The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1605 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

For the next hour the darkness was rent with the sound of small arms fire and sirens. I could see the headline in the paper the next day, ‘Firework display gets out of hand,’ or‘Military exercise alarms sleeping children.’ No one would tell the truth, it was beyond belief or more than the lies would be. An exclusive would be given to one paper or radio station and that would be it.

With the infra red equipment they have on helicopters these days it would mean all the bandits would be rounded up and hopefully an end to the whole business. Although in reality all it would take would be someone to draw up in a van outside the house with a bunch of flowers or a parcel and shoot whoever opened the door.

I wondered about making the property more defendable, getting stronger doors, shutters on the ground floor windows, an electric gate with a speaker and rebuilding the fences in something more substantial, like brick. It wouldn’t keep out trained operatives, who can climb six or seven foot walls quite easily, even with razor wire on the top of them. The machine gun post and control towers we’d leave for later.

I did think about trip wires in the woodland, but the kids play there and we have badgers and foxes which would trip them. It looked like some sort of compromise was necessary or we needed to move.

By three, the fighting seemed over and the helicopter had flown away–it was a naval one, a lynx with all sorts of weaponry aboard, but mainly used for the electronic surveillance stuff. The cavalry were a police SWAT team and a small team of special forces who so happened to be attached to a warship in Portsmouth harbour.

The man in the suit, Mick Thomson, wouldn’t give too many details, except to say one of the attackers was arrested having been injured in the knee with what looked like an arrow, except they didn’t know of any angry Cherokee in the area, so the man might have been mistaken and it could have been a bullet that hit him. The missile had hit the side of his leg and shattered his kneecap. I blushed but not through any sense of guilt.

With the injured man, another four were captured and carted off for interrogation. It was assumed the man running the show would escape, possibly via Spain, pretending to be a Spanish national. However, Thomson suggested he might have a surprise, in that the Spanish authorities were quite clued up and would attempt to arrest him as and when he landed there.

Two of the attackers were injured, one after resisting arrest and the other was shot but not badly injured. So five men caught, three of whom were wounded or otherwise injured by the defenders. Chief Inspector Wordsworth was also injured apprehending the one who resisted arrest–his nose was broken by the bandit head butting him. He apparently still caught the man and knocked him unconscious.

I attempted to thank all the men who had come to our rescue but Thomson told me he’d do it for me, and for the police and naval team, it was a real training exercise, only with live ammo.

“But they could have been killed?”

“Yeah, but the rest would learn from it.”

“That would be a great consolation to the family of the deceased.”

“Alas, that would be true–but we train these guys very well and if they get shot it usually means we either missed something or they did. These would be assassins may have been professionals, but they’re piss poor compared to our special forces lads, who could have killed them all and no one would have heard a thing.”

“So why didn’t they then?” I asked the obvious question, least ways I thought so.

“Just in case their leader was watching.”

“You’ve lost me,” well he had. I mean if they thought the guy was watching why didn’t they get him too?

“He was watching electronically, they were all wired up with digicams and sound stuff. The bangs and lights were enough for him to know we were ready for them.”

“If you were ready, how come we had to call you?”

“We were on yellow alert, to have this lot standing around all night would have cost a fortune, especially if they hadn’t attacked until next week.”

“No, but I had to pay for the two men we had protecting us.”

“Lady Cameron, it’s not as if this is a council house and your husband a street cleaner is it–I suspect you could afford it.”

“Yes but when Simon’s bonus is discussed, the media won’t be too happy, will they, even if I tried to explain most of it was spent protecting the family from terrorists–most of the public would probably be happy if the terrorists got him.”

“I feel you’re exaggerating somewhat, Lady Cameron.”

“A little, but you know how bankers are perceived by the public, it’s probably worse than estate agents and lawyers. I mean public opinion caused that bloke from RBS to eschew his million pound bonus, and I doubt terrorists have been after him.”

“I don’t think other banking families seem to attract the ire yours does, though I’m sure you don’t do much different to them in regard to financial activities and services.”

“I can’t comment on those, Mr Thomson, I don’t know what we do, let alone other banks, but I do know we won’t give in to anyone who threatens us.”

“I admire your spirit, Lady Cameron, but I think opening a bookshop might make fewer enemies than an international bank.”

He left after telling me to keep the H&K somewhere safe until he decided it wasn’t needed again. I protested that in doing so I was breaking the law and could end up with a prison sentence. He simply told me that would not happen provided it was kept safe and only used in dire emergency–‘after all, barbed arrows are hardly legal, are they?’ That did make me shudder a little and I resolved to hide them more effectively than just in my wardrobe. I was sure Maureen could design some sort of concealed cupboard for weapons. I had a flashback to movies like Kickass and some of Arnie’s where the hero had a whole room full of weapons suitable for sinking an aircraft carrier plus more guns than the average military magazine. I chuckled, a cupboard built into the wall of my study would do fine, and I could hide my biscuits in there too.

The next couple of days saw us recovering from the trauma of the attack. I also demanded the removal of the sandbags from my study–I couldn’t get to my biscuits, the drawer of the filing cabinet was blocked by sandbags.

I sent Maureen an email saying what I wanted and she replied that it would take a week or two to organise but that would be fine. It wouldn’t be a cupboard but a mock fireplace, which would have a real gas fire fitted to an external wall and the fireplace would contain two lockable but hidden cupboards with a release switch disguised as part of the decoration. It sounded quite good.

With Tom’s agreement, I also started pricing security gates making the front of the house more protected. Simon agreed to fund much of it as well as security lights and some infra red CCTV–could watch the badgers at night.

James would advise us on that except he was in Russia trying to discover about this girl, so some of the planning would have to wait. I wasn’t too disappointed, it seemed winter had arrived and everywhere was freezing so having the house knocked about again wasn’t appealing by any stretch of the imagination.