Killing Time

by John Kerr

  ‘How’s my favourite little drinking buddy getting on? Hope you’re keeping well ’cause you look like a bag of shit.’ Chris shook his head.

  ‘I look like shit? You might have at least combed your bloody hair.’ Charlie dropped his pack, ruffled his curly mop of tight, dark hair so that it shed its watery weight and bounced back into its usual coils. He stepped back then, lifted his arms and started singing.

  ‘I’m singing in the rain, just singing in the rain...’

  ‘Just as well you’re a good soldier because you’re a bloody crap singer,’ Chris said, as he jumped out, grabbed Charlie’s pack and threw it into the back of the car. Suddenly, the sound of an air horn split the night with a deafening screech. An articulated lorry roared past, careering down the motorway much too fast. It sprayed water all over the outside of the vehicle and caught Chris completely, just as he closed the tailgate.

  ‘Bastard!’ he shouted, throwing his arms up into the air, completely drenched.

  ‘Wanker!’ Charlie screamed at the lorry as he threw himself back onto the grass verge lifted his arms into the aiming position and fired an imaginary burst of machine gun fire. He reached into his breast pocket and removed a pretend grenade, pulled the pin with his teeth and threw it after the departing vehicle. After a second he threw a cursory glance at his friend, who was now dripping wet from head to toe, and quickly jumped into the car. He covered his mouth with his hand as he shook his head ever so slightly and tried very hard not to laugh.

  ‘Right, let’s get the fucker,’ Charlie boldly announced.

  ‘I’ll hold him down and you can jump on the prick’s head,’ he added, trying to sound overly serious.

  ‘Do you think they’ll maybe scramble a helicopter and cut him off at the pass? Or do you think they will just put the kettle on and have another chocolate biscuit?’ he added further, as he stuck his head out of the window and looked up at the police camera. He stuck two fingers into the air and blew a gigantic raspberry.

  ‘Fuckwits.’

  The large lorry disappeared into the night as the driver continued to sound his horn. Charlie began to fiddle with the tuning dial on the radio.

  ‘Can’t you get Perry Como on this damn thing? I’ve not heard a decent tune for ages,’ he said. Chris removed his wet jacket and threw it over his seat. He jumped in and tried to dry himself off.

  ‘Look at this! I’ve been dry for days and what happens? Two bloody minutes after I’m back in your company and I’m soaked to the skin. What chance do I have, I ask you? What chance do I have?’

  ‘Dry for days? What do you mean dry for days? Are you telling me you haven’t had your little carcase out there earning your money like the rest of us?’ Charlie asked, as he pointed out through the window into the darkness. He went on, trying really hard not to laugh,

  ‘No, that’s not right. That’s not right at all. I’ll have to have a quiet word with Major Grant when we get down to London. That sounds a little like favouritism to me. Christ, I’ve been lying in a bog up to my arse in shit for the past three days with old Bob. Now that, my friend, is enough to take the skin completely off your eyeballs. Listening to that old codger telling about “the good ol’ days” and what it used to be like when all he had was a penknife, a ball of string, and a black and white picture of Winston Churchill.’

  ‘He’s not that bad,’ laughed Chris, as he pulled his wet shirt over his head, giving his hair a good rub, before throwing that too over his seat. He grabbed a fresh one from his bag behind his seat and felt the cold start to bite into him.

  ‘Okay, you ready? You settled? can we get on now? Chris looked at Charlie and shook his head before swinging the car out into the now empty motorway.

  ‘So, no more dramas, right? Nothing more is gonna happen tonight. We’ll just have a smooth and easy drive south and if you behave yourself then I’ll get you there in one piece safe and sound.’ Little did Chris and Charlie know how prophetic those words would turn out to be?

  FIVE

  Chris pushed the car out into the fast lane and threw the lights onto high beam. The motorway in front of them was completely deserted and the noise from the road was masked only by the classical music Charlie had managed to find on the radio.

  ‘What is this shit we’re listening to now? Can’t you find something decent?’ said Chris, shaking his head in annoyance.

  ‘Listen, Sonny-Boy, that there is a little bit of culture. It’s about time you realised that and stopped being such a peasant,’ Charlie replied, pointing to the radio.

  ‘Culture? Load of bollocks!’ Chris retorted, reaching into his pocket for his vibrating mobile phone.

  ‘Hello? Yeah, Chris here,’ he said, speaking into the mouthpiece, ‘Yeah, I’ve got him; he’s being a right pain in the arse as usual, but hey, what’s new…?’ He stopped speaking and listened for a moment before going on,

  ‘Yes, well, we should be another couple of hours. The weather is bloody horrendous. It’s chucking it down something terrible… Yeah, okay… as soon as.’ He stuck the phone back in his pocket and slowly shook his head.

  ‘Problems?’ Charlie asked, knowing they never got courtesy calls from H.Q.

  ‘When is it ever anything else? Obviously the shit is about to collide with the blades and they want a couple of professionals to dig them out of it,’ said Chris, glancing at Charlie.

  ‘Professionals!’ Charlie blurted. ‘Why the fuck did they phone us then? Christ, they must be bloody desperate!’ They both laughed as Chris declared,

  ‘I don’t care what they want as long as it gets us a few days in London and out of this bad weather.’

  ‘Bad weather?’ said Charlie looking slightly bemused,

  ‘What bad weather?’ The road disappeared beneath them and the heat inside the car soon rose to a pleasant, bearable level – enough to grant Chris some respite, at least, as Charlie fell asleep and started snoring. The rain continued to fall hard as the clouds above closed further in and spilled their contents across the ever flattening landscape. Chris kept the speedometer a fraction under the national limit as they followed road signs which simply directed them ‘South’. Although they were both master drivers, and could drive everything up to and including the heaviest vehicles on the road, no attention from the police was good. Driving through the night was always the preferred option, as the road was usually quiet and they could make good time. A little way down the road, the driver of the lorry heard a small, deep rumble from somewhere at the back of the vehicle. It wasn’t loud and was more of a slight, general vibration rather than any kind of discernable sound. He switched his radio off, lifted his foot from the gas and listened hard. The noise immediately disappeared. The instruments in front of him indicated that all was as it should be, and everything looked normal. He was touching 60 mph and the road ahead was dark but clear. A sudden gust of wind buffeted the side of the wagon as he swung to his left. The lorry oscillated slightly as he tugged at the large steering wheel and only steadied when he let the rig slow to a forty-five mph. After cruising at that speed for a few kilometres, his confidence returned and he dropped down a gear and climbed back up to sixty-five. Chris watched the rear lights of the large lorry slowly loom into view as he closed in on the lumbering hulk of heavy machine parts. The rear axle groaned almost continuously under the incessant pounding inflicted by the driver as he chased the departure time of the Dover sailing. Twenty four tonnes of steel backed up to them slowly and Chris waited for an opportune moment to pass. Charlie wasn’t a light sleeper so it surprised Chris when, as he pulled out to pass, crunching the gears, he heard a soft murmur from Charlie.

  ‘Wanker,’ he said, under his breath. The word reverberated through the confines of the car at the precise moment the rear axle of the lorry sheared in two places. It punctured the inside second tyre, bounced between the two and was thrown back inside where it ripped both opposite tyres to shreds. The offside double-wheel housing collapsed completely and the lorry again oscillated wildly ou
t of control. It jack-knifed to the right and pulled the cab all the way round to the left. The driver struggled as he tried to steer into the skid but the momentum was just too much for him. He felt the cab jump viciously up and down, trying to force the vehicle onto its side. The wheels bumped continuously on the waterlogged road and the rear end suddenly filled Chris’s peripheral vision as it spun round. He automatically forced the car right…but too late. The corner of the lorry clipped his nearside front wing and pushed them towards the central reservation. They hit a number of upright steel posts one after the other then flipped up and over the barrier. The car came down hard on the opposite carriageway after it had somersaulted twice. It rolled over and over for almost two hundred and fifty metres before it slid down the opposite embankment and ended up on its roof in a foot of water. The front end of the car had been crushed flat. The engine was found lying between both bodies: the foot pedals had ripped Chris’ kneecaps off and he had multiple lacerations to his face. His chest was punctured by the steering wheel rack, which had collapsed and pushed its way through his body and out through the back of his seat. Charlie’s back seat mountings had sheared and flipped the seat forward, crushing his chest against the grab handle on the dashboard. The glove box had opened and caught him across the eyes: it had sliced deep into his forehead and broken his nose in two places. He had been thrown through the windscreen but had failed to exit the vehicle by virtue of his seatbelt and the remaining two front bolts on the seat. The emergency services were on the scene within seventeen minutes and the fire and rescue service cut the two soldiers from the badly mangled wreckage. They were both pronounced dead on arrival at the accident and emergency department of Wellingborough General Hospital just before first light.

  Later post mortem results would confirm both servicemen had in fact drowned.

  SIX

  The phone rang continuously in Colonel Derek Harrison’s office.

  ‘George, can you get back on the phone and find out where the hell they are and how long till they get here?’ said the Major as he lifted the receiver. Sergeant Major George Sands watched as Harrison kicked the door of his office to a shuddering close before flopping down onto his high backed leather chair. George glanced at the clock on the wall - 8.30am. ‘Christ, they should be here by now,’ he thought to himself as he quickly punched in the numbers on the hands-free phone in the ops room. The response came from a pre-recorded message:

  ‘THE MOBILE PHONE YOU HAVE CALLED IS NOT RESPONDING AND MAY BE SWITCHED OFF. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.’

  ‘Shit,’ said George out loud.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Major Nathan Grant, entering from the telex room.

  ‘Can’t get hold of Chris and Charlie. They should have been here hours ago. He’s having kittens in there.’ George tilted his head in the direction of Harrison’s office. Both men watched through the glass partition as the Colonel nodded. He slammed the phone down and in the same instant yelled, ‘Suzy! can you punch into the police central computer? Apparently there’s something on it we should see.’ He approached Major Grant and went on.

  ‘Listen, have you met with Captain Soutar yet and arranged to get him in here?’

  ‘Yes, he should be here later on this afternoon. Will you be here to do his introduction?’ The Colonel didn’t have time to answer. Suzy stood in the telex room doorway her face drained of all colour.

  ‘Sir, I think you’d better come and look at this.

  ACCIDENT ON THE SOUTHBOUND M6.

  TWO FATALITIES: AGED EARLY THIRTIES.

  The words blinked out from the centre screen on the bank of computers on the wall.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Harrison, as Suzy covered her mouth with her hands.

  ‘No way,’ said Grant as he punched into the computer keyboard. The vehicle registration number immediately jumped onto the screen in front of them. Suzy dropped her head into her hands and a cloud seemed to descend instantly over the entire office. George Sands slumped into a seat as Harrison threw a pile of papers at the filing cabinet in the corner and shook his head in utter disbelief while Grant just stared blankly at the monitor, reading it over and over. A silence fell over them for a few, long minutes. Then the phone on a desk next door rang. No one moved to answer it as it sounded twice, then stopped.

  ‘If there ever was a worst-case scenario for this little band of warriors of ours then I’m afraid, people, this is it…It couldn’t possibly be any worse,’ said Harrison, as he moved through to his office and poured everyone a large drink. Grant added.

  ‘Shit…we have lost two-thirds of our operatives in the field. Christ, all we’ve got left is Geno. What are we supposed to do with just one guy?’ There was a long, heavy pause in which no one spoke, then slowly, Harrison added,

  ‘It does get worse. Geno has been transferred to MI6. He’s being shipped out to the Middle East within the next three months’. Harrison started to drum his fingers hard on his large mahogany desk as his brain suddenly went into overdrive. Grant watched him intently and knew he would be methodically going over all possible solutions and scenarios.

  ‘Okay, listen. Nathan, you pick up Captain Soutar and get back here pronto. When you get back we are going to have to get our heads round this one.’ Harrison finally said as he lifted the telephone receiver and hurriedly punched in a number. He took a large gulp of malt before speaking into the phone with his now slightly mellowed Edinburgh brogue.

  ‘Hello, it’s Derek Harrison here. Let me speak to James McDowell. After a short pause he continued.

  ‘Hi, James. Listen, there’s been a bloody accident and we’ve lost Chris and Charlie. Can you find out if it’s possible to stall Geno’s transfer? ’cause we’re in the shit here, mate, big time.’ Harrison listened, finished his whisky and immediately poured himself another.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got Nathan Grant picking him up shortly, but there’s no way we can have anyone ready at such short notice. Christ, if we had any serious activity here, we’d be really up to our armpits in it.’ He stopped speaking and with his free hand ushered Major Grant out of the office.

  SEVEN

  Grant moved through the London streets with a heavy heart. The early morning sky somehow looked greyer than normal and it didn’t feel it would ever be the same again. They had lost two good men and were well and truly fucked for sure. He forced the thought as far back into his subconscious as it would go and tried to focus on his meeting with Captain Peter Soutar. Peter had been procured from the Scots Guards and was now the newest member of Military Intelligence, although their numbers were now down to eighteen. They had just lost possibly the most difficult two people to replace.

  It was just after nine when Grant entered the coffee shop and immediately recognised Peter, sitting in the corner. He went straight over, threw his coat on the inside seat and sat down.

  ‘Morning, Sir,’ said Peter. Grant ignored the greeting, thinking more of Chris and Charlie than of Captain Soutar.

  ‘Okay, Peter, first thing’s first. Tell me what you know, or what you have been told about your new job.’

  ‘Almost nothing, Sir. All I know is that it’s Military Intelligence.’

  ‘Right. Good,’ said Grant, nodding his head before going on,

  ‘Peter, over the next couple of days you’re going to get a fantastic amount of information thrown at you. We know you’re going to take it all in because we know that you’re the man we want. We know everything there is to know about you. We know your history, your parents’ history and even your dear old grandparents’ history… and probably beyond even that. What you have been selected to join is not MI5 or MI6. We are a completely separate unit: we answer to no one except the people at the very top. We have no official name or department number though we’re known by a few. Our favourite is The Circle. It’s as close as you can get to describing us. We are a completely enclosed unit. There’s no start, therefore there’s no end. No way in, so no way out. No-one can get in unless they have been invited. Our task is most secret
and special: our job is to seek out and ultimately destroy anyone who enters the country with evil and selfish intent. The British Isles are divided into three areas of operation: Scotland, Northern England and Wales, and the South - each one with a designated operator and link man though sometimes these areas overlap, depending on operational requirements. There are only a handful of people who know we exist and it’s vital to our continued operation that it stays that way… at all costs. It goes without saying that we are totally deniable but more than that - if word ever leaked out, if the papers ever found out about us, it would bring down the Government. Now, Peter, we have a problem and it’s serious... we just lost a couple of guys… guys that you were to work with very closely. It’s all right, don’t panic - it wasn’t anything untoward just a lousy car accident. The reason we have survived this long without exposure is due to a few sympathetic people in very high places. If one of our jobs does come to light, then we throw a discreet smokescreen round it. A quiet word here and a single phrase there will make Special Branch think it was the work of MI5, who in turn will believe the anti-terrorist squad or even the Special Forces were at work. It doesn’t matter: there are so many agencies out there that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And because of the nature of the job they basically don’t want to show their ignorance by saying they don’t know what the hell’s going on. While they’re all pointing fingers at each another, we can quietly get on with the very difficult task of keeping these shores safe and secure.’ Grant stopped talking. He watched Peter digest his every word.