We really need to get back into the hangar to carry on with preparations for our mission, I think to myself, but it is hard to pull my eyes away from the sky. The time is 1025 hours and just as I decide to give myself another ten minutes, Josh nudges me to bring my attention to where he is pointing to, at the front of the swarm.
The lead Apaches have tilted forward and are now moving off at greater speed. And as they do, the ones behind them follow suit, tilting and picking up speed, to follow. The ripple flows down the waiting Apaches as the ones in front of them move off, so they tilt forward to pursue. The view could almost be a scene from Apocalypse Now, the swarm of helicopters flying off into the sun, but it would have been impossible for the budget of that film to produce anything like the scene we are witnessing now. It is on a totally different scale.
I count the Apaches as they go. Eleven lines of five have moved off and then the ones now in the air and still here revert to the holding pattern as previously. As I suspected, the Apaches are moving off in different squadrons so they can give air cover to the troops on the ground at their different insertion points into the city. The ones that have left and flown off were heading due North East, and that tells me they are heading towards the North of London, I expect the next squadron will go further East, more towards North West London, a shorter distance. This pattern will carry on until all the Apache squadrons are on their way to their designated rendezvous and I expect them all to arrive there at the same time, to coincide with the ground troops.
Deciding the ten minutes are up when the first squadron of Apaches is disappearing in the sky, I pull my eyes from the next squadron preparing to go.
“Okay people, let’s get moving; we have a mission to prepare for in less than five hours!” I shout over the din.
Everybody averts their eyes too and moves off to carry on with their tasks at hand, while the Special Forces men go to their vehicles to grab more of their kit. I, Dan, Josh and Alice head back towards the hangar, and it’s only then I notice Lieutenant Winters isn’t out here.
We find the Lieutenant sitting in front of a computer monitor inside the hangar, typing away at the computer’s keyboard and clicking its mouse. He seems to have several different tabs open on the screen but it doesn’t look like he has a feed of the unfolding mission up yet.
“Any luck?” I ask him.
“Not yet, the IT guys were supposed to have set these up ready, but as usual, they have done half a job, I’m just downloading a couple of programmes to get us on; give me ten minutes please, Captain,” the Lieutenant says, frustrated.
“No problem, you seem to know what you’re doing so I’ll leave you to it,” I say, teasing him.
“Thank you, Captain,” he replies, not rising to me in the slightest.
Behind the tables and the Lieutenant, leaning against the wall is a flip chart easel with a big A1-sized paper pad attached to the front of it. The Lieutenant seems to have thought of everything we are going to need for our mission.
“Josh, get the pad off that will you?” I ask, pointing.
Leaving the Lieutenant to play with his computer, I move down to the other end of the two long tables, where conveniently there is a new box of black markers sitting.
“You ready, Dan?” I ask.
“Always ready for some drawing and mission planning, Boss.”
While we wait for the feed to come through on the Lieutenant’s screen, Dan and I pick up from where we left off in the office. Under normal circumstances, a mission like the one we are about to carry out could take days or weeks to prepare for, if time allowed.
Firstly, every scrap of intelligence available would be studied over and over, which could include, maps, aerial reconnaissance, relevant reports and statements and interviews with anybody who might have intel, anything that might give us insight into the objective or an advantage.
Different options and methods to carry out the mission would be studied, before the final overall plan to successfully execute the mission objective was decided on. That plan would then be dissected piece by piece until every possible detail and scenario was understood and planned for, and every risk was identified and mitigated against. When that was done, we would do it again from the start, and again, until we were satisfied, we hadn’t missed anything, and all eventualities were accounted for.
A detailed plan then had to be drawn up for the mission, one everybody could clearly understand. This plan gives minute-by-minute, step-by-step detail of every aspect of what is required from every team member to carry out the mission. If the objective was in a building, for example, floor plans would be printed off or drawn up by hand, aerial pictures are blown up, timings listed, and so it went on and on.
This was all before rehearsals started. Again, if the objective was in a building, a life-sized model has been known to be constructed to practise and rehearse in, and if there wasn’t the time, then pallets and containers could be laid out to approximate the building’s floor plan. The team would then rehearse over and over, as many times as possible, the plan changed and honed whenever problems were identified, until every member of the team knew exactly what their task was, where and when they had to be at any given moment and what risks and threats might arise.
All this planning and rehearsing meant that when the mission was being executed, it was almost second nature to the team and that raises
