'Advance to Contact' (Armageddon's Song)

by Andy Farman

  Art Petrucci was a late arrival and an escort delivered him to the incident room where he joined the Commissioner, stood quietly at the back. There were two military officers present in the room amid the policemen and women, and one was stood next to the Commissioner.

  “Good morning Art, do you know General Shaw?” The Commissioner clasped Art’s hand briefly and stepped aside in order for the two Americans to exchange greetings.

  “Only by reputation.” Shaking the marines hand he asked with genuine curiosity what had brought the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs there.

  “London is my last port of call before returning stateside, and I knew young Scott so I dropped in to see if there had been any developments in finding his killers.”

  As Head of Station for CIAs London office, Art knew damn well that he should have been informed of Henry Shaw’s itinerary if the United Kingdom had been on it, but he gave away no sign of what he was thinking.

  “So are you staying at the Embassy marine barracks, or with the Ambassador at Winfield House?”

  “I can’t stand the sanctimonious son of a bitch, and I was going to stay at the barracks tonight but the Commissioner here very kindly offered me the use of a spare room at his home in Surrey. It’s a lot closer to Heathrow and as I’m about travelled-out, I said thanks.”

  “A case of, if its Thursday this must be Paris, huh?” Art asked.

  Henry laughed.

  “Actually I was there yesterday, but that’s pretty much been the story.”

  Art laughed along good-naturedly with him, but made a mental note to ask both the chief of station Paris and the SDCE what they had known of his visit there.

  The conversation ended there as they listened in on the progress of the target vehicle. The driver of that car was following a route around the capital obvious only to himself, interjected with routine counter surveillance actions such as sudden course changes, reversing his direction of travel, and at roundabouts would at times circle around it several times. It was all being done in order to confuse a tail, or make them reveal themselves in their attempts to maintain contact.

  On two occasions whilst halted in traffic their suspect had released his seatbelt and opened the cars sunroof, peering up through it as he tried to see if a helicopter was being used to track him. They didn’t know about that in the incident room though, because none of the surveillance team had been in eyeball contact, or sight of it, since D.I MacAverney and his fellow ‘vagrant’ had placed the electronic tracking device beneath the car.

  They were not relying only on the tracker, there were cars, vans and of course solo motorcycles ‘doing the alternative’, or in others words they were travelling along roads that ran parallel to the one the target vehicle was using.

  The passengers, the men and women in the cars and vans were known in the trade as ‘Footmen’, and if for some reason the driver abandoned the target vehicle and did not seem as if he would return for it, then these officers would begin a ‘foot follow’ a task that requires much skill and practice, especially if the quarry was as surveillance conscious as this target quite obviously was.

  The Commissioner called over a uniformed Chief Superintendent at one point. Only a few words were exchanged before the man left on the task his boss had given him, but Art’s built in radar had twitched.

  “What’s his problem?”

  The Commissioner smiled.

  “Oh, he is just a little put out that I brought the military in to do a task his department wanted. Stokes and Pell were SO-19 officers, so my specialist firearms unit believe they should make the arrests.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Let us just say that I would rather not test their professionalism. We want those individuals as much for what they can tell us in intelligence terms, as I do for them to face justice.”

  It wasn’t until the driver reached Pall Mall that he saw a marker, a hexagonal shaped sticker about four inches across, its fluorescent green colour in sharp contrast to the red of the post office box it adhered to.

  It took a little while for the surveillance team to guess that there target had completed his business in the city, by which time the target vehicle was eastbound on the north circular road.

  The units involved in the vehicle follow had nothing particularly challenging to do until the target turned off the north circular toward Essex on the A13 and put his foot down. The controller sent two of the powerful surveillance team motorbikes forwards, to overtake the target and to keep well ahead of him. He kept the remainder back, the closest vehicle being another motorcycle a mile behind the target, but they knew their quarry was more switched on than the average criminal it was their usual brief to shadow, and a change of vehicles somewhere was a distinct possibility. If the controller read the situation correctly he would order callsigns to ‘punch up’, to close the gap between the target and themselves, but if he got it wrong the target could have switched wheels and a ‘total loss’ would have to be declared, as contact with the target was irretrievably lost.

  Controlling such an operation could send a person’s stress levels so high they redlined. A small mistake, a callsign sent in the wrong direction or not moved out of the targets path in time could sink an operation that had cost literally millions, so those present in the incident room who did not know Dusty Miller by reputation, had misgivings that a mere plain clothes duty police constable should even be allowed in the room.

  Dusty had twenty years’ experience in surveillance work and had he taken up the game of Chess would have been a candidate for grand master. Dusty had the ability not only to think several steps ahead, but the only thing known to ever cause him the slightest element of stress was the occasional aphid infestation of the prize roses he grew in his garden at home.

  When the target suddenly turned left onto the B1335 outside the village of Wennington, and then stopped in a lay-by a short distance further on, all heads turned in Dusty’s direction.

  The controller sat unconcerned as the minutes ticked by, ignoring the increase in fidgeting by others in the room, until at last the tracker indicated the vehicle was once more on the move, turning around and returning to the A13 where it continued deeper into Essex.

  Dusty sacrificed one of his vans by ordering it to overtake the target vehicle and confirm that the vehicle emitting the tracking signal was the same, and that the suspect was still inside it. With a target of this quality Dusty would not risk using the van again anywhere near it, and so the footmen were soon after transferred to other vehicles, and the van returned to London.

  “Someone just made a pick-up.” Observed Art.

  Counter Intelligence in the UK was the job of the British Secret Service, not the CIA, but he would be very interested to learn whom the SIS eventually caught servicing the dead letterbox near the lay-by.

  For a further hour they trailed the car, onto the M25 motorway where it crossed over into Kent, and then to a cul-de-sac off a quiet street in the town of Swanley.

  This was the first time on the follow that Dusty ordered the vehicles to punch up, and he then deployed footmen to cover access routes from the dead end street.

  The two motorcyclists Dusty had sent ahead of the target kept a discrete eye on the end of the street for the few minutes it took for the two vehicles worth of footmen Dusty selected to arrive and deploy, and so when their suspect appeared the only people he saw were a couple of pedestrians going about their business.

  Their suspect was good; there was no doubt about it. Three hours after his encounter with the vagrants he was still alert to possible surveillance as he made his way through the small town on foot. Using shop windows as mirrors he discretely checked his six o’clock position for tails as he traced a circuitous route around the town.

  Gemma Daly took over the ‘eyeball’ position as the target turned into Sycamore Drive, and when he turned apparently to see if there was a bus in sight she saw his body telegraph his intention a moment before his sudden movement. It was barely
susceptible but she caught it anyway, his right shoulder dropped fractionally before he swivelled around at the waist, looking sharply behind him and taking in all that was in the street before turning back.

  He saw Gemma of course, or rather a rather dowdy looking woman across the opposite side of the street and about ten yards back. But she wasn’t looking at him or doing anything to cause suspicion.

  Further back along the street, on his side, a man and another female were walking in the same direction as him. They weren’t walking together and everything seemed normal, but he didn’t relax.

  The target was level with the Convent of Mercy when he suddenly stopped, and this caused problems for the foot follow.

  There was no cover for Gemma and the other footmen that he had in view as he stood there with his back to the convent looking up and down the street. It was a tactic designed to force a tail to lose contact or ‘show out’, because there were no handy shop doorways, no alleyways or opportunities to drop temporarily from sight.

  Gemma put out the warning on her body set, her lips barely moving. “Stop, stop, stop.” Those footmen not in sight went into shallow cover, ready to go deep if the target did the reciprocal, retraced his steps. The female officer furthest from the target in Sycamore Drive got lucky, sticking out a hand for a bus, which pulled in for her at a request stop she had just walked past. The male ahead of her had no such options open except to keep walking right on, and gave a very convincing frown as he walked past he target who was staring at him. The male officer was now ‘burnt’, their quarry hadn’t sussed him out but he would be recognised if seen by the target again.

  Gemma wasn’t quite as ready to accept defeat, though what she tried is a difficult trick to carry off as any taught on the surveillance courses.

  The target paid close attention to passing vehicles as well as pedestrians, but in the minutes he waited he did not recognise any vehicle as one that had driven around the block and past him again.

  Across the road from him the dowdy woman had bumped into an old friend, and they were gossiping away as women did in his own country too when they hadn’t seen each other for a time, and he turned toward the town centre again.

  Gemma hurriedly said goodbye and promised to stay in touch this time with the local housewife she had never seen before in her life but had nonetheless convinced that she and Gemma had met years before on a holiday in Spain. She breathed “Off, off, off.” Informing everyone the target was again on the move, as she continued the follow.

  There are strict rules to be adhered to in the voice procedure of a follow, both vehicular and on foot. When the follow is electronic you ask the controller for permission to speak, but when you don’t have the aid of a tracker then that permission must come from the ‘eyeball’.

  No matter who you are, if you are in the eyeball position then that becomes your callsign, ‘eyeball’. When the eyeball is speaking nobody else does, and even when the eyeball is not commentating on the target, you ask eyeballs permission before you speak, and that includes the controller.

  Dusty was pleased with how Gemma had maintained contact, but now would be a good time to set up a change.

  “Eyeball, permission?”

  “Go.”

  “Mel’s in perfect cover ahead. You recycle with One Four down the next right.”

  “Ok.”

  Ahead of the target she saw her colleague appear out of the entrance of St Bartholomew’s Roman Catholic school and without giving a single glance to the approaching target, he negotiated the traffic to gain the far side.

  No one expects their tail to be the guy or gal in front of them, because tails are always following behind you, right?

  So Mel had a leg up on the creditability scale, and by crossing the road he had allowed the target to overtake and put him in the classic tail position.

  The target took advantage of a glass bus shelter for a free look behind him. Despite the graffiti scratched on it by bored individuals with sharp door keys, its reflection told him three people were behind him, but only two were heading the same way. The mousy woman, who was now turning down a side street, and the parent/teacher from the kid’s school.

  Out of sight of the target down the side turning Gemma climbed through the side door of a van and began a quick change. None of the vehicles carried changes of clothes, although most had workmen’s coverall’s and maybe a grubby coat, so what took place was a swap of outer clothing and accessories amongst the footmen inside.

  As in any walk of life, policemen come in different shapes and sizes, but unlike other departments the dedicated surveillance officers are chosen for their looks as well as intelligence, but not in the way a soap star would be.

  The old C.11 Criminal Intelligence Department were the very best at surveillance in any police force anywhere, and they set the standard that is still strived for in other covert police set-ups.

  When would-be members of C.11 came calling and they entered the door to the units offices at NSY, some would have noticed a mark on the doorframe. In those pre-equal opportunities days there was a height limit for the police service in London so there was no second mark on the door frame to designate that the caller was below average height, so only those who were shorter than the mark on the door frame went on to the second and subsequent stages of selection.

  Gemma was no head turner, and neither were any of her colleagues; they were all of the ‘nothing special’ category in attractiveness. Not too good looking or unattractive to attract attention, the all-round Mr and Ms Average.

  With a vehicle full of averaged sized people, a change in wardrobe was not that difficult to achieve as One Four’s avoided passing the target who he made his way toward the large Asda Superstore in the town centre.

  As Gemma slid open the side door again she paused, reaching forwards to pluck the cap off the drivers head and after trying it for size she emerged in the stores car park. The dowdy spinster-type was gone, and a middle-England thirty-something Mum sought shallow cover until Dusty called upon her once more.

  The target had been taught not to assume anything, go through the drills, and only then, if nothing untoward was apparent, to assume he was temporarily free of observation.

  Mel saw the target remove a mobile phone from a pocket and make a call, speaking very briefly indeed before replacing it.

  Back at NSY Dusty scribbled down the time and the postcode of the area the call had been in, handing it to an assistant who got busy on the phone.

  “With a bit of luck.” The Commissioner said to his guests. “We should learn the targets cellular number and the number of whoever he called, plus wherever that contact is.”

  It took ten minutes for the information to become available.

  “Ok.” Dusty said, as he looked at the details his assistant had written below Dusty’s own writing. “I think sir, we are looking at a potential third eye in the town centre.”

  Henry Shaw was intrigued.

  “What does he mean, a third eye?”

  “It is easier for a person to spot someone following someone else, so Dusty thinks our man just called a friend to watch who is behind him.”

  “Dusty…any clue as to this other guy?”

  “Unfortunately yes, the number he called was a landline, not another mobile. He telephoned the shopping centre CCTV control room.”

  “How are you going to handle it, isn’t it too risky to go following him in?”

  The Commissioner looked over at Dusty.

  “Well?”

  “We don’t follow him sir, we know where he is going and he has to come out of there. Once inside he will do something, something to cause a reaction from any footmen. It won’t need to be much, just ducking down for a minute would do that, and the third eye will be watching for someone who is looking about just a little too much in order to regain contact.”

  A few of the senior officers clearly disagreed, and the more senior voiced his concerns.

  “Commissioner?”

/>   “Yes Commander Aires?”

  “I disagree with this, uh, Constables assessment. We should flood the area with our footmen, put a dozen inside and that way we will keep contact no matter what he does.”

  Rather than automatically support him as he had expected, the Commissioner passed the commander suggestion to Constable Miller.

  “Dusty?”

  “We would just be giving the target and the third eye more officers to spot, I think it’s a stupid idea sir.”

  The Commanders hackles rose.

  “Oh really, Constable?”

  He was not used to the junior ranks saying anything other than, ‘yes sir’ to his suggestions.

  “Well I have decided that the decision should come from above your pay grade…”

  The Commissioner cut him off in mid flow.

  “I agree Commander!” however the Commander’s satisfied smile soon disappeared.

  “Dusty, any footmen already in the shopping centre, pull them out and run this as you see fit.”

  “Yes sir.”

  In Swanley, the target reached the end of Sycamore Drive and dodged the traffic in Bartholomew Way to arrive in the shopping centres car park, where he broke into a run, heading for the entrance.

  Mel let him go, and carried on walking without so much as a turn of the head along the road to rendezvous with a vehicle parked a little away from the town centre.

  Thirty minutes later, their man re-emerged onto the street. He still used shop windows in order to look behind himself but he now walked with an obvious sense of purpose.

  In a way the boys and girls of the SCG were disappointed as they watched their man drive out of the railway station car park in another vehicle. The game was nearly over now, they could sense it, and although they no longer had the aid of a tracking device they could see the suspect was relaxed, and no longer a challenge for their skills.