Greta rolled over on her back and looked up at the sky. It was clear blue, cloudless, bright and a pleasant looking morning. She on the other hand was hot, tired, no exhausted, sweaty, dirty, hungry and had to pee. And she had just missed the shot. The radio linked target vest had not registered the laser beam because she hadn’t pulled the trigger.
Greta was lying on the flat roof of a water tank in the Birmingham rail yard and her target was entering a cab with his head below the roof of the car. The shot had been a long but not impossible shot but the lack of crowd control at the exit door had made identification, aiming, and shooting impossible. Greta had been lying on top of the water tank most of the night waiting for a shot at someone that was supposed to be a high level foreign spy and she had just missed the shot. The whole exercise was stupid and poorly planned. She was frustrated and wasn’t going to put up with any more crap.
Suddenly there was the sound of a siren and Greta hung her head and swore. It would be the local police arriving since someone would have just noticed a woman on the tank and like a good citizen called them. They would arrest her and take her to the station and process her and throw her in a cell and not contact EUOPS until the next morning after they had examined and checked and finally stamped signed initialed and filed her national security training situation exercise permit. Meanwhile she might have to endure a strip search, or a nude ice cold shower with lots of witty chatting as the male officers blundered into the woman’s processing unit, strictly by mistake, and the female officers scolded them for fifteen minutes while Greta stood there naked. She would freeze her butt since they would only allow her a coverall and no blankets and probably no sleep. Finally someone would collect her and Julia and the training team would debrief her and ask her what went wrong and how could it be avoided and what had she learned and then she could run and do exercises and practice marksmanship for two weeks before they sent her to shoot someone in Trafalgar Square at noon disguised as a female Father Christmas. Well no more. They had been studying escape and evasion for the last six months and it was time for some practical practice.
Greta folded her rifle and packed it and her rangefinder scope in their padded case and put them in her pack. She folded her tarp and wrapped it around her brace bag and stowed them in the pack. Then she looked for anything physical that might connect her with the tank. She took a pressurized metal sprayer full of bleach out of the pack and methodically sprayed the top of the tank to destroy all the DNA traces. She sprayed the area where she had kept watch two times to make sure and then pulled on a balaclava to hide her face and sterile plastic operating room booties and heavy rubber gloves to prevent any contamination and tied a light rope to her backpack and around the top rung of the ladder and left it near the edge of the tank. Then she stood in the center of the tank out of sight.
The siren of the police car stopped as the car pulled up at the bottom of the tank and the engine died. There were two slams as the occupants got out.
A harsh male voice yelled, “All right missy, get your ass down here right now.”
Greta walked about half way to the ladder and answered, “No way, copper come and get me if you’re man enough.”
There was a silence. The trainees were instructed to comply with all orders from the local police and to present their identification and training permit immediately. Greta knew that she had been turned in by EUOPS when no shot had been made and the police had all ready been notified there was a training exercise in the area.
“Don’t make me climb the ladder sweetheart or I will personally tan your ass when we get you back to the station,” said the voice, “and I’m more man than you can handle so if I come up I will hold you down and handcuff you and then do a thorough weapons search and body cavity probe. Now get the hell down here!”
“Screw you copper,” said Greta.
There was a silence again and then some hurried discussion and finally someone started up the metal access ladder. Greta knelt and put one hand on the ladder it was one person. She nodded her head and then took three steps back from the top of the ladder and waited.
A large pair of hands appeared on the top crossbar of the ladder and then a large shaved head appeared. A huge man over six feet tall and well muscled with only the start of what would probably be an impressive beer gut by the time he made sergeant stood up and carefully stepped off of the ladder.
“All right miss smart ass,” said the policeman, “Get that blouse off I want to make sure you don’t have a gun in there with your tits and I am going to have search everywhere.”
Greta kicked him in one knee and he stumbled on the edge of the tank and fell forward to save himself. Then she swept off his mirrored sunglasses and sprayed his face full of the bleach solution. When he hit the tank she reached down and grabbed his handcuffs and cuffed his hands behind his back. Then she hit him in the side of the head with a small sap and then put a loop of cord around his legs and tied them so he couldn’t squirm around and fall off the tank when he regained consciousness. She pulled on a new pair of leather shooting gloves over the heavy rubber gloves and walked to the ladder. She swung over the edge and walked down to the third rung. Greta stepped off the rung and put her boots on the front of the half inch steel ladder side bars and cupped the back of the side bars with her hands then she pulled her pack off and screamed while slid down the ladder.
Just before she hit the ground she leaned back and applied pressure with her boot soles while she pulled against the back of the risers with her gloved hands. She timed it so that she was almost stopped when she reached the ground but she pitched over backwards at the base of the ladder and lay still. The other policeman had watched as she apparently lost her footing and fell. He ran over and yelled for his partner then he knelt and reached for Greta. He felt for a pulse in her neck and she hit him with the sap as he leaned back and concentrated. Then she handcuffed him to the bottom ladder rung. She checked that he was unconscious but all right and then stood up and walked to where her backpack was dangling four or five feet off the ground and untied it. She shook the rope that was tied in a circle around the upper rung of the ladder and through the pack straps and pulled it down and stowed it and her gloves and booties in the pack along with her balaclava. Then she tied her hair in a ponytail and put on a ball cap with her hair hanging out the back, put on sunglasses and unfolded a collapsible hiking stick and shouldered her pack.
Greta looked at the police car. It was fairly well out of sight so she would just leave it. She looked at the station and decided she could make it across the yard to the station on the pedestrian walk before she really need to pee bad enough to have an accident. She glanced at her watch and decided that she would take the train to Manchester that left in twenty minutes and get off there and then hitchhike back to Liverpool and catch a bus back to the training station in Wales and screw them all. She was done trying to do stupid stuff they set up just to please them. If she was going to kill people she would do it her way.
EUOPS Greta Steiner 