CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,107
from his hand. ‘McEwen here,’ he shouted. ‘Now listen here, you candy-arsed penguin-poking bottom-bandit. I haven’t eaten, slept or shat. I’m sitting here in a car that’s as hot as hell, and you’re telling me that my relief has gone to check into a bastard hotel! What the hell else are they gonna do before they make it up here? Sit down for a cheese ploughman’s? Play nine holes at the seafront pitch-and-putt?’
As a Chief Inspector, Ross Johnson wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, especially by a twenty-two-year old like McEwen.
‘Now you listen here, young man,’ Johnson roared.
‘Don’t you young man me, you goat’s dangler,’ McEwen bellowed, as Neil shrivelled into his seat with embarrassment. ‘When you work with CHERUB you do what we say. And I’m saying get your people to stop whatever they’re doing and drive here and relieve my arse now … Who goes and checks into their hotel when the surveillance team hasn’t eaten for eighteen hours?’
McEwen threw the phone at Neil so hard that it bounced off his lap and hit the door, making the battery compartment fly off.
‘Glad to get that off your chest?’ Neil inquired.
‘No offence,’ McEwen said. ‘But I spend a lot of my time working with the police and the great majority of them are dipshits.’
Neil sighed. ‘Ross isn’t a bad guy. We just don’t have the budget or manpower that we really need.’
McEwen got out to stretch his legs as Neil reassembled his mobile. Standing up gave McEwen a better view and he couldn’t believe what he saw.
‘Binoculars,’ McEwen yelled, as he leaned into the car.
The magnified view confirmed that there was a police van parked by the trees on the far side of the shed, plus two armed officers taking up positions behind a hedge.
‘What are they doing here?’ McEwen shouted into the car desperately. ‘They’ll blow our whole operation.’
McEwen grabbed his security services ID from a jacket thrown over the back seat and started running flat out across the field. By the time he’d reached the front of the shed there were six uniformed officers coming towards him and a megaphone blaring out.
‘This is the police, stand still and raise your hands.’
‘Go swivel,’ McEwen shouted as he carried on steaming towards a sergeant.
A warning shot fired out of the bushes, hitting the grass about five metres behind McEwen. They were in the middle of nowhere and even if the locals hadn’t seen the police driving up to the fields, half the neighbourhood would have heard the gunshot.
‘Do not move,’ the megaphone blared. ‘Drop to your knees and place your hands on your head.’
McEwen swore as he dropped to his knees and the cops surrounded him. The senior officer was a burly sergeant all done up in riot gear. He directed four men towards the shed before pulling his baton and glowering at McEwen.
‘Think you need all that gear to storm a wooden barn?’ McEwen asked sarcastically, as he waved his ID. ‘I’m intelligence service. That barn is under surveillance and you just blew a major operation.’
The sergeant snatched McEwen’s ID and stared at it sceptically. He wasn’t the first policeman who didn’t recognise a security service identity card when he saw one.
‘Where’d you get this, sonny? Did you buy it in the pub, or laminate it yourself?’
The sergeant laughed as his colleagues used a battering ram to smash the door off the barn.
‘You’re gonna be in the shit when my people hear about this,’ McEwen shouted.
‘Cuff that, and stick him in a van,’ the sergeant told a female colleague as he swaggered uphill towards the barn. But by this time Neil Gauche had arrived, waving a more recognisable metal police badge.
‘He’s with me. Sergeant Neil Gauche, National Police Biker Task Force. What’s happening here?’
A cop shouted out from the barn. ‘We’ve got the guns, sarge. Whole van is packed with ’em.’
The sergeant looked at Neil and shook his head. ‘I don’t know who you are or what’s going on here. All I know is that this got called in by the Chief Constable for Devon. So if you want to know why we’re here, you’d better ask him.’
Neil pointed at McEwen. ‘He’s with me, can you let him up?’
‘I suppose,’ the sergeant said, and gave McEwen back his card. ‘Intelligence service, eh? You don’t exactly look like James Bond, do you? Or even very intelligent for that matter.’
The sergeant laughed at his own joke, but stopped abruptly as McEwen grabbed his riot clothing and nutted him.