Capital Action: An Agent Carrie Harris Novella

By GJ Stevens

After two years of clandestine operations, Agent Carrie Harris doesn’t know why she’s been attached to the Metropolitan Police. Could it be, as her superiors say, to hone her skills at breaking down doors and catching bad guys? Or is it to become accustomed to working as a team when she’s been so used to operating alone?

Putting her uncertainties behind her, Carrie leans into her new role, taking pleasure as part of a special task force targeting organised criminals, until during an early morning raid, her colleagues lay dead and dying around her.

After saving those still clinging to life, she can’t do as she’s told and sit around while others hunt down those who gave the order to murder her colleagues. Determined not to let their deaths be in vain, can she rally against those up high who want her to have nothing to do with the investigation? Can she make the right choices to bring justice for her friends when everything, even the people she should trust, seem to conspire against her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: GJ Stevens
• Release date: Feb 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005125585

GJ Stevens

GJ Stevens started writing fiction at the age of thirty. Even as an engineer with a large family and a full time career with plenty of adult responsibilities, he has always had a creative side. After years of self-suppression, the flood gates opened and his novel In The End is the culmination of many years of finding time from nowhere to learn the craft.Whilst working to independently publish and make a success of his novels, Gareth lays bare his publishing journey through his blog, drawing together advice and knowledge from those already in the industry.As a lover of the outdoors, every year he spends weekends out in the desolate countryside of the UK hiking and camping with his long-time friends which he uses as inspiration for both his creative fiction works and the subject of many a blog post. GJ Stevens is on the beginning of his publishing journey and wants to share the highs and lows with anyone who will listen.

Book preview

Capital Action

A Carrie Harris Novella

G J Stevens

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © GJ Stevens 2020

The moral right of GJ Stevens to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1998.

All rights reserved.

Copyright under the Berne Convention

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover Illustration Copyright © 2020 by Gareth Stevens

Cover design by Gareth Stevens

ISBN: 9798707651281

DEDICATION

To the men and woman who tirelessly work to make our world a safer place, putting themselves in harm’s way so we can sleep soundly.

1

With my back against the lift wall, time slowed, my perception enhancing with the adrenaline. Feeling in complete control as the doors slid together, the four high-ranking police officers, the only other people in the lift, shuffled back to stand shoulder to shoulder, showing me the backs of their uniform jackets.

Their predictable movement sealed her fate.

With the doors closed, I delved into the handbag hanging from my shoulder by the long silver chain, my fingers pushing the phone to the side, but not before I saw the message.

What else could you be wrong about?

Trying to ignore his words, I pulled out the small syringe, raising the plunger to draw air.

I wasn’t wrong that the air in the syringe would be deadly once plunged into her neck. She’d barely feel the thin needle as it broke the skin. The air embolism, if I hit the target, would kill her within thirty minutes. Her death would be painful, but undetectable until I was long gone.

I was right that a mass murderer stood in front of me. A killer of cops. Of colleagues. Of friends.

But could I be wrong about which one had orchestrated the deaths?

The lift rose by a single floor, the lights by the door flashing to level two. With two more, the window of opportunity would end.

The choice was mine, and mine alone; the beauty and burden of working by myself. But it couldn’t be a guess. They trained me as a weapon. A tool. Honed for accuracy, for certainty. Trained not only to place the needle in a vein or artery, but in selecting the target.

Get it wrong and I would fail, not my orders this time, but those I meant to avenge.

Get it wrong and I became like them, ending my career before it started. Ending a life undeserving, but there was no time to think it all over again. Still, uncertainty came thick and fast, no matter how alien the thought was.

You’ve got something on your neck. Let me get it for you, I said, as the events of the day flashed before my eyes.

2

Early hours of that morning

As I pulled the helmet strap across my jaw, Tom slapped the bulk of the body armour on my shoulder. In the near darkness of the back of the police wagon, I turned, glancing out to the dim early morning light before I caught his eye.

Do you need a hand, little woman? he asked, with a smile rising to bunch up his cheeks as he clipped together the straps of his armoured helmet around his chin. Only kidding, Red.

I raised a wry grin, knowing the theme would stick with me until my time with the task force ended.

It had been my fault and I shook off his laughter, turning away as I secured my helmet.

Tom always went in first. Or rather I should have called him Delilah, a nickname the crew were hoping would stick.

In line for the sergeant’s post in the next round of promotions, he was fearless, a joker, but kind-hearted too, especially when no one else was in earshot. There was no one better to have up in front. He didn’t take risks with any of us.

We all had nicknames, but took no part in their choosing. Political correctness out of the window, mine had been given to me in the first briefing as I’d been introduced. It was an obvious choice, but I wasn’t offended, being proud of my striking hair.

For the last few months I’d been Clare Hunter with no rank, despite being the equivalent of a superintendent. Now I was Red, still the new girl, despite my years of service.

Ten minutes, came the call from the sergeant craning his head around in the front passenger seat, repeating the words we’d all heard in our earpieces. A collective groan went up through the van as Tom stood, nodding to the front as the sergeant’s fingers left the radio on the dash with the words already spilling from the speakers.

"Obie Trice, real name, no gimmicks," came Tom’s deep voice.

I smiled at the brightness in Tom’s eyes as he bellowed the words loosely in time.

When the song hit number one in the charts, Tom had just come back from three weeks of enforced rest after spraining an ankle on the job. The lyrics seemed to fit. Well, some of them at least. He’d sing the loudest in the chorus, blurting out ‘Guess who’s back,’ over and again in time to the beat.

Since the first play it became a ritual; an unofficial one at least. Before every job, at about this far away from the target, the song would pump out from the speakers.

Tom’s index finger jabbed at the Kevlar covering his torso.

"Now this looks like a job for me."

Each one of us knew the words, and despite not admitting it if asked to recall, mouths around the van moved in time, heads rocking up and down.

"So everybody just follow me. Cause it feels so empty without me," he shouted, whilst raising his eyebrows at each of us in turn.

I couldn’t help but laugh every time, the infectious beat still ringing in my ears after the last lyric, then everyone but Tom opened their mouths to boom out in chorus, My, my, my, Delilah.

That shut him up each time, knowing any complaint or reasoning would just add energy to the nickname.

You were only away for three weeks, Fish shouted. The sarge takes longer to have a shit.

Fish, real name Adeel, landed his moniker like many when he was a probationer. One of his first calls was to a trawler in dock and he’d somehow managed to cover himself and his mentor in fish guts. There was a longer version to the story, I was sure, but no one was ever interested in the detail.

Tom raised his middle finger towards Fish, then turned to me with a wide beaming grin.

With their out-of-tune voices dying down, another call silenced us in an instant. Five minutes, came the sergeant’s voice, draining away Tom’s smile.

The chat vanished in no time. The mucking around gone and with my assault rifle resting on my lap, I watched as Manny, short for Amanda and a sign of her broad-shouldered build, pulled her MP5 from its ballistic bag, checking the chamber as she pointed the muzzle inside.

The only other woman in the squad, and despite being ten years my senior, we still had a connection, able to talk like friends in our changing room while the others flicked each other with towels in theirs; our little escape from the constant testosterone of the men who turned into boys between the outings from the station.

The sergeant should have been sitting back here with us, not glancing through the grill pulled over the windscreen, but he was the senior-in-charge with the inspector crying off with an injury, who instead was spending his time waiting in A&E to see if the bones in his ankle had