Cyberstrike by James Barrington (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

said. ‘And before you ask your next obvious question, I’m here because I’m a part of C-TAC. You have heard of that, I hope.’

The desk sergeant looked only very slightly less puzzled. And no friendlier or more welcoming.

‘I’ve heard the acronym, yes, because C-TAC is on our Tier One contact list in case of a terrorist incident, along with a bunch of other initials of various secret squirrel outfits dotted about the capital and elsewhere. But I have no clue who you are, apart from your name. I still have no idea what C-TAC stands for, or what you’re doing here. As far as I can see, we’ve arrested an alleged terrorist buggering about on the Thames, which makes this a police matter until somebody in my command structure tells me differently.’

‘Right. C-TAC is the Counter-Terrorism Advisory Committee, and the reason we’re on your Tier One notification list is because terrorism, or rather stopping it, is our job. And from my point of view this is still a police matter and I’m not here to interfere with what you’re doing. What I am here for is to get answers to a few urgent questions, so I’ll need to talk to the skipper of the launch that stopped these comedians and maybe the other crew members of the boat as well.’

The sergeant looked doubtful.

‘He’s pretty busy right now answering questions from some of our brass.’

‘Here’s a news flash,’ North said, leaning forward slightly to emphasise his words. ‘Oddly enough, I’m pretty busy as well, and I’m not going to hang around here like a spare prick at a wedding. I need to speak to this guy right now, and if you don’t want to be on the receiving end of an extremely high-level and potentially career-terminating bollocking I suggest you talk to whoever you need to call and make sure that happens. I’ll give you three minutes. And I like my coffee white with one sugar.’

It took four minutes, not that North was actually counting.

When he walked into the interview room, escorted by a somewhat nervous-looking constable, he found another man wearing sergeants’ stripes standing behind the table, clearly waiting for him.

‘I’m Paul Carter,’ the sergeant said, extending his right hand. ‘I was the skipper of the Targa.’

North shook hands and introduced himself, but before he had even sat down there was a knock at the door and another uniformed constable appeared carrying a tray on which were two disposable cardboard cups, both steaming, a couple of plastic spoons and a selection of individual milk cartons and packets of sugar.

‘Take your life in your hands drinking this stuff,’ Carter said, picking up one of the cups of coffee.

North nodded, peered doubtfully at the contents of his cup, and added sugar and a couple of cartons of milk to try and tone it down a bit and help disguise the taste.

‘I’m military,’ he replied. ‘We’re used to hot brown stuff in cups. Sometimes it’s so bloody awful you can’t tell whether it’s coffee, tea or soup. Now, tell me what happened on the river.’

Carter took him through the events of the afternoon, from spotting the apparently overloaded cabin cruiser to capturing and securing the surviving terrorist.

‘And you’ve no doubt that the boat was filled with explosive?’ North asked. ‘And that their target was the Palace of Westminster?’

Carter nodded. ‘The man driving it steered it directly across the river from the east bank towards the Houses of Parliament. That was very clearly a deliberate act and as far as I could see at the time there could only be one reason for him doing so. And after we’d rammed the cabin cruiser I saw him lean forward into the entrance to the saloon and flick a wall-mounted switch that didn’t look to me like it was part of the boat’s original wiring. And then I heard the crack as the blasting cap or whatever it was detonated. So the short answer is I’m certain it was a floating bomb and that the target was Parliament. And we were bloody lucky it didn’t go off. If it had, you’d have needed to find a fucking good medium to be having this conversation.’

North nodded in his turn. ‘I can’t pick holes in any of that. Where’s the surviving terrorist right now?’

‘As far as I know he’s still here. A couple of guys wearing sharp suits and not saying a lot turned up a few minutes before you did and they’ve been having a few quiet words with chummy ever since. I assume they’re from Millbank.’

‘The men with the sharpest suits usually seem to me to be from Six rather than Five, but you’re probably right. Okay. No doubt my section will get fed whatever intelligence they managed to extract from him.’

‘He might well clam up,’ Carter pointed out. ‘I gather he asked for a solicitor as soon as he arrived here and he said nothing while he was on my launch.’

‘One thing he won’t be getting is a solicitor,’ North replied. ‘There are rules governing how suspects are handled, but for suspected terrorists we tend to be flexible, shall I say, and some rules might well get bent or possibly even broken along the way. Right, I’ll get out of your hair. And well done for what you did on the river. I’ll feed a note about your and your crew’s conduct up the line and make sure that the right people hear the right things about you.’

North was on his way back down the corridor towards the front desk when he was aware of a sudden commotion behind him.

A door slammed open and a man who from his appearance was one of the ‘sharp suited’ guys Carter had mentioned stepped into the corridor and shouted a single word: ‘Medic!’

Like many of the soldiers who ended up in the Special Air Service, North had qualified in field medicine. He wasn’t exactly in any kind of a field at that moment, but a medical emergency was