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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Crime
- Published: 10/18/2013
Guerrilla Gardener
Born 1964, M, from Staffordshire, United Kingdom1507 hours:
‘Have I mentioned this is boring?’ Tee asked.
‘Not more than a hundred times in the last…’ I checked my watch, ‘two hours.’
‘I thought it’d be interesting, being on a stakeout.’
‘Stakeout,’ I snorted.
‘It IS a stakeout,’ she protested.
‘This isn’t the Sweeney,’ Tee didn’t know what I was talking about. It was made well before her time.
Tee – better known to her parents as Tegan Davies is almost nineteen. She came to Provost Guard from the FE college in Stafford where she was on the Uniform Services course.
Silence reigned inside our Ford Mondeo. I leant across to the glove box
‘Who plays CDs now?’
‘I do,’ the tense throbbing of bass guitar introduced the Temptations Papa Was A Rolling Stone. ‘Before you complain about my taste in music Lance Corporal it’s this or Radio 4.’
Once upon a time this would’ve been done by the army. The real army, not this Mickey Mouse outfit. Privatization gets everywhere.
Welcome to the world of the Provost Guard. We’re a not-for-profit security company run by the Legion of Frontiersmen.
How the hell do I explain them?
The Legion is an odd paramilitary organization with its roots firmly set in another era - some might say on another planet. Set up more than a hundred years ago much in the same vein as the Scouting movement... but for grown-ups.
Now it provides cut-price security for MoD properties via Provost Guard Services, and provides employment for down on their luck ex-squaddies.
Like me.
At places like this.
Mid-Staffordshire Training Area, half-way between Stafford and Stoke. It can cope with a battalion - 800 squaddies at any given time. It has a company strength permanent garrison, just over a hundred. Oh, and wives and families, tucked away in a cul-de-sac of semi-detached houses over the road from the main gate.
And we’re supposed to stop drunken squaddies from wrecking the NAAFI bar, or prevent al Qaeda getting onto camp and running amok.
1517 hours:
‘Think about the Trog,’ Corporal Alistair Trogmorton was in an Observation Post a kilometre away. ‘He’s spent a couple of days lying in a basha, watching six plants through binoculars.’
‘What’re the odds that he hasn’t nipped down to do a close target recce?’ Tee asks, ‘maybe get a sample for personal use.’
‘He’s fool if he has,’ I snort, ‘the RMP will run a piss test as soon as we’ve wrapped this up, mark my words.’ It always happens, any hint of drugs and the Royal Military Police runs a drugs screening test.
‘Charlie three Alpha, the tango’s finished his gardening and is on his way.’ Trog’s voice cuts through the static.
I reach for my walkie-talkie, ‘Charlie three Bravo receiving, out.’
We spend five minutes waiting with baited breath. Then he arrives, Asian – as in oriental, he two looks a hundred years old. Dressed in a boiler suit with high-viz vests. He carries tools and stuffed big bin bags.
‘Looks like harvest time,’ I mutter.
‘Yep,’ Tee has a digital SLR camera to her face, she’s snapping off pictures.
He walks to a small van parked a hundred metres up the lane from us. As he loads I get the make and reg number in my notebook.
The van pulls away, I start up and follow. I hope Tee isn’t expecting a car chase; she’ll be disappointed.
0154 hours:
Captain David Handley-Jones is tall, slim and elegant. He has blond hair, a little longer than regulation, in a centre parting. He’s got a good brain, and a family rich enough to prevent him having to use it to earn a living.
‘Staffordshire police are letting us observe as a privilege,’ He explains slowly, wanting to make sure that somebody with my lack of rank and intellect understands.
‘Since we did all the legwork leading up to a very simple arrest for them it’s the least they can do,’ I remind him.
‘Nevertheless, we are to observe only.’
We are in a windowless room, a stationary cupboard in an earlier life I suspect, at the back of Stafford police station.
On a CCTV screen I can see a room, the floor and lower-walls are covered with pale blue carpet tiles. There’s a small table with the inevitable cassette recorder. Four people are clustered around it: our tango, Ngo Van Vien, Constable Wendy Kennedy, a young Oriental woman - the translator, and a narrow annoyed-looking middle-aged man who’s the duty solicitor.
‘We have photos of you with the plants,’ PC Kennedy has a Scottish accent, ‘we have…’
Vien whispers something to the translator who speaks for him.
‘He did not know what they were,’ she says, ‘he wanted to take cuttings and identify them at home.’
‘Aye? And for that he needed to take three bin bags did he?’ Kennedy wasn’t buying it. ‘And why was he on Ministry of Defence land?’
Vien and the translator repeat their whispering routine.
‘He did not know it was government land.’
‘Bollocks!’ I hiss, ‘he knew where he was and did a bloody good job of hiding the plants. The only way we found ‘em was when those cadets got lost and we had to send out search parties.’
‘Sarge, Captain,’ Tee burst into the room, excited about something. ‘The plod …’
‘Do you mean Staffordshire Police?’ Dave asked.
‘Yeah, they let me use their system to do an ID check on yer man,’ she nods at the screen. ‘Seems the yanks want him – for war crimes.’
‘What?’ Handley-Jones spits out. ‘War crimes?’
‘Yes sir,’ she grins from ear-to-ear, ‘it seems they think he was responsible for torturing one of their pilots to death during the Vietnam War.’
‘Congratulations sergeant, it seems you’ve done something that the US military couldn’t,’ Handley-Jones stands and puts his red beret on, ‘you’ve captured a member of the Viet Cong.’
Guerrilla Gardener(Steve Rowney)
1507 hours:
‘Have I mentioned this is boring?’ Tee asked.
‘Not more than a hundred times in the last…’ I checked my watch, ‘two hours.’
‘I thought it’d be interesting, being on a stakeout.’
‘Stakeout,’ I snorted.
‘It IS a stakeout,’ she protested.
‘This isn’t the Sweeney,’ Tee didn’t know what I was talking about. It was made well before her time.
Tee – better known to her parents as Tegan Davies is almost nineteen. She came to Provost Guard from the FE college in Stafford where she was on the Uniform Services course.
Silence reigned inside our Ford Mondeo. I leant across to the glove box
‘Who plays CDs now?’
‘I do,’ the tense throbbing of bass guitar introduced the Temptations Papa Was A Rolling Stone. ‘Before you complain about my taste in music Lance Corporal it’s this or Radio 4.’
Once upon a time this would’ve been done by the army. The real army, not this Mickey Mouse outfit. Privatization gets everywhere.
Welcome to the world of the Provost Guard. We’re a not-for-profit security company run by the Legion of Frontiersmen.
How the hell do I explain them?
The Legion is an odd paramilitary organization with its roots firmly set in another era - some might say on another planet. Set up more than a hundred years ago much in the same vein as the Scouting movement... but for grown-ups.
Now it provides cut-price security for MoD properties via Provost Guard Services, and provides employment for down on their luck ex-squaddies.
Like me.
At places like this.
Mid-Staffordshire Training Area, half-way between Stafford and Stoke. It can cope with a battalion - 800 squaddies at any given time. It has a company strength permanent garrison, just over a hundred. Oh, and wives and families, tucked away in a cul-de-sac of semi-detached houses over the road from the main gate.
And we’re supposed to stop drunken squaddies from wrecking the NAAFI bar, or prevent al Qaeda getting onto camp and running amok.
1517 hours:
‘Think about the Trog,’ Corporal Alistair Trogmorton was in an Observation Post a kilometre away. ‘He’s spent a couple of days lying in a basha, watching six plants through binoculars.’
‘What’re the odds that he hasn’t nipped down to do a close target recce?’ Tee asks, ‘maybe get a sample for personal use.’
‘He’s fool if he has,’ I snort, ‘the RMP will run a piss test as soon as we’ve wrapped this up, mark my words.’ It always happens, any hint of drugs and the Royal Military Police runs a drugs screening test.
‘Charlie three Alpha, the tango’s finished his gardening and is on his way.’ Trog’s voice cuts through the static.
I reach for my walkie-talkie, ‘Charlie three Bravo receiving, out.’
We spend five minutes waiting with baited breath. Then he arrives, Asian – as in oriental, he two looks a hundred years old. Dressed in a boiler suit with high-viz vests. He carries tools and stuffed big bin bags.
‘Looks like harvest time,’ I mutter.
‘Yep,’ Tee has a digital SLR camera to her face, she’s snapping off pictures.
He walks to a small van parked a hundred metres up the lane from us. As he loads I get the make and reg number in my notebook.
The van pulls away, I start up and follow. I hope Tee isn’t expecting a car chase; she’ll be disappointed.
0154 hours:
Captain David Handley-Jones is tall, slim and elegant. He has blond hair, a little longer than regulation, in a centre parting. He’s got a good brain, and a family rich enough to prevent him having to use it to earn a living.
‘Staffordshire police are letting us observe as a privilege,’ He explains slowly, wanting to make sure that somebody with my lack of rank and intellect understands.
‘Since we did all the legwork leading up to a very simple arrest for them it’s the least they can do,’ I remind him.
‘Nevertheless, we are to observe only.’
We are in a windowless room, a stationary cupboard in an earlier life I suspect, at the back of Stafford police station.
On a CCTV screen I can see a room, the floor and lower-walls are covered with pale blue carpet tiles. There’s a small table with the inevitable cassette recorder. Four people are clustered around it: our tango, Ngo Van Vien, Constable Wendy Kennedy, a young Oriental woman - the translator, and a narrow annoyed-looking middle-aged man who’s the duty solicitor.
‘We have photos of you with the plants,’ PC Kennedy has a Scottish accent, ‘we have…’
Vien whispers something to the translator who speaks for him.
‘He did not know what they were,’ she says, ‘he wanted to take cuttings and identify them at home.’
‘Aye? And for that he needed to take three bin bags did he?’ Kennedy wasn’t buying it. ‘And why was he on Ministry of Defence land?’
Vien and the translator repeat their whispering routine.
‘He did not know it was government land.’
‘Bollocks!’ I hiss, ‘he knew where he was and did a bloody good job of hiding the plants. The only way we found ‘em was when those cadets got lost and we had to send out search parties.’
‘Sarge, Captain,’ Tee burst into the room, excited about something. ‘The plod …’
‘Do you mean Staffordshire Police?’ Dave asked.
‘Yeah, they let me use their system to do an ID check on yer man,’ she nods at the screen. ‘Seems the yanks want him – for war crimes.’
‘What?’ Handley-Jones spits out. ‘War crimes?’
‘Yes sir,’ she grins from ear-to-ear, ‘it seems they think he was responsible for torturing one of their pilots to death during the Vietnam War.’
‘Congratulations sergeant, it seems you’ve done something that the US military couldn’t,’ Handley-Jones stands and puts his red beret on, ‘you’ve captured a member of the Viet Cong.’
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