The Pulsar Files, page 23
part #1 of Matt Flynn Series
Matt thought for a second. ‘You might be right. They could be using the house to plan missions and to come back here to sleep and regroup, either way, I think we hit it. If we don’t find Rosie, we’ll be knocking out part of their capability for kidnapping or killing someone else, and we might find someone who can tell us where Rosie is being held.’
Matt looked at Kamal who nodded. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Good,’ Matt said, ‘we’re all agreed. We attack it, but not in daylight and not with only four of us.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Kamal said.
‘Jess, you and Kamal stick around here a bit longer and confirm their strength and when you do, bugger off and get something to eat. Joseph and me will head back to the office and I’ll get Sikander to research the house and rustle up a few more bodies. We’ll meet back here at 23.00 with flak jackets and full ammo magazines. Then, we’ll hit them with everything we’ve got.’
Chapter 42
Matt drove towards the rendezvous point in Ockham a few minutes after eleven. In the time between first seeing the house and now, he’d returned to the office in London and briefed the Director, picked up some spare flak jackets, had something to eat and rested before completing an MFA, Monthly Firearms Assessment, known to all as the ‘monthly.’
Every month all agents were required to pass an assessment of their competence with a range of firearms. The instructors didn’t set the same test every time, and not the twelve shots at the target’s body so beloved of television crime dramas. They didn’t need to assess an agent’s prowess with a weapon, blasting a dummy full of holes, but to measure an agent’s accuracy and control under stress. It was an important consideration in their game as HSA had never been set up as a ‘shoot to kill’ operation, but an agency capable of deploying lethal force if the situation demanded it. With more accurate shooting, the perpetrator didn’t need to die in every instance.
The incident Matt faced two weeks ago, Louise Walker being held by an intruder at the safe house, would have turned out differently in daylight or with the hall light switched on. Agents concentrated on finding parts of the intruder’s body not covered by the hostage, easy to do with a slim girl like Louise and a large man like the intruder. HSA agents practiced shooting various sections of the body with their weapon in different positions. They tried to mirror unfavourable situations, such as when the agent’s gun was at their side, as if agreeing to an assailant’s request to put the gun down.
Passing the ‘monthly’ was a mandatory requirement for all agents, while office-based staff, the likes of Sikander and Amos, undertook a quarterly test. In every UK police force, armed officers were suspended from active duty and subjected to an inquiry if they opened fire. In HSA, no one would suffer any sanctions for opening fire if the situation demanded it, but they would lose their operational licence if they didn’t pass their ‘monthly.’
Matt also called Emma. He hadn’t seen much of her these past few days, he being so wrapped up in the Pulsar case, and she working late, planning raids across London and the south east to bring down Simon Wood’s drug operation.
He parked the car, removed the guns, thunder flashes and flak jackets from the boot and set off towards the house. He looked at the sky, the moon and stars obscured by thick clouds. He didn’t mind any form of weather for a raid like this, even stair-rod rain had some advantages, but he hated a full moon. It made hiding difficult and sneaking up behind an opponent near-impossible, and despite the intervening years, his head was still filled with his grandmother’s stories of elves and leprechauns dancing around tree stumps, trying to think up mischief as the full moon shone.
Dark nights like this did present him with a problem: it made the job of finding the rendezvous point way more difficult. If not for the lights burning in the target house, he would have walked past. He dipped into the woods and a few minutes later came across a small and well-armed huddle. He expected to be the last one to arrive and he was right.
‘Hi,’ he said quietly as he hunkered down. He looked around at the five faces, giving each a nod. He felt confidence at seeing the resolute expressions, despite the cold and damp place they found themselves in, the leaves and grass dripping with earlier rain.
‘Any changes?’ Matt asked.
‘Nope,’ Jess replied. ‘The lights came on, they shut the curtains. The same guy appears at the back door for a smoke at regular intervals.’
‘How regular?’
‘It’s about every forty minutes.’ She looked at Kamal who nodded.
‘A man who likes his nicotine. How many of the opposition are inside?’
‘Three, definitely three.’
‘Good. When did our smoker enjoy his last fix?’
‘Fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Ok. It gives us about fifteen minutes to get ourselves together, over to the house and in position.’ He pulled from his jacket a floor plan of the house and illuminated it with an astronomer’s torch, the red light didn’t ruin night-time vision as a conventional torch would do. They all crowded round to look.
‘Lee, you’ll cover the front of the house and Steph, you the back. The rest of us will wait at the back door for the smoker to appear. Joseph, you take him out as quietly as you can and when he’s out of the way, we’ll chuck flash grenades into the house. When you hear our grenades go off, Lee, throw yours through the front windows. We’ll move inside, grab the guards and tie them up. If Rosie’s in the house, our reaction will be determined by how badly injured she is. If she’s dead, I wouldn’t want to be one of the guards.’
He switched off the torch.
‘Lee, you and Steph will round up any strays who make it outside, and deal with any unexpected arrivals. Any questions?’
He looked around at the faces. He couldn’t see them well but he felt their grim determination.
‘C’mon guys, let’s go and rescue Rosie.’
The smoker didn’t come out at the forty-minute mark, but they didn’t mind waiting. When he didn’t appear after fifty minutes, Matt decided to give him until sixty before changing the plan. An assault with three gunmen inside would be a lot more difficult than facing two, but no way did he want to come away from this place empty handed. A minute before decision time, they heard loud voices inside; the door unlocked and a large body emerged.
He stood, legs apart, looking relaxed and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He selected one and sparked up. He clearly enjoyed the first puff as his cigarette hand dropped down to his waist and he tilted his head back and blew smoke rings into the night sky. Joseph struck. A ligature appeared around the smoker’s neck and as his hands came up to try and pull it off, Joseph pulled him backwards, off-balance. Matt rushed forward, a stun gun in his hand and after jabbing the prongs into the guy’s neck, pulled the trigger. The guy collapsed, incapacitated in a similar way to being hit by a police Taser. Joseph tied his hands and legs and Matt applied a gag.
They dragged the body to one side and then opened the door of the house. One by one, the agents threw in thunder flashes. They were percussion weapons, not fragmentation, designed to emit a loud bang which would disorientate those inside, not kill them with flying shrapnel.
Matt, with two agents behind him, entered the house, carbines drawn, Kamal positioned at the door to stop anyone sneaking up behind them. Joseph peeled off to check the rooms while Matt and Jess moved dead-ahead into the lounge. He found a man sitting inside but he didn’t look fit to pass water, never mind pick up a gun and shoot them. Matt pushed him to the floor and secured his hands behind his back.
‘Where’s the other guy?’ he hissed into his ear.
Matt received a garbled response and Matt left him where he fell. He looked over at Jess. ‘I getting no bloody sense out of him. Search the room, look for hiding places, then we’ll check the others.’
‘Will do.’
Matt walked into the hall and entered the first door he came across, a small television room. Joseph was standing there, his gun held in two hands pointing at something. Pushing the door further, he now saw the third guard in the house, a well-built character with a military-style haircut. He was backed into a corner, holding Rosie, a gun pointing at the side of her head.
At first glance she didn’t look hurt. He could see no blood on her face or bruises on her arms and her clothes looked intact. The only problem he could see, the frightened look on her face. No bloody wonder, their presence in the house increased her chances of being killed by a factor of three.
‘Put the gun down, pal,’ Matt said. ‘There’s six of us and one of you.’
‘Don’t try and smoke me, mate. Eric’s outside, he’s waiting for his moment to drop the lot of you.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Matt said shaking his head. ‘We’ve met Eric and he’s not giving you any help, not tonight.’
‘You come near me and she gets it.’
‘Last chance. Put the gun on the deck or you’re gonna die.’
A look of panic crossed the gunman’s face, an expression Matt didn’t like. The overhead light gave Matt a good view of the man’s left shoulder. Matt fired. It wasn’t the arm holding the weapon but in reaction, the gunman let loose a round. It almost sheered the tip of Rosie’s nose, but with luck it missed and struck the wall instead.
His grip of Rosie relaxed and, like a good trooper, she ducked down exposing the upper parts of her assailant’s body. The guy lifted his weapon. Before he could bring it level and let off a shot, Matt fired again. It hit him in the middle of his temple and the guy dropped to the ground like a lifeless theatre puppet.
Rosie ran over and hugged Matt hard, banging her fists on his back. He could feel her body shake. ‘You bastard, Matt Flynn. I could have been killed.’
‘Thanks for rescuing me, you guys did a brilliant job, is the usual greeting.’
‘You know what I mean, coming in here all tooled up. He could have panicked and shot me.’
She stood there for half a minute before kissing him on the cheek. ‘Thank you,’ she said and let him go.
Matt turned to Joseph beside him. ‘Why didn’t you drop him? You had a better angle.’
‘I waited for you. After completing your monthly today, I knew you would be more accurate than me. I was right.’
Chapter 43
‘Miss Fox, Doctor Harrison will see you now.’ Rosie threw the magazine on the table, rose from her seat and followed the well-dressed receptionist into Doctor Harrison’s office. If Rosie thought the outer area plush, the office of the occupational psychologist was equipped with deep pile carpets, an enormous desk and what looked like original artwork on the walls. It was difficult to reconcile this with the sparse offices she and the other HSA agents occupied only two floors below.
‘Ah Miss Fox,’ Doctor Harrison said, from behind the desk consisting of not much else but a large sheet of thick green-tinted glass and four chrome legs. It was good thing the doctor wasn’t a woman and wearing a skirt as this trendy piece of furniture didn’t include a modesty board.
He walked over and shook her hand. ‘Good to see you again, Rosie. How are you today?’
‘Getting better by the day, I would say.’
‘Good to hear it. Please take a seat.’
He directed her to the soft seats by the window for their third meeting and, for Rosie, the most important. A good report here and she could return to active service. Something not right or a specific problem identified, could send her out to grass for several weeks, and something more severe could see her kicked out of HSA.
‘When we last spoke you said you were having trouble sleeping. How are you sleeping now?’
‘Much better.’
‘What are you doing different?’
‘I’m thinking less about the kidnap incident, not easy to do being at home or kicking my heels in the office all day. I also tried your suggestion about taking a bath in the evening.’
‘Good. As I explained to you before, sleep is nature’s way of restoring some semblance of order to your thoughts. In deep sleep, your brain acts like a sophisticated filing system, sorting negative thoughts into one place and putting positive thoughts, like the successful projects you’ve worked on, into another. It helps you to attain a sense of perspective.’
‘I think I’m getting there.’
‘Are you taking any medication?’
‘We discussed this last time. Even before the kidnapping incident, I didn’t take pills unless I really needed to. In the last few days, I’ve been offered sleeping tablets, feel-good powders and all manner of herbal concoctions from well-meaning friends and relations, but I rejected them all. I’ll deal with this without the aid of any crutches.’
‘I know we discussed it last time, and then, as now, you made your position perfectly clear. I only asked to find out if anything had changed.’
‘No need. It hasn’t and it won’t.’
Rosie took a deep breath. She knew not to rile the pedantic doctor as he could put a red line through her assessment, but she mistrusted every mind doctor she had ever come across, from the behavioural psychologists at the Met, to the clinical psychologist her doctor recommended, to Doctor Harrison with his wall full of impressive certificates.
She knew Harrison had an important job to do. While working for the Met, the hurdle to reach was being mentally stable and physically fit. In HSA, the barrier was set higher. Mental stability would allow Rosie to walk the streets of London with a gun on her hip, but Harrison had to decide if she could handle a range of stressful situations with repercussions all the way to the Prime Minister’s office.
‘Have you experienced any flashbacks about the kidnap incident?’
‘Less and less. Now and again I have dreams about it and although elements of the kidnap are included, it’s often in strange places and with a different outcome.’
‘Ah,’ the doctor said and went on to explain about fragmentation and rationalisation, her brain inserting previous successful kidnap scenarios into the one she’d experienced. ‘This is your brain’s way of saying what you experienced is an aberration, look at all the times it went right. You’re looking back at something that didn’t go right and trying to find ways to correct it.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’
‘Good. You are no longer thinking about the kidnap incident in negative terms, for example, woe is me, look what happened to me. Instead, you are thinking that if this thing happened again, this is what I would do about it. Good. It’s a major step forward from our first meeting. You’ve moved all the way along the spectrum from negative thinking to positive thinking.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t you remember? All you could talk about then was the incident. How dark it was in the boot of the car, how horrible the men were to you and so on.’
‘Yeah, I suppose I did dwell on it for a bit.’ She could have mentioned the severe claustrophobia she experienced, but based on previous dealings with the good doctor, he was an expert on the subject and could go on for hours, including quoting from a paper he wrote for Psychology Today.
The interview continued for another twenty minutes and at the point when Rosie was about to tell him to shove his questions as she couldn’t be bothered answering any more, he collected his papers into a neat pile.
‘I think we’ve covered everything,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
‘I agree.’
‘Do you have any more questions or is there anything you would like to ask me?’
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘You’ve answered every question I can think of.’ Exhaustively she could have added, but didn’t.
‘Good, I’m glad to hear it. You will be pleased to hear I’m recommending to the Director that you can return to active service.’
She was stunned and didn’t realise at first what he had said. When her brain finally processed it correctly, she said, ‘Thank you doctor,’ and rose from her seat.
‘There is one condition.’
‘What is it?’
‘You pass a Firearms Assessment.’
‘What? I passed one ten days ago.’
‘I know but I’d like you to take it again.’
She sighed. ‘Okay.’
Rosie walked downstairs in buoyant mood and stepped into the open office with a renewed bounce in her step. The feeling of belonging here returned once again, no longer like someone with one foot on the pavement outside and clutching her P45.
She walked past the desk of Siki, his mouth busy munching a Picnic and in his hand, a can of Coke.
‘Hey, Rosie,’ Siki said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth to clear the last vestiges of chocolate. ‘How d’ya get on?’
‘I’m back,’ she said smiling.
‘High five, girl.’
She responded in kind.
‘I knew they wouldn’t kick you out. You’re too good and important to this place.’
‘Thank you for your kind words, Siki, you are too. Where’s Matt?’
‘Oh, he’s around. I don’t know exactly where but he is in today.’
‘No problem, I’ll catch him later.’
She headed to her desk, sat in the chair and surveyed her cubbyhole, something she believed she might not get the chance to do again. She didn’t share Siki’s confidence about her return to active duty being a slam-dunk, but she also couldn’t believe they’d sling her out on her ear. She imagined being pushed upstairs to Admin or consigned to a less conspicuous role not involving guns, or, at worst, a desk analyst in a front-line unit like Anti Terrorism.
She woke up her computer and looked through the many emails received since the previous night, her last visit to the office. In the time taken to walk down two floors from Doctor Harrison’s office, the doctor had sent an email to the Firearms Unit and sitting in her inbox was the date and time of her next Firearms Assessment.
Mention of a Firearms Assessment alarmed her more than it should, as without warning and several times a day, her hands would begin to shake. Not the tremors experienced during a frightening film or following vigorous exercise, but physical shudders like those experienced by severe Parkinson’s disease sufferers. It made drinking a cup of coffee or eating a bowl of cereal a distressing experience, and if it happened while holding a gun, she couldn’t hit the side of a barn, never mind a barn door.
