John Carr. James Deegan
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In all the confusion, it was well over forty kilometres from the Spanish coast by the time the Grupo Especial de Operaciones Eurocopter EC120 Colibri lifted off in pursuit.
But the two pilots put the aircraft nose down and flew flat out, the single Turbomeca engine straining to throw out its 504 shaft-horsepower, and they had the speeding Lucky Lady in sight on their on-board camera well inside twenty minutes, and in visual contact not long afterward.
Two kilometres out, the two GEO snipers aboard leaned out of the helicopter on harnesses and trained the scopes of their AMP DSR-1 .338 rifles on the streamlined yacht.
The officer on the left hand side, an oficial de policía, had the clearest view.
‘I can see two armed men on the rear deck,’ he shouted, into his collar microphone. ‘Three women are standing in front of them, hands on their heads.’
‘Roger that,’ said his colleague, a subinspector. ‘I’ll take the right, you take the left.’ Half a minute later, and a kilometre closer, he said, ‘Do you have a shot?’
He already knew the answer.
Both men were highly skilled, and their rifles, chambered for the Lapua Magnum cartridge, were effective out to 1,500 metres.
In theory.
At this distance, in a speeding helicopter caught in the up and down thermals of the Mediterranean, with the targets contained on a small rear deck, under an overhanging roof, on a boat crashing through waves, with civilians in the foreground…
‘No way.’
The second sniper leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. ‘We need to get a lot closer,’ he shouted. ‘We can’t take any kind of shot at this range.’
The pilot nodded and pressed on.
Six hundred metres out, one of the men on the deck lifted his AK47 and started shooting.
It was nothing more than a gesture – an AK is useless at that range – but it made the pilot think again.
He slowed the helicopter to fifty knots, so that it was simply keeping pace with the yacht.
‘Go on!’ shouted the sniper on the left hand side. ‘They can’t hit us from here. I need to get closer.’
Again, the pilot nodded and tilted the helicopter forwards.
Both snipers were now leaning well out of the aircraft, trying to get their sights on the centre mass of their targets.
The left-hand marksman shook his head in frustration and hauled himself back inside.
‘This is no good,’ he shouted, to his colleague. ‘I can’t maintain the target in the scope. I’m going to try with the 41.’
He stowed his AMP, unclipped his Heckler & Koch G41 assault rifle, and leaned back out.
Way outside the effective range of the weapon, but he could at least keep the iron sights on the group and maintain better situational awareness.
‘Closer!’ he said.
In response, the pilot dipped the chopper slightly, to gain on the terrorists.
At which point, one of them vanished inside the boat.
‘One of them just went below,’ said the co-pilot.
‘Seen,’ said the pilot.
‘Keep going!’ shouted the left-hand sniper.
What happened next happened very quickly.
The Lucky Lady suddenly slowed, meaning that the helicopter shot forwards relative to the boat.
Both snipers temporarily lost her, as the controlling pilot throttled back, lifting the nose to avoid getting within 7.62mm range.
At the same moment, the terrorist who had gone below now reappeared, carrying something long and black in his right hand.
In one smooth motion, he hefted it onto his shoulder, braced his feet, and looked up.
‘Oh, shit,’ said the pilot, instinctively breaking right, away from the contact.
Unfortunately, the manoeuvre simply made the roaring engine – and its heat signature – more visible to the missile’s infra-red sensors.
Below him, out of the pilot’s eyeline, there was a flash, and the Russian-made 9K38 Igla MANPAD released its projectile.
The pilot had pushed the Eurocopter hard right and down, desperately trying to throw the SAM off, but, with no countermeasure capability on the aircraft, they were dead and he knew it.
The missile detonated a little over a second after being fired, igniting the 280 litres of avgas still in the tanks and turning the front of the aircraft into an inferno.
As the disintegrating helicopter started to spin and descend, the snipers could hear the pilots screaming over their headsets.
The left-hand man unbuckled himself and leaped out, breaking his legs and back when he hit the water two hundred feet below, and knocking himself out.
He drowned shortly afterwards.
The other three men lived only until the aircraft itself smacked into the surface and exploded.
By which time, the Lucky Lady was already back up to top speed, and powering south through the choppy Mediterranean Sea.
THE LOSS OF THE Cuerpo Nacional de Policía helicopter was not immediately confirmed, but there is only one obvious reason why such an aircraft might have both suddenly dropped below the radar horizon and lost radio contact, and the controllers in Seville were immediately alarmed.
They made contact with the amphibious assault ship SPS Juan Carlos I, which had a section of marines aboard a long-range NH Industries NH90 some twenty minutes away and closing in on the Lucky Lady, and asked for a local SITREP.
In London, Justin Nicholls and the rest of the MI6 leadership watched the situation develop.
The Policía chopper had disappeared at 14:24hrs BST, and repeated radio messages had gone unanswered.
At 14:40hrs, the Juan Carlos aircraft arrived at its last known location and reported debris and at least one body in the sea.
It then departed in pursuit of the yacht, which was by now some thirty-five kilometres off the coast of Morocco.
The Royal Navy of Morocco, meanwhile, had a French-built VCSM fast boat and a Floréal-class frigate, the Hassan II, out on exercise to the east. After liaising with the Spanish, those craft were now steaming west to try to intercept the terrorists. The Hassan had had its Panther helicopter up, but the ship’s captain now recalled it, understandably wary of letting it get within shooting distance of the yacht, which was heading at maximum speed towards Morocco’s northern coast.
‘What’s their game?’ murmured C. ‘They must know they’re going to be caught.’
‘They don’t care, do they?’ said the head of the Spanish desk. ‘They’re hoping to ram something and go out in a blaze of glory.’
‘So why go to the trouble of taking hostages?’ said Justin Nicholls. ‘Why not just kill them on the beach?’
AT THE VERY moment Nicholls said that, the Lucky Lady slowed temporarily to thirty knots, and Argun Shishani and the man in the Manchester United shirt pushed the three women – all roped together and wearing flotation jackets – into the water, and jumped off after them.
All five of them got ears and