by James Adams
The routine patrol in the Irish Sea had been interrupted twelve hours earlier with the order to head south for Plymouth to take on cargo and men. As usual with such signals there were orders but no explanation, and so he had arrived in Plymouth certain that the task had to do with the Tunnel assault but with no idea of exactly what was required.
When the ship arrived at No. 5 Wharf, the “cargo” was already sitting on its pallet alongside. It was an Avalon submersible. Known officially as a Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle or DSRV, the Avalon is forty-nine feet long and can dive to 5,000 feet with ease. The vessel is shaped like a fat cigar and is divided into three self-contained spheres. The front houses the captain and two crew, the middle can hold twenty-four rescued submariners and the fourth crew member. The third sphere holds the engine and the enormous batteries used to drive the single propeller. It has a range of twenty-four miles at three knots.
The most important part of the ship lies below the centre sphere. It is a circular set of watertight doors with a ring seal at the bottom. By delicate manoeuvring, the vessel can be brought over a submarine’s escape hatch, the ring dropped on top of it, air pumped out to form a seal and then men transferred from one ship to the other.
A small man, Greaves had to do a little hop to get out of his seat and on to the deck. He moved to the back of the bridge to look at the TV monitor that relayed the image from the rear flight deck. There he could see the squat shape of the Avalon where he was used to seeing a Lynx or EH 101 helicopter. The fact that the Avalon was there at all was little short of a miracle.
When they had tied up alongside in Plymouth after the mad dash down the Irish Sea, he had looked curiously down at the dock and the little knot of men standing by what looked like a very long and very fat torpedo. As soon as the gangplank hit the dock, two of the men came aboard.
He met them in the security of his cabin. The first man wore the three stripes of a commander on his dark blue uniform. Even without the short cropped hair cut close to the skull, Greaves would have known him as an American. He had that tall, confident air that Americans of a certain type seem to carry with them. But he also had a rounded stomach that looked as if he had stuffed a football up his shirt. It was extraordinary, Greaves thought, what odd shapes Americans are, as if they are in perpetual training for the Fat People’s Olympics.
The man saluted and then grinned. “Hi, Captain. My name is Frank Rostenkowski. I’m the skipper of the Avalon, the little baby you see on the dock.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Commander. Welcome aboard.”
Greaves turned towards the second man who had been standing behind the American. The man saluted and stepped forward. “Lieutenant Mike Hodder, sir. SBS.”
Greaves nodded and considered the younger man. He had trained with the Special Boat Service and seen them operate in the South Atlantic, so the type, if not the individual, was familiar. The SBS is the elite unit within the Royal Marines responsible for carrying out beach reconnaissance and some counter-terrorism work at sea. There are many similarities with the SAS and a great deal of duplication in both training and roles.
During the Second World War, when both organizations were founded, the divisions were easier, with the SAS working mostly on land and the SBS at sea. Peacetime had brought different problems and different solutions. The SAS found that sometimes they needed to get to their targets by sea or river and the SBS learned that parachuting was an essential requirement to get within striking distance of a harbour or installation near the sea. But without merging the two, there was little to be done to avoid the competition and the duplication. Some specializations have evolved so that the SAS will deal with most counter-terrorism on land and the SBS, through Comacchio Group, looks after the security of North Sea oil installations, the Trident submarine base, and guards convoys carrying nuclear materials.
In an effort to streamline, a joint Special Forces Group headquarters was set up in 1989 based at the Duke of York’s Barracks in London under a brigadier who is always drawn from the SAS.
Beyond those basic facts, Greaves knew little about the black arts practised by the SBS. The man standing before him looked like a fairly normal Marine in beret and brown uniform. He was around five feet eight inches tall, clean-shaven, with sandy hair slightly longer than regulation cut, dark brown eyes and a very large nose that could have been unattractive but actually gave an ordinary face some character. Only two visible things distinguished Hodder: an enormous neck which must have been seventeen inches round, which Greaves presumed was caused by all those hours spent swimming and paddling canoes; and a shoulder patch with the winged oars and blue parachute and the motto “Not By Strength By Guile”.
“I understand you’re going to give me a lift up the Channel,” the American continued.
“That is certainly the plan, although I am still not clear just how we are going to get you and your vessel to our destination,” Greaves replied.
“Well, we gave some thought to that back in the States and reckon that we have come up with a pretty good solution.” The American walked out on to the starboard flying bridge and pointed out what looked like a pair of large steel railings lying alongside the submersible.
“What is it?” Greaves asked.
“Our problem was not so much getting here — we routinely deploy using one of the C5 transports — but once here getting from your deck into the water. So I had a word with some of the boys at Norfolk.”
Greaves nodded. He had once visited the vast headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic on America’s east coast.
“There’s an old Nike Hercules air defence system on the base. You remember the type? Brackets, trailer, rocket and a hydraulic system to get it to the vertical for firing.” He smiled with the satisfaction of the creator showing off his invention. “We took the rocket off, left the trailer behind and brought the mountings and the hydraulics. The way we figured it, we can mount it on your helicopter deck, put the Avalon on top and then instead of levering up to the vertical, we’ll pump the tail up and slide off into the sea.”
So far, it had worked exactly as planned. While the mountings were bolted into the deck, Hodder had brought his men and their kit aboard. Ten men dressed as Marines with bag after bag of equipment which he didn’t see and really didn’t want to know about. Greaves had the serving officer’s obsessive concern with “need to know”. Know what you need to do your job, know any more and it just causes trouble.
The men had stayed below since they had come aboard and the chief petty officer had brought him regular reports of their progress. “They’ve changed out of their uniforms, sir,” he had confided earlier. “Got up in some all-black suit of some kind. They’re laying out all their kit in the chopper hangar. I’ve never seen so much stuff: guns, grenades, grappling irons, ladders. They must be going to start a war. And finish it too.”
Greaves pulled himself back into the captain’s chair and tried to peer through the rain and mist. There was nothing to be seen in the dull, grey afternoon, just the sound of the radar operators calling out the sightings of other ships in their path. The rolling map display inside his head continued to scroll through the Channel towards the target.
The damp and the cold had seeped through Kate’s bones so that she was shivering all the time now. Once the electricity had been cut off and there were no trains passing through the Tunnel generating heat, the temperature had dropped rapidly. It was now only a few degrees above freezing.
The explosions earlier had not caused any massive rupture, but she could hear the steady drip drip drip of water from all around. There were no pumps working in the Tunnel so there was no way for the water to be extracted. It was a subtle and modern refinement of the old Chinese water torture. The way the ancients did it was to tie their prisoner under a steadily dripping pipe. At the beginning each drop felt soothing but after a short time the drops felt like lead weights and then as if they were drilling a hole into the centre of the skull. The prisoner eith
er talked or went mad. It was simple and effective.
For Kate the torture was more subtle than that. She felt trapped by the mass of water above and the drips that were forming pools below. She knew she wasn’t going to drown. That was the logic of her position. But her imagination kept taking her on a short and horrible journey where the Tunnel flooded, the water rose up and up into the carriage and, as she struggled to swim, she sucked in a mouthful of water, then another, and another…Hours after the first nightmare, she felt she could actually taste the water and could imagine her stomach filling, her throat constricting and her lungs, starved of oxygen, collapsing.
Tom’s execution had made it worse. She imagined that Emma would be taken next and was frantic to avoid making Tom’s mistake and attracting attention to herself or to Emma.
All around her people were shivering in the cold. The passengers had moved closer together, shuffling their bottoms along the cold metal. But their bodies were generating so little heat now that there was no comfort, only the chattering of their teeth breaking the silence.
For three hours she had been desperate to pee. Each drip of water piled on the agony until she could stand it no longer.
Others had been faced with the same dilemma and had simply let go into their underwear. The stench of urine was almost intolerable. Kate had heard some of the passengers vomiting and was sure that it was only a matter of time before she did so too. The only reason she had held on this long was because she was near the sliding door and so got some breaths of moderately fresh air.
But wetting herself would be the final humiliation. She did not want to give the Chinese the satisfaction of seeing her debased in front of them. Of course, they probably couldn’t see anything in the dark and wouldn’t be interested even if they could. It was the principle of the thing.
Kate had been quietly transferring items from her handbag into the pockets of her skirt and jacket and now the bag was empty. She opened it wide and slid it between her legs. She unrolled her pants until they were below her knees and then slid one half of the open bag under her buttocks. With a sigh of relief and explosion of urine she began to fill it, fearful now that it would overflow and wet her neighbours.
The mission successfully completed, she lifted herself up slightly, brought the handbag out from underneath her and stood it carefully upright.
The relief was wonderful. Now she could concentrate on what she had been thinking about ever since Tom’s death: revenge and escape — in that order.
Kate felt her pockets, touching each of the items, assessing their value. Keys, lipstick, comb, old sweetie paper, a stale toffee, wallet were all discarded. It was when she picked up her copy of that morning’s Daily Mail that an idea came to her. Far-fetched, idiotic even. But at least it was an idea. She pulled the newspaper out and carefully, quietly, began to roll it into a tube.
Like the situation in the Tunnel itself, COBRA was now in a state of permanent crisis. As the hours had gone by and plans were made, hopes raised and dashed, the tempers and the tensions inside the windowless and seemingly airless offices had become stretched, twisted and torn.
The news of the failed mission inside the Tunnel had acted as a catalyst for most of the people. The story had leaked to the press and the media hounds were looking for political victims to pillory. At the same time, the IRA cover was peeling away as the Chinese community in Hong Kong learned on their own accurate and astonishingly fast bush telegraph that the fate of the terrorists in the Tunnel would directly affect their welfare. There had been riots which were turning increasingly ugly.
Few now in COBRA were arguing for conciliation and peace. Those who were used to negotiation as a way of sustaining life recognized they were not dealing with reasonable men. Everyone knew that it was capitulation or conflict. There was no middle ground.
Few of the people in the room were used to such stark choices. Diplomats, policemen and intelligence agents are all used to fudging issues, to taking political decisions that inevitably involve a measure of give and take. Now there was no room for manoeuvre, there seemed to be a collective inertia that prevented the group from taking the next — and toughest — decision: actually to commit troops for an assault.
As Jonny looked around, he saw the same people he had first seen and met just the day before. They all looked different now. This was not a war game where everyone knew that they could leave at the end of the day and forget the winners and the losers. This was real life. The choices they made here might kill hostages, would almost certainly kill terrorists. It would, of course, make or break careers as well, depending on the wisdom of the decision.
“I think you should all be aware of a message I received from General John Foley, the Commander of British Forces in Hong Kong,” said Sir Clive Whitmore.
Jonny knew Foley, a tall, thin, balding man with a very long jaw and an easy smile. He had been Director of Special Forces after a long career in the SAS and then head of Defence Intelligence. He was a tough, experienced operator, the best type to have in charge at this time. Whitmore read the communication:
“The situation here has deteriorated rapidly in the past 24 hours. News of the assault on the Tunnel has leaked or been deliberately fed to the local Chinese community. The result has been huge demonstrations in favour of the terrorists and against the Chinese takeover.
Two hours ago a march involving around one million people began in Sheung and is heading for Causeway Bay. The scale of this protest exceeds that which followed Tiananmen Square. There is a similar demonstration planned for Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon. The uncertainty seems to be creating panic in the local community. There has been a run on the banks and they have been advised by the Governor to close their doors.
There have been sporadic outbreaks of violence as the police try and control the crowds and the armed robbers who are taking advantage of the unstable situation to carry out a wave of attacks across Hong Kong.
I have placed my troops on full alert and expect to deploy them within hours. I do not believe that in the present circumstances my forces will be enough to contain the crisis. We are therefore faced with a complete breakdown of law and order.
We have three choices:
1. Send reinforcements
2. Call for help from the PRC
3. Resolve the crisis in the Tunnel in the next few hours
Unless 3 is achieved, you must do 2 without delay and 1 may be necessary to avoid very heavy loss of life in Hong Kong among both expatriates and the local community.”
Whitmore took off his spectacles and laid them on the table in front of him. His expression was bleak and, as he looked around, Jonny thought there was little left of the urbane civil servant of a few hours ago. The suit was still well cut but the face looked pinched and the bags under his eyes huge.
“As you can see, the Commander is pretty pessimistic and I have to concur with his judgment,” said Whitmore. “I spoke with the Prime Minister a few minutes ago and he remains resolute that we must not give in to the terrorists. But he is also determined that this matter must be resolved without delay. That seems to leave us with little choice but to go in and get the hostages out.”
“That’s easy to say but difficult to do,” said Williams of the Special Branch. He had been badly burned both personally and professionally by the debacle of the reconnaissance mission, which had been partly his idea. He knew it was not the police’s fault that they had walked into a trap but he also knew that the knives would be out yet again. “But I believe we have no choice,” he continued. “I have received some intelligence that the terrorists in the Tunnel are receiving instructions by radio from an outside controller.”
Jonny’s deal had taken only minutes. Williams was desperate for information and Jonny desperate for access to the Tunnel. Williams was bruised by the failure of the police action in the Tunnel and needed to restore his credibility and that of SB. Jonny wanted Dai Choi and Williams was happy to help him kill himself if that was what he wanted to do
. So, the price of knowledge was Jonny’s participation in the rescue mission and Williams had paid it. Now he passed on the rest of his intelligence.
“We also know they will receive instructions to begin killing the hostages some time before the deadline runs out.”
The men and women around the table seemed to collapse as one. The knowledge that the one benchmark which had given a solid foundation to all their plans — the deadline — was being taken away was another blow on the backs of already exhausted people.
“For God’s sake, why?” Whitmore asked.
“Apparently there is a feeling that a few more bodies will help concentrate our minds as the deadline comes up,” Williams replied. “It’s interesting psychology, actually. We’ve always worked to deadlines in these situations. By moving them, the terrorists are piling on the pressure, forcing us on to the defensive.”
“It’s not psychology that matters, it’s doing something to stop them,” Witherow interrupted. “First, we must make sure the signals people down at the Tunnel are jamming everything going in there. Second, we’ll have to send our people in to rescue the hostages. As Mike says, we’ve really no choice.”
“I agree,” Whitmore said. “I will advise the Prime Minister accordingly and we can expect a decision within the hour.”
Mary Cheong had listened to the exchange with growing despair. Before the crisis had begun and since the terrorists had taken the Tunnel, she had done everything in her power to try and persuade the British government to negotiate and honour its obligations. At every step she had been rebuffed, first by Hurd and then by the COBRA committee. She knew, knew with complete certainty, that the terrorists’ demands were legitimate. Their methods might be questionable, but the goals were not.
The whole build-up to the transfer of power to the Chinese had made her cynical about the British, a nation she had admired from afar when she was still in China. There the missionaries had spread the word about honesty and integrity and the British had been held up as the finest examples of such qualities. She had believed it, which was one of the reasons why she had fixed on Hong Kong as her goal when she escaped from the Communist yoke.
