“Lovely.
All three present knew of the
“Sorry to break up the party, but let’s get the briefing under way,” said Lyndhurst.
He and Preston mounted the stairs to the upper office, where they met Brigadier Cripps, the major in charge of operations, Chief Superintendent Low, and the SAS intelligence collators. Preston spent an hour giving as thorough a briefing as he could, and the atmosphere grew extremely grave.
“Have you any proof there’s a nuclear device in there?” asked Low at length.
“No, sir. We intercepted a component in Glasgow destined for delivery to someone working under cover in this country. The backroom boys say it could have no other use in this world. We know the man in that house is a Soviet illegal—he was made on the streets of Damascus by the Mossad. His associations with the secret transmitter in Chesterfield confirms what he is. So I am left with deductions.
“If the component taken in Glasgow was not for the construction of a small nuclear device inside Britain, then what the hell was it for? On that, I come up with no other feasible explanation. As to Ross, unless there are two major covert operations being mounted in Britain by the KGB, that component was destined for him. Q.E.D.”
“Yes,” said Brigadier Cripps, “I think we have to go with it. We have to assume it’s there. If it’s not, we’ll have to talk to friend Ross rather earnestly.”
Chief Superintendent Low was having a private nightmare. He had to accept the fact that there was no other way but storming the house. What he was trying to envisage was the condition of Ipswich if the device went off. “Couldn’t we evacuate?” he asked, with little hope.
“He’d notice,” said Preston flatly. “I think if he knows he’s ruined, he’ll take us all with him.”
The soldiers nodded. They knew that, deep inside Soviet Russia, they would have done the same.
The lunch hour was gone and no one had noticed. Food would have been superfluous.
The afternoon was spent in reconnaissance and preparation.
Steve Bilbow went back to the airport with the photographer and a policeman. The three took the Scout in one single run down the estuary of the Orwell, well away from The Hayes but on a course from which they could keep it in view. The policeman pointed out the house; the photographer ran off fifty stills while Steve took a long pan-shot on video for screening in the holding area.
The entire assault team, still in civilian clothes, went with the police to see the empty house that had been built by the same architects to the same plans as the one on Cherryhayes Close. By the time they got back to the holding area, they could see the stronghold on video and in close-up still pictures.
They spent the rest of the afternoon inside the holding area, practicing with the mock-up that the policemen had helped build, under SAS supervision, on the warehouse floor.
It was a hurried construction, with canvas “walls” dividing the “rooms,” but its dimensions were perfect, and it showed up one overriding factor: space inside the house was very limited. It had a narrow front door, a narrow hall, a cramped stairway, and small rooms.
To the eternal grief of the four who were left out, Captain Lyndhurst decided to use only six assaulters. There would also be three snipers—two in the Adrians’ upstairs front bedroom and one on the hill overlooking the back garden.
The rear of 12 Cherryhayes Close would be covered by two of Lyndhurst’s six assaulters. They would be in full combat gear but their uniforms would be covered by civilian raincoats. They would be driven in an unmarked police car to Brackenhayes Close. Here they would disembark and, without asking permission of the householders, would walk through the front garden of the house that backed onto the stronghold, down the side path between house and garage, and into the back garden. Here they would strip off the raincoats, hop over the garden fence, and take up position in the back garden of the stronghold.
“There may be a trip wire in the garden,” warned Lyndhurst. “But probably close to the rear of the house itself. Stand well back. On the signal, I want one stun grenade straight through the window of the rear bedroom and another through the kitchen window. Then unclip the HKs and hold position. Do not fire into the house; Steve and the lads will be coming in the front.”
The rear-access men nodded. Captain Lyndhurst knew that he would not be in the assault. Formerly a lieutenant in the King’s Dragoon Guards, he was on his first tour with the SAS and held captain’s rank because the SAS have no officers under that grade. He would revert to lieutenant on return to his parent regiment in a year, though he hoped to come back to the SAS later as a squadron commander.
He also knew the tradition of the SAS, which is at variance with the convention for the rest of the Army: officers participate in combat in desert or jungle but never in an urban environment. Only NCOs and troopers carry out such assaults.
The main attack, Lyndhurst had agreed with his CO and the operations officer, would be via the front. A van would draw up quietly and four assaulters would step out. Two would take the front door, one carrying the Wingmaster, the other wielding a seven-pound sledgehammer and/or bolt cutters if necessary.
The instant the door came down, the assault front rank—Steve Bilbow and a corporal—would go in. The door squad would drop their Wingmaster and hammer, rip their HKs off their chests, and enter the hallway as backup for the first pair.
On entering the hallway, Steve would step straight past the stairs to the door to the sitting room on his left. The corporal would race up the stairs to take the front bedroom.
Of the backup men, one would follow the corporal up the stairs in case Chummy was in the bathroom, and the other would follow Steve into the sitting room.
The signal for the two men in the back garden to hurl their stun grenades into the two rear rooms, kitchen and back bedroom, would be the crash of the Wingmaster at the front.
By the time entry had been made, therefore, anyone in the kitchen or back bedroom should be reeling around, wondering what had hit him.
Preston, who had volunteered to return to the observation post, was allowed to listen to the details of the assault.
He already knew that the SAS was the only regiment in the British Army allowed to choose its weaponry from a worldwide menu. For close assault they had selected the German Heckler and Koch short-barreled nine- millimeter rapid-fire submachine gun—
light, easy to handle, and very reliable, with an up-and-over folding stock.
They habitually wore the HK—loaded and cocked—slantwise across the chest; it was held in place by two spring-clips. This left their arms free for opening doors, entering through windows, or throwing stun grenades. When the weapon was needed, a single jerk brought the HK off the chest and into operation in less than half a second.
Practice had shown that to get through doors, it was faster to blast off both hinges rather than take the lock. For this purpose they favored the Remington Wingmaster pump-action repeater shotgun, but with solid heads rather than buckshot in the cartridges.
Apart from these playthings, one of the door squad would need a hammer and bolt cutters in case the door, having lost its hinges, was held on the other side by several bolts and a chain. They also carried stun grenades, designed to blind temporarily by their flash and deafen by their crack, but not to kill. Lastly, each man would have a thirteen-shot nine-millimeter Browning automatic on his hip.
In the assault, Lyndhurst stressed, timing was of the essence. For the hour of the attack he had chosen 9:45 p.m., when dusk would be deep in the Close but it would not yet be darkest night.
Lyndhurst himself would be in the Adrians’ house across the way, watching the target house and in radio contact with the van bearing his assaulters. Thus he could monitor the approach of the team. If there were a pedestrian moving down the Close at 9:44, Lyndhurst could tell the van driver to hold until the passerby had cleared the door of the stronghold to be assaulted. The police car bringing the two rear-garden men to position would be on the same wavelength, and would drop those two men ninety seconds before the front door came down.
Lyndhurst planned one last refinement. As the assault van cruised up the Close, he would telephone Ross from the Adrians’ house across the road. He already knew that the phone in each of these houses was kept on a small table in the hallway. The ploy was to distance the Soviet agent from his bomb, wherever it was, and to give
