Ultimatum by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online Page B

over there.’
    Tina got to her feet, feeling relieved and disappointed at the same time. She was glad to be in the thick of things again, but sad that her relationship with Bolt had become so distant. Theirs had always been a complicated one, yet he’d always stood by her when things had been tough. She owed him a lot more than he owed her, and it was a debt she knew she’d never be able to repay.
    ‘One thing before I go,’ she said. ‘A lot of people died in the Stanhope incident, and the inquiry to find out who’s behind it has got to be pretty major. So, why does this place feel so empty?’
    ‘We’re a small team. Manpower’s a problem these days. With all the cuts going on, and the resources they’ve pumped into the phone-hacking scandal, the Met’s running extremely low on detectives.’ He shrugged, seeing her expression. ‘I know, I don’t like it either, but that’s just the way it is. Also, up until about an hour ago, we’ve effectively been working on a hunch. We’ve always believed there was UK involvement, but there’s never been any proof. And there’s another reason too. The smaller the team, the less chance there is of a leak to the bad guys. The fact that a senior CTC man like John Cheney was working for the terrorists scared a lot of people. That’s why I’ve agreed to work with you, Tina. You’re a hell of a lot of things, and not all of them good, but one thing’s for certain: you’re definitely not corrupt.’
    Tina smiled. ‘I’m flattered.’
    They looked at each other, and something – a flash of their old friendship – passed between them.
    ‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said. ‘Considering what you’ve already been through this morning, you look great.’
    ‘It’s good to be back,’ she said. And she meant it.

Ten
    09.50
    THERE ARE NO noble causes.
    They tell you there are, but they’re lying. When they sent me to Iraq they said we’d be liberating a downtrodden people from the shackles of a brutal dictatorship, but all we did was destabilize the whole region and start a civil war that’s still rumbling on today, losing a lot of good people in the process. And in Afghanistan they said we’d be in the forefront of the fight against global terrorism, and helping to keep the streets of Britain safe for present and future generations.
    Bullshit.
    The streets are no safer because we went there. In fact, they’re probably a lot less safe. The world’s Muslim extremists – the kind we were supposed to be defeating – can come and go inside Britain as they please, safe in the knowledge that, thanks to the Human Rights Act and the parasitic lawyers who uphold it, they can’t be deported. And they hate us even more because of what we’re doing in Muslim countries. We’re international aggressors and domestic appeasers, which seems to me to be the worst kind of combination there is.
    And the politicians who sent us to those Godforsaken countries are sitting pretty at home, eating their vol-au-vents, fucking their secretaries, and fiddling their expenses, while harping on about freedom and sacrifice and all that shit, even though it’s not them who’ve lost limbs in IED attacks, or seen their best mate’s brains splattered all over some dusty rock thanks to a sniper’s bullet.
    I did two tours of Afghanistan and we didn’t change a damn thing. Not a jot. The moment western forces leave, the Taliban will be all over the country like a rash. And you know why? Because they don’t want our democracy. Most of them don’t even have a clue what it is, and the few who do think it contradicts God’s law anyway, so won’t have anything to do with it. Democracy to them just means corruption – and one look at the western-backed government in Kabul and you can see they’ve got a point. So the whole thing will have been a complete waste of time, money and, most of all, the blood of far too many good men.
    We changed cars less than a mile from the scene of the