Malta Police Counter-Terrorism Squad

The Malta Police Counter-Terrorism Squad is a newly formed antiterrorist unit under Inspector George Zammit. Its members are keen and hardworking, but still inexperienced; training with Creasy exposes both the squad’s promise and the distance between enthusiasm and operational mastery. The unit also provides a setting in which Creasy’s own return to weapons and combat training becomes visible, and in which his experience turns from a private capability into instruction others can use.

Formation and Command

The squad enters the story through a discussion of an aircraft hijack attempt in West Germany. Joey Schembri has been reading a newspaper account of the intervention by a special antiterrorist squad, and Paul Schembri remarks that Malta has a squad of its own. Its commander is Paul’s nephew, George Zammit, an inspector of police. The account establishes the unit’s counterterrorism purpose and places it within the practical concern over hijacking, rather than presenting it as a large or long-established force.

The squad is described as recently formed and not yet experienced. Its fifteen members are nevertheless enthusiastic and hardworking, qualities apparent in the way they approach weapons practice and a full-scale assault exercise. George is a large, friendly policeman, but he also watches closely: when Creasy handles the unit’s weapons, George becomes thoughtful, recognizing a level of competence beyond what the squad’s own training has provided.

Training and Equipment

After learning about the unit, Creasy asks Paul whether George will allow him to train with the squad. Paul makes a phone call, and the arrangement is quickly made. The session takes place at St. Elmo, the old fort guarding the entrance to Grand Harbour. The squad uses weapons donated by the departing British Army, including Sterling submachine guns and a variety of handguns. A firing range lies in the depths of the fort, giving Creasy the chance to handle weapons again after a period away from that work.

The training is practical rather than ceremonial. After the firing range, the fifteen squad members and Creasy go to the gym to work out and practise unarmed combat. Creasy considers himself rusty and clumsy by his own standards, but expects that to improve over the coming weeks. The session therefore marks both an assessment of the unit and a stage in his own physical and technical reconditioning. George’s interest grows as he watches Creasy handle the weapons, and he later tells Paul that Creasy is the best weapons handler he has seen, despite having attended training courses in England and Italy.

George sees a potential use for that expertise. He tells Paul he would like to learn more about Creasy and suggests that the squad could use him as an instructor, very unofficially. The request reflects the unit’s shortage of instructors, but it remains a possibility rather than a formal appointment: the text records George’s interest and invitation to dinner, not a completed hiring or a settled training role.

Assault Exercise and Creasy’s Instruction

A later exercise gives the squad a chance to test its training in a simulated building assault. The scene first presents an armed squad member in camouflage, carrying grenades and a small transceiver on his chest webbing and holding a Sterling submachine gun. He sprints across open ground to a two-storey building, steadies himself at a stone wall, then moves around the corner toward a windowless corridor and stairs. Creasy is positioned at the foot of the stairs as the man advances through the building. The exercise lasts five minutes; the debrief lasts an hour.

George leads the debrief, praising and criticizing different parts of the operation, with Creasy beside him. When George invites comments, Creasy assesses almost every man in the squad. His observations are specific enough to expose individual errors as well as broader tactical habits. One man, Domi, had followed another into a room when he should have remained in the corridor covering two other doors. The squad laughs at Creasy’s joke about Domi’s romantic reputation, but the correction itself is operational: the assault team had doubled up where it was not needed and left other approaches uncovered.

Creasy also recognizes what the squad has done well. He approves of the method and direction of entry, the plan to drive a truck below the upper south windows, and the timing and realism of the diversion from the front. His main caution concerns reliance on transceivers. Useful during a stakeout, they can inhibit an assault force if members report every movement instead of acting on their training. He advises that the men should ignore the radios unless they become bogged down and should be allowed to react as individuals.

Significance and Planned Development

George is astonished by the range of Creasy’s observations and by the change in his manner while teaching. His usual reticence gives way to clear, incisive instruction, and the squad listens closely. The members have already seen his speed in changing an empty Sterling magazine, his confidence with handguns, submachine guns, and carbines, and his ability to strip and reassemble them. They have also practised unarmed combat with him and been struck by his speed and reflexes. Though older than the men, Creasy is regarded as someone who could defeat any of them in a serious fight. Their attention to his critique is thus grounded not only in what he says, but in the skill they have watched him demonstrate.

Creasy concludes that the squad has done well for a first exercise, particularly praising the speed of its initial assault and the men’s lack of hesitation once inside the building. George, pleased with the assessment, describes further plans: he has the building for a month, intends to hold two more exercises there, and says AirMalta will lend a Boeing for a simulated hijack assault the following week. These plans show the unit trying to extend its practice from a building-entry exercise to a more specialized counter-hijacking scenario; the narrative presents them as forthcoming exercises, not as events already completed. Through this training sequence, the squad functions as a measure of Creasy’s expertise and as a young unit whose initiative is real but whose methods can still be sharpened by experience.