Four lads decide to meet up and do a robbery planned by Sweeny, an angry, agressive but small young man who is like a time bomb waiting to go off. The robbery never happens because the boys soon realise Sweeny hasn't put enough thought into the job. His closest friend Tel has a more gentle side to him and falls for a girl at a party called Kak. Gombo is released from a young offenders, and along with Tony finds Sweeny to give him a kicking which actually ends up with Sweeny giving Gombo a kicking! In the end they find an empty house where the owners are away on holiday so they decide to break in. This doesn't quite go to plan either.

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.