towards him. ‘Spider, good to see you,’ he said. He lowered the weapon he’d just fired and shook hands.
Major Allan Gannon was well over six feet tall, with a strong chin and wide shoulders. His nose had been broken at least once. He was wearing camouflage fatigues with Converse sneakers, and a Rolex Submariner on his left wrist. A yellow foam plug nestled in each ear, protection against the deafening gunshots. The metal briefcase that contained the secure satellite phone nicknamed the Almighty stood against the wall. No matter where the Major went he was never far from it. The only people who had access to it were the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Office, and the chiefs of MI5 and MI6. No matter who called, it was never good news.
‘Didn’t expect to find you in Hereford,’ said Shepherd.
‘They try to keep me nailed to that desk, but I managed to tunnel out,’ laughed the Major. ‘I like the haircut. You joining the Marines?’
Shepherd ran his hand over his scalp. ‘I was under cover with a gang of heavies who thought that short hair, tattoos and an earring meant you were hard. It’ll grow back.’
The Major grinned. ‘Yeah, I wish I was hard.’ He showed Shepherd the weapon he had just fired. ‘Seen one of these before?’
‘It’s the Heckler MP7, right? They came out just before I left the Regiment.’
The Major nodded. ‘They call it a Multi-role Personal Defence Weapon, these days.’
‘Better than the MP5?’
‘I like it,’ said the Major. ‘It’s got a 4.6-by-30-millimetre round, which packs the same punch as an assault rifle, and it’ll cut right through Kevlar body armour at two hundred metres. But it handles like a .22 with hardly any recoil. It’s like a rock during burst fire, even at nine hundred and fifty rounds a minute. NATO was getting fed up with bullets bouncing off body armour so they asked for a new weapon and Heckler came up with this.’ He put it on a table and picked up a second weapon, thinner and longer than the MP7 with a smaller hand-grip. ‘We’re doing a compare and contrast with this,’ he said. ‘Heckler’s UMP. Universale Maschinenpistole.’
‘
Gannon handed him the UMP. ‘Now, this one was specifically designed to replace the MP5. It fires from a closed bolt, like the MP5, but is designed for bigger cartridges. Mainly polymer construction, it’s a full pound lighter than the MP5. It comes in three versions. This one is the UMP45 which uses the .45 ACP cartridge. Lots of stopping power.’
‘Which is all well and good if you hit the target,’ said Shepherd, ‘but I wouldn’t want bullets like that whizzing around where there’s a risk of collateral damage.’
‘Sure, but you have to take into account that, these days, the bad guys all wear body armour,’ said the Major. ‘Even the old double-tap to the chest with an MP5 comes up short if the guy’s got a Kevlar vest. The clever thing about the UMP is that all three versions are the same basic design and can be converted to any of the other calibres by switching the bolt, barrel and magazine. So you can have the nine-by-nineteen-millimetre Parabellum if you prefer it, but you have the option of converting it to take the .45 or the .40 Smith amp; Wesson cartridge.’
Shepherd hefted the UMP. It weighed about five pounds, with its twenty-five-round magazine, and didn’t look much different from the MP5 he’d used during his time with the SAS.
‘So, how’s business?’ asked the Major.
‘Same old,’ said Shepherd. ‘Drugs, mainly. That’s SOCA’s bread and butter.’
‘Don’t you feel you’re wasting your time putting drug-dealers away? They’re supplying a need, and presumably for every one you put behind bars there’s another waiting to take his place, right?’
‘I just do what I’m told,’ said Shepherd. He sighted at one of the targets down the range, the weapon’s stock fitting snugly against his shoulder.
‘You’ve got better things to do than arrest drug-dealers,’ said Gannon. ‘You should come and work for the Increment. Get involved in anti-terrorism. Do something that makes a difference.’ The Increment was the Government’s best-kept secret, and the Major ran it. It consisted of a group of highly trained special-forces soldiers who were used on operations considered too dangerous for Britain’s intelligence agencies. The Major was able to draw on all the resources of the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service, plus any other experts who might be needed.
‘I’m too old to be an action man,’ said Shepherd.
‘You’re almost ten years younger than me,’ said the Major, ‘and it’s not all jumping out of planes and firing from the hip.’ He indicated a box of earplugs on the table.
‘I’m happy with SOCA,’ Shepherd said. ‘It’s challenging, and I get to spend time with Liam too.’ He popped plugs into his ears and worked his jaw as they expanded to fill his ear canals.
‘And the lovely Miss Button?’
‘Mrs Button,’ said Shepherd. ‘Married with child.’
‘Don’t get too attached,’ said the Major.
‘What do you mean?’
The Major picked up the MP7 and fired a short burst at the terrorist target twenty-five yards away. The tang of cordite in the enclosed space made Shepherd’s eyes water. The Major grinned at the tight grouping in the centre of the dummy’s head. ‘We had some MI5 hotshots down for weapons training last week,’ he said. ‘They weren’t a bad crowd, as it turned out, but they sure as hell couldn’t hold their booze. We took them on a pub crawl and I had a very interesting chat with a young lady who works in Five’s surveillance department.’
‘I bet you did,’ said Shepherd. He aimed the UMP at the target next to the Major’s and pulled the trigger. The weapon’s relatively slow rate of fire and the large-calibre rounds meant he had to keep a tight grip as it kicked. Even before he’d finished he knew that several of his shots had gone wide. He grimaced as he put the gun back on the table. ‘Give me the MP5 any day,’ he said.
The Major slapped him on the back. ‘If that’s any indication of your marksmanship, you’d better stick with an MP3,’ he said. ‘Or, better still, an iPod.’ He handed the MP7 to Shepherd and bowed theatrically towards the targets. ‘Pray try again, m’lord,’ he said, in his best Jeeves impersonation.
Shepherd raised the weapon to his shoulder. He slipped his finger inside the trigger guard. The weapon had a similar safety feature to the Glock pistol – the trigger was in three sections of which the middle had to be pulled first before the outer sections would move. It helped prevent an accidental discharge. It wasn’t a feature that Shepherd appreciated. It made the trigger less sensitive and Shepherd believed that a man who could accidentally fire a weapon shouldn’t be handling one in the first place. In all his years as an SAS trooper and undercover cop he’d never once fired without meaning to. He loosed a quick burst and smiled at the almost total lack of recoil. There was none of the kicking and bucking he associated with the UMP yet a tight cluster of holes had appeared above the terrorist’s heart. ‘Nice,’ he said.
‘And the rounds have enough velocity so that once they’ve punched through body armour they start tumbling,’ said the Major. ‘The ammunition is pretty much exclusive to the gun, the bullet is made of hardened steel and it’s smaller than a nine-millimetre so you can get loads of them in a magazine. It’s a real man-stopper. The German Army’s already using it and the Ministry of Defence police here have already signed up for it.’
‘It’s a good gun,’ said Shepherd. ‘I just hope the bad guys don’t start using it.’ He handed it back. ‘What did you hear about Charlie?’ he asked.
The major raised his eyebrows. ‘What makes you think I heard anything about the lovely Mrs Button?’
‘Because I’m a cop and you’re transparent,’ said Shepherd.
Gannon laughed. ‘Fair point,’ he said. ‘Seems that Charlie’s a bit of a hero with MI5. And they reckon she’ll be back there before long.’
‘Office gossip or something more substantial?’
‘Substantial gossip, from what I understand. The way my little songbird told it, Charlie was one of several MI5 high-flyers who were seconded to SOCA at its inception. The spooks were worried that SOCA might get ideas above its station, so they wanted their own people on board from the get-go. But it was never a permanent attachment, and my source is guessing that before long she’ll be back in the fold.’
‘There’ll be lots of movement back and forth between SOCA and the other agencies,’ said Shepherd.
‘She’s a spook,’ said the Major. ‘Graduate entry, dyed-in-the-wool MI5. What I’m saying is, don’t nail your colours to her mast because, come the day, she’ll sail off into the sunset.’
‘Leaving me high and dry? You do love your metaphors, don’t you?’
‘In your line of work, your boss means everything,’ said the Major.
