Stephen Leather - False Friends

Sharpe shrugged. ‘This one just feels different, that’s why. Kettering and Thompson aren’t regular crims. They’re not blaggers, they’re not drug dealers, but they want enough guns to supply a small army. Don’t you want to know why?’

‘Not really,’ said Shepherd. ‘In the grand scheme of things the reason doesn’t matter. They buy the guns, they go to jail and they don’t pass go or collect two hundred pounds. And we move on.’

‘Yeah, maybe I’m over-thinking it.’ Sharpe drained his glass and patted his expanding waistline. ‘Okay, once more into the valley of death.’

‘There’s confidence for you,’ said Shepherd. He stood up and Sharpe followed him out to the Range Rover.

After driving for fifteen minutes they arrived at the lay-by where Kettering had parked. There were four men sitting in Kettering’s Jaguar. Shepherd flashed his lights and slowed down as he drove by. Kettering flashed back, pulled into the road and followed them.

It took Shepherd another ten minutes to drive to the destination on the TomTom. There was a fence running to their left with a barred gate leading to a track that wound round a gently sloping hill. Sharpe got out and opened the gate, waited for Shepherd and Kettering to drive through and closed it. Ahead of them, about a hundred feet or so in the air, a hawk was flying into the wind, its wings fluttering as it held its position over the ground. As Sharpe got back into the car the hawk plummeted down, its wings tucked in close to its body, and grabbed a small rodent in its claws.

Shepherd drove around the hill. The track petered out but the four-wheel drive kept the Range Rover moving easily across the field. The Jaguar had more trouble and slowed to a crawl.

Shepherd brought the Range Rover to a stop and climbed out. Sharpe laughed when he saw how much trouble Kettering was having driving over the rough ground. ‘He’s not going to be happy about this,’ he said. ‘It’ll play havoc with his suspension.’

The Jaguar, its sides now splattered with mud, finally reached the Range Rover. It parked and four men got out. Kettering and Thompson were both wearing leather bomber jackets and jeans and had scarves round their necks. Kettering waved. ‘All good, Garry?’

‘No problems,’ said Shepherd.

Kettering nodded at the two men who had been in the back of the Jaguar. ‘Friends of ours,’ he said. ‘Roger and Sean.’ The two men shook hands with Shepherd and Sharpe. Sean was broad-shouldered, with a military haircut and a Northern Irish accent that suggested Londonderry rather than Belfast. Shepherd had seen Roger McLean’s photograph in Button’s office — he was the right-wing activist who had met with the Norwegian mass murderer in 2002.

Sharpe walked over to the Jaguar. ‘Nice motor,’ he said.

‘Yeah, can’t beat a Jag,’ said Kettering.

‘Be better with four-wheel drive, though,’ said Sharpe. He walked round the car, checked that there was no one hiding in the back, and nodded at Shepherd.

Thompson saw what he was doing and he grinned. ‘Don’t trust us?’ he said.

‘Just don’t want any surprises,’ said Sharpe.

‘Better check the boot in case we’ve got a group of dwarves in there with shooters,’ said Kettering.

‘We’ll trust you,’ said Shepherd, opening the tailgate of the Range Rover. He used a screwdriver to lever off the top of the crate. Inside were three assault rifles, swathed in bubble wrap. He took one out and unwrapped it, then showed it to the four men. ‘You know much about guns?’ he asked.

‘A bit,’ said Kettering. He looked across at Thompson. ‘Handguns mainly, though.’ He nodded at Sean. ‘Sean here’s the expert.’

‘Okay, well, this is a Zastava M70, manufactured in the former Yugoslavia. Barrel length 415 millimetres, gas-operated, air-cooled, 620 rounds a minute on fully automatic, muzzle velocity 720 metres per second with an effective range of 400 metres.’ He reached into the crate and pulled out a curved magazine. He held it up so that they could see it. ‘Thirty-round box magazine.’ He slotted in the magazine then chambered a round. ‘And there you are, good to go.’ He sighted down the gun at a rock in the distance. ‘Point and shoot. That’s pretty much all there is to it.’

‘They’re reliable, yeah?’ said Thompson.

‘Not much to go wrong with them,’ said Shepherd. ‘Trust me, it’s a nice weapon. It’s better than the crap the Chinese make and in my view it’s more reliable than the Russian version. The one drawback, and it’s a minor thing, is that you need to clean it thoroughly. If I were you I’d clean it every time you use it. The inside of the barrel isn’t chromed so you have to stop rust setting in.’

‘Can you show us how to clean them?’ Thompson asked Sean.

Sean nodded. ‘Sure. It’s not difficult. But doing it will add years to its life.’

‘What happens if you don’t clean it?’ asked Kettering.

‘It starts to rust and the inside gets pitted,’ said Sean. ‘That means there isn’t such a tight fit for the round as it moves along the barrel so it doesn’t go as straight. Take a new gun like this fresh out of the crate and at four hundred metres you should be able to put round after round in a target the size of a dinner plate. But if you don’t clean it, after five hundred rounds or so you’d have trouble hitting a bus.’

Shepherd and Sharpe nodded in agreement. Whoever Sean was, he knew his stuff.

‘Got you,’ said Kettering. He held out his hands for the gun. Shepherd clicked the safety on and handed it to him.

Kettering smiled appreciatively as he held the gun. ‘And you’re sure it’s as good as the Kalashnikov?’

‘It’s better, I think. And I’m not just saying that because I’m bringing them in from Serbia. I could get the Russian version if I wanted. And I could get the Chinese version at a lower price.’ He gestured at the gun. ‘That’s a good, reliable weapon. These are the fixed-stock versions but I can get you them with a folding stock.’

‘They’d be easier to hide, right?’ said Thompson.

‘Absolutely,’ said Shepherd. He unwrapped a second gun, slammed in a magazine and handed it to Thompson, after making sure that the safety was on. ‘With the folding stock you can hang them on a sling and hide them under a coat. Takes a second to snap the stock out.’

Kettering nodded enthusiastically. ‘That sounds perfect,’ he said.

‘How many are you going to be looking for?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Forty. Maybe more. It depends on your price.’

Thompson was holding his gun awkwardly, as if he was scared that it was going to bite him. Shepherd smiled and pointed at the safety catch. ‘The safety has three positions,’ said Shepherd. ‘At the moment the safety is up, which means that the gun can’t be fired. If you move it down one notch it’s set for automatic firing which means it will keep firing so long as you keep the trigger pulled. You really don’t want to be doing that because you’ll empty the clip before you know it. Push the safety all the way down and you’re in semi-automatic mode. That means one pull of the trigger fires one round.’

‘We can fire them, right?’ said Kettering.

‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Shepherd. He took a wooden target from the car. It was a wooden frame that folded down the middle. He assembled it, locked it into position and handed it to Sharpe. There was a cardboard tube next to the crate and Shepherd popped a plastic cap off one end and pulled out a roll of paper. It was a paper target that the SAS sometimes used, a cartoon of Bin Laden holding a Kalashnikov.

Kettering laughed when he saw the target. ‘I thought he was dead already.’

‘You believe that?’ asked Thompson. ‘He was dead five years ago.’