INTRODUCTION

Meet Johnny Roberts. My avatar.

His name is Johnny Roberts. That’s not his real name, but he has had more names than he can remember. He lives in a house with no number on a road with no name. He carried a gun for more than fifty years and used it more times than we care to think about.

After ten years as a Royal Marine Commando, where he was taught how to be aggressive and how to take life, He was flipped to become a police officer with SCO19, the Counter Terrorist Specialist Firearms Unit, London, as a team leader. Both occupations allowed him to legally carry a firearm, for good reason.

When he decimated the indoor assault course record at Hendon Police College, Mr G, a person you will meet later, advised him not to show out so much, not to show his true skills, to be Mr Average. He never really knew how hard that was to do.

But these were his day jobs because he also worked covertly for an organisation that does not, and never has, existed. he carried a gun 24/7 because he had upset a lot of people and became a target, as did his family. 

In his day job, he shared his expertise as an experienced bodyguard and firearms instructor with men and women who would become PPOs (Personal Protection Officers) for the Royal Family, the Prime Minister, some Members of Parliament, visiting dignitaries, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and many others.

 As the team leader for the infamous Black Team, the team that brought a new style to firearms operations in the early days of the department and the first multiple shooting of ‘bandits’ in London.

 Sometimes, it became necessary to deal with people protected by men or women whom he had trained, no easy task. 

Though he retired from his day job, it is more difficult to retire from an occupation you never had.

 But he had been left with one final task, not a simple one, as it would involve others who, like him, would never retire. 

But his operational time ended when his link, for want of a better word, passed. All he received was a coded message: Stand down.

It was some time before he discovered this, as his direct link had also passed. His tenuous line to the organisation had been severed. This was the pre-arranged signal to work on a new project that no one, for various reasons, had been able to do but which he had been prepared for should such an event occur. Can he do it? We don’t know. You’ll need to follow on and see.

That is how it works; you keep going until your link is broken. 

But what is a person like him? This is a very hard question to answer. His story may explain a little, a lot, or nothing. 

It all begins with the young marine travelling to places he had never heard of, at the incident that led to his recruitment into an organisation that does not exist.

 9 Troop, G Company, 1974

A villa in the Turkish sector of Paphos

 The Original Black Team

Ready for a demo at Bramshill Police College