Soft Target 04 - The 18th Brigade

by Conrad Jones

  “So the Afghan forces had no idea what they were delivering, or why?” Major Timms asked.

  “No, none at all. They were under the impression that the weapons were deactivated, and that we were completing the handovers purely to identify possible al-Qaeda operatives amongst the Taliban.

  “Where do you think the leak came from then?” Major Timms pressed.

  The director looked toward Janet Walsh for confirmation that he could answer the question, and she nodded in his direction.

  “We can only assume that Rashid Ahmed has turned against us,” the director said.

  “Your agency leaked the news about Rashid dealing arms to the Taliban didn’t they?” Tank accused the director. He had a feeling that MI5 had lost control of its informer and had punished him for the betrayal by literally destroying him in the press, which in turn led to the collapse of his bank.

  “There may have been a leak in our department, but it is purely speculation,” he answered Tank`s question with his head down, all his earlier bravado had now gone.

  “Who deployed the Brigade to protect him?” Major Timms asked, enjoying seeing his opposite number on the rack.

  “We did,” the director replied.

  “Why wasn’t his wife given the same protection?” Tank asked.

  The director looked to the Minister of Defence but she looked away failing to meet his gaze. Tank spotted that there was the chink in the bullshit armour, their united front had a weak spot and he aimed to capitalise on it in order to get to the absolute truth. Tank hated bureaucracy, especially when the taskforce was about to become involved. His agents would walk into any situation that he asked them to, but he wanted the real situation exposed before he could even begin to come up with a realistic action plan. The director remained silent, ignoring his question.

  “Why wasn’t Rashid Ahmed`s wife offered the same protection as he was, it`s standard procedure surely?” Tank repeated.

  The director coughed into his fist and blushed.

  “It was an oversight I`m afraid,” he mumbled.

  “Bullshit, you left her exposed as a lesson to Rashid Ahmed for leaking information about the arms deals didn’t you?” Tank laughed sourly. He hated the intelligence services and their underhand methods. Tank called a spade a spade, an arms dealer was always an arms dealer, and a liar was always a liar.

  “I`m afraid the details of the incident are still a little sketchy, too much so for me to comment any further,” the director bumbled on.

  “You think Rashid Ahmed betrayed the intelligence services, so you exposed his past, destroying his financial institution, and left his wife exposed as a lesson to him,” Tank clapped his hands in applause.

  The uniformed policemen were aghast at what was being said. The world of domestic crime fighting is a very different one to the cynical world of espionage and covert operations, where people were erased and disposed of like refuse, as if they never existed. Angry glances and expressions of disbelief were shared across the table.

  “We could not know that she would be targeted,” the director replied angrily.

  “She wasn’t, Rashid Ahmed was the target, because you hung him out to dry in every national newspaper in the country. You invited someone to have a crack at him, trying to force him back into service,” Tank answered him with the same amount of venom.

  “Rashid Ahmed is an international arms dealer with a history of peddling death and destruction stretching back thirty years or more,” the director snapped back.

  “Exactly, not the type of man I would trust, especially to arm our enemies with weapons that will ultimately be used to kill our own troops. Someone has displayed a dreadful lack of judgement when they chose to ally with this man, and he in turn has paid a terrible price for his betrayal,” Major Timms said.

  “I`m guessing that if he wasn’t being protected by a private security firm, then he wouldn’t be alive right now,” Tank stared at the Minister of Defence. She broke his stare and looked down at the table.

  “That`s ridiculous and downright libellous,” the director replied, anger was making his voice shake.

  “It`s the truth. If he was under MI5 protection when the suspected leak occurred then Rashid Ahmed would have been erased,” Tank continued despite the worried expressions on the faces of the regular law enforcement officers.

  “I think that now would be a good time for a break,” the Minister of Defence stood up to signal an end to proceedings, but no one moved for a long time.

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  North Stack

  Rashid Ahmed sat in a huge leather armchair and watched the waves crashing against the North Stack hundreds of feet below the cliffs. The rise and fall of the waves seemed to calm his shattered nerves slightly. He held the telephone tightly in his sweaty hand as he waited for it to ring. The sudden appearance of two huge bodyguards, almost out of thin air had rattled him badly. He thought that they had come to kill him. The telephone conversation that he`d had earlier with his contact in the British intelligence agency had prompted the close personal protection agents to reveal themselves. The agency thought that it would give him some piece of mind. The Brigade had been protecting him covertly for nearly a month, and from the brief and curt exchange of words he`d had with them, they were annoyed that they`d had to reveal their presence.

  “What`s the point in you protecting me if they found it so easy to kill my wife?” Rashid blurted out at the Brigade men, frustrated that the intelligence agent tasked with looking after him still refused to answer his phone.

  The 18th Brigade men looked at each other blankly, sharing a feeling of contempt for their charge.

  “No one was protecting your wife Mr Ahmed, and more to the point you`re still alive aren`t you?”

  “I was told by my contact that my family would be protected. His promises are worthless,” Rashid quivered as he spoke, sadness overwhelmed him. The death of his beautiful young wife was beginning to eat into him. His eyes became misty with tears and he turned away from the bodyguards so that they couldn’t see him weeping.

  “You were being protected Mr Rashid, but you chose to hide and leave your wife behind to run your affairs. She was always going to be vulnerable on her own.”

  “Why wasn’t she protected too if she was in danger?” Rashid whimpered.

  “The government are only paying for one protection team, and they are paid to shadow you,” a Brigade man answered him clinically.

  “What do you mean `paid for`? I`m supposed to be under government protection,” Rashid turned to face the man angrily.

  “We are contracted by the government Mr Rashid, but there are financial restrictions to our service. We do what we are paid for and we make recommendations to the government if more protection is required. Then it is down to them to respond,” the big guard shrugged his shoulders.

  “Did you recommend that my wife required extra protection?” Rashid asked wiping his running nose with his sleeve. He sniffled noisily waiting for an answer.

  “We recommended it on day one of the contract. Unless you and your wife were permanently joined at the hip, then she was always in need of her own close protection team, always,” the Brigade man explained.

  “Are you telling me that she was not protected to save money,” Rashid`s sadness was replaced by anger.

  “I`m saying that we are contracted to protect you, and so far we have a one hundred percent record, we also recommended that your wife needed her own personal protection squad. I have no idea why the government chose not to employ another team.”

  “I need to bury my wife, when will they be coming for me?”

  “When will who, be coming for you?”

  “The government men, the ones that are looking after me,” Rashid snapped angrily.

  “We have no direct contact with our employer Mr Rashid, we just keep you alive until we are told not to, and on the flip side of things, we haven`t lost a contract primary yet, so you are safe for now,” he sneered.r />
  Rashid walked to the wide window and watched the sea again. There was a puffin flying near to the edge of the cliff. The wind was blowing so strong that it was hovering stationary in mid air despite flapping its wings rapidly. The wind dropped slightly and it soared off into the mountain mist toward the sea.

  “You are mercenaries, nothing more. What use are two men against these people. It will not take them long to find me, and then what will two mercenaries do?”

  “Who said there were two men?” the Brigade man smiled brightly.

  Rashid looked out of the window again and studied the thick foliage, but he couldn’t detect any more guards out there. He looked into the Brigade man`s eyes for a flicker of untruth, but again he could see nothing to indicate that he was lying.

  “Let`s get down to business. The plans for this place show a panic room built beneath the staircase. We`ll need to see that, and we also need to see the visibility across the headland from the downstairs windows. Are all the storm shutters in full working order?”

  The Brigade man looked hard into Rashid`s eyes, taking full charge of the situation with his assertive manner. Rashid could see why this man was a bodyguard. His eyes were like those of a shark, alive but ice cold. Rashid could tell that killing someone would not be a problem to this man. All the begging and pleading in the world would not bring a flicker of compassion into those eyes. It should have made Rashid feel safer, but it didn’t.

  “How do you know about the panic room?” Rashid was intrigued. Only Rashid and the architect, and the builders he employed should have known about that. It had been part of the construction contract that the interior modifications were kept a secret. The plans submitted to the council and the fire department didn’t show the special additions, and because of its remote location, no one had ever been to the house to verify them.

  “It`s our job to know everything Mr Rashid, that`s what we get paid for, and we are the best at what we do. As I told you earlier we haven`t lost a primary yet.”

  “I don`t like that,” Rashid said regaining some of his composure.

  “You don`t like what exactly?”

  “Being a `primary`,” Rashid said, “It makes me sound like a cancer.”

  The Brigade man looked to his colleague who smirked. There were many in the 18th Brigade that would have agreed with his analogy. Most of the Brigade men that had seen active service had completed several tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. Islamic extremism had been the enemy for all of them, and it left most of them carrying a burning hatred of anything Muslim. The analogy of extremism spreading across the planet like a cancer was easy for them to imagine. Rashid saw the silent communication between his protectors and it worried him further still.

  “Primary is just the word we use for our charges, or the people we protect, it`s not an insult,” the Brigade man brushed the comment aside and got back to business in a professional manner.

  “Yes, I understand, come this way and I`ll show you the strong room,” Rashid resigned himself to be compliant with the two guards. At least he wasn`t alone anymore, although he almost wished that he was.

  “Tell me about the storm shutters, I couldn’t get a definitive layout from the plans. Where they added later on?”

  “Yes,” Rashid paused at the top of the stairs which led down to the bedrooms on the ground floor. “They were fitted to protect the glass wall in the first floor living room.”

  “What about the ground floor?”

  “No, there was no need to protect them because the headland plants act as a windbreak. They are only fitted to the first floor windows.”

  Rashid answered the big bodyguard`s questions politely, but his mind wasn’t really on the job in hand. He was worried about burying his wife. He didn’t really see how he could do it in safety with any dignity left intact for her or her family. If he buried her normally the press would turn it into a circus. If he handed her body back to her family for burial then they would probably never tell him where she was buried. Rashid couldn’t bear the thought of not being at her internment, it wasn’t right.

  “Where is the entrance to the panic room?” the bodyguard interrupted his tortured thoughts.

  “What?” he muttered.

  “I asked you where the panic room entrance is,” the Brigade man repeated the question slowly, as if Rashid were stupid.

  They had reached the bottom of the wide staircase which brought them to a `U` shaped corridor. Bedrooms led off the walls furthest away from the stairs. The staircase was positioned in the centre of the `U`. The Brigade man walked around the staircase looking for the panic room entrance, first down one corridor and then back down the other. He tapped the walls searching for the entrance, and then looked at Rashid confused.

  “Where is the entrance?” he asked.

  “It is very well hidden isn’t it?” Rashid enjoyed feeling in control for the moment.

  “There are no obvious breaks in the walls, no fake broom cupboard underneath, it`s probably the best one I`ve seen so far, I can`t identify the entrance, which means that I wouldn’t know that there was a panic room unless I`d seen the plans,” the Brigade man admitted.

  Rashid walked to the foot of the stairs and kneeled down at the base of the first step. He slipped his fingers beneath the carpet on the first riser, and there was an audible click. The first four stairs lifted like the trunk of a car, hinged further up the staircase, revealing a dark narrow passage beneath. Rashid waved his arm like a maitre de showing an important customer to their table in an expensive restaurant.

  “I`m impressed,” said the Brigade man peering into the darkness.

  “I hope that I never need to use it. I built it to hide from the British intelligence services, in case they discovered my occupation,” Rashid said resignedly, as if he was talking about another life.

  “Let`s hope that you don’t have to use it. How long can you remain in there?” the Brigade man knew that there would be a tungsten steel capsule buried somewhere in the dank passageway. Breaking in without a laser cutting torch was impossible, blowing it up was not an option, it was indestructible. Air would be pumped in by a solar powered generator which would be hidden somewhere far away from the building. The only time restraint on survival inside the pod was the amount of food and water that was stored in there.

  “Six weeks, so I`m told,” Rashid answered. It was like asking most normal people how fast does your car go, few have actually taken them to the absolute limit.

  “Six weeks, I wouldn’t fancy the smell in there after six weeks,” the Brigade man recognised that Rashid was repeating the salesman`s pitch verbatim. The amount of human waste generated over a six week period was not something that could easily be disguised in an enclosed space. His experience on covert missions told him that the timescale of human endurance in that environment would be less than half that period of time.

  “Yes, I have to agree with you, apparently the waste disposal unit sits above a deep chamber drilled into the rock bed, but I`m sure the smell would soon become an issue shall we say,” Rashid wittered on as if it were important, his mind was on darker things.

  “Okay, I`m happy that even if our position were to be breached, that you could be made safe from harm in the panic room. If in the unlikely event there comes a time were you have to take refuge in there, then it is absolutely imperative that you remain in there until someone contacts you. I assume there is an, all clear, signal in there?” the Brigade man asked matter of factly.

  “Yes, the activation button that I used cannot be used to open the pod once someone is inside, but it will alert the occupant to the fact that someone else is either in need of shelter, or is telling you that it is safe to come out,” Rashid explained.

  “For now only you, me, and your contact at the agency will be aware of that, you must trust no one else. Is that clear?” the Brigade man frightened Rashid with his manner. “The quarry access road and the mountain trail are set with motion sensors. If anything tries to climb up this
mountain we will know about it. There is no need to worry Mr Ahmed, you`re completely safe.”

  Rashid felt a cold shiver down his spine, and despite the reassurances from one of the biggest, coldest men he`d ever encountered, he didn’t feel safe at all.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Salford Towers

  Jay had watched the Somali falling from the platform burning like a human torch. He grimaced at the thought, and wondered if the man was praying for the imminent impact of the cold concrete to stop the terrible pain of being burned alive. Jay had seen more than his fair share of burn victims during his tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. American `Hellfire` missiles were loaded with a toxic flammable gel which ignites on contact with the air. They are a thousand times more devastating than the biggest napalm bombs used in Vietnam. The American bombers had dropped over ten thousand Hellfire missiles on the mountain cave system hideaways of Afghanistan, known as the Tora Bora, trying to kill Osama bin-Laden and his affiliates. Jay had been part of a clean-up squad, part American Delta Force and part British Special Forces, who were sent in to search bombed areas looking for survivors, and evidence of confirmed kills. On many of his missions they had discovered bodies burned beyond all recognition, some of the unfortunate victims of the Hellfire missiles however were found alive, suffering dreadful burns and unbearable pain, begging to be shot and put out of their misery. The experience stayed with Jay, especially on the dark lonely nights when those terrible fleshless blackened faces haunted his dreams.