Soft Target 04 - The 18th Brigade

by Conrad Jones

  “You don’t know where the leak is coming from do you?” the Major asked.

  “No, we don’t, but I know that it cannot be the taskforce because you have had no involvement so far,” she answered honestly.

  “You`re talking to the wrong people Minister,” Tank said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You need to ask Rashid Ahmed if he is still on side, or if he is leaking information to the Taliban,” Tank answered.

  “What? Do you think he`s just going to tell us even if he is?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes, given the right incentive to do so,” Tank nodded.

  “I don’t understand. If it was so easy why haven’t MI5 done that?”

  “Because they`re always looking for the subtle way of doing things, like leaving his wife unprotected.”

  “I don’t believe that was deliberate.”

  “Then you`re a gullible fool and the intelligence agencies are hanging you out to dry Minister,” the Major interrupted.

  She snapped her head toward him angrily at the affront, but her eyes registered that he had made a valid point. She was protecting the agency without questioning their role in the whole scenario. Their behaviour had been questionable at best, evil at worst.

  “With all due respect there have been eleven ministers in your role while we have served in the taskforce, politicians come and go, and the intelligence director has probably seen another half dozen more than we have. They will play the game with you Minister, but only up to the point where it all goes tits up, and then it was all your decision making that was to blame,” Tank leaned against the desk and chewed the end of a pencil thoughtfully.

  “Okay, I`ll accept the fact that their loyalty to any government is limited, but surely their agenda is the same as ours,” she asked.

  Tank and the Major exchanged amused glances. The Minister had no idea of just how sinister the world of spooks and spies was.

  “Do you recall your predecessor?” the Major asked innocently, Tank smiled recalling the man, and the scandal behind his departure.

  “Of course I do, that was a terrible business. His suicide was most unexpected,” she seemed to be genuinely moved by the subject.

  “How long had you worked with him?” Tank asked.

  “I`m not sure, ten years, maybe more,” she replied.

  “Did you know that he had a penchant for teenage boys?” the Major asked.

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous, he was married with three children. His wife is a very close friend of mine, still heartbroken the poor woman,” Janet Walsh couldn’t see what was coming, but she knew that something nasty was on its way.

  “I`m afraid it`s true, and more to the point he fell for the oldest trick in the book, just weeks into his first term as Defence Minister, after that he was literally their puppet,” the Major said.

  “I don’t know what you`re talking about Major,” she seemed to sag visibly.

  “He was caught in a honey trap Minister, lured into a seedy hotel room by two pretty young rent boys, where he proceeded to take cocaine and indulge in what can only be described as depraved sex with underage boys, and it was all on camera,” Tank continued with the story.

  “It was a set up from the beginning to the end, all paid for by your friends at the intelligence agency. Having the Minister of Defence, responsible for allocating huge budgets, in your pocket for a few years is a priceless asset, however your colleague obviously couldn’t handle the thought of his wife and family one day finding out about his sordid pastime,” the Major finished off the tale.

  “Your current personal secretary has a liking for white powder products too, and one of her dealers is on the payroll, she is passing information from your cabinet meetings straight back to the agency. They know what you are going to do before you do,” Tank added.

  “What!!” the Minister put her face in her hands trying to hide from the shocking truth.

  “The Prime Minister`s private aide has also strayed across the line into rent boys and drugs, needless to say they have quite a file on him already,” the Major added fuel to the flames.

  “I don’t believe all this, how would you know what they are up to in such detail?”

  “It`s our job to know,” the Major answered.

  “Not everyone in the agency is in total agreement with their methods, and so we have informers on the inside that keep us up to date with what`s going on. We have to know who we can trust and who is leaking information, and that includes cabinet ministers,” Tank said.

  “My god, spies spying on other spies, who can I trust?” she said bemused by the whole thing. The Minister looked like she was going to be sick, and the colour drained from her cheeks.

  “Don`t trust anyone Minister, it`s really that simple,” Tank replied.

  She seemed to gather her wits around her somewhat, and she breathed in deeply before she spoke.

  “Okay, now that I know where I stand, how do we deal with this cache of arms?” she said confidently.

  “The point is Minister that the agency and their mercenaries are guarding the only person that really knows if that arms cache is heading for another ambush or not, Rashid Ahmed,” Tank sat down opposite her and stared into her eyes. She nodded in agreement.

  “What do you suggest Major,” the Minister steeled herself, regaining some of her composure.

  “We need to bring him in immediately, and hold him under the counter terrorism legislation until we are happy that we know the truth. Rashid Ahmed wants to return to the Middle East immediately to bury his wife. We need him to think that his Muslim brothers are going to be made aware of his cooperation with the British government over the last few years. If we can rattle him then he might think twice about coming clean. We have to make him think that he is no longer being protected by Her Majesty`s secret service,” the Major said.

  She nodded in agreement again, looking lost.

  “I`ll have the director call you with his location immediately, and have him handed over to you for interrogation,” she swallowed hard trying to recover her air of authority, but she failed miserably.

  “We know where he is Minister, and we have to take him from them,” the Major said.

  “I don’t understand, how do you know where he is?” she looked out of her depth again.

  “Like I said earlier, it`s our job to know.”

  “Of course it is,” she said smiling nervously.

  “No one must know that we are going to take him Minister, except you of course,” Tank said.

  “We must consider the possibility that the leak has come from the agency itself. Therefore they must not know that we are taking him, it`s the only way to be certain,” the Major concurred with the scenario.

  “I understand, what about the protection unit that he has, they`ll be armed won`t they?”

  “We know that and we`ll take Rashid with minimal casualties, that`s the best we can say at this stage,” Tank said.

  “I`ll set up a snatch unit straight away and pick him up,” Tank continued heading for the door. He could smell trouble a mile away, and he sensed that there was plenty waiting for them.

  Chapter Forty Four

  Omar

  Omar overtook a large Japanese four wheel drive vehicle, which was pulling a caravan along the North Wales coast road. His English was very good now but he was still not accustomed to the names of Japanese trucks, and they all looked the same to him. The carriageway was four lanes wide separated down the middle by a low reinforced metal barrier. His headlights illuminated the dual carriageway which climbed gradually into the distance as it cut through the granite mountains at the edge of the Snowdon range. To his right was an inky black void where the land fell away steeply down to the River Dee four miles away, and in the far distance on the horizon the lights of Liverpool twinkled yellow against the night sky.

  “Where are you?” the voice on his cell phone asked.

  “Passing Holywell, init,” Omar answered glancing at the
name of the town on a road sign as it flashed by in the darkness.

  “We`re approaching Chester, about fifteen minutes behind you,” the voice said.

  “Nice one man, how many soldiers you got with you?” Omar asked accelerating harder to keep the van he was following in sight. The brake lights brightened and disappeared around a bend in the distance.

  “There are two cars, mine and another twenty minutes behind us.”

  “Nice one, they`re cruising at sixty five, put your foot down and you`ll catch up to me. I`ll call if they change direction,” Omar clicked the phone off and turned the stereo up.

  The previous days flashed by in his mind as he concentrated on following the distant rear lights of the Brigade vehicle. He shivered as he thought about his friend Lewis crucified to the wall in a tower block, thousands of miles from home. After everything they had been through in Mogadishu, it didn’t seem right for him to die that way, and someone would pay for that. Omar had no concept of the fact that he was responsible for starting the conflict with the Brigade in the first place. His memory took him to the alleyway where he`d used his knife to cut up the Brigade men. He`d cut them to send a message to the 18th Brigade, an attempt to frighten them into handing over an area of the city to them, so that he could expand their drug business. It hadn’t worked. He had stirred up a hornet`s nest, woken a sleeping giant, and losing Lewis was the price he had to pay for his foray into the dangerous world of drugs and private security. Omar had underestimated the strength and depth of the gargantuan door security company, but it wasn’t the first time he had bitten off more than he could chew.

  Three years earlier in the sun baked streets of Mogadishu, where reputations were built and maintained by the death toll a man had caused, Omar had made a similar mistake. He had stumbled across a drug deal being made on the outskirts of his neighbourhood. Mogadishu is carved up into blocks controlled by violent militias. Each militia protects their turf vehemently, to the point where straying into rival territory is a mistake that would cost you your life. The roads between rival blocks are counted as grey areas, where business deals could be conducted with impunity. Drugs arms and munitions were valuable currency, and the more a militia had, the more credibility they carried.

  That particular day Omar and Lewis watched as a large amount of drugs was exchanged for money, eight Kalashnikov rifles and a box of bullets to match. He didn’t recognise the protagonists making the deal, and he wrongly assumed that there were only a few of them because they were from weak militias. The fact was they were from the two biggest militias in Somalia. The reason they had only a few soldiers with them was because no one with any sense would attack either of them. On impulse Omar killed six men with a burst of machinegun fire before they could even move. He stole the cache of weapons and all the drugs, but the repercussions were swift and violent. His militia was threatened with annihilation unless they handed him over. Omar and Lewis were forced to leave their homes and flee for their lives.

  Three years later on he had once again repeated his mistake of underestimating his opposition. Omar had expected the Brigade to come looking for them in the pubs and clubs of Manchester, but not to come through the living room window of his woman`s fourth floor apartment. They had completely shocked him by crucifying his childhood friend to a wall. He wasn’t sure where the Brigade man he had seen leaving the tower block was headed, but he intended to follow him until he stopped, and then he would wish that he hadn’t hurt Lewis.

  Chapter Forty Five

  North Stack

  Rashid heard the dull drone of an all terrain cycle and he walked toward the kitchen window. He looked out and saw two sets of headlights, belonging to quads, coming over the horizon. Miles away below the mountain, in the distance he could see the streetlights of Holyhead glowing yellow, and the powerful intermittent revolving beam of the Breakwater lighthouse, a mile and half out to sea. The huge bodyguards didn’t appear to be concerned about the approaching vehicles, and there had been some radio messages crackling earlier, which were almost inaudible to Rashid. Now he realised that they had been talking to whoever was now approaching his remote hideaway.

  “Terry`s here,” the big Brigade man called down the stairs to his colleague.

  “Good, ask him for a pay rise, I`m bored stupid up here,” the reply came.

  “Signal the others to come in. He wants us all here to bring everyone up to date, and issue new briefs. I think something is going on.”

  “I don’t like it when you think, and you think too much.”

  “Roger that,” came the reply. More static could be heard on a coms unit somewhere. Rashid couldn’t see it but he could hear several voices acknowledging the message to rendezvous at the house. Rashid peered into the darkness, but he still couldn’t see anyone moving. He cupped his hands over his eyes to stop the lights reflecting off the window, and he peered into the night again. To the left about a hundred yards away across the headland, the undergrowth seemed to grow and move. A previously undetectable figure emerged from the deep foliage. He couldn’t distinguish the shape or form because the edges were blurred, but it turned and moved toward the house, carrying a rifle with a huge scope attached. Suddenly there was movement two hundred yards to the right, and another shadowy figure seemed to melt from the long heather, and then another directly in front of him, yet another far left, followed by two more to the right. Rashid was impressed. He felt much safer now having seen the extent of the firepower which had been deployed to protect him. It would have been impossible for an assassin to approach the house past all those snipers. Perhaps the intelligence agencies were taking his safety seriously at last; unfortunately it was too late for his young wife. His stomach seemed to clench as he thought about her terrible death. The pain inside him steeled him to the cause once more. He had to know what the agency was planning for him, but his contact was still not answering his calls.

  The front door slammed shut disturbing his thoughts. He looked down into the courtyard and saw the Brigade men gathering in a rough circle. The snipers were draped in long green net ponchos, which had been weaved with ferns and heather foliage to make them invisible on the headland. Their faces were daubed black and green with camouflage face paints, only the whites of their eyes were visible, giving them an inhuman appearance. The two new arrivals seemed to be in charge of proceedings, one of them in particular was giving orders out whilst pointing to a map. The conversation was brief and professional from what Rashid could see. The map was folded into a pocket, and the snipers headed off across the headlands again. Rashid watched them fading into the darkness as they passed the outer range of the artificial lighting, where they were headed he didn’t know, but he felt more secure knowing that they were out there somewhere in the darkness.

  The front door opened again, and he heard two sets of footsteps coming up the stairs. Rashid walked from the kitchen to greet them.

  “We have a problem,” Terry Nick said.

  “I`m sorry, who are you?” Rashid asked, trying to grasp some control over his situation. He was being treated like a valuable object rather than a person, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  “All you need to know is that I`m in charge, and if you do as you`re told you`ll live, if you don’t then you won`t survive until the morning,” Terry brushed past him and looked out of the panoramic windows toward the cliffs and the ocean beyond.

  “There is no access from the cliff face?” Terry quizzed the Brigade man.

  “No, we`ve completed risk assessments three hundred and sixty degrees. There is a minimal risk from the south, across the mountain but the danger zone is at twelve o`clock, the path you used is the only feasible way to get up here.”

  “Good, I want you to stay here with the primary, keep the radio to hand and the first sign of any shenanigans put him in to the panic room,” Terry Nick headed toward the stairs.

  “Primary this, primary that, put him here, stick him there, I`m sick of being talked about as if I`m not here,” Ras
hid Ahmed shouted after the Brigade leader as he disappeared down the stairs. The heavy footsteps stopped on the staircase and there was a creaking sound as he turned and climbed back up them. Terry Nick stomped back into the first floor space and approached Rashid with an evil scowl on his face. He encroached his personal space and stared deep into his eyes, his nose was inches away from Rashid`s. He was so close that Rashid could smell cigarettes on his breath.

  “Listen to me Mr Ahmed, and listen well. You gave up your right to be considered in anything the moment you asked for protection from the agency. Now they own your arse, and they pay me to keep it alive. If you are looking for sympathy, then look in the dictionary, it`s in between `Shit` and `Syphilis`.” The Brigade leader turned and headed for the stairs again. “If he gives you any problems cut his throat, we`ll blame the Yardies later on,” he said laughing as he stomped down the staircase.