Danger Close

by Charlie Flowers

  A cordon was established and the Blackeyes executed the ringleaders. Bang-Bang dragged the Sikh guy across the tarmac by his shirt, shoved him up against the wrecked Sky van, and shot him in the head. We had no idea who he was, and by now, we were past caring. He started to say something but the bullet caught him in the temple, whanged off the van’s bodywork…and Bang-Bang shrugged as he dropped dead. The girls passed the pistol around and each commander despatched one prisoner. A round was fired, there was some smoke and a captive smacked to the ground among the abandoned cars and the dark blood pooled and pattered around them. The SAS looked on, bored. They were used to this stuff. They’d carried out summary executions at the Iranian Embassy raid, and all over the globe, and this time was no different. They held the police lines back for as long as was necessary as the shots cracked out and echoed over the Morrisons car park. And then they left. The SAS went one way and the girls went the other, fading into the scenery and standing off. And all that was left was impotent police, emergency services, blue flashing lights, and me with my MOD pass. And some dead racists in a mosque car park. The world was welcome to them.

  I’d arrived at a decision. I’d told Bang-Bang and the girls I’d be back in a few hours and I walked away. I passed Sadie, who was checking the corpses of all the people she’d shot around the scrapyard. We exchanged ironic salutes and I handed her my AK. I didn’t want to see it again today. I walked through the crowds and the cordons and back into Sparkhill. I needed to change my last two 500 Euro notes. And I needed to ring Mo.

  46

  October 13th

  The rain had cleared. I looked up at the Essex sky. Me and Bang-Bang were standing in her mum’s garden. The last week had been somewhat hectic as the government had scrambled to tie up the loose ends and get all the MOD people out of the way. Birmingham had been declared a disaster zone. Half the Cabinet had descended on the crime scenes and were blathering away about the overwhelming need for community cohesion at this difficult time.

  They’d never found Chris Fletcher, aka Lionheart, either. He hadn’t been in the chase car that Roadrunner shot up. His face hadn’t been detected on the systems again and he’d vanished without trace. At that point I’d given up listening to the news and just concentrated on the text messages. Roadrunner had been arrested at a police cordon shortly afterwards, and when all her outstanding warrants came up, that was it, she was off to jail for six months.

  We had an invite from the Colonel to the Special Forces Club tonight and I needed to get this squared away beforehand. I looked back through the patio windows. My mum and Mrs Kirpachi were handing out the inevitable samosas. Teacher was chatting up Sags. Priya was cleaning her daughter Daisy’s face with a napkin. Mr Kirpachi was behind his newspaper. Mishy and Fuzz were trying to get the Sky box working. Mishy was partially deaf in one ear. Fuzz wasn’t going to be flying anything for weeks with that bandaged arm. Duckie had made good on her promise and had gone to Marbella, and had sent a text. It read “I am going to write about this shit, rather than doing it. xXx.” And Maryam had tried to walk out of Sandwell General A and E with that infected gunshot wound, and was now on a drip. What a mess. Still, most of us were alive.

  And now I had something to ask Bang-Bang.

  Bang-Bang pointed at a square of patio that apparently was important and I stood on it. She fixed me with that wonky gaze and batted her eyelashes once… twice. ‘So Rizwan Sabir, what you got to tell me?’

  ‘Well for once in your life Holly Kirpachi, Fox Princess and Queen of the Raccoon Army, I reckon I figure you’re gonna be speechless.’

  I took out the little box and opened it to show the ring. Mo and his family had done good. You could always get a good jewellers in Sparkhill. I didn’t need to go down on one knee or anything because she knew. Bang-Bang glared at it and then punched me in the chest with a small fist. ‘Bastard. Of course. Yes. You got me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes, Rizwan Sabir. Ha ha, I’m Holly Sabir. I’m Holly Sabir! Holly Sabir-Kirpachi? I need to work on my signature.’

  I placed the ring on her finger and she laughed. And that was it. She gave me the longest kiss and leant her head into my shoulder. The she went ‘ouch’ as she touched her scabbed-up lip. I remembered Westfield, Afghanistan, Paris… all the times I thought I’d lost her. We had looked into the abyss. The whole country had stared into hell and at the last moment, had been pulled back. We hugged and we looked at the people behind the French windows. I yelled at them. ‘You can come out now!’

  And we exchanged a knowing look. We knew, deep down, that we were both fated to die in a hail of bullets like Bonnie and Clyde. Just not today or next week. Inshallah. We’d chosen our fatal path, but at least we’d now die as husband and wife. And that was good enough.

  She leant into me. ‘Now what, bhai?’

  ‘Now we take a break from this nonsense.’

  We went out into the garden to feed the birds.

  Glossary

  Aimpoint sight- A reflex or “red dot” small arms sight

  Akhi - Brother (Arabic)

  AKS-74U - Shortened carbine form of the AKS-74 assault rifle, highly prized by jihadis to denote leadership status

  ALARP - Air-Land Refuel Point

  ANA - Afghan National Army

  ARV - Armed Response Vehicle

  Astaghfirullah - I ask Allah for forgiveness

  AW50 - .50 calibre sniper rifle

  Beta - Son (Urdu)

  Bhai - Brother/cousin (Urdu)

  Chinstrapped - British Army slang for exhausted

  COBR - Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms - used for emergency planning

  CONTEST 2 - UK Home Office counter-terrorism strategy

  CPNI - Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure

  CP Team - Close Protection Team

  CZ85 - Czech 9mm semi-automatic pistol. Rated as one of the best combat pistols ever manufactured.

  Desi - People from the Indian subcontinent or South Asia

  Dope Chart - Tables of ballistic drops and windeage effects for a sniper rifle

  Emir - Leader (Arabic)

  Emperor Mong - Mythical figure who leads British Army squaddies astray with stupid ideas

  Fisabillillah - For the sake of or in the way of Allah

  FRU - Army Force Research Unit, responsible for agent - handling

  GIGN - Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale – French military special forces group responsible for counter-terrorism and hostage rescue

  Haji - US military slang for insurgent

  HUMINT - Human Intelligence

  IMINT - Imagery Intelligence

  IMVU - Instant Messaging Virtual Universe - an online virtual reality website

  INSCOM - US Army Intelligence and Security Command

  Jark - Originally referring to planting a tracking device in a weapon or vehicle

  JSIW - UK armed forces Joint Services Interrogation Wing

  M14 - US selective fire automatic rifle firing 7.62 NATO calibre rounds

  Minimi - Light machine gun made by FN Herstal

  MMORPG - Massively multiplayer online role-playing game

  NAAFI - Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes. Runs recreational establishments needed by the British Armed Forces

  NPIA - National Policing Improvement Agency

  NVGs - Night Vision Goggles

  PPSH-41 - Russian World War Two-era submachine gun. Still used in the Middle and Near East. Valued by US troops for its high rate of fire and stopping power.

  RWW - SAS Revolutionary Warfare Wing – unit of the SAS responsible for subversion and guerrilla uprisings

  RMP - Royal Military Police

  Rupert - British Army officer

  RV - Rendezvous

  Salwar kameez - Traditional South Asian dress

  Second Life - An online virtual world

  Septics - (Septic Tanks) Yanks

  SF - Special Forces

  SO15 - Also known as Counter Terrorism Comm
and, SO15 is a Specialist Operations branch within the Metropolitan Police Service

  SOCMINT - Social Media Intelligence

  Supermarket Crazies - A gang that terrorised Belgium in the Eighties with random raids and massacres

  SWP - Socialist Workers’ Party. Extremist group dedicated to overthrowing democracy and replacing it with one-party Trotskyism

  USO - United Service Organizations Inc. Provides services and live entertainment to US troops and their families

  Walt - “Walter Mitty”, someone trying to be something they’re not or just acting important.

  Walther P88 - Semi-automatic combat pistol. Expensive, compact and highly-prized due to its accuracy.

  X-Ray - Terrorist

  About the Author

  Charlie Flowers was born in Eastern Europe sometime in the late Sixties and arrived with his family in Britain in 1975. After training as a journalist in London he had a varied career as reporter, roadie, truck driver and record label boss. In the late Nineties he formed two cult bands, and is currently an adviser on terrorism and extremism to certain departments and think tanks. His day job is transport manager at a specialist logistics firm.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again I am indebted to; Tom Cain for further advice and encouragement; Sabba Tariq for the Urdu; Noor Khan for the Pashto; Gavin Murrell for the technical advice; Misbah for the recipes; my ‘constant readers’ circle’; and the real-life Black-Eyed Girls for proofreading and correcting elementary errors. Any inaccuracies are purely authors’ own or artistic license. All the characters, companies, or groups in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons or companies, or groups, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Excerpt from “Yes My Darling Daughter”

  Words and music by Jack Lawrence 1941

  Excerpt from “Agualera do Brasil”

  Words and music by Ary Barroso 1939

  If you enjoyed reading Hard Kill by Charlie Flowers you may be interested in Friends and Enemies by Humphrey Hawksley, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Friends and Enemies by Humphrey Hawksley

  1

  As dusk takes grip, the temperature drops and Jennifer breathes deeply to slow her heart rate. She’s feeling the cold and there’s a trembling deep in the base of her spine.

  “Why were you there?” The man across the table is clean-shaven and could be 25, could be 40. He’s standing, his hands on the back of a chair.

  “There was a bomb,” she answers. “People were hurt.”

  In situations like this, moods can swing in seconds, which is why she keeps her answers short and her expression calm.

  “What did you see?”

  “A mosque, its wall collapsed.”

  He’s introduced himself as Abdul, which in Arabic means servant, so she reads nothing into it. He wears jeans, plastic sandals, a red T-shirt and a denim jacket. He carries a pistol in a shoulder holster.

  Wars are won with money, weapons and territory. But those who can inflict the most fear win the fights. That is why they call it terror.

  “What else did you see?” he asks.

  “Dead people. Injured people.”

  “Who did you talk to?”

  “The people I treated.”

  “You are lying.”

  “No.”

  Outside the room, a lone voice from a minaret starts up. The evening call to prayer surges back and forth like the sea, trailing with it belief, history, culture and something unforgiving. Her paramedic, Joe Dexter, 25, younger than her, across the table, only arrived that morning, rested up in Jordan overnight and came eager to work.

  Two hours later they were kidnapped.

  All news from this country is bad which is why Jennifer wants to be here. The job of a trauma surgeon is to save people from absolute horror, and she hopes that amid the heat and the flies, the lying and the guns, the thieving politicians and murderous clerics, there is humanity of sorts. In cruel and painful places, outsiders talk about how wonderful the people are. It is true, but they are also human, like her captor. They cause suffering just like anyone else.

  “Who else did you speak to?” Abdul persists.

  “Helpers. Doctors.” Jennifer tries to keep her face blank.

  Show no fear.

  No arrogance.

  No weakness.

  2

  Washington’s first winter snow has melted to dirty gray slush heaped up on the sidewalks. An early morning wind blows new flakes hard and cold against Kat Polinski’s face. Soon the city will be white with fresh snow covering car roofs and the windowsills of the apartment block just up from Dupont Circle where Kat’s heading.

  A large flake falls on her phone and melts. Kat presses the dial for Jennifer. She lets it ring to voice mail, “Hi, it’s Dr Jennifer Fox here. I’m in Iraq until December 21st but picking up messages.”

  All up beat, as if being in Iraq’s like working anywhere else, as if Jennifer could be round the corner.

  “It’s me,” says Kat lightly. “About to see how things are going with the apartment, then to the Russell Building for the hearing. Hope to catch you before that.”

  She drops the phone into her pocket, slows her pace and stops across the street from the block where she and Jennifer have just bought an apartment. Jennifer’s Kat’s best friend but not an old one. They’ve only known each other a few years. Jennifer’s clever and groundbreaking in her work. She pushes boundaries in trauma surgery and is already acclaimed by her peers. She’s also funny and sexy and people love her. Part of Kat wonders if setting up home with Jennifer is a form of avoidance because she should be finding the right guy, seeing if she can purge her restless demons and settle and if it fails, that’s fine, at least she’ll know and can move on. Jennifer’s wondered the same about herself too, being in a similar situation or maybe a step ahead of Kat because she’s ended a relationship and needs decompression space. They’ve done it anyway and they’ve found a place with a great terrace, a huge living room, four bedrooms, two, which will be their studies, and two bathrooms to die for. The owner needed to sell, so the price was good and they calculate that even just renovation and selling will pay the mortgage so it’ll be win-win.

  But renovation means dealing with contractors, and today it’s an electrician named Phil O’Connor, commissioned by Jennifer. He’s been paid half his money up front with a deadline to finish.

  O’Connor isn’t returning Kat’s calls, and, worse, when Kat visited the new home yesterday he wasn’t there. It was littered with cigarette butts, beer cans, and sleeping bags rolled up in a corner.

  This morning, she finds O’Connor’s truck in the parking lot. Home Electrical – Fast, Reliable Service is painted on the side, with a phone number underneath. She switches her phone to video, notches it up to the highest resolution and makes a call to Bill Cage.

  “Light OK?” She asks.

  “It’s fine,” says Cage.

  Kat holds the phone’s camera lens six inches from the driver side door handle.

  “Keep it steady,” says Cage. “Three, two, one….OK….hold it there….It’s accepting…we have an image.”

  Cage is relaying the image into the fingerprint identification unit database shared throughout the federal intelligence community. It will show vehicle fingerprints, match them to O’Connor and run a full check on him.

  Kat gets her answer in less than two minutes.

  She quietly lets herself into the apartment. It’s warm like a sauna with the heating on full and smells of whisky and stale marijuana smoke. Plaster is stripped out down the walls and dug out from around the electrical sockets. A bare light bulb hangs precariously from the ceiling.

  In a corner of a huge bedroom, O’Connor sleeps, tangled in bed sheets, on a pile of sleeping bags. His right arm drapes over the breast of a woman, who’s also asleep. His left is on the thigh of another. She lies; awake, on her side, eyes open, looking straight up at Kat.

  Kat put
s her finger to her lips for her to stay quiet. But she doesn’t. She jolts upright and screams. O’Connor sits up, eyes screwed against the light. His hand reaches down under the blankets as if for a weapon.

  Kat side steps. “Phil, stop. It’s OK. It’s Kat Polinski. The owner.”

  “Polinski.” O’Connor’s face looks pale, uncertain. He coughs phlegm into a handkerchief.

  “Both hands out, Phil.”

  O’Connor pulls his right hand from under the bundle of clothes that made up a pillow. “Shit, girl, you scared me,” says O’Connor.

  “You got a gun down there?”

  O’Connor shakes his head. “No, no way. It’s instinct, OK. It’s nothing, just what I do when disturbed.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “You’re not going to meet the deadline,” says Kat.

  “You never know what shit’s behind the walls.” The edge of his lips is turned down, sneering to keep some control. “Some problems delaying things.”