“JAMIE!!” shrieked Georgy, struggling to get away from me.
“He’s OK, Georgy, I’ve got him, he’s safe!” shouted Bonzo, “Stay where you are, he can’t get to you there, Jamie’s under the stairs with me, just stay there, don’t move!”
Jarhead had hit the floor too, diving behind the big Chesterfield sofa, pulling his headset and boom mike into place as he hit the ground.
“Sunray, Sunray, this is Foxtrot Victor Romeo Two-Niner I say again, Foxtrot Victor Romeo two-niner call-sign Jarhead, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, incoming fire, unknown shooter or shooters, no casualties, there are children here, I say again, there are children here, we are taking fire, requesting bailout ASAP, this is a priority Alpha, I say again, we are taking fire, requesting priority Alpha bailout ASAP, Foxtrot Victor Romeo Two Niner EXFIL.”
Bonzo out in the hallway, smack in the centre of the building and out of any possible harm’s way with Jamie, called out to Aunt Kay.
“Mrs. K, Mrs. K, get the children and Megan away from the windows NOW! All of you, stay up there, don’t move around, lie down on the floor in the hall, don’t try and come down the stairs, I’ll come get you all, repeat DO NOT go near the windows, just lie flat on the floor. The police are on their way, stay there and don’t move until I say so!”
The shots had stopped, and in the ringing silence all I could hear was Jamie crying, and Georgy crying and struggling, glaring at me because I was holding her close to me and not letting her go to him.
“No, don’t, he’s waiting to see movement, stay put, sweetheart! Jamie’s Ok, Bonzo’s got him, he’s safe where he is; please, wait, the police are on their way, don’t give him a target.”
Georgy suddenly stopped struggling, instead slumping against me, crying hysterically.
“Who’s doing this Will, what do they want? They tried to kill you, that bullet was aimed at you, they missed, but supposing he hadn’t? He’s trying to kill you Will, why, who is he, what have we ever done to deserve this?”
I held my mouth; I wished to God I knew.
The sound of sirens, police two-tones came from the distance, lots of sirens, and then they were louder, and blue flashing lights were reflecting off the walls as the police vehicles pulled up outside the house.
“Hello the house, this is the police!” and a rapid tattoo of knocking at the door let us know the police were at the door. Bonzo opened the door, and a squad of the West Midlands Police Armed Response Unit, in their distinctive black body armour and NOMEX overalls, and black MICH2000 tactical helmets, with SIG SG551 folding-stock carbines dived into the room and took up station either side of the windows.
“Injuries?” enquired the sergeant in charge of the squad.
“None here,” replied Bonzo, “two children and two adults on the upper floor, check them out…”
A pair of armed officers peeled off and took the stairs two at a time, calling out as they ran upstairs. Jamie ran crying into the room and jumped into Georgy’s arms before Bonzo could stop him, and then suddenly Edie and Jerry were there too and I could hold my children again, and that’s when the reaction set in. The police discreetly looked the other way while I fell apart, and then suddenly Aunt Kay was there to hug us all as I cradled my wife and children, and yes, there were tears; I’d suffered nightmares not knowing if my children were safe, horrific visions of them lying silent and motionless upstairs, harmed by that madman, running through my mind, and to know they were safe, and in my arms, I have no words.
Charlie came rushing into the room, eye-counted us all, and sagged in relief.
“Thank fuck, Will, all the way here I…” he choked, hunkering down to ruffle the kids’ hair and squeeze Georgy’s knee. Edie clambered out of my lap and hugged him, her Godfather and best friend, and the tears ran down his cheeks as he hugged her close. After a few longer, heartfelt hugs, and a kiss to the top of her head he handed her back to me and nodded silently at the door. I gave our daughter back to Georgy, who gathered her in, and followed Charlie out of the room. We walked in silence all the way to dad’s old study in the upper branch of the ‘E’ the house was built like, and that’s when he lost it.
“FUCKING BASTARD, FUCKER SHOT AT CHILDREN, HE’S GOING TO FUCKING DIE, I SWEAR!” He yelled, slamming his fist down on dad’s desk, “How fucking dare he, on my watch, he does this, first he attacks the children then he shoots at them, I’m going to fucking disembowel that cunt, how fucking dare he!”
I hugged him close as he shook with rage; Charlie was one of my oldest friends, the kids meant the world to him, he’d carried them when they were newborns and played with them all their lives, and someone had put them in mortal danger; he was incandescent with rage, but still not as furious as I was. Whoever was doing this was a dead man; Charlie was constrained by law to apprehend him and have him sent for trial; not me. The first chance I got, he was going to die, painfully. The bastard came after my children, they could have died! He was going to pay, whoever he was.
Charlie looked like a man with a serious problem.
“Will, this whole situation is going to blow up on us; if the press gets hold of this it will be bad, they’ll be yelling about terrorist incidents and ‘Radical Islamic terror groups’ and God knows what other fucking nonsense and making two and two into twenty-two and in the middle of it all this fucking madman is going to slip away until he’s ready to try again. If the Chief Constable and the Chief Superintendent are pressed too hard by the media, they’re going to turn to the Home Secretary, and he’ll be answering questions in Parliament and laying blame anywhere he can and it’s going to be a fucking media shit-show with you and the kids right in the middle of it. I can’t allow that, so we’ll do it this way: Bonzo and Jarhead are part of a specialist MoD group, SRG, security operatives who manage special projects for the military and certain branches of government; they were here too, they were under assault, which makes this their show.”
He shook his head resignedly.
“If you allow them to step in front of this, it becomes an SRG, and in all likelihood SIS-SAS, joint-operation, then it’s immediately covered by The Official Secrets Act. That means immediate and total media clampdown, no word of this gets out, and you get SRG and the SAS watching your backs and looking for whoever’s behind this. How does that lie with you?”
I had to stop dead and think about it; so many people here already knew what had gone down, how could Charlie suddenly make this to not have happened?
“What about us, Charlie, where do we all go? We can’t stay here, we can’t be put in police protective custody indefinitely, how do we get eyes off us?”
Charlie actually grinned, although it was more of a rictus.
“All my lot have, at one time or another, signed The Official Secrets Act, they know how to keep their mouths shut if they want to keep their jobs and stay out of court, and when I say court I’m talking about being debriefed by a bunch of faces at Spook-Central, not the county court or the Crown court, so I guarantee when they leave here they’ll forget what they saw, who was here, and what happened. They’re already aware of the presence of at least two SRG officers so they know there’s something else going on here. They won’t talk.”
Just then Jarhead knocked and walked in.
“Will, Charlie, we need to arrange for a rapid bug-out, we’ve got a couple of safe locations, unless you’ve got a better idea, Will; I don’t like the idea of hanging around here too much longer, we need to bail ASAP out before they brew us up again.”
“Let me get Georgy and the kids sorted and we’ll get our stuff together, give us thirty minutes and we’ll be packed and ready, I know where we’re going…”
Part 2: Withdraw and Regroup
Leaving the house had been a bit of a wrench but we had no real choice, and we managed it okay without too many frayed tempers or teary outbursts. Luckily we’d retrieved the children’s car-seats from the wrecked B-Max, they went into one of the nondescript estate Toyota Land Cruisers parked in the rear garage, and a bunch of suitcases and flight-bags stuffed with clothes, favourite toys, laptops and tablets went in the other one. Megan and Aunt Kay were both coming with us; after the way she’d defended the kids there was no way on God’s earth I was cutting Megan loose to fend for herself, plus the kids loved her and she wouldn’t be parted from them anyway.
Jarhead arranged to have an SRG-bonded contractor in to repair the damage to the house and provide 24/7 security while the house was empty, and his boss would very shortly be having a little chat with the school and the local education authority about the kids’ absence and impressing upon them how it never happened, that issues of national security were at stake, and just how dim a view those higher up would take of any discussion of it by anybody at all. With that we set off, I drove the car with the kids, with Georgy riding shotgun, and Jarhead drove the other Land Cruiser with Aunt Kay and Megan for company. Bonzo was going to follow about ten minutes behind us in Georgy’s battered but reliable old Land Rover Defender, keeping his distance and watching our back-trail.
Our destination was one of the properties I’d inherited from my father’s estate, a pretty, 6-bedroomed cottage (actually, two cottages knocked together into one) in a secluded valley in The Peak District. Georgy and I had vacationed there as a sort of short honeymoon just before Jamie was born, and she’d always wanted to come back and spend more time there; I just don’t think our current trip and the reasons behind it were quite what she had in mind back then!