Danger Close

by Charlie Flowers

  My various email addresses were pinging. Three new emails. First one was a Liveleak update. Oh brilliant, here was the new viral video from the Blackeyes, starring Bang-Bang chainsawing Iqeel al-Afghani’s head off. It had gone global. I could tell it was her, behind that crazy Mexican sugar-skull makeup.

  The second email was from a Salafi friend of mine. He’d forwarded this month’s update from the conspiracy magazine Notes from the Glue Factory. They were leading with… fucking hell, they were leading with a picture of me running down the bottom level of Westfield Stratford with an AK. It was captioned “dead al-Qaeda terrorist?” The shot must have come from a bystander’s mobile. The MOD now had an office designated DS35 devoted entirely to scooping up any footage from Black Thursday, be it CCTV or mobile phones, anything. This must have slipped through the net.

  The next photo really shook me. It was a photo of Bang-Bang’s M14 rifle, lying on the floor in that mess of blood. It was captioned “Covert British Army unit weapon?”

  I took a deep breath. I opened the last email.

  It was an office circular from Toots. It read-

  From: Tasneem Khani (tkhani@kts.co.uk)

  Sent: 24 Sept 2012 14:28:33

  CC: Riz Sabir (rsabir@kts.co.uk)

  Subject: ANALYSIS OF TRENDS AND INTENTS WITHIN

  ANTI-ISLAMIC GROUPS

  STAFF EYES ONLY

  NODIST

  Recent terrorist outrages have prompted UK Nationalist and right-wing extremist groups to attempt counterprotests in Muslim-majority areas. The English Defence League leadership appear to be planning major marches or static demos outside mosques in Manchester and Birmingham. The breakaway Infidels groups, who have links with Combat 18, are planning what they refer to as “days of rage” on the same days, with flashmobs outside mosques.

  EDL leadership has disassociated themselves from Infidel/C18 involvement (opportunity for action here?).

  Elements from European far-right groups also appear to be planning to attend these events. (cf Belgian and Danish Int.) SOCMINT would appear to indicate Vlaams Blok, SIOE, NDL, and many others have elements heading to UK in the next few weeks. All of the above also coincides with today’s anniversary of the death of Ian Stuart Donaldson, former lead singer of Skrewdriver. Blood and Honour will be attempting gigs as close to this date as possible. So far no gigs have taken place but B & H are attempting to book decoy venues in East London and the Midlands.

  Two other items of interest. First - Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw (BBET; "Blood, Soil, Honour and Loyalty"), a Flemish Neo-Nazi group, has recently successfully infiltrated members into and/or recruited members in the Belgian armed forces. These elements are rumoured to be actively stockpiling weapons from foreign conflict zones that can be transferred to Europe via military channels.

  Second – Anders Breivik is communicating via letters to supporters on the outside, and has mentioned his “English mentor” aka “Lionheart/Lionhearted” several times. Security services are actively attempting to trace this person, IF they exist.

  See attached files for NATO security services reports.

  ENDS

  TK

  Free Resilience HealthCheck

  Events taking place in London during 2012 have raised the UK’s threat level to critical. As such businesses are being urged to consider the risks that such events may bring. Use KTS’s free online Resilience HealthCheck to assess your risk management – and get advice on reducing your organisational vulnerability.

  www.kts.co.uk’

  Even better. More crap to stir into the pot. I made a mental note to contact Tommy Robinson, infamous leader of the EDL, when… if… I got back from wherever I was headed. I was chinstrapped. I looked up at the lounge light. The light was filling my vision.

  The light was very bright. It was one of those disco mirror balls. Hang on a minute. I was asleep. No, I was definitely awake. Farzana Shaheen was onstage. Graham Norton introduced her. She sang Yes My Darling Daughter with the entire Windmill Club Band behind her. I was at the bar trying to lose myself in a martini but she had my attention. I used to come and watch her do standup at tough east London clubs where she'd get in fights and lose teeth. Certain members of the audience would always take exception to a mad Paki bird ripping the piss out of them onstage, and more often than not it would kick off. Fuzz never held back though, she had a punch on her like a mule-kick. Heck, I'd been at the one where Calamity thought Al Murray was a real pub landlord and had climbed onstage to get her pint back. The ensuing fight had been like something out of a Western.

  This gig was different. Farzana had a story to tell. Farzana had lost a sister and the audience was damn well going to know about it. The band struck up. And we were in. Fuzz sang under the onstage moon.

  ‘I’ve gotta be good or Mama will scold me

  I asked her and this is what she told me

  Mother, may I go out dancing?

  Yes, my darling daughter

  Mother, may I try romancing?

  Yes, my darling daughter

  What if there’s a moon, mama darling,

  and it’s shining on the water

  Mother, must I keep on dancing?

  Yes, my darling daughter... ’

  I was in Mrs Kirpachi’s garden. I looked around. Nope, I was definitely awake. The garden was bathed in the most beautiful moonlight, from a moon the size of a hot-air balloon. It hung in the trees, and then settled down into them. How had I got here? I’d been in my flat a minute ago. The moonlight illuminated the lawn and there was Bang-Bang. Except she wasn’t Bang-Bang, she was a fox in a kimono. She took my hand and wiggled her shiny black nose.

  ‘C’mon, retard, it’s our wedding.’

  A raccoon tugged the leg of my combat trousers. I looked down at it. Its eyes weren’t raccoon eyes, they were like the eyes of someone on Ecstacy. Deep, pitch-black pools like the dead doll button eyes of a shark. It spoke, but it seemed to have a speech impediment. ‘Wiz. Reddingth.’

  My eyes were drawn to the lawn we were standing on. The lawn was slicked with blood and cartridge cases. How strange blood looks in moonlight. Black.

  Behind us Mrs Kirpachi was sobbing uncontrollably. Bang-Bang turned to both of us and scolded ‘Mum! You should be happy! It’s what you wanted, it’s our wedding!’

  With a start, I realised there was a gunshot wound in her kimono and blood was pouring from it. The moon split apart and there was a blinding light. The light went blue, to white, to blue and...

  I opened my eyes. Fuzz was shaking my shoulder. I was on the lounge carpet under a duvet. She placed a mug of tea beside me and walked away. I got to my feet. The dawn light streamed in. I looked out over the view to Stratford and the Thames. I was shaking. I decided to take the time to pray. Properly.

  ‘Cheers for the tea Fuzz. I just dreamt you were onstage with Graham Norton.’

  She looked at me and finally said ‘and they say I’m the mad one.’

  10

  25th September

  It was 7.49am. We were parked in the visitors’ car park at Chrome Flightplan in Crawley, just shy of Gatwick airport. A plane thundered over.

  ‘Remind me why we’re here again Fuzz?’

  Fuzz was dressed soberly and smartly for a change, in a charcoal ladies’ business suit, a slightly too-short skirt and Christian Louboutin heels. She was obviously on a vamp mission.

  ‘One, this is the firm that does the logistic support for all the CIA’s rendition flights in the Eastern hemisphere. Two. Me and the MD, have… well, we have a past.’

  She grinned wolfishly.

  ‘And you’ve got an appointment?’

  ‘You betchya. Give me five minutes.’

  She exited the car and went for the reception, giving me a little wiggle on the way in. I clocked it and laughed to myself.

  I turned the news up on the radio. BBC Five. John Gaunt had Tommy Robinson fulminating about Islam and Islamism, and the EDL’s legitimate right to protest. He was adamant that they wou
ld be marching, and soon. Gaunty was giving him a hard time. Tommy was punching back, but he kept saying “Inam” rather than Imam. I switched to Sunrise and tuned out. I looked out across the car park. Not much going on apart from rain until...

  A shower of glass was raining on the car and an office computer was sliding leftwards off the bonnet. As I watched, it slid off and hit the tarmac with another crash. I got out of the car on autopilot, picked up the PC and slung it on the rear seat. Instinctively I looked up. There was a gaping hole in the office window above me.

  The reception doors banged open and Fuzz came walking out with a bounce in her step. She was grinning as she got in. ‘Let’s go, bhai.’

  We drove away, me trying to act smooth.

  As we hit the ramp for the motorway I asked her.

  ‘OK. What happened?’

  ‘I gave him one minutes’ grace and sweet talk, but he wasn’t having it. So I put my pistol to his nose and got him to print out the flight manifests for the 16th. Just in case he was fudging, I threw his PC out the window so we could check it.’

  She waved a sheaf of papers. ‘Now we check.’

  I laughed, and then stopped laughing as I realised I was going to have to explain the dents and scratches on the pool car to the beancounters at the office.

  Back at mine we dismantled the PC with a screwdriver and pulled the hard drive out. Years ago, Bang-Bang had taught me how to do this. I had a gutted terminal she’d left here years ago with the motherboard exposed for this kind of thing, and networked in. SATA cable in, power on… and fingers crossed.

  ‘Fifty-fifty it survived the fall’ said Fuzz.

  We waited. I necked some painkillers as my side was playing up like a bastard.

  The drive whirred, then there were a few quick clicks. Success. It was calibrating. Seconds later, an icon appeared on my right-hand screen. We were in.

  Fuzz spoke. ‘These guys are so ubiquitous, us pilots call their charts “Chrome charts”. They supply the full package. Lemme do a search on that drive.’

  She got busy. I made some tea.

  Within half an hour she had it. ‘Here it is. Here are copies of the EFBs.’

  ‘EFBs?’

  ‘Electronic Flight Bags. We use them instead of the old paper systems when we can. It’s what you load into those funky green displays in a cockpit.’

  She read from the screen.

  ‘September 16th. N6161K. One Leasing. Squawk 5331. Filed a flightplan to Frankfurt, from there to Cyprus, and from there to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan… and from there to Bagram airfield, Afghanistan.’

  She went to look at the files she’d taken. She riffled through them. ‘These are hard copies of the fuel requisitions. Yep. They fuelled up at Frankfurt, Cyprus, and Ashgabat.’

  She went back to the PC. ‘Yep. Bagram and then back to Ashgabat.’

  She looked up. ‘Bhai. She’s in Bagram. No doubt.’

  11

  26th September

  Out on the rainswept pan at Brize the props on the RAF Special Duties Flight C130 were turning and blurring, their whine turning into a grumbling roar that eventually drowned out the thumping rap music from Fuzz’s car. I ran up the ramp into the brightly-lit interior of the plane. Fuzz waved a goodbye and Swallow winked at her and then looked at me.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Born ready.’

  ‘Got your kit?’

  I nodded at the two khaki kit bags I was carrying. ‘Packets are with me and ready to go.’

  ‘Good. We’ll brief you in in-air.’

  Two minutes later we were climbing and I was clinging onto the orange webbing on the fuselage. Swallow was laughing. He put a headset over my ears and slapped the mike down. This was the only way we could communicate in the roaring interior of a C130.

  ‘Welcome back, Terry.’

  For the duration of this mission I was Terry. Terry Taliban. The British Army never, ever, let you forget where you were from. Could have been worse though. Could have been Royal Signals.

  ‘OK Tel, come over here and have a look at the maps.’

  We pulled our comms leads behind us and inched inwards to a set of aluminium cases with large-scale maps spread on them. We gathered round.

  Swallow was OC for this mission. This was an SAS Revolutionary Warfare Wing gig. I recognised the two other guys. Dinger and Briney. They were from Twenty-Four (Air) Troop, G Squadron, also known as Lonsdale Troop for their tendency to fight amongst themselves. Both had black hair, seasonal tans, and nobody had shaved for several days. Blending in. Briney was wrapping two sets of NVGs in foam cut from a mattress, to cushion them and prevent breakages. I knew that these NVGs would have been bought in Peshawar or taken from captured insurgents’ inventories.

  ‘Guys. Listen in. The mission is to get Rizwan here to the perimeter of Bagram airbase. The mission… is to get Rizwan here to the perimeter of Bagram airbase.’

  In Britarmylese, you always stated the mission twice.

  ‘Here’s how we do it. We traverse ISAF airspace as a normal RAF scheduled flight. Southeast of Bagram we climb to oxygen level. One piece of luck is that Bagram’s aerostat, or the big Yank balloon with cameras to you and me, is down for repairs this week. We bang out at 25,000 on a standard HAHO profile and track in. Our DZ is… here…’

  He indicated a point on the map and rattled off the lat and long. ‘We stash our kit, raghead up, tab northwest and lay in Riz’s cache… here…’

  He pointed to an overhead blown-up photo of what looked to be a burnt-out car. ‘Then we move again. Two clicks from the Bagram fenceline. We brass up that fenceline and bug out. Riz stays.’

  He looked at me.‘And good luck with that one, Riz.’

  In my headset the whole team started laughing.

  ‘OK weather over the target area tomorrow.’ Swallow consulted a printout. ‘Visibility good, light cloud cover, wind speed 6 kph direction west north west. Humidity 74, night time temp 13 degrees C. Moon sets at 02.53 local. And that’s when we bang out. Sunrise is at 05.15 local. That gives us an hour to glide down to the DZ and then an hour to get on target and get the attack on.’

  Swallow spoke again. He was speaking to me alone. ‘Go get her, Riz. We all miss her. Bang-Bang was a funny girl. OK. Listen in. I’ve been to Bagram. I’ve walked the perimeter. There are two Bagrams. South Bagram is super-organised, ISAF and US Air Force, you get me?’

  I got him.

  ‘Exactly. But North Bagram is total chaos. It’s meant to be run by the Afghan Security Forces…it’s a madhouse. If your fiancée is in it, she’s probably running it as we speak.’

  Another voice came in. Briney. ‘Her mate punched me. That mad bird with broken teeth.’

  I snapped my head right. ‘Hello Briney. That was Fuzz.’

  A wave back. ‘Awight Tel. That bird’s got a punch on her.’

  Swallow click-clicked the pressel to clear the channel.

  ‘OK lads. Let’s get Terry here trained up on tandem-rigging.’

  He looked at me. ‘Don’t worry mate, doesn’t take more than twenty minutes. And it’s, oh, about four hours to Cyprus. And another four hours from there to Afghan.’

  12

  27th September

  ‘Final drills. Check weapons. Check air. Aircrew. How long, guys?’

  Swallow was speaking in our earpieces. We’d climbed to 24,000 feet and gone to oxygen masks an hour ago as we passed 10,000. And we were still climbing, high above the clouds and out of sight and earshot from anybody on the ground. We were all on pure oxygen from the machine on the pallet as we waited. Breathing pure oxy was to reduce the risk from “the bends”, or nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood, as we climbed to drop altitude.

  Aircrew replied in our earpieces in scratchy tones. ‘Twenty minutes. Go to carried air.’

  We unplugged ourselves from the pallet and switched to the small oxygen bottles on our belts. The loading bay lights were dim red, and had been for a while. Swallow and I now began to buckle ourselves toget
her into the tandem harness. It was a good thing he was a big lad, I was basically hanging off him. Damn this rig was awkward. We were going to fling ourselves into the Afghan airspace from four miles up, so high that no-one on the ground could hear the plane, and Swallow was going to do all the steering. We both made sure everything was strapped down tight, AKs made safe, racing jockey goggles on, oxygen masks clipped snugly. We were all wearing insulated jumpsuits made of special radar-absorbent material.

  A loadie held up a flashcard. That was the signal. The team waddled down the fuselage to the carrier ramp in a close file like penguins. The loadies stood around us, holding cards which they illuminated with red orienteering torches strapped to their heads. They presented the cards just like in playschool, in a set order to make sure no-one had missed an item. The loadies also checked their harnesses were attached to the webbing on either side of the fuselage. Nobody wanted to fall out of the plane without a chute. We watched the jumpmaster.

  The ramp whined open. We shuffled forward until the team was on the edge. I could hear and see nothing but howling blackness. The four turbines roared. Red lights went on on the left and right of the tailgate.

  ‘Red on! Red on!’ everybody shouted.

  The lights went green.

  ‘Ready… set… GO!’

  We flung ourselves out and off the ramp.

  ‘Enjoy the ride, Tel’ said Swallow in my headset. Above us, our drogue chute deployed. Around us in the blackness, the other team members would be forming up in a loose diamond pattern around us, watching the tiny glowfly lights on their helmets and grabbing each others’ flightsuits to hold onto that formation. I tried to remember the drills and kept my limbs as straight as possible in the buffeting air. I looked down and around as the howl of the C130’s turbines faded and was replaced by the rushing wind. Now I could see a sprawl of lights through the clouds. Maybe Kabul. If it was, that other cluster would be Bagram to the north. Hello, Afghanistan, here we come, I thought.