'This is where we have a few problems,' he went on. He was working now without his notes. Did that mean no more one-liners? Certainly, there was more of an edge to his voice.
'What are we to do with these people? If we try to move in on them too early, that would only leave other PIRA teams free to go ahead with the bombing. In any case, if the ASU travels through Malaga airport and remains on Spanish territory until the last minute, there is no guarantee that the Spanish courts will hand them over, not only because of the dispute with the UK on the question of whom Gibraltar belongs to but because the case against them could only be based on conspiracy, which is pretty flimsy.
'So, gentlemen, we must arrest them in Gibraltar.' The screen went blank; there was only the light from the lectern shining on his face.
'And this throws up three options. The first is to arrest them as they cross the border from Spain.
Easier said than done; there's no guarantee we'll know what kind of vehicle they're in. There would be only about ten to fifteen seconds in which to make a positive identification and effect an arrest not an easy thing to do, especially if they are sitting in a car and probably armed.
'The second option is to arrest the team members once they're in the area of the square, but again this depends on advance warning and positive identification, and their all being together with the device. At the present time, therefore, we are going for the third option, and that's why we are all here.'
He took a sip of his tea and asked for the lights to come back on.
He looked around for each group as he talked.
'The Security Service will place surveillance teams to trigger the PIRA team into Gibraltar. The two soldiers who have just arrived from Northern Ireland' Euan caught my eye that was him and me 'must give positive IDs on the terrorists before the civil authorities will hand over the operation to the military. You two will not, repeat, not, conduct any arrest or contact action. You understand the reasons why?
The four men from your counterterrorist team will make a hard arrest only after they have planted the device.
'Once arrested,' Simmonds went on, 'they are to be handed over to the civil authorities. Of course, the normal protection will be given to the team from any court appearance.'
He managed a smile.
'I think that's enough, gentlemen.'
He looked at the commanding officer.
'Francis, I understand we fly to R.A.F Lyneham in ten minutes to link up with the Hercules?'
Just over three hours later I was sitting in a C-130 with Euan, who was busy worrying about a black mark on his new sneakers. Kev was checking the weapon bundles and ammunition and, more important as far as I was concerned, the medical packs. If I got dropped, I wanted fluid put into me as soon as possible.
We landed at about 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 3.
Gibraltar was still awake; lights were on everywhere. We moved off to the military area, where trucks were waiting with our advance party to get us away quickly and without fuss.
Our FOB--Field Operations Base--was in HMS Rooke, the Royal Navy shore base. We had requisitioned half a dozen rooms in the accommodation block and turned them into living space, with our own cooking area and ops room. Wires trailed everywhere, telephones were ringing, signalers ran around in track suits or jeans, testing radios and satellite communications links.
Over the din Simmonds said, 'Intelligence suggests there could be a third member of the team, probably its commander.
Her name is Mairead Farrell. We'll have pictures within the hour, but here's some background for you. She's a particularly nasty piece of work: middle class, thirty-one, ex-convent schoolgirl.'
He grinned, then told us more about her. She'd served ten years in prison for planting a bomb in the Conway Hotel, Belfast, in 1976, but as soon as she was released she reported straight back to PIRA for duty. There was a slight smile on his face as he explained that her lover, unbelievably named Brendan Burns, had blown himself up recently.
The meeting broke up, and a signaler came over and started handing out street maps.
'They've already been spotted up by Intelligence,' he said.
As we started to look at their handiwork he went on.
'The main routes from the border to the square are marked in detail, the rest of the town fairly well, and of the outlying areas, just major points.'
I looked at it. Fucking hell! There were about a hundred coordinates to learn before the ASU came over the border.
I didn't know what was tougher--the PIRA team or the homework.
'Any questions, lads?'
Kev said, 'Yeah, three. Where do we sleep, where's the toilet, and has somebody got some coffee on?'
In the morning, we picked up our weapons and ammunition and went onto the range. The four on the counterterrorism team had their own pistols. The ones Euan and I had were borrowed--our own were still in Derry. Not that it mattered much; people think that blokes in the SAS are very particular about their weapons, but we aren't. So long as you know that when you pull the trigger it will fire the first time and the rounds will hit the target you're aiming at, you're happy.
Once at the range, people did their own thing. The other four just wanted to know that their mags were working OK and that the pistols had no defects after being bundled up. We wanted to do the same, but also to find out the behavior of our new weapons at different ranges. After firing off all the mags in quick succession to make sure everything worked, we then fired at five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five yards. Good, slow, aimed shots, always aiming at the same point and checking where the rounds fell at each range. That way we knew where to aim at fifteen yards, for example, and that was at the top of the target's torso. Because of the distance, quite a lot for a pistol, the rounds would fall lower into the bottom of his chest and take him down. Every weapon is different, so it took an hour to be confident.
Once finished we didn't strip the weapons to clean them.
Why do that when we knew they worked perfectly? We just got a brush into the area that feeds the round into the barrel and got the carbon off.
Next job was getting on the ground to learn the spots system, at the same time checking our radios and finding out if there were any dead areas. We were still running around doing that when, at 2 p.m.' Alpha came up on the net.
'Hello, all stations, return to this location immediately.'
Simmonds was already in the briefing area when we arrived, looking like a man under pressure. Like the rest of us, he'd probably had very little sleep. There was two days' growth on his chin, and he was having a bad hair day. Something was definitely going on; there was a lot more noise and bustle from the machines and men in the background. He had about twenty bits of paper in his hand. The intelligence boys were giving him more as he talked, and they distributed copies of the rules of engagement to us. The operation, I saw, was now called Flavius.
'Just about an hour and a half ago,' he said, 'Savage and McCann passed through Immigration at Malaga airport.
They were on a flight from Paris. Farrell met them. We have no idea how she got there. The team is complete. There is just one little problem--the Spanish lost them as they got into a taxi. Triggers are now being placed on the border crossing as a precaution. I have no reason to believe that the attack will not take place as planned.'
He paused and looked at each of us in turn.
'I've just become aware of two very critical pieces of information. First, the players will not be using a blocking car to reserve a parking space in the target area. A blocking car would mean making two trips across the border, and the intelligence is that they're not prepared to take the risk. The PIRA vehicle, when it arrives, should therefore be perceived as the real thing.
'Second, the detonation of the bomb will be by a handheld remote control initiation device: they want to be sure that the bomb goes off at exactly the right moment. Remember, gentlemen, any one of the team, or all of them, could be in possession of that device. That bomb must not detonate.
There could be hundreds of lives at risk.'
