‘Why can’t you do it?’ Dirty Dave added.
Kam spoke furiously. ‘Because I don’t speak bloody Chinese. I grew up in Exeter, you understand? And my bloody mother was from the Philippines, not China.’
Kerry took a half step back as Dirty Dave’s hand reached her bum. He jerked her back and made like he was about to kiss her. Fortunately the Führer stepped in before she had to push him away.
‘Hands off, Dave,’ the Führer warned. ‘You’ve got enough pussy. We need this one for the meeting upstairs.’
Dirty Dave was put out by the rebuke. He couldn’t take it out on the Führer, so he strode briskly across the floor and slugged Kam in the stomach.
‘Nice shot!’ Rhino laughed, as Kam doubled up in pain.
‘Where’s our money?’ the Führer demanded. ‘Little yellow bastard. I bet you’ve got a hundred grand under the bed, ain’t you?’
‘I’ll pay as soon as I can,’ Kam gasped.
‘You see this boy here, Mr Kam?’ the Führer shouted, pointing at James.
Kam nodded as he straightened up. James had no idea why the Führer was pointing at him.
‘James is my up-and-comer,’ the Führer explained, as he eyeballed Kam. ‘He’s young, but he’s hard as nails and I’m putting him on your case. He’ll be coming round here regular to collect your payments. If you don’t pay, expect pain.’
‘Why don’t you leave him alone?’ Alison shouted as the Führer shoved her husband towards James.
‘Show our man what you can do,’ the Führer told James.
Two factors had enabled James to infiltrate the Führer’s inner circle over the previous months: his advanced combat skills made him the ideal person to have on your side during a war between biker gangs, while his youth made the Führer think he was too young to be an undercover cop.
James had no problem when it came to thumping a member of another biker gang, but a hard-working civilian like Kam was entirely different.
‘What shall I do?’ James said awkwardly.
‘Mess him up,’ Dirty Dave urged. ‘Your choice. Smash his fingers or something.’
James had to think fast. Most young bikers would do anything to impress the Führer. He didn’t want to hurt Kam badly, but he couldn’t back off without destroying his credibility.
‘Can’t break his fingers, can I?’ James said casually, trying to buy time. ‘Chef can’t earn money with a broken hand.’
The solution came to James in a flash. He grabbed Kam around the back of the neck and gripped his right arm. Kam was stocky and almost as strong as James, but with no combat experience Kam had no idea how to defend himself as James expertly wrenched his arm behind his back.
From this position the easiest thing would have been for James to snap the arm, but instead he gripped Kam’s bicep and violently twisted his upper arm, causing a crunching sound as his shoulder joint dislocated.
James had suffered this injury during combat training a couple of years earlier. A dislocated shoulder looked dramatic and was extremely painful, but was much less serious than a broken bone. A doctor could relocate Kam’s joint. He’d be stiff for a few days, but fully recovered within a week.
Not that Kam appreciated James’ consideration as he crumpled to the floor.
Alison charged towards James and screamed, as Rhino, Dirty Dave and the Führer laughed appreciatively. James didn’t want to hurt Alison, so he intercepted her painted nails as she tried to claw his cheek and gave her a shove. She stumbled backwards into a table, tipping it up and sending condiments and a serviette dispenser crashing to the floor.
As Kerry rushed over to calm Alison down, James put on a show of menace, spitting on the floor in front of Kam’s face and pounding his fist into his palm.
‘I’d stay down if I was you,’ James warned. ‘And next time I see you, you’d better have our money or I’ll be sticking your hand in the deep fryer.’
2. STRIFE
Kam sat on an upturned bucket in the Surf Club kitchen. He held a pack of ice cubes against his injured shoulder, while tears streamed out of his eyes. Dirty Dave was outside by the bar, while the other Brigands had gone upstairs.
‘It’s just dislocated,’ Kerry whispered in Kam’s ear. ‘After the Brigands meeting we’ll take you straight to hospital.’
Alison didn’t like having Brigands in her restaurant, and was no fan of the attractive sixteen-year-old fussing over her husband either.
‘What do you know about his arm?’ Alison asked Kerry furiously. ‘You don’t look like any doctor I’ve ever met.’
Kerry quelled a mix of nerves and anger. ‘I know first aid,’ she said soothingly. ‘I’m not an expert, but I think it’s a dislocated shoulder.’
Alison turned towards her husband and pointed an accusing finger at Kerry. ‘Where do you know her from, anyway?’
‘You’ll understand when this is over,’ Kam said, as he winced with pain. ‘Stay calm and trust me.’
‘Trust you?’ Alison hissed. ‘You’ve been shaken down and beaten up. You’re in debt to the Brigands and now those lunatics are holding meetings upstairs in our restaurant. How can you expect me to stay calm? I told you to go to the police months ago.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Kerry warned, as she pointed up at the ceiling. ‘If they hear you making threats about the police they’ll kill us.’
‘Trust me, Alison,’ Kam repeated firmly. ‘On our daughters’ lives, if this goes wrong I’ll divorce you. You can have everything.’
‘That’s a bloody laugh,’ Alison snorted. ‘What do I get? The mortgage on the house? The debts on the restaurant? You’re so stupid I can’t even look at you.’
Alison stormed out of the kitchen into the dining area. Dirty Dave stood at the small bar, where he’d been helping himself to Wild Turkey.
‘Looking nice,’ Dave said, as he raised a shot glass. ‘Sexy in that blue dress.’
Alison turned her nose up and gave Dave the finger before crashing at a table and burying her head.
‘Must be on your period,’ Dave sneered, then laughed at his own joke.
Back in the kitchen, Kerry looked accusingly at Kam.
‘You should have told your wife what’s going on,’ she whispered.
Kam sighed. ‘Alison wasn’t supposed to be working today, but my waitress called in sick.’
‘We’ve got to keep Alison calm,’ Kerry said.
‘I can’t believe what that punk James did to my arm,’ Kam groaned. ‘I hope they lock the little prick up for a long time.’
Kerry smiled inwardly. Kam had agreed to cooperate with the police to stop the Brigands extorting money from his business. He’d been told that Kerry was a young looking nineteen-year-old police cadet, rather than a sixteen-year-old CHERUB agent, but he had no clue that James was also working undercover, or that it had been James’ idea to set up a sting operation inside his restaurant.
Outside, two Chinese men stepped out of a big Lexus. The older of the two moved slowly towards the Surf Club entrance, in a stooped posture. As he rapped on the frosted glass above a sign that read restaurant closed due to electrical fault, his son opened the trunk of the limousine and lifted out two Louis Vuitton bags.
‘Mr Xu,’ the Führer said warmly, as he opened the door and shook the old man’s hand. ‘Come on upstairs. Traffic not too rough, I hope.’
Mr Xu barely spoke English and made no sound, except a sigh when he saw the two flights of stairs.
Xu’s son Liam was completely different. He was in his mid-forties and looked like some kind of movie villain, with his tailored suit, dark glasses and a diamond-crusted Breitling chronograph on his wrist.
‘How’s tricks?’ Liam said as he put down his designer luggage.
The Führer had met Liam several times, but Liam’s English skills didn’t stretch beyond greetings and restaurant menus. As a substitute for words, the pair did a manly dance of back slapping, grins and laughter.
Kerry approached them and stood forma
lly, feet together with her hands held neatly behind her back. ‘I’m here to assist with any language difficulties,’ she explained, before bowing slightly and repeating the phrase in fluent Mandarin.
As Kerry walked up behind Liam and the Führer, James came down from the top of the wooden stairs and offered an arm to a grateful Mr Xu. The Surf Club didn’t do much business outside of summer season, so the top floor was closed for winter. The L-shaped dining-room had a desolate atmosphere, with chinks of light creeping around the edges of shuttered windows, plastic sheeting over the bar and chairs stacked on table tops.
Rhino sat in the centre of the room next to two tables pushed together. On top were five automatic weapons, clips and boxes of ammunition. The rest of the tables had been pushed back against the walls, creating a clear path to a metal target box at the end of the room.
Liam charged towards the guns, as James helped his frail father settle into a dining chair.
‘State of the art,’ Liam stated excitably, as Rhino offered him white gloves so that he didn’t leave fingerprints.
‘You’ve got a good eye,’ Rhino complimented, watching Liam pick a small machine gun off the table. Kerry hurried to translate. ‘That’s the MP7 you asked for. Retractable stock and multiple sights, so you can use it three ways: assault rifle, machine gun, or even out in your hands as a pistol. The four-point-six-mil’ round is small, but it’s good up to fifty metres. It’ll slip under the jacket of a big fellow like you, but packs enough punch to cut through thirty layers of Kevlar and kill a room filled with anyone you don’t like the look of.’
‘Beautiful,’ Liam said admiringly. ‘I know plenty of people who’ll sell me a gun, but only you guys bring in this kind of fancy kit.’
‘Nobody else has our contacts,’ Rhino boasted. ‘The Brigands over in the States were stealing weapons almost before they first mounted their Harleys. Most gun dealers have one connection. We have dozens, and we’ve been dealing with most of them for years.’
Liam turned the gun in his hand. ‘What about the special ammunition? Can you get hold of it?’
The Führer took over Rhino’s sales pitch. ‘Would I sell you a gun you couldn’t shoot?’ he smiled. ‘These are used by the German army. Now I’m not saying you can get bullets as easy as a standard nine-millimetre, but anything the German army uses can be had one way or another.’
‘And we’ll supply each gun with a thousand rounds,’ Rhino added. ‘Just to get you rolling.’
As Liam exuberantly pointed the machine gun towards the target and wished for a mirror so that he could see himself posing, Mr Xu leaned towards Kerry and whispered in her ear.
‘Mr Xu asks about your recent difficulties with the police,’ Kerry said stiltedly. ‘He’s interested to know how you continue to do business after all the arrests, and if it’s safe for us to do so.’
‘Parking tickets,’ the Führer answered airily. ‘I’ve been in this game for thirty-odd years. Bought, sold, ducked, dodged and I’m still here. I’ve seen people come and go, but the only trouble I’ve ever had is parking on a yellow line and doing fifty-five in a forty-mile-an-hour zone. And believe me, prison is a young man’s game. I’ve got no intention of getting locked up at my time of life.’
The Führer sounded confident, but James knew it was a lie. Before the war with the Vengeful Bastards and the arrest of half his men, the Führer kept his weapons dealing at arm’s length. Standing in a room with guns on the table, speaking to two men holding bags of cash was the kind of business he would have passed on to a subordinate. But gang wars aren’t cheap and the Führer had to take risks.
‘So we’re all happy?’ Rhino asked, as he slid an ammunition clip across the tabletop. ‘Target box is set up if he wants to try shooting. The kid picked this place ‘cos there’s no neighbours within half a mile.’
Liam reached eagerly for the clip, but his father disapproved of his son’s posturing with the weapon. The old man spoke brusquely in Mandarin and Kerry translated.
‘Mr Xu says that the weapons are excellent. He wishes to conclude business quickly and return to London. He trusts that the rest of the stock will be up to standard, and asks you to begin inspecting the money quickly to ensure that you’re fully satisfied.’
Rhino leant towards one of the Louis Vuitton bags and unzipped it, but the Führer swatted him back.
‘It’s on trust,’ the Führer said.
‘Of course,’ Liam smiled.
While working with the Führer, James had learnt that the level of trust between criminals became greater the higher up you went. The chances of street dealers ripping one another off in a small drug deal were high. But a half-million-pound weapons deal between the Führer and the Chinese crime syndicate for which the Xus worked went through on mutual trust, because the consequences of any dispute would be devastating for both sides.
‘Here’s a key, and a map showing the lock-up where the rest is being stored,’ the Führer explained, as he handed Liam a padded envelope. ‘Will you be wanting your luggage back?’
Mr Xu smiled as the Führer shook his hand.
‘They’re excellent fakes, a lucrative business of ours,’ Kerry translated. ‘Mr Xu says that your wife might like them, and that they’re indistinguishable from the real thing.’
‘Most kind,’ the Führer smiled, as Kerry helped Mr Xu back to his feet.
James’ heart accelerated as he saw the Xus heading for the top of the stairs. Everything was going to plan, but he was still edgy. The police had fitted the Surf Club with hidden cameras and microphones. They’d have the whole deal on tape, and the Fuhrer’s boast that he’d been dealing in guns for more than thirty years couldn’t have been more perfect.
But now came the dodgy part. The police didn’t want anyone to have a chance to destroy evidence or grab a weapon. They planned an overwhelming assault, moving in quickly with armed officers, arresting everyone in the meeting and grabbing the cash and the envelope with the location of the weapons.
None of the officers hiding outside knew that James was working undercover, so he could expect rough treatment. And with guns and ammunition lying around, the situation could turn into a shoot-out if the cops slipped up.
3. BLENDER
Kerry helped Mr Xu downstairs, with Liam and the Führer walking behind. The first sign of police was the clank of two aluminium ladders hitting the side of the building. Clad from head to toe in black, and sporting Kevlar helmets and sub machine guns, the firearms officers jumped on to the first-floor balcony and wrenched at wooden shutters covering the windows.
In theory, two shutters had been loosened in preparation for the raid, but it didn’t work out. As the officers battled with sheets of chipboard screwed to the window frames, Rhino snatched an MP7 from the table top and slammed in a twenty-round clip.
At the same moment, another pair of officers hit the swinging front doors on the ground floor.
A shout went through a megaphone outside. ‘This is the police, everybody down on the ground.’
‘Fuzz,’ the Führer shouted angrily, before acting with typical decisiveness.
He gave Mr Xu an almighty shove before doubling back up the stairs. Kerry held the old man’s arm and couldn’t free herself or get hold of the banister. She fell with Mr Xu, crashing helplessly down seven steps.
They would have hit the floor, but for the two firearms officers coming through the doors. One officer was supposed to aim her gun up at the men coming down the stairs, while her partner’s job was to charge into the kitchen and deal with Dirty Dave. Instead, Kerry and Mr Xu clattered into the two officers, knocking them into an alcove containing a long dead payphone.
The hitch with the shutters and the bodies falling down the stairs only delayed the firearms officers by seconds, but it was the difference between a decisive take-down and complete chaos.
James was horrified. He didn’t want to be near Rhino and the firearms officers when they started shooting and made a quick run before diving behind th
e upstairs bar. Daylight flooded the room as a shutter finally came loose.
Rhino hesitated with the MP7. Did he really want to take on two expert marksmen in full body armour? But there was no way he could drop the weapon before the officer started shooting at him.
So Rhino shot first. He was no marksman and he blew his twenty-round clip in two short bursts, hitting the floor, the ceiling and everything in between except for the police officer. The lucky officer kept his cool and took aim. Two shots punched through Rhino’s chest, killing him instantly.
From behind the bar, James had no idea what was happening. He expected to hear either Rhino, or the sound of the firearms officers stepping in through the balcony, but all he picked up was the sound of metal cartridges rolling over the floor where an ammo box had been knocked off the table.
‘I’m unarmed,’ James shouted, as he bobbed up with his hands in a surrender gesture.
He saw Rhino. The force of the bullet had knocked the biker backwards out of his chair. Blood was beginning to pool on his chest, while his jaw had locked in its final shocked expression.
There was no sign of the firearms officers and James knew why: unlike soldiers, police officers are trained for absolute caution. They wouldn’t enter any space without knowing exactly what they faced and had jumped down off the first-floor balcony at the first sign of confusion.
‘This is the police,’ a megaphone outside announced. ‘You are totally surrounded by armed officers.’
‘Screw you piggies,’ the Führer shouted, as he charged around the top of the staircase. He saw Rhino, but didn’t flinch. ‘Poor bastard. You OK, James?’
‘Had better days,’ James said warily.
The Führer kept low as he raced between the tables. He grabbed one of the MP7s and picked up a couple of ammunition clips before pulling a wodge of twenty-pound notes from one of the money bags.
‘What are you doing?’ James gasped. ‘Police marksmen are deadly. They’ll shoot you.’
Not that James minded the prospect of the Führer getting shot; he just didn’t fancy being caught in the crossfire.