Soft Target 05 - Blister

by Conrad Jones

  “This can be as quick and simple as you make it old man,” a thick guttural voice rasped. Billy thought he could detect an Eastern European accent, probably Polish. He thought it was strange that even though he was more frightened than he had ever been, his brain was still processing information in a calm logical manner. Perhaps his brain was protecting him from complete panic. ‘The man that is trying to drown you has a Polish accent’.

  “You are Commander William Wright, correct?”

  Billy nodded his head slowly. Even the slightest movement of his head made the pain in his broken face feel like hot knives were piercing his brain.

  “Very good” the voice rasped. “You were the second officer on board a British submarine in forty three?”

  Billy Wright nodded again. He squeezed his eyes tightly closed as a bolt of pain ripped through his nervous system.

  “Well done Commander. Your submarine was sent to the Irish Sea to hunt for German spy vessels, is that correct?” the gravelly voice asked.

  Billy opened his eyes wide and cast his memory back in time. His submarine had been sent to seek and destroy several suspected German merchant vessels which had been disguised as British war ships. Their mission was to find them, identify them as spy ships and destroy them. The Admiralty had informed the submarine fleet that the Germans were trying to land German spies on the mainland by sea and by parachute. Allegedly the German boats were sailing from the cover of southern Ireland at dusk, deploying their spies by rubber dinghy under the cover of darkness and then retreating back to their hideouts in the daylight hours. His memories disappeared as his head was forced back under the water. He gurgled and a rush of air bubbled from his mouth as he choked again.

  “Yes or no old man, did your submarine receive orders to search and destroy German spy ships in the Irish Sea?” the gravelly voice sounded distorted from beneath the surface but Billy understood the question and he nodded. The man released the pressure on him and dragged him up for air again. Billy coughed and fluid flew from his nostrils. His confused brain raced through the possible scenarios, befuddled by pain and the lack of oxygen. He couldn’t understand why these men were torturing him. Billy had been prepared to answer questions about his war service, but this wasn’t what he had in mind when he agreed to meet reporters.

  “We need to know the exact location of the ships that you torpedoed on that mission,” the guttural accent rasped again.

  “Please, it was so long ago, I have no idea....,” Billy gasped as his head was pushed back beneath the water. This time he had no time to fill his lungs with air and he felt that he really would drown. What strength the octogenarian had was spent. Darkness filled his mind as his lung screamed for air.

  “You’re going to kill him,” an unfamiliar voice spoke for the first time. Billy’s brain identified it as English, probably public school educated. Funny that he was so close to death yet his hearing was still sharp. He remembered that he was once told that the last thing to fail when you die was your hearing. He felt cold air on his face as he was pulled free of the water. His lungs rattled as he drew breath and fresh air had never tasted so good.

  “He has several ships’ log books in here, some charts and hundreds of pictures,” the English voice spoke again. This time it sounded like he had walked back into Billy’s living room. Billy could hear him rummaging about through his precious belongings. There was a clatter as something was thrown across the room, and then Billy could hear the distinctive whirring of a camera phone. There were several flashes from the other room.

  “Did you record the sinking of the German spy ships on any of those charts?”

  “I don’t think so, it was so long ago. I can’t remember.....,” Billy gasped the answer but was forced under the water again. He was too weak to struggle anymore and he welcomed death to come and take him, but it refused to end his torment just yet. The strong hands pulled his thinning hair and he was above the suffocating liquid once more.

  “You had better remember quickly old man. Did you record the details of sinking the German spy ships, or not?”

  “I may have a copy marked of an oceanic chart with the suspect sectors that we were given to search on one of our missions,” Billy gasped for breath. His will to survive was far greater than his allegiance to protect a sixty year old chart.

  “How can we identify it?”

  “I would have to show you,” Billy Wright gasped. Maybe he could get them to lift him out of the bath. Billy could see a glimmer of hope. The pain from his shattered cheek bone was becoming unbearable and his eye was swollen completely shut. Talking sent spasms of pain through his broken jaw and the nerve endings in his teeth were screaming. He knew that he was close to death. He also knew that the only reason he was still alive was because these men needed the whereabouts of an ancient sea chart.

  “Just tell me how to identify it old man, or do you want to go back under the water permanently?”

  “They all look the same unless you know what you’re looking for,” Billy’s voice was becoming nothing more than a whisper.

  “They do all look the same. Drag him out of there,” the English voice spoke from the other room.

  “For fuck’s sake just bring the charts in here and let him show us in here. How many are marked with a year on them?” the Polish accent snarled.

  “None of them have a year on them. Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?” the English voice retorted. “Now get him out of that fucking bath before I shoot you through the head.”

  Billy heard the venom in their voices and it gave him a lift up from the dark place that he was in. They were arguing with each other, and that could only be good. The fact that they had guns was not a good thing though, unless they shot each other of course. The man grabbed Billy by the feet and yanked him hard. Billy was pulled roughly beneath the water before being lifted clear of the bath completely. His back was scraped badly as he was hauled clear of the rim. The man continued to pull him and Billy’s head struck the bathroom floor hard. The fracture in his jaw splintered sending a bolt of white hot pain through his body. This time Billy screamed louder than he had ever screamed before.

  “Shut him up you bloody fool, do you want the world and his wife to hear him?”

  “I told you that we should leave him in the bath. Don’t talk to me as if I’m stupid or I’m warning you....,” the guttural accent snarled.

  “You’re warning me what exactly?” the English accent growled back.

  “Look let’s just take all the fucking charts and get out of here. Everyone in the building must have heard him scream.”

  “I’ve photographed the charts on my camera phone. What about him?”

  “Kill him. No one must know why we were here.”

  Billy Wright squeezed his eyes tightly and waited for a bullet to end his torment.

  Chapter Nine

  Tank

  Tank was less than fifty yards down the corridor when he heard a blood curdling scream. He was being accompanied by a female member of the nursing staff who had insisted that she must ask William Wright if his interview with the navy press reporter could be interrupted. She had tried his room phone but the line was dead, so she opted to escort the hunky new visitor herself. Life behind the reception desk was very mundane and the appearance of a strange muscle bound male was always welcome, even if he was very frosty and disinterested in her. When they heard the scream she froze on the spot and pointed toward Billy’s door with a shaking hand. Tank drew his Glock and waved her away.

  “Get these rooms emptied now, and make sure no one comes down this corridor,” Tank whispered to her sternly.

  As he approached Billy’s room Tank assessed the door and the frame with an expert eye in less than a second. There was no time to show caution. He was going through that door no matter what the outcome. Tank hit the door with his huge shoulder, running at full pelt. The wood frame cracked down the middle and the hinges were ripped from their fixing as the door disintegrated beneath the col
ossal force. The momentum carried Tank through the doorway and into Billy’s apartment. He dipped his shoulder and rolled onto the floor. His eyes scanned the room and his brain calculated the situation that he was presented with.

  There were three men. One of the men was old and badly beaten. His eye was swollen shut and his facial features were horribly distorted by purple bruising and ugly swelling around his mouth and jaw. He was being held up by the feet, his head and shoulders were on the floor supporting his body weight. Two men stood frozen for an instant, just long enough for Tank to identify the good guys and the bad guys, and to pick his first target. The man holding the old man had a long dark ponytail. His hands were occupied holding Billy Wright, which meant that he wasn’t a threat for the moment. The second man had greying hair swept back from his face and jelled to his scalp. He looked like a Wall Street banker dressed in a sharp suit. As Tank weighed up the situation the banker reached inside his jacket. Reaching for his gun was the last decision that he ever made. Tank aimed his model 17 Glock automatic and squeezed the trigger three times. Classic Special Forces training is to shoot three times tap, tap, tap, two bullets to the chest and one to the head. The first bullet hit the sternum and flattened before ripping a path through the chest cavity and bursting his right lung. The second ripped a three inch rent through his heart before finally stopping in the liver. The third hit him square in the centre of his forehead. The bullet hole was a neat circle surrounded by ragged blackened skin. Once the high velocity soft nosed bullet was inside the skull it bounced around like a red hot pinball turning the brain matter into mush. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Ponytail dropped the old man and sprinted for the kitchen area. He grabbed a handful of maps as his colleague crumpled onto the carpet. Tank fired at the fleeing man and two bullets shattered into the wall showering the man with plaster shards. A third shot clipped his upper arm and he cried out in a language that Tank didn’t understand. Ponytail ran headlong without showing any sign of stopping. He took a huge leap up onto a dining chair and then stepped onto the kitchen table kicking a crystal fruit bowl and its contents across the room. He covered his face with his hands and launched himself toward the window. Tank fired again and the bullet smashed into the fleeing man’s shoulder. Ponytail hit the glass pane at speed and the window shattered into a thousand pieces as he crashed through it. Tank heard gun shots coming from outside and guessed that Grace was firing at the fugitive as he fled the building through the window. He reached the window and watched as ponytail sprinted across a grass lawn toward the car park. Grace was seventy yards to the left of his vision, and she was sprinting level to the fugitive, stopping every time she had a clear shot. She kneeled and fired again. The bullet ricocheted off the brick building spraying brick shards across the grass. There were civilians milling about and they hindered Grace taking aim. A black Mercedes screeched across the car park toward the running man, but Grace was in between them. She heard the gunning engine and turned toward the speeding vehicle. Grace had a split second to fire or jump out of the way, but she couldn’t do both. She dived across the bonnet of a Ford Mondeo narrowly avoiding the Mercedes as it roared past her. Grace rolled off the other side and cracked her head on the front wing of a Transit van. The impact stunned her momentarily and she lost her grip on the Glock. It skidded across the layer of snow, which had coated the tarmac.

  Tank fired at the vehicle twice. The driver’s window exploded into a million pieces. He could see the driver covering his eyes from the flying shards as he pulled the Mercedes to a screeching halt. Ponytail jumped over the bonnet of the car and the passenger door was thrown open as the driver leaned across the vehicle to allow him entry. The rear wheels went into a spin as the tyres tried to gain purchase on the tarmac. Ponytail flung the charts into the vehicle and made ready to climb in. Tank steadied his wrist and squeezed the trigger once more. The weapon recoiled and a second later a large red hole appeared on the centre of Ponytails forehead. His head jerked back as if he had been hit with an invisible sledgehammer, and he was tossed from the vehicle like a ragdoll. The Mercedes sped away toward the main road leaving ponytail dead on the car park. There were too many civilians milling about near the main road for Tank or Grace to fire again, and their vehicle was at the front of the building. By the time they reached it the Mercedes would be a mile away.

  Chapter Ten

  Canning Place, Liverpool

  “How is the old man,” Tank asked as Grace Farrington walked into the bunker meeting room. The Canning Place police station was the nerve centre of the taskforce operation, and was also the government’s secret communication centre. Three traffic tunnels had been built beneath the River Mersey in the sixties and seventies, and the British Government used the huge construction project to camouflage the building of a bunker network beneath the city. The idea was that in the event of war London would be destroyed. Liverpool offered a safer haven than the capital city, and could facilitate smuggling the cabinet ministers out of the country via submarine if an enemy invasion was imminent.

  “He’s not good at all. He has a compound fracture of the jaw, a depressed cheekbone and several broken ribs. At eighty four years old that’s a lot to cope with,” Grace walked to the table and placed her bag on the back of the chair before sitting down.

  “Will he live?” Helen Walsh asked. Helen had been brought into the meeting to act as a medical advisor for the government. She was primarily a physiotherapist, but she had studied the effect of blister agents on the human body as part of her thesis at university. The interest had turned into a professional one as she collated information from all over the world about chemical weapons and their effects on the human condition, and the environment. Helen was a pretty woman, blond and lithe. She had turned at least a dozen heads when she entered the police headquarters above the government bunker.

  “It’s touch and go at the moment.”

  “How much information did he give to you,” Major Stanley Timms asked, cutting through the niceties and getting to the point of the meeting.

  “Between the information from the commander and the evidence recovered from his apartment we have a reasonable idea about what’s happening,” Grace replied. She removed a note book from her bag which contained some prompts for her to refer to.

  “Are we expecting any other departments?” Chen asked. He flicked on the digital screen and placed the remote on the table in front of him.

  “No. We need to be one hundred percent certain of what we are dealing with before we bring in the other agencies,” the Major replied.

  “What about the Royal Navy? Surely we’ll need them to monitor any possible dump sites,” Helen Walsh asked naively.

  Everyone turned to look at her and she blushed crimson.

  “It would probably be a little too obvious to have a great big battleship sitting out in the Bay of Liverpool. The terrorists may think that we’re onto them,” Tank said sarcastically. Helen blushed again and played with her pen nervously.

  The Major chuckled and patted her on the back patronisingly. He was trying to put her at ease, but it had the opposite effect. Helen felt patronised.

  “As I said, we need to be certain of our facts before we start bringing in any other agencies at all,” the Major looked at the faces around the table. “The twenty twelve Olympics is the biggest showpiece that our small nation has been honoured with since the World Cup of nineteen sixty six. We must avoid any potential disasters at all costs, and more importantly, we must never allow a sniff of any plot to leak into the press. It would be an international catastrophe of unprecedented proportions if this potential threat were to become public knowledge.” The Major eyed everyone individually to reinforce the point that he was making.

  “I am still not completely clear as to why Christopher Walsh would want to attack the games at all, what is the motive?” Chen asked.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any clear political benefit,” Grace added.

  “Maybe he has de
veloped a new focus, an extremist cause to follow,” Tank speculated.

  “It is all pure speculation at the moment, all we have is the information found by the intelligence service which has led us this far,” the Major said. “The attack on William Wright demonstrates that a determined enemy is planning something doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly supports what we suspected, but the motives are still unclear,” Chen said. He shrugged his shoulders and turned the palms of his hands face up as if the answer may drop into them.

  “If I may, I might have a reason for him to plan such an attack,” all eyes turned back to Helen Walsh, and the blond blushed again. She coughed and regained her composure.