False Friends (24 page)

‘But what if you get married?’

Shepherd laughed. ‘Trust me, Katra, marriage isn’t on the cards, not at the moment. And if I do meet someone it’l just mean twice as much ironing.’

Katra nodded, reassured, and went back to cooking his breakfast.

An hour later and Shepherd was pul ing up in front of the Stirling Lines barracks at RAF Credenhil , home to the SAS. He was driving an MI5

Range Rover that had been registered in the name of his Garry Edwards legend. He wound down his window. ‘Dan Shepherd, here to see Major Gannon,’ he told a young trooper.

The trooper consulted a list on a clipboard and nodded. ‘Can you show me photo ID, please, sir?’ Shepherd took out his wal et and showed him his driving licence. The trooper looked at it careful y, handed it back and then wrote down the registration number of the car. ‘If you could park by the shooting range, Major Gannon is expecting you,’ he said, raising a boom barrier so that Shepherd could drive through.

The Major, dressed in a black Adidas tracksuit, was waiting for him in front of the shooting range. He grinned as Shepherd got out of the car.

‘Traded in the BMW?’ he asked.

‘Nah, this is a pool car. More in keeping with what an arms dealer would drive, apparently.’ Shepherd walked round to the rear and opened the tailgate.

‘The guns are inside,’ said the Major, nodding at the double doors that led to the range. ‘I’ve got you three Yugos, but there’re more if you need them. I thought there were six but three have been signed out.’

‘Three’l be fine,’ said Shepherd. He fol owed the Major through the doors into the range. He wrinkled his nose at the acrid smel of cordite.

At the far end of the range was a line of terrorist targets in front of a wal of sandbags. There was a table close to the entrance in front of a rack of ear protectors, and on the table was a wooden crate and a metal ammunition case.

‘So I’ve been hearing stories about you from a couple of Navy Seals we’ve had embedded with us for a few weeks.’

‘Just make sure they’re careful where they’re pointing their weapons,’ said Shepherd.

‘They do have a reputation for friendly fire, don’t they?’ agreed the Major. ‘Friendly fire ranks right up there with military intel igence in the tautology hit parade, doesn’t it?’

‘You know there are two thousand active Navy Seals? Hardly special forces, is it? I mean, how special can they be to let that many in?’

The Major grinned. ‘They’re not exactly fans of you, either.’

Shepherd’s eyes narrowed. ‘They were tel ing tales out of school, were they?’

‘What happens in Stirling Lines, stays in Stirling Lines,’ said the Major. ‘They were among friends; plus, they can’t hold their liquor. Not like our lads.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘Just that you were on the Bin Laden operation. Not that they knew who you were, not by name. Just that there was a Brit there and he was none too happy about the way it went down.’

‘They must have been wel pissed if they talked to you about the Pakistan operation.’

‘What can I say? Part of the Sass initiation is to have your drinks spiked, you know that.’

‘Yeah, wel , careless talk costs lives.’ He smiled rueful y. ‘I did give them a piece of my mind, that’s true. No one told me that we were going out there to kil him. And I certainly wasn’t there to shoot women and kids.’

‘It was messy?’

‘It was a cock-up from start to finish,’ said Shepherd. ‘One of the choppers crashed. You know why?’

The Major shook his head. ‘But they do have a habit of crashing their choppers. The Iranian hostages. Somalia. Al over Iraq and Afghanistan.’

‘This wasn’t just pilot error, this was plain bloody incompetence. The compound was surrounded by a concrete wal , eighteen feet high. We were supposed to land inside the wal and that’s the way they’d rehearsed it. For weeks. They’d built a mock-up of the compound in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The plan was to fly over the compound and drop down on to the building. They’d rehearsed it a hundred times. But they screwed up.

For the rehearsals they’d replaced the wal with a wire fence. I guess some prick decided that so long as it was the right size, al wel and good.

Except, of course, the downdraught could escape through the wire fence when they practised the manoeuvre. But as soon as we started descending towards the wal s the downdraught blew straight back up and the pilot lost control. So they crashed because some idiot couldn’t be bothered to build a wal .’

The Major nodded. ‘Yeah, for the want of a nail. That’s the big problem with the Yanks: everything’s done for the lowest price. I wouldn’t use an American weapon if you paid me.’

‘Yeah, wel , let’s make sure that this operation goes as it should.’

‘No problem,’ said the Major.’ He patted the crate. ‘I’ve put six clips in there, ful y loaded.’

‘Excel ent,’ said Shepherd. ‘And the suppressors?’

The Major nodded at a black holdal . ‘In there too. Do you want to check them?’

‘No need,’ said Shepherd. ‘When do you need them back?’

‘Whenever,’ said the Major. ‘They’re off the books and the serial numbers won’t cause us any trouble.’ He opened the ammunition box. It was fil ed with large polystyrene beads and the Major shoved in his hand and pul ed out a spherical grenade. He brushed off a few stray beads and then gave it to Shepherd. It was painted a deep green with a thin yel ow band across the top just below where the safety clip and fly-off lever were attached to the casing. Stencil ed on the side were the yel ow letters spel ing out GREN HAND HE L109A1 and a lot number.

‘You ever thrown one?’ asked the Major.

Shepherd shook his head. ‘They were stil using the L2A2 in my day.’

‘This is pretty much the same,’ said the Major. ‘Based on the Swiss HG85 but the boffins played around with the design so that the fragments can penetrate the latest body armour.’

‘Nice,’ said Shepherd.

‘Yeah, funny the way that so much money is put into coming up with better ways of kil ing people,’ said the Major. ‘You’d think a grenade would just be a grenade, but someone somewhere thought it worth spending a few mil ion quid on coming up with a better one.’ He took it back from Shepherd. ‘Bog-standard percussion fuse with a delay of three to four seconds. Effective kil ing radius is sixty feet unprotected, fifteen feet if you’re wearing body armour and a Kevlar helmet, but frankly there wouldn’t be much left of your arms and legs. Explosion produces about eighteen hundred fragments, any one of which could ruin your day.’

‘And you don’t want it back?’

The Major put it back into the box. ‘It’s non-traceable,’ he said. ‘The lot number won’t lead anywhere, so if you do get caught with it just say you found it.’

Shepherd laughed. ‘Yeah, that should do it.’

‘And you’ve no idea what these clowns want with grenades?’

‘We’ve just got a shopping list, that’s al . They’re not very chatty about their motives but they’re talking about forty Yugos and a stack of ammunition. Charlie reckons that they’re tied in with the Norwegian mass murderer.’

‘White supremacists, then?’

‘They didn’t come over at al Ku Klux Klan when we met them,’ said Shepherd. ‘But they might have been on their best behaviour.’

‘So what do you think? They’re going to start shooting blacks and Asians?’

‘The Norwegian didn’t, did he?’ said Shepherd. ‘Most of his victims were white kids. He did what he did to draw attention to his manifesto. The only thing that made them targets was that they were at a left-wing camp. So, if anything, his target was political rather than racial.’

‘With any luck they’l head for Westminster and get al Guy Fawkes on the Houses of Parliament,’ said the Major.

‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ said Shepherd. ‘But that’s not how it works with terrorists, is it? They always choose the weakest targets. And the guys we’re dealing with are from the Midlands; there’s no evidence they’l be heading down to London.’

‘So what’s Charlie’s plan? Nip them in the bud or let them run?’

‘She’s not letting me in on the bigger picture,’ said Shepherd. ‘She pinched the case from the Brummie cops, that much I do know.’

‘You think she’s after the glory?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Shepherd. ‘But at the moment she’s got me in the middle playing both ends. I’m reporting to Sam Hargrove, who reports to the top brass in Birmingham, then I get debriefed by Charlie. The shit’s going to hit the fan if Charlie moves in over the heads of the cops.’

‘Hopeful y none of the shit’s going to head your way.’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘I’m hoping that Sam wil take the flak,’ he said.

‘He’s the guy you worked for when you were a cop, right?’

‘Yeah, he’s a straight shooter. One of the best. So I don’t see that he’l hang me out to dry. But the Brummie cops are going to be spitting feathers when they find out that al the work they’ve done has been pinched by Five.’

‘It’s a mucky business at best, isn’t it?’ said the Major. ‘It’s so much more black and white in the military. Both sides wear uniforms and carry weapons and the best side wins.’

‘And the losers end up dead,’ said Shepherd. ‘Unlike the world of terrorism, where the losers end up as MPs.’

The Major laughed. ‘Yeah, funny how the world changes,’ he said. ‘There’s a whole generation already who’ve no real idea what a threat the IRA were. You ask most teenagers about the Brighton bombing and they wouldn’t have a clue what you were talking about. But say what you want about the IRA, at least you knew what they wanted: the Brits out and a united Ireland. You might not agree with their methods, but you could understand what they wanted and why they did what they did.’

‘They murdered plenty of civilians,’ said Shepherd sourly.

The Major held up his hands. ‘Hey, you won’t ever hear me defending the IRA,’ he said. ‘They kil ed enough of my friends over the years. What I’m saying is that at least you knew what was driving them. But this new lot of terrorists? Who the hel knows what their motivation is?’

‘A life in paradise with seventy-two coal-eyed virgins if they kil the infidel,’ said Shepherd.

‘Yeah, but they can’t real y believe that, can they?’ said the Major. ‘Even if you believe in God you can’t possibly believe that God, any god, would want to see innocents maimed and kil ed. Those guys who crashed the planes into the Twin Towers – what did they hope to achieve? And the British Muslims who blew up the tube. Does anyone know what they wanted?’ He shook his head sorrowful y. ‘The world’s going crazy, Spider. And an old fart like me just can’t make any sense of it any more.’

Spider laughed. ‘You’ve a fair few years left in you yet, boss,’ he said. ‘The mistake you’re making is assuming that they think the way that we do.

They don’t. They’re brainwashed, most of them. They’re led into it, trained for it, then, if need be, they’re pushed.’

‘But what are they trying to achieve? Death to al Christians? Because that’s not going to happen. The Islamification of Europe? That’s not going to happen either. And it’s not about Iraq or Afghanistan because that happened long after the attack on the Twin Towers. And most of the troops have already been pul ed out. There doesn’t seem to be any objective; and if there’s no objective, if it’s just a religious war, then it’s never going to end, is it?’

‘It’s al becoming a bit
Alice in Wonderland
,’ said Shepherd. ‘I can’t believe that the London bombers real y believed that their actions would change anything. Or that they were going straight to heaven. There’s something else at work. Something self-destructive. Self-hatred, maybe, which spil s over to hatred of the world. If you real y want to worry about something, Major, think about what’l happen if they ever get a nuclear weapon.

You know that the IRA would never have even contemplated using a nuclear bomb, but these morons wil . That’s what I find so scary.’ He laughed harshly. ‘I’ve got my psychological evaluation coming up so I’l see if the MI5 shrink has any ideas on what it al means.’ He patted the crate. ‘I’l get the guns back to you tonight.’

‘Good man,’ said the Major. ‘Just be careful, okay?’

‘With the guns?’

The Major shook his head. ‘With the morons you’l be giving the guns to,’ he said. ‘Guns and civilians are always bad news.’

Shepherd drove from the barracks to Hereford station and waited in the car for twenty minutes until the train from London pul ed in. He waited until he saw Jimmy Sharpe emerge from the building before getting out.

Sharpe was dressed casual y in a dark-green waterproof Barbour jacket and dark-brown corduroy trousers. He was holding a Marks & Spencer carrier bag. ‘Thought I’d bring some sandwiches,’ he said, holding up the bag.

‘I can see you dressed for the country,’ said Shepherd. ‘What’s with the Barbour?’

‘Forecast said it might rain. And I thought this was how you country folk dressed for hunting, shooting and fishing, and we’re going shooting, right?’ Shepherd climbed into the Range Rover and started the engine. Sharpe got into the passenger seat. ‘Gear’s good?’ he asked as he tossed his carrier bag of sandwiches on to the back seat.

‘Just what we needed,’ said Shepherd.

‘Good to have mates in low places,’ said Sharpe, settling into his seat. He looked at his watch. ‘We got time for a pint, do you think?’

‘I’m driving is what I think, Razor.’

‘Yeah, but I’m not.’

‘We can stop for a coffee on the way.’

‘In a pub?’

Shepherd smiled and shook his head. ‘You’re incorrigible,’ he said.

Sharpe grinned with no trace of embarrassment. ‘It fits in with my legend. I’m an incorrigible arms dealer who takes a drink now and again.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Do you think Hargrove wil reimburse me for a first-class ticket?’

‘From where?’

‘I was in London. The train was packed and the chavs in standard class were doing my head in. So I sat in first class. But when I showed the conductor guy my warrant card he said he didn’t give a toss who I worked for and made me pay the difference.’