Stephen Leather - False Friends

‘You ever thrown one?’ asked the Major.

Shepherd shook his head. ‘They were still 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 killing people,’ said the Major. ‘You’d think a grenade would just be a grenade, but someone somewhere thought it worth spending a few million 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 killing 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 all. 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 all 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’ll head for Westminster and get all 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’ll 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.’

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

Shepherd shrugged. ‘I’m hoping that Sam will 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’ll hang me out to dry. But the Brummie cops are going to be spitting feathers when they find out that all 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 killed 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 hell knows what their motivation is?’

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

‘Yeah, but they can’t really 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 killed. 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 sorrowfully. ‘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 all 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 pulled 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 all becoming a bit Alice in Wonderland ,’ said Shepherd. ‘I can’t believe that the London bombers really 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 spills over to hatred of the world. If you really want to worry about something, Major, think about what’ll 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 will. That’s what I find so scary.’ He laughed harshly. ‘I’ve got my psychological evaluation coming up so I’ll see if the MI5 shrink has any ideas on what it all means.’ He patted the crate. ‘I’ll 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’ll 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 pulled in. He waited until he saw Jimmy Sharpe emerge from the building before getting out.

Sharpe was dressed casually in a dark-green waterproof Barbour jacket and dark-brown corduroy trousers. He was holding a Marks amp; 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.