Then there was no time to think, because the three other members of the Cell filed into the Shed. First came the woman with the strawberry lips, then the black guy with the cropped hair. The short guy entered the room last. As he shut the door a red light glowed above, signalling that the Shed was fully secure. He took a seat next to his colleagues.
‘Everyone, this is Josh Bowman,’ Mallet said. ‘He’ll be joining us for this operation. He’s coming on board as a replacement for those two other idiots. One or two of you might have worked with him before. For those of you who haven’t, Josh is a Regiment lad. From B Squadron. My old crew.’
Mallet gestured towards the short guy. Keith ‘Tiny’ Loader was the smallest man in 22 SAS, but also one of the toughest. A widow’s peak sat atop his craggy face; his hands were criss-crossed with scars. But the smile was warm, and there was a kindness to his large round eyes.
‘I’m sure you know Tiny from your time at Hereford,’ said Mallet.
Bowman nodded. ‘We did Selection together. He beat me on the Long Drag.’
Loader grinned, revealing a graveyard of stained brown teeth. ‘You were a cocky bugger back then, boyo.’ He spoke in a sing-song Welsh accent, redolent of the valleys.
‘Typical bloody Para. Always wanting to kick the front door in and kill everyone in sight.’
‘Engineers,’ Bowman quipped. ‘Always think you know best.’
‘That’s because we do, mate. We sneak through the back door while you idiots are going through the front.’
Bowman laughed.
‘How’s the madhouse these days?’
‘Fine,’ Bowman said. ‘The lads are all fine.’
‘Is Sally Stevens working the bar at the Green Dragon?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘She’s a good woman, that one. Gorgeous. If I was still down there, I would have been giving her the old Loader vaccine by now.’ He winked. ‘A seven-inch injection, if you know what I mean.’
‘If you did,’ said Mallet, ‘it would be the first time you’d pulled anything in a pub other than a pint, Tiny.’
Bowman and Mallet shared an easy laugh. Although the other guys in the Regiment often teased Loader, everyone respected his abilities as a soldier. He had a smart, thoughtful attitude, like many of the recruits from the Corps of Engineers. He was also loyal to a fault. In public he fancied himself as a ladies’ man, but everyone knew that he secretly adored his childhood sweetheart Mary and their eight kids. One of the bullying sergeants had nicknamed him Tiny after he’d passed Selection, but Loader wore the name like a badge of honour. The piss-taking had only motivated him to work harder, to prove himself the equal of every other guy in the Regiment. Bowman was genuinely glad to see him on the team.
Mallet said, ‘Tiny’s the team medic. He also deals with anything related to entry, breaking security systems. As you know, he used to run the lock-picking wing at Hereford. If there’s a safe that needs cracking, he’s your man. Or if you need a terrible chat-up line.’
He pointed to the man to the right of Loader. The figure with the cropped hair. Under the glare of the overhead lights in the Shed, Bowman saw that his chin was a knot of pinkish scar tissue. He was lean and tough, with muscles like cement and a fierce look in his eyes. There was a quiet intensity to the guy, Bowman noted. As if he might explode into violence at the slightest provocation.
‘This is Sergeant Patrick Webb,’ Mallet said. ‘He’s from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.’
‘All right, mate,’ Bowman said. ‘How’s it going?’
Webb nodded a curt greeting.
Mallet said, ‘Patrick is our lead surveillance operator and team linguist. Fluent in seven languages. He did three years with SRR before he was picked up by Thames House. Now he works for us.’
Bowman nodded. The Special Reconnaissance Regiment was the modern successor to The Det, the shadowy surveillance unit that worked alongside the Regiment in Northern Ireland. SRR candidates were trained in many of the same skillsets as their predecessors in the Det. They were the ultimate grey men and women, able to operate in areas others couldn’t, recceing targets and observing enemy positions. Their skills were highly prized by the security services, who often recruited SRR operators to carry out surveillance work.
‘Josh did two years in SRR himself,’ Mallet said to Webb.
‘When did you join SRR, mate?’ Bowman said. ‘I don’t remember seeing you around the ops room when I was there.’
‘Four years ago,’ Webb replied in a heavy Birmingham accent. ‘We don’t know each other.’
‘You’re a Brummie, eh? Villa fan?’
‘City.’
He said nothing more and stared blankly at Bowman, his lips pressed into a hard line. A long moment passed between them. Bowman figured he was the kind of guy who preferred silence to small talk.
Mallet turned to the third member of the team. The dark-haired woman with the strawberry lips.
‘Captain Alex Casey,’ he said. ‘She’s also from SRR.’
Casey smiled at him. She had a small mousy face, with a button nose and a slender neck, but the big green eyes were constantly alert, observing everything, missing nothing. Her side-parted hair was the colour of coffee grounds.
‘Alex is our electronics specialist,’ Mallet said. ‘She’s in charge of our surveillance equipment, comms, nano-drones. Anything technical, Alex can take care of it.’
‘You can take care of my handset any day of the week, love,’ Loader said.
Casey stared at him with flat eyes. ‘That’s not funny, Tiny. It doesn’t even make sense.’
She spoke in a clipped Home Counties accent. She sounded more like a Pimlico book editor than a member of Britain’s covert reconnaissance unit.
‘Alex was in 18 Signals before she joined SRR,’ Mallet added. ‘Which means she’s good at all the cyber stuff too. If you’ve ever looked at porn, she’ll know about it.’
Bowman nodded thoughtfully. The men and women of 18
