Danger Close (15 page)

28

October 4th

The day was sunny and warm. Bang-Bang seemed fine, although a bit pale and wobbly, and demanded that we stroll the boulevards. She’d gone to the Crazy Horse Revue with Marianne last night and left me to man the computers and try and keep ahead of what was going on back in the world. And the world was falling apart.

Bang-Bang had returned at midnight with a bottle of Moet and we’d made the most of it and watched some Luc Besson films on cable.

And now it was a new day. We bought a map at a shop and decided to strike out towards the Avenue Foch and just go where the wind took us. By late afternoon we were sightseed-out and had plotted up on an outside table at a restaurant off Quai de Dion Bouton. We had a cheeky carafe of red wine and we were dead set on making the most of it. Bang-Bang stuck her gum on the underside of the table and said to me and no-one in particular, ‘Should we be on the lookout for runaway schoolgirls and English teachers?’

I laughed. ‘Yeh. Good one. I think DPSD have got their dragnet out in Paris for Nazis, not elopers.’

‘Ah. OK.’

‘Thought about what we’re going to do when we get back to Blighty, Holly doll?’

She stretched and smiled at me. ‘What do we do when we get back? Back to me getting asked for ID in shops again, whooh… See Mum and Dad. Not get shot or rendered for a bit. Cook lots. A dinner party. Cook for you, you’re skinny, Riz my darling. Go to bed for a fortnight... How about you?’

‘Same same. Cook for YOU. You’re
very
skinny. We’ve got two jobs on at the office but we can work round that.’

‘Two jobs?’

‘Well, three really. First one is moving KTS’s offices to somewhere where the cops can’t get us. Second is the Colonel’s big plan to get Met cops on the payroll. Third is pinning down what the Infidels and or C18 are planning and taking them out.’

‘I know. Dangerous stuff.’

‘OK… apart from that…’

We both laughed and drank some of the rough earthy wine.

‘Penny for your thoughts Holly.’

She looked at me. ‘When we were in Second Life last night… that place Duckie and the raccoons took us to. Did the floor plans and building mockups look remotely French to you?’

‘No. It looked British. And I saw French and Belgian fellas going by their handles, but no reference to anything at all in France. I saw models of two big mosques that looked well-British, not French in style at all. French mosques are squarer, more blocky, they’re often in the style of Moroccan mosques, whereas UK mosques these days are sort of mock-Moghul.’

‘Mock
what
?’

‘Work with me here babe. I know this stuff. Oh, and the cars in their floor plans were driving on the left, not the right.’

She puffed out her cheeks and thought for a bit.

‘I noticed the cars. I’m thinking all this whack-the-NATO conference stuff is just a blind. I reckon they’re going to try and get the arms to Britain. And as and when we
do
find this truck and its container, what are you thinking of doing?’

I placed a Sony Ericsson W995 mobile phone on the table. ‘Already set up for Google Latitude. We gluepad this onto the chassis and track it. I’m sure our new French colleagues will jark the container too, but I want some backup.’

She nodded. ‘Plan. What’s the battery life on that thing?’

‘48 hours tops from when we turn it on. I hope.’

‘And when we’re tracking it in Britain, then what?’

‘We’re going to get the whole team on it and then you and me are going to have a chat with Tommy Robinson in Luton, luv. I want to know what he knows about Breivik, the Templars and the Infidels. Just a hunch. Well, not a hunch, Breivik’s talking to people from inside his prison and they never really
did
find the rest of those Templar Knight people.’

We were silent for a long while. Bang-Bang’s glum face suddenly brightened.

‘Riz. We haven’t hit the shops properly yet.’

I agreed. ‘Tomorrow I’ll treat ya.’

Bang-Bang blew me an ironic kiss.

Cars passed. We looked at the hospital opposite.

‘Holly, d’you reckon you’ve beat it?’

She nodded. ‘I reckon I have, because I swear to almighty Allah, if I ever so much as see smack or even a needle in the future, I’m gonna run like hell and call in an airstrike.’

She gave a little shudder. She reached for my hand and I took it. ‘All it’s left me with is a feeling I’m now a member of an exclusive club I never wanted to join. OK, penny for
your
thoughts, Rizwan Sabir.’

‘I was just remembering when me and the Colonel lost you in the MOD building and he put out an APB for a girl in a corset and French knickers.’

She laughed with me. ‘Oh God, all those years ago last month. You had to be there.’

I suddenly remembered I had on my person something else I’d requested the office send over. I’d been holding onto it till she was better. And found alive. Casually, I placed Bang-Bang’s Queen’s Gallantry Medal on the table in front of her.

‘For services to the nation, Her Britannic Majesty is pleased and all that…’

She picked it up and burst out in incredulous laughter. ‘Oh my Lawd would you look at this! That is brilliant. Hopefully I’ll live to tell the Queen thanks myself.’

Again we let the sheer randomness of our lives impress itselves upon us. We watched the river and the traffic. ‘Ain’t life ridiculous?’

‘Yes. Yes, it sure is…’

And then she suddenly gulped and went pale. ‘Doll. Look behind you. No DON’T look behind you. Wait. Wait one.’

‘What?’

She started to murmur as quietly as possible. ‘One of the French or Belgian army neo-Nazis that I spotted in Parwan, is walking up the street behind you.’

‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

‘I am
so
not.’

Subconsciously my hand went for a pistol that wasn’t there. This was going rapidly south. ‘Talk him in.’

Bang-Bang sipped her wine for cover and murmured out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Twenty… fifteen… ten…’

A man in a leather jacket, talking on a phone, walked past our table and kept going, left onto the main road. Gone. I watched his retreating back.

‘Are you sure?’

She nodded slowly at me.

‘Follow, doll?’

She was already out of her seat. We followed, one hundred metres back. I rang the Colonel.

‘Riz, what have you got?’

‘Boss. Holly just pinged one of our neo-Nazi possibles, heading right past us on Foxtrot, be advised we are tailing.’

‘Have that. Hang back and report. See if you can get him at a Loc, but do
not
endanger yourselves. I’ll let Tchéky know.’

‘Will do.’

I closed down.

Bang-Bang also had her phone out and within five seconds a nondescript Peugot 506 had pulled out and had smoothed ahead of our man, slowed at the junction, and turned left. OK… we had a loose box around the target. I looked at Bang-Bang. ‘Luv. I’m not going to wait for backup. Let’s track him. We’ll call him Alpha Two.’

She nodded and we walked, acting the happy couple oblivious to the world around them. Bang-Bang linked her arm in mine and looked up at me and said ‘Now… when twilight beams the skies above… ha ha.’

Alpha Two turned left up a sidestreet and we waited at the corner then looked round while absently checking our phones. Alpha Two was halfway up the street and looking at his watch. The Peugot had driven ahead of him and turned off right. Behind us, a black people carrier slid into the kerb. Marianne was driving. I smiled to her. We should be OK now, these guys wouldn’t lose him. She nodded at the departing figure of Alpha Two. ‘Follow?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Get in.’

We drove past Alpha Two and gave him a quick glance in the mirrors. ‘He’s waiting for something. A lift?’

‘Yeah.’

Marianne slowed our vehicle, not too slow, not too fast… we watched. Alpha Two was looking away from us, back down towards the main drag and the river. A blue Citroen turned in from the main road and stopped before him. He got in. Marianne hit the indicators. She let the Citroen ease past us and called in the license plate, colour and make in low tones, her lips hardly moving as she spoke for the benefit of the covert microphone fitted inside the edge of the sun visor.

Marianne laughed. ‘You can hardly see it but his Departement number on the license plate is 93, Seine-Saint-Denis. A tough banlieue… suburb, out north of town. Our boy is proud of his roots.’

We followed, hanging well back, and we listened to the murmur of the radio transmissions as the team formed up again, a loose box on the streets parallel and ahead of us. Within two minutes we were all back on Quai de Dion Bouton and driving west.

We went round the E5/E15 inner ring road, through Saint-Mande, and ended up in Belleville as the second follow-team took over. ‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ said Marianne, ‘this is a traditional FN area. Or maybe I’m generalising. We’ll see.’

Ahead of us the other chase cars accelerated away and Alpha Two’s vehicle slowed at a gaggle of people on the sidewalk. They double-parked and Alpha Two and another man got out and joined the crowd. Marianne brought our vehicle to a halt and pulled in a good hundred metres short, and we watched. I pressed my window down and listened. ‘Sounds like a block party, guys.’

Bang-Bang chipped in. ‘Yeh. The National Front Disco.’

Marianne called it in and listened to the radio transmissions. ‘OK. Tchéky is bringing the teams… hang on. Yes. We’re cleared to hit it as soon as.’ She looked around and then nodded at a small yard opposite the block party. ‘We’ll rendezvous there.’

Dusk fell. Across the road the block was in full party mode, and Oi music was blaring out of the upper windows. I recognised the track as the Smack Song from the soundtrack of Romper Stomper. Catchy little number. A steady stream of sketchy-looking guys had been arriving and leaving for the last hour. It had just been confirmed that we were going to hit the block as soon as possible, no messing.

Marianne had Bang-Bang strapped into a good set of body armour. She smiled at me and gave me a V for Victory. Tchéky looked at us both, without smiling, then handed us each a G36 from a kitbag and some magazines, and simply stated ‘Ma jurisdiction. How are you feeling Holly? OK to do this?’

‘Ben ouais, Tchéky. Alllll good. I’ve got a nice shiny coat and a wet glossy nose.’

She grinned and Tchéky gave me a despairing look.

We checked the rifles, pointing them to the ground and ensuring they were loaded and safe. I tightened the velcro on my own armour. Tchéky spoke to the two teams and Bang-Bang translated for me. He was pointing to various areas of a portable whiteboard that was standing on the rear footplate of the truck that had been reversed into the yard. The board had been hastily marked up with different coloured marker pens to show the floors of the block. Photos of the main targets including Alpha Two hung from the top of the board.

‘He’s saying… attention. Red Team is overwatch, Sniper element One and Two take out targets on the windows as they… present themselves. Blue team is GIGN, DPSD, and us. We go forward, to the door, blow it in and up the stairs, anyone even standing up gets shot down. We’re looking for our… friends in those photos. Hang on… yep. They will be armed. There will be a lot of people in the block and we have to go through it like a…’

She spoke to Marianne and they laughed. She looked back at me. ‘They’re saying like a dose of salts.’

From across the street a skinhead in a green bomber jacket jogged towards us. He was one of ours, his name was Rico. He showed us a flyer and spoke to Marianne and Bang-Bang. Bang-Bang translated. ‘It’s a White Power House Party. They gave him a flyer and invited him in.’

I studied the flyer. ‘Fantastic. White Power squaddies. Let’s hope they’re not all Parkour guys who come steaming out and up the walls as soon as we go in.’

Tchéky looked at us. ‘Utilities are switching off the power to the block in thirty seconds.’

He put a radio to his mouth. ‘Trente secondes. Aller.’

Our teams ran across the street in two loose files and formed up on either side of the main doors to the block. I was with the two guys I recognised from GIGN, Bang-Bang was on the other side with Marianne. Marianne’s team placed the frame charge on the door, taping it down firmly, and paid out the firing cable. Suddenly all the lights on the block went out, along with the street lights, and there was a chorus of expletives and shouts from inside the block as the music died. Static and garbled orders came from the teams’ radios.

‘Cinq secondes, quatre, trois… se tenir pret…’

We all cocked our weapons, flicked the selector switches to semi-auto, turned on the laser sights and flashlights, then turned away and covered our nearest ear.

‘Tire.’

The frame charge took the door off its hinges and we ran in behind the two assault teams into the dust, screams and shouting. From outside in the street came the harsh bark of sniper rifle fire and upstairs windows smashed. The teams were throwing stun grenades into every room and thundering upstairs. Me and Bang-Bang hung back and let them get on with it. We jumped over the splintered front door which was now halfway up the hall and appeared to have an unlucky person underneath it. We stopped and looked at each other and looked back at the debris. An unspoken signal went between us. You never left a possible live one behind you. We ran back and levelled our rifles onto the remains of the door and the body underneath it. Bang-Bang fired. Two double-taps. The body jerked. Good enough. She
heaved the remnants of the door off the body and we inspected the face. The sweet stink of arterial blood rose up to hit us. ‘Nah.’