Mad Dog No More Heroes Ch 03

3 - Fancy Meeting You Here:

On the return from my a training course I got as far as Birmingham New Street before my train was delayed. To be honest, I was quite surprised that I'd got this far without any scheduling problems. But now I had time to kill. A massively overpriced pint of beer and a bag of crisps was calling me.

A young woman sat alone at a table. She wore a curve-hugging dress. I took my purchases and sat as near as I could without being obvious.

I recalled Raymond Chandler's words from his novel The High Window: "from thirty feet away she looked like she had a lot of class, from ten feet away she looked like something to be seen from thirty feet away."

A young man approached her table and sat down. I recognized him, a player with Manchester United. Neither spoke, they were both too engrossed in their phones. I reached for my own and tapped the footballer's name into Google then added "girlfriend". I learnt that she was twenty-six and a social media influencer, whatever the hell one of those is. Her boyfriend had recently received a ban for driving while drunk, hence their reliance on public transport. Isn't the internet wonderful?

"MAD DOG!"

The footballer and the blond looked up startled. So did I, but then I recognized who the voice belonged to. Standing nearby was a brick shit house in a badly fitting suit.

"Spider!" I barked. "What the hell are you doing here sunshine?"

"Same as you, catching a train, y' daft bugger!" Lee 'Spider' Webb grinned.

We'd served in the army together a long time ago. After three years Spider had become bored with the army in general and life at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire in particular. He had shuffled off to become a civilian. I'd white knuckled things for three years after that, but eventually even I had finally had enough and returned to civilian life.

Spider sat down opposite me and fished a couple of cans of Stella Artois out of a plastic carrier bag. He handed one to me and we cracked them open together in parade ground formation.

"Thanks for this by the way," I lifted the can in recognition.

"No worries," he said.

"What confuses me mate," I said thoughtfully, "is that I always thought you lived here in Birmingham."

"I do. The thing is, I'm on my way to a stag do in Bristol. And there's a reason I'm on the train instead of going by car; that's because I intend to get so rat-arsed I'll still be over the limit for driving tomorrow morning."

"Fair enough then." I took another swig of beer. "So what're you doing with yourself these days?"

"Don't hate me but I'm an estate agent. Well, sort of," he shrugged and smiled ruefully before adding; "I work for a firm that rents out flats to students."

I shook my head in mock disgust.

"What about you?" Spider asked, "y' aint still in the army are you?"

"Nope, I'm not a squaddy any more," I tell him.

"Are you not?" he raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, "don't tell me you've demobbed and gone and joined the private sector?"

"Work as a hired gun for a Private Military Contractor in Iraq or somewhere? No bloody thank you, I've done more than my fair share of that for Queen and country" I said, adamantly. "And I don't particularly fancy nursemaiding the fragile ego of some arsehole who thinks they're a VIP."

"Yeah, besides, you're of the Caucasian persuasion," he grinned at me, "you've got to be one of us brothers to get a gig minding a rapper."

"Fair point well made," I grinned at him. "No mate, I'm a civil servant. I'm with a new unit that's run by the Ministry of Defence: the General Support Branch (Technology) Tactical Security Group."

"That's a hell of a mouthful," Spider grunted.

"Tell me about it, most people just stick with the initials -TSG" I grinned Sardonically. "What we are is sort of a mash up; we combine IT-based Cyber intel, surveillance, PSYOPS and covert field operations for the MoD."

"I reckon that sounds just a bit spooky like," Spider grinned. "Are you sure not a spy? Go on, shame the devil and tell the truth."

"Nah, it's nothing like that, not really," I shook my head. "Mostly I spend my day in a cubicle staring at a computer screen and pretending that I'm not clock-watching."

"Now there's nothing James Bond about that," he grinned.

"Well, it does have its moments," I replied, "we also do covert surveillance and close target reconnaissance on people or organisations who may pose a threat to the MoD's technological infrastructure. But that side of things is pretty rare. Mostly its just surfing the net to gather Open Source intel."

"That sounds like the usual civil service bullshit," Spider grinned.

"Yeah I know," I smiled too, "and that's because it is."

"In fact it sounds properly boring."

"Tell me about it."

We both took big swigs of beer.

"So what brings you here?" Spider asked.

"I've been away on a training course," I kept things vague, "talk about death by PowerPoint presentation. Can you get compensation for PTSD brought on by boredom?"

"Yeah well, you've only got yourself to blame if you will insist on becoming a sodding civil servant," he said. "So what was the course about? The proper way to requisition paper clips in triplicate?"

"Pretty much," I nodded.

The station PA cut our conversation short, announcing my train. We told each other the usual lies about not leaving it so long before meeting up again, and I headed for the platform.