Going Rogue, page 6
part #2 of Tom Novak Series
‘Borat; enjoying the pokey? Been bummed yet?’
‘It’s not getting my best TripAdvisor review, I’ll say that,’ Tom said.
‘Any developments?’
‘Nothing. Been banged-up most of the time. I’ve seen our man a couple of times. He’s a loner and isn’t popular with many of the inmates. One bloke called Masood, known as Mad Max, seems to have a particular grudge. Big bloke, looks Nigerian, I’d say. About thirty. Can you check him out?’
‘Will do.’ Tom could hear the tapping of a keyboard in the background as Buster typed.
‘I’ve seen Smith but had no opportunity to engage with him yet. We are on association now so I will keep watching.’
‘Well take care, Borat. I’m looking at a picture of your mate Mad Max now. He’s a nasty fucker. Real name is David Oluwasean but changed his name to Masood Ali when he converted to Islam. British citizen and has been in the UK all his life. Inside for kicking the shit out of some poor unfortunate because he was drinking from a can of lager near his mosque in North London. All sorts of red flags about him. He’s tried to get to Syria to join ISIS, but CTC got wind of his plans, so he’s lost his passport for a bit. He’s also got a fair few convictions for drug supply. All in all, he’s a bit of a scrote, Borat. Be careful.’
‘Always careful, Buster, you know that. Any progress your end?’
‘Nada. Jane’s going mental. We have no leads as to who has the product other than it got lifted from the Boyo’s over the water. Relying on you, Son.’
‘I’ll do my best, Buster,’ Tom said.
‘By the way, and don’t ask me how, but our techie whizz, Tiny, has managed to hack into the prison CCTV so I’m watching you right now. Wave.’
Tom didn’t wave but scratched his nose with his middle finger towards the camera dome surreptitiously giving Buster “The Bird”. Tiny was, as you might expect, a colossal, six foot six, middle-aged DC from Manchester who had been seconded to the team as their IT expert. He was an ex-computer security expert from GCHQ who had been responsible for securing military and intelligence IT systems. He was as talented at breaching systems as he was at securing them.
‘In fact, I can see the big fucker at the pool table by you right now, Borat.’
‘Yeah, I’m probably going to have to go, mate,’ Tom spoke slowly as he watched Lenny Smith exit the dining room, Ashraf a few steps in front of him. Something was about to happen; he could feel it. ‘In fact, can you check out one of the prison officers here, bloke called Ashraf. He should be visible on the CCTV now. I will try and call you back later.’ Tom didn’t wait for a reply as he knew Buster would be right onto it. At that moment he needed to concentrate as something was definitely brewing. Mad Max and his two friends were no longer laughing and joking but were all silently staring at Smith as he entered the room. Smith walked past the pool table and approached the furthest of the phones, picking up the receiver and punching digits into the keypad. Tom hung up and walked to one of the chairs in the middle of the association area.
Tom watched as Ashraf nodded almost imperceptibly at the three Muslim Brothers. Masood was leaning against the pool table staring with venom at Smith. Ashraf reached for his keys and walked to the staff office at the end of the hall, unlocked the door and went inside, the door slamming behind him.
The crashing door jolted all three men into action. All three men walked with purpose towards Smith who still had the phone clamped to his ear and his head buried in the booth. Mad Max was first to reach Smith, taking his huge fist and grabbing a handful of his hair, dragging him violently away from the phone and tossing him across the floor towards the centre of the area. The smaller man fell and skidded, crashing into the seats in the middle. The hubbub of relaxed conversation from the other room was replaced with the electricity of anticipated violence.
As always, the stress of such a situation induced a calm in Tom that he could never explain. He stood and walked quickly over to the three men now circling round the prostrate Smith, who was still trying to react to what had happened.
‘That’s enough. I think you should walk away now,’ Tom said in an even, level voice whilst stood directly behind them.
All three turned in unison. ‘How is this your problem, white-boy? Stay out of this or regret it. This Kuffar piece of shit killed our Brothers and he must pay.’ Masood’s deep, rich voice was rich with a mix of fury and excitement at the prospect of imminent violence. He was ready for battle, his huge, muscular arms tense and bulging and the corded ligaments in his neck jutting with tension.
‘There’s three of you and only one of him, and he’s sick. In my mind that makes you gutless. Chickenshit. What would Mohammed think of his soldiers being chickenshit?’ Tom smiled, aware that the mention of their prophet would be very likely to prompt a reaction and get the focus away from Smith and onto him. The words tasted sour in his mouth, but he knew that, however unpalatable, he had to provoke the required reaction.
Tom moved his position so that his back was against the metal gates that led into the corridor out of the association area. Limiting the directions that the inevitable onslaught would come from struck him as the wisest option. The three men were stood directly in front of him, with Max in the middle. He knew that the first assault would come almost immediately; all three men were breathing heavily in anticipation of the violence to come.
‘You protect that Kuffar murderer who killed my brothers then you accept consequences, you fucking bastard,’ Max hissed, through gritted teeth.
‘Careful, Princess. You look tense; I thought you Muslims were supposed to be calm with Allah on your side.’ Tom smiled as he spoke, his voice calm and betraying no fear. He wanted to prompt the attack but he didn’t want to be an aggressor, fully aware of the numerous CCTV cameras that would be recording the incident. The last thing he needed was to end up in the segregation block; he needed to be seen to be simply defending himself.
Tom saw the punch coming around the same time that Max decided to throw it. He was a big, powerful and muscular man but, by Tom’s standards, slow. Had it connected then it would have taken Tom’s head off but to Tom it was like the big man was moving through treacle. First he saw the balling of the man’s right fist, the slight drop of his shoulder as he began to wind the punch up for delivery, and then the dipping of his hip and increase in tension in his deltoid muscles as the punch flew forward, aimed at Tom’s jaw with terrific force.
For Tom, it seemed as if the fist moved in slow motion as he watched it pick up momentum. He calculated the trajectory of the blow and, like a fly watching an oncoming newspaper, simply moved his head four inches to the left. The enormous momentum of the swing was unstoppable, and Tom felt the disturbance of the air as the punch missed his temple and crashed at full force into the reinforced steel bar behind him. There was a dull clang from the unforgiving railing as bones crunched and blood spurted. The huge hand disintegrated and Max let out an agonised howl.
Tom was already shifting his location ready for the next attacker, turning ninety degrees to his left so he had one of the pool tables immediately behind him. Max fell to his knees clutching his bloodied, ruined fist and let out another animal wail, a mixture of pain and fury.
‘Kill! Him!’ he screamed, spit flying from his scowling mouth.
This spurred the large fat man to Max’s left to unleash a massive kick towards Tom’s groin. Once again Tom’s reflexes were way ahead of his opponent’s and he watched, almost with mild interest, as the wild, uncontrolled kick came towards him. Tom simply raised his right knee upwards, angling his shin into the path of the oncoming limb and braced forwards with his planted leg in a classic Muay Thai shin block.
Tom had been practising Muay Thai for a number of years and, like many practitioners, had put himself through a shin conditioning regime over a period of time. This involved kicking heavy bags repeatedly each day: two hundred strikes with both shins, deadening the nerves and causing micro-fractures in the bones. As they healed, the resulting calcification made the bones in his shins as hard as concrete.
In Muay Thai the shin is a weapon, both offensive and defensive, and Tom’s attacker was about to experience this first-hand.
Tom watched the slow moving but hugely powerful kick with mild interest as the big man’s lower leg connected with terrible force against his shin. There was no contest: all that force had to go somewhere, and the result was a crunching of bones as the other man’s tibia and fibula snapped clean in two. The fat man almost looked puzzled as to what had happened, stumbling and trying to steady himself by planting the ruined leg on the floor. With no structural integrity in the limb, it simply gave way and the man dropped like a sack, his leg horribly malformed beneath him. He let out a terribly piercing scream as he hit the floor in a crumpled heap.
Tom sprang to the side as the final man rushed towards him with a roar. He was lean and tough-looking with sinewy muscles like knotted, nylon rope visible under his t-shirt. Tom dipped down and drove his shoulder into the man’s midriff, pumping forward with his legs, picking the man up and driving him towards the pool table. He deposited him with force, flat on his back on the green baize. Unfortunately for Tom’s adversary, the pool balls were all present on the smooth surface and a number were directly under the man’s back as he smashed down on the table’s surface. The air escaped him with a whoosh and he cried out as the hard balls cracked into his ribs and spine.
In less than twenty seconds, it was all over. Three opponents disabled, and all Tom had done was move his head to one side, lift his shin to stop a kick and deposit an attacker onto a pool table. No blows struck, no attacking moves, purely self-defence. The spur erupted into a cacophony of cheers and shouting, a mix of shock and admiration at what they had witnessed. Lenny Smith looked across in awe from where he lay, still on the floor.
Tom put his hands on his head and waited for what came next.
A piercing alarm sounded and suddenly staff, including Ashraf, appeared. Tom was immediately seized by two burly officers who handcuffed him and led him away in a restraint position, arms secured behind his back, his body bent forward at the waist.
Tom smiled to himself, his insides icy calm despite the three opponents all laying prostrate and disabled. As always, he felt little. No elation, no guilt, no excitement. He would have felt the same if he had killed all three of them. Tom never felt the strength of emotions that most people do. He just didn’t. Not Tom.
9
Simmo sat in the darkened room, his workbench lit with a powerful Anglepoise lamp. The acrid biting smell of scorched solder pervaded the room. The bench was strewn with components, assorted wires and a scattering of galvanised nails. He was tired and really needed to rest but the Major had told him that the next device needed to be ready immediately. His right foot throbbed terribly, which was a slight problem given that it didn’t exist anymore: what remained of it had presumably been eaten by the vermin in Helmand Province after it had been blown clean off by a small anti-personnel mine. His sophisticated prosthetic foot was pretty good, and he could walk with only a small limp, but he often ached where there was nothing to ache.
The device he was constructing was going to be remotely triggered, as they didn’t want any arrests this time. The first strike had done its job in announcing the Aryan Defence Front to the world; going forward their soldiers would be planting multiple bombs to keep the pressure up on the government and keep the Muslim invaders scared.
Simmo didn’t know the next target. The Major carefully followed the “need to know” principle and Simmo didn’t need to know where, how or by whom the devices he made were going to be deployed. He trusted the Major; they’d joined the Army together as boys and served for many years together in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland. Simmo was a Belfast-born catholic who had joined the British army, which made him something of a pariah in his community.
The army had taught him how to make IEDs safe and get rid of dodgy ordnance, so it was easy to turn his skills to making devastatingly effective devices. It wasn’t that complex, really. If the rag-headed scumbags in the Middle East could make them, then so could he. Except his would be more reliable and, of course, deadlier.
Simmo never used to care even a jot about politics. None of his business and, as far as he was concerned, all politicians were wankers. But this began to change after his injury and discharge from the Army. It was all down to the Major. He put him straight on the causes of all of Britain’s problems. The Muslims were to blame; they had cost him his foot, his job, his self-esteem and his wife. They were invading the UK by stealth with their excess breeding and stupid, anti-British sentiments. It had to stop. He had the skills to strike a blow into the heart of the Muslim invaders and, if Britain was going to survive, then it needed leaders like the Major to tackle the rot creeping in; the rot of Islam taking hold of communities and eating at classic British values.
Since his discharge Simmo had been struggling to make any type of a living; after all, who wanted a disabled bomb disposal expert who drank too much? It also didn’t help that all the good jobs and houses went to the fucking asylum seekers.
The Major had stayed in the army after Simmo had left and the rumour was that he would take over the unit as a colonel in the next year or two.
Then it had happened. The Major reappeared after a long absence overseas and he and Simmo had met up for a beer. The Major’s career was at an end; he’d reached his limit and, realising he wasn’t going to make colonel, he’d left. He was bitter and angry and resentful, subjecting Simmo to a long and maniacal monologue about Islam and Muslims. He had seen so many soldiers killed and maimed by Muslim bombers, only to return to the UK to see them filling up the city slums with their over-breeding and their stupid religion.
‘Britain used to be a Christian country, Simmo,’ the Major said. ‘The Britain we knew when we joined up and took the Queen’s Shilling is not the same anymore. Just look at London; Sharia courts, mosques being built everywhere, Muslim patrols and fucking women in letterbox outfits.’ His eyes blazed with a genuine rage and passion that Simmo found intoxicating, particularly after a few beers.
‘That’s it now,’ he had said, slurring his words after a skinful of whisky one night. ‘I’m striking back; I am stopping this onslaught on our way of life. We must take the fight to them in their mosques and their communities. I’m taking our country back. Are you with me?’
Simmo had agreed immediately.
The Aryan Defence Front was born. It had been easy to recruit other soldiers, as they both had contacts all over the place. Lenny Smith had been the first into action, but he wouldn’t be the last.
Simmo ensured that the mobile phone was switched off as it was wired into the device’s simple circuitry, nestled inside the Tupperware box. A single kilogramme of Semtex was surrounded by galvanised nails with a detonator pushed into the faintly acrid-smelling, stiff putty-like material. It would be a simple case of switching the phone on and then deploying the device at the chosen site. Then a call to the cell would complete the circuit, the war would continue, and The Aryan Defence Front would be on everyone’s lips, once again.
10
Tom was ushered into the governor’s office by a somewhat sheepish Ashraf. Tom could understand exactly why the officer was acting that way; his sudden absence, leaving Lenny unguarded, was just a little too convenient even for that place.
The governor was surprisingly young, smartly dressed in a tasteful suit. He appraised Tom a little coolly, clearly not amused at having three inmates hospitalised. Tom was thankful for the presence of the CCTV cameras recording the fracas. The last thing he needed was to be banged up in segregation.
‘So… Vidmar. Why is it that I have three inmates currently in two different hospitals costing me four members of staff that I don’t have? And it turns out that two of the inmates are going to need major surgery.’ He seemed weary more than angry.
‘I take it you watched the CCTV? You’ll have seen that all I did was move out of the way of a punch, block a kick and throw an attacker off,’ Tom said politely but firmly.
‘Of course I watched it. I must report this to my superiors. I am more than satisfied that you acted reasonably and that the three men you incapacitated were the aggressors. I am more interested in why you went to the other inmate’s aid. Is he a friend?’
‘No. I’ve never seen him before I came in here. But those men were clearly going to kill him as far as I could see. I don’t like bullies.’
‘Do you have a problem with Muslims, Vidmar? We know why you are here and why Slovenia wants you back.’
‘Not particularly, but I don’t like people trying to kill a man in front of me. There were three of them, and I hear he’s not a well man.’
‘You know why Mr Smith is in this prison, Vidmar?’ The governor fixed Tom with an intense stare that Tom matched without discomfort.
‘My cellmate, Charlie, told me. It’s not my business why he’s here, but I don’t like to see three men attacking a single man; especially a sick one.’
The governor sighed, already returning to his paperwork. ‘Okay. Return to the spur; there will be no action being taken against you, given that you were defending yourself. But we will be watching you closely, Vidmar.’
Tom stood and nodded at the governor, ‘Thank you, Guv.’ He turned and walked out of the door that had been opened by Ashraf.
By the time Tom reached the spur association was once again underway, with a couple of games of pool ongoing and a clutch of inmates around each table. As he entered he felt, rather than saw, every pair of eyes turn to him. Charlie was sat on one of the vinyl-covered armchairs half-watching a game of pool and half-looking at a newspaper. Tom went over and sat in the chair opposite.
