Never Kidnap A Serial Killer: T14 Book 5

By Marcus Freestone

Book 5 in the T14 series sees Jennifer and her colleagues hunting down their missing serial killer, who has been very busy indeed during his short absence. Meanwhile the British public are rioting over power shortages and someone else has also escaped from custody, someone who only has deadly revenge on his mind.

The sequel to "Two Serial Killers, A Wedding And A Funeral" is a fast paced thriller that continues the story of the futuristic, high tech counter terrorism agency.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcus Freestone
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310355905

Marcus Freestone

My main work is the T14 series of thrillers about a futuristic, high tech counter terrorism agency headed by a man with a computer implant in his brain. The first book "The Memory Man" is permanently free in e-book. I also have a series of novellas on the subject of mental health and psychology. My most popular book is "Positive Thinking And The Meaning Of Life" which has had 200,000 downloads. It deals with psychology, philosophy, depression, anxiety, mental health in general and the human condition.I have also released more than 50 albums, ranging from metal and rock to jazz and ambient/electronica. And last but not first I also produce the "Positive Thinking And The Meaning Of Life" podcast and "The Midnight Insomnia Podcast", a comedy show with ambient music and abstract visual images.

Book preview

NEVER KIDNAP A SERIAL KILLER

T14 BOOK 5

by

MARCUS FREESTONE

ALL MATERIAL © COPYRIGHT MARCUS FREESTONE 2016. THIS WORK MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED OR RESOLD IN ANY FORM.

ISBN: 9781310355905

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

THIS IS FOR BEV WHO LOST HER BELOVED DOG MOSCHER DURING THE WRITING OF THE BOOK. SHE WILL BE ALIVE IN OUR HEARTS FOREVER.

ALSO BY MARCUS FREESTONE from SMASHWORDS:

FICTION

The Memory Man: T14 Book 1

Random Target: T14 Book 2

Just Murder: T14 Book 3

Two Serial Killers, A Wedding And A Funeral: T14 Book 4

The Least Resistance

Ethelbert's Sunday Morning(Short Stories)

What To Do If Trapped In A Lift With A Dentist (Poetry)

Tabula Rasa (Novella)

NON FICTION

Positive Thinking and The Meaning of Life

Tell Depression To #&%! Off

101 Ways To Happiness

#1.CHAPTER ONE

#2.CHAPTER TWO

#3.CHAPTER THREE

#4.CHAPTER FOUR

#5.CHAPTER FIVE

#6.CHAPTER SIX

#7.CHAPTER SEVEN

#8.CHAPTER EIGHT

#9.CHAPTER NINE

#10.CHAPTER TEN

#11.CHAPTER ELEVEN

#12.CHAPTER TWELVE

#13.CHAPTER THIRTEEN

#14.CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

March 28th 2027

Life in the world's premier counter terrorist agency was as hectic as ever. Despite our increasingly sophisticated technology and intelligence gathering there was still always plenty of leg work, both physical and intellectual, to get through. That morning, before rushing off to a promising meeting, I put on two robust sports bras over my normal bra – you can't chase terrorists with your tits slapping you in the face. Not to mention that the straps on a Kalashnikov rifle were obviously not designed with women in mind. There hadn't been much chasing of the bad guys lately, but hopefully that was about to change; I didn't spend two years begging for this job and then going through the most rigorous training programme in the world so I could sit in an office all day, all be it an office in the massively impressive high tech underground complex that was T14 HQ.

It may sound arrogant to describe us as 'the world's premier counter terrorist agency' but we unequivocally are. I also happen to think that we are the best in the world, certainly the most effective. The unthinkably huge attacks on London thirteen years ago that killed, all told, eighty thousand people, knocked everything that had preceded it, including 9/11, into a very small and very cocked hat. While there wasn't the kind of political and international fallout that followed the twin towers, the UK government were obviously shocked and traumatised into taking drastic action.

Less than twenty four hours after the literal dust had settled, they announced to the world the formation of T14, a counter terrorism agency with a 'virtually unlimited' budget. Given the enormity of the situation it was the absolute least they could have done.

I was in Special Branch at the time, and involved in a minor way in helping to track down the perpetrators. As soon as I watched the press conference I knew that I had to join T14. I applied the next day but was summarily turned down. I kept applying until Bill White, the director of the agency, realised I wasn't going to go away and granted me an interview. He told me, predictably, that I was too young and didn't have enough experience. I asked him forthrightly what I needed to do in order to be accepted and he reeled off a long list I suspect he had come up with on the spot. I wrote it down word for word and over the next two years I diligently ticked off all the requisite items, going far further on each one than he had indicated was the minimum requirement. Eventually I had pushed him into a corner and he had little choice but to admit me, initially as a junior agent.

I was determined to achieve senior status as soon as possible. I wanted to be out there on the front line, tracking down and eliminating terrorists. I never questioned why I was so driven but, within eighteen months I had been made a senior agent and taken my place amongst the elite. Several times over the last nine years I have unexpectedly produced that list and waved it under his nose. His response is always the same: he smiles and pats me on the head like an uncle who is proud of a particularly tenacious niece.

On my way to the meeting I ran over more recent events in my head. Thankfully the electricity crisis hadn't panned out as badly as had been initially anticipated. The country hadn't ground to a complete halt as Arthur had feared. A technical solution had been instigated which got everything working again and also put in place new protocols that prevented either of the attack scenarios occurring in the future. There was an ongoing investigation into the cyber attacks and the original kidnapping infiltration at Sizewell C that began it all but so far we still had no idea who was responsible for either plot. Other agencies were working on this and they were welcome to it but so far they had produced nothing of any use.

After a worrying few weeks where nobody knew what was happening, neither the public or the authorities themselves, the national grid had instituted a kind of curfew whereby the supply was switched off between midnight and six a.m. Strictly speaking it wasn't really switched off – the technicalities of the whole thing were still way beyond me – but effectively there was no domestic supply during those hours. This allowed most businesses and households to function more or less as normal. Being British lots of people were still complaining about the situation but the majority of people were so relieved that things weren't so much worse that they put up and shut up. It had been a terrible time for the country as a whole but we managed to scrap through it somehow.

There was also an 'investigation' into how this situation had been allowed to happen being conducted in the media and among the general public and, of course, the usual blaming and scapegoating was going on with gusto. The conspiracy theories were multiplying daily and becoming ever more absurd. For the time being Adam and I and many other agents were still living at HQ to save power and for convenience (we had our own generators and all manner of newfangled eco power-generating machinery in our vast underground complex).

We at T14 were still occupied with a problem much more within our remit, one we thought we'd been able to permanently wash our hands of: nobody had any idea what had happened to Davies, our perspicacious serial killer.

On his way to trial, persons as yet unknown had hijacked the prison van and spirited him away. 'Spirited' was an apposite word - he had vanished into thin air. We had no clues as to his current whereabouts or why or by whom he had been taken. It was, of course, possible that he had been killed immediately or soon afterwards. However, this was no simple vigilante attack - it had been a thoroughly professional kidnapping. Short of T14 agents being present, security was as tight as it could have been. I did mention at the time that we should have been involved but the PM vetoed it for some reason. Why? Surely we didn't have another traitorous leader in our hands? No, on reflection it was far more likely to be incompetence or over-confidence than deliberate malfeasance. Besides, with only just over a hundred agents, we simply can't get involved in everything that would benefit from our presence.

My personal opinion, my usually reliable spidey sense, was that our serial killer was still alive. If somebody wanted him dead they would also have wanted his death to be public knowledge. Why not just kill him on the spot instead of taking him away? Even if they had wanted to make him suffer, the utter silence made no sense. Therefore, on the balance of probability, I thought that he had been taken by somebody who wanted to make use of his talents. But who? Who the hell would be insane enough to want to kidnap and use a serial killer for their own ends? And what could those ends possibly be? What use could anyone make of such a devious, single-minded, self-centred individual? I had been trying to come up with an answer to these questions for weeks and drawn a complete blank. Now, as I had another go at them, I felt the beginnings of a headache.

Come on, Jennifer, I scolded myself, You're going round in pointless circles.

The other possibility was that he had orchestrated the escape himself, but I discounted that out of hand. The time I had spent with him convinced me beyond any doubt that he not only held the whole of humanity in utter contempt, he also considered himself above everyone else. The idea of him willingly cooperating with anybody else was laughable, as was the possibility of him ever thinking that he needed assistance from one of the people he so despised.

There had been much discussion among senior agents on this matter, and so it was with an air of intense anticipation that a small group gathered for a briefing which promised 'new information' on the case.

Present at the meeting was Arthur, also known as A1, head of T14, the counter terrorism agency I had worked for for the past eleven years. Now in his mid-fifties, Arthur had been with T14 since its formation in the wake of the gargantuan terrorist attacks in London in 2014. In the years since then the agency had used its virtually unlimited budget and the latest technology to ensure that nothing like that was ever allowed to happen again. Over the years we had evolved into an organisation that was unique anywhere in the world, both in our remit, freedom of operation and autonomy. Ultimately we were answerable to the government but three years ago we had arrested the prime minister when I caught him attempting an act of treason. We didn't always get things right – I myself had made some disastrous mistakes, one in particular for which I would never entirely forgive myself – but on the whole we did a bloody good job and had foiled dozens of terror plots and criminal activities and saved countless thousands of lives.

As well as his vast experience and being a former SAS soldier, Arthur had the not inconsiderable advantage of having a computer chip in his brain. This had begun as an experimental device that was inserted into his hippocampus when he was shot in the head six years ago. Several senior level agents, myself included, had signed up for this procedure should we ever find ourselves at deaths door but so far he was the only one who had received an implant. It was quite crude to begin with but over the years our amazing tech team had modified the software so that his brain now really was partly digital. It didn't allow him to do anything magical or read people's minds, it just processed digital information in a way that allowed him to read it with the organic parts of his brain. This proved far more useful than anyone had ever imagined and his implant had directly saved my life more than once. It allowed him to communicate directly with digital devices and computers and assess information far more quickly than anyone else in the world could manage. We had only ever encountered one other person with a similar implant, a former US president, but his was of such inferior quality it actually made his cognitive performance worse rather then better, and that was really saying something.

Also at the meeting was 37, Adam, deputy director of T14, and now my husband. It was a rule that agents in a personal relationship didn't go out in the field together so we only really worked together in the office now. As deputy director he spent most of his time in HQ and he was welcome to it – I get cranky if I spend too much time in my office, I need to get out and get things done. Adam was a very sober individual, many people found him off-puttingly so, even some of our fellow agents. It was only outside of the pressure and intensity of work that he relaxed and became the gentle, caring man I had come to know and love. He had had an appalling childhood and developed pretty serious OCD and anxiety as a result, but he had finally left his past behind and his symptoms were now often barely noticeable to anyone but the two of us. When we had time off from the office or the field we went for long walks in the countryside, I enjoyed his wonderful cooking and we lived a married life of quiet contentment, something neither of ever thought we would be capable of achieving. Neither of us wanted children and so life was just ticking along pleasantly, vanishing serial killers and global terrorism not withstanding.

Next was 61, Hannah, my best friend in T14, and probably outside of it as well. She joined eight years ago, three years after me, and was probably our most physically fit agent. She was one of those annoying people who just seem to be born super-fit and never have to make any effort. She was pretty small but very strong and served as one of our long-range rifle specialists, providing vital cover as others went in closer, but she was more than capable of turning her hand to anything. She was married with a lovely daughter, my god daughter, and was one of the very few agents lucky enough to maintain a stable home life where she could get away from our world of guns, bombs and death.

B6, Lars, had joined us from the BND (please don't ask me to spell or pronounce it), the German equivalent of MI6. He was in many ways as formal as Adam during work hours but he also had a clinical way of approaching problems that often yielded solutions that nobody else would ever have arrived at. I suppose you could describe him as the strong silent type. He was also superb with weapons of all types and, now that he had permanently joined our ranks, was proving an invaluable asset. His command of the English language was excellent as he had done a PhD at Cambridge but I also found that his peculiarly precise way of speaking was very useful in explaining technical matters or complicated plans.

76, Mike, was a former police armed response officer. He was another long range rifle specialist. I had recruited him myself directly from the police after seeing him in action when our former HQ had been invaded. He had been a counter terrorism officer with the Met, and before that in the army.

97, Chris, was another person I recruited at the same time as Mike. He was an armed response officer who was also helpful when the zombies attacked our HQ (not horror film zombies, people with electronic implants controlling them... it's a long story). He had badly injured his arm during our partly failed attempt to prevent a series of bombings on the Paris underground but was now back to full fitness.

53, Suzy, was our field agent with the best tech abilities. We had three boffins who were based at HQ and came up with the amazing stuff we used, like our Mphones, and Suzy was the out and about version of them. If we suddenly found a need to hack into someone's computer or an alarm system then she was the one we turned to.

74, Jason was a guy who was hard to get to know. To begin with I didn't really like him as he was so uncommunicative but I soon realised that I'd misjudged him. He was a single parent bringing up a teenage daughter in a job that is unpredictable and where it is almost impossible to have a normal life outside of work. I hoped that I had helped his situation when I had taught self-defence to his daughter after she had almost taken an overdose.

10, Tim, was a former prime minister no less. We had worked closely with him when he was in Downing Street and he had previously been in the Marines. After leaving politics he had initially worked for us as a freelance consultant but was now a senior agent. He didn't often do field work because he was still a very famous face and that doesn't work for a counter terrorism agent, but his experience was invaluable at HQ and he had proved a real find.

By the way, I'm Jennifer, 45 (that's my code name, not my age). I specialise in close combat, weaponry and generally running around after the bad guys. Much of the technical stuff leaves me clueless and the intelligence side of it has never been my strong point. I started in the police and then moved to Special Branch before finally being accepted into T14. I used to do a lot of undercover work but after I stayed in one job for over a year only for it to go tits up and end up as largely a waste of time, I steered clear of that.

Arthur pressed a few buttons and the wall screen was filled with the image of a serious looking compound. Electric fences, gun turrets and all manner of 'Don't fuck with us' accoutrements adorned the exterior of the substantial group of buildings set in an isolated mass of countryside.

Yekaterinburg, Russia, began Arthur. "This facility does not officially exist. As best as I've been able to establish it is a place where political prisoners or enemies of the state are taken and interrogated. Another way of putting it is that it's an experimental torture chamber. Few people who are taken there come out alive, those that do never talk about it or physically can't talk about anything any longer.

"I understand that the Americans have know about this place for many years but, since the Russians are only torturing their own citizens, nobody has cared to rock the boat by looking to closely.

What I am about to divulge has been kept out of all public arenas and I want to keep it that way. It is not to be discussed outside of this group.

We all dutifully nodded even though it went without saying. Much of our work was so top