Free Honour Bound by Keith Walker

in the dock or in the basement
area."
    "Okay
Mr. Holmes," she said brightly, "I'll re-route any calls."
    The
warehouse was fifty yards from the north bank of the river. During its
refurbishment, a wide channel had been cut into the riverbank, to allow several
barges at a time inside the building for unloading. Cranes moved stealthily on
overhead gantries above the channel, enabling the cargoes to be unloaded
directly onto lorries for distribution, or onto
conveyer belts into the storage areas.
    Holmes
now overlooked the unloading area after leaving the lift. A low wide barge was
moored in the dock and the unloading appeared to be almost finished. He spotted Winters having a heated exchange with the operator of
a crate laden forklift. A few angry gesticulations passed between them before
the forklift moved off to deposit its load on a nearby lorry.
    Holmes
descended a flight of metal stairs and approached Winters .
Raising his voice above the general din of the machinery, he said, "Having
trouble?"
    "Where
do you get some of these people from? Most of them are as thick as pigshit ."
    "Thick
they may be, but they are exceedingly loyal." He motioned towards a second
lift, "Let’s go to the basement, it's a bit quieter down there."
    Winters
nodded. They walked to the lift, descended another three floors, about thirty
feet below the surface of the river, and entered an empty office in one of the
cargo storage areas. Holmes settled his bulk on a small desk, pushing aside
several wire baskets stacked with multi-coloured invoice sheets to make room.
"How's the equipment coming on? Has it all got here yet?"
    Winters
leaned against a filing cabinet, resting his elbow on the top. "The final
consignment came in on the barge in the dock." His eyes and eyebrows
indicated upwards. "I called Langdon as per your instructions, to let him
know it's here. I've put the light weapons and the ammo in the range and the
other stuff I've locked in the vault."
    Holmes
nodded his approval while mopping his brow with a handkerchief, seemingly
immune to the cool current of air coming from the air conditioning duct in the
ceiling. "Fair enough," he said, replacing the handkerchief in his
pocket. "What about the planning, any problems?"
    "Everybody
involved in the pre-assault phase knows what they have to do, where they have
to do it and when it should be done by. As for the assault phase, because we
can't practice it, I took the team out to the site in one of your coaches. We
had a small breakdown while they familiarised themselves with the layout of that
particular stretch and the distances involved. I've been drilling the details
into them at every opportunity. They know it as well as me."
    "What
about the team,” Holmes asked, “can you foresee any problems there?"
    "No.
Most of the blokes, as you know, are ex-forces and only two of them admit to
never firing a shot in anger. Personally, I don't think it'll matter. Once the
shooting starts I reckon they'll all react in a manner suitable to the
occasion."
    "Good,”
Holmes said, “let's have a look at the weapons."
    They
left the office, crossed the corridor, went down a flight of stairs and entered
the range through a thick metal door. A single bulb burned in the control room
of the otherwise pitch-black chamber, and they both made towards it like moths
to a flame. Winters flicked a switch and several dim lights came on at spaced
intervals along the 70-metre range. At the halfway point, six man-sized targets
hung from the ceiling like lynched convicts. A black four-foot thick rubber
wall, in place to stop the bullets without them ricocheting, marked the far
end.
    "Each
man in the assault team will have one of these," Winters said, reaching into an open crate and taking out a black submachine gun. He
handed it to Holmes. "It's a Heckler & Koch MP5. It’s a shit hot piece
of kit. It'll fire a full magazine in three seconds or so, and they'll each
have six thirty round mags loaded with armour
piercing