"The Increment"

The Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, apparently mentioned a cell made up of operators from 22 SAS and the SBS that was known as "The Increment"; they are or were the best of SAS/SBS soldiers, that are selected and sent specifically on SIS-controlled missions such as would have been the case in Richard Tomlinson's accusation that MI6 had made assassination scenarios for Slobodan Milosevic. It is not known if they are a permanent unit or whether they are only activated for specialist operations.

According to a 1998 letter drafted by former MI5 agent Richard Tomlinson, he claimed the existence of the unit and of a written plan to use The Increment to assassinate Milosevic:

"The remainder of the document proposed three methods to assassinate Milosevic. The first method was to train and equip a Serbian paramilitary opposition group to assassinate Milosevic in Serbia. Fishwick argued that this method would have the advantage of deniability, but the disadvantage that control of the operation would be low and the chances of success unpredictable. The second method was to use the Increment (a small cell of the SAS and SBS which is especially selected and trained to carry out operations exclusively for MI5/MI6) to infiltrate Serbia and attack Milosevic either with a bomb or sniper ambush. Fishwick argued that this would plan would be the most reliable, but would be undeniable if it went wrong. Fishwicks third proposal was to kill Milosevic in a staged car crash, possibly during one of his visits to the ICFY (International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia) in Geneva, Switzerland. Fishwick even provided a suggestion about how this could be done, such as by disorientating Milosevic's chauffeur using a blinding strobe light as the cavalcade passed through one of Geneva's motorway tunnels."

THE INCREMENT, CHRIS RYAN - Published by Century (2004) £16.99 ISBN: 1844133834

It is a long, hot summer and the country is suffering an epidemic of road rage. What isn't making the news headlines, though, is that the SAS's secret assassination squad, the Increment, is killing ex-soldiers. These two strands of violence become ever more tightly intertwined as Matt is drawn into an adventure that takes him to Russia and ends explosively in the UK.

'Hard as nails' Mirror