Scorpion's Vengeance

by Lawrence Hebb

  “In that case sir” Jacko began, “you won’t mind us checking the place out, will you?” he seemed oblivious to the others in the garage, one of whom had come up behind him, Billie saw the wrench start to fall, she almost got a scream out, but not quite.

  Jacko pivoted on his right leg, the left coming up and out in a Taekwondo kick that caught the would-be assailant in the side of the head, he went down, two others began a swing, but stopped mid-flight as fifty thousand volts jolted them, Tasers attached to their skin, Mac and Sgt Harris didn’t let go of their triggers until the men were unconscious on the floor, others were trying to join in, but they were facing five drawn weapons, and they had none.

  “Up against the wall, all of you, MOVE IT” Jacko screamed as Joey and Mac began manhandling them, no one was being gentle. Harris moved to cover them as Mac began a frisk search, as each was searched they were handcuffed using the plastic ties called ‘plasticuffs’ and led away. Meanwhile, Joey went back to using the ‘Wheelbarrow’ to check out the building.

  “Under the prevention and investigation of terrorism act of 2008 we are hereby detaining you folks for further questioning” Sgt Harris began, they’d run through this before the Op began with the team, Jacko had made it clear that any detaining had to be done by Harris, and it had to be ‘done right’. “You are not under arrest, therefore Lawyers are not required, but should you withhold information during the investigation it is likely to affect your residence permit and may result in you being deported as ‘Persona non-grata’ he knew that part was total fabrication, but they likely didn’t and the last thing they wanted was to be sent back to mother Russia.

  “That's screwed things up a bit” Billie was angry, she just wasn't sure who with, the idiot Russian for arguing, or Jacko for being ‘pig-headed’.

  “Why?” Jacko sounded surprised, he was heading for one of the rooms at the back. Joey had the robot in the building and was working through the first vehicle bay.

  The standard ‘Wheelbarrow’ is normally only used to defuse explosive devices, and it does it by firing a small jet of water powerful enough to rip out any electrical wiring and soak any connection, but the one he was using, along with the modification that was the shotgun had one other slight modification, it had an extra small box, four inches by three, attached to the arm that the camera was on, it looked just like a camera, except where the lens should be something similar to a mesh face, it looked like a microphone, but noise didn't affect it, aromas did, it was an electronic sniffer.

  The finest sniffing device is still the canine nose, but not far behind, and able to be programmed for specific aromas much quicker is the electronic sniffer, and Joey had programmed it for specific things.

  “Boss” Joey spoke into his lapel radio, everyone snapped back to attention, he wasn't in the room where the Mondeo was yet, “we've got a hit, sniffers reading GSR on this vehicle but no device, someone used a firearm from this vehicle” he pointed to one of the vehicles on the ramps, it was a Land Rover.

  “Roger that” Jacko replied, “Sgt Harris, you better get your people in here, this room is safe, but start tearing that vehicle apart” he started walking over to the Land Rover, then turning to Billie he carried on, “you were saying?”

  “It's a bloody Landrover, with a rifle rack!” Billie replied frustrated, “probably some upper-class idiot who enjoys hunting!”

  “In the middle of town?” Jacko shot back, not too impressed Billie was willing to overlook the obvious, “besides, this vehicle” he slapped the Lannie’s tyres, “has never seen a dirt track, let alone the hunting country!”

  “Holy crap” Joey whistled to himself as they went slowly through the room, he'd switched the camera to infrared when the sniffer unit picked something up in the door panel of the Mondeo he couldn't believe what he was seeing, “Jackpot, boss we got ‘em, we've got the smoking gun, and I mean literally

  Chapter 40

  “This is the news at one from the BBC, and I'm your host Alistair Burnett” the newsreader began the bulletin. The station was one of two dozen channels they were monitoring. It was amazing how much valuable intelligence came to light through commercial news channels.

  “Earlier this morning police raided a commercial property believed to be linked to the shooting last week on the outskirts of Bristol”

  That one sentence brought everything to a halt. No one in the operations centre at MI6 was even aware anything had been going on let alone anything linked to the shootings.

  “TURN THAT UP!” a supervisor screamed at whoever had the controls, this was a major screw up and someone was going to pay heavily for it, she just didn't want it to be her. “And get me everything they effing well have NOW!!”

  “A number of firearms were found as well as a vehicle believed to be linked to both the shooting and the murder of a man in central London” the newsreader went on, but by that time the phones were going crazy, someone wasn't happy.

  “My boss was at his club having lunch when a reporter called him asking about the situation” the voice, a female one whom the officer had heard of but never met, she was the kind of one you didn't want to annoy, a short career could be the result, and it was abundantly obvious he was probably going that way simply because he was on duty today, “so, kindly send me all the details on how our entire intelligence community, along with the most extensive surveillance operation on the planet screwed up and got bloody blindsided so flaming badly, and I want it by the time he gets back from lunch, that is in about ten minutes” the voice had risen with each word until it reached a crescendo close to screaming, then the sound of a device, presumably the handset of a desk phone slamming down was so loud it actually hurt the operators ear.

  “A fat lot of good that's gonna do!” he whispered to himself he was seriously considering redialling the caller and telling her just what she could do with the ridiculous demand, ‘either way, I'm finished here’ he thought, but it was really tempting.

  The room had no windows, three were facing the wall on the left, three more on the right wall and a small walkway down the centre, Jill, the supervisor was pacing up and down the middle.

  The ops room was frantic, the handful of the staff was frantically trying to collect every piece of information they could find, anything would do. Each one had their own responsibility, police, MI5, GCHQ, local authorities and even local security companies, anyone who had any way of tracking what might have gone on, they were all being monitored. Six of them were working frantically.

  “I can't believe this” she was young for the position, early thirties, slim build and blonde with blue eyes, but don't let the Scandinavian good looks fool, everyone in the room had at least a university education, usually in one or more languages, she was fluent in a couple, but that wasn't relevant, she also knew computers, that was why she was working there, “Does no one follow the bloody rules” she threw her arms in the air, frustration was written all over her face, “we should have had some warning it was going down! How the hell do we explain the whole screw up?”

  “It gets worse” the male operator chipped in, “that was ‘the Princess Margaret’ herself on the line, she wants details for the boss, like yesterday” he inverted the commas in sign language.

  Margaret may be Sir Mike's secretary, but she wasn't that well liked, “too bloody good for us” was the feeling.

  “Shit! What DO we have?” Jill was almost pleading, “give me anything!”

  “I might have something to tell them” another of the operators chipped in, “but it'll cause more questions like how the whole thing was missed!”

  “Speak” Jill demanded, she whipped around and faced the one who'd spoken.

  “Well, it's kinda strange, you see, they did notify but” his specs were slipping down his face, or at least that's what it felt like when he got nervous, and he was terrified, he just wanted to crawl into the nearest hole and hide, and what he was about to say wasn’t going to go down well with ‘the Brass’, “but the
y emailed the local cops HQ that they were running a keen wind exercise!”

  “They did what?” Jill was furious, “who the authorised that? And what the hell is a Keen wind exercise?”

  “Didn't need authorisation” the operator cut in, “it was local, the station superintendent signed off in it, called it a snap keen wind!” he shrugged, then went on, “It’s what they call an anti terrorist operation, bomb threat in particular!”

  “No use arguing about this” Jill really wanted to argue with someone, but it wasn't going to get them anywhere, “find the email, and create a file, they're gonna want to see all that for the debrief, ” she turned back to the other operators, “meanwhile someone get me the details on what a local keen wind is supposed to look like!”

  ‘Keen wind’ is the code name for the precautions taken to thwart a potential terrorist attack.

  Intelligence networks do their best to listen in to anyone wanting to cause a problem. As soon as they get an idea of a threat to a place the local security services in the area are brought to a higher state of readiness, on military bases things like the guards at the gate are doubled and issued live ammunition, extra searches of sensitive areas.

  For the civilian population, the cops also get extra powers and if a place is suspected of being a target, then the Army can be called in and bomb experts search for devices. This usually only happens when someone in Whitehall decides, but occasionally the local station can ‘pull’ an exercise to test their own response times that's what they'd done, and now everyone was scrambling, dealing with the crap no one knew was there.

  “Thank you” Sir Michael was in a foul mood and rushing, but that was no excuse for rudeness, he quickly turned without waiting for an acknowledgement and was through the door.

  She waited until she heard the elevator close, then reaching for her bag she stood up and headed for the door.

  The elevators are quicker than the stairs, but more people use them, using the stairs means others .are less likely to see you, and the last thing she needed was to be seen.

  The elevators open out into the main foyer on the ground floor, complete with the security desk and guards, they might be busy, but the cameras would catch everything.

  But security is only ever as good as the weakest link, and every system has them, Vauxhall house was no exception.

  The stairwells had cameras that were monitored, but Margaret knew the cameras wouldn't pick up the face of anyone heading downward, and on the first floor they were down, maintenance was booked, so anyone checking the system would see it arranged, but no one ’cottoned on’ to the fact that the dates for it kept changing.

  Turning right out of the stairwell she headed down the corridor, there was a fire escape at the end that took her down the back of the building and into the car park

  Two minutes later she was on the street and heading for the local underground station.

  Chapter 41

  “Look” she cut across his tirade, “we’ve been damn well blindsided by this, and we need to get it together” Margaret was angry at this, angry and scared, for the first time she was beginning to see just how dangerous what she’d been doing really was, she wasn’t a bad person, at least she didn’t think she was, but she was trapped, trapped in a life she got through one of the seven ‘deadly sins’ her father, an Anglican priest had always harped on about, she turned her back on his teachings as soon as she’d left home, now she was paying for not listening, “and it’s much worse than you think”

  “But you were meant to warn us of anything like this!” Serkhov was angry, he was directing the anger at the little secretary sat here on the park bench with him, but the truth was his anger was more at himself for not having much of a contingency, “instead I’ve got a missing right-hand man, and now I learn from the TV that the police have hit the garage!” he stopped for a second to let the information sink in, she was there to stop them doing this, or at least give him some warning the raid was scheduled, she did neither. “What else haven’t you told us?” the look he gave made hse shiver inside.

  “They’re working outside of the system” she began to reply, “We’ve got a team at the moment that seems to be running amok in the country, some of the divisional heads are saying they’ve ‘gone rogue’ and they’re the ones creating the havoc” she reached into her purse, “here’s what I can find on them, they were the ones sent to the West Country a couple of days ago, to protect the hacker” she slowly took out a plain brown A4 envelope, it was about an eighth of an inch thick, “They were also the ones in New Zealand a few weeks ago” she stopped giving him time to digest the information.

  “And in Iran?” she nodded in reply, that answer told him volumes, he’d heard of what happened there, and the damage they’d done to the organisation, this was one job he was going to take great delight in carrying out, and he would destroy them even if it was the last thing he did on this earth. “What else is here?” he held the envelope up.

  “Enough for you to set a trap” she came back, “they’re onto us, but we can destroy a large part of their evidence, maybe not all, but enough to make them think twice,”

  “You think they’ll back off?” he was surprised.

  “The team won’t” she replied, “but they’re already working outside the system, but a string of bodies littering the countryside will make anyone else think twice, and MI6 are crapping themselves that word of a rogue team might get out, so you can pretty much guarantee they’ll back off for a while.”

  He thought for a moment, he’d come here angry and frustrated, but the beginnings of a plan was forming in his head, it wouldn’t stop them hunting him, but it might just buy enough time for him to go to ground, but the operative word was ‘might’ he glanced over at the woman, she was showing no emotion whatsoever, something that surprised and yet didn’t surprise, they were people she’d worked with for years, okay she’d worked against them for a lot of that time, slowly climbing the ranks, waiting until she was in a position to be of some use, and by that time her original bosses in the Kremlin had been replaced with, well let’s just say ‘same people different agenda’.

  “Look” she began again, “I’m giving you the information, it’s up to you what you do with it, you can cause enough carnage to maybe slip away in the night, or you can do nothing and hope, but rest assured, now they have the garage, the car and the weapons, they’re coming for you and me, as for me, I’m hoping it’ll buy me enough time to get out while I still can, I really don’t fancy the rest of my life in Holloway or Dartmoor.” she stood up and began to walk away.

  Serkhov didn’t leave immediately, he waited a good fifteen minutes, it looked like he was reading the news on his tablet, but he was reading a note that had been on the envelope, it simply said, “all communication devices are tapped, whatever he arranged would have to be done the ‘old way’.

  He looked as if he was watching the other park benches, and pedestrians walking past, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the trees and such, he didn’t see the slight rustling of the trees a few dozen feet away.

  Less than a dozen feet away Chambers had watched everything, he’d also managed to record most of the conversation, best of all he could confirm the mole had just betrayed themself.

  “Let her go, at least for now” he whispered to himself, he hated the idea, but sometimes a little ‘evil’ is necessary for the greater good, at least that’s what he kept telling himself.

  There was one thing he could do though, and that he set about doing. Taking a small plastic piece of equipment out of his pocket, he pressed a button on the side and waited as the small phone came to life, it went straight to the email programme, typing in an email address he sent a simple two-word message, it read “Bait taken”

  As soon as the message showed up as being sent he got up from the bench, checked there was no one watching and began walking off in the same direction Margaret had taken.

  “Listen” Jacko turned to talk to Sgt Harris as
they neared the Land Rover, Smithy and Mac were stowing their weapons in the back of the Land Rover, checking each one and carefully making sure they were locked away in the lockbox, Joey and Sandy were packing the equipment away at the CP, they had another vehicle for transport. “It’s vital that no one finds out about us, WE WEREN’T HERE RIGHT!” he was emphatic.

  “Yeah, we got that Harris replied, Billie was with Joey and Sandy, she was getting the same brief, except probably stronger, “How do I explain it though?” he meant how did he explain the Army turning up and taking over, then disappearing, “you made a pretty big impression”

  “Just tell the truth” Jacko opened the vehicle's door and pulled himself in behind the steering wheel, “you were running a practice drill when you saw something that just wasn't right” he closed the door and reached for the starter button, “but don't mention us, and if anyone else asks, deny any outside help, and that includes Billie's too!”

  That was weird! a bust this big and he was being told to take all the credit, this was a career-making bust, one any cop would give almost anything to be associated with, and he was being told to hog all the credit. It was Billie had brought him the information, she wasn't going to like being shut out, he had ambition, but trampling over fellow officers on the way up just didn't sit right.

  “Listen” Jacko read his thoughts, “this is vital, the people we're chasing are very good at disappearing, they're also bloody well connected, they know every move the authorities make, the only way to beat ‘em is if they don't know who's chasing ‘em, and for that we need to stay in the shadows, so” he stopped momentarily, made eye contact and went on, “you ran a practice and found things GOT IT!” he pushed the starter button and went to release the handbrake.