Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus

by Charlie Flowers

  Bang-Bang had just cut off his lefthand thumb with the boltcutters.

  ‘Sorry you were saying?’

  Iqeel howled and jerked against the restraints like he was undergoing ECT. Blood rained all over the place.

  ‘Password to your laptop, now.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Bang-Bang took the boltcutters and chopped off his righthand index finger. And then his middle finger. The howling went on and on and blood sprayed. I felt sick. She whispered in his ear.

  ‘I spoke to your ex-wife, bhai. She told me what you tried to get her to do. Blow herself up outside Downing Street, wasn’t it?’

  Iqeel was crying and his legs were twitching.

  Bang-Bang laughed in his face.

  ‘Al Qaeda? Al-Queerda more like. We’re al-Hur al-Ayn and we’re better at this than you are. Tell me the password or I carve you into hamburger.’

  Next door, the boom box went quiet for a moment, then started up again with the Mad Capsule Markets. Blimey. The last time I’d heard them, I’d been in prison. What a racket. I pushed the bedroom door open with the muzzle of my shotgun and checked on the family. No-one was moving an inch. Their eyes stared out like a family of lemurs. Bang-Bang walked over to Lady Calamity and casually started flicking through stuff on the coffee table. Blood dripped from her fingers.

  Iqeel was saying something.

  ‘Alsawaiqalilahiyya. Alsawaiqalilahiyya.’

  Bang-Bang looked back at him. “Divine thunderbolts?” Is that the password?

  His head drooped.

  Calamity tried it.

  ‘We’re in.’

  ‘Epic. Get on the Wifi.’

  Bang-Bang walked back to Iqeel, swinging the boltcutters like Tiger Woods.

  ‘You know what we want now, bro.’

  His one good eye stared sullenly.

  ‘You’re going to let us into Islambase.’

  He spat out a tooth.

  Bang-Bang raised the boltcutters above her head and brought them down with such force that his chair upended. He screamed a bubbling scream and then she was on him like the angel of death, swiftly removing all the remaining fingers on his right hand. The howling was like a bad dream.

  ‘Holly for Chrissake, lay off him!’

  She looked at me with that glazed expression again. She was covered in his blood and breathing harshly. Iqeel was trying to say something but it was like the mewling of a baby or a cat. She kicked him in the face.

  ‘Speak up!’

  Again came the phrase, through bubbles of blood.

  ‘Usul al-fiqh. Usul al-fiqh.’

  Calamity raised an eyebrow. ‘Sure about that? I’ll give it a go.’

  Bang-Bang shrugged. ‘It’s what he said. Can’t hurt to try.’

  Calamity tapped on the keyboard for a few minutes. ‘Hah!’

  She turned with a winning look.

  ‘We’re in Islambase and we’re admining it.’

  Bang-Bang spoke.

  ‘Well in that case we’ve got what we came for. Lady Calamity, ukhti, if you could grab the laptop and the charger, and start the camera.’

  I was confused.

  ‘Hang on a minute, Holly, we haven’t even asked him about any SOAP SUD stuff.’

  Again, Bang-Bang looked at me like she was in a trance and then her eyes cleared. ‘Cuz- we don’t need to. We have his computer and his phones. It’ll all be in there.’

  On the floor, Iqeel’s good eye focused on me. He coughed blood and bubbled a whisper. ‘I know you, you dog. You’re Riz Haq.’

  Shit. He’d used my old name. He remembered me from the old days. I looked at the two girls. Bang-Bang shrugged.

  ‘That seals it then. Off he goes.’

  Calamity nodded at us from behind the video camera and she turned away. Bang-Bang went to a kitbag and pulled out the Husqvarna chainsaw. She put the choke on, turned on the fuel feed, switched on the ignition, and pulled the cord. It screamed into life and blue exhaust smoke jetted out.She called out over the roar of the chainsaw, for the benefit of the camera.

  ‘My name is Holly Kirpachi of the Blackeyed Girls, and you had better make your peace with Allah, Iqeel, because you are about to die, and you are not going to die in a good fashion.’

  Bang-Bang took the choke off and Iqeel squirmed on the carpet, but it was no use. His legs kicked spastically. She revved the chainsaw.

  Next door the party was in full swing. They were now playing Las Ketchup at full volume. I went to the balcony. I needed some air. She was really going to kill him. Bang-Bang was talking to the prone figure on the floor.

  ‘You people make me sick. You make me vomit. You claim to be the followers of the Companions of the Prophet, al-Allahu alay-hi wasalam, but you’re just dirty little fascists. All you do is murder the innocent. You have no honour. And now… and now I’m going to slaughter you like a sheep.’

  I couldn’t help it - I looked back. Iqeel had pissed his pants.

  Bang-Bang stood over him.

  ‘Now shut the fuck up and die like a man.’

  Whatever he was screaming was lost in the rasp of the chainsaw as Bang-Bang got astride him and started sawing. The saw bit into his throat and blood sprayed and splattered Holly and me in a fine mist. I jerked back instinctively. She kept sawing. Iqeel’s head rolled onto the floor and there was a wheezing rasp from the trachea as the air came out of the lungs.

  It was over. The body was still moving, but it was over. Bang-Bang grabbed the severed head and held it before the logo of the Hur al-Ayn.

  ‘And so die all takfiri scum!’

  The girls assembled from next door and cheered.

  ‘Takbeer!’

  ‘Allahu Akhbar!’

  ‘What makes the grass grow?’

  ‘BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD, KILL, KILL, KILL!’

  Bang-Bang dropped the severed head to the floor and booted it against the wall. Smack.

  Suddenly I felt a small hand gripping mine. Calamity’s daughter Daisy had wandered in. She looked up at me.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  I looked down at her.

  ‘Yes, doll, he’s very dead indeed.’

  She cooed and leant on my leg.

  ‘Mum said I should learn this. I’m going to be a Blackeye when I’m ten.’

  We looked at the mess. The flat was like a warzone.

  I had to ask.

  ‘Are they going to make you a Blackeye Princess?’

  She looked up at me brightly.

  ‘Yes, akhi! I’ll be a Blackeye Princess!’

  Fuzz came in, laughed at the gory shambles in front of her, and scooped every bit of paperwork she could find into a kitbag along with the two mobile phones on the kitchen table. She thrust the kitbag into my chest.

  ‘You’ll thank me.’

  We made our way downstairs to the vans with our kitbags and Iqeel Ahmed’s laptop, and his severed head stuffed into a Tesco shopping bag. We drove away. We’d been on target for just under fifteen minutes. Bang-Bang was checking the AKS-74U she’d captured. She grinned.

  ‘Mine. Mine, I tell you all.’

  Calamity sucked her teeth in irritation.

  Roadrunner was driving our van. She began to sing.

  ‘Around the block, she pushed the baby carriage …’

  Our contingent laughed and sang along.

  ‘She pushed it in the springtime, and in the month of May …’

  We headed back to TJ’s. Fuzz passed round a pack of baby wipes in a semblance of an effort to get ourselves cleaned up. I was lost in thought in the back. Before he’d died, Iqeel Ahmed had admitted to being al-Qaeda. Crevice, 7/7, 21/7… he’d known them all. I stared at the bag containing his head.

  ‘What do you know, bro?’ I said to him and myself. ‘What do you know?’

  16

  11am the next morning at Kinetic Training Solutions. The lecture room was packed to the brim with staff, visiting MOD top brass, and, in the corner, the Blackeyes. Colonel Mahoney and I stood at the back. F
uzz Shaheen took centre stage in front of the main screens and tapped the mike. Bang-Bang sauntered on from stage left and did a little Charleston. The front row cheered. Fuzz spoke into the mike.

  ‘Cheers Colonel Mahoney for inviting us in at such short notice, and Holly and I will now present what my lot have divined from the take at SOAP SUD’s flat.’

  The light glinted off her smashed teeth. I idly wondered why she’d never bothered to get them fixed. They looked like Dresden high street, as the old Army saying went.

  Down in the front row Maryam and Duckie were kicking off.

  ‘Shut it, brat. Why aren’t you in school?’

  ‘Well at least I’m not in the EDL!’

  ‘I’m not in the EDL! I’m in the Democrats.’

  ‘Yes you are. Tommy Robinson is your BOYFRIEND.’ said Maryam with a significant look, and sat back. ‘Hah.’

  Fuzz glared at both of them and then clicked the remote. A screengrab filled the lefthand display.

  ‘OK … to be perfectly honest, what we’ve found in Iqeel’s laptop and phone, and flat, raises more questions than answers.’

  After TJ’s for the obligatory champagne, we’d driven straight to mine and got into extracting everything we could in the time available. None of us had slept much. We all looked slightly frazzled and still had blood smears everywhere.

  ‘Smartphone first. We used your firm’s UFED analyser to extract everything we could from it, and got the following: emails, web history, Bluetooth, locations, GPS fixes, call logs, texts, and contacts. That generated a lot of data, and we haven’t had much time to look at all of it, but the GPS showed us where he’s been travelling to.’

  A map flashed up. Hotspots appeared in red and orange. I could see a bit of West Ham, and a hell of a lot of Derby.

  Fuzz carried on.

  ‘The positive from this is that we have pretty accurate GPS fixes, so as soon as possible we’ll be looking at those locales in real life.’

  ‘Now the laptop. We were able to access Islambase - courtesy of Holly chopping bits off him …’

  Bang-Bang bowed ironically, and the front row cheered again.

  ‘… and we are now running it, as Iqeel al-Afghani. We can see who he’s been talking to, and what about. The inner core were using Mujahideen Secrets 2 to communicate and we were able to get most of his end of the comms.’

  A capture of Mujahideen Secrets flashed up. He’d been receiving untraceable emails from someone called “Chacha”. Urdu for uncle.

  Fuzz looked at the audience and spoke in a low, quiet tone.

  ‘Our best guess from the email contents is that he was in contact with an Afghan slam-on gang in East London, and some as yet unidentified al-Qaeda cells in Derby. The use of the word “nikkah” increases weekly, as we can see from this shot …’

  “Nikkah” meant “wedding”. Jihadi cells used it to refer to a bombing or shooting attack.

  ‘We also have a lead as to the possible identity of one of the cell leaders, but that’s Holly’s bit at the end of the briefing.’

  Fuzz paused again. She seemed to be making a decision.

  ‘… We now have a golden opportunity to find those gangs and put someone on the inside of those gangs.’

  The Colonel looked at me and smiled.

  ‘Oh now hang on a sec -’ I began to protest.

  Too late.

  Fuzz laughed.

  ‘Right. Now Duckie and Maryam will explain the Afghan slam-on scam to you all.’

  Duckie jumped onstage and Maryam skulked after her, fiddling with her phone. Duckie waved.

  ‘Can I smoke in here?’

  ‘NO!’

  She regarded the audience for quite some time.

  ‘Well, you’re a pile of shit drills, aren’t you? OK. Hands up who’s heard of the Afghan slam-on scam?’

  No hands went up and a collective question mark hung in the air.

  ‘Maryam - Bluetooth ‘em up on screen.’

  Two screens flashed up. On the left was an Anacapa telephone relationship chart, on the right a gang network chart - car number plates, people, business addresses. Duckie continued.

  ‘AKA the deliberate and staged accident scam. These gangs are mainly of Afghan or Pashtun background and spot each other by tying red and green cloths on their vehicles. OK here’s how the first part works -’

  Maryam fiddled with her phone and a diagram of a road with vehicles came up.

  ‘You usually get two small cars full of Afghan lads …’

  She traced the diagram with the laser pointer.

  ‘…hunting around roundabouts or junctions for either commercial vehicles or single women driving expensive cars, like yer average Chelsea tractor. Watch. Hit it Maryam.’

  The diagram began to animate. The two gang cars slid past the target vehicle. The rearmost indicated smoothly in front. And then suddenly the lead gang car swung left and away across the roundabout. The rear gang car hit the brakes and the target car whacked into the back of it. A classic shunt.

  ‘The brake lights will have been disabled so the person going into them will have no chance. Crunch. OK … at this point all the Afghan lads will jump out and start acting up. Not much damage, and both parties exchange details. The third party has disappeared. Next thing you know some dodgy “Accident Management Company” sends you a letter through their equally dodgy solicitors, and they want compensation from your, legitimate, insurers. Like, I dunno, Direct Line or something. Anyway, the insurers pay up.’

  Duckie paused.

  ‘This is going on every day from West London to Bradford, and loads of Afghan families are in on it - doctors, lawyers, garages … and the money is eye-watering. Someone’s generating some good moolah, and they’re in it with our friends the jihadis. The late Iqeel seemed to be the link between these London scammers and Derby. We want to know what they’re doing with that money.’

  Fuzz spoke up as she nodded at Duckie and Maryam.

  ‘Right. Now Holly here will talk to you about the Dark Web, what it contains, and how Iqeel was using it.’

  Bang-Bang trotted back on stage. Some bright spark in the Blackeyes audience started wah-wahing the the theme from The Stripper and got a marker pen thrown at her for her witticism.

  ‘Very funny. OK have a look at this screen and tell me what you see…’

  The lights went dark and the screen lit up. It was another capture of Iqeel’s chats in Mujahideen Secrets 2. Bang-Bang used a laser pointer to highlight some strange URLs in the messages.

  ‘See these? These are Dark Web URLs, and you have to use a browser called Tor to see them …’

  She clicked up a Tor browser.

  ‘… aaaaaand down the rabbit hole we go. OK, think of the Dark Web as an untraceable internet within the internet. It can’t be seen from search engines or normal browsers, and it’s massive, bigger than the everyday Web. The Tor router relays all the traffic through hundreds of nodes round the world, always shifting.’

  She clicked a URL called “silkroadvb5piz3r.onion”.

  ‘This is the Silk Road marketplace. You can buy anything here- gun parts, explosives, drugs, and it can all be airmailed to you. It took me most of the night, but eventually I found Iqeel and the Derby cells’ little hangout in …’

  She clicked in ‘Shop by category’.

  ‘… Home & Garden.’

  The room chuckled.

  ‘So here’s where the real chats are going down, beyond even Muj Secrets 2. Almost impossible to trace. OK look at this guy chatting here …’

  She pointed to ‘ Emir Wolf’’.

  ‘Going by how they all interact, this looks to be the cell emir in Derby. Even Iqeel defers, oh I’m sorry, deferred, to him. Now I’ve only ever heard of one UK jihadi ever going by the name Wolf –’

  Bang-Bang clicked to the other screen and a photo of a white convert with dark, raisin eyes and wild ginger hair popped up.

  ‘Johnny Devlin. The devil himself.’

  There was no l
aughing now. A rustle of concern swept the room like an evil breeze. I felt a chill. God, not him. Every eye in the place was on Bang-Bang as she placed the laser pointer back on the lectern.

  ‘Johnny Devlin. Helped found Combat 18. Nazi and Satanist until his conversion to Islam in 1998 and embracing of full-blown Wahaabism. In 1999 his manual “A Practical Guide to Aryan Combat” inspired David Copeland to carry out his bombing campaign. He’s been arrested many times but it never seems to stick much, and he can never be found, he always keeps moving. Three ex-wives, two of them dead. He makes Iqeel al-Afghani look like a part-timer.’

  Farzana Shaheen retook the stage.

  ‘Thanks Holly. Thankyou audience. We’ve all got a lot of work to do and people to find. Waleikum salam.’

  The Colonel was pleased. His blood was up and the hunt was on. ‘Ladies - first-rate presentations and good luck with the hunting.’

  Everyone left to chase up the leads. The Colonel turned to me and Bang-Bang and said ‘Friday night, Chinatown. Best Vietnamese restaurant there is. My shout.’

  Bang-Bang looked dubious.

  ‘What time? I might have to come straight from the stage, so to speak. I’m on at the Windmill that night.’

  ‘The Windmill?’

  I was shocked.

  ‘Does your Mum know?’

  She waved the question away.

  ‘”The Windmill presents Bang-Bang Khan and her ostrich feathers of delight”. And no, she doesn’t know.’

  Thank God for that. Mrs Kirpachi would only blame me.

  17

  Teacher was looking at me across the restaurant table with a wry expression.

  ‘Don’t ask for much at short notice, do you?’

  I shot that look back.

  ‘When you care to call the very best …’

  He slipped an envelope across the table towards me and I reached into my jacket, retrieved a fat Jiffy envelope, and slid it the opposite direction.

  We were sitting at a back table in Cinnamon, the best restaurant on Brick Lane. I’d been coming here all my life and the management still put up with me and my mates. I could smell the charcoaly scent of the tandoor oven wafting from the back. I liked that scent.