The best of the best?
So once the elite, (elite? Are you sure you’ve got this right? –Ed), hand-picked members of the computer industry had assembled, through no small amount of phone calls to explain that we were indeed at the dirty great big orange and white aircraft in the middle of the bloody huge airfield, each member was kitted out with black overalls, combat vest and side arm. The weapons we’d be using were just pistols as anything else in such a confined space as an aircraft would be useless. It’s all well and good having a the latest in military hardware that spits out 6,000 rounds a second, but if you can’t bring it to bear on the terrorist before he shoots you, it’s not much good, is it? No, pistols are the way forward as you can keep them close to your body and whip around to shoot at a target without snagging it on the headrest or the stewardess’ bouffant hair-do.
So once we were kitted out we were split into our teams of four ready for the training to begin for real. Now you’d be forgiven for thinking that an assault on an aircraft is simply a case of getting inside, shooting the bad guys and then trolling off for beers and pies. Sadly, you couldn’t be further from the truth. The first thing we learnt is that the terrorists have pretty much everything on their side, everything. Ok, so we know where they are, but they know where we are too… after that they have everything else on their side. Of course, you can say that being stuck on a plane is no great place to be, and you’d be right, but trying to get into one while guys with guns try and stop you is stupendously difficult.
John 'Mac' MacAleese, Ex-SAS and hard as nails, points out where the plane is...As we learnt as we were taken through the drills, the only advantage we have is that the hijackers can’t see much out of the plane and definitely can’t see anything behind the plane. There’s also a blind spot running all the way around the fuselage from underneath to about 4 feet out to the sides…. Even standing up and looking down out of the windows you still can’t see anything. So armed with that crucial blind patch to the rear, that 4 foot safety zone all around the edge we set about figuring out the best way in.
