Andy McNab: Zero hour

The photographs did the most damage. They showed the complex at various stages of construction since 2002. The main building looked like a tree-house on stilts, with pipes leading into a pumping station on the banks of the Euphrates. It was going to need a lot of water to create fissile material. As the building grew, it sprouted concrete piers and roofs, which could only have one function – to camouflage the place from above. Al-Kibar's core design, they could now prove, was the same as North Korea's Yongbyon reactor, even down to the number of holes for fuel rods.

The clincher was a photo that showed an Asian guy in blue tracksuit trousers standing next to one of the Arabs who'd been working there all the time. The Brits quickly identified the Asian as Chon Chibu. He was the chief engineer behind the North Koreans' plutonium reactor at Yongbyon.

The Israelis were wetting themselves with this int, but it still wasn't enough for the US. Washington thought it would be years before the Syrians were capable of producing a bomb. They could be fucked up without the US getting drawn into another war.

Things might have stayed that way had not a high-ranking Iranian decided to switch sides. General Ali-Reza Asgari was a massive catch. Head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon in the eighties, he'd become Iran's deputy defence minister in the mid-nineties. His fall from grace had come after the election victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. Asgari had branded several of those close to the new president as corrupt. He was living on borrowed time.

The Iranian general was an intelligence goldmine. He confirmed that Tehran was building a second, secret, plant in addition to the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, already known to the West. And that Iran was funding a top-secret nuclear project in Syria, launched in co-operation with the North Koreans.

Finally, the US had to sit up and take notice. The UK would be standing shoulder to shoulder with them, and sharing blood. That blood, of course, was going to be mine if I fucked up. From swanky executive suites in Kensington to high-profile defectors larging it in Washington, the operation had now come down to Cody munching doughnuts in Nevada, and me sitting in a dingy hotel room checking my watch.

In exactly fourteen minutes, a bright flash would light up the night in the distant desert, followed by the sound of thunder that would signal Armageddon.

I plugged the laptop into the wall socket, let it sort itself out, and unfurled the umbrella. I extended the handle, pulled off the small plastic knob at the end and lifted the cap beneath it to reveal a USB slot. I placed what was now a satellite dish on the floor by the open window.

Six floors below me, giggly Brits headed back to the hotel against the hum of traffic. Long fluorescent tubes dangled outside a line of shops to show off the goods on display. Above me hung a huge blanket of stars. In the middle distance, between the stars and the city, lay the inky blackness where the desert took over. Out there somewhere, oblivious to what was on its way, was al-Kibar.

The 200mm zoom lens was much heavier than the others. It housed a lithium battery that could power the device on its own or become an instant backup if the local grid cut out. I ran a lead from it into the USB slot in the top of the umbrella. Another USB wire ran from the camera to the laptop. Its screen was now displaying thumbnails of the hundreds of pictures I'd been taking to make my cover story stand up.

I hit the blue circle icon to open the programme.

'This is Cody Zero One. Ra'am are airborne – Ra'am are airborne. Acknowledge.'

'Roger that, Cody Zero One. Ra'am airborne.'

I checked my G-Shock: 23.26. I fired up my countdown display. GCHQ had pre-set it at eighteen minutes.

The F-15s had taken off from Ramat David Air Base, just south of Haifa on the Mediterranean coast. It was also near Megiddo, which, according to Baltasar and the Book of Revelation, would be one of the sites of the final battle between good and evil. That seemed appropriate. The attack on al-Kibar was certainly going to be Biblical.

Ten fast jets would take part in the initial attack, though only seven would be coming my way. For now all ten headed west, out into the Mediterranean. It was a decoy manoeuvre. Both the Turks and the Syrians would be tracking them. Everybody wants to know what the Israelis are up to 24/7 in this part of the world.

The screen displayed an empty bar chart. The Tefalheads at GCHQ who'd put this together must have realized that I needed everything to be as simple as possible. I turned off the lights and picked up the umbrella so that the inside and the shaft pointed out of the window. I moved it up and down and side to side until the bar chart was about three-quarters full of green. It was the best I could do and all that was needed.

I propped the umbrella on a chair and anchored it across the handle with my pillow.

'This is Cody Zero One. Ra'am first wave ready to go active.'

I adjusted the dish. 'Roger that, Cody Zero One. I am seven-five, seventy-five per cent. Over.'

'Roger that, James Zero Two. Seven-fiver. Good to go. Stand by.'

Someone somewhere counted down Ra'am's first wave on a radio. It was slow, guttural and very Israeli. 'Five – four – three – two – one – go, go, go.'

'This is Cody Zero One. Ra'am first wave active. Acknowledge.'

'Roger that, Cody Zero One. I'm still seven-fiver.'

Three of the ten F-15s had peeled off and headed east-north-east towards the Syrian border. They were going to attack the radar site at Tall al-Abuad with their Maverick missiles and 500-pounders. The moment that happened, the stakes would be raised. Every unit near the border would hear what was going on, and the Syrian military would start flapping big-time.

All I could do now was listen as Cody gave the running commentary. I needed a picture in my head of what was happening. So did the other guy listening in. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, was taking personal responsibility for the Ra'am part of this attack. I was sure his surroundings were a little more comfortable than mine.

'This is Cody Zero One. Ten seconds to contact.'

I counted them down on my second-hand.

'First attack – ordnance deployed. Contact, contact, contact. Second attack…'

There was a pause.

Cody was waiting for the Mavericks from the second wave to deploy as he watched the target on his screens. He'd be looking for the splashes all over the night-vision thermal imagery as bombs and missiles hit the radar installation.

'Ordnance deployed. Contact, contact, contact. Third attack…'

Another pause, shorter this time.

'Weapons deployed.' For Cody, it would have been like watching a video game. 'Contact, contact, contact.'

That was the radar defences fucked up.

'Ra'am second wave now active… James Zero Two, acknowledge.'

'Roger that, Cody Zero One. I still have seven-fiver.'

The seven remaining F-15s were now screaming towards the Syrian border to break through the secure corridor that had been opened by the attack. From the moment they hit Syrian air space, it was exactly eighteen minutes to target.

Cody couldn't help himself now. There was excitement in his voice. 'Ra'am second wave – now in the combat box. James Zero Two, all yours – acknowledge.'

'Roger that, Cody Zero One.'

I hit my countdown timer. My eyes were glued to the screen. I wasn't sure what to do if the bar percentage dropped. Fuck about with the umbrella, I supposed.

The F-15s would be virtually hugging the ground to avoid being illuminated. Now the border had been attacked, ground-to-air missile systems would be searching the sky. They wouldn't know what the fuck was going on, but they'd know there had been an attack on their air defences, and that meant there was going to be an air incursion. But what type? Jets? Ground troops? A combination? There'd be nothing for them to latch onto just yet, but Ra'am couldn't hug the desert for ever. They were going to have to gain height in excess of 8,000 feet in order to assume their attack profiles. That was where I came in: if I didn't fuck up the Russian-made Tor-M1 and Pechora-A2 surface-to-air missiles that were protecting al-Kibar, they were going to fuck up Ra'am, and it really would be Armageddon.