Captain Gibson is facing huge political pressure to show his Unit is working to discourage illegal asylum seekers from coming to Britian in small, dangerous boats. He sends his top spy (Amelia Hartliss, or 'Melia') to the South Coast to infiltrate a violent and unsafe new group called 'MEGA', or 'Make England Great Again', (just England, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland).
Then he instructs his top freelance operative, Mickey, to work with an old colleague, a man called Ian Bann, who makes bombs. The plan is to infiltrate MEGA in the north of England, (around its HQ in Manchester), and sabotage their campaign by supplying bombs that don't work effectively.
Then, the Captain sends his Deputy Director, to go undercover and join 'Haychers', a loose amalgam of farmers, land owners and business people, who were going to be affected by the building of a high speed rail link from Birmingham, north to Manchester, and are now suffering even more from the cancellation of the project, even though buildings have been bought, and houses and woods demolished, to make way for the trains.
England is in a furious mess, with all these campaigns going on at the same time. The three friends are not even able to maintain contact, since they have such discrete responsibilities, and the lack of a friendly face and active support drives more than one off the rails. While the work continues, Captain Gibson finds his team disintegrating around him.