Soft Target 04 - The 18th Brigade

by Conrad Jones

  Rashid walked back into the kitchen, his temper was reaching boiling point, but what else could he do. He was in mortal fear of his life. He couldn’t leave, but he didn’t want to stay either. He was beginning to think that he was as much in danger from the agency and its mercenary thugs as he was out in the general population. Despite the collapse of his financial institution Rashid had millions stashed. He could disappear if he needed to, but if he did that he would never be allowed to resurface. He would be assassinated for sure.

  “I`m making some coffee, would you like some?” Rashid shouted to the remaining Brigade man, as he picked up the stainless steel kettle and filled it from the tap.

  The Brigade man poked his head around the corner of the kitchen area and grinned widely. He was stroking the saw edged blade of a wide steel knife on his sleeve. Rashid looked at the glinting blade and made his mind up there and then. He looked the grinning mercenary in the eye.

  “I have sold over a million machineguns to dangerous men in more countries than you could name. I have met many frightening men in my time, some of them could have killed me in the blink of an eye, trust me my friend when I tell you that I don’t frighten easily, so do you want some coffee or not,” Rashid held the big man`s gaze. The Brigade man seemed to be thinking about what Rashid had said, he could almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain.

  “Coffee would be great thanks, any chance of a biscuit?” the huge soldier became human in an instant.

  “Milk and sugar?” Rashid turned back to the kettle and switched it on. He walked across the marble tiles and reached up to open a cupboard door. He took the coffee jar down and grabbed a packet of digestives.

  “Yes please, two sugars,” the bodyguard said. He walked over to Rashid and took the packet of biscuits from him. He ripped open the packet and stuffed three digestives into his mouth at once. Rashid frowned as a flurry of biscuit crumbs showered his polished marble floor.

  “Are you hungry?” Rashid asked sarcastically. He opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk.

  “Bloody starving, I`ve not eaten since this morning,” the Brigade man mumbled spraying more crumbs across the kitchen floor.

  “Here, take your biscuits through to the lounge, and I`ll bring some sandwiches with your coffee,” Rashid took a loaf of bread from the breadbin and returned to the refrigerator. The Brigade man was starting to salivate at the thought of food coming. He was even more pleased when Rashid opened the massive Smeg refrigerator to reveal a veritable feast of cold meats, cheeses and smoked sausages. He took the biscuits into the living area and happily looked out across the dark headland to the crashing ocean hundreds of feet below. The white horses and foam seemed to glow in the darkness somehow reflecting what little light there was. He could hear Rashid opening and closing cupboards and the clinking of plates and cutlery. The smell of fresh coffee permeated into the room, adding to the anticipation of satiating his hunger. He had munched through half the digestives before Rashid appeared carrying a steaming cup of coffee and a plate piled high with sandwiches.

  “Here you are, tuck in, if we`re going to be stuck up here then we may as well be civilised to one another,” Rashid said as he placed the plate on the low coffee table.

  “Thanks, he was only joking about cutting your throat you know,” the Brigade man said biting into a smoked sausage and cheese sandwich that was two inches thick. He chewed it greedily and then slurped the hot coffee to wash it down.

  “Like I said earlier, I don’t frighten easily,” Rashid smiled warmly, nodding like a wise old sage, who knew the secrets of the universe. Of course he didn’t know the secrets of the universe, but he did know that the Brigade man`s coffee and sandwiches were laced with enough diazepam to drop an elephant.

  Chapter Forty Six

  Sergeant Mel Hickey

  Sergeant Hickey put his metal foot down and the Ford increased speed silently. The power in the engine was impressive for a small saloon car, and he indicated before moving into the outside lane, overtaking a long line of cars and caravans that were heading into the mountains of North Wales. A large Japanese four by four was struggling to pull its mobile domicile up a long steep gradient, and was causing a tailback behind it. He passed the caravan and looked left at group of three customised hatchbacks that were travelling convoy like in the slow lane. There were big bore exhausts fitted to each one. The rear vehicle was fully loaded with passengers all of them were black skinned. Mel thought that they were probably Africans at first glance.

  The second vehicle was the same, and he could almost have been passing the same car twice, fully loaded, all black males. The driver was deep in conversation with a mobile phone pressed to his ear. The third vehicle had only a solitary male, also black African, and Mel instinctively knew that he was talking to the man in the car behind him. The driver glanced toward him as he passed by and Sergeant Hickey caught a glint of light from his face, gold teeth probably, very classy.

  The dual carriageway levelled out for a half a mile or so before it turned gently to the left and then ran steeply down a mountain side, before following the natural path of a river valley which snaked sixty miles along the Welsh coastline toward the island of Anglesey.

  He continued to overtake the slower vehicles and had almost forgotten the unusual convoy of hatchbacks, when he passed a panel van on the inside lane. The interior light was switched on and the passenger was reading a map and talking on his telephone. The driver was a large male, shaved head and he had a blue tattoo beneath his ear, probably a swastika. Mel looked again quickly before accelerating away from them. He recognised the passenger as an 18th Brigade General, who had been in Iraq when he first arrived for his tour with the mercenary outfit. The Brigade General had only stayed in Iraq for two weeks of Sergeant Hickey`s first tour, before being recalled to the UK, where he now looked after the domestic security business in the Liverpool area. The driver wasn’t familiar to him but he fitted the bill as a Brigade employee. Mel had heard from his neighbour Ross, via old Jim that the Brigade had been having trouble with the Somali drug gangs from Manchester. He also knew that they had been involved in some heavy duty personal protection business domestically.

  Past experiences had taught Sergeant Hickey that coincidences rarely existed in the theatre of conflict and espionage. He had a saying, if it walks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then the chances are that it is a duck. If the Brigade were protecting Rashid Ahmed then that was an unfortunate coincidence, but fore warned is fore armed. The fact that the Brigade van had a convoy of black Africans neatly tucked behind them, shadowing them at a discreet distance could also be a coincidence, but Sergeant Hickey didn’t think so. He was seventy miles away from the quarry at the foot of Holyhead Mountain, where the path led up to North Stack, and his target. He floored the accelerator with his prosthetic limb, if he pushed the Ford to its limit then he could arrive in time to study the quarry before any else arrived.

  Chapter Forty Seven

  The Quarry

  Terry Nick shivered as a gust of icy wind travelling at sixty miles an hour blew across the exposed headland off the Irish Sea. He really didn’t need to be here right now babysitting Rashid Ahmed, a Saudi arms dealer who had turned `supergrass`. Although it was a very lucrative contract he had other problems to deal with. The Somali drug lords were following Jay along the Welsh coastline headed directly toward them. It was a stroke of luck that Rashid had a property in such a remote location. It could be just what they needed to be able to confront the Yardies and deal with them once and for all. A gun battle on the streets of Manchester would not go unnoticed, and the fallout could put the Brigade` security business under intense scrutiny and further threaten their core business interests. He could not allow that to happen.

  The quad bike shuddered and slid precariously on the muddy headland, thick tyres spun freely in the mud spraying moss and fern into the air behind it. Terry shifted his considerable bulk into the skid and the quad righted itself onto the path a
gain. The wind howled through his clothes, even the Kevlar vest he wore offered no protection from the icy blasts. To the left he could make out two inhuman shapes approaching the edge of the cliffs which encircled the quarry below them. His sharpshooters were taking up elevated positions overlooking the quarry and the path which led from it. Their camouflage ponchos made them look like bushes or boulders from a distance, even through binoculars they weren`t distinguishable as human.

  The path narrowed and twisted steeply following a man made ledge carved into the rock face, and then zigzagged in a series of hairpin bends until it reached the quarry floor two hundred feet below him. The quarry hadn’t been active for nearly a hundred years. The rocks mined from the base of the mountain were used to build the one and a half miles of breakwater, which protected Holyhead`s marina and deep water harbour from the frequent violent storms that developed in the Irish Sea. Once the massive marine structure had been completed the quarry went out of business and the miners moved on to other parts of Wales to work. About the same time as the breakwater was completed miners at Dolgellau hit a gold lode and many of the miners from Holyhead headed there fuelled by gold fever.

  The quarry was two miles from the port town, accessed by one narrow road which was once a railway track used for shunting gigantic cubes of granite to the breakwater. The old rail track road was carved into the surrounding landscape, and was bridged every few hundred yards by a series of red brick bridges which were built to appease angry local farmers whose land had been dissected by the railway. The railway road reached the quarry and then crossed three deep man made chasms which Mother Nature had filled with water. When the miners left the pumps stopped extracting water from the excavations and soon treacherously deep ponds were formed. The chasms were so deep the water was always bitterly cold and had a black sheen to it, almost as if they were filled with crude oil.

  The quarry yard opened up beyond the ponds and two buildings stood alone, one had a tall granite chimney built at one end of the gable. It was a renovated furnace, once the heart of the quarry but now a tourist information centre. The second building was a derelict roofless warehouse. It had been left dilapidated for the visitors to wonder at. One hundred yards beyond the buildings, a sheer rock face rose two hundred feet up to the mountain shoulder and the sloping headlands. The narrow manmade ledge which zigzagged up the cliff face was the only way from the quarry up to North Stack.

  Terry approached the top of the rock trail and slowed the quad down as it dipped and started to descend. The wind dropped suddenly, as it was blocked by the huge quarry walls and Terry felt instantly better, warmer and more confident that things would work out for the better tonight. He had men positioned on the cliff tops, and more in the quarry yard. Once their visitors passed by the ponds there was no way out, they`d be trapped in a killing zone. All he had to do now was wait. In less than an hour the Manchester Yardies would be at the bottom of the quarry lakes too deep for even a technical diver to find their bodies, and then he could get back to running the Brigade business as usual.

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Tank

  John Tankersley leaned forward on the bench seat to try and make himself heard. The enormous twin rotor blades of a military Chinook were starting to gyrate, preparing to take Tank and a snatch squad to RAF Valley, Anglesey. The airbase was six miles away from the bottom of Holyhead Mountain, and from there they would take trucks onto Holy Island. Tank had chosen to employ a six man team from `The Regiment`, better known as the SAS, to carry out the extraction. The plan was to transport the squad up the only drivable road, which would take them to the tourist area at South Stack Lighthouse. From there they would be at approximately the same altitude as Rashid Ahmed`s residence, although they would have to traverse over miles of rocky slopes to circumnavigate the mountain peak, they would eventually approach the building from the blind spot to the south. No one would anticipate an approach from that direction.

  “The close protection squad are mercenaries, but don’t underestimate them. They will be covering this road here,” Tank said pointing out the old railway line on a detailed map. Camouflage faces, smeared green and black looked on as he explained the finer details of the extraction.

  “The road is an old railway track, it`s flanked by steep banks and bridged by a series of cattle crossings.”

  The elite troops could see a death trap if ever they saw one. The opportunity to be ambushed at any point along the quarry road was an obvious one to anyone with a modicum of military savvy.

  “Things don’t get any better at the quarry yard. The entire area is almost completely encircled by the quarry walls, which are sheer cliff faces hundreds of feet high in places.”

  The Regiment soldiers exchanged glances as he explained how well protected the approach to the mountain path was. It was impossible to breach. A handful of sharpshooters could defend the position against a thousand troops, and still repel them.

  “We are going to deploy here at South Stack and traverse across the shoulder of the mountain, and hit the residence from the south side here where they will least expect it,” Tank pointed to the map and the Regiment men seemed to relax. The plan made perfect sense. The only way to attack a well defended position like this mountain location was from the direction the taskforce leader had highlighted.

  “Piece of cake,” the Regiment commander said sarcastically.

  “That`s why you`re here, because it`s too easy for us,” Tank replied laughing.

  “How come you`re not sending your people in?” the SAS man asked, lowering his voice slightly.

  “What, hiking across a mountain in the dark for miles, now that`s got your name written all over it,” Tank said. “Besides, some of your boys are looking a little sloppy, and a good walk will do them good,” they laughed, sharing the sarcasm.

  “Seriously though, my people will be here, at South Stack,” he pointed to the map again to explain where the taskforce would be during the extraction. “I`ll be here with a unit covering any attempt to bring him out down the quarry road,” there was a derelict hotel perched on the end of the quarry road where it joined the breakwater service road, and also branched off to the town centre.

  “If they see you coming somehow then my guess is they will have an escape plan, you`ll have no way of pursuing them from the mountain, so we`ll have to cut off this route here, it`s the only way in and out,” Tank sat back. The Regiment men followed suit as the huge flying machine lifted off the roof of the Canning Place police headquarters. The engine noise seemed to reach a new deafening level as it hovered over the River Mersey, and then lurched forward toward the Welsh Mountains.

  Grace Farrington took the initiative realising that all further verbal communication was pointless until they arrived at the airbase. There would be a short briefing there, but they needed as much information between now and then as they could. She reached into a kit bag and handed out photocopies of the floor plans for Rashid`s residence. The eager troops studied them with professional interest, knowing where every door and closet was could save their lives. The drawings were relatively accurate although some of the later alterations hadn’t been added by the architect. The Chinook cleared the city`s airspace and accelerated to its full speed.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  The quarry

  Sergeant Mel Hickey slowed the Ford down as he reached the bright lights of Holyhead town centre. His map showed a wide open grassy area which sloped down to the shore of the port`s yacht marina. It had a wide promenade road dissecting it. He studied the map as he reached the Newry Beach. He could clearly see the flotilla of yachts anchored in the marina, protected by the breakwater which was hidden by the darkness across the harbour. A lighthouse at the end of the breakwater flashed in the darkness. The promenade road appeared to be a dead end, as the road signs marked it as a `no through road`, but the map told him differently.

  The map depicted a narrow service road which ran through a copse of trees, before splitting into two veins
, the one on the right led to the breakwater, and the other to the left was the quarry access road. At the junction was an entrance, overgrown with bushes and small trees. There were tall stone gateposts barely visible in the dense foliage, beyond them was the derelict husk of the old Soldier`s Point Hotel. It was a castle like building with fortifications along its roof line. It had once been painted white and could be seen standing like a proud sentinel from the promenade. It was once the destination for the port`s rich Victorian visitors who championed it because of its coastal location and stunning views of the mountain and the sea.

  He drove slowly down the twisting lane and killed the headlights as he approached the ruined hotel. It took a while for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. He thought about leaving his vehicle there and heading to the quarry on foot, but his prosthetic legs were not designed for trekking that far, plus his stumps would be a swollen mess by the time he reached the quarry. There was little choice but to drive on toward the quarry and try to gauge the lay of the land from nearer to the mountain. If his assumptions were correct then the 18th Brigade were protecting Rashid Ahmed in a remote residence up the mountain, well beyond his reach. One of their Generals was behind him en route, being followed by Somali antagonists that they had been having a turf war with. Sergeant Mel Hickey had to assume that there would be some kind of violent engagement and his money was on the Brigade coming out of that as the victors. The imminent encounter would compromise the security at Rashid Ahmed`s mountain residence. News would leak out sooner or later and then they would have to move him to a new safe house. When they moved him Sergeant Hickey would be waiting for them with a few surprises. He engaged first gear and took the Ford at a slow crawl onto the pitch dark quarry road.