Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus

by Charlie Flowers

  On the next table were a bunch of UK Casual lads I vaguely knew. They were an offshoot of the English Defence League. Strange times. I know they placed great store in taking liberties. A few years back they’d caused a massive riot by turning up in the neighbourhood. The leader nodded at me. I nodded back.

  Teacher and I opened our respective packets. Teacher whistled appreciatively and stashed the £8000 worth of notes. In my envelope was a UK passport, name of Imran Mian, whoever he was. The photograph had been taken by Maryam on her digital camera. It had been the fifth try and it had taken an hour to crop and size correctly, but we’d got there in the end.

  The passport was as real as real could be. The RFID chip was there, which I knew would be loaded with something good. There were visa stamps for various Middle Eastern countries… Dubai. Turkey. Egypt. And Pakistan. Perfect. I knew how this was done. Whole batches of blank UK passports regularly went missing. If you had the software - which was publicly available - and access to printing and laminating equipment, and some radio frequency chips for a laptop, you could start churning them out to order. Chips could be cloned and tweezered back into your fake. There was meant to be an international database that would spot cloned or faked passports when scanned, but only five of the signatory countries had bothered to use it. Jordan wasn’t one of them.

  ‘This looks… this looks brilliant, Teach. Thank you.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘It took me a day of hanging around Heathrow with the RFID scanner, but I came back with a job lot of Asian fellas your age. Imran Mian looked the most like you, so now you’re Imran. I won’t ask what you want it for or where you’re going, but you have my number.’

  ‘I’m going somewhere hot and sandy, mate.’

  Teacher laughed and scooped up some rice.

  ‘Send me a postcard.’

  The manager came over with two flaming sambuccas and laid them reverently before us.

  ‘My favourite boys.’

  We saluted him and knocked them back.

  18

  ‘Comms check Alpha.’

  ‘Receiving.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  There was some hash and static on the channel, and then it went dead. The tension in the vehicle was sour and nasty. This was the second day of staking out the locations from the GPS hotspots, and so far, zip. On the radio, an MP was criticising Lord Justice Leveson, or something to do with his report, it was hard to tell. Or care.

  The girls had passed the time putting flowers in their hair and hennaing each others’ hands. So far I’d managed to avoid getting hennaed. Calamity passed round some gum and started speaking to no-one in particular.

  ‘Harold Shipman’s in his cell, right, and it’s Friday night, so it’s curry night at Wakefield. The screw comes round and asks Harold what he’d like, and he says oh can I have a chicken madras, some aloo gobi, some pakhora and two onion bhajis …’

  Sadie rolled her eyes and shifted in her seat. She had been trying to get her holstered pistol at a comfortable angle for the last two hours, and failing due to her rather large pregnancy bump. She grinned at me and returned to looking out the passenger window.

  ‘… So they take him his curry and an hour or so later the guards go back to get his tray, and Harold’s sitting there looking a bit glum. They ask him if everything was OK and he says –’

  ‘Yes but I could have murdered a nan!’ chorused the rest of the car. Calamity looked around her in disgust.

  ‘Steal my punchline? Fuckers.’

  At least it broke the tension.

  The day before yesterday we’d all assembled at 253 RMP Provost Company in Tulse Hill and started practising our vehicle drills. Roadrunner had given us a little demonstration on how to do a Tokyo drift in a 7.5 tonne truck. We’d been impressed. We’d spent the morning whacking our vehicles into blocking cars, running through anti-ambush routines and taking notes. I hoped it had been enough.

  Sadie broke the silence.

  ‘So what was the plan again, we just drive round the scenic roundabouts of Uxbridge like Postman Pat until some Afghans show up?’

  ‘Erm … yes, that’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Great. Where’s Roadrunner exactly?’

  ‘Next layby back by the hot dog van.’

  ‘Wallahi. Get her on the comms and tell her to get some teas in. We could be out here all day.’

  Calamity looked back at Sadie.

  ‘We’re bait, love. We fit the profile. Women drivers driving posh cars. They’ll be out like sharks.’

  ‘Yeah right.’

  Calamity stared out the windscreen for a moment. She laughed.

  ‘Fuck this. This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to put Sunrise Radio on, and we’re going to start driving about like clueless Asian mums, and with any luck, they’ll play Kajre Re.’

  ‘Plan.’

  She tuned the radio to 1458 AM and pulled out of the layby.

  I checked behind us. Several hundred yards back a large white truck pulled out of another layby and began to close on us. Good. That was Roadrunner. She drove up beside us and then eased ahead as we meandered round the entrance to Stockley business park. The radio hashed again. Roadrunner.

  ‘Alright babes? Keep an eye on me backside.’

  I tapped Calamity’s shoulder.

  ‘I thought we were meant to be in lead.’

  Calamity shrugged.

  ‘If it goes off, I want her in front and us covering.’

  Oh heck. I started to speak but the sentence died in my throat. I had looked right, by instinct… and to our right two saloon cars full of Asian-looking guys had swept past. Oh my God, this was it. This was them.

  I caught a fleeting glimpse of a red and green scrap of cloth on an aerial and then they were gone past the 7.5 tonner.

  ‘That’s them!’

  Sadie pulled her pistol and racked the slide back. The next roundabout rushed up at us and there was a flurry of motion. The saloon cars swung left in front of the truck in the classic manoeuvre, exactly as we’d gamed on the whiteboard. And then things started to come unstuck. The walkie talkie squelched. Roadrunner howled in delight as the saloon cars braked and she hit the gas and went straight over the blocking car, flattening the passenger compartment. The truck banged up in the air and down, and glass exploded in every direction. Christ. I shouted.

  ‘STOP STOP STOP!’

  Calamity skidded our car to a halt inches from the truck’s rear bumper and we were all out and running. I drew my pistol.

  Roadrunner jumped down from her cab. It was tilted at a crazy angle and there was steam and shattered glass everywhere. The traffic was screeching to a halt from every lane on the roundabout. She was laughing.

  ‘ That sorted the fuckers.’

  I stood with my head in my hands.

  ‘We were meant to take them alive …’

  Ten metres ahead, the second car had braked by the second exit. Both occupants had disembarked and were standing there staring in shock at their friends’ crushed saloon. The truck sat half on, half-off it like a vast white wedding cake, and then slid off it and rolled over with an almighty crash, revealing half a car. An arm was sticking out of the car’s window and the passengers all looked very dead. Worse than dead. Squashed.

  ‘Probably not going to be taking it back to the rental people then …’ said Roadrunner. Sadie brushed past me muttering ‘I’m having Braxton Hicks contractions cause of this rubbish. I’ve had enough. And you two -’

  She strode towards the men standing in the road, stopped, took aim and shot them both where they stood with two rounds to each man’s head. The spent cases flew across the roundabout and pinged off the window of a UPS van. The Afghans jerked and dropped to the tarmac. She walked back past me, holstering her weapon.

  ‘Pricks.’

  This was turning into a waking nightmare. In the traffic queue behind us there was the whoop of a police siren and the blue lights sta
rted up as a traffic car nosed forward. Time to make lemonade out of lemons. I turned to Roadrunner and Calamity.

  ‘Ladies. Get what you can from what’s left of the occupants. Mobiles, drivers’ licences, glovebox. You’ve got five minutes and then we go. I’ll deal with the cops.’

  They both nodded and started to delve through the windows into the crushed car, pulling the remains of the dead men about. I distantly noted that one was a white guy. A white guy?

  A policeman was jogging down the road towards me. He looked about fifteen and his papery face had a mouth open in an O of shock.

  ‘What … this truck … who fired a …’

  I walked towards him calmly holding an old MOD pass in the air. ‘Morning constable! I’ve got a pass phrase for you. Ready?’

  His adam’s apple bounced. I gave him the code that KTS and various undercover Army units used to get themselves out of trouble.

  ‘Clockwork Orange’.

  The copper looked like he was going to be sick.

  ‘Which means you have to stand down and secure the scene, constable. We’ll be gone in a bit.’

  Behind me, Roadrunner had sauntered up and was holding a bloodied drivers’ licence for my inspection.

  ‘The white guy. Andy Bennett.’

  I did a double-take as I saw the photo.

  ‘THE Andy Bennett? As in Socialist Worker’s Andy Bennett?’

  She nodded.

  19

  ‘This is one unholy mess.’

  Fuzz wasn’t wrong. My mood board had grown from two post-its to something resembling a Jackson Pollock, with breakout notes, action lines by the dozen, and several distinct areas. It had taken over the entire wall. On the top left hand side was Iqeel’s little corner; top right was a sticker saying “ Chacha ??”; bottom left a sticker said “ Slam - on gang ”. And finally, bottom right was a sticker saying “ Derby AQ cell / s Johnny Devlin ”. A riot of coloured stickers and photographs took up the space between with little discernible order. There was also a new guest at the party. A sticker said “ Andy Bennett SWP ”.

  On the table in front of me were all the car occupants’ drivers’ licenses and their mobiles. We’d powered up the phones and were waiting for Duckie to bring round the Aceso terminal to extract the data from them. And in the middle of the table, among a pile of gas station receipts and general bumf from the car, sat a torn business card reading “Goldenboy Global Ltd.”.

  Emlyn had told me to ring him if anything came up on my end, and now was as good a time as ever. I rang.

  ‘Riz. What you got?’

  ‘I’ve got the drivers’ license of a Masud Maudar sitting in front of me. We took it from a slam-on car this morning.’

  A long silence. I looked at the display, wondering if he’d hung up. Emlyn finally spoke. ‘He’s Akkas Maudar’s brother, you know that? The one who got killed in the frontier territories in that drone strike. The one I told you about at Hendon. 100 per cent al-Qaeda, Riz.’

  ‘Thanks mate … Emlyn, who is Chacha?’

  A longer silence.

  ‘Someone big, Riz. Someone who walks the corridors. I mean UK government corridors. We don’t know and I don’t want to speculate.’

  I waited. Finally he spoke again.

  ‘… OK, I’m going to speculate. I take it you’ve been watching the news about that screwed-up raid in East London? Someone fed us a duff tip-off so we’d send armed police into a perfectly innocent families’ house, and the inevitable happened. I reckon someone’s on a panel somewhere and is playing us for mugs. And it’s all happening in the middle of the biggest security operations in living memory.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘It is. Good luck, son.’

  UK government corridors. This was getting dark. I let my gaze refocus on the table in front of me. Almost by reflex, I got my BlackBerry and took shots of all the drivers’ licenses and business card, and emailed them to the office. These shots would go into our UPBRAID database, kept entirely separate from anything the Met or the Home Office had. It was our ace card.

  Also before me on the table was Iqeel al-Afghani’s laptop, whirring away happily and signed into everything. Bang-Bang was idly flicking her fingers across the touchpad. Beside her lay an NPIA notepad and she was scribbling on it without looking. She had her internet glasses on again, and that not-quite-here expression. Duckie came through the door and placed the terminal on the table. I’d made my decision. I stood up and clapped my hands once.

  ‘My esteemed sisters of the Hur al-Ayn! … we’re getting nowhere here. We’re going to attack this case from all the angles on that wall. Lady Calamity - I’d like you to take the Derby al-Qaeda cell angle. Scoot over here.’

  She shrugged and brought the material over. I continued. This was great. I moved round the table and gripped their shoulders, feeling like Michael Caine in The Italian Job. ‘Holly will take the Iqeel al-Afghani angle … Fuzz will look at whoever the SWP guy is … Maryam and Duckie work on the slam-on rings …’

  They all sat and looked at me with bright enquiring eyes like a murder of crows.

  ‘And I’ll look into this Chacha bloke. And in an hour, I shall cook for you.’

  The room burst into laughter. Duckie lit a fag. ‘I knew there was a good reason for coming out tonight.’

  While I was in the kitchen Fuzz came in and showed me a netbook screen.

  ‘The dead nazi scum Andy Bennett’, she said, and left it on the worktop. I had a quick glance through. Nothing seemed unusual. The Socialist Workers Party of Britain seemed to attract utter filth. I’d never met a good one. Most of the take onscreen seemed to be from his administering a Facebook group called “Exposing EDL Racism Online”. I laughed. Here we go. These guys cracked me up.

  Next up was his blog … dreary, hateful Trotskyite rubbish. The links on the landing page went to some Venezeluan solidatarity campaign and then a plethora of buttons for the must-haves. Occupy. Viva Palestina. Respect and George Galloway. Muslim Affairs Committee.

  I set up the cooking and deferred to Len Deighton’s Action Cookbook. I hit Andy Bennett up on Youtube and let the clips roll by. While I was chopping onions a clip from a Stop the War Coalition meeting came up. Andy Bennett was on the podium. He was speaking.

  ‘Socialists can take advantage of these contradictions to begin to make some of the more radical Islamists question their allegiance to its ideas and organisations – but only if we can establish independent organisations of our own, which are not identified with either the Islamists or the state. On some issues we will find ourselves on the same side as the Islamists against imperialism and the state. This was true in many countries during the second Gulf War. It should be true in Britain when it comes to combating racism. Where the Islamists are in opposition, our rule should be, “with the Islamists sometimes, with the state never”.

  Half an hour later I’d lost the will to live. My BlackBerry pinged. A reminder. Me and Bang-Bang had a dinner date with the Colonel tonight.

  20

  The Colonel was conversing with the manager in fluent Vietnamese. Well, since I didn’t speak a word I assumed it was Vietnamese. They were both rattling away about something. Man of many parts. Where had he picked that up?

  I’d just got a text from Bang-Bang.

  ‘ There in five , start without me , get the noodle soup in’.

  The Colonel sipped his beer and fixed me with that gunbarrel gaze.

  ‘Going well?’

  ‘Going really well, Boss. I have a great passport courtesy of Teacher, I head out to Jordan to get my jihad credentials in three days, and then IF I survive that, I’m off the radar and hopefully straight into the Derby cell. Whoop de doop. Wish me luck.’

  He clinked my glass.

  ‘Luck.’

  ‘I really am gonna need it. Oh and thanks for helping to volunteer me without consulting me, I’m sure.’

  The street door whacked open and in strolled Bang-Bang Kirpachi. She was wearing a whalebone corset, pol
ka-dot frilly French knickers, vintage stockings with the bows on the knee, and white go-go boots. A family of American tourists gaped from the adjacent table. She stared them out as she draped her denim jacket on the seat next to mine and sat. Finally she looked at me.

  ‘What? I told you I was coming straight from work.’

  Couldn’t argue with that.

  She smirked at the Colonel.

  ‘Getting my boy here in trouble again?’

  ‘He’s the best there is. If anyone can get in there and find these bastards, he can.’

  She cracked the chopsticks.

  ‘S’pose.’

  Bang-Bang took a swig of my beer and did that swirly thing with her hand to get a waiter’s attention that I’d never mastered. Her wonky-eyed focus returned to settle on the Colonel.

  ‘I suppose you know quite a bit about me and him, but I don’t know much about you.’

  The Colonel grinned.

  ‘Is this an interview?’

  She grinned back. She wasn’t really grinning though; it was more like she was showing her teeth.

  ‘I want to know about the man the myth the legend. Riz speaks very highly of you.’

  ‘Miss, it’s an honour.’

  So he told us.

  He told us about thirty years’ hard soldiering, and joining the SAS, back in the days when it wasn’t talked about. The long, secret desert wars. And then a posting to what he really loved, screaming round Berlin in unmarked cars against the KGB. And then they’d taken the whole thing across the water to Northern Ireland and unleashed it on the Republicans. That was when his story had really started. His brainchild had been the different intelligence-gathering systems, that, allied with informers and double agents, had paralysed PIRA. He’d written the manual, the manual that could never be read.

  We talked into the early hours. I suddenly saw a different side to the boss. He cared . He was doing this for a reason.