Four men, Middle Eastern. The one with the bandages was now removing them; another held a handgun. As Snow aimed his cameraphone at them, a hand grabbed Snow’s shoulder. Snow pivoted and flung his unknown attacker to the ground, his phone dangling by its carry cord. The police officer hit the pavement with force, his helmet spinning off into the traffic.
‘Security Services,’ was all Snow managed to get out, before a round zipped past his face. He fell to the pavement, the lights changed, and the Mondeo moved off. Snow tried to get to his feet but was forcefully pushed flat by the second officer, who had now caught up.
‘Secret Intelligent Service. You’re stopping the wrong person.’
The second officer attempted to place his knee on Snow’s chest. ‘Stay still!’
‘For the love of God…’ Snow twisted and, using his right leg, swept the officer’s legs out from under him. He sprang to his feet. The first officer, now standing, had extended his folding truncheon and was holding it in his right hand.
‘Get down… down!’
‘Get out of the bloody way!’ Snow lurched forward and ducked inside the officer’s advancing arm. He kicked the man in the back of the knee before ripping the truncheon from his hand and hurling it into the street.
Snow sprinted to the end of the road and at the junction reacquired the Mondeo, fifty metres ahead on Wigmore Street, stopped this time by a taxi. He heard sirens now, from Harley Street behind him, an armed response unit arriving on the scene given the sensitive Central London location. As Snow watched, the target vehicle raced off, mounting the pavement and breaking the speed limit. Snow turned and was met with a cloud of CS gas…
‘You… sodding… idiots!’
Hands again tried to clamp him. Eyes streaming, Snow fought back, kicking out at the blurred shapes. One officer went down swearing, the other landed a punch. Snow lost control completely and shoulder-barged the second officer before delivering an uppercut to his unprotected jaw. Both officers were down, hurt.
‘Listen to me!’ Snow yelled. ‘There’s a kill team out there getting away. We need to call it in!’
‘Armed police! Drop your weapon and lie on the floor, facedown.’
Snow shut his still-streaming eyes in disbelief. He slowly placed his phone on the pavement and lay down beside it. A black tactical boot kicked the phone into the gutter.
‘That’s HM Government property. You’ll get a bill!’
‘Be quiet now, please, sir.’
Gloved hands grabbed Snow’s and pulled them behind his back.
His hands secured, Snow was searched before being hoisted to his feet. The tight plasticuffs bit into his wrists. The two ‘beat bobbies’ were looking none too happy.
‘My name is Aidan Snow, I’m an SIS operative. Call Vauxhall Cross – they’ll confirm who I am.’
‘I’m sure we’ll do that at the station,’ the CO19 member mocked.
‘Come along, please, sir,’ a second added.
‘An SIS officer is down and the shooter is getting away. Call it in!’
‘Move!’ The friendly tone evaporated.
Arriving at the secure police station, Snow was led to the front desk for processing. The duty desk officer looked up, unimpressed. The CO19 officer placed a clear plastic bag on the desk. It contained the contents of Snow’s pockets, wallet and phone.
‘Name?’
‘I’m an operative for SIS. Call them.’
‘Your name?’
Snow took a deep breath; they were only doing their jobs, all of them, if badly. ‘Aidan Snow.’
‘Right then, Mr Snow, if you’ll just press your fingers there for me, we’ll scan your prints.’
There was little point in resisting. Snow put his fingers on the scanner. He wasn’t a fan of anyone having his personal information, let alone his fingerprints.
The desk officer looked at the screen and frowned. ‘OK, we’re going to put you in a holding cell until we can confirm your identity.’
Snow shrugged. He had no idea what had been on the scanner screen or even which database had flagged up, but he knew either way he’d be in for a wait.
‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’
‘Sure. How do you take it, shaken not stirred?’
Shoreham-by-Sea, UK
A victim of the credit crunch they would call him, an unavoidable casualty of an unseen enemy: the recession. Paddy Fox swallowed his pint bitterly. He was no one’s victim. He looked at the jobs page for the third time before screwing it up in a ball. The anger he felt towards them hadn’t lessened in the six weeks since it had happened, the rage he had for his former boss. He had nothing to prove. He was James ‘Paddy’ Fox, a twenty-year veteran of the SAS and worth something. If no one saw that, then sod ’em.
Fox’s mobile rang and he grabbed for it. ‘Yes?’ His guttural Scottish hue hadn’t been lessened by years of living in Hereford and then Sussex. There was a pause, which instantly told him it was a company trying to sell him something, before a voice reading from a script spoke.
‘Can I speak to Mr James Fox?’
‘You could.’ He cut the connection.
Take, take, take! The world seemed to want something from him, but not him. He flattened out the paper and circled another job, the ‘Dymex’ logo blurring in front of his eyes. Tracey still worked for them, but why he had kept a corporate ballpoint pen he didn’t know. Was it his sackcloth?
Fox downed his pint of bitter and wiped his lips on the back of his hand. Just the two for now; more later when he already knew he’d storm out of the house after arguing with Tracey. It had become an almost daily occurrence since he’d become, as he saw it, ‘redundant’. He looked across the Crown and Anchor’s dingy, deserted bar. Burt, the jowl-heavy landlord, was the only other person in the room, with the exception of ‘old Dave’, who sat in the corner like a fixture, with his paper and pint of Guinness. Fox shook his head; what a miserable pisshole of a pub. It was the only bar in Shoreham that had yet to be ‘neoned’, as he called it, to have a bit of paint slapped on, fancy lights added, and the price of the drinks doubled. As such, it was the only place where the average age of the punters was over twelve – in his mind anyway. He stood, placed his empty on the bar, and nodded at Burt as he left the pub. Outside it was rush hour, cars cutting through the narrow streets of the old town in an attempt to miss the traffic. In a way, the SAS veteran was glad he wasn’t part of the corporate world any more – the ‘rat-run rat race’. Nevertheless, he was still angry at how he had left it.
Summoned to a glass-walled meeting room, Fox had looked across with disgust
