Tehran Decree

by James Scorpio

  Judging by the intermittent nature of the phenomena this one could be either type, it was hard to tell. It could take hours to mature into a death trap, or appear full blown in an the next instant. He put both hands to his mouth and repeatedly shouted as loud as he could sending the words to all and sundry.

  ‘Hello...is anyone still alive!’

  Slowly his team began to surface, as sand covered objects arose from the desert surrounds, and dusted themselves off.

  Jansen made a quick head count -- by a miracle of middle eastern quackery everyone was still alive. He tugged at his inside pocket and hoped that the explosion had not damaged his satellite phone too much. He pressed the direct line button which would put him in touch with defence minister Hayes.

  The phone put out a scratchy series of beeps above the static. A long pause and a faint voice came over the line

  ‘Hello Hayes here...’

  ‘Hold your horses sir, I can hardly hear you,’ Jansen moved around and manipulated the phone to get a better reception.

  ‘Hello Jansen speaking...it’s all over sir...the Yanks have blown everything to bloody hell with their MOAB bomb. There isn’t a stick of wood still standing here,’ defence minister Hayes came over loud and clear as he shouted into the phone.

  ‘It’s not all over commander...you need to find evidence.’

  ‘Evidence? Evidence of what sir?’

  ‘The bodies of Farid Kazeni and Habib Sharazi.’

  ‘Your bloody joking sir...the largest piece of human tissue here would be about as big as a finger nail, most of it would have been vapourised, with a lot of luck you might just find a little finger to go with the nail.’

  ‘I’ll make it clear for you commander, the PM wants evidence that we were the first on the scene, and it was us who finally cornered the BIB in the warehouse. He wants a political feather in Australia’s cap...something to show the Americans that we metaphorically pulled their nuts out of the fire, then perhaps they’ll stop blaming us for the this whole bloody debacle.’

  ‘Got your message sir...I’ll do my best,’ Jansen looked around and scanned the debris field. It was immediately obvious that no one could heave possibly survived the detonation. There wasn’t even a respectable pile of bricks to hide behind and the tallest debris pile was no more that a foot high. Jansen collected his men together.

  ‘The Yanks have done a fantastic demolition job lads however, we’re going to comb the area for human artifacts. That means we need to collect anything that is remotely human, including personal effects...especially personal effects that identify a particular person, such as wallet, driving licence, credit cards, love letters,etc.’ And we’d better start now the last thing we need is to get caught up in a ferocious sand storm.

  Over the next hour a pile of blackened, amorphous objects, and burnt clothing began to accumulate. Then the first charcoal coated, human head, appeared on top of the pile. The skull seemed to be the hardest anatomical artifact to fragment, even for a MOAB device

  The head count continued until six of the grizzly items dominated the debri. All the heads were so mutilated and burnt that it was virtually impossible to identify them by visual recognition alone. A small pile of personal items began to accumulate next to the human heads.

  Sergeant Worsely used his SAS jack knife to dig below the compacted layer of rubble in the middle of the warehouse ruins -- trying to find the administration office the BIB were using before the MOAB blast.

  The knife struck something hard and he rapidly cleared the rubbish around it. He shouted to Jansen.

  ‘I’ve found a tiled area sir...could be the admin office.’ Worsely recalled that the floor area of the main building consisted of patches of concrete slab, interspersed with compacted earth, but there was also a tiled floor in the administration office.

  Jansen looked around the immediate debris field for signs of human habitation, there just had to be some evidence of BIB presence, they could not have gotten out of the admin office before the MOAB struck.

  When the numbers were crunched, there were a number of human skulls missing, but there was also the possibility they could have been totally vapourised in the sustained heat flash, which must have desimated the entire building.

  Interestingly, non of the peripheral evidence seemed to belong to hierarchical BIB members.

  There was only one other possibility. The two men looked at each other and Worsely emulated an arcane smiled.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking sir?’

  ‘Of course, we’re both men of the world...so lets shift some of this rubbish and see if we can find the entrance to the tunnel they must have used.’

  The team worked feverishly to move as much material from the tiled area as soon as possible; thirty five minutes later a square four by four metres had been cleared.

  It was still difficult to see the splices between the tiles and Worsely fashioned a crude sweeping brush made from paper sheets and cardboard. He proceeded to sweep the entire area. Jansen watched intently as the tile pattern started to form. Some of the gaps were irregular with serrated edges where the ground was uneven, it was obviously a rough tilling job. Then he noticed that six of the tiles were neatly placed together as if they had been stuck to a wooden board or concrete slab. Jansen looked at his men and pointed to the array of tiles on the floor.

  ‘This is it gentleman...I’ll lay ten to one this is the entrance to a cellar.’ Many corporate warehouses and buildings had cellars in Muscat. Cold rooms were often incorporated for the storage provisions and supplies as well as residences for wealthier Arabs and their families. Prolonged forty degree heat tended to become an insufferable impasse, even for some of the Arab population.

  Jansen glanced toward the sun, shielded his eyes, then looked at Worsely.

  ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘What sir?’

  ‘Movement over younder...looked like a dung coloured vehicle,’Jansen pointed towards the road in the distance.

  ‘Nothing there sir.’

  'That's strange sergeant, I could swear there was a vehicle just disappearing near the horizon.’

  ‘Not likely sir...probably a car or truck turning off the road heading south.’

  ‘I’d like to agree with you sergeant...except something like that has happened two or three times lately...its a bit too surrealistic for my liking. I get the impression it’s a vehicle trying hard not be seen by us.’

  ‘You mean we’re being observed.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Your imagining things commander, the desert does that sometimes...it plays tricks on your senses. What with the heat, the endless terrain and possible mirage effects,’Jansen grimaced warily -- from his own personal experiences over many forays, in extreme conditions, he knew it was possible for the mind to make blatant mistakes of judgment. Light had its own behaviuor patterns and the brain had limited perceptibility -- it also had the ability to create graphic detail which did not actually exist in reality.

  ‘Okay sergeant, you may be right...I’ll try to relax. Lets get on with the excavation.’

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The team swept all traces of sand from the floor and Worsely wafted his hands across the top of the tiled slab indicating the need to check for booby traps. He whispered to the team.

  ‘They could still be down there and they could still be alive...so no unnecessary noise,’ after several minutes of careful digging and clearing the top surface, the tiled concrete slab was checked for wires, and carefully lifted from its mooring.

  A musty smell emanated from the exposed shaft, and Jansen peered down into a dank, black-hole. A makeshift rusting steel ladder receded into the darkness.

  Jansen put his finger to his lips indicating continued silence and caution.

  Worsely strained at the chance to go first, such adrenaline charged actions were his forte and he had lost non of his youthful daring do. He slung his Mac 10 over his shoulder and pulled out the Beretta 92F automat
ic pistol he always carried during his many sorties. He descended the steel ladder with one hand and kept the cocked Berretta poised for action in the other.

  Sergeants in the SAS and in the army generally always seemed to be large men and Worsely was no exception. His broad shouldered, six foot frame, filled the shaft space more than adequately. Jansen and the rest of the troop watched with baited breath as the ground slowly swallowed him up. Finally his mauve berry vanished in the black shaft and the team above were reduced to audio contact only.

  The minutes went by and the silence started to nag at Jansen’s nerves. Had they silently captured him? He turned over the choices in his head -- there were only two. Go down and find out...or throw a splinter grenade down the shaft, then go in.

  A metallic clatter made its way up the steel ladder and Jansen shone his torch down into the void. Worsely was standing at the bottom of the shaft banging his pistol on the sides of the ladder, his large round, unshaven face grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Come on down sir...its okay.’

  The team descended the shaft and found themselves in a small ante-room which opened into a larger store room. Air vents were built into each corner of the room which continued up into the ceiling.

  Jansen stopped short as he saw the two bodies at the far end of the room. The BIB hierarchy were in the cellar all right -- but they were all very dead.

  One was propped up against the cellar wall, a distant gaze frozen on his glazed eyes. He recognised the corpse as that of Farid Kazeni. The second body was laying on an old couch, eyes closed, as if in a peaceful sleep. It was Habib Sharazi -- there were no obvious marks on the bodies and no blood shed.

  Jansen looked at the air vents in each corner of the room. They obviously went up to the surface; probably terminating as grated openings in, or outside the main building.

  Worsely picked at the bodies with the barrel of his Mac 10 machine gun.

  ‘What do you think sir, asphyxia?'

  ‘Could be...or the opposite.’

  ‘The opposite?’

  ‘Yes sergeant, the insurgence of highly compressed hot air into the confines of the room, via the air ventilation shafts when the MOAB detonated.’ He had seen this effect when people were confined to a building that had been repeatedly bombed with high explosives.

  It reminded him of a conference he attended at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in his early SAS days, during which, they screened an old film showing the effects of an induced firestorm using high explosives. People killed by this method showed no sign of external injury. The simple act of breathing had killed them all; the superheated air molecules from the heat blast had roasted the alveoli in their lungs and prevented gas exchange with the blood. The damage was all internal and had caused instant death.

  ‘Well sir, it seems we’ve got all the evidence we need,’ Jansen slowly nodded in agreement.

  ‘Good we’d better contact Hayes,’ he suddenly realised he had left his satellite phone in the SVU.

  ‘No problem sir,’ an SAS corporal prompted, ‘ I’ll get it for you,’he dashed off, scaled the metal ladder in a flash, and headed in the direction of the vehicle.

  Breathing hard, he wrenched the front door open, and stuck his head in the vehicle, reaching over the seat to retrieve the phone.

  Jansen and the crew surfaced from the cellar just as the corporal stuck his head in the vehicle. Jansen’s peripheral vision suddenly brightened and a blast of hot air spun him to the ground as the lead SVU exploded in a fireball. The vehicle leapt ten metres into the air and dropped back to earth with a monumental crunch. Chunks of charred human flesh peppered the area around the SUV. Silence returned to the dessert as the team took in the unexpected horror, gazing at the wrecked vehicle and at each other.

  Worsely muttered a few words.

  ‘I think you may have been right about that mystery vehicle sir,’

  ‘That’s for sure sergeant...somebody dosen’t like us...the sooner we leave here the better,’ Jansen peered forlornly at the remains of the brave corporal -- smoking remnants, that more than likely, should have been him.

  The event itself was a brutal shock, but the implications could well be much greater, it put Jansen into covert thinking mode.

  The only way this could have happened was by the careful planting of a bomb in the lead SUV. Whoever carried it out wanted the top leadership wiped out. It implied that someone with prior knowledge of the operation was involved. Corruption had reared its ugly head again, it was a disease which afflicted large, and small organisations alike. It was a human malady which always lurked in the background however careful internal security was.

  Chapter Fifty

  Two days remained before the state funeral of former police commissioner Clement Chester and Rosey Chester had finally come to terms with the disposal of Clement’s numerous personal effects. Most of his clothing had been anonymously given to St. Vincent de Paul, and she cried bitterly, as she watched the van disappear down the road.

  It seemed so cruel and inhuman, like disposing of a cherished part of one’s life, after all, it was only one step up from the garbage dump.

  His extensive library of books had faired a lot better having been donated to a dozen different writers groups and libraries for dispersion around the literary community. Now it was time to get to the bottom of the barrel and clear out Clement’s shed completely. Rosey had purposely left this unsavoury task till last, knowing that his beloved citadel, as he called it, was one ghastly rubbish dump of second hand bric-a-brac.

  She stared out of the kitchen window at the metal edifice residing in the back yard, wishing she could just put it out with the wheely bin. It was the scene of Clement’s demise and represented all he stood for in his private life. She no longer considered their personal life together -- that had long since vanished, with familiarity turning into the inevitable contempt for each other. Rosey knew that this was the end product of many marriages, but still there was that tiny ember of passion, which had held the marriage together over the years. This was what would sustain her as she opened the kitchen door which lead to Clement’s shed.

  Unwittingly, she took several deep breaths, as if to fortify herself for a difficult and dangerous task ahead. She moved cautiously around the large, custom-built, galvinised construction, pulling a wheely bin behind her and almost blindly dropping items directly into it. She had considered hiring disposal companies to rid herself of Clement’s rubbish, but soon realised the folly of exposing a former police commissioners private effects to a gullible open armed public. The media would have a field day.

  Involuntary tears flowed down her cheeks as she went about the grueling task. Strangely, she now felt little emotion for Clement -- the bodily grieving process had gone into overdrive automatically, without asking her permission, and had almost run its course.

  The relief was enormous and seemed to give her renewed impetus to complete the job; in spite of having to continually dip into a box of tissues.

  She gave the wheely bin an extra tug as it stuck fast on a large object beneath the workbench. Pushing the bin backwards revealed a large metal tool box with a hefty brass padlock keeping the lid securely locked.

  Digging deep into her weighted apron pocket she pulled out a large bunch of keys that Chester kept on a hook in the kitchen. Fumbling and trying to insert a likely key frayed her emotions even more and created a nervous tick in her right eye.

  She sat back on a small stool closed her eyes and rested them for several minutes. Tiredness combined with emotional outburst was the most decimating of human foibles. Finally she looked at the large box with renewed determination and studied the bunch of keys once more.

  Six attempts later she opened the unwieldy padlock with the correct key. She struggled to lift the lid, only to find a pair of smelly leather boots, on top of a pile of type written paper sheets tied together with string. Under the papers was a hand bound, plain covered book. She took aim at the wheely bin with the i
ntention of instant disposal. Anything Clement read in private was bound to be extremely decadent in every sense of the word. She lifted the book and papers with boots on top, leveled the smelly package over the wheely, and let go.

  It hit the bottom of the bin with a satisfying thud, which metaphorically said -- good riddance to bad rubbish. She couldn’t resist one last look at the objects and she peered intently into the bin. Black typed headings and obscure diagrams met her gaze. Whatever it was Clement had written he had certainly spent a lot of his spare time on it. If it were hearsay rubbish or pornographic material it certainly didn’t look like it.

  Her basic instincts abruptly intervened and told her to retrieve the object -- at least discreetly assertain what it actually contained. She bent nearly double, groveling in the bottom of the bin, her waist acting as a leverage and her legs propelling her downwards. She managed to painfully straightened up with the book in her right hand. Opening the cover, she read the large printed title at the front...

  ‘MY LIFE AS A FAKE COPPER’

  By

  Police Commissioner Clement Chester

  ‘Fake copper,’she mouthed to herself, ‘what was he on about?’she made her way back to the kitchen, made herself a coffee and browsed the pages, reading little bits here and there, then thumbed through the complete volume. It was a total expose of his life from his first day at the police academy to within weeks of his death. She could now see that the accompanying manuscript pages were a continuation of the book -- a sort of part two, or sequel.

  Clement, apparently, had not been wasting his time in the shed, but had secretly been writing his life story, cupboard skeletons and all. She felt an involuntary ripple move up her gastric tract, knowing the sort of free thinking, irascible man, Clement was, gave her nervous paroxysms that she couldn’t easily control. Whatever the contents were they would be forever connected with her -- after all, she was the woman who had married this pariah of a policeman. Her immediate instincts told her to burn it, but her conscience rebelled, there was no fire place in the house, it would have to be burnt outside in full view of the nabours, and in any case, this may not be the only copy in existence. She relented as her baser instincts forced her to read on.