'For his first trick, the terrorist presents....' Ch. 5

[JHyde]

Big chapter with some explanations that I sometimes wish the show had. Apologies if you like Harry and Ruth and Tariq (not all three of them together....that would be weird....) but I promise they all have good moments before the end of the fic. This was, after all, a Lucas fic from the start.

Spoilers and disclaimers as before. If you've stumbled in here by accident, read the first four chapters before chapter 5. Or don't, I dunno, who cares?

Please review. This fic has been a bugger to write and I really need the encouragement to get to the end of it. I feel like I'm cheating on Harry and Ruth a bit!

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Lucas clenched the underside of the bench in the back of the ambulance, the vehicle now hurtling through the streets of London. He was permitted to stay with the patient, but Piggins was in and out of consciousness while they had waited for the ambulance to get to Thames House. Lucas' mission was to find out just exactly what the guard had smuggled into the UK, presumably in his backpack.

The paramedics bundled out of the ambulance, and threw out the gurney with the frantic but well practiced movements of those who have seen it all. Lucas trailed after them, knowing that Ruth would have called ahead to ensure that all necessary measures were taken so that Piggins was treated quickly and discreetly. He still had interrogation to follow through with, and witholding medical treatment could prove very effective. Lucas knew himself just how much leverage that threat could give an interrogator.


****************

After briefing Ruth and Tariq quickly, and exhorting them to investigate any chatter regarding the attempt on Piggins' life, Ros stepped into Harry's office to confer.

"Lucas went with him in the ambulance, I presume?" Harry asked, turning away from his monitor.

"Yes," Ros answered. "We judged it best....under the circumstances. If he needed to threaten him, Lucas would work better, given the roles we were playing before. He does the angry man better than I would have expected." She cocked her head to one side, remembering again, a little surprised, at just how well Lucas had fitted into the bad cop routine. Harry nodded.

"It was good to see him at his best again." He paused, not quite knowing how much to confide in his Section Chief. Ros seemed to understand and she sighed.

"You worry about him, still." She sat down on his couch, crossing her legs and looking him straight in the eye, as was her custom. "Russia, Sarah......"

"....and this thing with me." Harry shrugged. "It was to be expected, but sometimes I have to lie to him, he knows that." He walked around from behind his desk and leaned against it, trying to find the words. He seemed to give up and turned to the matter at hand. "I'll be surprised if Piggins even knows exactly what it was he was bringing into the country. But we need to know who it was who sent him on this particular jaunt across the Channel so let's hope Lucas can get something out of him while the doctors aren't listening too closely."

Ros had stood up from the couch after realising that Harry had shut down on her. "Doctors are always too nosy for their own good, but nurses are worse, Harry. And they'll be swarming for Lucas. In any case, Tim the Pig won't have too long, I suspect. Whatever it was that caused him those burns, he won't outlive any attack he might have helped."


*****************

It hadn't taken Lucas more than 15 minutes to get the truth out of the guard. The doctor had dealt with Piggins and informed him that his burns would prove fatal, and Lucas simply followed up swiftly as the Pig swore his revenge. Unofortunately, he had little to go on. Piggins had been approached by a regular user at the college in Lille where he sold several times a week, but he had no name and could only give a description that could apply to thousands of students. He was about to check in with the team when his phone rang.

"Lucas?" Tariq's excited voice came over the phone before the older spook had time to get a greeting out. "You need to head over to Univ again, mate. Abehsera wants another meet. The alternate spot. At 3. So you'd better start moving so.....hang on, Ros wants a word."

Lucas smiled, the image of Ros standing over Tariq one he couldn't resist. He knew that Ros quite liked the scruffy tech boy, it was just that she found his youthful optimism and enthusiasm a little wearisome. Ros' clipped tones interrupted his smile as it crept towards his eyes.

"You do need to head to Univ, but what has Piggins coughed up? Apart from his lungs?"

"Very little that will help us find anyone who can tell us anything more. I have a description that I'll forward to Ruth. Perhaps she can get some hits from French Intelligence. But the big problem is that there was no meet for the package to be handed over. Piggins was to meet them tomorrow after a phonecall telling him where to go. And no, he didn't have a number, not even one for emergencies. You'd think he'd be more careful given it was his first time."

Ros sighed. "Yeah well, we're not always careful our first time around. Get over to Univ. His doctor's on orders from Ruth to let us know what's going on if she figures out what it was in his backpack that signed his death warrant. And do send that description to Ruth, we need everything we can."


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Lucas waited impatiently inside the small meeting room of the Univ student centre. The alternate meeting place wasn't ideal, but as they had already met once that day, agreeing to Abehsera's terms had been the only option. However Lucas treated him to his face, the older man had a strong respect for this particular asset. Abehsera was one of those rare agents motivated by ideology and little else, with an unshakeable belief that the life he had been born into was wrong. At this thought, the teenager strode into the room and flung his backpack against the wall before slamming the door closed.

"Steady on, mate, they'll have someone in here...."

The teenager broke Lucas off. Now it was Lucas' turn to be admonished for the pleasantries.

"I've only got five minutes. And you've gotta get cracking, mate. 'Cause Rani tells me we've got ourselves some strontium since this morning and my chem's not that great, but that means there's some bomb making going on."

Lucas paused. The prospect of a dirty bomb was one that had not really been a real threat in the hazy days when he went to Russia in 2000, but in 2010 it was a very real danger. He eyeballed the teenager uncertainly.

"When? And where are they keeping the strontium?"

Abehsera pulled out his cigarettes and then remembered he couldn't light them indoors. Then he pulled one out anyway and waved it about in his agitation.

"I don't know when they're planning anythin' for, but I promise you that it's for Trafalgar Square. As to where - Vafa has it apparently. I don't know anything more." The teenager tucked his cigarette behind his ear, picked up his bag and walked resolutely out of the door, leaving a crestfallen Lucas in his wake.


***********************

Lucas had prepped the team over the phone, so that a meeting was in full swing by the time he had returned. It was almost exclusively Ruth's briefing and she had waited for Lucas to arrive before outlining the chemical implications of what Piggins had allegedly brought into the country.

"Strontium was one of the ingredients for a dirty bomb that was first bandied about when the weapon was talked about after 9/11." Ruth was standing, for a change, using her hands as she described the material they so feared. "It's a low-grade radioactive material that would set off the gates at St Pancras, for example, but it looks like talc powder. It's not surprising that Piggins didn't question what it was when it was shown to him in Lille - it looks just like cocaine."

Harry inclined his head slightly. "I'm only surprised he didn't sniff it."

Ros smiled. "I think you'll find Piggins was chosen specifically because he isn't a user of 'hard drugs'. Just prescription ones."

"Exactly." Ruth nodded. "Not to mention that if our friend the Pig had sniffed anything inside that canister, he wouldn't have made it across the Channel anyway. He'd have been dead by the time he got to St Pancras, certainly."

"Ruth, this is the gear that got the Russians so worked up in 2001, isn't it? They kept finding it in agricultural farming equipment, in canisters, ready to spray on crops?" Lucas felt stupid asking the question like a young trainee, but there were still gaps in his knowledge of the time he had spent away. Strange to be inquiring about history that took place bare miles from where he was being held, in all likelihood.

"That's the one." Ruth sat down at the desk again, feeling a little weak. It didn't matter how many times she described this scenario, it never became any more real to her. "The bomb is usually made out of an explosive, Semtex for example, about 10 lbs of it, so the blast itself isn't that big. Perhaps enough to kill ten people in the vicinity when it goes off. But the scenario you're describing - Trafalgar Square being the target - in seconds, depending on the direction of the wind, the plume could reach Whitehall. A minute later Charing Cross. The city would be next. In just half an hour radioactive smoke could reach London suburbs 10 kilometres away."

Harry shook his head, even as he cradled it in his left hand. "We’ve got contaminated air moving across a section of London and nobody would be aware that that contamination was there."

Ruth took up the narrative once again. "And they don't find out until after the scene is dealt with professionally. Maybe 24 hours pass before they understand the extent of the damage. The real outcome is that they decimate a city like London and make it uninhabitable. Economy destroyed. And because the material we're talking about is so easily dispersed......"

Harry once again finished the sentence of one of his team. "......it could spread even further and make the better part of the UK unliveable. "

Ros turned to Lucas. "Your asset's group? Does this fit in with their aims as far as you know?"

"Certainly the idea that bankrupting a country is often better revenge than a mass slaughter would appeal to them." Lucas rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "And the Russian connection makes sales of radioactive material to a terrorist group with its roots in North Africa quite plausible."

"Aberhsera's group. The Qatari." Harry paused. "They're a faction of that group with the unpronounceable French name aren't they?"

Ruth jumped in before Lucas could speak. "They're the offspring of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, yes," she said, refusing the bait, but shooting Harry a small, surreptitious smile. "But they themselves were born in blood of the Armed Islamic Group, or the GIA. They focus more on the direct assault of state and civil institutions, financial powerbrokers and...the security services."

"And their attacks include targeting countries who they see as sympathetic to the Algerian cause." Lucas weighed in. "The UK is one of those countries."

Ros sighed. "Leaving aside revisionist history and the fact that "the Algerian cause" changes with the seasons, we know that Qatari fits this profile, Ruth?" The Section analyst nodded. Ros turned to Lucas once again. "Abehsera is good for this, you think?"

"Absolutely," said Lucas. "He's an impressive asset, Ros. And everything he's ever given us has been spot on. Tariq's looking into the background of Vafa, his work colleague at the community centre and especially given that both he and two of the other men who work there seem to be missing from work today....I feel like we're on the right trail. Abehsera's the right stuff, and regardless of what happens today he needs to be looked after."

"You like the ideologues, don't you Lucas?" Ros asked quizzically. Without waiting for an answer, she rose from her seat, the rest of the team following suit. "Ruth, Tariq - we need to know where they're making the damn thing. They know if they're handling the stuff they're dead regardless, but we need to find out how to get in wherever it is without exposing any of us to danger if we possibly can. It's a bit hard to break in wearing full assault gear and HAZMAT suits."

The team filed out promptly, but Ruth waited behind. Harry's heart leapt, thinking that perhaps Ruth was about to tell him she would be at his house with a packed bag after work - and then chastised himself for thinking of such a thing at such a time. Ruth smiled, a little sadly, as she read his usually impassive face and took his elbow gently.

"It's not about that, Harry. That can keep until later. It's about Ros. Is there any chance she was exposed to the strontium while she was trying to bring Piggins in?"

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Duh duh duh! Review please!

[Tea Lady]

Hells bells ! That's a bit of an ending and a half! Ros must be ok surely? Wouldnt she be feeling ill by now if she was exposed ?

Ruth loves her dirty bomb stuff doesnt she.

I know London is facing annihilation but please let there be a spare few minutes for Harry and Ruth to sort out their sleeping arrangements for the evening.

Keep going, this is good stuff.

TL

[Aria]

Great chapter with another jaw dropping cliffhanger.

Like the flashes of Lucas as he might have been if he hadn't been captured by the Russians.

Keep up the excellent writing and update soon.

[YourFutureMuse]

I am in love with your cliffhangers! So tense, this story is excellent

[Silktie]

I do love those briefing sessions with the whole team present. And Harry and Ruth once again finishing each other's sentences. Also loved the fact that it was Ruth that thought about Ros possibly being contaminated, as this fits in with her persona as the compassionate one.

[lwhite53]

(25-02-2010 12:56 PM)Tea Lady Wrote:  I know London is facing annihilation but please let there be a spare few minutes for Harry and Ruth to sort out their sleeping arrangements for the evening.

Amen to that. LOL.

Love this, JHyde. Keep going (and please don't infect Ros, she has enough problems).

[Beatriz]

As always I can picture all in my head as a chapter, I love those briefing meetings. And yes please, let these two solve their problems before killing all the population

Not Ros!! Poor woman, it seems that everybody was to kill her off

I also liked how Harry tells Ros his insecurities with Lucas

[Nia M]

'And they'll be swarming for Lucas.'
She's very observant there. Do you think she's been visiting the forum lately...?

Aww, that image of Ros and Tariq

'Apart from his lungs' - brilliant 'Ros line' there!

unpronounceable French name - and naturally Ruth can recite it off the top of her head

And that's a cruel cliffhanger *grumps*

[HellsBells]

I have had a lousy week, but finding chapter 5 has really improved my day
I am glad this is a fic with Lucas as the main character, we can't have too much Lucas. Loved the part where Harry confides in Ros (almost) about how he feels about Lucas.
Your writing is so like the real show, hope you give us chapter 6 soon.

[JHyde]

Thanks so much for the reviews on this chapter guys. I really needed them. I'm especially chuffed that you all liked different things, but all the things I either tried very hard to get in there and/or especially liked myself.

Nia, Ruth didn't actually use the proper name for the French group yet. It will make an appearance in the next chapter I think because it really is quite impressive. Poor NW would have a bitch of a time saying it if it was ever pronounced on the show.

I know this has mostly been a Lucas fic but there is a really lovely HR moment in the works, I promise.