At least he’d finally been given some outside help. Three casually dressed men had introduced themselves to him as envoys from the Ministry of Defence. Two carried military identity cards that gave their names as Sergeant Tom Croft and Major Hugh Gould, without specifying the unit to which they belonged. The third introduced himself as Andy Jenkins and said he was a civilian advisor.
Willie Holloway had no doubt at all that all three names were false. He had spent enough years working in oil-rich parts of the world that were a lot less pleasant than this corner of the Pembrokeshire coastline to know special forces when he saw them. And he wasn’t going to turn down their offer of help.
‘Delighted to be of assistance,’ said Rod Tyrrell after Holloway had shaken his hand. ‘Let’s take a look at a plan of this place. See how we can get through this without too much risk of total disaster.’
Carver said nothing. Until further notice he planned to keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth very firmly closed.
43
Carn Drum Farm
In London, the Metropolitan Police have a dedicated Counter Terrorism Command, designated SO15, which deals with threats to the capital city. The Dyfed-Powys police, however, are not so well-equipped to fight the forces of terror. Why should they be? Their patch, which covers a great swathe of south-western and central Wales, has one of the lowest crime-rates in the entire UK. Back in the seventies, outraged Welsh nationalists set fire to the occasional English-owned holiday cottage, but since then, the area has been notable for its lack of antisocial behaviour. So the slaughter at Carn Drum Farm was totally outside the experience of any of the officers who first attended the scene of the crime. They searched the entire property for bodies, but once it was clear that these were all confined to the farmhouse and its immediate surroundings, little attention was paid to the outbuildings, so no one initially realized what the inhabitants of the farm had been up to during their stay in the country. In any event, there was no one whose training or professional experience would have equipped them to detect an improvised bomb factory.
To make matters worse, the force, which includes Pembrokeshire, was already stretched to the limit providing officers to police the unscheduled, unplanned event at the Rosconway refinery. The Chief Constable and a number of senior officers had also decided to attend the event. So when reports of the terrible events at this isolated hill farm first started arriving at the force HQ in Carmarthen, their significance was by no means clear. Were the deaths the result of a burglary that had spiralled into deadly violence? Was this some kind of cult mass suicide? No one knew, and since it can take days, if not weeks, to process the results of forensic examinations of violent crime scenes, especially ones as complex and large-scale as this appeared to be, there was as yet no evidence at all to suggest any terrorist aspect to the crime.
Nor did Deirdre Bull’s warning cause any alarm bells to ring. When she begged the paramedic, ‘You’ve got to stop the attack!’ he just nodded reassuringly.
Then, as she slumped back on to her stretcher, he turned to a colleague and said, ‘Bit late for that.’ He naturally assumed she was referring to the attack on the farmhouse. What other attack could there possibly be?
44
Rosconway
Willie Holloway’s problem, as he explained to Tyrrell, Schultz and Carver, was that just when he had the greatest need for totally watertight security around the refinery, he actually had less capacity than usual to provide it. The four men were in Holloway’s office on the second floor of one of the bland, low-rise administrative blocks from which the plant was managed. A series of ground-floor conference rooms had been hurriedly commandeered to act as the working venues for the participants at the morning’s conference and the reporters who were covering the event.
‘Half my lads have become car park attendants,’ Holloway grumbled. ‘They’re all standing at the gates, checking IDs and getting everyone spaces.’
‘What about the local police?’ asked Tyrrell.
‘They’ve set up roadblocks. Nothing’s got closer than a mile to here since about eight this morning. As soon as it got light we were out patrolling the fields around the plant.’
‘So there is some kind of buffer-zone around the place?’
‘Sure. I’ll show you…’ Holloway walked to a wall of his office, on which was a large, framed Ordnance Survey map of the refinery and its surroundings. The plant had been sited on a headland. It was criss-crossed with streets whose names revealed the American origins of the refinery’s parent company: First, Second, Third and Fourth Avenues intersecting with Refinery Street, State Street and Ocean Drive.
‘As you can see,’ Holloway said, ‘almost two-thirds of the perimeter of the plant backs directly on to the sea, and we own all the land between the furthest storage tanks and the water. The coastline here is pretty rocky. There’s anywhere between thirty and fifty feet of cliff for most of the way around. I’ve got people patrolling the cliff tops, and there’s a couple of boats offshore, keeping an eye on things. Facing the other way, we’ve got all the land within around seven to eight hundred metres of the perimeter fence.’ He ran his finger around the limit of the refinery’s land. ‘Everything inside that line we searched earlier. If anyone’s there, all I can say is they’re bloody well hidden.’
For the first time since he’d arrived, Carver spoke: ‘But you didn’t patrol outside your actual property?’
Holloway gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Look, there’s a limit, you know? I’ve had this dumped on me from on high, and I’m doing the best I can.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shit!.. The VIPs are due here any minute, and I’ve got to make sure we’ve got everything ready. One of the ministers wants to make an opening statement to the media, and his people say he has to stand right by the distillation columns. They want powerful pictures for the TV. So can I leave you gentlemen to get on with, well… whatever you want to do?’
‘I think we’ll tag along, if that’s all right with you,’ Tyrrell said. ‘Come on, Sergeant… and Jenkins?’
‘Give me a minute,’ said Carver. ‘I just want to take another look at this map.’
He watched the others leave the room, then turned his attention back to the refinery layout, and the land around it. Why was Zorn making such an issue of energy terrorism? Did he know something no one else did — did he have advance warning, perhaps, of a planned outrage? ‘Well, then,’ Carver thought, running with the idea. ‘Suppose he were attacking a refinery — this one, for example — what would he do?’
One option was to come in from the sea. Carver could get past Holloway’s boat and foot patrols without too much trouble. He’d once beaten the combined forces of the US Coast Guard and Secret Service to attack the President’s seaside holiday compound. But then the target had been a single individual, not a giant industrial installation. So how much damage could he do here? There was a limit to the amount of explosive anyone could haul up a cliff-face. A few well-placed C4 charges would certainly make a hell of a bang, but they’d struggle to do the kind of serious, long-term damage that sent a message no one would be able to ignore. For that you’d need a lot more explosive, and that meant some form of transport, either by land or by air.