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fredbassett
Title : The Guns Fall Silent, Part 1 of 2
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Claudia/Ryan, Becker, Stephen, Cutter, Connor, Abby
Disclaimer : Not mine, no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 5,400 in two parts
Summary : Claudia has some reservations about the young captain who’s joined the team.
A/N : 1) Written for the
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
primeval_denial Art Challenge for this lovely artwork by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tli 2) This poem by Philip HendyDavis sums up what was in my mind when writing this.“He looks like he’s barely out of short trousers!” Claudia mashed the teabag hard, taking out her frustrations on the most harmless object in the flat in a wholly proportionate and adult manner.
“Do kids even wear short trousers any more?” Ryan had been doing his best to maintain a poker face, but she could see that the façade was starting to slip.
“I bet they did at his prep school.”
Ryan gave up the unequal struggle and grinned. “You’re determined not to like him, aren’t you?”
“He’s even posher than Lester!”
“James Lester went to an inner city comprehensive.”
Claudia’s eyes widened . “How did you find that out?”
“Late night conversation in his office. Alcohol might have been involved. Plus I’ve seen his security file.” Ryan’s grin broadened. “Come on, give the lad a break…”
“Lad!” Claudia pounced on the word. “See, you said it, not me.”
“Figure of speech. He’s a captain in the Regiment, not some kid straight out of Sandhurst, wet behind the ears. He’ll be fine.”
Claudia added two sugars and a dash of milk to Ryan’s tea and set it down on the coffee table that was currently doubling as a footrest. A run-in with a juvenile ankylosaur had left him with a fractured tibia. His lower leg was immobilised and would be for the next seven weeks.
With Lyle away doing something well over Claudia’s security clearance, the Director Special Forces had assigned one of the Regiment’s newest acquisitions to the ARC for the duration of Ryan’s recuperation.
“So what have you got against Becker apart from his unfortunate birthday and his poshness?”
Claudia gave in to the urge to sigh loudly and then curled up against Ryan on the sofa. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him for a leisurely kiss. When they finally drew apart, she rested her forehead against his and admitted, “Nothing… apart from the fact that he’s not you, Tom.”
“Lester says that if Ditzy clears me for a desk job, I can come into the office and annoy everyone with some back seat driving, but that’s not going to be for a couple of weeks, so try not to chew Becker up too much.”
****
“Tea or coffee, ma’am?” Becker asked, as Claudia appeared in the doorway of the small kitchen attached to the breakroom.
“Tea, please, and it’s Claudia.”
He smiled and nodded. “Becker,” he added. “Although for the past few months, I’ve mainly answered to ‘oi, you!’.”
“The youngest officer ever to pass Selection,” Claudia commented.
Becker did a surprisingly good impression of a startled deer. “You’ve been peeking at my file…?”
Claudia shook her head. “Talking to my boyfriend.” She thought it was best to get this out of the way. “Captain Ryan.”
Becker’s expression morphed from startled to impressed. “How is he?”
“Lying on the sofa catching up on some reading. Would you like to join us for supper one evening? I’m sure he’d like to meet you.” There, Ryan had told her to be nice, so she was being nice.
“I’d like that, ma’… Claudia.”
The smile that Claudia had first marked down as supercilious was actually rather shy. Maybe she had been a bit too hasty to judge…
“How are you settling in? Has Professor Cutter been rude to you yet?”
“A couple of times,” Becker admitted.
“Don’t worry. It’s a rite of passage around here. Ryan had to thump him to make him see sense on their first outing.”
“So I’ve been told. Captain Ryan’s something of a legend around here.”
“I would say don’t listen to the gossip, but I have a nasty feeling most of it is probably true.”
Whatever remark Becker had opened his mouth to make was drowned out by the sound of the ADD alarm blaring through the speakers Connor had set up throughout the ARC. There was no escaping the noise, wherever you were. With the ease borne of long practice, Claudia quickly downed the hot tea. You never knew when you would get the chance of another brew on an anomaly shout.
With Becker striding ahead of her down the corridor, Claudia joined the rush to the control room. The soldiers would already be en route to the underground garage via the armoury.
“What have we got, Connor?” Cutter demanded, beating her to the ADD only because his office was closer to it than the break room.
“North Yorkshire…” Connor’s nimble fingers flew over the keyboard and one of the screens started to zoom in on the location. “Gotcha! Helmsley, North Yorkshire National Park… looks like…” Another screen flashed up an image of an enormous ruin.
“Rievaulx Abbey,” Claudia said, beating Connor to the announcement by a fraction of a second. One of her aunts was passionate about architecture and medieval history and had once dragged Claudia on a tour of the country’s most notable abbeys. It hadn’t exactly been Claudia’s idea of fun as a teenager, but her aunt was good company, so it hadn’t been too bad. “Heritage England look after it. We’ll need to get them to clear the place.”
“Suspected terrorist threat to a national treasure?” Becker hazarded.
“That’ll do nicely. Raj, get me someone on site on the phone.”
“How fortunate I acceded to the inestimable Captain Ryan’s request to spend large amounts of taxpayers’ money keeping a helicopter on standby,” Lester remarked, joining them on the floor of the control room. “I believe that can have you there in under an hour and a half.”
“Cheaper than the speeding fines,” Cutter remarked. “All right, folks, let’s get moving, we can do the rest of the briefing in the air.”
****
The £5.5 million Eurocopter EC155 rose smoothly into the air and quickly accelerated to a steady cruising speed of 180 miles per hour. Their pilot, an ex-special forces operative who had lost a foot to an IED in Helmand Province, gave them an ETA of an hour and 17 minutes.
As yet, they had no intel on the situation on the ground. Claudia had been assured that an orderly evacuation would be conducted immediately. The local police were under orders to secure a perimeter and let no one in and nothing out. A firearms team had been despatched and would be there in approximately 20 minutes. Becker was liaising with the sergeant in charge of the six-man unit and Claudia was handling communication with the Heritage England site manager, a sane-sounding woman called Maria Webb.
Connor had pulled up a plan of the ruined abbey, which was being displayed on a large screen in the Eurocopter’s seating area while he gave a quick run down of the abbey’s history, courtesy of Wikipedia. The soldiers, with their phenomenal capacity for absorbing information, were listening to him with every appearance of interest, while they waited for some information from site that might tell them what they would be facing when they arrived on the ground.
“Quiet!” Becker held up a hand as a call came into his phone. A moment later he’d patched the sergeant in command of the ARU into the Eurocopter’s sound system. “What have you got for us, Dan?”
“There’s a light shining in one corner of the ruins. Can’t get a direct visual on it but I can see something flickering.”
“Is the area clear?”
“It will be in the next five minutes.”
“Good, keep it that way.”
“On it. And if we see something?”
“Let me know immediately.”
“Noted. Can you be more specific about the nature of the threat, Captain?”
“Regret not,” Becker said. “Matter of national security.”
The sergeant’s sigh was fully audible over the comms system. “It always is where you lot are concerned, sir. I’ll call if we see anything. Out.”
Claudia gave Becker a sympathetic look. “They do all talk to their counterparts in different forces. Not much we can do about that.”
From the look on Becker’s face, Claudia could tell he wasn’t expecting the ARC and its activities to be the subject of police gossip, but with the number of shouts they got called out to, word got around. And most of the time it worked to their advantage. Ryan had told her ages ago that their police nickname was The Monster Squad. But none of the police had ever taken their stories to the press, and that was what mattered most. Privately, there were times when Claudia doubted the wisdom of the veil of secrecy under which they operated, but that was a decision taken far, far above her paygrade and nothing she could say would influence the Minister, who did not want to answer question in the House about dinosaurs.
Claudia also kept an open channel of communication to one of her assistants in the ARC who was constantly monitoring social media channels for anything referring to the evacuation at Reivaulx. So far there had been a couple of disgruntled tweeters, but the cover story she’d fed Maria Webb for her use of a stone fall and suspected structural problems at one end of the south transept was holding good, and it hadn’t gone beyond complaints of a ruined day out. Nothing that a refund and enough free ice-cream to make the kids sick in the car on the way home wouldn’t put right. And they hadn’t yet had to openly play the terrorist card apart from to Heritage England.
Ten minutes short of their destination, Dan Simmonds, the ARU sergeant, called Becker again. “There’s someone in there.”
“You told me the place had been fully evacuated.”
“I did and it has been. Ms Webb checked the numbers leaving against the day’s ticket sales. The two tallied.”
“Then someone can’t count, or they sneaked in over a fence. Get them out of there.”
Before Simmonds had time to answer, Nick Cutter jumped into the conversation. “This Professor Cutter speaking. Take no action, Sergeant. We’ll be with you in ten minutes. Keep eyes on and report anything you see.”
“Noted. You’ve been hanging around with the boys in black too long, Professor,” Simmonds said, failing to keep the amusement out of his voice. “You’re even picking up the lingo.”
“See you in ten,” Nick said, looking as amused as the police officer sounded. “Out.”
Becker – understandably - looked pissed off.
Cutter lifted a hand to forestall his objections. “There’s a third possibility, Becker. Whoever it is might have come through the anomaly. We need to keep all contact to an absolute minimum until we know what - or who - we’re dealing with.”
Becker had the good sense not to argue. That sort of operational decision was Cutter’s call and he knew it.
The last few minutes of the flight took place in a tense silence, only broken when their pilot said, “The Abbey’s in view now, Prof. Plenty of green space there. How close do you want me to get?”
“Just don’t damage anything on the way in. You know Lester hates it when Heritage England send through compensation claims.”
“In fairness, the Stonehenge incident wasn’t Lyle’s fault,” Claudia commented.
“You weren’t there, ma’am!” one of the soldiers yelled from the back of the helicopter.
“Collateral damage,” Cutter said, waving a hand airily. “But let’s not give Lester apoplexy if we don’t have to.”
Claudia suppressed a smile. Cutter’s idea of necessary and unnecessary apoplexy didn’t entirely accord with her boss’s. In response to a question from their pilot, Cutter vetoed Becker’s suggestion of an overflight of the site by the helicopter so they could asses the situation on the ground. He didn’t want to spook anything – and anyone – that might be down there.
Their pilot brought the Eurocopter down on a large expanse of grass just to one side of the main carpark. They were partially obscured from the abbey by trees and it was obvious that the police had blocked the road in both directions, so they weren’t in danger of being watched by bystanders on the public highway.
The soldiers jumped down from the helicopter and unloaded their equipment before Claudia and the science team left their seats. They all knew the drill by now, and there were some operational matters that Ryan had always refused to compromise. Soldiers before civilians was the rule, and even Cutter had stopped trying to argue with that, much to Claudia’s relief.
Three minutes later, she enforced the ladies first rule, and preceded the science team out onto the grass. Becker was already deep in conversation with a stocky man with short, greying hair who looked to be in his early-40s, dressed in a black polo shirt, black trousers and a bulky tactical vest, carrying a short-barrelled rifle slung across his chest.
“Sergeant Simmonds? Claudia Brown, Home Office.” The man’s grip was firm but not bruising. “This is Professor Nick Cutter.”
Cutter stuck his hand out, smiling. He was finally starting to learn social graces.
“There’s definitely someone in there, ma’am,” Simmonds said. “As instructed we’ve not engaged.”
“Good. Thank you. Captain Becker and his men will take things from here, Sergeant, but please keep your men in position.”
“Ma’am.” Simmonds kept an impassive look on his face and didn’t ask any questions. “We kept Maria Webb on site in case you need any information from her.”
Claudia nodded, but for the moment couldn’t think of anything she needed from her.
“Our priority is to do a sweep of the abbey to locate anyone who shouldn’t be here,” Becker said, glancing at Cutter to see if he was going to jump in and contradict him.
“That’ll be a good start,” Cutter acknowledged, and for a horrible moment, Claudia thought he was going to call Becker ‘laddie’ but to her relief the L word didn’t cross his lips, an exercise in diplomacy for which Claudia was profoundly grateful.
Becker quickly issued orders to his team to conduct a search of the ruins for the anomaly and the person seen by the firearms officers, Connor plonked himself down on a bench with his laptop ready to tap into his database in response to any creature sightings.
“Yell me when you’ve found it,” Connor instructed. “I’ll take some readings.”
“Stephen, take a look around,” Cutter said. “I’ll make sure that lot don’t get into mischief.” He promptly set off after the soldiers, Abby hard on his heels. When Becker tried to protest, Cutter called back, “Stick with Stephen, he’ll find whoever it is faster than your lot! I want to get a look at the anomaly.”
“Professor!” Becker’s voice was urgent, but Cutter was well used to going his own way and didn’t even look back.
The hunt was on.
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no subject
Date: 2018-07-05 07:38 pm (UTC)I love how you've made Becker both the new boy, needing some instruction on how things work, but also perfectly competent in himself.
LOL for Claudia and Ryan's conversation. I was giggling.
That poem made me want to cry. Brilliant.
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Date: 2018-07-05 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-05 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-05 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-06 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-06 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-06 02:58 pm (UTC)Ooh,I wonder who’s inside. *runs to join the hunt*
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Date: 2018-07-06 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-06 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-07 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-07 07:13 am (UTC)*does happy dance*
One of my favourite places, although the locals should have had someone up at the Temples- you get a clear view of the site from the top of the hill.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-07 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-08 07:06 pm (UTC)*sporfles*
But, Cutter is learning manners? That was shocking! I'm sure that's Claudia's doing *g*
Claudia and Ryan's conversation at the beginning was hilarious. Poor 'lad' Becker is the new one in the office, but he is doing well so far.
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Date: 2018-07-08 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-19 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-19 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-09-09 02:45 pm (UTC)Ryan had told her ages ago that their police nickname was The Monster Squad.
LMAO
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Date: 2018-09-09 04:50 pm (UTC)