Zero Option

'He won't see anything at all. First, we'll do it at night. Second, when we hit the meat wagon, our opening move is to fill the back of it with CS gas.

That'll disable him and the guards as well.'

'How do we get into it?'

'We whack a hole out of the side. Power-saw with a carbon fibre blade.'

'OK.' Tony scribbled in his notebook. 'I'm making a list. We're gonna need CS, a saw, breathing kit for ourselves… What else?'

'Two cars. We'll draw a couple from the training pool at Llangwern — something pretty-fast and beefy.

Some kind of a hefty van for the intercept itself.'

'How many guys on the team?'

'Two drivers, and at least three others: two to handle

Farrell, one spare in case someone gets hurt.'

'How do you pick the team?'

'As I said, I'd like to stick to the Ostrich crowd — if the head-shed will let us. So it's us two, Whinger and Stew. That'll be the core. We need one more really.

Maybe Yorky can spare someone.'

Tony got up and walked around. 'How are we going to control Farrell?'

'Handcuffs. We keep him cuffed to one of us all the time.'

'Two pairs,' said Tony as he wrote. 'Whenever you change his guard, you want him linked to the new guy before the old one lets go. And a chain: when you're hitched to a guy, you need room to manoeuvre.'

'OK,' I agreed. 'Two pairs and a chain. Next thing.

He'll be cuffed to a screw in the van before we get to him. So we need bolt shears as well. And a hood to put on him.'

'And what happens when we've got him?'

'We drive him to a safe house and get in touch with the Pll?i to set up a rendezvous, where we exchange him for the hostages.'

'What safe house?'

'The legiment owns several — holiday cottages, mostly. Some of them belong to former members.

Tucked-away places where a guy can thin out for a while if he has to disappear.'

'Are there any available right now? I mean, it's holiday season. They could all be full.'

'There'll have to be one. We can probably find something in the Welsh mountains.'

'How about bugging Farrell's clothes?'

'He'll be in prison uniform when we get him. So it'll make sense to have a set of civilian clothes for him to change into. We'll get a belt and some shoes doctored up.'

'In that case we need to get his sizes. I'll make a note of that too.'

We tried to plan timings, but it was practically impossible without knowing how the PItLA would react to the news that their man was out of custody — or rather, out of giol. I reckoned we should stage the exchange of prisoners as soon as possible after we'd lifted Farrell, to cut down the chance of him escaping or anything else going wrong. The best scenario I could see was that we'd get our hands on Farrell on Friday night, pass word to the PI1LA immediately, and set up the exchange for Saturday. But that was only our programme. Given the way the terrorists were inclined to piss about, there was no guarantee they would get their act together in time.

'I don't know where they'll propose,' I said. 'They'll assume our lift is going to take place somewhere close to Birmingham. But if they're in London, as we think, they'll probably opt for a handover rendezvous somewhere around the capital.'

'Who are we supposed to be? The other members of the team.' Tony asked.

'Friends of mine. The rest can be former members of the Regiment, but you — well, you're just an American pal, over here on holiday. You'll be a positive help in the deception, because Farrell won't connect an American with the SAS.'

'What's my profession, then?'

'Peanut farmer.'

'Thanks, pal. I'll write that down too.'

Tony grinned before going on. 'Our clothes…'

'What about them?'

'Got to be civilian.'

'That's right. And no weapons showing. No covert radios or other specialist gear. Whatever back-up we have has got to be well out of sight.'

After a salad in the sergeants' mess I was back at the CO's office for one o'clock — and from the look of suppressed excitement on his face I could see that we were in business.

'Bit of luck,' he began.

'What's happened?'

'I don't know whether you'd call it lateral thinking or lateral influence or what, but outside events seem to be working to our advantage. This came in from Special Branch this morning.' He picked up a sheet of fax paper and held it off the desk with both hands. At first I thought he was going to give it to me, but it seemed that he preferred to paraphrase its contents. 'Through an intercept, SB have got wind of PItkA plans for a high- level political assassination in London. They believe the target's the Prime Minister himself.'

'Charming!' I muttered. 'They're aiming high.'

'They are. The man SB overheard on the phone was talking about a special weapon they've brought over to do the shoot.'

'Not that rifle they were using in Armagh?'

'The very one. A Barrett Light Fifty — at least, we assume that's what it is. A five-oh, anyway.'

'Jesus! One hell of a weapon. That means they're planning a long-range shoot.'

'Exactly,' the CO agreed. 'That puts the police on the spot. They're organised for close-quarter protection, but they can't occupy every building in line of sight every time the Prime Minister goes somewhere.'

'No.' I thought for a moment, then said, 'What's that got to do with us?'

'Nothing directly.' The CO pushed his chair back.

'Except that SB believes the crowd they overheard are the same lot as the ones holding your people — the West London ASU. The thought is that if Plan Zulu goes ahead, you may get in among them and break up the cell.'

'You mean we can go ahead?' I nearly jumped off my chair.

The Boss gave-me a beady look and nodded his head.

'You want to watch yourself. The Director is not chuffed with you.'

'What's wrong?'

'He's had to spend the morning at an emergency meeting in the COBI, liaising with Downing Street, the Home Office and Scotland Yard. That meant he couldn't clear other things off his desk, and he reckons you've buggered his weekend.'

I thought of the big fat brigadier, huffing and puffing in the Cabinet Office Briefing loom, the underground sanctum in Central London which is activated to deal with major emergencies… but I didn't feel too sorry for him.

'Mind you,' the CO added, 'if you smash the West London ASU I think he'll forgive you. The security forces have been trying to bust the organisation for years, and haven't managed it. They've made a number of arrests, but never got the key players.'

'All right then,' I said thoughtfully. 'What we're going to do is set a fucking great trap, and let the PIRA walk into it.'

When I asked Yorky for someone to replace Norm on the team, he promise.d to have a quick think; but before he came back to me I had an idea of my own. Living in Hereford having recently retired from the Pegiment was a guy called 'Doughnut' Dyson,“ formerly of D Squadron. He'd had a job BG'ing some Arab sheikh, but at the moment he was out of work. I suddenly realised he would be ideal. For one thing, he was older than the rest of us, and looked it; for another, he really was ex-SAS, and if necessary could prove it by talking about his BG work. He'd add credibility to my claim that my team was a private army. Further, Doughnut was a hefty guy, and I foresaw that weight and muscle would come in handy when we were dragging Farrell around.

Doughnut was a larger version of Pat — dark, straight hair, rosy cheeks — powerfully built and into weights, but nippy with it. He was quick-minded too: when I rang him at home to brief him he picked up the situation in a flash. Above all he was cheerful, the sort of guy who fits easily into any team and is a pleasure to have around.

His real name was Eric, but he had once made the mistake of appearing for a rugby trial in a cream- colouredjersey with a red blob in the middle. He never wore the damn thing again, but from that moment he was Doughnut.