by Nick Oldham
Meanwhile, normal traffic continued to roll past and, without exception, every vehicle slowed down and the occupants gawked at the incident unfolding in front of their eyes. Traffic may have been light, but it was a problem, and it needed to be completely stopped behind them somehow.
Henry and Rik climbed out of the Mercedes which was parked about fifty metres behind the ARV on the hard shoulder, hazard lights on.
A gust of wind buffeted Henry, causing him to stagger. Then he was almost spun full circle by the slipstream of a passing lorry. He felt extremely vulnerable and suddenly realized what a very dangerous place a motorway was, even at the best of times. He went to the boot of his car and fished out a couple of reflective jackets that he always carried, handing one to Rik. Then, keeping to the side of the motorway, he strode up to the traffic officers, the wind in his face, amazed by how strong it was on such a nice day. The fact that the motorway was exposed and slightly raised made it cold and forbidding.
The man in the Fiesta had not moved. Henry could see his outline in the driver’s seat.
Henry mentioned the passing traffic to one of the officers who shouted back at him, raising his voice because that was the only way to be heard against the combined thunder of passing vehicles and swirling wind. He told Henry that the gantries had been activated further back down the motorway and blocks had been set up on the slip roads to keep anyone from coming on. The overhead signs were telling drivers to stop because of a police incident. The officer added, ‘No one ever does, though.’
Henry patted the guy’s shoulder and, crouching low with Rik just behind him, he jogged up to the armed officer using the passenger door of the traffic car as a shield. This was the one with a loudhailer.
Henry assessed the whole scenario, very unhappy about it.
‘We need to get him out from the nearside door and up to the Armco barrier,’ he shouted.
The officer nodded.
Then the driver’s door of the Fiesta opened, the guy swung out his legs, stood up and faced Henry’s direction. Henry saw a young, skin-headed Asian youth, maybe nineteen years old, dressed in trainers, jeans and a big anorak. This was not the man that Donaldson had described to him, the one he’d chased through the streets, who had driven this car at a cop, the one he’d shot. Not the man called Akram.
‘Stand still,’ the AFO with the loudhailer shouted. ‘Do not move.’
The lad had a blank expression. He seemed to be saying something to himself, mumbling. His hands were down at his sides, fists clenched. He walked between the Fiesta and the traffic car and stopped by the rear offside wing of the Ford as though he hadn’t heard the shouted instruction.
Henry’s eyes took in everything — including the other firearms officer crouching behind the driver’s door of the traffic car, armed with a Glock pistol, held down in front of him in the classic two-handed grip. This officer had a clear, unobstructed view of the lad.
Henry thought he saw the twitch of a smile in the corner of the Asian’s mouth. His head rose slightly and he looked at Henry across the gap that separated them.
Several cars hurtled past in the fast lane.
Henry spotted something in the young man’s right fist. It looked like the top of a pen. Henry knew exactly what it was. A button. A detonator. Attached to a bomb that was strapped to his chest.
Henry had been here once before, face to face with a suicide bomber. Last time, in the backstreets of Accrington, he’d been lucky. A mis-connection meant the device failed to explode. Since that moment, Henry knew he never wanted to be in that position again. He knew he would not be so lucky next time. This time.
The young man raised his right hand.
Several things happened.
Henry screamed, ‘TAKE HIM DOWN!’ to the firearms officers.
The young man shouted something, words that were blocked by the wind, but Henry knew he was saying that Allah was great.
The firearms officer on the other side of the car stepped sideways, raised and aimed the Glock, bringing it up into the point of an isosceles triangle formed with his locked arms.
The young man lifted his thumb in a gesture designed to show that he was now going to press the detonator in his hand, blow himself up and whoever else he could take with him.
Henry cringed and cowered away, as though turning his back to the situation would protect him from a bomb blast.
SEVEN
Steve Flynn was looking at one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life. He adjusted the peak of his tatty baseball cap to reduce the relentless glare of the African sun in his eyes, squinted and did a dreamy double-take just to make sure. But there was no doubt about it, even from this distance. The young woman was something special.
Flynn was in the cockpit of the sportfishing boat Faye2, carefully manoeuvring her backwards into the tight mooring space alongside Ray Boone’s boat, Shell, when the woman appeared on the shaky wooden quayside, walking from the direction of Boone’s houseboat tethered in the next creek. Just for a moment Flynn lost concentration and almost scraped Boone’s older boat, a mistake that would have left him more red-faced than he already was. Flynn was proud of the way he handled boats.
Boone himself emerged from the galley and glanced sideways at Flynn as he passed him at the wheel. Boone winked smugly and said, ‘Spotted her, huh?’ and continued out on to the rear deck. Flynn’s eyebrows arched. He reversed the last few inches into position and Boone stepped ashore with the mooring ropes, looping them over two wooden stanchions. He then walked towards the beautiful woman, said a couple of words into her ear and embraced her gently. Her face widened into a wonderful smile, and she then gazed lovingly at the old hound dog that was Ray Boone. She said something softly to him, her green eyes sparkling shyly.
Flynn killed Faye2 ’s Volvo engines and the boat he’d come to love over the past eighteen months became silent, rocking gently in the river current. He slid off the pilot’s seat, walked out on to the deck and rolled the narrow gangplank across to the quayside. He then stood there with his hands on his hips waiting for Boone to tear his attention away from this stunning woman and remember he had a guest to attend to.
Finally Boone looked at Flynn, a broad, proud smile across his weather-ravaged features, an expression that knocked about ten years off his grizzled face.
‘Hey, pal — permission to come ashore,’ he called, and gestured to Flynn.
Flynn shot across eagerly to meet Boone’s lady, the one he’d had an earful about over the last six hours. He had started to believe she was actually either a figment of Boone’s tropical-sunshine-addled imagination or something far worse — a wizened old hag who Flynn would have to pretend was as beautiful as described.
But no. Boone, the old time crim, had come up trumps and was not fantasizing, as evidenced by the slender female who now stood alongside him with one arm draped intimately around the older man’s thickening waist.
Boone beamed and announced, ‘Flynn — meet Michelle, love of my sordid life and saviour of my soul, after whom my boat is named and who is also a great sportfisher and sailor.’
Flynn’s right hand extended and she shook it with a soft hand of her own, blessing Flynn with a magical welcoming smile that gripped his heart then slam-dunked it right down through the hoop.
‘Welcome to the Gambia, Steve,’ she said in a lilting West African accent, the words almost singing from her lips. ‘Boone has told me all about you. He called you a complete bastard,’ she said innocently. Boone’s crooked smile stayed firm as Flynn gave him a sardonic glance. ‘But,’ she laughed and added, ‘as honest as the day, fair and firm. At least that’s what he wanted me to say.’
Flynn chuckled. ‘He’s been too generous in his praise.’
Michelle extracted her long fingers from Flynn’s over-tight grip and said, ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise,’ Flynn said. ‘Ray’s told me all about you — but being a man who can’t string too many words together, he has comp
letely and inadequately failed to describe how lovely you are.’
‘Thank you.’ Michelle lowered her eyes demurely at the compliment and looked slightly discomfited by it. Flynn also felt a bit awkward. He was actually a man of few words, most of them usually short and to the point. Complimenting did not come naturally to him — unless he was trying his seduction techniques — but somehow Michelle’s radiant ambience had made him gibber like a jerk, he realized.
He smiled simply at her and gave a shrug. He certainly wasn’t trying to seduce this woman, not just because she and Boone were an item, and Boone was an old foe-turned-friend, but because Boone would probably have killed him outright for chancing his arm. That kind of thought always made Flynn hesitate.
Boone coughed. ‘OK guys, end of the BS.’
‘I have a wonderful spicy chicken casserole for the evening meal,’ Michelle announced. ‘All breast,’ she added cheekily, ‘with sweet potatoes and ice-cold local beer.’
‘Jul-Brew?’ Flynn asked. She nodded and his mouth watered at the prospect. He loved its taste. His stomach gurgled hungrily at the thought of a decent meal. He and Boone had grazed on sandwiches, crisps, cola and strong coffee all day on the boat and he was famished, his body yearning for proper food.
But the rub was that however hungry you might be, or ill, or whatever, the boat came first. Flynn said, ‘I’m really hungry, but I’ll clean her and the equipment first if that’s OK?’ He jerked a thumb at Faye2. ‘Then I’ll clean myself, too.’ He said to Boone, ‘Ray, you get on and I’ll do it. Be about an hour if that’s OK?’
‘You sure, pal?’
Flynn had spotted the exchange of lustful looks between Boone and Michelle. From Boone’s boasting, Flynn was fully aware of the full-on sexual nature of this relationship and Flynn guessed it would be a good move on his part to let the two of them get it out of their system before the evening meal.
‘Certain.’
Boone gave him that smug wink again. Flynn watched as the two lovers sloped away, draped around each other like teenagers, Boone with a hand firmly gripping one of Michelle’s buttocks. Flynn readjusted his cap again, smiled slightly enviously, then took the three strides back across on to Faye ’s deck.
There was the accumulated debris of a long sea journey and then a six hour fishing trip for tarpon to clear up. Flynn liked to keep the boat spotless and was intensely proud of the way he cared for Faye2 and the fishing tackle, so he got to work.
He hosed down the decks, vacuumed and dusted the small galley, lounge and stateroom. He cleaned the rods of any salt and fish debris, all of which took longer than an hour, by which time the sun had dropped in the sky, then dramatically hovered hugely over the horizon before disappearing. A hot, sultry night had fallen over the Gambia River.
Flynn, sweating heavily, was desperate for that beer. Still, he took the time to grab a quick shower and shampoo, applied a manly underarm spray, then mosquito repellent, a wicked combination that he hoped would defeat even the most determined insect invader. He changed into his beloved Keith Richards T-shirt, a pair of three-quarter length pants and flip-flops. From the fridge he grabbed the box of chocolates he’d been keeping there. Then he ensured the gas bottles were tightly closed and the engine cut-off that he’d wired to a secret compartment under the tackle station was definitely in the ‘off’ position. As he extracted his hand from this hidden compartment, his fingers brushed against the Bushmaster. 223 AR-15 Predator rifle also secreted in there. An additional piece of kit only he knew about, kept for purely defensive purposes, he would argue. Pirates and desperate refugees were a growing menace.
Next he secured the boat and rechecked everything, because he knew theft was endemic around these parts. Lastly he set the alarm which, if breached, would scream loudly and deafeningly for twenty minutes. He stepped ashore clutching the chilled chocolates, gave his babe one last all-over glance and set off, hoping to reach his destination before his gift melted in the oppressive evening heat.
Boone’s houseboat was moored in the next inlet alongside another poorly constructed quayside, affixed to shore by various ropes and chains that allowed it to rise and fall with what little tide there was, while flexible power cables and sewage pipes ran into the riverbank.
It was not a houseboat in the way most people might visualize one. Usually they would imagine a square, wooden structure afloat in a marina or along a canal bank, or perhaps a refurbished narrow boat, but Boone’s was completely different. Flynn knew exactly what it was and from where it had originated.
It was actually a huge concrete barge, consisting of two levels — upper and lower deck. It had been built probably sixty years before by British Waterways for use on the canals of northern England, but it had spent only a short time performing that function.
Flynn smiled at the memories it brought back to him, as for most of its life this fairly ugly looking two-storey barge, well over sixty feet long and twenty wide, had been moored at the edge of the marina at Glasson Dock, the tiny port on the Lune estuary on the north Lancashire coast. It had been converted into a cafe and fish and chip shop. Flynn knew it from his youth and adulthood. As a kid he had been taken there occasionally by his parents for a treat. He recalled wonderful fish and chips and mugs of tea. He had never known the barge, which was called the Ba-Ba-Gee, to serve any function other than a floating, but permanently moored, refreshment stop.
Over the last few years the restaurant business had failed and the boat, one of Glasson Dock’s best known sights, had fallen into disrepair and been put up for sale for one pound, it was rumoured, conditions attached.
Then it had disappeared and Flynn now knew where it had ended up. Luxuriously refurbished, lashed to a muddy river creek off the Gambia River, a home for one of north-west England’s biggest drug dealers — as was — who had a bit of a soft spot for the place in which he’d almost died.
The upper deck accommodation was fitted out as a large covered sitting and dining area, whilst below decks there was a lounge, a large bathroom and two double bedrooms, the master having an en suite shower and toilet. On deck it was spacious and open plan with floor to roof sliding windows. The whole boat was air-conditioned, vital in the heat of this tropical country. The living area was surrounded by a wide, walk-around deck constructed of teak, which opened to an outdoor, rattan-covered sitting area at the stern, the roof of which could be extended or folded away as required.
Boone and Michelle were relaxing on cane chairs on the open deck area, each with a beer in hand, chatting softly. The deck was illuminated by fluorescent lights that were less attractive to bugs, but even so Flynn could see huge numbers of massive moths and other insects flitting through the light. Fortunately a fine mesh curtain surrounded the seating area and did a reasonable job in keeping out the unwanted guests.
He coughed to attract attention.
‘Flynn, old pal, come on, come on,’ Boone greeted him effusively. He got to his feet and drew back the curtain to allow him to step through. Michelle had also risen to her feet. She gave Flynn a double-cheeked kiss and he caught a sexy, musty scent on her.
‘Sorry I was a bit longer than anticipated,’ Flynn said.
‘No problems,’ Boone said. ‘Have you battened everything down? They’re a thieving bunch of bastards hereabouts,’ he warned.
Flynn nodded, then handed Michelle the chocolates. ‘For you.’
Her bottom lip tightened with surprise and pleasure. ‘Thank you.’
‘Probably need to get them into the fridge,’ Flynn advised.
‘I will.’ She batted her long eyelashes at him. ‘I’ll get you a beer at the same time.’
‘That would be fantastic.’
She went to the steps in the centre of the boat that led below decks. Both men watched her until Boone raised his eyes slowly at Flynn, caught him looking and said, ‘Kill you if you even think about it.’
‘I was just concerned about the chocolates.’ Flynn grinned, and the men laughed.
&nb
sp; ‘Take a seat,’ Boone gestured.
Flynn dropped into a cane armchair. ‘This is a great job,’ he commented, his hands indicating the barge.
Boone’s head bobbed with the compliment. ‘Yeah, thanks. It is, even if I say so myself.’
‘Surprising what you can achieve with drug money,’ Flynn said, mischievously straight-faced.
Detective Sergeant Steve Flynn from the Drugs Branch of Lancashire Constabulary’s Serious and Organized Crime Unit had been hunting Ray Boone for two years solid.
Back then, Flynn’s job was to bring about the downfall of some of the north-west region’s top level drugs traffickers, Boone being one of them.
The frustration for Flynn was that although he knew Boone used an RIB — a rigid inflatable boat — to bring drugs ashore, usually from Ireland on to the Lancashire coast, he always managed to fox him as to his pick-up and landing locations. On the face of it, it should have been easy to capture someone like Boone, but it wasn’t. RIBs were fast, could easily outrun and outmanoeuvre customs boats, could come ashore at almost any point (once he had even run on to Blackpool beach), could navigate shallow, treacherous waters and were easy to hide. But Flynn knew Boone was active and he should have been able to catch the sneaky bastard.
But so far he’d been unsuccessful.
This was partly due to having to follow other targets, often selected at whim by the powers-that-be, and Boone was not always the top of that heap.
But one night it all came together. Using information from a snout and other intelligence, Flynn and his team ambushed Boone bringing a consignment into Glasson Dock on his RIB. The operation went well until Boone — heavy smoker that he was, coupled with the excitement of the bust — had a heart attack as he was being put into the back of a police van.
Flynn saved his life, all his first aid training clicking in — cardiac massage, mouth-to-mouth, the full hit.
Flynn’s mouth twitched at the memory. Boone must also have been sharing the flashback as he raised the bottle of Jul-Brew.
