Soft Target 05 - Blister

by Conrad Jones

  OTHER TITLES BY CONRAD JONES

  SOFT TARGET

  SOFT TARGET II ‘TANK’

  SOFT TARGET III ‘JERUSALEM’

  The 18th Brigade

  THE CHILD TAKER

  SLOW BURN

  Nine Angels

  Death Tax

  Undisputed

  ‘BLISTER’

  CONRAD JONES

  GerriCon Books Ltd

  Copyright 2009 Conrad Jones. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  The places named in this book are real. The fictional events are based on factual ones but have been changed by the author. Any similarity between the fictional characters and people in the public domain are coincidental, and are generated purely from the imagination of the author.

  First published by GerriCon Books Ltd 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-9561034-4-4

  Chapter 1

  Blister Agents

  The city of Liverpool was once the busiest port in the world, and the centre of the terrible human slave trade. Most of the historic dock buildings are long since gone, but some of them remain and have been turned into a tourist hub along the banks of the River Mersey. The Terrorist Task Force are also based on the riverbank. They occupy the top floor of a fortress-like building known as Canning Place. The remaining lower floors of the building are occupied by the county’s uniformed police divisions. Today the taskforce had been called to an emergency meeting. They were sat listening to Chen explaining the properties of blister agent weapons.

  “The sulphur mustards, of which mustard gas 2-chloroethyl sulphide is a member, are a class of related cytotoxic, vesicant chemical warfare agents. They have the ability to form large blisters on exposed skin, both internally and externally. In spite of the name, technically they are not actually gases, but are liquid chemicals which turn into vapour when they are released,” Chen smiled at the gathering in the room. He took a sip of water and then continued with the brief.

  “Pure sulphur mustards are colourless, odourless, viscous liquids when they are at room temperature. However, when used in impure form as warfare agents they are usually yellow-brown in colour and have an odour resembling mustard plants, garlic or horseradish, hence the innocuous name. Mustard gas was originally assigned the name LOST, after two men called Lommel and Steinkopf, who first proposed the military use of Sulphur Mustard to the German Imperial General Staff during the First World War”, Chen looked seriously at the audience of taskforce agents that had been summoned to an extraordinary meeting.

  Chen was of Chinese origin, and was an information guru for the Terrorist Task Force. The taskforce was set up as an elite counter terrorist unit that operated outside of the usual military jurisdiction, and they answered directly to the Minister of Defence. When incidents were escalated to the level of the Terrorist Task Force involvement, then all other avenues had already been exhausted.

  “Is there a reason behind the chemistry lesson?” John Tankersley asked impatiently, rubbing his aching neck. He had been lifting heavy weights in the station gym prior to the meeting, but he had pushed his limit too far and torn a muscle. It was Chen who had been spotting him as he lifted the last heavy set, and he had failed to provide enough support, which had caused the injury. Tank was pissed off with him.

  “Please be patient Tank, I’m getting to the point but you will need all this background information to understand the implications of what I’m about to tell you,” Chen replied holding his palms downward in a calming motion.

  John Tankersley was the lead agent of the taskforce. He was an ex-Special Forces operative and had been decorated more times than an artificial Christmas tree. John Tankersley was a brute of a man, six foot tall and seventeen stone of solid muscle, it wasn’t difficult to understand why his colleagues shortened his name to ‘Tank’.

  “Okay, but get to the point please, the German High Command are not really on my need to know list,” Tank snapped back. The muscles in his wide jaw twitched and the veins in his massive neck throbbed visibly as he spoke.

  “I’ll be as brief as I can,” Chen smiled and his oriental features were exaggerated. He had deep brown eyes and high cheek bones. His smile was brilliant white and had a very disarming effect on everyone he met, especially women.

  “Will you get to the point Chen,” Tank said under his breath. He rubbed his hand over his shaven head.

  “People exposed to mustard gas rarely suffer immediate symptoms, and mustard-contaminated areas may appear completely normal, victims can unknowingly receive high dosages. However, within six to twenty four hours of exposure to mustard agent, victims experience intense thirst, itching and skin irritation which gradually turns into large blisters filled with yellow fluid wherever the mustard agent contacted the skin. There are many recorded incidents of the thirst being so intense that it causes a type of delirium, or madness. Victims can become extremely violent,” Chen smiled again as he continued the presentation. He could see that Tank was becoming agitated, which amused him. Chen often teased him that if Tank’s brain was as big as his bicep, then he would be a genius.

  “At very high concentrations, if inhaled, mustard agent causes bleeding and blistering within the respiratory system, damaging the delicate mucous membranes and causing the victim to drown on their own bodily fluids. Severe mustard gas burns are usually fatal. Furthermore, mustard gas is a persistent agent which would remain in the environment for days and continue to cause sickness. If mustard gas contaminated a soldier's clothing and equipment, then other soldiers or medics he came into contact with would also be poisoned,” Chen sat down at the long meeting table and looked at the gathered agents. The gathering remained silent. No one was quite sure where the meeting was heading.

  “Thank you Chen, most interesting, and also very concerning,” Major Stanley Timms broke the silence.

  The Major was the director of the taskforce. Before he had been selected to operate the covert unit, he had been a high ranking officer in the Royal Marines with a military record that would make Rambo blush.

  “I’m sure that you can appreciate the implications of a blister agent falling into the wrong hands, MI5 has received information that a right wing extremist group is intending to attack the 2012 Olympics with such a chemical,” the Major explained. Anxious looks were exchanged around the room. The taskforce knew that the forthcoming Olympics could be a target for a hundred different terrorist organisations, but this was the first tangible plot to surface.

  The credit crunch of 2008 had sent the economy into melt down, which had pushed unemployment up and house prices down, leaving many in a desperate financial position. The effect increased racial tensions nationwide as immigrants were still flooding in and taking indigenous British jobs. It was fuel to the fire for the right wing fascist parties.

  “How solid is the information?” Tank asked. The intelligence agencies often scare mongered. The greater the perceived threat, the higher their government budget was.

  “Solid enough to have been put onto the Minister’s desk,” the Major replied.

  “What do we know about the protagonists?” Grace Farrington asked. Grace was the taskforce’s number two. She was of Jamaican descent and looked more like a pop star or a beauty queen than a Special Forces operative.

  “We don’t know a great deal about them at all I’m afraid, except they preach the usual anti-immigration nonsense as the rest of the neo-Nazi groups,” the Major answered. He stood up and walked to the head of the table. On the wall behind him was a bank of screens. He picked up a remote and the largest screen flickered into life. The face of a handsome youn
g man appeared. The photograph looked like a school portrait.

  “This is Christopher Walsh aged sixteen, and this is the most recent photograph that we have of him. He is now twenty seven years old, and a very successful business man. He was an eminent scientist in his field until he began to diversify his business interests. The information that the intelligence agencies have received puts Christopher Walsh on centre stage as the brains behind the proposed attack,” the Major sat down again.

  “What is his background?” Grace asked.

  “Chemicals, believe it or not,” Chen answered the question.

  “Well, chemical weapons to be more precise,” the Major added. “We think that one of his associate companies was behind selling mustard gas formulas and production methodology to at least half a dozen rogue governments, and God forbid, several extremist organisations, but nobody knows where he is or why he would be involved in an attack on the London Olympics.”

  Tank picked up a paper file from the desk and flicked through the pages. Chen had compiled some of the basics about chemical weapon production. He stood up and walked toward the meeting room window. The chemical formulas and technical information blurred on the page. It made no real sense to Tank, but he knew that to some people it would be only too easy to manufacture chemical weapons. Tank looked out of the window. The River Mersey was only a stone’s throw away from the taskforce headquarters. It looked dark grey and angry as it flowed on its way to the Irish Sea. Across the road hundreds of tourists ambled around the historic Albert Docks, once the centre of the slave trade, the ancient buildings had now become a huge tourist destination. Tank wondered just how much of Chen’s blister agent it would take to attack a ‘Soft Target’ like the docks.

  “How easy would it be to manufacture this stuff,” Tank asked, placing the file down on the window ledge.

  “It would be difficult,” Chen answered. “All the ingredients required for the manufacture of chemical weapons and homemade explosives are monitored. So if someone bought enough of the individual ingredients required then the intelligence agencies would be alerted.”

  “We think that Christopher Walsh is involved because he may already possess the ingredients required, therefore no one would be any the wiser if he made a chemical agent. Every chemical plant with any association to him is being investigated by MI5,” the Major said.

  Tank looked out of the window again. It had started snowing again for the third time in a week and the sky was obscured by dark low clouds. Over the last month or so they had seen the heaviest snow fall in a century. The Liver buildings on the riverbank looked bright and clean against the grey clouds. There were two huge bronze birds perched on top of the building. They had become the emblem of the historic port.

  “We are looking into how easy it would be for anyone to get hold of a blister agent, but my concern is this,” Chen approached the bank of screens and the school portrait changed. The black and white image of a naval ship appeared. Judging by the style of the uniforms worn by some of the sailors in the picture, Tank reckoned that it had been taken during the Second World War. The deck of the vessel was covered with artillery shells. There was barely an inch of the deck that didn’t have ordinance on it.

  “This is a British Royal Navy vessel shortly after the allied invasion of Italy during the Second World War. I can’t tell you what it was called or exactly when the picture was taken because the information relating to this vessel was so classified that it was destroyed. To all intents and purposes this picture is the only evidence that this ship ever existed.” Chen moved across the room and the picture changed again. Two mini submarines appeared on the smaller digital screens. Tank was reminded of deep sea salvage documentaries that he’d watched on television. The submarines had robotic arms and grabs.

  “The ship in the picture was carrying an unknown number of mustard gas shells,” Chen looked sternly and allowed a pause for the information to sink in. The room remained silent and a nervous tension began to build.

  “In your files are the details of a chemical weapons disaster which occurred during the Second World War in the Italian port of Bari, 1943. The incident was so bad that the allied leaders conspired to destroy their entire stocks of the chemicals. The British Government scuppered this ship, amongst others, and pretended that it had never been contemplating the use of chemical weapons against the Germans. They scuppered a total of sixteen similar vessels at various points around the British Isles,” Chen explained.

  Tank could see what was coming. The mini-submarines in the picture had either been stolen or purchased by someone on the MI5 watch list, and when you combined that information with the fact that a known chemical weapons dealer had been implicated in a terrorist plot then it all added up. Someone was trying to recover mustard gas shells from the bottom of the ocean.

  Chapter 2

  December 2, 1943 Bari, Italy

  Jimmy Lyons watched as the port cranes moved methodically to and fro unloading the armada of ships that had arrived over the last few weeks. The Italian armed forces had surrendered and the allies had the German army on the run. The allied Italian campaign had begun with a fierce battle for the capital city of Rome. Men and munitions were arriving every hour to bolster the allied mission. Driving the German army out of Italy northward would need hundreds of thousands of men and millions of tons of supplies. The port of Bari had been identified as one of the main arteries that would be needed to support the allied invasion.

  Jimmy took a cigarette from his soft packet of Lucky Strikes and placed it into the corner of his mouth. He nudged his pal with his elbow and offered him one too. The sailor took one gratefully and followed suit by placing it into the corner of his mouth. His fellow shipmate, Mark Brown, lit a match with his thumbnail and they both smoked in silence as they watched the armada of vessels being unloaded. Jimmy and Mark were American sailors aboard the USS Bistera which was part of an allied convoy of heavily armed cruisers. They had been sent to protect the convoy from a German counter attack against the port. It was getting dark and as the sun went down there was a chill in the air.

  “Did you get a letter from Jackie yet?” Mark asked.

  “Yes, I got one in the mail run yesterday,” Jimmy shivered. He wasn’t sure if it was the cool evening air that had made him shiver or the thought of his wife thousands of miles away.

  “The kids all okay?” Mark tried to make conversation, but it was always difficult. Men at war had to try and desensitise themselves. Worrying about getting home to their loved ones would drive them mad if they allowed it to. It was a constant mental and emotional battle dealing with being torn from their loved ones.

  “They’re fine, she said to say hello,” Jimmy said patting his shipmate on the back. They had been at sea for months and to quell the boredom the sailors often shared their letters with their friends. The sailors got to know each other’s families intimately by reading and rereading their letters. The sailors rarely received letters at sea as they had to wait until they made port, and so sharing their post passed the time. It created a bond between naval men that couldn’t be matched by the men in land based forces.

  “Be sure to say hello back to her from me,” Mark laughed. Jimmy laughed at Mark laughing. Mark had a laugh which sounded like a cross between a donkey baying and a sea lion barking. Whenever Jimmy heard his laugh he couldn’t help but laugh too. He shook his head as they chuckled, and took another soothing puff on his cigarette. It was a precious quiet moment.

  Jimmy stopped laughing suddenly as an air raid siren in the distance beyond the harbour began to wail. He dropped his cigarette onto the deck and crushed it with his boot as the first siren was joined by a second, and then a third. Within seconds there was a deafening cacophony of a dozen or more sirens blaring. The sirens were joined by the distant hum of German Junkers Ju 88 long range bomber engines approaching.

  “Get on that forty,” Jimmy shouted to Mark.

  The naval vessel was armed with 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft
guns. They were fitted together in fours and welded to a carriage that could rotate to track enemy aircraft. Jimmy could hear the approaching bombers but he couldn’t see them yet. The evening sky was darkening quickly which made spotting the enemy even harder. He looked around the overcrowded harbour and he had a gut wrenching feeling. There were so many ships crammed into the port that even a blind bomber pilot couldn’t miss hitting something. The scene was one of blind panic as soldiers and sailors ran to arms, while civilians and port employees scrambled for cover. The port had no anti-aircraft system of its own, not even barrage balloons. Jimmy knew that they were sitting ducks. He tensed his neck and gripped the handle of the Bofors as he waited for a target to aim at.

  “Take my letter Jimmy,” Mark said. His voice was breaking slightly as fear took hold of him.

  “Keep it in your pocket Mark. You’re going home with me my friend,” Jimmy said. Mark pushed the letter back into the breast pocket of his sweat stained shirt. The letter was for his wife if he died. Most soldiers and sailors at war carry a final letter for their loved ones, as a way of conveying all things that they wished they had said, but never got around to.