They were in the Mercedes. Jimmy was in the back and the two guys who had laid out the cops were in front, one driving. They were cruising through the streets of London, Jimmy glowering sullenly through the smoked glass window, seeing the Thames away to his left as they travelled towards the city.
He hardly dared look at the man beside him, was cowed – maybe ashamed – to be in his presence. These were the sort of reactions that Jimmy only ever felt in this man’s company, the man who had trained and mentored him, moulded him into the man that he had become. Carved him from a snotty-nosed kid into a one-man killing machine and everything that went with that.
And now, perhaps, Jimmy thought he had let him down – but he knew he had to fight against this man’s influence for the first time in his life.
‘Didn’t expect to see you, Colonel,’ Jimmy mumbled. ‘You here to take me back?’
He had said the words, asked the question, without looking at him.
Now he turned his head slowly.
Colonel Leach shook his head. ‘The sooner you report in, son, the better this can be for everyone involved.’
‘Everyone will have to wait.’
The Colonel’s voice dropped low and became a growl. ‘This ain’t optional, James.’ The use of the name ‘James’ made Jimmy shudder. Few people ever called him that. His mother and father when they were angry or annoyed with him. Morgan at certain times, under certain conditions. Basically the people he loved or who loved him were the ones who used ‘James.’ And that fact made him wonder what the hell his relationship with Leach truly was. Jimmy was as sure as he could be that there wasn’t love behind it. But over the years it had become almost too complex to disentangle and analyse. And yet, in return, Jimmy only ever called the man sitting by him by his rank and surname, or ‘sir’ – and Jimmy never used the accolade ‘sir’ with anyone else.
Leach went on. ‘Fact remains, you are a serving soldier in the most elite force on this plant. And Rooker knows the Afghan spilled his guts to you and he wants what you know.’
That was another name – person – to conjure with: Rooker. Hearing it jarred Jimmy, but it didn’t alter anything.
‘Got some things to finish off and then I’ll come in.’
Leach leaned back thoughtfully, staring through Jimmy as he said, ‘This isn’t going to bring ’em back son, what you’re doing. Now you’re a good lad and a hell of a good soldier – the best – but you gotta let this go before it turns into a shit storm even I can’t clear up.’
His words were convincing and Jimmy heard them and knew them to be true. Jimmy held firm. It would have been so easy to relent. ‘I’ll stop when they’re down,’ he stated. He regarded Leach, letting the man know for certain he meant what he said, even though it made him nervous because he was defying him. ‘Then I’m out.’
‘Out?’
‘Seen enough blood for a lifetime. Want a normal life. It’s on offer now and I don’t want to fuck it up.’
Leach continued to look through Jimmy. ‘Normal? What is normal, James Vickers? Cushy job and desk over in Whitehall? Maybe drive a forklift around a grubby warehouse, stacking pallets? Newspaper and sandwiches on your half-hour lunch break, flask of grey coffee? People like you,’ – here Leach’s eyes came into focus on Jimmy – ‘are beyond social integration. They sit here.’ He held out his right hand flat, palm down, parallel to the ground. ‘And you sit here.’ He raised his hand a foot upwards to a new level. ‘You sit here, psychologically tweaked to be superior to all these drones walking the streets.’ He paused for effect, mesmerising Jimmy, and although his next words were clichéd, they revealed a fundamental truth. ‘A lion walking amongst lambs.’
He looked back out of the window and continued, his voice lulling Jimmy, with its baritone and rhetoric, as it had done for so many years. He was like the Pied Piper and Jimmy was a kid from Hamelin. ‘These people, if they knew what you’ve done to keep them living their mundane lives, they’d kneel and kiss your feet.’
Jimmy sat back, breathed deeply, inhaling all this, fighting his conditioned urge, desperate not to fall under Leach’s spell.
It was hard when Leach said, ‘You are a hero, son.’
‘You realise that if they hadn’t locked me up, I would’ve been here for them? I was due home on leave the day before they were killed.’
Leach sighed, realised that Jimmy was on a collision course that he was unable to derail.
‘And I was the one who left the prison door open,’ Leach said.
‘I know,’ Jimmy said.
The two men looked at each other, then Leach said to the driver, ‘Pull over.’ As the Mercedes stopped, Leach said to Jimmy, ‘You’ve got forty-eight hours to get your personal shit wrapped up and then this passes over to Rooker … and he is not the pussycat I am.’
***
‘Watch and shoot.’
The firing range commander, a sergeant from the firearms training unit, stood four paces behind the officer standing on the start line of the thirty metre range. In his hand he had a wireless remote control, and with it he was able to control everything that was about to happen down the range – with the exception of the human being who was about to be tested.
The firearms officer stood ready and relaxed, flexing his fingers. He had his ear defenders in place – as did every other person in the range – and his safety glasses on. He was not in his full firearms kit as this was just a basic training walk down the range.
He was armed with the Glock 17 pistol with a seventeen round magazine, the standard issue firearm for officers on the Metropolitan Police branch known as SCO19. This exercise, which would probably last not much more than a minute, was simply one of a number that this particular unit – the Specialist Firearms Officers, or SFO’s – would run through that day, and there was little room for error. Every single one of them was required to have a 90% accuracy rate on all shoots, not just an average, and if this target was not met, their firearms authorisation would be revoked immediately.
These were officers, though, who were so good that if they didn’t get at least 95% on each shoot, they would suffer a lot of grief from their team members.
The range itself was kitted out with various obstacles which could either be seen as cover or hazards, such as low walls (made of hardboard), stacks of tyres, a large white fridge/freezer and other bits of debris that also included a pair of legs from a dress shop dummy that stuck out from behind a wall at the end of the range. Victim or villain?
The officers would not know until they reached it and saw whether or not the dummy had been armed with a submachine gun or was carrying a baby.
At the very far end of the range were the targets and they were varied. All were life-size. Some were the standard ‘charging soldier’ targets that flipped head on, then flipped back. Others were moving targets that, like a fairground shooting range, skimmed back and forth across the range, either slowly or quickly, depending on how the training sergeant had set up the timings.
But not every target was an actual ‘target’.
Some were clearly hostiles: men with guns, men holding hostages … women holding hostages.
Some were innocents – such as the hostages themselves or a woman holding a child (who might be armed) which on first glance could look like a hostage situation, but wasn’t.
The SFOs had to make those instant decisions. They had to assess what they saw, analyse it, then make the decision. Shoot or not.
Many an innocent vicar had been shot dead in this situation. And many a would-be firearms officer had lost their ‘ticket’ because they’d killed a baby, albeit a cardboard one.
So a basic walk down the range wasn’t just a bit of target practice, and although there was nothing else to deal with other than what appeared, it was very stressful. It was a test of reaction, being able to read a situation, do what was right and justified within milliseconds. And to add to the psychology and difficulty of this, there was background noise, delivered by a surround sound hi-fi system, which was a mix of demonstrating crowd noises, traffic – including trains – and, of course, the usual accompaniment for the jobs on which these officers were deployed – rap music.
All played out under averagely poor lighting conditions.
This was one of the easier exercises.
The background sound came on, a pounding drum and bass line.
‘Walk,’ the instructor told the officer.
He began to move slowly forward.
And thirty metres away, the first target flicked into view.
The officer reacted, his hand going to his pistol, and he went down for cover behind a low wall. But he did not draw the gun. It was the bloody woman and a baby.
She appeared for two seconds, was gone.
The officer started to rise and as he did, another target appeared. This time it was youth pointing a gun.
The officer came out and double tapped. Bang, bang. Two rounds almost simultaneously.
The target disappeared.
The booming beat filled the range.
Maybe a minute later the walk was done. Half way through, the officer had reloaded a full magazine under cover, and reached the target line. The range lights came up, the music turned off and the officer breathed as he slid out the empty magazine, slid back the rack and showed the instructor that his weapon was empty and safe.
‘Clear,’ he said.
‘Clear,’ the instructor confirmed.
After a short conversation between the two men – the instructor had noticed one or two points that could be worked on, mainly in connection with the grip – the shoot was then scored. Ninety-eight per cent.
‘But it could be significantly better,’ the instructor said.
‘That’s what my golf pro told me,’ the officer laughed, re-holstering the Glock and walking back down the range where the other members of this particular SFO team had been observing the shoot.
They jeered. He expected nothing more than derision. Nothing was ever good enough for these twats, but he loved each and every one of them – and would, if necessary, lay down his life for them as he knew they would for him. That’s how close the SFOs were, a team that relied one hundred per cent on each other.
They were used for pre-planned, intelligence-led operations such as actions against armed robbers or raids on drug warehouses and could be called on to storm buildings, planes and docked boats.
Or to capture a wanted man, believed to be armed and highly dangerous.
The officer who had just walked the range was Sergeant Joe Windsor. He was a man who could instinctively lead others, who would follow without question because they knew he could be trusted. He had a great reputation for thorough planning, good briefing skills, great decision making, was known to be tough, but was also very modest and quiet and had a military background of distinction.
He shared a crack with his team until he raised his eyes and saw someone he knew hovering at the back of the range.
Tony Griffin.
Griff caught Joe’s eye. They knew each other well and had briefly been colleagues at the same nick until Joe followed his career route into firearms.
Puzzled to see Griff, Joe broke away from the team.
‘Hey, Griff, mate, what’re you doing in this neck of the woods?’
They shook hands. ‘Got a sec?’ Griff asked.
‘Yeah course, mate … look, walk with me, eh? We’re taking a coffee break and I want to dump some stuff into my locker first.’
‘Cheers.’
It was the kind of response Griff had expected from Joe, who had time for everyone.
Joe led him out of the range and into the locker room, where the rest of the team were also putting gear into lockers, chatting and fooling around.
Griff said, ‘Private conversation?’
Joe opened his locker and tossed his stuff inside, said, ‘Sure,’ then took Griff aside to another area where they could talk quietly and not be overheard.
Griff’s face was tight with doubt. Joe saw this and said, ‘Spit it out, mate.’
‘You know Jimmy Vickers, don’t ya?’
‘Yeah … ran a support op for him at FOB Robinson in Helmand about five years ago.’
‘Holland closing in on him?’
‘Only a matter of time.’ Joe confirmed. ‘Gone psycho, ain’t he?’
‘You know what happened to his parents, though?’
‘Yeah, but that don’t give him the right to go round offin’ people.’
‘You gotta give me the heads up if Holland finds him.’ It was a hard request for Griff to make.
Joe frowned, working this out. ‘You helping him?’ he asked cautiously.
Griff’s lips stayed rigid, but he wasn’t someone who could mask the truth. He was easy to read.
‘Griff, bruv! What you doin?’ Joe’s voice was strained with disappointment.
‘I’ve known him since I was six, mate,’ Griff started to explain, to plead, but Joe cut across him.
‘It don’t matter, Griff. He’s out of control. If we get the order to drop him, we drop him.’
‘What? And Holland isn’t out of control? He don’t give a fuck about anything. All he wants to do is lynch Jimmy. It’ll shortcut his way to the top. Can you imagine a prick like that as a superintendent?’
The two men eyed each other.
Griff said, ‘Just keep me in the loop. Please. All I ask.’
Griff patted Joe’s shoulder and left. Joe watched him, now deep in troubled thought because he knew the chances were that if Jimmy Vickers didn’t get caught by some other means, the likelihood would be that he’d come face to face with an SFO team – with Joe Windsor leading the assault.
And Joe Windsor was as much a professional as Jimmy Vickers.
Which meant that Joe Windsor would do his job – even if the prospect of coming up against Vickers scared the living crap out of him.
++++