James Barrington - Overkill

‘What’s that?’ Richter asked.

‘It’s a computer-driven pre-flight check which exercises all the flight control surfaces in sequence, plus the intake control system,’ he replied. ‘Once it’s finished, the aircraft lets us know if it wants to fly or not.’

‘Really?’ Richter said. ‘Let’s hope it’s in a good mood.’

Reilly chuckled. ‘OK,’ he said, a couple of minutes or so later. ‘Systems check complete, we’re ready to roll. Remove your pins, please.’

As briefed by Peter Marnane, Richter extracted one safety pin from the ejection seat, arming it, and another from the MDC – miniature-detonating cord. This is a single filament cord which runs longitudinally down the centre of the canopy. In the event of an ejection, the cord detonates and blows a hole in the canopy to permit the ejection seat to pass through it.

‘Normally the navigator would input start position data into the navigation computer,’ Reilly said, ‘but Peter has already done that, and it really doesn’t matter much anyway, as Gibraltar’s a bit too big to miss.’

As the Tornado moved along the taxiway, Richter looked at the two screens in front of him. The one on the right was showing a track display, while the left exhibited a plan view of the intended route of the aircraft. At the end of the runway Reilly stopped the aircraft while he waited for take-off clearance, then turned the aircraft on to the runway and lined up. He ran the engines up to maximum cold power, holding the Tornado on the toe brakes, then engaged full afterburner and simultaneously released the brakes.

Just over ten seconds later, as the airspeed indicator reached one hundred and forty-five knots, Reilly rotated the aircraft ten degrees nose-up and they climbed away. Within another few seconds the Tornado’s speed had built sufficiently to allow him to disengage the afterburners, and the noise level dropped considerably. At three thousand feet he levelled out, turned the aircraft south, and instructed Richter to select three one seven decimal six megahertz on the UHF radio box beside his right thigh.

‘I’ll be off intercom for a couple of minutes,’ Reilly said. ‘I have to talk to Mazout Radar to advise them we’re now en route for Gibraltar and to get clearance to climb.’ A couple of minutes later the intercom crackled. ‘Back with you,’ he said. ‘We’re going up.’ The aircraft’s nose pitched higher and they continued the climb to twenty-three thousand feet and increased speed to five hundred knots, heading south in the deepening night.

North American Aerospace Defense Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

Construction of the Cheyenne Mountain base began in 1958, following the launch of Sputnik by the Russians, but the base did not become operational until 1966. Workmen used a million pounds weight of explosives and removed nearly seven hundred thousand tons of granite to create the four-and-a-half-acre site. The entrance is located about seven thousand feet above sea level, and leads into a tunnel fourteen hundred feet long. The tunnel cuts a curved path through the granite, and is designed to let the pressure wave from a nuclear detonation traverse its length. More or less in the centre of the tunnel, and parallel to the direction of any blast, are two immense steel doors, each over three feet thick and weighing twenty-five tons, fifty feet apart and set into concrete pillars. Behind these doors lies the NORAD complex; fifteen steel buildings, interconnected by steel walkways, and each resting on huge steel springs designed to resist the effects of shock waves. The complex is effectively self-contained. Electric power is provided by six diesel generators with fuel supplies for about thirty days. Drinking water, food and sleeping accommodation are all available on site.

On a normal day, Cheyenne Mountain is occupied by about eight hundred staff. When Brigadier-General Wayne Harmon had assumed the watch at two that afternoon, the staff tally list showed that twelve hundred and forty-three people were in the complex, either on duty or waiting to relieve duty staff. Harmon heard the murmured conversations of Air Force officers of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and the clipped, precise messages they were relaying over their radio and satellite links. NORAD had already passed alert and update messages to its worldwide network of early warning radar sites. These included Fylingdales in Yorkshire, England, Diyarbakir in Turkey, Shemya and Clear in Alaska, Thule in Greenland and the thirty-three sites of the Distance Early Warning system – the DEW line – the ageing warning stations that stretch across the entire width of the northern Canadian border.

General Harmon took a last look around the active suites, then turned and walked into his private office. He sat down in his leather swivel chair and loosened his tie. Despite the air conditioning it was hot, and it had already been a very long day.

Gibraltar

At eleven thirty-three local time the Tornado banked to port as Reilly turned left base leg. There was no view ahead, because the pilot’s seat completely obscured it, but out of the left-hand side of the cockpit Richter could see the lights of Gibraltar, with La Linea just to the north, the two complexes separated by the dark mass of the airfield, its landing and approach lights barely distinguishable at their present range. The Tornado was at four thousand feet over the Bahia de Algeciras, about two minutes from touchdown.

Five minutes later the whine of the engines stopped as Reilly applied the parking brake in the dispersal area they had been allocated. A C–130 Hercules was parked about a hundred yards away, so Richter assumed that the SAS had arrived. Richter replaced the seat and MDC pins, on Reilly’s instructions, then unstrapped, opened up the storage locker and grabbed the pistol and toolkit, and clambered out. The ground marshaller gestured towards a Sherpa van with ‘Air Traffic Control’ written on the side, and they walked over to it and climbed aboard.

Thursday

HMS Rooke , Gibraltar

‘Before we start I think we should just establish the ground rules, as it were,’ Richter said, looking across the Wardroom dining table at Dekker and the senior SAS officer, Major Ross. ‘My instructions in this matter are quite specific. We are to seize that vessel, and we are to disarm the weapon it carries. All other considerations are subordinate to that. If we encounter any resistance we are to overcome it using whatever force we consider necessary. That’s the official terminology. In real terms, it means that we shoot the bastards, starting with any sentries they’ve got posted and finishing with the ship’s cat. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Like crystal,’ Ross nodded.

‘Right, Major,’ Richter said, ‘where’s the Anton Kirov ?’

The ship was alongside the North Mole, which made the approach easy. If it had been at anchor in the bay or alongside the Detached Mole – an elongated hyphen almost linking the encircling concrete arms of the North and South Moles – they’d have needed boats.

Ross considered two different attack strategies. ‘As I see it we have only two choices,’ he said. ‘Either we try a diversion – a fire or something on or near the Mole – which might allow us to get aboard undetected or we go for a straight frontal assault. Let me clarify that – a quiet straight front assault. Colin – your recommendations?’

‘I agree about the two options, but I don’t favour a diversion,’ Dekker said. ‘It would either involve additional personnel who might get in the firing line, and who we haven’t got anyway, or we would have to use some of our troopers which would deplete the number available for the assault. And diversions tend to attract attention. I wouldn’t want to wake up the entire crew of the Anton Kirov to watch a bonfire on the Mole, say, on the doubtful grounds that while they’re watching that they aren’t going to be watching out for us.’