Bolt Action

by Charlie Charters

  Only the Secretary of State had voiced a serious objection, and when prodded, confirmed this could be taken as a ‘no’ vote. He predicted an avalanche of diplomatic nightmares, a tidal wave of disaster completely paralysing US interests around the world.

  Last to speak, before the president, is the National Security Advisor, who’s in the middle of a history lesson.

  ‘. . . I know that a number of you are troubled by the fact that Canada is not by our side on this, that they’ve opted out. Perhaps you’re thinking somehow we should do the same, follow their lead.’ The NSA rolls his tongue over his buck teeth, which catch the light from the overhead spots. He savours the silence, the dramatic moment.

  ‘Nineteen sixty-two, same thing. Canada walked away from us, in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, two gut-wrenching days in October, the pre-eminent crisis of the last sixty-plus years. Nuclear annihilation on the line. And the Canadians wouldn’t follow our lead, refused to upgrade their force status to DEFCON3. Why do I mention this? Because we’ve been here before, because in the end, Canadian shilly-shallying didn’t count for diddly-squat, and it won’t count today.’

  The NSA frames his next words with a deliberate quaver of emotion. ‘The Evil Empire folded, we prevailed, and a young president by the name of Kennedy, striving to advance the same agenda of hope, outreach and tolerance as this administration, showed the world that more important even than this . . . is the security and peace of mind of the American people.’

  No vote is called. Not needed. The Secretary of State’s concerns are noted, and he accepts this, along with the directive that his staff urgently work up some big ‘blue sky ideas’ that might knock the worst edges off global reaction.

  ‘Right, Jim . . .’ The president turns to the Chief of the Defense Staff. His face studded with steely grit. The hardest decisions take the most courage, he keeps reminding himself. ‘Tell those two boys up there. Let’s do what we have to do. Pass the word.’

  Inside the Volkswagen van at the south end of Lambeth Bridge

  There are three MI5 operatives seated in the rear of the van, flicking fingers across keyboards, talking into headsets, scrutinising a bank of monitors. Behind them, stooped as ever, the shift supervisor has his eyes on four different video feeds and can feel his blood pressure rising. All this information pulsing at him. ‘I don’t care what Vodafone says . . . we’re sweeping this bridge.’ The supervisor slams the phone down. The default screen shows a two-shot of his boss Sheila Davane, Noppy, and that arrogant prick Beveridge Clairmonte, QC.

  The video camera and a directional mike for audio are housed within the overhead structure of the Volkswagen. Both work by remote control, with an operator adjusting the focus and zoom with a keyboard toggle.

  The barrister’s sonorous voice is distinctive. ‘Aren’t you interested to know how I came to meet Ms Merritt?’

  ‘Why do you think I care?’ Davane absolutely does not like this man. ‘Probably rescuing blind puppies from a glue factory.’

  The supervisor feels he needs to put a rocket under proceedings at his end. ‘I say this again . . . we don’t know the incoming number, OK . . . but how many mobile phones are powered up on this bridge? Come on, we are better than this, people.’

  The very fact that the bridge is currently deserted offers a crucial advantage to MI5. In the area that their scanner is locked on to, there are so few mobile phones emitting signals that it should be relatively straightforward to isolate any radio transmissions. The process of phone mast triangulation, but worked backwards. They had already eliminated Noppy’s number, and the two guys from 14 Coy. A little bit of fishing in various databases had produced the number for Clairmonte’s carphone and post-pay office mobile.

  Now, they just need one more number . . . this new phone that the barrister holds in his hand.

  The Nokia rings and Clairmonte’s reaction is clear on the video . . . ‘OK, people, where is that call coming from, give me the number?’ The supervisor leans over his three keyboard whizzes.

  Five, ten seconds pass.

  ‘Almost . . . hang on . . .’ As one hammers on the keys like Jerry Lee Lewis, the others turn to watch the electronic net closing. ‘. . . coming up . . . now . . . and . . . got it!’ And the SIM card details and pre-assigned number flash on the screen in red. Clairmonte has the phone to his ear, out there, on Lambeth Bridge, just as the supervisor slams his fist into the Volkswagen panelling. ‘Lock it in, please. Let’s listen and learn. And tell me where the caller is . . .’

  On the monitor, the barrister passes the handset to Noppy. The van now hears her voice twice over, from the intercepted call and from the directional mike.

  Davane: ‘Can we get this over with, please?’

  Unknown male voice. Trace of a Geordie, possibly Wearside, accent. ‘I just want to hear you say sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘No. Sorry, as in “I’m sorry for betraying the trust that Captain Tristie Merritt placed in me.”’

  Davane: ‘What’re you talking about?’

  The supervisor starts to shake with frustration. ‘Please, a location . . . how much longer do I have to wait?’

  Geordie: ‘These muppets on the bridge pretending to read newspapers . . . you think we’ve just fallen out of a tree or something? What is it with you people, why is it that nobody we’ve been fighting for can do one damn decent, honourable thing and stick with it?’

  The youngest of the communication officers, to the supervisor’s left, is shaking his head. Index finger pointing at the screen. ‘This isn’t making sense . . .’

  The supervisor clasps him by the shoulder, looks over at his display and the myriad of intersecting lines overlaid on a map of London. ‘What isn’t?’

  Davane: ‘I’m saying this under duress and it’s all shite to me . . . I’m sorry for betraying the trust that Captain Tristie Merritt placed in me.’

  ‘I’ve checked this twice now . . . that call is coming from Lambeth Bridge. Right where they’re standing . . . I’ve trigged the air cells on Abingdon Street and Millbank on the north side of the river, and the roundabout on Lambeth Palace Road to the south. Same thing. They all intersect there,’ and he stubs his fingers on the soft plasma screen. ‘Somehow he’s with them right now, on the bridge.’

  ‘That’s impossible . . .’ The supervisor rechecks the data entries, then the live picture on the video monitor. A mistake now and he’d be counting penguins in the Falklands until retirement . . . The chauffeur had been given his taxi fare, told to get home. That left four people. Davane. Clairmonte. Two from 14 Coy. On another monitor, he checks that neither of the soldiers is talking. They’re just watching, looking all about.

  Geordie: ‘Thank you . . . now pass the attaché case to Clairmonte.’

  Davane snaps, ‘Where’s the computer?’

  ‘About twenty feet from where you’re standing.’

  The supervisor sees a shape in this mass of bewildering information and tries to join up all the dots, with one simple explanation. ‘Bloody hell, is the caller in the boot of the Bentley?’

  ‘Give the case and the phone to Clairmonte . . .’

  The supervisor folds his arms, smiles, happy either way, that the triangulation is correct, and about how this is playing out. ‘Well, if he’s in the boot of the car, that’ll be the easiest arrest of the week.’

  Watching the monitor, they see the barrister take the case, flick open the locks with one hand and take the phone with the other. He removes a clear plastic file, holding the attaché between his knees, then pulls out a document.

  Everybody waits as Clairmonte reads and re-reads. Slowly.

  He nods his dreadlocked head. ‘This is good. Exactly what Ms Merritt would have wished. I’ll hand you back to Davane.’

  Davane’s harsh Ulster voice: ‘Now my computer, the Trident stuff . . .’

  ‘Take five paces back, Noppy.’

  ‘Noppy . . .?’ Davane bites off the rest of the question.


  ‘Tell Clairmonte, too.’

  Everyone in the Volkswagen laundry van is riveted to the main feed. The barrister on one side, and Davane and the two soldiers on the other, shuffle backwards. Glaring at each other, expecting the worst.

  A flash of movement whips across the monitor, too sudden and unexpected to register in anybody’s mind. ‘What the crap was that?’ the supervisor screams, scanning all his feeds. Nothing, except that Davane has backed into one of her protectors and both have tumbled to the floor.

  The second guy from 14 Coy. is barking into his cuff-mike. ‘He’s under the bridge. Repeat. Contact under the bridge.’ And he holds up high the grappling hook that had shot across the screen, hauling a thick mountaineering rope behind it. The reaction inside the Volkswagen is a very perplexed Huh?

  Davane struggles to her feet, barely supported by her bodyguard . . . Off screen, the directional mike picks up an altogether new sound, the roar of an engine, over which Davane’s voice can just be heard. ‘Pull it up, come on,’ and within seconds a thick padded case is hoisted over the railings and clunks on to the pavement. Nicely framed on camera, as Cuff-mike screeches, ‘Jesus . . . look at him go.’

  The supervisor shouts back: ‘Look at who go? Where’s my bloody vision. I want pictures now.’

  And, as he watches the wake streaking into the distance, Cuff-mike files a police-standard report. ‘White coupé cruiser. Sunroof. Approximately twenty-five feet long. Heading to sea, ex-Lambeth Bridge. Making perhaps thirty knots.’

  ‘Have you got that, India Ninety-nine?’ snaps the supervisor, and serenely, two thousand feet above, comes the response from the day crew flying one of the Metropolitan Police’s three Eurocopter EC145s.

  ‘Affirmative. Have craft in sight. Will liaise with MPU . . . Thank you.’

  The supervisor grinds his jaw, conceding to himself the best he can hope for now is a share, a tiny slice, of the glory. The penguins are still a possibility . . .

  ‘Marine Police Unit, this is airborne India Ninety-nine. Please intercept white coupé cruiser, travelling downstream, thirty knots, approaching Westminster Bridge . . .’

  The supervisor punches open the rear doors of the Volkswagen Crafter, getting a cigarette ready, and stalks around the rear of the truck, stewing. On the other side of the road, Davane is being protectively manhandled into a Metropolitan Police Volvo that has screeched to a halt, bathed in flashing emergency lights. Her two minders seem to be fighting off a posse that can only be from the CIA, trying to force their way to Dougal MacIntyre’s missing laptop.

  Barrister Beveridge Clairmonte calmly watches the roof of his Bentley Azure T slowly unfurl, the briefcase and amnesty note safely locked in the boot. Mission very much accomplished. He has already given the small huddle of Metropolitan Police surveillance officers a warning shot about the absolute nature of legal privilege for barristers such as himself. ‘Getty v. Getty 1985 . . . in case you care for some bedtime reading,’ and the wary policemen had duly backed off.

  The supervisor flicks a match, lights up and sucks in a lungful of Lambert and Butler. They would catch this Geordie guy, the man in the white powerboat. Nothing on the Thames could outrun one of those Targa fast response units, and he laughs out loud: a ninja grapple hook! . . . his father, an old-time beat copper, would say, you live long enough, you see everything.

  The Weasel looks at his watch, decides ten minutes is enough. Half a thermos flask of creamy, sweet tea and a nice pork pie sit nicely in his tum.

  Indeed, the sun is a touch lower in the west, hopefully right in the eyes of anybody looking upstream from Lambeth Bridge. He’s pretty certain there are no more coppers on the bridge –they’d gone after that white Sealine cruiser as though it were a one-man crime wave. He pities the driver. But not too much. Funny how easy it is to pull a bet with a bored rich kid. Must be that attention deficit disorder, or something. Five thousand pounds says you can’t get your dad’s cruiser from Lambeth Bridge to the QE2 Bridge in . . . You’re on, soldier boy, the rich kid had jeered, making the vilest imaginable upper-class snort of contentment.

  Weasel looks up at the huge span of the second arch under which he’s been hiding. Designed for four lanes of traffic, and pavements on either side the width of two men lying head to head. All told, more than enough space for his little nine-foot inflatable Zodiac to make itself invisible while all hell was breaking loose upstairs.

  He stands up carefully. Balances, and edges forward. Wouldn’t want to tip up into the Thames now. He uncouples the mooring hook from a steel piling extruding from one of the bridge’s granite supports and lets go. Balances again, shuffles back, and the modest eight-horsepower outboard bubbles into action with the push of a small black button.

  Feeling like one of the waterborne warriors known as the Cockleshell Heroes, Weasel spins the boat in a tight circle and put-puts upstream, in the direction of Kew Bridge.

  No big plans, except a few jars with Piglet . . . Piglet had been watching things go down with a spotter scope, and keeping the Weasel clued up by small marine walkie-talkie . . .

  They’ll raise a glass to Tristie, and Button, and Whiffler. On the one hand, £315 million locked away, banked, and an amnesty to boot. On the other, three good people dead . . . he feels the dread hollowness in his gut . . . more names for a list already way too long.

  On board PK412

  The torch lights up what’s left of the cavity ahead . . . Tristie’s wedged sideways against the roof, frozen, naked and greased-up, and she’s made it beyond the first-class galley on the right side of the aircraft. The olive oil worked a treat. But now the fuselage cladding sucks at the clamminess of her skin, like tentacles . . . frosted breath is all she can see for a moment . . . wait, girl, and it will clear. Wait . . . she thinks of Captain Salahuddin and his Tussauds biro, the span from his thumb to the middle finger . . .

  I would be astonished, absolutely amazed, if there was more than the length of this pen in crawl space . . .

  Well, Captain, no need to be astonished. The dimensions of the Mount Everest that lies ahead is the height of a foam mattress and the width of a coffin. And pinching in tight from all sides.

  She’s on her front, trying to worm over a cross-spar, while at the same time sliding around a stainless-steel box, an electrical bus of some sort. Body arched both backwards and to the side, a mermaid in mid-kick trying to squeeze around an S-bend. The smallest matter in all this is what’s beneath her. A half-dozen broken-ended shafts of cotter pins, which are piercing her skin, snagging her stomach in place.

  Just don’t pull any of the wiring . . .

  Four bundles of multicoloured wires snake ahead of her . . . her body feels spent, but in her brain there’s enough gas in the lighter to keep a low flame flickering. You’ve done it before, Tristie, rappelling, climbing walls, this is a piece of cake . . .

  The wiring feeds into an access panel within the floor, a grey metal surround. Only a tennis racket’s length from her fingertip. Might as well be on the other side of the world. If only she could move . . . just that little bit . . . Just don’t pull any of the wiring.

  Yes, and so what, Captain, if I do break your bloody plane . . .

  A surge of helplessness, her pulse hammering in her neck, and a sudden blood-rush darkness of mind. Her fingers coil and tighten around the wiring cables, as if she’s about to wring the life out of them . . .

  The virus leaks past her every defence, insidiously, without fanfare. The great unravelling. Her sanity. All its carefully contrived normality creaks, splinters, falls away. Wedged tight, no way forward or back, for the first time it enters her mind that she will die . . . watch and learn, this is how people go to pieces . . . and the most intriguing headline will be ‘Naked Female Found In Pocket of Aircraft Fuselage’. Someone with an itch to write is bound to scratch that curious wrinkle, spouting endless theories.

  . . . Terrible forces fuse in her mind . . . the black holes of childhood engulf her. . .

  . . . Soc
ial Services-docketed, tagged, abandoned and abused . . . a soul rotting from the inside out . . .

  And yet. And yet. Where does determination come from? The torchlight of determination sparks, explodes, takes over every fibre and particle of her existence . . .

  Sympathetic detonation, they call it in the army . . . one anger detonating another . . . fast cook-off time, in terms of explosives . . .

  Grappling. Hauling now on the electric cables, nudging forward, inch . . . by inch. Pain, the pain is nothing.

  The first crack as a wire bundle shorts, and sparks arc and dance in front of her almost visionless eyes. She keeps pulling, mechanically, one hand over another amid a kaleidoscope of flashes, bright, skittering around like snowflakes . . . fingertips reaching . . . slowly, her life squeezing out of her in this aluminium vice . . .

  ‘Echo Whisky’

  FA-18E Super Hornet

  The Fighting 103rd, Jolly Rogers

  Eight minutes to point of engagement . . .

  On one level the pilot, call-signed Cletus, understands the momentous nature of what is happening, what he and his wingman are being asked to do. Not a witness to history, but history itself. No doubt, in time, he will dwell on the gravity of his orders.

  ‘Echo Whisky, you are weapons free when combatant aircraft reaches . . .’ and a long list of coordinates spells out a point of engagement just a short distance away. After this, it’s in his discretion when to initiate contact.

  . . . But on another level, he’s glad this thing is coming to a climax. The tension. The exhaustion. Make it difficult to feel ‘removed’. Or alert even . . . Holding position five miles astern of the Boeing 777, checking, rechecking his systems and armaments, then re-rechecking. Listening to the same call go out from air traffic controllers on the international distress channel and their standard Gander frequency . . . ‘Pakistan 412, request you acknowledge immediately . . . Pakistan 412, request . . .’ That slow, measured Canadian accent. On and on, and on. Like the sleep-inducing midnight chimes of a grandfather clock.