Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus

by Charlie Flowers

  ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

  ‘I am so not.’

  Subconsciously my hand went for a pistol that wasn’t there. This was going rapidly south. ‘Talk him in.’

  Bang-Bang sipped her wine for cover and murmured out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Twenty… fifteen… ten…’

  A man in a leather jacket, talking on a phone, walked past our table and kept going, left onto the main road. Gone. I watched his retreating back.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded slowly at me.

  ‘Follow, doll?’

  She was already out of her seat. We followed, one hundred metres back. I rang the Colonel.

  ‘Riz, what have you got?’

  ‘Boss. Holly just pinged one of our neo-Nazi possibles, heading right past us on Foxtrot, be advised we are tailing.’

  ‘Have that. Hang back and report. See if you can get him at a Loc, but do not endanger yourselves. I’ll let Tchéky know.’

  ‘Will do.’

  I closed down.

  Bang-Bang also had her phone out and within five seconds a nondescript Peugot 506 had pulled out and had smoothed ahead of our man, slowed at the junction, and turned left. OK… we had a loose box around the target. I looked at Bang-Bang. ‘Luv. I’m not going to wait for backup. Let’s track him. We’ll call him Alpha Two.’

  She nodded and we walked, acting the happy couple oblivious to the world around them. Bang-Bang linked her arm in mine and looked up at me and said ‘Now… when twilight beams the skies above… ha ha.’

  Alpha Two turned left up a sidestreet and we waited at the corner then looked round while absently checking our phones. Alpha Two was halfway up the street and looking at his watch. The Peugot had driven ahead of him and turned off right. Behind us, a black people carrier slid into the kerb. Marianne was driving. I smiled to her. We should be OK now, these guys wouldn’t lose him. She nodded at the departing figure of Alpha Two. ‘Follow?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Get in.’

  We drove past Alpha Two and gave him a quick glance in the mirrors. ‘He’s waiting for something. A lift?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Marianne slowed our vehicle, not too slow, not too fast… we watched. Alpha Two was looking away from us, back down towards the main drag and the river. A blue Citroen turned in from the main road and stopped before him. He got in. Marianne hit the indicators. She let the Citroen ease past us and called in the license plate, colour and make in low tones, her lips hardly moving as she spoke for the benefit of the covert microphone fitted inside the edge of the sun visor.

  Marianne laughed. ‘You can hardly see it but his Departement number on the license plate is 93, Seine-Saint-Denis. A tough banlieue… suburb, out north of town. Our boy is proud of his roots.’

  We followed, hanging well back, and we listened to the murmur of the radio transmissions as the team formed up again, a loose box on the streets parallel and ahead of us. Within two minutes we were all back on Quai de Dion Bouton and driving west.

  We went round the E5/E15 inner ring road, through Saint-Mande, and ended up in Belleville as the second follow-team took over. ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ said Marianne, ‘this is a traditional FN area. Or maybe I’m generalising. We’ll see.’

  Ahead of us the other chase cars accelerated away and Alpha Two’s vehicle slowed at a gaggle of people on the sidewalk. They double-parked and Alpha Two and another man got out and joined the crowd. Marianne brought our vehicle to a halt and pulled in a good hundred metres short, and we watched. I pressed my window down and listened. ‘Sounds like a block party, guys.’

  Bang-Bang chipped in. ‘Yeh. The National Front Disco.’

  Marianne called it in and listened to the radio transmissions. ‘OK. Tchéky is bringing the teams… hang on. Yes. We’re cleared to hit it as soon as.’ She looked around and then nodded at a small yard opposite the block party. ‘We’ll rendezvous there.’

  Dusk fell. Across the road the block was in full party mode, and Oi music was blaring out of the upper windows. I recognised the track as the Smack Song from the soundtrack of Romper Stomper. Catchy little number. A steady stream of sketchy-looking guys had been arriving and leaving for the last hour. It had just been confirmed that we were going to hit the block as soon as possible, no messing.

  Marianne had Bang-Bang strapped into a good set of body armour. She smiled at me and gave me a V for Victory. Tchéky looked at us both, without smiling, then handed us each a G36 from a kitbag and some magazines, and simply stated ‘Ma jurisdiction. How are you feeling Holly? OK to do this?’

  ‘Ben ouais, Tchéky. Alllll good. I’ve got a nice shiny coat and a wet glossy nose.’

  She grinned and Tchéky gave me a despairing look.

  We checked the rifles, pointing them to the ground and ensuring they were loaded and safe. I tightened the velcro on my own armour. Tchéky spoke to the two teams and Bang-Bang translated for me. He was pointing to various areas of a portable whiteboard that was standing on the rear footplate of the truck that had been reversed into the yard. The board had been hastily marked up with different coloured marker pens to show the floors of the block. Photos of the main targets including Alpha Two hung from the top of the board.

  ‘He’s saying… attention. Red Team is overwatch, Sniper element One and Two take out targets on the windows as they… present themselves. Blue team is GIGN, DPSD, and us. We go forward, to the door, blow it in and up the stairs, anyone even standing up gets shot down. We’re looking for our… friends in those photos. Hang on… yep. They will be armed. There will be a lot of people in the block and we have to go through it like a…’

  She spoke to Marianne and they laughed. She looked back at me. ‘They’re saying like a dose of salts.’

  From across the street a skinhead in a green bomber jacket jogged towards us. He was one of ours, his name was Rico. He showed us a flyer and spoke to Marianne and Bang-Bang. Bang-Bang translated. ‘It’s a White Power House Party. They gave him a flyer and invited him in.’

  I studied the flyer. ‘Fantastic. White Power squaddies. Let’s hope they’re not all Parkour guys who come steaming out and up the walls as soon as we go in.’

  Tchéky looked at us. ‘Utilities are switching off the power to the block in thirty seconds.’

  He put a radio to his mouth. ‘Trente secondes. Aller.’

  Our teams ran across the street in two loose files and formed up on either side of the main doors to the block. I was with the two guys I recognised from GIGN, Bang-Bang was on the other side with Marianne. Marianne’s team placed the frame charge on the door, taping it down firmly, and paid out the firing cable. Suddenly all the lights on the block went out, along with the street lights, and there was a chorus of expletives and shouts from inside the block as the music died. Static and garbled orders came from the teams’ radios.

  ‘Cinq secondes, quatre, trois… se tenir pret…’

  We all cocked our weapons, flicked the selector switches to semi-auto, turned on the laser sights and flashlights, then turned away and covered our nearest ear.

  ‘Tire.’

  The frame charge took the door off its hinges and we ran in behind the two assault teams into the dust, screams and shouting. From outside in the street came the harsh bark of sniper rifle fire and upstairs windows smashed. The teams were throwing stun grenades into every room and thundering upstairs. Me and Bang-Bang hung back and let them get on with it. We jumped over the splintered front door which was now halfway up the hall and appeared to have an unlucky person underneath it. We stopped and looked at each other and looked back at the debris. An unspoken signal went between us. You never left a possible live one behind you. We ran back and levelled our rifles onto the remains of the door and the body underneath it. Bang-Bang fired. Two double-taps. The body jerked. Good enough. She heaved the remnants of the door off the body and we inspected the face. The sweet stink of arterial blood rose up to hit us. ‘Nah.’

  W
e went back down the hall and left into a kitchen area. We swept it with the lights on our rifles. Nothing here but smoke and dust. From upstairs came a cacophony of screaming and short, controlled bursts of automatic weapons fire.

  Bang-Bang turned to me, snapping gum in her mouth, and said ‘Reckon we should follow that lot upst-’

  A burst of gunfire crashed through the wall to our right, shattering all the kitchen utensils hanging above the surfaces. We both hit the floor and pans and plaster fell all over us. I could hear shouting from behind the wall. I checked my G36 was on full-auto, poked it up over the worktop and let fly. The assault rifle roared and knocked chunks out of the wall. Bang-Bang leaped to her feet, got her rifle into the shoulder and began loosing short bursts in the same direction, yelling like a crazy girl between bursts. Our mags ran out and the rifle bolts locked shut. I stood, up into a haze of blue smoke that hung at head-level. My ears were singing from the gunfire. ‘Reckon we got ‘em our kid?’

  Bang-Bang shrugged, probably unable to hear me, changed mags, worked her rifle’s bolt and went forward to a shattered door. I changed mags too, joined her and we pushed the door open with the muzzles of our rifles. In the light of our rifles’ flashlights two bodies lay on the floor with AKs next to them. One was very dead, gazing into space. The other was writhing in pain in the blood and debris. Bang-Bang nodded as she shone her light on his contorted face. ‘That’s Alpha Two.’

  Behind us Marianne and a squad of GIGN had arrived and were talking about what the Crazy English had bagged. Everyone leant in to look at the bodies. Bang-Bang knelt down, handed the guy’s AK back to me, and slapped the moving man hard in the face.

  Marianne looked at her watch and spoke. ‘Five minutes and we leave. The coroner will be here soon.’

  Bang-Bang gripped Alpha Two by the ear and started banging his head sideways off the tiles, hard. After five whacks his eyes flickered open. She spoke to him. ‘Soldat! Le camion. Il est où?’

  The skinhead grimaced, coughed an explosion of blood all over her t-shirt, and died. She stood, wiping the blood away in distaste. ‘Well that was a no-go.’

  I turned to Marianne. ‘Luv, what we need is a quick search of all bodies for receipts, ticket stubs, truck or vehicle keys.’

  She nodded and we got to it. Several minutes later we’d found nothing useful and the coroner’s vehicles were here. We left disappointed, through the Mobile Gendarmerie cordon and the crowd of locals, and Tchéky gave us a lift back to the hotel.

  Tchéky and I slumped into various Louis XV chairs in our suite. Our clothes smelt of blood and cordite. My ears were still whistling slightly. We didn’t even have the energy to take our body armour off. Bang-Bang flung herself onto the bed in a starfish shape, and then suddenly bounced back up. ‘Idiot!’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  She slapped the side of her head. ‘Guys. We’re not thinking. The truck’s in Paris, so they need to hide it under cover so it doesn’t get seen from the air or satellite?’

  ‘Yes…’

  Tchéky looked interested. Bang-Bang tapped at her netbook and the wall screen came to life with a website called “Parking Paris”. She tapped on the parking for trucks section. A map came up with six P symbols. She looked at us and grinned.

  I chipped in. ‘Tchéky. What was the make of the truck?’

  ‘Dutch Army Volvo, most likely an FL12.’

  I looked at Bang-Bang. ‘Babe, get us the dimensions for a truck of that type?’

  She tapped furiously. A three-view came up. I went and looked at the wall screen. ‘OK… three metres something. Say three and a half. Right doll, can you check the height restrictions on those six truck parks?’

  She ran the cursor over the P symbols, one by one. All were listed as three metres or under.

  Save one. Parking Garage D’Abbeville in Saint-Georges. She got a map up showing location and directions. Five or so klicks away near the Gare Du Norde.

  I looked at both of them. ‘What are we waiting for?’

  29

  “This large, well maintained car park which covers several floors both below and above ground, is open 24 hours a day. The Garage d’Abbeville is located 3 minutes from the Gare du Nord railway station, making it very practical, particularly for those who need to leave their car in a safe place for a few days. Another key benefit is that it can welcome one truck of up to 3,40m in height and 7m in length and two trucks of up to 2,90m in height and 6m long for short stays! When you arrive, leave your keys to the valet who will take care to park your vehicle and to fetch it in your return. THIS PARKING IS OFTEN COMPLETE: YOU MUST RESERVE 24 HOURS BEFORE ARRIVAL... ”

  I clicked off the BlackBerry internet connection and looked in the drivers’ side mirror and then back down Rue d’Abbeville. Our service Citroen was parked just on the corner of a side road called Rue de Rocroy, directly outside some shop called Sovitrat, whatever that was. Bang-Bang got off the phone. ‘Marianne and co will be here with the vans and the gear in ten. Tchéky’s plotted up just beyond the entrance.’

  I looked back down the street past the 24-hour garage and spotted the white panel van marked up in Exapaq livery. OK. We could do this. I put my hand out and Bang-Bang placed a set of miniature binoculars in my palm. I focused them and looked at the garage entrance. “Garage d’Abbeville Parking Autos Motos Velos Lavage, ouvert 7 jours/7 et 24h/24” read the sign on the right and a massive illuminated arrow pointed downwards saying “PARKING”. Bright light flooded from the inside. I could see a vending machine and, as I refocused the binos, a small car pulled in and a man in overalls came out to greet the driver.

  ‘Looks like a bit of a squeeze, Holly. Tight corner. You reckon they could have got a containered-up truck in there?’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  ‘True dat.’

  Traffic passed. I took time to appreciate the car that Tchéky had rustled up for us and had brought to the hotel concourse. A top-of-the-range Citroen C5 VTR saloon, topped off with fuel, satnav, CD player, leather seats. I could get used to this. Apparently it was ours to use until we left the borders of France. Nice.

  Bang-Bang stretched and sighed. ‘Babe – I’m gonna go to that Brasserie on the corner and get us some food and Cokes, and I’ll have a little shufti on the way down and up. Won’t be long.’

  ‘The one with the Stella Artois sign?’

  ‘That’s the one. Back in a bit.’

  I watched as she ditty-bopped down the street and cheekily tapped on the side of Tchéky’s team’s van as she passed it. I laughed to myself. That would keep them sharp. They were probably racking the slides on their weapons and securing everything.

  I got the binos back on the garage. Overalls guy was smoking a fag and chatting with someone from the kiosk inside. It didn’t exactly look like Nazi Trucks R Us. My view was obscured by two vehicles and I lowered the binos. Two sleek black people-carriers with tinted windows drove slowly up the street and away, and then pulled in just out of sight. Probably our lot. I craned my neck to see what they were up to but no dice.

  There was a rap on the roof and I jumped. The passenger door opened and Bang-Bang got in, grinning. I’d turned off the interior light earlier so all I could see was her in the light from the street and the dashboard. She was carrying two brown paper bags and started doling out cans of Coke and sub sandwiches.

  ‘You done good babe.’

  ‘The Only Way is Holly.’

  ‘See anything inside the garage?’

  ‘Yes. Two vans on the right, and two trucks on the left.’

  ‘Really? Better by the minute.’

  We got stuck in to the food and I told her about the black vans that had arrived. She nodded and took a long swig on her Coke can. I suddenly realised how shabbily we were both dressed. I was in the combats and sweater I’d bought from the hotel shop. Bang-Bang was wearing that horrible old Phoenix Program t-shirt, a pair of pink salwar kameez trousers and some complimentary hotel flip flops. And that manky gold nosering. W
hat a couple we made. She reached into the rear seats and brought out the laptop configured for tracking our improvised device and began checking the connections, while trying not to get crumbs all over the keyboard. She was speaking with her mouth full. ‘Got a connection. Google Latitude on… Sony Ericsson online… OK. I can see it.’

  She showed me the phone symbol on the Google map. Good. I nodded.

  I suddenly noticed that both Tchéky and Marianne’s teams were forming up on the far side of our vehicle and half of them were wearing Police Municipale uniforms. We got out and went to confer. Tchéky spread a blueprint over the car boot and we looked at it in the street light.

  ‘Here’s the plan, my foux Anglaises. We go in as police and tax authorities and… harass is your word? Yes. Harass the owner and staff. We did this at the Paris Microsoft office not too long ago. While we do this, Rico and one other guy takes the equipment over to the trucks and they scan.’

  ‘Scan?’

  He nodded to a selection of large black kitbags on the pavement behind us. ‘Oui. Scan. This is very new experimental X-ray sensor equipment, based on the cargo scanners from ports. It can see through one hundred and eighty millimetres of steel and take 3D images. This is man-portable, and safe. Only 1.25 MeV gamma ray dose. Rico takes one pack. Do you want to take the receiver? You know what to look for.’

  I shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll do it.’

  Bang-Bang waved a hand in the air. She still had a mouthful of baguette so there was no way they were going to understand her. ‘Hey, hang on a sec, I don’t want my fiancé going Jaffa!’

  The French teams looked at her nonplussed and Tchéky spoke. ‘Jaffa?’

  She laughed. ‘Yeah. Jaffa. Don’t want my boy seedless!’

  Marianne convulsed in giggles. I looked at Bang-Bang. ‘Babe, it’s like an X-ray at the dentists. It’ll be fine!’

  She looked away with a moué of distaste.

  They kitted me out with a covert comms set, earpiece and throat mike, and tuned me in. I checked the channel. Rico spoke in my ear. ‘Check. Talk please… bon.’