a fight with Mrs Ritchie. He will lose the sight of one eye, has lost most of his nose and a great deal of blood. He is not in a position to speak at this time. His two followers appear to speak no English and we are organizing an interpreter to question them now. I doubt we will learn much from them.

  “Passenger records suggest that there are 90 people inside the Tunnel. As you know, we have a photographic record of all passports checked through the Tunnel security system and passports are now being matched against the records in Petty France. We have turned up 10 false passports so far and there may be more.

  “That means a maximum of 80 hostages, although it is likely we will end up with a slightly smaller figure. Of those, we have identified 18 children under the age of 15, 27 women and 35 men.

  “So far we have insufficient intelligence on the terrorists and their weapons to determine their strength or the nature of any defence they might be able to mount.

  “Given what they have already done to the train driver’s child — two fingers cut off simply as a warning — I think we can assume they are ruthless and will kill hostages if we do not meet their deadline.

  “Our military assessment is that an assault on the Tunnel at this stage would result in high casualties on both sides and a probable high loss of life among the hostages.”

  The Prime Minister had sat patiently through the briefing, making notes in the painstaking longhand which had become the bane of his civil servants. They were used to briefing a minister, getting an answer and then taking the brief away for action. Major always insisted on making his own notes, thinking about the subject, seeking other advice (an unheard-of insult to his civil servants) and then dictating a memo with his decision. His predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, had tended to listen without making notes at all and then reach her own decision without consulting anybody. This made for fast and firm government but a lot of unhappy colleagues. The Major style might be a bit slower but it had reintroduced the idea of government by consensus.

  “Thank you for that, Brigad
ier,” he said. “I have to tell you that after their recent success in the rescue of the driver’s family, the police are keen to go into the Tunnel and try again. What do you think about that?”

  “I’ll defer to Captain Daria from the SAS if I may, Prime Minister.”

  Despite his name, Daria came not from Sicily but from Scunthorpe. Like many in the SAS he was a quiet man, whose thoughtful caution had kept him alive in Northern Ireland and in the wars in the Falklands and the Gulf. Like most of his colleagues, he had prospered not because of an enthusiasm for shooting people but through an obsessive attention to the detail of planning each operation, which ensured that only rarely were shots fired and, if they were, he and his men were fully prepared.

  It was hardly surprising therefore that Daria gave a cautious response to the Prime Minister. “We have looked at the problem and so far we simply do not have enough information to launch any kind of rescue effort. We could go in now and we could certainly get the hostages out but some, perhaps many, would be killed. We would lose some of our men and I have no idea what the damage to the Tunnel might be. I strongly recommend that we do nothing for the moment. If you can, Prime Minister, buy us some time.”

  “I’m afraid, Captain, that may not be possible.” Major paused and appeared to be consulting with someone off camera. “What we need is information and we need it as fast as possible. I understand your reservations, Captain, but I must have something on which to base decisions. I am prepared to allow a police tactical unit to go into the Tunnel to try and find out something about the terrorists. They will be authorized to look but not to attack.”

  Cassidy realized that Major had made the classic politician’s compromise: the short-term gain of placating an anxious police and a panic-stricken business community against the longer-term needs of the operation itself. The police always made a cock of this kind of thing, Cassidy thought gloomily. This is going to be another one.

  “Meanwhile, is there nothing else we can be doing to prepare for action against these people?” Major asked. “I’m told that some allowance for this kind of attack was made in the building of the Tunnel. What do you have on that, Brigadier?”