Adrian Magson: Red Station

Christ, no, Harry thought, hardly able to believe his eyes. This is all we fucking need…

As the driver tried to turn the girl back inside the car, he glanced at the boat ghosting into the jetty, its crew of three illuminated by the car’s lights, and lifted a hand towards them.

But the girl didn’t seem to understand.

‘Hey, baby,’ she cried plaintively, her voice slurred. ‘Whassup? What’re you doing?’ She ducked past him and peered at the incoming vessel. ‘Who’re they?

As the boat brushed the jetty, the man with the dreadlocks moved forward on the deck, bouncing the pole up and down on his shoulder. Behind him, the figure on the rear platform got ready to jump ashore, a glint of something stubby and metallic in his free hand.

Harry Tate felt a kick of anguish deep in his gut.

‘Don’t…!’

Afterwards, he never was sure what he’d intended to say — something more definite, for certain — and nothing like the single, useless utterance which came out of his mouth. He pushed himself to his feet, muscles cramped after too long in the same position, and brought up his gun. It was a long shot for a handgun but doable; he’d managed under worse conditions before now. His instincts told him Maloney was still somewhere to his right, also ready and willing to mix it if he had to.

‘Stop! Police! Don’t move!’

It was Parrish. Shouting and running forward along the bank, faint in the reach of the car’s headlights, he was swinging his Heckler amp; Koch in the air, the barrel aimed at the night sky. Harry couldn’t tell if it was bravado or stupidity, but the gun was pointless if he wasn’t going to use it.

And he was running across his colleagues’ direct line of fire.

‘Get down, you prick!’ yelled Maloney.

Too late.

The man with the dreadlocks looked at Parrish, then turned back to the Land Rover and screamed in defiance. He swung the pole down from his shoulder, catching it with a solid smack in his other hand. The car headlights glinted off dark metal.

Shotgun.

The muzzle-blast ripped the night apart, and the driver of the Land Rover was punched off his feet. The girl screamed as he was torn from her grasp, and her legs sagged. She whirled round to see what was happening, incomprehension on her face. Then a stutter of automatic fire came from the man at the rear of the boat. It ripped into her, shredding the floaty dress and sent her spinning to join her companion.

Without pause, Dreadlocks swung his gun and pulled the trigger again. The heavy charge knocked Parrish over backwards. The helmsman shouted a warning and hauled on the wheel, surging away from the bank with a howl of engines. Taken by surprise, Dreadlocks grabbed for the side rail but missed. He sprawled headlong on the deck, while the man on the stern platform danced off-balance for a moment before grabbing the side bar and holding on tight.

Harry cursed. Whatever was housed below decks wasn’t a standard engine, but something bigger — possibly twin diesels. The boat was already on its way out and would soon be gone for good if it wasn’t stopped.

He took aim and squeezed the trigger, a controlled double-tap followed by another, then a third. He was aiming at the helmsman; stop the driver and the boat would go nowhere. The volley of shots was lost among the roar of the engines, and puny in contrast to the stunning blast of the shotgun. But a section of glass windshield exploded and the helmsman ducked as a chunk of moulding blew apart alongside the wheel.

Maloney was up and running, tracking the boat along the bank. He began firing steadily at the charging vessel, now nose-up as it increased speed, the wash flashing white against the sloping mud walls on either side.

At the stern, the man with the machine gun was trying to bring his weapon to bear, but was thrown off balance as the boat bounced and swayed in the narrow inlet. Dreadlocks, however, had regained his feet. Gripping the rail with one hand, he raised his shotgun and lined up on Maloney, barely thirty feet away and with nowhere to hide.

‘Bill, down!’ Harry bellowed, and as Maloney threw himself to the ground, still firing, he emptied his clip at the gunman.

Shots from both guns caught the man high in the body, flipping him overboard.

Seconds later, the boat had gone, leaving in its wake three bodies on the shore and a fourth bobbing in the cold, black water.

‘ We’re sending you out of the country. Pro tem.’

The speaker was George Paulton, Harry Tate’s superior and Operations Director for MI5. His office in Thames House had a fine view of the river below, but the scenery was lost on the three men facing each other.

‘Why?’ Harry stared at his superior, then flicked a glance at a heavy figure standing in one corner. The man, nameless and grey as battleship paint, had said nothing when Harry had entered the room, and there had been no introductions.

Two days after the shooting, and a raft of internal MI5 and Metropolitan Police enquiries had been kicked off with startling speed, engineered to analyse failure and avoid blame. Still numbed with feelings of guilt and remorse about the deaths of the young couple and Parrish, Harry had been called to Paulton’s office to face what he was sure would be intensive questioning, yet maybe a reassurance that all would be well in the end.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

‘Needs must, I’m afraid,’ Paulton explained smoothly. ‘The press will be all over this like a rash, especially after Stockwell. The de Menezes affair,’ he added unnecessarily, and adjusted a buff folder on his desk.

‘That wasn’t the same thing,’ Harry protested. ‘We didn’t have enough men-’

‘Maybe not. But we have to view things in a broader context. There are… gaps in the sequence of events. Gaps we need to deal with. We can’t do that while there’s a danger you might be compromised by the press discovering your name.’

‘How could they?’ Harry looked from Paulton to the other man. He didn’t like the way the conversation was going. ‘There’s no way they can find out, unless someone talks. And what gaps?’

‘You’re right: on balance, they shouldn’t find out. But we can’t take that chance.’ He waved at the folder, which Harry guessed contained his and Maloney’s debriefing notes. ‘As to gaps… there’s the question of why the secure perimeter around the site allowed two civilians to pass through. And why the police officer on assignment wasn’t managed correctly. It doesn’t look good.’

‘I’ve already been over this.’ Harry had faced a three-person committee earlier that morning. A woman from Legal and two men, one from Human Resources and the other a limp-wristed individual from Operations. All faceless, all void of any emotion, they had absorbed detail like sponges but offered no help or empathy. It was as if his career so far counted for nothing.

It had been like facing a death tribunal.

‘We’re trying to safeguard your situation,’ Paulton purred.

‘Is that what it is?’ Harry felt an uncommon rebellion building. His dealings so far with Paulton had been relatively few and at best remote. But he had always seemed to be on the side of his officers. Now something different seemed to be hovering in the air. ‘Why do I get the feeling that the fault for what happened is being shifted my way?’

‘There were failings, you can’t deny that.’ There was a hint of steely reproof in Paulton’s voice.

‘Damn right there were. Like the last-minute reduction in team numbers. Economics, I was told. What kind of economics?’ Harry continued, before the other could interrupt, ‘We were in the middle of an operation!’

‘You could have vetoed it.’ Paulton tapped the folder, his cheeks flushing. ‘If you felt there were insufficient resources at your disposal, you could have said… should have said. It’s every officer’s right… every officer’s judgement.’