Braver Men Walk Away Page 10

  Inevitably, the weakest part of the helmet is the visor. Though made of ⅜ of an inch thick Plexiglas, flying debris and bomb fragments can penetrate it. The bomb jacket is stronger, but it will stop fragments and mitigate blast effects only up to a certain distance from a bomb. After that – depending on the size and nature of the device – there is no protection: the explosion will either maim or kill you.

  The closing of the helmet’s visor is like the shutting of a door on the familiar, everyday world. One moment you are there, at the cordon, aware of the sounds and sights all around, the next you’re in an altogether different environment, a place where you can only see straight ahead, and can only hear muffled noises from the world beyond. The sense of isolation is acute. Like the underwater diver, the loudest noise is your own respiration.

  And so you begin the long walk. As you draw nearer to the bomb or suspect device, thoughts begin to churn: every step brings with it a new set of possibilities and considerations.

  You find yourself calculating the effects of an explosion, subconsciously mapping out imaginary boundary lines between zones of relative safety, medium risk, high risk and probable fatality. But the zones are pure guesswork, because unless you’re certain of the size of the bomb, everything is speculative. In truth, you can never know the precise nature of the threat until you are on top of the bomb – at which point there’s no sense in bothering anyway; if it goes off then you’ll be dead within milliseconds.

  With each step you inwardly compute such factors as probable poundage, environmental conditions, weather and distance from the bomb. As each invisible boundary line passes underfoot, you find yourself thinking about degree of body damage, about survivability; 100 yards, 75 yards, 50 yards … as the distance diminishes between you and the bomb so the likelihood of multiple injury increases.

  In many ways, this is the worst time: to be close enough to a bomb to be maimed but too far away to be killed is the most deeply-rooted horror of all. You know what a bomb can do, how its blast can blind and deafen and tear away human limbs. To me, death is infinitely preferable to being stretchered away to hospital there to awaken in a permanent darkness knowing only that I will never walk, hear or see again. Far better to be at the bomb when it explodes, to exit this life quickly, cleanly.

  But these are not the only thoughts which clamour in the silence and the isolation. Even whilst one part of your mind is calmly and dispassionately undertaking risk assessment, another part is calculating and re-calculating angle of approach, endeavouring to map out the safest line of attack. You know what is going through your mind – but what was in the mind of the bomb-maker and the bomber? Is all as it seems, or does a secret trap await?

  All the time the gap is narrowing, with every step another zone is navigated, another invisible boundary line is crossed.

  Finally, you are there and it is as if a whole section of circuitry shuts down. It is too late to speculate. Now there is only the bomb, and every last thought process is directed to it. Two options exist: either you will beat the bomb, or it will beat you.

  You stop, compose yourself, steady your breathing. Taking stock of the bomb’s size, shape, location and possible intended target, you gather all the information the bomb will yield up without touching it. You make the decision on your line of attack …

  The devices were side by side on top of the rubbish in the half-filled dustbin outside the Greek Embassy. I switched on my torch to illuminate the dustbin’s interior.

  If they weren’t bombs then they were certainly fair imitations: what seemed to be home-made explosive was connected by a tangle of wires to a detonator and some kind of timer, a type I hadn’t seen before: small, circular, made from moulded plastic and capable of fitting easily into a pocket or the palm of one’s hand. The fact that nothing had happened when embassy security moved the devices didn’t mean things would stay that way if I did the same. Better to deal with them in situ; being hunched over a dustbin might be uncomfortable but it was infinitely preferable to being blown up.

  I rechecked the external details of design and construction and worked out the most likely configuration of the circuitry. Gripping the torch between my teeth, I stooped down over the dustbin and set to work with Stanley knife and wire-cutters.

  Somebody once said that the first cut is always the deepest. A bomb disposal operative could also have added that the first cut is sometimes the last. In 1969, before the advent of portable X-ray machines and remote-controlled mini-robots, equipment was elementary: hardware was a pair of hands, knife, and cutters; software, a brain. Not only did the brain have to command the body’s motor functions, it also had to think its way into the mind of a stranger – the bomb-maker.

  Was that person skilled or amateurish? Was the bomb as simple as it looked or more complex? Alternatively, was an apparent complexity merely a way of causing confusion and delay?

  You had to look, and think, and think again because what was at your fingertips was as much an expression of a stranger’s personality as an expression of that stranger’s purpose. It was warped, certainly; but just how warped? And just how cunning? All of which meant you couldn’t go cutting the nearest wire without thinking everything through: get it right, and the device would soon be rendered safe; get it wrong, and there would be no second chance to contend with the likeliest cause – the collapsing circuit.

  With such a circuit, current is fed from the battery to a relay – an electromagnetically operated switch. If you cut the wire that provides power to the electromagnet, the magnet will cease to function. The instant that happens, the magnetic field will collapse, and this causes the relay to close. With the relay in the closed position, the current will now flow directly to the detonator, where it is converted into heat, causing the small explosive charge in the detonator to ignite and then detonate. The shock wave from the detonator will blast into the main explosive charge, causing instant decomposition. This will set up a shock wave that will flash through at supersonic speed, exciting the individual molecules of the explosive which then release super-hot gases and immense energy.

  Sometimes a bomb will have more than one collapsing circuit (the IRA was later to come up with a device which actually had seven). Sometimes the wire itself will cause problems: cutting a co-axial or a twin lay-flat can lead to a shorting-out which also initiates detonation. Even when a wire is single strand it can still be deadly: if you don’t take care to keep it well out of the way after cutting, it can drop down and short out against the casing, thus allowing the current to pass through to the detonator (on at least one occasion a bomb disposal man was killed by inadvertent mishandling of a cut wire).

  Whatever the cause, collapsing circuit or shorting out, the resulting sequence of events occurs in milliseconds and is entirely unstoppable.

  Hunkered down over the dustbin, my jaw and mouth throbbing from the strain of holding the torch, I gripped the wire between the cutters and squeezed. A few moments later I heard the ticking of the timer.

  The significance of the Greek Embassy bombing only became apparent when the bomber was brought to trial. Guilt wasn’t in doubt, nor purpose: the attack was politically motivated. There was, however, a dispute about what had happened. The defence said that the bomber had not set the devices and so they were quite harmless; the prosecution said that the bomber had set them because the explosives disposal operative at the scene had heard a ticking noise.

  Defence Counsel confronted me in the witness box and handed over one of the unfamiliar-looking timers.

  ‘Mr Gurney. You said in your earlier evidence that you’d heard a ticking sound. Presumably it was emanating from this timer?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I heard it soon after I’d cut the wire.’

  ‘But the defendant says he never set the timer. So how d’you account for that?’

  ‘The timer definitely made a noise. It was a … metallic sound. A high-speed ticking.’

  ‘I see.’ Counsel paused. ‘The timer – if you hold it in fron
t of you, would you say it’s about as far from your ears as it was on that night?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘So you can hear it ticking now?’

  I strained to listen. Finally: ‘No, sir.’

  Counsel smiled. ‘I can assure you, Mr Gurney, the timer is definitely set. And yet you say you cannot hear anything.’ Another pause. ‘This Courtroom, is it as quiet as the location which you were at on the eleventh of December 1969?’

  ‘I would think so, sir.’

  ‘You would think so.’ Counsel paused again. ‘It’s no noisier here than it was outside the embassy yet you can’t hear any … ticking sound.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Mr Gurney. The fact is, this type of timer does not make a clearly audible ticking when it is set. More to the point, it did not and could not have made any noise at all on the night in question … because the defendant had not set it.’ A brief though eloquent pause. ‘Whatever you might have heard, Mr Gurney, it was certainly not the ticking of a timer.’

  The silence ran on between us. Eventually, and with the utmost politeness, Counsel reached for the exhibit. ‘May I?’

  I leaned forwards and handed it to him. At that same instant it burst into life – a high-speed ticking … noisy, metallic. ‘That’s what I heard!’ It was an effort to keep still. ‘That’s the noise I heard.’ The sound continued. Across the Courtroom, the jury heard it too.

  This timer was to become increasingly popular with motorists. It served as a reminder: you parked your vehicle at a metered bay, set the timer according to how many hours or minutes you’d bought on the parking meter, then went off about your business. Safely in your pocket, it would alert you to the fact that time had run out by emitting a noisy and metallic high-speed ticking.

  I had not seen this unit before the night of 11 December 1969 and therefore hadn’t known that, had I not cut the wire only a few moments before, the ticking would have been instantly followed by an explosion. The timer’s name was to become very familiar to me and many others because the Memo-Park Timer and the IRA were later inseparable.

  In 1970 Hounslow dealt with 3,200 CMD calls, ranging from a single item to 15 tons. Our involvement with matters criminal rather than civil increased as a reflection of the increase in the politics of violence. IED calls mounted, thanks to the activities of Black September, the Palestinian terrorists, and the anarchist Angry Brigade.

  The Metropolitan Police had decided to build an impressive new police station at Paddington Green, and huge hoardings testifying to its construction were erected around the building site. You couldn’t miss what was going on – nor could the Angry Brigade.

  At around midday on 22 May 1970 a site worker almost tripped over a small newspaper-wrapped package. Assuming that one of his colleagues had misplaced his lunchtime sandwiches, he picked up the package, shouted to his friend, and tossed the package across to him. His mate unwrapped the newspaper and found a bomb.

  I was called to the scene and briefed by a Met liaison officer who asked if I could preserve as much as possible of the device for forensic evidence. ‘If you can sort of stun it first,’ said the liaison man, ‘we’ll be able to go in close. Get some shots. Afterwards you can do whatever’s necessary.’

  I examined the bomb. It had already unwittingly been thrown around; after that kind of treatment it was likely to be more delicate than ever. I knew I’d be able to disconnect part of the circuit and render the timer inoperative, but that would only make the device safe enough to be photographed. As I emphasized to everyone at the scene, a ‘stunned’ bomb is still a bomb: it must not be touched until I’d made it totally safe.

  It was a good day to be outdoors. Sunlight sparkled on concrete and steel and warmed the soft brown earth. I finished the preliminary work, straightened up and motioned the Met photographer to join me. He was carrying a large-format camera, accessories and a tripod.

  ‘I’ll take some overhead shots,’ he said. ‘That all right?’

  ‘So long as you don’t touch it, yes.’

  He extended the tripod’s legs; slowly, carefully, I positioned it in such a way that the anchor plate was directly above the bomb. He attached the camera to the plate, satisfied himself that the tripod was secure, inverted the pan/tilt anchor, and centred the viewfinder on the bomb. He took two photographs and then paused to adjust the lens before resuming. ‘Right,’ he said, frowning slightly. ‘That about does it from that angle.’

  I glanced at him, then back to the bomb. At this stage of the proceedings my gaze had to stay locked on the device. ‘Anything wrong?’ I asked him.

  ‘It’s the light. I don’t want to throw the thing into shadow by standing in the wrong place. And I don’t want lens flare, either. If you look where the sun is you’ll see that–’

  But I was still looking at the bomb and the overhead camera and the tripod – and the tripod legs that had suddenly assumed a life of their own. Slowly, progressively, they were splaying outwards under the heavy weight of the camera. Slowly, progressively, the camera was dropping down on to the bomb.

  I launched myself forwards in a kind of sprawling dive, grabbed at the camera and tripod and pulled them away. I finished up flat out on the earth, a couple of yards from the bomb.

  The photographer stared open-mouthed, then moved to my side. His face bore an expression of enormous relief. ‘Thank God you caught it in time,’ he said, reaching for his camera. ‘These Hasselblads cost a bloody fortune.’

  Around this time we were experimenting with a new aid to EOD work: a portable X-ray machine. Though it was still wise to think yourself into the bomber’s mind, having something to hand which could actually look inside a device was going to make life a lot safer.

  We had a Swedish-made ScanRay unit on test. It weighed only marginally less than a hospital’s entire X-ray suite. X-rays taken by the unit were developed separately, which meant we resembled a sort of travelling film crew going out on location.

  We were always anxious to try out the unit in as many different conditions and on as many objects as possible, so when a call came in from a museum in Colchester we loaded up and headed off to Essex. This time, it was not munitions but mummy trouble.

  The mummy was 2,000 years old and still wearing its original outfit. The curator had decided that the mummy was due for the equivalent of a 2,000-year oil change. Its wrappings were beginning to come apart and, as mummies went, it was no longer in first-class burial chamber condition. Could we, enquired the curator, X-ray it to see if the embalmed body was wearing any jewellery? Well, of course, we could; the nice thing about mummies was that though they could go off, they didn’t do so with a loud bang. Deterioration was preferable any day to detonation.

  We moved in close with the ScanRay and X-rayed the mummy from every angle, then took the exposed film plates to our hi-tech mobile laboratory (the back of a truck) and laboriously developed each picture. They were impressive: from head to foot every detail was clear. Of jewellery, though, there was no sign.

  The following week another EOD call came in. A blind three-inch mortar had been unearthed in a town-centre location; traffic was stacking up and if the situation couldn’t be speedily resolved there’d be chaos.

  I made it to the scene as quickly as possible, taking the ScanRay equipment and fresh film plates for further trials: the machine would hopefully give me a pretty good idea of the condition and content of the bomb – drill filling or high explosive – and that would determine whether or not I could safely move it to a less inconvenient area for disposal.

  It was a day when everything went well. Not only did the ScanRay function as intended, a nearby hospital was able to process the plates far more quickly than I could: it seemed I’d hardly arrived before the X-ray staff had finished the job and had the plates pinned up on a back-lit display for inspection.

  ‘Pretty good,’ said the radiographer, as he walked slowly along, studying each image in turn. I thought so too as I trailed after him, inspecti
ng the results of my handiwork. Then, ‘What on earth is this?’

  He was staring at the final shot, brow furrowing with incomprehension. ‘I don’t understand …’

  Nor did I. The X-ray showed the mortar and something else, a strange mixture of substance and shadow, rigid white structures of varying thickness coming down then radiating out around and above the bomb’s upper casing. Bits of curling whiteness were also dotted about the image.

  The radiographer leaned closer to the wall. He spoke very slowly. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken,’ he said, ‘that’s a metatarsal.’ Disbelief gave a rising inflection to his voice. He jabbed at the image with his finger as though to better confirm its existence. ‘A metatarsal …’

  Oh Gawd, I thought. The last time I’d seen an image like this, I’d been poring over it in the company of the museum curator at Colchester. This last X-ray must have been accidentally omitted when we processed the batch. As a result, the plate had gone back into stock, become mixed up with the new film, brought to the EOD scene – and then been inadvertently used by me.

  Instead of taking a single picture, I’d actually managed a most artistic double exposure of a fairly modern mortar and a very ancient mummy’s foot.

  I turned to the radiographer. He was staring at me with the kind of look which medical people reserve for the dangerously irresponsible or downright deranged.

  ‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ he said, ‘that when this X-ray was taken you were actually standing on the bomb?’

  I hesitated. This was going to require an awful lot of explaining.

  X-ray machines were to prove essential in the fight against terrorism. A few airports, but by no means all, had X-ray scanners in 1970; only later were they to become as essential as a runway. But they were not (and are still not) a hundred per cent effective against terror in the skies. On 21 February 1970 two aeroplanes were targets for bombs: an Austrian Airlines jet which managed to land safely despite extensive damage, and a Swissair jet which blew up high above Switzerland with the loss of everyone on board. It was obvious that some new and very elaborate precautions were going to be needed.