Soldier Spy

by Tom Marcus

  Unzipping my overalls, I start pissing on him. I’ve not been to the toilet in hours so it’s coming out in force, first on his legs then his upper body, to the drunken cheers of my new-found friends.

  ‘Get fucked, you twat! You’re all gonna die!’

  He staggers to his feet and runs off, bleeding heavily, as I turn to the crowd bursting at the doorway to get out of the pub. I raise the cash up: ‘Let’s get drunk.’

  On the way back towards my stool, I get endless nods of acknowledgement, of acceptance and encouragement. I hand the money to the landlord, who has now replaced his son, who’s obviously gone into hiding, and people line up to get a free drink courtesy of the copper I’d just turned over.

  Living my cover, I start examining the phone I’ve stolen, banging it on the side. I need to send a text message to Base; they need to find out who this guy with the Shanker is. We all memorize the number in case of emergencies. I pretend I can’t get it to work as I type a brief message:

  From 06 tgt with tall slim well-dressed UIDM 6’2-6’4 – need housing.

  Hopefully the Operations Centre will send out a message to the team outside and they’ll be ready to follow him after the meeting.

  Pressing ‘Send’, I play the part as I wait for the status bar to complete. Come on, hurry up and send!

  ‘Message Sent’ icon on the screen. I throw the phone into a pint pot half full of stale beer, destroying the evidence. ‘Piece of shit doesn’t fucking work!’

  ‘You hate those cunts, then? They’ll come after you, you know.’

  The landlord brings me over another whiskey as a thank you without actually saying so.

  I drink the glass’s watered-down contents in one go and wipe the beard around my mouth.

  ‘Maybe I’ll get my kids back. Fucking bitch ran off with one of those pigs. All they do is arrest innocent people. They want to go after these Paki twats stealing all our jobs.’

  I’d just tuned up a copper, so being a drunk racist complemented my cover. It fitted my profile perfectly.

  Continuing to ignore the meeting, I notice the zip on my coveralls is still undone. It doesn’t shock me, what I’ve just done; no adrenaline come-down, no remorse. Have I gone a step too far this time? No, I saved his life. This place would have killed him if I hadn’t stepped in.

  I know I have to get out of here now, though; can’t risk getting caught up in a mass arrest when the police riot vans turn up because one of their own has just been attacked. Nodding towards the landlord, I lean over the bar to talk to him, using my stool as elevation.

  ‘Mate, is there another way out of here? If I get lifted again, I’ll go down for pure time.’

  Using my newly found alliance is a great way to make sure that if I need to I can return to this community again; you always want to keep that door open. I’ve been over-exposed to the targets here, but that could prove an advantage later down the line. Right now, though, I need to clear the area.

  The landlord signals me round the back and lifts the bar hatch for me to go through. I walk past the targets, still deep in conversation; I notice the man with the Shanker passing him a piece of paper with a name and what looks like an IP address.

  WHITLOCK 186.69.145.197

  I don’t have a photographic memory, unfortunately, but just like the Emily elephant story back in Thames House I make up a visual extreme story out of it as I walk behind the bar to the rear fire exit by the pub’s bins: ‘Massive dagger covered in blood stabbing a woman with massive tits who was swinging two golf clubs at a meat hook.’ The Shanker’s bodyguards don’t give me a second look; they are uneasy and know they have to get him and the well-dressed man out of here. It shows how good their operational security is when they’re thinking the same way as me, or is it that I am thinking the same way as them?

  Running the numbers through my head, I leave the pub and walk straight towards the main road, the landlord shutting the door behind me. I notice more teenagers at key transport areas, obviously looking out for police, who are no doubt mobilizing to come and find the heartless thug who attacked one of their own. Me.

  Past the bookies, I make it to my van. I’ve been drinking all day, but need to get out of here. Into the driver’s seat and lock the doors. I slide my coveralls off. I need to switch my radio on to listen to the chatter through the car comms.

  ‘Base, Zero Six now complete, Charlie Nine.’

  Hopefully the team will also acknowledge and they will take control of the well-dressed man with the Shanker. We need to know where he goes so we can identify him. I know Charlie Five had the entrance to the pub so they should get imagery of him walking out, if nothing else.

  ‘Zero Six, withdraw. Debrief tomorrow 0900hrs, Base OUT.’

  What? I stared at the radio hoping for an explanation. When the Operations Centre end their transmission with ‘OUT’ it means nothing further is to be said or discussed.

  Bollocks to that, I need to make sure we found out who the Shanker was with. ‘Base, Zero Six. Did you get my message regarding the target contact needing housing?’

  ‘Zero Six, WITHDRAW IMMEDIATELY, Base OUT.’

  Still looking at the radio, painter’s coveralls down round my ankles.

  ‘Prick!’ I mutter as I use my feet to drag my coveralls off. I throw them into the passenger footwell. I drive out of the area steadily, keeping an eye on my speed, listening in hope that I will hear some sort of chatter. Twenty minutes go by as I drive south out of Scotland.

  Nothing, not even a no-change or security check to make sure everyone on the ground is OK. I have to assume they all pulled off. Why? Why would they pull off from something as massive as this? A brand-new contact potentially supporting one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in Europe was massive. Was this because of what I did to that young plain-clothes police officer? No way: our operational priority would supersede any charges of attempted murder and once they knew I was saving his life it would all be recognized as the right thing to do to protect him.

  First services on the M6 motorway, I pull in. It’s getting dark. I walk into the toilets. Standing at the urinals, I can smell the booze oozing out of me. I need to sober up. I must eat a lot and drink water to try to flush my system for a few hours before I hit the road again. A change of profile would be a good idea too.

  The great thing about service stations in the UK is they have everything you need. Clothes, food, phones; you can even buy a camp bed, for fuck’s sake! A red check lumberjack shirt, white T-shirt and blue baseball cap will dramatically change my profile if anyone is looking for me. The chances are no-one is, but I’ve always lived by the same principle: a covert operator operates for life. Throwing some sandwiches, crisps, muffins and pastries on top of my new clothes, I find the basket gets heavy when I top it all off with three bottles of water.

  Sitting on the corner of a huge seating area, pulling the price tags off the clothes, I think about the job today. I had to take that copper out: they were going to kill him. Doing it any other way would have got us both killed and the Shanker would have gone underground instantly. We needed to find out who this guy at the meeting was.

  I have to pass the IP address and the name WHITLOCK on to the Operations Centre at the debrief tomorrow. Stuff like that you usually need to relay immediately, but the fact that they essentially told me to go off grid until tomorrow means I have to keep it to myself for now.

  A few hours pass as I trough my way through the synthetic service station food and make my way to the van. I need to get home and get some sleep, ready for the debrief tomorrow.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the morning I was sitting in the debrief room waiting for the rest of the team. Usually this place was a hive of activity, people getting spare batteries for their radios, getting target information, but that day it was silent apart from the odd admin support shuffling papers in the adjacent office.

  Eventually the frosted glass doors swung open and in walked the branch director. I’d onl
y ever met this guy once, when I officially joined MI5 from the military. This can’t be good.

  ‘Boss,’ I said.

  I went to stand up and shake his hand, try to defuse any arse-kicking I was about to get.

  ‘Don’t bother standing, this won’t take long.’

  Feeling like I was about to have my arse handed to me, I sat very still and waited for the director to talk. To look at him you wouldn’t guess he was a senior figure in MI5 with a serious shot at becoming the director general of the service in the next five to ten years; he was short, very thin and quietly spoken. ‘Right, the police officer yesterday. Explain,’ he said.

  ‘They were going to kill him. Two locals directed by the CIRA counter-surveillance team working for the Shanker saw the plain-clothes police officer enter the pub. I saw them pull out two butterfly knives and believed they were about to kill him. If I hadn’t done what I did he would have been dead.’

  The director wasn’t taking notes, he was listening but he’d already made his mind up what he was about to say.

  ‘OK, I wouldn’t have done what you did but I understand why you did it. We do, however, have a problem here.’

  I couldn’t contain myself any more and stopped him in mid-sentence. I needed to know if we had found any information about the well-dressed man with the IRA commander. ‘Did we house the contact with the Shanker? He was–’

  ‘Don’t interrupt me again! Forget the contact – you were filmed pissing on a member of Strathclyde Police! That pub was being used to launder money for a Russian gang, YOU were caught and now Special Branch are looking for YOU.’

  ‘Boss …’

  He wasn’t having any of my reasoning here. I was about to get a message and there was no way I could twist this to my advantage.

  ‘You went too far. Your team don’t trust you. You’ve got real potential but you’ve got to remember where you are and what we do. The service has a proud history, and despite your experience with us in Northern Ireland, we can still sack you if you fuck up.’

  Sitting back in my chair, I looked away from the director, who was leaning forward as he gave me this bollocking. I was fucking fuming, but couldn’t help wonder if I really had gone too far. I saved this guy’s life, that’s all that mattered.

  ‘The copper, how is he?’ I asked.

  The director sat back in his chair with a sigh as if to say he’d been talking about this constantly since last night and had no sleep. ‘Fractured eye socket, superficial bruising. Probably going to spend the next few months having some mental therapy or whatever.’

  Hearing that didn’t make me feel bad for him, actually I was pleased he wasn’t more seriously hurt. Trying to look remorseful, I turned back to the director as he continued, his posture now more friendly.

  ‘Listen, when your handler brought you in all those years ago from the military he assured me you would be a great asset. You are unique, but you’ve done things I struggle to defend.’

  I was going to get sacked here, I knew it. What the fuck would I do if I didn’t do this? I couldn’t handle the nine to five, all that social media soap opera bollocks. I didn’t fit into that mould of the masses; the service needed me as much as I needed the service.

  ‘Your team is back on for a job in Wolverhampton tomorrow evening, and before then you’ve got to reassure the other operators you can be trusted. I’ve kept you out of the shit so far, but I can’t do it any more. This police officer was my last favour to you.’

  As he walked out of the debriefing room I felt like I’d been let down by the very team I thought had my back. Didn’t trust ME? I couldn’t understand why my ‘team’ was acting like this. I saved that copper’s life. That’s all I do, protect this country and save lives. I badly needed to get to the gym and work this off before I took it out on someone.

  Cold grey block-work surrounded the battered free weights, punch bag and the creased blue mats on the dusty floor. As I swiped my pass against yet another locked door to gain entry, the strip lighting flickered into life; the gym was empty. Thank God, as I could feel my anger starting to spill out of me.

  Walking straight over to the heavy canvas punch bag, I didn’t bother putting the gloves on. I stretched out my left hand, running my fingers down the bag as if I was hunting for the weaknesses in its filling. Where could I cause maximum amounts of damage quickly? I was humanizing this inanimate object. This bag was going to pay for the dressing-down I’d just had from the director.

  I wasn’t the best boxer, nor did I hold any martial arts belts. I was no Bruce Lee ninja. I was, however, dirty and relentless. Our unarmed combat training is conducted by United Kingdom Special Forces, usually the SAS in Hereford. The instructor notably called me a ‘vicious little cunt’, which, coming from a member of the most formidable Special Forces unit in the world, might have been a compliment, or might not.

  I was always the ‘demo guy’. The person who the instructor used to demonstrate how to take someone out. I got the feeling that was because he wanted to knock me down a peg or two and teach me a lesson in humility. Control is key when you’re fighting for your life: you need to be able to go from standing still to kill in a second.

  Turning the aggression off to develop the ability to handle the adrenaline is a skill in itself. I suppose over the years I’ve also maybe lost the sense of knowing when enough is enough. If a target can get up when you’ve put them down, you run the risk of having to put them down again. Men in particular have a lot of weak points: testicles, throat and eyes being really easy spots to hit hard continuously, to allow you to then concentrate on the vitals like ribs, kidneys and the base of the skull.

  What most people struggle with when fighting – real fighting, not your typical drunken pub brawl – is breathing. The last thing you want to happen as an undercover operator is to end up on the floor with someone who is trying to kill you. Ideally you put them down to allow you to escape. But that could take anything from a few seconds to a minute. You need to remember to breathe, to allow yourself to think and feed your muscles. The more controlled your breathing, the better chance you have of thinking about your surroundings.

  Speed is key, and Krav Maga is very typical of the fighting style we use. Multiple quick strikes. I’d been destroying the weaknesses in this punching bag for at least five minutes now, not thinking, reacting to the way the bag moved, exploiting the next weakness. Taking a break, I stood over the water fountain, drinking the slightly stale water. I noticed that the metal bowl was filling slowly with my blood as the water fountain washed away.

  I’d been using my elbows on the bag so much that they had become raw and I’d split the skin. Turning back to the bag and wiping the water away from my beard, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked angry, frustrated, isolated. I was alone in there. I desperately didn’t want my team to disown me. I needed to belong to a family, and this was all I knew. I had to regain their trust.

  I remembered the very first time I felt like my team had a problem with me. When you first join the service at the end of your training, all recruits attend situation-awareness training, run by the SAS using Special Branch police officers due to their high security clearance levels. It’s all designed to focus an operator’s senses to react to any given situation, albeit in a disused army barracks.

  On the fourth day I was driving in a scenario that was a vehicle hijack. You, as the driver, get hijacked at gunpoint by one of the ‘role players’. The right thing to do as he screams he’s going to kill you and demands the car keys is to give them to him, exit the vehicle and let him drive off. Better to risk losing an operational car than losing your life, was the thought process.

  I was fresh to the service, having been recruited from Special Operations in Northern Ireland. Even though I was tapped on the shoulder by my handler, I still had to do the training; if nothing else it helped me learn the different operating methods and tactics before joining my team.

  Prior to any scenario you’re not tol
d what to do or how to react; it’s designed to gauge your most natural and honest response to each event. As I drove the battered car round this ageing camp, I could tell it was used for all sorts by the cracked windscreen, ripped seats, smashed back window and the fact that every single panel on the vehicle was heavily dented.

  I’d done a lot of stuff like this, in selection for Northern Ireland. It’s fairly standard among covert operating agencies. Turning the corner, I noticed a makeshift set of traffic lights. Knowing the central locking was disabled on this car, I was expecting some sort of hijacking situation. And it came.

  As I slowed down for the red light, a van pulled across the back of my car from a side street, blocking me in, while simultaneously another van prevented me from driving forward. Into the front passenger seat burst ‘Mr Scary’, who was in reality a Special Branch officer who’d obviously lost a lot of weight recently, judging by the sagging skin around his neck. He was armed with a Glock 17 9mm pistol, typical of undercover police in the UK.

  He was screaming that he was going to kill me if I didn’t hand over the keys and get out: all standard stuff, so none of it fazed me. I was calmly reaching for the keys to switch off the engine and hand them to him when he clearly got overexcited and jabbed the side of my head with the barrel of the pistol.

  Something switched in me. Instantly leaning back, I pushed his pistol onto the steering wheel with my right hand, allowing me to grab the Glock and his wrist at the same time. Left hand free, I grabbed his neck and smashed his head against the windscreen, which was the last hit the glass would take as it cracked into a full spiderweb. I was holding his weapon hand firm and his right arm was now outstretched. A perfect strike with my left palm straight on to the back of his elbow, giving me that familiar pop that let me know I’d dislocated his joint nicely.

  ‘STOPPPP!’