Crash Course by Derek Fee (freenovel24 .TXT) 📗

and unusual force that the bastard deserves hasn’t been invented yet. Hackett and his posse are a disease worse than cancer. If they want to play rough with me, I’ll be happy to oblige them.”

“Don’t be a bloody idiot.” Davenport laid his hand on Kane’s shoulder.

Kane turned and shot his boss a hard look.

Davenport immediately removed his hand. “Hackett is about the most vicious bastard that we’ve tried to nail. He owns this estate and everybody on it. What I’m saying is, be extra bloody careful. I want him but I don’t want him at the expense of one of my best officers.”

“I’ve got the message,” Kane said. “Time to hit the road.”

The two men walked towards the champagne-coloured Mercedes 380 which was parked behind the police van.

“You keep your mind on being around when the shit hits the fan,” Kane said as they approached the car. “Make damn sure that none of those clowns in the van does anything stupid enough to get me killed. Some of them are shaking so much there’s no telling what they’ll do when the bust goes down.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on them,” Davenport said. ‘Final check on the wire.’ He took what looked like a hearing aid from his pocket and slipped it around his ear.

“One, two, three.”

“I’m hearing you loud and clear.”

Kane ran his hand along the smooth contours of the Mercedes. “I’ll miss this baby.” This was his ‘drug-mobile’; It gave instant credence to his claim to be a major player on the Glasgow drug scene. Someone who was willing to invest a quarter of a million pounds on a drug buy didn’t drive around in a Lada. His own battered ten-year-old Saab 92 had been sitting outside his flat for the duration of this assignment. Tonight he would return the Merc, the Hublot, the gold chains, and the threads, and tomorrow he would be back at the wheel of the Saab with a Tissot on his wrist. He felt a stab of regret that the operation to nail Hackett was nearing an end. And it wasn’t only the Merc that he would be missing. A part of him enjoyed playing the villain. He understood the buzz they got from breaking the law. Most of them were as thick as a plank but they lived on the edge and they knew how to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. That was their buzz. He opened the door and slipped behind the wheel for what might be the last time.

Davenport held the door open. “Remember. The drugs, the guns and Hackett. And no heroics.”

Kane pulled the door shut and reversed the car out of the alleyway and onto the main road.

“If only you weren’t so bloody good at what you do,” Davenport muttered to himself as he watched Kane pull away. It was a high-risk strategy having a copper on your team who didn’t give a damn whether he lived or died. There were of course huge advantages. Kane would never buckle under pressure. He would never be the one with the shaking hands or the sweat running down his face. When you needed someone to go deep undercover and to hold onto his water while he did it, then Mark Kane was your man. The operation to clip the wings of Veeral Hackett and his posse of Jamaican drug pushers had gone according to the book. Kane had wheedled his way into Hackett’s confidence with a series of minor drug buys and he had already located two crack houses on the estate. Both would be raided before the night was out. The ‘snip’ they had planned for tonight would lead them to the centre of Hackett’s operation – the crack factory itself. They knew it was somewhere on the estate but finding it was a totally different matter. If they started a house-to-house, the factory would have vanished before they found it. The only solution had been to allow Kane to smoke the whole drug operation out piece by piece. And that was what the bastard had done. Tonight was the big buy and as soon as Hackett showed off his prized possession, they would spring the trap.

Chapter Two

Kane entered the estate where every pair of watching eyes belonged to Veeral Hackett and his crew. United had scored before he switched off his phone and he was feeling the pain of his loss on the Arsenal bet. Five hundred quid was a lot of money to a copper who took home two thousand pounds a month. Gambling was one vice that would have to go. Maybe he was beginning to believe he really was a big-time drug dealer from Glasgow. He never felt so alive as when a bust was about to go down. That was the joy of being a copper. He was in this business for the buzz and the buzz was running at its strongest this evening. Davenport didn’t have to tell him that Hackett was a vicious killer. He’d seen the rap sheet from the Kingston police and he had seen the bodies of some of the hoods who thought that they could stand up to the drug lord. The thought of bringing him down only heightened his excitement. The expectation that there could be heavy action before the night was over had Kane’s heart beating like a drum and sent his adrenaline rush into overdrive.

He pulled up outside a crack house where he had met Hackett on a previous visit. A large Jamaican with flowing Rasta locks stood guard at the entrance. An Uzi machine pistol lay cradled in the crook of his left arm. The Uzi was no longer considered as simply a weapon. It was the essential fashion accessory for the up-and-coming gangsta. The man guarding the door stared through hooded eyes as Kane pulled up outside the front gate. The estate had been built for the cloth cap workers of a previous generation and successive waves of immigrants had been housed in