Soft Target 04 - The 18th Brigade

by Conrad Jones

  Chapter Forty One

  Vigilante

  Sergeant Mel Hickey picked up his sports bag and slung it over his shoulder. He looked around his small living quarters and smiled sourly, thinking that he probably wouldn’t be back for a while, if at all. He opened the front door and looked out at a mocked up corridor, made to look like a street of terraced houses. Mel had always thought the idea was a terrible joke, not so bad if you were in the final throws of Parkinson`s disease, or Alzheimer’s, but not so convincing for those with all their mental facilities intact. He stepped out and closed the fake red front door behind him. The imitation brass knocker rattled as it closed, making him laugh.

  “Hello Mel,” a voice said behind him, making him jump. His legs buckled a little as he shifted his weight. When he had first started to use them his balance was an issue but he was learning to adjust to them now. As long as he administered his pain relief on time he could stay on them for days at a time. Walking was still painful but it was when he removed them that he suffered the most.

  “Hello Jim, have you been to see your Ross then?” Mel replied shocked at the sudden appearance of old Jim in the corridor. Jim was the last person that he wanted to see.

  “Yes, I called in on the off chance that he would be sober, not much chance of that though, how are the bionic legs doing?” Jim looked bleary eyed, either tired or emotional, Mel didn’t much care. He needed to be away from old Jim rapidly.

  “They take some getting used to, I`ll never be winning any races. Has he been at the whisky again,” Mel said cheerfully, trying to pass Jim in the corridor.

  “Listen to me a minute Mel,” Jim grabbed his arm surprisingly hard for an old fellow. He leaned close to Mel`s ear.

  “Has Ross said anything strange to any of you lads in here?”

  “What do you mean Jim?” Mel pulled away from him, but the grip on his arm tightened.

  “Has he mentioned anything about the Brigade having a weapons stash?” Jim was desperate. He was fishing for any sign of untruth in Mel`s eyes, but there was only anger and surprise there.

  “Get your hands off me Jim or I`ll break your arm,” Mel spoke calmly but with enough venom to make the old man realise that he had crossed the line. He might have been a Para once, but that was a very long time ago. Mel would destroy the old man in seconds, legs or no legs.

  “Sorry Mel, I`m upset, I need to know if he`s been talking to anyone about weapons and stuff belonging to the Brigade, has he said anything to you?” old Jim stepped back and tears welled in his watery eyes.

  “Look Jim, everyone in here is fucked up, me included, Ross likes a whisky or two and when he drinks he talks shit, but I haven’t heard anything about any weapons,” Mel stared into the old man`s eyes cool as a cucumber, not even a flicker of deceit in his gaze. The old man`s body seemed to deflate, and he nodded his head as he turned and walked away.

  “Jim,” Sergeant Mel Hickey called after him.

  “What,” the old man said, half turned away.

  “You take it easy Jim,” Mel said, and he saluted the old Para.

  “I will, you too,” old Jim saluted back, and then walked off down the corridor staring at the carpet as he went.

  Mel Hickey adjusted his weight and then walked in the opposite direction from Jim. The corridor stretched a hundred yards before he would reach a bank of elevators which would take him down to the reception. He had a hire car waiting for him in the car park. He`d blown up his last vehicle when he attacked the bank to draw Rashid Ahmed out of his home, and he hadn’t had time to replace it. He had killed the wrong target that time, but that didn’t matter now because he was about to redress the balance. He planned to use the six kilos of Semtex that he had stolen from the Brigade`s arsenal. Ross was very drunk the night he`d told him that there was explosives in the cellar belonging to old Jim.

  In 2007 when he had opened fire in Nisour Square Mel genuinely believed that the convoy was about to be attacked by a mobile car bomb, which had broken down. The truth of the matter was that the mercenaries used by the American and British forces were constantly in fear of suicide bombers and that made them twitchy. Everyone was a suspect, and every vehicle was a potential hazard. When constant fear was combined with the heat and the dust then tempers became taught, and nerves were perched on a knife edge. The events of Nisour Square were covered up and brushed over, all the mercenary immunity clauses were invoked and evidence was manufactured to muddy the waters of the FBI`s investigation.

  Sergeant Mel Hickey had been hauled in front of his superiors and identified as the instigator of the massacre. The Blackwater employees lost a huge cash bonus because of the incident. The bonus only applied if there was no loss of civilian life during their active term in Iraq. Although he was safe from prosecution he had caused his employers a huge amount of hassle, and they placed him on light duties. Mel was traumatised by the incident. The camaraderie that he had enjoyed in the British Army did not exist in the mercenary ranks, and he was routinely castigated by his peers, who had been penalised financially as a result of his actions. The fact that a dozen other mercenaries opened fire that afternoon seemed to be lost on everyone. All the fingers were pointing at Mel and the following days and weeks became almost unbearable.

  Sergeant Mel Hickey was posted on sentry duty outside an Iraqi police recruiting station. The station was a primary target for insurgents. Over two hundred Iraqi policemen are either murdered or completely disappear every month, and even now it is the most dangerous profession in the nation. No one really knows how many are actually slaughtered, or how many run away for fear of being killed. Iraqi policemen are deemed as collaborators. They are trained by the Christian invaders and therefore their families become legitimate targets and are murdered wholesale every day.

  Sentry duty was a laborious task, mainly because of the relentless heat. The desert sun beat down on them without mercy all day long. There were huge concrete blocks in the road, in front of the recruitment station, stopping suicide bombers from driving cars packed full of explosives into the compound itself. The compound was surrounded by a crooked brick wall which had been rendered with white plaster, as is the custom in the Middle East. The render has a two-fold effect, firstly it looks cleaner at first, and secondly it hides the shocking quality of the bricklayers` workmanship. Mel knew that a determined bomber could drive a vehicle straight through the fragile wall, in fact they often joked that they could ride a push bike through it. Another mercenary had quipped that they could be attacked by the first skateboard bomber in history, because the walls were so poorly constructed. The rendered walls were pockmarked with machinegun bullet holes from several drive-by shootings. There was a constant queue around the building, ambitious poor young men eager to feed their families, and progress up the social ladder by landing a responsible job as a policeman. They waited patiently for hours upon end for their turn to enlist. Standing in the recruitment line had cost over sixty men their lives already that year.

  Two weeks into his posting local Iraqis had got wind that the men guarding the recruitment station were in some way connected to the massacre at Nisour Square. Mel was nearing the end of a twelve hour nightshift, which spanned midnight until midday. The queue of eager recruits was snaking around the compound as usual, despite the intense heat, which was creeping over a hundred degrees. Mel was incredibly fair skinned, almost an albino, and he suffered from the heat more than most. His hair, almost white, offered no protection to his sensitive pink scalp from the sun`s rays.

  He was tired and hungry when a young Iraqi child approached him and his men. They were grouped together taking in some fresh water. They had to complete the required paperwork before handing the shift over to the incoming Sergeant. The night shift commanders were en route with a fresh troop of mercenaries. There was less than thirty minutes remaining before they could get out of the sun, eat and then get some well earned sleep. Mel noticed that the child appeared to be distressed, but there was something else which struck
him. There was something different about her face.

  It was unusual to see girls out alone even when they were young. They were rarely seen in public unaccompanied. This young girl was upset, crying and alone, and then it clicked. She was a Down syndrome child. Mel felt a wave of sympathy as he watched the little girl crying and walking toward them. He smiled, trying to calm her, and walked toward her. He offered her his bottle of water but her confused face showed no signs of understanding anything further than the fact that she was lost. It was obvious, what else would she be doing here on her own.

  Mel heard a raised voice from the line of waiting men and he turned to see what the noise was all about. Some of the waiting men had started to run away from the approaching child. Mel turned back to the child and noticed her loose fitting smock had angular bulges beneath it, as if something had been strapped around her waist and chest. He realised too late that she had been taken from an asylum by insurgents, wrapped in explosive belts and then told to walk toward the soldiers. Mel looked around for the perpetrators who had sent the poor helpless girl to a dreadful death, but he never had chance to locate them. The explosive belts were remotely detonated from just fifty yards away, ripping the poor girl into bloody shreds. Because of his close proximity to her he was catapulted upwards away from the deadly shrapnel. His legs were blown off and couldn’t be recovered, but he`d survived the blast, unlike his entire troop who were shredded by a wave of ball bearings and nails.

  Weeks turned into months, and then into years as his recovery went from one stage to the next. Now he was walking with the aid of Hi-Tec prosthetic legs. His upper body was powerfully built and his mind was as sharp as a razor. The war in Iraq was the reason for his injuries. His injuries and the resulting mental damage were the reasons why he had eventually lost his wife and children to another man. His anger and resentment at his plight had eventually driven his family away from him. The turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan was being dragged out by the Muslim insurgents. The insurgents were his enemy, Rashid Ahmed had been sending arms to the Taliban, and now was the time to even things up a little. He slung his bag over his shoulder again and headed for the car park. It was a two and a half hour drive to Holyhead Mountain, and a long climb to North Stack. Chances were that the climb would be too much for him, and he would probably have to wait for Rashid to come down, but he could wait.

  Chapter Forty Two

  The Brigade

  Jay checked the wing mirror again and saw the hatchback still following them. He reached for the cell phone in his pocket, and pressed the speed dial button.

  “Jay, how did it go?” Terry Nick answered.

  “I think they got the message, but I`ve picked up a tail,” Jay looked in the mirror again.

  “How many of them?” Terry asked.

  “There is only one of them, but he`s been on his mobile for the last fifteen minutes, probably drumming up some backup,” Jay explained.

  “Keep him away from town. We don’t need any more hassle with the police. I`ve had London on the telephone giving me a polite warning that our public image could jeopardise our international contracts,” Terry didn’t want to court any more adverse publicity. The contracts in Iraq had been much more complicated than he had anticipated them to be. The events at Nisour Square had caused reverberations across the entire world. Deploying mercenary soldiers was lucrative, but people were always going to die, that`s what they do for a living. You just had to hope that they only killed the bad guys.

  The situation in Iraq seemed to be coming to an end. The American public wanted their troops out of there immediately, and a British troop withdrawal was already underway. The situation was precarious to say the least. Buying weaponry and equipment was expensive, and when you consider that most of it stays in situ when the conflict is over, planning your purchases as a conflict comes to an end is a risky business. Terry Nick knew that there would be other conflicts and other governments that would need the services of his mercenaries, but he had to protect his domestic business too. Without the door security business everything else would implode. It supplied the cash flow to fund Brigade ventures overseas. His relationship with the gargantuan American mercenary company, called Blackwater Worldwide, was still intact. They welcomed the influx of highly trained British veterans into the fold with open arms, because they were the best.

  Relationships at home were less cordial, and it seemed that the intelligence services kept blowing hot and cold with the Brigade, but they still had key primaries to protect. Rashid Ahmed was the priority right now, and the fact that his men had been ordered to reveal themselves complicated matters further. He needed to go to the remote safe house himself to assess the situation first hand. It was obvious that `persons unknown` had carried out a well planned attack on Ahmed, and people like that seldom go away unassisted. The Brigade couldn’t afford for their reputation to be tarnished any further by losing a primary. Rashid`s mountain residence could be a blessing in disguise because the remoteness of the area could offer the perfect location to dispose of his latest problem, Omar and the Yardies.

  “I`m heading down to Holyhead, you should head there too and bring that tail with you, do you have enough fuel to make it there without stopping?” Terry asked. He didn’t want to offer any opportunities for the Yardies to attack Jay before they reached the mountain.

  “We`ve got a full tank, are you already on the way?” Jay replied leaning over and looking at the fuel gauge.

  “If I leave now, I`ll be thirty miles ahead of you, put your foot down and you`ll catch me up before the Conwy tunnel. If we can play this right then we can arrange a nice little welcome party for your friends, just keep him behind you,” Terry ordered. Most well trained military personnel were taught how to keep a tail close enough to entice them to keep following, but far enough away to stop them getting into striking distance. The FBI call it `following a suspect from the front`, they pretend that they don’t know they`re being followed, allowing the tail to grow in confidence while an ambush is organised.

  Chapter Forty Three

  Tank

  The meeting in the subterranean bunker had been brought to an abrupt end by the Minister of Defence. The conventional law enforcement agencies had left, some reluctantly, and others indifferently. Tank knew that the idea of bringing MI5, MI6, military counter terrorist units, uniformed police chiefs, CI5 and the Terrorist Task Force was flawed, to say the least. The two worlds of conventional law keepers and covert agencies could never marry. The uniformed divisions spent all their time hunting murderers, kidnappers and burglars, while the covert agencies committed all three serious crimes on a weekly basis, without fear of prosecution. The intelligence world is a dangerous and cynical place to live in, and few people have long careers there, fewer still collect their pension.

  The Minister was talking in hushed tones to the intelligence directors, while Tank and Major Timms waited impatiently.

  “They`re obviously in disagreement about something,” Major Timms pointed his pen toward the Minister, as she appeared to be animated about something.

  “Do MI5 ever agree with anyone about anything,” Tank laughed cynically.

  “Rarely,” the Major agreed.

  “What do you think the problem is?” Tank mused.

  “The outstanding arms deal,” the Major speculated.

  “That`s exactly what I think,” Tank agreed.

  The Minister waved to them through the reinforced glass wall. The intelligence directors stood up and walked toward the glass; the door opened and they stormed between them without saying a word. Tank smiled and entered the room, twisting his huge shoulders slightly to fit through the doorframe. Although the bunker was state of the art, all the doors were very narrow and were designed to add strength to the overall structure of the excavation.

  “We have a problem,” the Minister said, crossing her legs as she spoke.

  “We have several from what we`ve heard today,” the Major replied.

  “Quite,”
she replied curtly.

  “What are you going to do with the arms deal?” Tank asked saving her anymore embarrassment than was really necessary.

  She looked at him and eyed him coolly, realising suddenly how transparent the situation really was.

  “We are stumped frankly, if we don’t deliver the cache then the whole project with Rashid Ahmed is over, if we do deliver we`re risking the lives of another dozen Afghan soldiers,” she shrugged not finishing her analysis, and leaving the sentence open.

  Tank and the Major remained silent, playing the game. She fidgeted uncomfortably before being forced to continue.

  “We need the arms to go in but under your protection. Your taskforce is made up of the best people that we have,” she said abruptly, but not totally convincing anyone that she meant it.

  Tank smiled and looked at the Major, shaking his head.

  “The taskforce is the best covert strike force in the country, and I repeat the word `covert` Minister. Afghanistan is a war zone, and you need soldiers, SAS, SBS, commandoes. The list of assets that you can use is endless,” Tank said still smiling.