Going Rogue Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Burning Chair Limited, Trading As Burning Chair Publishing

  Dedication

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  Did You Enjoy This Book?

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About Burning Chair

  Other Books by Burning Chair Publishing

  Going Rogue

  A Tom Novak Thriller

  By Neil Lancaster

  Burning Chair Limited, Trading As Burning Chair Publishing

  71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden

  London WC2H 9JQ

  www.burningchairpublishing.com

  By Neil Lancaster

  Edited by Simon Finnie and Peter Oxley

  Book Cover Design by ebooklaunch.com

  First published by Burning Chair Publishing, 2019

  Copyright © Neil Lancaster, 2019

  All rights reserved.

  Neil Lancaster has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-1-912946-08-2

  Dedication

  For Dad, whose biggest, most important piece of advice to me sits front and central in the Novak books.

  “Always do right, son.”

  William Basil Lancaster 1939-2017

  1

  Lenny Smith advanced along Whitechapel Road, the heart of enemy territory. He strode purposefully and with a steely determination, his shoulders squared and his head held high as he scanned the street for any imminent threats.

  Lenny was angry. In fact, he was fuming about the unfairness of it all. Unfair because of what his country was becoming, but even more unfair because of what was happening to him.

  The only joy he had felt over the past few weeks was the knowledge of what he was about to do; how he would exact a devastating revenge and show the whole world that normal men like him wouldn’t stand for it any longer. His wasn’t a normal walk; it was an advance to contact.

  He continued along Whitechapel Road, his excitement rising with each step. His backpack was small and compact and, if the other pedestrians knew what was inside, they’d all run a mile. He’d been briefed by a man of military bearing who’d explained exactly how he should activate the device inside the bag, and he’d practised arming and deploying it more times than he could count. All that was left to do was unleash holy hell and then sit back and watch the chaos.

  A feeling of calm swept over him as he approached the mosque. The street was tightly packed with worshippers thronging around the entrance of the building. Nearly all were men and almost all wore traditional attire, including kufi caps and loose robes. The timing was significant and planned. Eid, the most important time in the Muslim calendar, meant that the road would never be busier with targets.

  Lenny pushed his way through the crowd before shrugging the rucksack off his shoulders. He hooked one of the straps round the metal barrier outside the mosque. He’d practised this repeatedly during training with the bombmaker, known to him only as “Simmo”. He made sure that the zips faced out and into the crowd of worshippers struggling to get through the front doors.

  No one took any notice of Lenny. He was anonymous.

  He walked away from the rucksack without a backwards glance and crossed the Whitechapel Road, which was heaving with cars full of Muslims all celebrating. He found a bench looking across at the mosque entrance and sat down, wincing at the jab of pain in his back and abdomen.

  He checked his watch. Just one minute to go. Smiling to himself, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small RF fob: the type typically used for remotely opening garage doors. It was an unremarkably small piece of plastic, holding just a black, rubberised button. He watched the digital numerals on his watch count down to the hour mark. When they clicked to a double zero he pushed the button, a smile creeping across his face.

  Two pounds of plastic explosive detonated with a deafening, dull report. Several hundred galvanised nails from the improvised claymore mine flew with terrible force into the crowd, closely followed by a huge cloud of acrid dust ballooning into the air. There was no fireball; there never was with an IED like that unless there was a secondary explosion from a fuel tank or similar. Limbs were torn from bodies and shrapnel devastated organs. The pressure wave hit Lenny, but he was spared the shrapnel as the improvised device blew its terrible payload away from him, in the direction of the crowd.

  After a second of eerie almost-silence, the screams began. Lenny leapt to his feet and pulled out a Glock 17 pistol from inside his jacket. He began firing rapidly into the crowd as he advanced across the road though the stationary traffic. When the Glock was empty, he ejected the magazine, slammed a new one in and began firing again until that one was empty. He then dropped the pistol on the floor and returned to his bench, sat down, and waited. He laughed, elated as he heard the approaching sirens, just audible over the terrible screams.

  2

  The four men sat opposite each other in the cheapest ground floor room in the cheap North London hotel. There was an atmosphere of turgid tension that you could slice open with a knife.

  Ten oblong blocks, each about the size of a house brick, sat on the table, arranged like a small wall. Each was securely wrapped in brown masking tape.

  ‘I’m telling you guys; this Charlie is the best you are likely to find anywhere. Just look at the flakiness of it. Columbia’s finest marching powder, boys, and you are getting it cheap. Tell them, Larry,’ said the oldest of the four men with an enforced jocularity that did not mask his crippling nerves.

  Larry was a younger man in his forties with a limp moustache and a crumpled shirt. ‘It sure is, Mick. It’s good as gold, boys. Straight off the boat; you won’t find a trace of any nasty cutting agents in there, straight up.’

  “Larry” and “Mick” really did not look like they belonged in that hotel room with the ten kilogrammes of pure, uncut cocaine that had been recently top-sliced from a much bigger consignment seized from a trawler, which had in turn been intercepted just off the coast of Felixstowe by the authorities and all the crew arrested. They especially looked out of place as both were Investigation Officers from the United Kingdom Border Force.
Larry and Mick were, not to put it too finely, shitting themselves.

  The other two men in the room didn’t look so nervous at all; in fact, they looked positively at home.

  ‘Thing is, boys, we know you are ripping this off your employers and, as public servants, you ought to be fucking ashamed,’ one of them, called Vinny, smiled. ‘But on the basis of helping you two with your forthcoming retirements, I reckon I can do you both a favour by taking it off your hands.’ Vinny was a stocky man who looked and sounded tough with his rapid-fire cockney patter and air of utter confidence.

  ‘Now my good friend here, Freddie, isn’t given to favours,’ continued Vinnie. ‘He is without my sunny disposition. In fact, he is a right moody bastard and insists on not taking suppliers at their word. He will insist on testing the product. I tried to tell him that as two fine and upstanding servants of Her Majesty you wouldn’t try and rip us off, but he won’t have it. You see, his instinct when he gets ripped off is to tear the head off of the individual ripping us off and, to be frank, shit down their necks. Now this presents us with a problem as Freddie ripping both of your heads clean off your shoulders would attract attention we would rather not have. So, gentlemen,’ Vinny paused and showed his teeth in a nasty smile. ‘I hope the product is what you say it is?’

  Larry and Mick looked across at Freddie, who was slouched on the bed with a half-bored look on his face. He had deep brown, almost black, eyes that glittered with menace. He had not said a word since they had arrived at the hotel but simply sat there, a brooding presence that they found rather unsettling.

  ‘Straight up, Vinny,’ Larry gabbled, perspiration forming on his top lip. ‘The rest of the haul has been tested and it’s ninety-percent pure. That’s why we are asking the price we are asking for.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Don’t shit your pants,’ Vinny said, shaking his head. ‘Freddie, over to you.’

  Freddie stood up and reached into his rucksack, removing a small cardboard box from inside. Moving to the piled-up bricks he selected two at random and, pulling up a chair, sat down with a sigh. He produced a sharp craft knife and carefully made a small slit in the first brick then, using a small plastic spatula, dropped a few grains of the white powder into a small plastic bottle. Moving to the next brick he performed the same action again, tipping a few grains of the white powder into another identical bottle. He then took two small bottles containing clear liquids and mixed them together, shaking them vigorously.

  ‘Freddie likes testing gear, boys. He did chemistry at school, reckons he’s Walt White,’ Vinny said with a chuckle.

  Freddie said nothing, instead just eyeballing Vinny and shaking his head with a half-smile as he added half of the mixed liquids to the plastic bottles that contained the cocaine samples. Again, he shook them hard for a few seconds in his closed fist. As he opened his hand to look at the results, Larry and Mick held their breath, a blanket of tense silence enveloping the room.

  Freddie looked at the two bottles: both now contained a deep brown liquid which he compared to a colour code chart.

  ‘It’s good stuff,’ Freddie said, his first words since entering the room. There was an audible exhalation from the two Border Force agents.

  ‘You just need to hope that the weights are right now,’ said Vinnie. ‘Freddie don’t like underweight packages.’

  Freddie reached into his bag once more and produced a small set of electronic scales. One by one he weighed each package carefully and methodically, a picture of unhurried calm. Once done he said nothing but simply nodded at Vinny.

  ‘How much per key?’ Vinny asked, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘We… We wanted thirty-five,’ stuttered Mick.

  Freddie let out an amused snort of derision.

  ‘Boys, boys. We can’t pay thirty-five on the key. It’s a buyer’s market at the moment: as cuzzies you ought to know this.’ It was telling that Vinny used the historic moniker for Customs Investigators, marking him and his partner as seasoned professional criminals.

  ‘Plus, you don’t have the contacts we do to sell for more. We need to turn a profit on this. Twenty-five a key, boys. That’s still a quarter-of-a-mil. Not bad to top up the retirement fund, right?’

  ‘But at the purity it is, it’s worth loads more. People are paying twenty-six for cut rubbish. This stuff is prime,’ Larry said.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s fucking nicked Charlie, ain’t it, boys. You ripped it off, so it’s all profit. Now you are welcome to try elsewhere or, fuck it, flog it on the streets. Fancy that?’ Vinny’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Larry looked at Mick imploringly, but he knew they had little choice. Despite being Investigating Officers for years, neither had the network to off-load a batch of cocaine like that. These boys were their best chance, and a quarter of a million was not to be sneezed at.

  Freddie spoke for only the second time. ‘Gents, it’s a good deal. You get two-fifty for nothing, and we can turn a nice profit and take all the risk. You don’t belong in this world; most of the people in our business would see you for what you are: out of your depths no-marks. You’d most likely just get robbed for the lot.’ His voice was low, even, and emotionless. His eyes glittered like a lizard’s and the rhythm of his delivery was almost soothing.

  Mick sighed deeply in resigned frustration. ‘Okay, you have a deal. Let’s do this and get out of here, this place is making me nervous.’

  ‘Excellent. Good decision, chaps. Just wait here for a few moments and Freddie will go and fetch the dough.’

  ‘What, it’s not here?’ Mick asked.

  ‘Obviously it’s not here. Who would bring a quarter of a mil to a fucking meet? Fucking hell boys, you’re lucky it’s not some other horrible bastards or you would probably be minus ten keys of Charlie and possibly with cut throats right now.’

  Freddie left the hotel room, returning within a few minutes carrying a packed duffel bag that he tossed onto the bed. ‘It’s all there. Feel free to count it.’

  Mick emptied the bundled banknotes onto the bed and both men gasped in wonder at the pile of currency.

  Larry let out a low chuckle as he began to almost caress the piled bank notes.

  ‘There’s two hundred and fifty bundles of a thousand each,’ said Vinnie. ‘Now hurry up. Much as I’ve enjoyed this little gathering, we’re busy men.’

  Freddie quickly and efficiently began to stack the packages of cocaine into his rucksack. The final two bricks that he had tested were quickly rewrapped with a roll of clingfilm before being jammed back in the bag with the others.

  ‘Right, I suggest we all get the fuck out of here, gents. Been nice doing business with you; don’t spend it all on cheap hookers,’ Vinny said, smiling and offering his hand, which each man took and shook excitedly.

  Freddie hoisted the rucksack onto his shoulder and opened the hotel door.

  ‘Armed Police!’ came the yell from the hotel corridor. Black-clad firearms officers appeared from everywhere and in seconds they were all overpowered and cuffed, face down on the carpeted floor.

  *

  There was a queue of police vans waiting to divest waiting prisoners in the secure yard at Colindale Police Station, so they had been forced to double the amount of prisoners in the transit cages in the back of the vans. The rogue customs officers, Larry and Mick, shared the back of one of the vans while Vinny and Freddie were together in the other.

  Vinny stared at the floor, a look of truculence on his face as Freddie sat opposite him, staring at the ceiling. Their escorting cop wandered over to his colleague in the other van, leaving them alone.

  ‘You were a bit shit today, Borat,’ chuckled Vinnie.

  ‘Fuck off, Buster,’ said Freddie. ‘Your cheeky-chappie cockney routine was totally overacted. If they were proper villains, we’d have been well blown out. Good job they were just stupid corrupt cuzzies.’

  ‘Well, your strong and silent thing didn’t work. You just looked like a miserable bastard.’

  ‘They were bricking it
, mate.’ Freddie tried not to laugh as he saw the escorting cop return to the van.

  ‘Oi. No talking you two!’ he shouted at them.

  ‘Sorry officer,’ said Vinnie.

  Freddie and Vinnie, otherwise known as DS Tom Novak and DC Pete “Buster” Rhymes, looked at each other with smiles on their faces.

  An hour later they had been booked in, fingerprinted, and photographed. DNA samples had been taken and both men were languishing in adjacent cells.

  Tom was lying flat-out trying to sleep on a thin, rubber mattress which did not in any way hide the fact that the base was hard concrete, when he heard keys rattling in the cell door. He sat up to see the elegant form of Detective Chief Superintendent Jane Milligan entering his cell, a wide smile on her face.

  ‘How’s my best DS doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Tired and bored. Do we have to play this right the way out? Not sure I fancy hours and hours here. It’s so bloody busy I’ve not even had a tea yet.’

  ‘Fortunately, no. Something has come up.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Come on, it’s all sorted and we have already retrieved your belongings from the custody officer. The custody main office is now cleared so we need to go now. We need to get back to the office urgently.’ Milligan’s delivery was brusque; Tom could tell that whatever had happened was serious.

  Leaping to his feet he followed Jane out of his cell, meeting Buster coming out of his own cell and escorted by Lin, another team member. Buster shot him a puzzled look.

  As they climbed into the waiting car in the yard Tom said, ‘If you’ve managed to extricate us out of the usual twenty-four hours’ custody of pretending to be a drug dealer then it must be serious.’

  ‘It is,’ Jane said flatly.

  ‘How serious?’ Buster asked.

  ‘Very. Let’s wait till we get back to the office; the rest of the team is waiting for you two. I need to make a call. Good work today, by the way. They were properly corrupt bastards.’