by Conrad Jones
Tank looked past them to where she was lying. She didn’t look any different. He wasn’t sure what he had expected her to be doing. Sitting up and reading a newspaper, catching up on over a year’s events; or tucking into her first solid food since she’d took two bullets. Ridiculous, but he hadn’t expected her to look the same.
Grace’s father placed his wrinkled black hand on Tank’s huge forearm and squeezed gently, all the hate in eyes seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a compassionate understanding. Tank tensed his muscles reflexively, a little confused.
“We don’t see eye to eye about Grace, but I want to thank you for sending your men here to look after her,” her father said quietly, still holding Tank’s forearm. Tank looked him in the eye. There was an inner strength behind his eyes. A strength that he had seen in Grace’s eyes a million times. Her father had been the first black man to reach the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major in the British armed forces. He was Grace’s hero, and the reason why she’d chosen to follow him into the service to be a career soldier.
“We don’t see eye to eye because she’s my little girl, she always will be. She woke up, Tank. She woke up and she asked why you hadn’t been to see her today,” tears filled his eyes as he spoke. The hand on Tank’s forearm squeezed a little tighter. “She woke up and she knew that you hadn’t been here today. Go and see her.”
Tank felt a lump the size of an orange in his throat as he approached the bed. She looked so fragile, so small, so beautiful, but so painfully vulnerable. The memory of the black woman on the gurney returned. Jagged red holes drilled into her naked chest by an assassin’s bullets. His stomach tightened at the thought of it. It made him feel protective and scared at the same time. Anger filled his mind as the sight of Grace’s body being slammed against a land rover by a high-powered bullet in Chechnya returned to him. He reached out and touched her hand, scared that he might break her if he pressed too hard. He was scared that she might shatter into a thousand pieces beneath his touch. Her skin felt warm, alive. Her hand twitched, and her eyes flickered open.
“You’re late. Where’ve you been?” she whispered. Tank held her and cried like a baby.
Chapter Forty-Two
Yasser
“You should have used this when you had the chance to,” Yasser said waving the severed tongue to the screaming Eygptian that it had belonged to. He was covering his ruined eyeball with one hand, and the other was over his blood-filled mouth. There was a thick gurgling sound coming from his throat as he screamed in pain and tried to breathe at the same time.
“Put him into my cage. Make sure that he has fresh water to drink,” Yasser ordered. Melad and Megdah dragged the man away looking a bit bemused. They couldn’t understand the significance of giving the man water to drink when you’d just cut his tongue out. It made perfect sense to a psychopath like Yasser Ahmed, one good turn deserves another. Yasser walked toward the Bedouin tribesmen and exchanged formal greetings with them.
“Shukraan, Ahlan wa Sahlan,” the chief greeted him as he would another chief. Yasser returned the respect that he’d been shown by bowing his head slightly.
“What are we to do with these bastards?” the chief asked spitting phlegm toward the Egyptian guards. The Bedouin despised the Egyptian government and their minions, especially those that aided the West.
“Put them in the cage for now,” Yasser said, and the Bedouin tribesmen herded them toward the cage. The terrified guards were falling at Yasser’s feet as they were dragged to the cage, begging for mercy. They had seen what had become of their colleague. One of the Bedouin approached the wounded helicopter engineer.
“Not him,” Yasser shouted, “bring him to me first.”
The Bedouin dragged the injured man to Yasser. His military boots dragged two lines in the sand. He was shot in the shoulder, injured badly but well aware of what was going on around him.
“This man mocked my disability,” Yasser addressed the gathering as if he were presenting a sales pitch. He circled slowly round the man, and the two Bedouin that held him as he spoke.
“He mocked my disability and he showed me no mercy at all. A Muslim who was willing to berate and inflict pain upon his brother for no reason at all,” Yasser explained to his audience.
“In the back of that flying machine he stamped on my wound,” Yasser pointed to the festering stump, making some of the men grimace at the thought of how painful that must have been. The stump was scabbing over and drying out, a collage of blackened blood and purple flesh, mixed with creamy patches of infected puss. As he displayed the terrible wound, several bloated flies flew away, disturbed from their feeding.
“He saw a brother, injured and in pain, and he offered me no solace, no sympathy, no mercy, only more pain and humiliation. Can somebody explain to me why one man would treat his brother in such a terrible way?” Yasser raised his good arm questioning the crowd. The gathering stayed silent. Yasser continued to circle the man. The man was looking around the crowd of Bedouin in a panic; the grip on his arms was unbreakable, which scared him. The fact that Yasser was circling him was even more terrifying, especially because what he saying was one hundred percent correct. He had been the second man on rendition flights for over a year now, never once stopping to think about the pain and terror that was being inflicted on his unfortunate prisoners. He’d lost count of how many men and women he`d kicked, punched, stamped on and raped in the back of that grey helicopter, but he had a feeling that the reaper was coming to repay him for his kindness.
“Why?” Yasser stopped directly in front of the man.
He stared into him with his glassy eyes. The man looked into Yasser’s eyes. It was like looking into a milky bottomless pit. There was a terrible logic in them, which made it more frightening. Yasser felt aggrieved, and he wanted an explanation for that, an explanation and recompense of course.
“Why did you mimic me for only having one arm?” Yasser leaned forward and whispered in the man’s ear. “Having one arm isn’t funny, but having no arms is even less funny than that. You can tell me what it’s like soon.”
The man’s bottom lip started to quiver and he squeezed his eyes closed, tears spilled over and ran down his face.
“Why did you stamp on my wounded shoulder?”
“Muta’ assif, I’m sorry,” the man spoke in poor Arabic, terrified of what Yasser might do to him.
“Oh, I have no doubt in my mind that you are sorry now my brother, but are you sorry because you’re no longer in control, and because you’re scared, or have you seen the error of your ways?” Yasser started to circle him again.
“No, I am truly sorry, please don’t hurt me,” the man cried, spittle dribbled from his mouth and his knees sagged. The Bedouin had to support him.
“My brother, why do you cry so?” Yasser addressed the gathering again.
“When you stamped on my shoulder, did you think that it would make me cry?”
“Please, I didn’t think at all. I’m sorry I followed orders,” the man sobbed.
“What, why didn’t you say so?” Yasser cried out loudly. He waved his hand dramatically.
“We must let this man go immediately. He was only following orders. Tell me who ordered you to stamp on my shoulder,” Yasser sneered in the man’s tear stained face.
The man jabbered but he couldn’t answer. Yasser bit hard into the man’s nose and crushed the cartilage between his teeth, feeling it crunch and crack under the pressure. The man screamed and jerked violently trying to escape Yasser’s vice like grip, but he couldn’t. The Bedouin held him too tightly. Yasser released his teeth and spat blood and saliva into the man’s face.
“Tell me who ordered you to put your arm inside your vest and mimic me.”
The man moaned a garbled reply that no one could understand.
“Tell me whose orders you were following and you are free to go,” Yasser spoke calmly.
There was no reply except the shuddering sobs of the man.
“This is
your last chance. Whose orders were you following when you stamped on my wounded shoulder?” Yasser whispered the question into the man’s ear. There was no reply. Yasser sunk his teeth into the man’s ear, twisting his head and ripping a chunk of flesh away from the lobe.
The man’s knees buckled. The Bedouin repositioned themselves and restrained him by twisting his arms behind his back. They bent his hand in an awkward angle, applying wristlocks to him. He cried out as one of the locks was applied a little harder than was necessary to restrain him.
“Where do you feel the pain?” Yasser bent over and asked him, his mouth close to his ear.
“My hand, he’s breaking my hand,” the man cried through gritted teeth.
“Remember that sensation in your hand. Remember it well because you will yearn for that feeling one day. The chance to feel anything in your arms is a gift from god, even if it is pain. I’m going to teach you how to become humble. I will teach you how to become a man with no arms and no legs at all. You will thank me eventually, I promise you that, and I promise that I will show you the same mercy and compassion that you have showed to me,” Yasser said.
The man started to sob uncontrollably. He had a vague idea of what was coming to him, but he was way, way short of what was actually going to happen to him. If he’d known, his heart would probably have exploded at the idea that one man could feel so much agony at the hands of another. Melad and Megdah pushed their way to the front of the Bedouin crowd to listen to their leader.
“There will be a workshop on this airbase somewhere,” Yasser spoke to them directly.
“There is one at the other side of the guardhouse,” Melad said. They had been able to see it from where the Bedouin set up camp, but it had been hidden from view from Yasser’s cage.
“Perfect, take him there, and bring me all the tools that you can find. Let the lessons begin.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Nasik/ St. John’s
Chen opened the access door, which led into the stairwell that serviced the subbasement delivery areas beneath the St. John’s shopping precinct. Five members of the Terrorist Task Force peeled away one at a time, entered the stairwell and descended in perfectly practiced combat formation. They were all dressed in heavy leaded jump suits, which were designed to offer some protection from nuclear, biological or chemical attack. Progress was slow and laboured. Tank was the last man through the doorway. He entered the stairwell then headed down the stone steps to take up the lead position, by overtaking the other Task Force men. Once a member of the team is positioned in the lead position, the man at the rear of the formation then passed everyone else, to take up the lead, and so on. The man at the rear moved to the front in rotation, one man taking the place of the next as the unit moved forward by the numbers.
At the bottom of the stone steps was another fire door. Chen approached the door, held the handle in his left hand and signalled with his right, two men break left, and two break right. He pulled the door open and the Task Force men streamed through the doorway into the cavernous subbasement, and took up low covering positions. Tank and Chen followed them through into the delivery area. The delivery area stretched out half a mile left and right in both directions. They were positioned on a raised platform, which ran the full length of the service roads. Five foot beneath the raised platform was the tarmac surface of the road, which was an inch deep in rainwater from the streets above, and littered with discarded cardboard boxes and rotting vegetables. Liverpool’s street cleaners hadn’t been down here for a while. Still, what the tourists couldn’t see wouldn’t hurt them. The walls of the raised delivery platform were punctuated by metal floor to ceiling roller shutters, which were symmetrically spaced out as far as you could see in either direction. Across the service road was another raised area, which completely mirrored the one that the Task Force men were positioned on. Behind every huge roller shutter was a delivery and storage warehouse belonging to the retail units that traded in the three-storey shopping mall above.
“Take a reading off the Geiger counter,” Tank instructed. The device could be hidden in any one of over one hundred and fifty storage units, each of which contained its own stairwells and goods lifts linking them to the stores above. It was going to be like looking for a needle in a field full of haystacks, even using handheld scanners. The shopping mall had been thoroughly scanned from the air already, but the thousands of tons of concrete and steel just couldn’t be penetrated.
Chen’s tech guy scanned the platform with his electronic unit, and it emitted loud clicking noises as he passed it over the concrete. There was nothing there to detect. The tech guy shook his head to communicate that the machine was coming up blank.
“This is pilgrim one,” Tank spoke into the coms. “We need to start checking the empty units first, which is our closest target?”
“Roger that pilgrim one, from where you are, I would say that unit eleven is the closest to you. It should be on your side of the road, to your right,” the fat controller was directing operations from the Task Force office, using detailed plans to guide them in.
Tank signalled to the team and they moved as one fluid unit along the platform to the shutters, which were marked with a giant number eleven. To the right of the shutter was unit number nine, and to the left was unit number thirteen, all odd numbers on one side of the road, and all evens on the other.
“Scan it,” Tank ordered into the coms.
The tech guy moved forward protected by his Task Force colleagues. The Geiger counter clicked noisily, the pitch varied as he moved it around the concrete platform. He neared the metal roller shutter and the tone changed again sensing the difference in its surroundings, but there were no radioactive traces to detect. He shook his head again and moved away from the unit door.
“This is pilgrim one, nothing here, what’s next?” Tank asked into the coms unit.
“Next door, number thirteen,” the fat controller directed them. The shopping centre was incredibly busy all year round, especially so since Liverpool won the City of Culture status in 2008. When the shopping centre management refurbished units, they carried out the work in small blocks, so as not to spoil the cosmetic impact for the tourists.
“Number thirteen unlucky for some,” Tank said, signalling the team to move to the unit next door.
The tech guy moved forward and started his sweep pattern in front of the huge shutters. The Geiger counter clicked as he scanned the concrete platform. The result was the same. There was nothing to detect. He went through the pattern sweeping left to right as he approached the metal shutters.
“How many more empty units are there after this one?” Tank asked into the coms, fearing that the results outside unit thirteen would be as fruitless as the previous ones.
“There are nine more after number thirteen.”
“I’ve got something,” the tech guy whispered into the coms. He was standing in front of the metal roller scanning the handle, and the pitch of the Geiger counter was oscillating wildly. He took the scanner away from the door and it settled again. The tech guy looked at Tank and nodded, sweeping the gadget over the handle again the tone registered a positive reading.
“What is it?” the fat controller asked, as the tech guy analysed the reading that the Geiger counter had recorded.
“I’m not sure, the reading is very weak, give me two minutes to analyse it.”
“Don’t worry about analysing the substances; just tell me what type of rays it is emitting?”
“It’s very weak, but it’s definitely beta rays, probably from the hand of someone who has been in contact with a beta emitting substance, or its container,” the tech guy explained.
“What do you think?” Tank asked the fat controller.
“If it’s definitely beta rays, then it`s strontium-90. I think that is what we are looking for; the odds of anything else giving that reading are a million to one.”
“Roger that control, we’re going in, pilgrim one out.”
Tank called Chen over to him and they both approached the metal clasp, which fastened the door to the concrete platform. Chen wiggled it up and down, as there was no padlock. Tank had to assume that whoever had taken the lock off, had refastened it on the inside, both locking the roller, and making the padlock inaccessible from the outside.
“Get Flash over here,” Tank whispered to Chen. Flash was the unit’s explosive expert. Everyone in the Task Force was adept with explosive compounds and their different applications, but Flash loved the stuff, hence the nick name Flash Bang, or Flash for short. Flash looked at the clasp and then gave thumbs up signal. He pointed to four spots along the base of the roller, two to the left of the clasp, and two to the right, and then he pointed to the clasp itself.
Tank gestured the team to take up sheltered positions left and right of the roller, while Flash got to work. He removed a black webbed pouch from his belt and opened a stainless steel zip, which fastened it. Flash took a lump of plastic explosive, a Semtex based product used by demolition experts when liquid explosives like Tovex weren’t suitable. Then he took four brass rings, the size of a large wedding band from the bag and stuffed the plastic explosive into them. The brass rings had the effect of directing the blast in a preordained direction, concentrating the explosive force of the blast tenfold. He positioned the packed brass rings beneath the edge of the roller shutter.