Rafi held his breath.
Then the five minutes were up.
‘Go, go, go!’ came over the speakers. The troops swung into action.
On the screens Rafi could see the shadowy terrain over which the soldiers were navigating. Greg’s makeshift Ops Room was working well.
At Heysham, a squad of paratroopers were supporting a team of three SAS soldiers. The building had been under observation for the previous five hours. There was no sign of movement and no telltale infrared heat signatures to show where the terrorist was. It was a tall property, to one side of the industrial estate. It was being refurbished and sections were covered in tarpaulins. At the back of the flat roof there was a new scaffolding tower. The SAS soldiers inched forward, carefully checking for booby traps. Eventually the first soldier reached the bottom of the scaffolding tower. He gave a thumbs up sign and pointed to the top of the tower.
His signals were relayed back to the command centre, which briefed the Ops Room. It was then that Rafi heard, ‘Infrared shows the target to be lying on the scaffolding boards under the tarpaulins. He’s going to be seriously difficult to get at without giving our presence away.’
There was a flurry of movement in a number of the small frames on the screens as the units’ progress was fed back to the Ops Room.
The brigadier called out, ‘Terrorist located at the Hartlepool property. He’s under camouflage netting in the gully of the roof. He has a clear line of sight across to the nuclear power plant. The team on the ground is working out how best to tackle him.’
Rafi felt his hand being gently squeezed, as if to say, ‘We weren’t wrong!’
‘No sign of the terrorists at Cruden Bay, St Fergus or Peterhead,’ shouted Colonel Bill Turner.
‘No sign of the missiles or of terrorists at North Walsham, Bacton, Sizewell and Grays,’ added Colonel Gray, abruptly. ‘Wait! A Vektor mortar and twenty shells have just been found on a motorbike parked at the back of the industrial building at North Walsham.’
Colonel Bill Turner spoke. ‘An unattended utility van just over a mile from St Fergus has been investigated and a mortar with twenty shells has been recovered. No sign of the terrorist and nothing to report at Cruden Bay.’
The Air Chief Marshal called out, ‘They’ve located a mortar and twenty shells in the panniers of a BMW motorbike parked in an old container on the building site at Gosforth, near Sellafield.’
This was quickly followed by the brigadier. ‘A mortar and twenty shells have been uncovered at the Hull property.’
Rafi’s pulse was racing. He did a quick calculation: all four Vektor mortars had been recovered, two terrorists and their Kornet missile launchers were still unaccounted for… they were getting there. The smile on his face evaporated, as he realised that it was too soon to be complacent. If just one missile hit a nuclear target then it could be game over.
Rafi listened to the Air Chief Marshal being briefed. The SAS soldiers at Heysham couldn’t get at the terrorist on top of the scaffolding without alerting him to their presence. After a short conference, a decision was taken and a message went back. ‘Take him out. At all costs stop him firing a Kornet missile.’
The SAS assaulter at Heysham waited unmoving in the darkness. He had advised command that he couldn’t guarantee to immobilise the terrorist with his compact 9 mm sub-machine gun. The SAS snipers behind him also had no clear shot.
He waited for his orders and then moved forward silently. The scaffolding tower had four main legs. He approached the furthest pair, reached into one of the pockets of his assault vest and pulled out a couple of small packages – the special services own blend of plastic explosive – which were spot on for cutting structural supports. Without a sound, he expertly set the charges, then moved back to the other pair of legs and repeated the process. He heard a person moving above him. His pulse rate stayed steady. The terrorist had no line of sight to him and the SAS soldier knew that he’d been as stealthy as a summer breeze; silently, he backtracked around the corner of the building.
He gave the signal that he was clear of the detonation zone and waited for the order from command. When it came, he pressed the miniature magneto in his hand and felt the shock waves of the four explosions ripple through his body. Each of the tower’s legs was now missing a section. The tower remained motionless for a moment and then gravity took hold. The scaffolding wall ties had no chance of holding the load. The tower arced outwards from the building and crashed into the ground. The terrorist, who had been under the tarpaulin on the top, spilled out and did a dead cat bounce on the nearby grass. Three darkly clothed SAS men descended on him and stripped him of his weaponry. The Kornet missile launcher and three missiles lay on the ground close to him.
‘Beware of any remote controlled devices,’ barked the commanding SAS soldier.
In the Ops Room the capture of the Kornet launcher, its three missiles and the terrorist was greeted with cheers. The terrorist was still alive, but unconscious and looked to be in a bad state.
Suddenly, flames and dense billowing smoke erupted near to the Heysham nuclear power plant.
‘Oh, no!’ thought Rafi. Then he remembered it was the army at work, giving the impression that the terrorist attack had been successful.
Kate was still leaning against Rafi. She felt a release of pentup anxiety. She turned her head and looked into his eyes.
‘Your instincts were spot on. You’re a star.’
He felt the warmth of her body. ‘More like good teamwork,’ he replied, holding her gaze with a big grin.
Meanwhile, the brigadier had received confirmation that the terrorist at Hartlepool had a clear view of the nuclear power station. ‘Can he be safely taken out?’ he asked his opposite number in the command centre.
‘Yes, sir. a SAS sniper has outflanked him and has him in his sights.’
‘Do it. Just don’t risk him firing a missile.’
‘Yes, sir!’
A few moments later, confirmation came over the speaker. ‘Terrorist taken out.’
This was followed by the noise of a massive explosion at Hartlepool. The brigadier turned to Colonel Gray. ‘Crikey! The sappers have been busy – I wonder what they’ve found to blow up?’
Rafi watched the flames darting high into the air, followed by thick smoke engulfing the area around the nuclear power station. He looked across the screens. The army’s pyrotechnic skills were being shown off to great effect at Aldermaston, and now at Hartlepool and Heysham.
Daylight would reveal damage to a non-nuclear building at Aldermaston, a smoking zinc factory next to Hartlepool nuclear power station, and fire and smoke coming from the abandoned visitor centre on the perimeter of the nuclear compound at Heysham.
Rafi and Kate were on tenterhooks. Two terrorists with Kornets were still out there. The good news was that at least one of the likely targets – the oil pumping station at Cruden Bay -wasn’t nuclear, but what on earth was the other target?
‘Nothing to report on the three trawlers,’ called out Ewan.
There was a lull in the proceedings. Time ticked by slowly; the two missing terrorists were conspicuous by their absence.
Rafi and Kate hurried back to their office. They looked again through their paperwork, but still couldn’t find any clues as to where the missing location might be.
Rafi was worried. Had he let the side down and missed some-thing obvious which could have pointed them to the missing target? The very possibility haunted him.
The Air Chief Marshal took the PM, the Defence Secretary and the head of MI5 to one side. ‘I would like your permission to mobilise the entire military. We’ve passed the point of no return. I should have asked for this hours earlier. Unfortunately, at the time I was preoccupied with coordinating the limited resources we had available.’ He looked at the PM. ‘Sir, we have to have a cast-iron insurance policy in place should one of these damn missiles get through to something nuclear. Our ability to deal with a nuclear incident isn’t what it should be. We have two terrorists with Kornet missile launchers on the loose. Who knows if they now suspect that we’re on to them? We must prepare for the worst eventuality: a nuclear disaster.’