SOFT TARGET III Jerusalem (SOFT TARGET SERIES)

by Conrad Jones

  “That’s very interesting but what is your point?” the defence minister asked.

  “I’m sorry that I am not being specific enough for you. These thermoelectric power generators are fuelled by radioactive isotopes. Most of them contain beta emitting strontium-90,” he changed the picture again.

  This time a series of photographs appeared depicting dead bodies, which had swollen, to unrecognisable proportions. The skin had been burned purple and their facial features were so bloated that they were barely recognisable as human.

  “This is a family of woodcutters who lived in a small village Georgia. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992, they stole one of these generators from a remote hilltop to provide heat for themselves and their families.” He flicked through more autopsy pictures.

  “Two days later a local policeman investigating reports of the disappearance of the aircraft beacon found them like this. Apart from the obvious casualties the policeman himself and seventy five other people from the village died within three weeks of becoming contaminated,” the Israeli finished his explanation, leaving the people in the room in shocked silence.

  “You think that these Palestinian insurgents are in possession of a number of these generators?” the American asked.

  “We think that they are in possession of the strontium-90 that was inside them. Many of these generators have simply disappeared. The metal casings and radiation shields are sold for scrap, and the isotopes inside traded for the arms industry. We are sure that they have strontium, and that they have mixed it with cobalt-60. It is a simple operation to surround them with a conventional plastic or liquid explosive to create a salted bomb, or dirty bomb, or a radiological dispersal device.”

  “How could they have transported such a powerful beta emitting device so far across the world without becoming infected themselves?” Janet Walsh asked.

  “They couldn’t, quite simply. To transport that type of material safely it would need to be encased in lead, sealed inside a radioactive proof flask. All personnel being exposed to the flask would need several layers of protective clothing, and a thorough decontamination programme afterwards. The method required is so costly and expensive that it is virtually impossible to move it safely. That`s why the Soviets didn’t worry about leaving the generators scattered all over the remote areas of the country. There were no populated areas nearby, and if anyone did stumble onto one of them and tried to steal it, then the result is on the screen.” The Israeli with the hooked nose finished explaining and he pointed to the screen again. The pictures of radiation burned bodies, twisted and swollen demonstrated the power of radioactive beta rays.

  “So whoever constructed this device never intended for the carriers to return?” Chen asked.

  “Absolutely not, the carriers could have been oblivious, but the more likely scenario is that they were compliant with the plan. This time the suicide bombers will not die in the explosion, but will die either before it, or soon after. Whatever the motives it’s an act of Islamic Jihad,” the second Israeli answered.

  “We think that when the Abuhamza brothers left the West Bank they’d gone to the old Soviet Union in search of such materials, and that’s why our clandestine units couldn’t trace them.”

  “What’s our worst case scenario?” asked the fat controller.

  “If a device salted with cobalt-60 and strontium-90, the size of the photographic imprint explodes in the city centre, then it will become a contaminated wasteland. It will be economically useless and devoid of human life for decades,” the Israeli answered.

  David Bell smiled because he’d said almost exactly the same thing, word for word at the Task Force briefing earlier. No one else in the room could understand his apparent glee at the bad news, but he liked being right.

  “I assume that the Task Force has a plan of action?” Janet Walsh looked at Tank for a response. The Israelis remained standing, which she thought was a little odd, as if they had more bad news that they hadn’t imparted with yet.

  “Once our uniformed division has completed the evacuations then we’re going into that delivery basement,” Tank clicked the remote and architectural plans of the subterranean delivery area appeared on the centre screen. A labyrinth of access roads, shuttered storage areas, lift shafts and stairwells covered over a square mile.

  “Why haven’t they exploded the device already?” asked the defence minister.

  The Israelis looked at each other furtively, and the silent communication was spotted by several people in the room. Janet Walsh shot them both a withering glance, which prompted them to spill the beans.

  “We think that the device will have been hidden awaiting detonation by a timer,” the hooked nosed Israeli began. He looked to his colleague for support.”

  “The size of the potential device that you have discovered does not show direct correlation with the amount of strontium-90 contained in the thermoelectric generators. The size of the device means that there is more than one, it’s not big enough,” his colleague helped him along.

  The officials around the table became restless as the implication that there was more than one device became clear.

  “Our sources suggest that there is a plan to explode several devices simultaneously. A synchronised attack on Israel and the West,” hook nose continued.

  “Israel? I don’t follow,” Tank said.

  “We think that there will be a similar attack on Jerusalem and New York,” the Israeli intelligence officer dropped a bombshell.

  “I think that you’d better tell us exactly what you know Doctor Graff, and I don’t mean at Thanks Giving sir, I mean right now!” said the American officer in a slow southern drawl, he was already reaching for his cell phone.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Yasser Ahmed

  Yasser was trying to prepare himself mentally and physically for the escape bid that had been planned by someone. He didn’t know who it was or how they’d found him, nor did he know what was planned. All he knew was, that live or die he couldn’t go back into the torturous barbaric regime of extraordinary rendition. Yasser had tortured and killed more people than he could remember, and he could recognise the signs of when a human being no longer cared whether they lived or died. He had reached that point months ago. He would escape today or die trying. The infection in his shoulder seemed to be drying up, fresh air and the lack of torturers stabbing at it was allowing massive blackened scabs to form. It even smelled better, which was a good sign.

  Yasser stood with his face pressed against the steel bars of his cage, looking at the Bedouin tribesmen that he could see in his line of vision. Most of them were hidden by the single story guardhouse that blocked his view to the east of the airfield. There had been a cacophony of sound earlier as they fed and watered their animals and themselves, but it was much quieter now. The midday sun was scorching down on the desert, pushing temperatures over one hundred and forty degrees. Many of the Bedouin took shelter from the burning heat beneath the canvas gazebos, which they carried across the desert sands, along with all their other possessions.

  Two men in particular had attracted Yasser’s interest. On first inspection they appeared to be the same as the other Bedouin, but if you looked in detail there was a number of tell tale signs which indicated that they were not who they pretended to be. Their skin was smooth, unlike the sundried, wind-parched skin of their companions. The outdoor life of the Bedouin took its toll on the facial skin of the men and women. Constant sunshine, wind and dehydration made the Bedouin look much older than their actual years.

  These two men were in their twenties Yasser guessed, but there was no sign of the wrinkled skin of the genuine Bedouin. Their garments weren’t right either. Although authentic, the colours were too bright, too new, not yet faded by the burning Eygptian sun. They simply weren’t dusty enough. The two men had arrived on camels with the caravan, but they’d stayed at the western edge of the community, always keeping Yasser in view. They had even discretely approached th
e guardhouse, speaking to two of the guards and shared cigarettes with them, before wandering back to their camels.

  Yasser wondered how many of the caravan were involved in the escape plan. The Bedouin chief would certainly be aware that they were concealing Islamic combatants, and if the rest of the tribe were sympathetic to Yasser’s cause then they were a formidable force. The Bedouin tribes of Egypt were nomadic people that had travelled around the deserts of the Middle East for centuries unhindered. The expansion of tourism and capitalist ventures robbed them of their ancestral hunting and fishing grounds. Few insurgents came from the Bedouin tribes, but hundreds had been hidden by them. The three Eygptian guards were too few and too poorly armed to resist the Bedouin caravan if it became hostile. They were also too far away from anywhere to call reinforcements. Yasser was becoming more and more confident as the day past.

  He heard muffled sounds from the guard hut, and the piercing polyphonic ringtone of the pilots mobile. Then his hopes were shattered when the door to the guard hut opened, and the pilot and his mate ambled over to the helicopter. They were both carrying kit bags, which Yasser guessed contained their travelling gear. They climbed into their aircraft and began pre-flight checks. Yasser’s heart sank and he looked pleadingly toward the Bedouin in the distance.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The Bedouin

  Megdah and Melad sat up straight when they saw the helicopter pilot and his mate climbing into the aircraft. Megdah whistled toward a group of Bedouin tribesmen who were dozing beneath one of the larger canvas gazebos. They looked toward the helicopter and realised that it was being prepared for takeoff. They had been sent here to rescue their inspirational leader Yasser Ahmed, and it would be more than their lives were worth to fail. Megdah jumped to his feet and ran over to the chief’s gazebo. The chief was a wizened old man in his mid forties. There was a line for every month he’d lived outside in the sun carved deeply into his face, significantly aging him. His dark beard was peppered with grey hair, which was slowly winning the war for chin space, against the black hair. He was drawing heavily on a Marlborough cigarette, as western tobacco was now cheaper than their own, and easier to come by.

  Megdah pointed to the helicopter and spoke quickly to the chief. The chief nodded slowly and pulled on the cigarette again. He turned toward a group of Bedouin children and shouted instructions to them in a dialect that Megdah could barely follow. The children ran away laughing and chattering in their guttural tones. The chief turned to the agitated Megdah and gently waved his hands, palms down facing the floor, in a calming motion. The elders of the Bedouin tribe started laughing at Megdah, which only served to rile him even more. He couldn’t allow them to take Yasser Ahmed away at any cost. The Bedouin tribesmen had been chosen to help them with this mission because it was well known that this particular chief was sympathetic to the Islamic extremist cause. He hated Egypt’s president Mubarak because he’d traded Bedouin fishing grounds for Western money and arms. The Bedouin tribe had also been paid well by their sponsor to take Megdah and Melad along, to identify Yasser Ahmed, and to provide the firepower to rescue him. It had all gone well until now. Now that their target was in sight, all the Bedouin tribesmen could do was laugh at Megdah.

  “Do not panic my young friend,” the chief said gently, sensing that the Arab was becoming annoyed. “Sit down and share a cigarette with me.”

  The chief took a packet of red Marlborough from his dusty white cotton robe and offered one to Megdah. Melad approached, and he was uncertain of what was happening, and the chief gestured for them both to be seated, and gave them cigarettes. The chief spoke to his elders who were all sitting or lying on straw filled cushions around the perimeter of the open gazebo. The gathering burst into laughter again, much to the distain of Megdah and Melad. None of the Bedouin had even retrieved their Kalashnikov rifles yet.

  Megdah didn’t want to offend the chief but this was becoming unbearable. He looked to his colleague but he looked as if he was more concerned for their own safety than what was happening with the mission. They were heavily outnumbered and hundreds of miles away from anywhere. If the chief said, they should smoke a cigarette first then they would have to do just that.

  Two things happened at the same time. The children that the chief had spoken to earlier appeared at the western edge of the Bedouin camp, where Megdah and Melad had been sitting. They were running along with their hooked sheep crooks, herding the sheep and goats into a mini stampede toward the guardhouse. They were creating a ridiculous amount of noise, frightening the animals into flight, running and bleating loudly across the sandy runway. At the same time, one of the Bedouin women carried a black silk wrapped parcel into the gathering of elders, and she placed it at the feet of the chief. The elders burst into laughter again.

  The chief stubbed out his cigarette and unwrapped the black silk material from the prize inside. Megdah stared in disbelief as the chief picked up a shiny well-oiled American M16 rifle. The rifle was fitted with a brand new state of the art, image intensifying digital scope, which looked like a black video camera from the nineteen eighties. The chief picked it up quickly and pointed the weapon around the room aiming at the gathering, at the same time as making a mock machinegun noise with his mouth.

  “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da,” he simulated shooting everyone down, much to the amusement of the Bedouin tribesmen who rocked backward and forward laughing at their chief’s mischief making. Some of them grasped imaginary bullet wounds and made gagging noises as they pretended to be shot, adding to the chief’s pantomime. Megdah and Melad swapped glances, not knowing whether to humour the wrinkly Bedouin or not. The chief reached into the black silk parcel again and retrieved a thick black metal suppressor. He displayed it to the crowd like a magician who`d just pulled a rabbit from his hat. The Bedouin tribesmen rolled with laughter again and clapped their hands in applause. The chief screwed the silencer into the business end of the M16, and then pretended to shoot everyone again. His audience responded on cue with exaggerated laughter and more imaginary bullet wounds.

  The chief removed the bullet clip, he checked the magazine and snapped it into position, suddenly the smile on his face was gone, the muscles along his jaw line tensed visibly. The M16 was pulled tight into his shoulder, his right eye just millimetres away from the telescopic sights; the index finger of his right hand was positioned firmly against the trigger, while his right thumb slid off the safety catch.

  The Bedouin gathering became silent as they watched their chief tuning from a clown into well-practised marksman. They had seen it many times before. The rifle was his pride and joy and using it with the precision of a sniper was the chief’s party piece. There was very little to shoot at in the desert. The chief moved his jaw slowly as he concentrated, grinding his back teeth against each other, waiting for that moment when the body was perfectly poised and balanced to make a long range shot. The perfect moment when the trigger should be squeezed can’t be taught to anyone, it has to be felt, a complete merging of mind body and machine. The perfect camouflaged killing machine.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Jerusalem plot/ Armageddon

  “The Bible says in the Book of Revelations that the end of the world will begin and end around the land where Jesus was born,” Doctor Graff said very slowly, “religious or not, what we are about to tell you could indeed be the beginning of the end.”

  The room had settled back down to business following the Israelis shocking disclosure of information. Urgent calls had been made to various communication hubs in America, warning that a synchronised attack could be imminent, and that once again New York was a possible target. After a brief five-minute break, all the original government and military officials were ready to discuss the options. A satellite link had been patched through to the big screen, and the American Secretary of State was party to the meeting first hand via a conference call. She looked like she had just been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and given terrible news
, which was about right.

  “Whatever your religious beliefs you must understand what significance Jerusalem holds for those that are religious. For Christians the world over it is without a doubt the centre of the universe. Likewise for those of Jewish descent, whatever type of Jew, the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall as you know it, is the focus of our religion,” the Doctor paused for effect.

  “For Muslims it is home to the oldest building in Islamic history, they used to turn their prayer mats to face Jerusalem before Mecca become their holiest city. An attack by Muslim extremists, turning the old city into a radioactive no go zone would cause an irreversible religious melt down.”

  “This information is so sensitive that we haven’t even shared it with our own military chiefs. If the plot leaked out we think that there would be reprisals that would escalate out of control, dragging the Muslim countries around us into a nuclear conflict,” the Israelis Major explained further.