Danger Close
Danger Close
Charlie Flowers
© Charlie Flowers 2013
Charlie Flowers has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published
by Black Dove Books 2012
This edition published 2013 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
‘And they plotted and planned, and Allah too planned,
and the best of planners is Allah.’
Al
-
Quran
Surah
Âl
'Imran
3
:
54
Table of Contents
Prologue
September 17th
Home Office
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
Home Secretary;
I am writing to express my association’s unease with the continuous inaction over the racist murders of Iqeel Latif and of our association member PC Kerim Shah, the stonewalling over the events at Westfield, and the unexplained death of our patron, the Labour peer Lord Khalil. Our association remains convinced that an Army unit is being allowed to run amok within our Muslim community, and that agents provocateurs are operating to discredit us.
I have also raised my concern with the ACPO lead on terrorism and allied matters.
Yours sincerely
Ali Masood
Chair
Muslim Police Association
Home SecretaryMetropolitan Police
Home OfficeNew Scotland Yard
2 Marsham Street Broadway
London SW1P 4DF Westminster London SW1 0BG
18th September 2012
Dear Home Secretary
I am writing to inform you that the Director of Public Prosecutions has instructed me to open an investigation into Colonel David Mahoney, CO of Kinetic Training Solutions, on suspicion of obstructing an active police investigation. I shall be briefing all relevant ACPO leads on this enquiry at the earliest possible opportunity, and I would be grateful for a meeting in person as soon as possible. I understand your schedule is rather busy at the moment due to the inquests but I would be grateful if you and your Prevent team could spare me an hour or so this week?
Kind Regards
Benjamin Howells QPM
Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis
Civilian Gallantry List
Wednesday 19 September 2012
The names of the individuals who have received The George Medal, The Queen’s Gallantry Medal and The Queen’s Commendation for Bravery, have been published. The Queen has been graciously pleased to approve the following awards of The George Medal and The Queen’s Gallantry Medal and for publication in The London Gazette of the names of those shown below as having received an expression of Commendation for Bravery.
Queen’s Gallantry Medal
Holly Kirpachi (deceased), Civilian
For helping to prevent an attack by terrorists at Stratford.
On 13th September 2012 Holly Kirpachi and her colleagues were present at Westfield Stratford during the al-Qaeda terrorist attack. Between them they managed to rout several groups of terrorists and pass information to the security services enabling a successful counter-attack to be staged. During the counter-attack, Miss Kirpachi went forward to clear an al-Qaeda cell from the shopping centre and accounted for many enemy combatants with a captured rifle. She was fatally wounded during the firefight. Without her intervention it is certain that many more lives would have been lost. Her body was not recovered. She was thought to have been twenty-one years old.
1
20th September
The engine roared and the sirens howled. Roadrunner grinned at me as she hit the gears. I was trying to get my head round the fact that we’d actually just stolen a Volvo fire appliance and were barrelling it out down the side streets towards the Venezuelan Embassy. The emergency lights strobed the outside in blue staccato bursts.
Roadrunner yelled over the squall of the sirens. ‘Good times! Where d’you want me to park this thing, akhi?’
She was a short, buxom Desi girl with wild curly black hair, and the London Fire Brigade helmet really didn’t fit her. It hung off her head at a crazy angle. In the seat to my left was her dog, Bullet. Bullet was panting away happily. Well, I thought it was a dog, it may well have been a bear. Bullet was a Caucasian mountain shepherd and liked to bite people.
My Blackberry pinged. A text message. ‘
Fire
on
,
moving
now
’. That was Maryam and Duckie in the loft of the Embassy.
I texted back - ‘
30
secs
’
We hit the corner of Cromwell Place and I clung on for dear life. We were going the wrong way down a one-way street. Bit late to worry about that. I got my respirator and my one CS gas grenade ready. I checked my Walther 88 Compact was sitting nice and easy in the small of my back. It wasn’t. It never did on nights out.
We had about three minutes to do our stuff before the real fire brigade turned up and it all went south. I hoped Duckie and Maryam had stopped arguing long enough to unplug the computers we needed from the first floor and bring them out.
‘Roadrunner. Right outside the front. Why on earth are them two up there? They can’t stand each other.’
She shrugged: ‘Cause they’re the smallest.’
Roadrunner screeched the fire truck to a halt directly outside the embassy. The blue lights lit the front up like a rave from hell.
‘GO, akhi!’
I pulled on my respirator and jumped down from the cab and ran for the main door, readying the pin on the grenade. Three, two, one…
Smoke and chaos met me. The street door was open and people were stumbling out. Here was a concierge trying to stop me getting in. I elbow-smashed him down and ran in. Pin pulled. Grenade thrown. We were go.
Computers. Servers. This was part of Fuzz Shaheen’s mad plan to get the links from the SOAP SUD investigation and everyone involved in talking to the late Lord Khaleel and his al-Qaeda teams. We wanted to know where their fake Venezuelan passports had come from and to what extent the Socialist Workers Party had been involved. Hey guys, we won’t hack them, we’ll just bust into their premises and take their computers. I guessed she was angry at the loss of Bang-Bang. We all were. The reprisals were spreading and were bloody. Dead bodies of UK jihadis, cousins, colleagues, you name it, were turning up everywhere. And every IP address involved in the backtracking from the investigation was getting hit, and hit hard. And the Venezuelan Embassy, naturally, had come up. So we were hitting them. With extreme prejudice.
I ran forward up the staircase, pulling my Walther 88. Above me there was screaming, and as I reached the first floor landing down came Duckie and Maryam, each carrying a PC tower and both yelling at each other through their respirators. I couldn’t understand them, they couldn’t understand each other, and this had the makings of a clusterfuck. I gripped their shoulders.
‘You two! Downstairs! On the fire engine! Right hand side, GO!’
They stopped bickering and went.
I followed them down into the haze. From my right a security man stepped out, spluttering in the smoke and teargas, and brought up an MP5 submachine gun. I cannoned into his body, folding the weapon into my grasp and punched him to the floor as I kicked his legs from under him. And he pulled the trigger. It was on full auto. Rounds went spanging all up and down the stairs and a stray shot hit Maryam in the hip and she went down in a cloud of dust and dropped the PC with a bang. I yanked the weapon clean from the man’s grasp and smashed it into his jaw with its buttstock. His head bounced off the carpet like a stunned cow. I hit him with it again, three more times as training dictated, and teeth and blood flew everywhere.
I pointed my 88 at his head. His jaw was broken. I cocked the hammer. One flight below me on the ground floor the staff started screaming and coughing as the teargas hit them. I looked back. The man was now out cold on the floor. Nope. Couldn’t do it. I hung his weapon by its strap over my shoulder and picked up the dropped PC terminal.
I looked behind me. Duckie was dragging Maryam to her feet in a comet smear of blood. I ran and got Maryam’s other arm and we hustled her down the stairs. Blood was spraying everywhere and she was going deathly pale and stumbling.
We ran down the last flight of stairs. We hit the street door to a festival of blue flashing lights. I tore Maryam’s respirator off and she gasped the night air in. Roadrunner was standing there with Bullet on his leash.
She grinned. ‘Ey, chicas. Want me to release ‘im?’
Of course we did. ‘Roadrunner. On my command unleash Hell! And get a trauma pack!’
She let the leash slip, and off Bullet went like a furry missile, straight into the posse of firefighters running up the street from Cromwell Road. Within seconds he was hanging off a Fire Inspector’s arse and we were all running for Mishy’s estate car at the other end of Cromwell Place. As we ran I loosed off the MP5 on full auto back up the street to keep their heads down. Brass cases flew and the flash and roar of the machinegun lit up the street.
We regrouped between the fire engine and Mishy’s estate car and flung Maryam onto the back seats of the fire truck. I got the MP5 into the shoulder and slowly swept the way we’d arrived. I’d lost count of rounds expended so I was hoping for the best. No movement. Good. They were showing sense. No heroes.
The PC terminals went into the back of the car. Roadrunner got the trauma pack out of the rear compartment of the fire engine and began working on Maryam. Maryam kept trying to sit up, swearing like a sailor, and Roadrunner kept forcing her down. By now there was blood everywhere, on seats, windows, and everything we’d touched. Roadrunner looked at us in the blue strobing lights. She spoke as she flicked blood and gore off of her hands. ‘Don’t worry. I just got my NVQ in first aid.’
I kept covering the road behind us. Duckie kept one hand on my shoulder, waiting for the signal to move. After a minute, Roadrunner nodded at me, threw a used syringe into the cab, and said ‘Go! It didn’t hit an artery. She’ll be fine. I’ll take care of this.’
We went for the doors of Mishy’s car, and left the chaos and sirens behind us in the dark.