Soft Target 02 - Tank

by Conrad Jones

  “How long have we got that drone for?” Tank asked Chen. He looked at a radio control panel fixed to the rear bulkhead of the vehicle.

  “Ten minutes at the most,” Chen replied. The drone was running low on fuel and at 15 million dollars apiece it needed to return safely. They rounded the knoll and Tank sighted the men running across barren brush land. There was very little cover, and although it was some distance from the hospital, bomb craters pockmarked the area. The men seemed to be following a narrow trail through the mined scrubland. From their elevated position Tank and his men could see the route that was carved through the scrub clearly. To stray from the path would be fatal. Tank chambered a grenade and fired. The grenade whooshed over the heads of the escaping men and exploded fifty yards in front of them, on the path. The men crouched to take cover, and they turned to see where their attackers were firing from. Tank raised his binoculars and looked directly into the dusty face of Yasser Ahmed. The veins in his temple filled to bursting point and the muscles in his jaw twitched visibly. Yasser and his men stood and scrambled forward again, running for their lives. Tank pointed both fingers along the line of vehicles and then made looping signs with his hands. He had communicated that his men should fire in front of them. Grenades whizzed skyward and 50 calibres raked the wilderness in front of the escaping men. Without deliberating the four men ran in separate directions, leaving the safe path through the minefield.

  Anti-personnel mines fall into two categories, blast mines and shrapnel mines. The majority are called bounding Omni-directional mines. Usually about the size of a shoe polish tin they are triggered by the weight of its victim standing on it. Once triggered a small charge ignites a propellant, which launches the mine upward to around waist height, where it explodes causing the maximum damage to whoever is in the shrapnel range. Blast mines are different in that they remain beneath the earth when they explode, and rely on a directed shaped charge causing horrific injuries to one combatant.

  Yasser’s guide stumbled through the scrub terrified by the barrage that was laid down in front of them. Sweat trickled into his eyes stinging them and blurring his vision. He wiped his sweaty brow and tripped over a tree root. He fell headlong onto the dirt jarring his elbows painfully as he landed. He tried to stand up. The last thing he heard was the click whir sound of a fragmentation mine. The small metal disc jumped out of the ground and exploded next to his face.

  One of Yasser’s men saw and heard the explosion and froze, frightened by the sight of the guide’s sticky end. He held his hands above his head in surrender. Tank saw the man gesturing that he was surrendering and he looked at him through the binoculars. It wasn’t Yasser Ahmed. Tank fired half a dozen bullets around the feet of the stationary man, forcing him to take flight again. He made it exactly twelve feet before he detonated a blast mine, which tore both his legs off at the knees. His screams could be heard a long way off as he rolled in agony in the dirt. He rolled over a second mine, which launched his shattered body twenty-foot into the air, and silenced him permanently.

  Yasser was close behind, but to the right of the remaining rebel, when he appeared to complete an involuntary cartwheel in the air. The blast wave hit Yasser and knocked him from his feet into the dust. Tank held his hand in the air and the barrage ceased. Only Yasser remained alive in the killing field. He picked himself up slowly and dusted the dirt from his face and mouth. Tank focused on him through the binoculars. It was Yasser, no doubt about it. He appeared to be smiling. Yasser removed a 9mm Luger from his belt, and chambered a round. Tank dropped to his knees and raised the M16 to his shoulder in what seemed like slow motion. Yasser raised the pistol toward his own head. If this was where it was going to end then it would be by his own hand, not that of the Kufur. Tank steadied the M16 and took aim. The Luger arced past Yasser’s shoulder and the barrel twisted toward his temple. Yasser closed his eyes as Tank fired.

  Chapter 55

  Terrorist Task Force/ Liverpool

  (Six months later)

  Grace Farrington hadn’t opened her eyes since she was placed on the Apache helicopter. The surgeons had removed what was left of her spleen, which left her susceptible to infections. The shattered bones in her arm and chest had knitted together months ago, and would cause no more problems if she ever regained consciousness. She had lost a chunk of bicep muscle, but even that had healed well enough. The problems were internal. Her kidneys were weak from blood infections, and despite all the drugs and treatment she was still in a coma. Tank visited her every day before and after work. He talked to her for hours on end about work and life in general, but he mostly talked to her about what they would do together when she woke up. He had never said I love you enough when she was awake, and now he couldn’t stop saying it. His heart felt heavy with regret for the things they hadn’t done yet. In the back of his mind he suspected that his one true soul mate was gone forever.

  “I won’t ask you to marry me,” he had whispered to her with a tear in his eye one day, “because then you’ll never wake up! And I want you to wake Grace, wake up and talk to me babe.”

  He missed her and wished that he had never agreed to the mission. She probably would have shot him if he had protested anyway, but he felt responsible.

  The Saudi girl Jeannie Kellesh was returned to her family, which eased tensions in the Middle East. They had lost good men in the process, and Grace Farrington was very poorly. She was critically ill in fact, and the longer she stayed unconscious the less chance she had of making it without incurring permanent brain damage. Tank knew in his heart of hearts that a full recovery was unlikely if she lived at all. Whether she lived or died was in the lap of the gods and only time would tell.

  Chapter 56

  Yasser Ahmed

  The American government had legal claim to Yasser Ahmed despite the fact that it was British Special Forces who had captured him. They still had first claim on him for his planning and execution of the first Soft Target campaign. In the minefield at Kizlyar, Tank had put three rounds into his arm and shoulder, stopping his suicide attempt. He was flown to a military hospital in Istanbul, and handed over to the Americans. Tank sat next to him on his stretcher all the way through the flight. Every time Yasser looked like he was about to pass out or drift to sleep Tank punched him in the wounded arm. Eventually the medical staff attended to him, doing their best to patch him up. There was extensive damage to his upper arm and shoulder, and despite several attempts to knit the bones with metal pins there seemed to be little improvement. Not long afterward Tank was informed that Yasser had contracted gangrene in his wounds, which resulted in the amputation of his arm at the shoulder.

  From there, the art of extraordinary rendition was applied to its extreme by his American captors. Yasser was processed for six months into what was called his debrief. Bad luck or good fortune brought him to be held for a time at a political prison in the north of Chechnya. He was in the same cell that his unfortunate younger brother had occupied before his death. Yasser was there for days before he had noticed the scratching in the plaster on the wall. The names of dozens of poor souls were carved at various angles around the dark dank cell, some carved, and some smeared in excrement or blood. There was a circular deep stinking hole cut into the floor in one corner of the room, which ran into an open sewer. The waste and excrement of a hundred prisoners flowed through his cell on its way to a cess pit beyond the thick walls of the medieval prison. He spent his waking hours being tortured by methods he had never dreamed of in his worst nightmares. His sleeping hours were spent dwelling on the pain his amputated arm still caused him and the myriad of new injuries that they added to every day.

  One morning daylight entered through a small barred window, which was set high in the wall of his cell. They usually came for him soon after but today they hadn’t come at all. The dull light illuminated the inside of his cell, and for the first time he read the desperate graffiti on the walls. There were several different languages, some he understood and some he didn’
t. He focused on two words and a name written in Arabic. He couldn’t turn his gaze away from it, as hot stinging tears ran down his cheeks.

  BAKRAH AK’E

  Mustapha Ahmed

  In English it read I HATE MY BROTHER. By Mustapha Ahmed, it appeared to have been written smeared with his own blood.

  Epilogue

  (Five years on/ Liverpool)

  Dave Simmons was drunk and broke. He had spent most of life the same way, but he was approaching rock bottom. Simmons had once owned a share in a busy wine bar in the Preston area, which suited his drinking habits, until his unscrupulous partner had screwed him. Left bankrupt and destitute Simmons soon found that his friends weren’t his friends at all; they had just been hangers on. The fat happy faces that crowded around him when he was buying a round of drinks were gone. In the space of six months he lost his business, his wife and children and his pride. Since then he had drifted from crap job to crap job, crap relationship to crap relationship. The few good people he ever met soon tired of his self loathing alcoholism. Simmons sought solace in the bottom of a cider bottle.

  Dave Simmons staggered toward a large brick building that was undergoing renovations. He was near the River Mersey and the building looked like one of the old motor housings that used to hold the exhaust fans that serviced the traffic tunnels. The wind was howling and rain was driving horizontally into his stubbly face. He pulled his coat tighter to keep out the wind, and noticed the vomit down the front of it. Things were getting desperate, because he couldn’t remember being sick at all. Simmons climbed over the hoardings to escape the rain, and found himself in what must have once been the control room. He pushed the broken door closed trying to keep the wind out and looked for somewhere cosy to sleep. To the left was a narrow access tunnel. He headed for the tunnel, thinking that he could sleep there out of sight of any patrolling security guards. Fifty yards down the tunnel he found an equipment cupboard, which was covered in dust, and opened the door. The door creaked as he pulled it, and inside covered in cobwebs was a fire blanket, and he shook it before wrapping it round his shivering body. He stared past the cobwebs into the dark and saw there was a holdall in the corner. He pulled it free of the dust and spider webs. He opened the zip and stared inside. His eyes widened at the contents of the bag. Inside covered in dust was exactly three hundred thousand reasons why his life had just got better.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  CHAPTER 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 21