Poole, Dorset
Stirling groaned as the face of his mobile phone flashed on and off and buzzed and rattled next to him. He picked it up and the backlit screen read three forty-five, and heard the icy December wind and rain batter away at the windows.
“Captain Hunt,” he answered.
“Oh, thank God,” came the voice down the line. “Alright boss? It’s Spinks.”
“How are you, Sergeant Major? How can I help?” Stirling said and rubbed the sand from his eye with his palm.
“I’ve just had a gypsies from Northwood. We’re getting stood to.”
The line was quiet.
“You alright Spinks?”
Stirling sensed the weight of the news becoming evident to the Regimental Sergeant Major.
“What’s the Op?”
“Not a hundred percent sure yet. We’re on a raid.”
“Bloody hell, the day before Christmas. Most of the blokes are in the sand or on leave … you couldn’t make it up, Spinks.”
“You’re one of the only ones left on camp …”
“You know me, I can’t get enough of the place,” Stirling said dryly.
The truth was that even if he had wanted to get off camp, he had no family to spend Christmas with. And flying back to Zimbabwe wasn’t an option for counter-terrorist specialists on a short notice to move period. He heard Spinks grunt.
“And, I’m supposed to be deploying to Afghan in a few days,” Stirling said.
“Too right,” Spinks said, “I’m to corral as many of the scroungers as we can get. We’ll need an intelligence briefing and a set of Battle Orders.”
“When are we going?” Stirling asked.
“Tonight,” the RSM replied.
“I’ll get on it. Don’t worry Spinks, I’ll take care of it. Where are you?”
“Heading to headquarters now.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you there.”
Stirling hung up and switched on the light. His first thought was to get over to the Headquarters and start getting the boys back from Christmas stand down. One thing they had drilled over and over were phantom call-ins. The Special Boat Service (SBS) always rushed the men back to base for mock counter-terrorism operations. Something was different this time though, this was no training exercise.
Stirling punched the code into the Regimental Headquarters building.
He yanked at the door, but it clattered and shook, and didn’t open. The wind was icy and gusting and water rained down as the gutters overflowed. He punched the numbers again and this time the door swung open. He bounded up the stairs two at a time and went straight to the kitchen. He flicked the kettle on and the Company Sergeant Major came in just behind him. Spinks wiped himself down and shook out his working dress waterproof jacket.
“Brew?” Stirling asked.
“You read my mind,” Spinks said.
Spinks rubbed his hand back and forth though his thinning blonde hair and shook the water out of it. Stirling handed him a steaming cup. He respected Spinks. He was lean, his eyes darted around with a knowing intensity and his body moved the same way, every action done for effect. The CSM was a Londoner, used to bellowing on the Parade Square in his earlier years, and he knew how to use the force of his voice to get his own way, when required. The kind of man who could make you laugh, and then ask you to go over-the-top, and you’d do it with a smile on your face.
Where Spinks went, men followed.
“I’ve just got off a call with COBRA,” Spinks said. “It’s not a phantom call-in. We need to get a warning order out. The boys need to prep.”
“What’s the mission?”
“We’ve been warned off for a Direct Action Assault. There is a tanker charging up the English Channel as we speak, and they think it is full of terrorists and potentially a bomb.”
“Holy shit,” Stirling said. He felt his heart rate increase and his mouth went dry.
He was excited.
He took another sip of his tea and tried to look calm in front of the CSM. Spinks just grinned at him. Must not be hiding it too well, Stirling thought.
“What kind of bomb?” Stirling asked.
Spinks paused and swallowed.
“They reckon chemical or biological.”
Stirling raised his eyebrows.
“Where is it heading?”
“East London. It’s also full of sugar,” Spinks said.
“Isn’t the Tetley factory in east London?”
Spinks nodded.
“Just as sharp as a razor, Hunt,” Spinks winked, “exactly right.”
Spinks looked at him.
“What?” The CSM asked, “you look like someone just shat in your bed.”
Stirling swallowed hard and put his cup down.
“What’s the matter?” Spinks said, uneasy.
“Sugar is a natural explosive Spinks.”
The CSM shook his head, not fully understanding.
“Did you ever hear that army prank, in the Officers’ Mess, where they throw a bag of flour into someone’s room while they are asleep?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Spinks said.
“Well, they chuck in a bag of flour, the thing bursts and throws up this fine dust, and then they chuck in a flashbang and shut the door.”
“Idiots,” Spinks said.
“The primary charge - the flashbang - explodes, and then the flour ignites and explodes again. A secondary. Blows out the windows, poor sleeping bugger has his hair and eyebrows blown off. They’ve set fire to more than one mess that way.”
“So what’re you saying?”
“Look, I’ll show you.”
Stirling poured out a thick coating of sugar on the counter.
“So, imagine we are in an enclosed space,” he said, and smacked his had down hard on the counter top. The sugar and dust bounced, and some of it floated in the air. He banged it again.
“Okay, I see it.”
“Well, imagine we lit a match right now. If we saw it in slow motion, what we would actually see is, instead of a single instantaneous burst, is actually a series of chain reactions, as each dust particle lights the next one. So the primary charge is the match, which unsettles all the sugar particles, and that causes the secondary explosion and it happens in quick, quick succession. But, the secondary blast is much more powerful; kind of like ‘boom-KABOOM!” Stirling clapped his hands and Spinks jumped.
“Fuck me,” he said, “maybe I should have paid more attention in science class.”
“How much sugar is it carrying?” Stirling asked.
Spinks puffed his cheeks and exhaled and shook his head.
“Thirty-thousand tons,” Spinks said.
“Enough to blanket the whole of London in the stuff …”