And then Mishy ran back in to the hall holding the RPG with a expression of set, pure killing rage and levelled it. I flailed back after her and shouted ‘NO! No you can’t use a RPG inside a-’
She shook her head like she was worrying off a bothersome fly, concentrated and…she squeezed the trigger.
I dived for cover. The backblast took out two SVS who’d crept up behind us and drove their smoking bodies through the wall displays from a local school. The warhead quickly puffed twice, armed and detonated at the far end of the prayer hall, blowing every last surrendering combatant into the walls in a storm of bricks and out the two windows. I scrambled to one knee and emptied my AK into the two writhing enemy behind us in a shower of brass cases and blinding flame. The school displays, including a large cardboard thermometer, slowly toppled onto them. Mishy lowered the RPG launcher and blinked twice, then dropped the launcher to the carpet.
It was over. It was over. The carpet was spongy with blood. Debris pattered to the floor and masonry and white dust coated the living and the corpses. I looked down.
Fuzz was lying dead beside me.
Oh no.
Suddenly her eyes fluttered open and she coughed. ‘Y’allah.’
I helped her up. Her left sleeve had burned away and she gazed curiously at her scorched, blackened arm. ‘Fuck. Pass me a dressing.’
Calamity came running back in from the corridor, worrying at one ear with a finger and then replacing her radio earpiece. ‘Hang on…We’ve cornered them! We’ve cornered them! We’ve got them out the back in the caretaker’s building.’
Maryam readied a grenade. ‘Good. Let’s frag ‘em out.’
I could hear the dull thud of stun and smoke grenades in the street outside. I got on the secure radio. ‘Cope. Tell your lot to wait. Something’s happened.’
The car park was full of the smoke from burning vehicles. The ITN van was charred, burnt-out. All the crew were scattered around its doors, blackened, dead. Too late for that.
Maryam hobbled to the van, half-dragging her injured leg, and chanced a glance around the bodywork to the caretakers’ building. She looked and raised her hand in the correct signal. Then dropped her hand. All clear. She threw the grenade in through a broken window. She had the backspin just right and it whirred through the gap. There was a bang and a cloud of smoke and glass fragments, and shrieks, then silence.
Mishy ran forward to the outbuilding. She readied the PKM and loosed a long burst through the door. The door fell into pieces and there was more screaming as the interior lit up in flashes of green tracer. She stopped firing and started shouting in Urdu. ‘Bahar niklo! Jaldee sey!’
The survivors emerged, deafened and blackened. Mishy prodded them forward with the muzzle of the PKM. ‘Get in that car park you baby murderers.’
Bang-Bang was watching with her usual non-committal look. ‘So we shoot them now?’
‘What?’
Fuzz racked the slide on a pistol. ‘Yep, now. Click-clack pow. So the whole world sees what happens to people who murder children and defile a mosque. Move ‘em out.’
Mishy came over and pointed at two of them. ‘These two. I recognise them from the screen photos from last night. Ray and Westey from C18 and the Infidels.’ She pushed them to their knees. ‘Came to see the massacre, did you? Hands on your heads.’
Bang-Bang wiped at her bleeding mouth and looked me over. She touched my arm. ‘Allah must love you, Riz honey, you’ve escaped with hardly a scratch.’
Then she raised a hand. ‘Hang on. Got a runner on the drone feed. Look.’ She pointed to her netbook screen. The overhead display showed a figure racing away from the mosque. A box cursor settled on him and tracked as the target ran towards the junction of Coventry Road.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Dunno. Could be one of the leaders. Going to automatic. Not so fast, ese…’
Bang-Bang tapped keys and the drone whirred above us and dropped, accelerating. She turned away and held a finger in the air, conducting the orchestra, a blissful smile on her face. Her eyes closed. I could see all the pent-up rage from Afghanistan about to expend itself. And we watched, a rapt audience. On the screen the view zoomed in like a TV-guided bomb. A running man.
Running, turning… he turned too late and our last freezeframe of him was a shocked face gawping skywards at several pounds of whirring carbon-fibre bladed death. Out on the main road came a loud crack and presently, a little puff of grey-blue smoke rose into the air. Bang-Bang dropped her hand and gave a small half-bow.
‘And I thangyew. Droned ‘im. Someone wanna go clear it up?’
‘Rather you than me. Where’s Duckie? Can’t get her on the radio.’
We found Duckie in the main hall, holding a baby. Her face was wet with tears. It wasn’t moving... We took the body off her and I wrapped it in a blanket. Bang-Bang spoke quietly under her breath over its body. ‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un… O Allah. Make him a cause of recompense for us and make him a treasure for us on the day of Resurrection and an intercessor and one whose intercession is accepted…’
Duckie nodded at the nearest door where some corpses were frozen in the act of clawing at the blood-smeared door handle. ‘Her mum. She didn’t get very far.’
She looked up at me. ‘Forget it, guys, I’ve done my bit. If this is my England then I’m off. Maybe I’ll go to Spain. I’ll write.’
Bang-Bang produced a wet-wipe and began dabbing at Duckie’s face. ‘You did good babe. Better than good. You saved us. Don’t ever kick yourself, Duck. Don’t ever kick yourself.’
They shot the prisoners out in the supermarket car park opposite the mosque. Ray and Westey were first. The photograph of a shimaghed-up Fuzz putting a round through Ray's head was on the Evening Standard's front page that evening, and from that moment, the country changed. No-one could see Fuzz’s face, of course, but her gun arm had the tattoo on it. “Get Dead Or Die Trying”. The internet went mad trying to figure out the meaning.
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 n
ever 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 Command, 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
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
Kill Order
Metropolitan Police Appeal
Parents and DCI make new appeal for missing local girl
29 March 2013
Incident Date
26/03/2013
Incident Location
Tower Hamlets
Description
Police investigating the disappearance of missing Hackney teenager Kelly Bowen are today, Friday 29th March, renewing appeals for information regarding her whereabouts. Throughout the weekend of 30th and 31st March, officers will be handing out appeal l
eaflets to shoppers in the vicinity of Roman Road – an area that Kelly is known to frequent. An image of Kelly will also be displayed on the big screen at Upton Park during fixtures.
19 year-old Kelly Bowen was last seen at approximately 2230hrs on Tuesday 26th March, leaving the Lord Morpeth pub on Old Ford Road on her own.
Kelly is described as white and around 5' or 5'1" inches tall with medium-length black hair. Detective Chief Inspector Lennie George said: ‘It has now been three days since Kelly went missing and concerns for her safety are understandably increasing. I would encourage people to look closely at her picture. This picture can be found on the Met police and Missing People websites. I urge anyone who may have seen Kelly since 26th March to contact us.’
Anyone with information about Kelly's whereabouts is urged to call Bethnal Green Police incident room on 020 8417 2083.
1.
It was the morning of my wedding day, and already things had come unstuck. I was meant to be sorting events in an Asian restaurant in Ilford. Instead I was stood on a roof in Bethnal Green with a Blade E-Flite radio transmitter in my hand, ready to send a signal to detonate multiple high-explosive charges in the basement of the building over the road. And it was a non-functioning radio transmitter.
Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus Page 36