Soft Target 02 - Tank

by Conrad Jones

  Dano appeared from behind a stud wall and hit Faz with a short length of three-by-two wood. The wood made a thunking sound in the empty concrete structure. She cried out and fell forward onto the dusty floor causing a cloud of cement dust to rise around her.

  “Fucking hell you’re a bird!” hissed Dano startled by the female cry, “and a bloody nignog as well,” he snarled as he kicked her in the ribs knocking the wind from her lungs. Tank fired a warning shot above his head to stop the attack, and ran across the concrete floor quickly closing the distance between him and Grace. Dano twisted back behind the stud wall out of sight and followed it until he reached an open lift shaft, then he froze and held his breath once again.

  “Are you ok Grace?” asked Tank as he approached her. She was breathing deeply trying to get her breath back, and holding her ribs where the vicious kick had landed. Tank and Grace had been an item for nearly two years now, which was completely against Task Force policy. There was sexual chemistry between them since the first day they had met. They kept their relationship a secret but rumours about them were rife. Little glances and intimate comments overheard by nosey ears had fuelled speculation.

  He touched her cheek and she opened her eyes. She seemed a little startled. There was a trickle of blood running down her dark skin just below her ear.

  “Did you hear what he called me Tank?” she asked as she sat up. She was pouting in a false expression of distaste. Tank had seen that look a hundred times and he knew that she wasn’t seriously hurt.

  “What offended you most, the bird bit or the nignog?” asked Tank as he pulled her to her feet. He hadn’t heard the term nignog since he was a child, and even then he thought it sounded like something his grandmother would drink at Christmas.

  “Bird!” she said exasperated, “Now I’m angry and he’s in really big trouble.” Faz dusted herself down and checked that her gun was safe. Tank watched her facial expression fascinated by her dark eyes and chiselled features. She turned quickly and disappeared behind the stud wall without saying a word.

  “Oh dear, she really is pissed off,” Tank said to no one. He began to move in a parallel direction to her but on the other side of the partition. Tank moved quietly for a big man, and he arrived at the unfinished lift shaft completely unheard. He moved swiftly round the partition and bumped straight into Neil Danelley. Dano was as surprised as Tank which slowed his reaction for a split second. Tank smashed his forehead into Dano’s face breaking his nose with the devastating force of the impact. Dano was knocked backward by the sickening blow but swung the thick piece of wood instinctively. Tank ducked beneath the blow and hit the big skinhead in the midriff with a vicious side-kick, which catapulted him through the partition wall. Chunks of plasterboard flew in all directions as the stud wall disintegrated beneath the big man. Amazingly Dano shook his head and picked himself up from the floor and faced Tank again. The two men were evenly matched for weight, and both were unusually muscular from years of pumping iron. Tank saw a flash of uncertainty in the skinhead’s eyes. It was only for a second but it was definitely there. Mentally he was already beaten. Tank caught sight of a blur of movement to the man’s right hand side, but unfortunately for Dano he hadn’t. Faz had approached him from the side and once she was in striking distance she transferred her weight to the ball of her left foot. She began a 360’ spin and raised her right leg at an increasing angle as the spin progressed. The physics behind spinning kicks means that the further the exponent spins the more devastating the impact becomes. Faz caught the skinhead in the face with the heel of her thick military boot, cracking his jaw in three places and knocking him backwards through the plaster partition again. Dano lay on his back out cold.

  “I hate that phrase ‘bird’,” she said as she patted cement dust from her battle vest. Tank thought that he would be well advised to remember never to call her that.

  Chapter 35

  Roman/ Alexis/the Airbase

  Roman darted for the limousine as the hangar turned into a bloodbath. He dived into the open passenger door and slammed it closed behind him. He watched one of his bodyguards spinning violently as he was hit in the shoulder by a bullet fired by one of Alexis’ men. The injured man jerked a second time reminding Roman of some teenagers he had once seen break-dancing. The man twitched robotically, and then he toppled into the oily inspection pit as a third bullet made his face disappear. A stray round struck the door and Roman backed away from the window. The limo had two and a half inch thick plasti-glass windows, which were totally bullet proof when they were intact. Any bullet damage to the material made it susceptible to any further ballistic impacts. Beneath the normal body panels were armour plates, which were initially manufactured for British Warrior tanks. The underside of the vehicle was reinforced to protect the occupants from a bomb attack. The front driver’s door was flung open at the same time as the front passenger door. Two bodyguards clambered into the driver’s compartment trying to escape the deadly bullets of the snipers. The window next to Roman shattered into a spider’s web pattern as the sniper above the hangar door turned his attention to the limo.

  “Get this fucking thing moving!” Roman shouted, moving away from the damaged window instinctively. The bodyguard in the driver’s seat reached for the ignition keys and found they weren’t there. He pulled down the sun visor desperate to find them, but it became obvious that the dead chauffer had them on his person. Two more high velocity bullets struck the windscreen causing web patterns to appear, and long deep cracks radiated across the glass. It was holding for now but wouldn’t withstand the bullets forever.

  “Get the keys, what are you waiting for?” Roman hissed and banged the back of the driver’s seat. A bullet hit the damaged side glass panel and a chunk the size of a coin hit Roman in the cheek. He touched his finger to the wound and felt warm blood trickling down his face. The driver saw the look on Roman’s face in the rear view mirror and he knew that he was probably safer outside the limo at the moment. Mikhail Lebedev had worked for Roman Kordinski for five years. Roman had selected him because of his Russian Spetsnaz training. He had spent six long years fighting the Muslim rebels in Chechnya before the Soviet dissolution began. Mikhail was Jewish and hated the Muslim insurgents with a passion. Once in the employ of Roman his hatred and talents were applied to seeking out, and assassinating Chechen gangsters that threatened Roman’s business interests. He was eventually arrested for the murder of a Chechen gang leader, his wife and three children in a suburb of Moscow. Mikhail was sentenced to eighty years hard labour. He was sent to one of Russia’s Stalin built gulags situated near the borders with China and Mongolia. The prison was called IK-10, which is four-hundred miles away from the nearest city Chita, three thousand seven hundred and seventy four miles east of Moscow. The journey for any prospective visitors by train from Moscow takes one hundred and six hours, and ends with a two-hundred kilometre taxi ride from the station to the prison. For the impoverished Russian public this ruled out the chance of ever receiving a visit from loved ones. The prisoners are forced to work in nearby uranium mines for twelve hours a day in sub zero temperatures, which was back breaking and soul destroying work. The radio-active minerals from the uranium mines affect the water table that supplies the prisoner’s drinking water. Life expectancy for prisoners is four years.

  The chain gang, which he was part of, was involved in a bus crash. He was just eight weeks into his jail term. No one survived and most of the bodies were never recovered because of the remoteness of its position. The bodies recovered were burnt beyond all recognition, which pointed to a road accident, however there were reports locally which alleged the dead bodies recovered had gunshot wounds, but all the witnesses gradually disappeared too.

  The bus crash was caused by Roman Kordinski and his men in order to spring Mikhail from his incarceration. Mikhail owed Roman his loyalty and his life. Mikhail opened the door of the limo and darted round the bonnet to where the dead chauffer lay. He rifled his pockets desperately trying
to find the keys. The jacket pocket was empty. A sniper’s bullet slammed into the bumper of the vehicle just inches away from his head. Shards of plastic fender struck him in the neck, and he dived to the floor. The sniper above the hangar door had a clear shot at him unless he did something. Next to the dead chauffer was his discarded machinegun. The driver grabbed the Special Forces weapon and removed the safety. He couldn’t see where the sniper was hiding but he was somewhere on the access platform above the hangar entrance. The platform was manufactured from 2mm steel plate which would stop any normal bullets, however, the B&T machinegun was full of armour piercing bullets. He squeezed the trigger and the machinegun bucked in his hand as if it were trying to escape from his grasp. The volley of high powered armour piercing bullets ripped through the metal plates and blew large holes in the hangar wall above them. The bullets hit the steel with enough velocity to penetrate it, but they were severely flattened by the force of the impact. Six of the flattened projectiles entered the snipers chest, abdomen and groin areas virtually cutting him in half. He rolled over the edge of the platform, but his exposed intestines caught on a protruding steel bolt leaving yards of glistening viscera flesh hanging from the structure.

  The bodyguard breathed a sigh of relief because he knew that the second sniper was behind the vehicle and couldn’t see him. The gunfight seemed to have dissipated and he could no longer see Alexis and his men. The hangar door that they had entered through was flapping open in the wind. There were three bodies close to the door. One man was seriously injured and was crawling slowly toward it. He searched the chauffer’s trouser pockets and found what he was looking for; all he had to do now was get back into the car alive. He took a deep breath and bolted for the open door, a shot hissed past his ear and he felt the breeze as the bullet narrowly missed him. He threw himself into the driver’s compartment and breathed a massive sigh of relief as he slid into the seat. He said nothing as he inserted the keys into the ignition and started the engine. The bodyguard selected reverse gear and released the handbrake. The vehicle lurched backward at high speed, and the tyres squealed on the concrete leaving a melted rubber trail behind. The back window exploded in a shower of broken glass and Roman flung himself onto the floor of the limo. The driver turned the steering wheel violently to his right and the limo turned one hundred and eighty degrees, so that the windscreen faced the elevated sniper. He accelerated hard and the limo drove beneath the snipers position to safety. Roman sat up and patted the driver on the shoulder in congratulations.

  “Alexis is a tricky man,” Roman said laughing “he is very clever placing snipers in there. But he is not the only one with brains. I have a trick or two of my own, don’t you worry about that.”

  The limo screeched out of the hangar onto the old runway system. Grass and weeds poked through the ancient concrete surface in random patterns. Roman could see Alexis and the two surviving members of his team approaching the black Volkswagen they had arrived in. They were three hundred yards away across the ancient tarmac.

  Alexis stopped running when he heard the limo escaping the hangar, and he stared at the elongated vehicle as it sped away. He locked stares with Roman across the abandoned airfield. The two men glared at each other with venom in their eyes. They lived in a fickle violent world where friends became enemies and enemies died quickly.

  “Get in, we need to get out of here, we can deal with Roman Kordinski another day when he least expects it,” Alexis shouted to his remaining men. Alexis climbed into the passenger seat and thought it was odd that the engine hood didn’t look closed properly. The driver inserted the ignition keys into the steering column. Alexis watched him turn the keys, and it was as if the world was switched to slow motion.

  “Slow down,” Roman ordered. He lowered the shattered window to get a better view. He watched Alexis and his men climb into the Toureg, and laughed uncontrollably when the vehicle exploded into a massive fireball, which plumed sixty yards into the air.

  Chapter 36

  Terrorist Task Force Meeting / 1 Week later

  Tank looked from the top floor window of Canning Place, which was the headquarters of the Merseyside police force, and the home of the international Terrorist Task Force. The dark waters of the river Mersey flowed passed on its journey to the Irish Sea. There was a flotilla of tall wooden sailing ships floating near the Albert Docks, with their white canvas sails billowing in the wind. Tank loosened his tie around his thick neck but still felt very uncomfortable. He picked up his suit jacket and pulled it on. The feeling of being restricted increased as the material stretched over his muscular frame. The wearing of business suits was mandatory for meetings when government ministers were attending, unless one was a serving member of the conventional armed forces, in which case military uniform was worn. Tank looked through the glass porthole in the door at the meeting room and frowned. The Admiral of the fleet stood talking to the Field Marshall of the British army, and the Wing Air Commander of the Royal Air Force. Behind them was the Minister of Defence, who was in deep conversation with Major Stanley Timms. Across the room were senior officers from MI5, MI6 and the Organised Crime Unit. Tank hated meetings with the top brass, especially the spooks of the intelligence agencies. Grace Farrington entered the office that he was in, and she joined him at the round window to inspect the gathering of Britain’s military boffins.

  “All we need now are the yanks and we’ll have a complete set,” Faz said squeezing Tanks huge bicep through his jacket sleeve.

  “They’re on their way up,” Tank said, walking back to the window.

  “What, you are kidding aren’t you?” she replied, “Who are we expecting?”

  “NSA, CIA and the FBI, full house I think,” Tank said.

  The door opened and three well groomed men in dark suits walked into the room. They inspected Tank and Faz with expert glances, recognising them as allied agents. The intelligence agencies trained operatives to assess people quickly with the briefest of glances. They were taught to scrutinise subjects in seconds without raising suspicion. Tank and Faz were identified as members of an agency, which agency didn’t really matter. One of the men at the rear of the new group nodded to Tank in recognition. Tank nodded back but remained silent while shaking hands with the American agents. Tank recognised the agent as a member of Delta Force, who had accompanied his unit in the search for Yasser Ahmed in the mountains of Pakistan. Delta Force men were often recruited into America’s secret services, just as the Terrorist Task Force agents were picked from Britain’s elite fighting forces. The door to the meeting room opened and Major Timms ushered them into the inner office. Everyone took a seat around an elongated wooden table. The table had a just polished sheen to it, which only a dozen layers of lacquer can achieve. The Major cleared his throat and tapped his hand on the table to gain attention.

  “I think we are all here,” he began, “I would like to just start the meeting by introducing our American colleagues, who some of you may not be familiar with.” The Major pointed to one of the Americans, who was blond and tanned. Freckles covered his nose and cheeks; a sign that most of his time was spent on the golf course in the sunshine.

  “Gentlemen this is agent Shaw from the National Security Agency,” Major Timms said.

  The NSA is the American government’s intelligence agency. It is responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications. They are experts in the fields of cryptanalysis and cryptography, which is basically code breaking and code making. The NSA has the capacity to eavesdrop every telephone call and e-mail made anywhere on the planet. The agency mission is to identify and secure military, diplomatic and all other sensitive, confidential communications made by enemy and allied governments alike. It is also the world’s biggest employer of mathematicians, and the owner of the largest single group of supercomputers. For many years the US government never acknowledged its existence. The NSA was referred to as ‘no such agency’ and also ‘never say anything’. The headquarters are at Fort George, Mar
yland, approximately ten miles north of Washington. The electricity bill for the NSA building in 2007 was thirty one million dollars, and there are satellite photographs of the site, which show eighteen thousand parking spaces for its non-existent employees. It is the largest listening post in the world.

  “This is agent Galvin of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and agent David Grey of the CSA,” the Major continued. The ex-Delta Force man nodded at the other people round the table. Tank remembered him well, as an outstanding soldier. He had obviously been drafted into the CIA, which was based at Langley, Virginia, a few miles east of Washington. A Muslim suicide bomber attacked the headquarters at Langley in 1993. Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national killed himself and two CIA agents with his improvised device. The CIA had field operatives all over the world; many were deployed as junior members of a diplomat’s staff to cover their real identities. They are usually ex-Special Forces men, and are responsible for America’s clandestine and covert operations. The CIA now acts upon the information gathered by the NSA, where previously the CIA gathered its own data. In the 1950’s before the formation of the NSA, the CIA were also responsible for gathering vital military information. Their intelligence gathering had proved to be flawed on several key occasions in modern history. On October 13th, 1950 the CIA director assured President Truman that the Chinese Army would not invade Korea. Six days later over one-million Chinese troops crossed the border. The most recent CIA gaff was the absolute certainty that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Years after the allied invasion of Iraq there were no such weapons found. Saddam was found hiding in a hole in the ground. Despite all the efforts of the Allied invaders no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.