Soft Target ss-2

by Stephen Leather

  The passport the Palestinian was using belonged to an Iraqi whose brother had been murdered by Saddam Hussein. The man had fled with his wife and two young sons before the Iraqi secret police could visit him in the middle of the night. The British had granted the family asylum, and permanent residency in the United Kingdom. The Iraqi hated the British as much as the Palestinian did, but he was happy to take advantage of them. He had received a new hip, courtesy of the National Health Service, lived in a spacious three-bedroomed council flat in Notting Hill, with a balcony and use of a communal garden, his children were receiving a free education and would, hopefully, go to university one day. The Iraqi didn’t need his passport any more. He had no plans to leave the country. Iraq was a hellish place run by the infidels, but even if it wasn’t he wouldn’t want to return. In Britain he was richer than he would ever be in Iraq. His children would soon be granted British citizenship, and they already spoke with British accents.

  The Iraqi wasn’t grateful for what the British had done for him. He saw it as his right. The British helped the Americans, who murdered and tortured Muslims around the world. He owed the infidels no loyalty. His only loyalty was to Islam and his Arab brothers. When he was approached by the Saudi one summer afternoon as he strolled through a pretty London square, he didn’t take much convincing to hand over his passport. He didn’t even want to know how it would be used. All he knew was that his Arab brothers were preparing to strike at the heart of the infidels and lending his passport was the least he could do. Even if the authorities ever traced it, all the Iraqi had to do was say it had been stolen. That was one of the benefits of living in Britain: it was so easy to lie to the police. Unlike in Iraq, where the secret police could torture and kill with impunity, the British police had to call him ‘sir’ and would get him a lawyer, free of charge, if he needed one.

  The Palestinian had been in the UK for two weeks, and he had spent all that time in the bedsit that had been found for him. Food and drink was brought to him by a man who never spoke. Another man – a Saudi, the Palestinian thought – came after a week, took measurements of his chest and waist and gave him some newspaper cuttings about the latest atrocities on the West Bank. Five schoolchildren killed by an Israeli rocket. A baby shot in crossfire. A student killed by a rubber bullet that hit him in the throat. The Palestinian didn’t need the newspaper stories to fuel his hatred for the West. That had been forged more than ten years earlier when the Israelis had thrown him and his family out of their house, then bulldozed it. His father had fought back and been shot in the leg. The doctors had amputated it above the knee and he had never worked again. A year later, the Palestinian’s elder brother had died when Israeli soldiers had fired into a crowd of protestors, and his mother had died of a broken heart six months later. The Palestinian hated the Israelis, he hated the Americans, who funded the Israelis, and he hated the British, who kowtowed to every demand the Americans made. It was time to hit the British, to show them what it was like to have people die in the streets. To make them suffer as the Palestinians had suffered.

  There was a knock and the Palestinian got up off the prayer mat. He unlocked the door. It was the Saudi.

  The Saudi opened his bag and took out a canvas vest with bulky packages in pockets spaced around it at even intervals. Red and blue wires ran from the pockets.

  The Saudi helped the Palestinian fit the vest and tightened it with straps and buckles. The button to detonate the explosives was at the end of a white wire. The Palestinian tucked it away in one of the pockets. He knew how the vest worked: he’d been on a training course that was part technical, part indoctrination. He hadn’t needed brainwashing: he’d welcomed the opportunity to join the ranks of the shahid. Once he had given his life for the jihad,he would be with his mother and brother in heaven, his father, too, when his time came.

  The Palestinian put on his coat over the vest and fastened the buttons. The Saudi walked round him several times. He made a small adjustment to the shoulders, then handed the Palestinian an envelope. He picked up his bag and left. ‘Allahu akbar,’ he whispered, as the door closed. God is great.

  The Palestinian opened the envelope. Inside, there was a single sheet of paper. It was a photocopy of a map of the London Underground system. One station had been circled in red ink. King’s Cross. And written in the margin was a time: five o’clock.

  The Palestinian looked at the cheap clock on the wall by the door. It was a quarter to one. He had plenty of time. He knelt to pray.

  Ken Swift swiped his card and pushed through the revolving door. His boots squeaked as he walked down the corridor, head swivelling to left and right. He popped his head into the COMMS room and saw Mike Sutherland checking a radio. ‘Seen Rosie?’ he asked.

  ‘On the range,’ said Sutherland. ‘He’s not happy with the sights on his Glock.’

  Swift turned on his heel. He heard the cracks of 9mm rounds as he went down the stairs to the range, single shots, evenly spaced. He barged through the door and saw Rose firing at a bullseye target ten metres down the range. Rose was in his black overalls, wearing orange ear-protectors.

  ‘Rosie!’ shouted Swift.

  Rose carried on firing. When he’d emptied the magazine he pressed the button that brought the target closer so that he could see exactly where his shots had gone.

  Swift walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. Rose pulled off his ear-protectors. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Marsden?’

  Rose frowned.‘He’s with BTP this afternoon. They want him undercover on Operation Wingman. Why?’

  ‘We’re in deep shit,’ said Swift. ‘Deep, deep shit.’

  The Palestinian pulled the door to his bedsit shut behind him and walked slowly down the stairs. He heard loud rock music from one of the rooms on the first floor. Whoever was living there played music all day long and well into the night. Some nights the Palestinian had been unable to sleep but he had never gone down to complain. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself. He just hoped that whoever was in the room would be at King’s Cross station at five o’clock.

  At the bottom of the stairs a glass door led to the street. The Palestinian pulled at it but it wouldn’t open. Then he realised he had to press a button to unlock it. He stared at it. It was exactly the same as the one on his vest. It was an omen, he decided. An omen that everything would go as planned. ‘Allahu akbar,’ he whispered. He pressed the button and the lock buzzed. It would be just as easy to press the other button, when the time came. Click, and he would be in heaven. He pulled open the door and walked into the street. He was just five minutes’ walk from Brixton station in South London, the terminus of the Victoria Line.

  The sky was overcast, another good omen. He had to wear the coat to cover the vest and it would have looked out of place on a warm, sunny day. Allah was smiling on him because what was about to happen was Allah’s will.

  The streets were busy with afternoon shoppers. Music blared from an open window. Reggae this time, not rock, but it was just as offensive to the Palestinian’s ears. He walked past a travel agency, whose windows were plastered with posters offering cheap holidays – one for two weeks in Israel. The Palestinian shook his head sadly. Why would anyone want to holiday with murderers? he wondered. Had the Nazis offered package holidays to their extermination camps? London was full of tourists, coming to spend their money in a country that aided the persecution of Muslims. It was time to show those tourists that they would have been better to stay at home.

  He walked under a railway bridge and a train rattled overhead, making him flinch. Brakes squealed with the sound of a tortured animal. He walked along a street filled with market stalls selling cheap clothes, flimsy luggage and counterfeit batteries. Most of the shops catered to the Afro-Caribbean community, supermarkets with open boxes piled high with vegetables the Palestinian had never seen before, butchers offering halal meat, posters advertising phonecards to make cheap calls to Jamaica and West Africa. The Palestinian
moved through the shoppers, trying to avoid physical contact with those around him.

  He turned right on to Brixton Road. He was only yards from the tube entrance. He was so busy with his thoughts that he didn’t see the two men blocking his way until he had almost bumped into them. He mumbled an apology and tried to step to the side, but a hand gripped his right arm just below the shoulder. He looked up to see two big black men. One had dreadlocks tumbling from under a red, green and yellow woollen hat. The other was shorter but wider, with a large medallion on a thick gold chain. Both stared at him with undisguised hatred.

  ‘Give us your mobile,’ said the man with dreadlocks.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said the Palestinian.

  ‘I don’t want your fucking apology, I want your fucking phone. You speaka da fucking English, don’t you?’ He pushed the Palestinian in the chest and he staggered back against a shop window. He was facing a bus stop where half a dozen housewives and old men stood with bags of shopping. They didn’t intervene: they knew from experience that it brought only grief and a trip to the local Accident and Emergency department.

  The Palestinian was confused. ‘I understand English, but I don’t have a phone.’

  ‘Everybody’s got a fucking phone,’ said the shorter of the two men. He pulled a small knife out of his pocket, a shiny blade with a brown wooden handle. ‘Now, give us your fucking phone or I’ll stick you.’

  ‘I don’t have a phone,’ said the Palestinian. ‘Please, I have to be somewhere.’

  ‘Give us your wallet, then.’

  ‘I don’t have a wallet,’ said the Palestinian. He had nothing in his coat pockets and only a handful of coins in his trousers, just enough to buy his tube ticket to King’s Cross. He had been told to carry nothing that might identify him.

  The Palestinian tried to push between the two men. ‘Excuse me, please,’ he said. The knife flashed in and out and he felt a searing pain in his side. He gasped.

  ‘You fucking Arab piece of shit,’ hissed the man with the medallion. He stabbed the knife into the Palestinian’s side again. And again. The Palestinian staggered back against the window and it rattled from the impact. He felt blood flow under his vest and his legs went weak. He tried to reach under his coat so that at least he could die with honour, with glory, but his arms were like lead.

  ‘Think you’re better than us, do you?’ hissed the man with the knife. The knife struck again, in his chest this time. The Palestinian’s breath gurgled in his throat and he sank to his knees, a red mist falling over his eyes. His last thoughts were of the shame he would bring upon his family when they heard he had died in the street, that he had failed in his mission, that he had died for nothing, murdered by an infidel for not having a phone. He slumped forward and slammed face down on to the pavement, bloody froth spilling from his lips.

  Shepherd took a drink from his plastic bottle of water, sat down under a map of the Underground system and stretched out his legs. He had been walking around Piccadilly Circus tube station for the best part of an hour, moving from platform to platform. His radio was clipped to the back of his belt under his leather jacket and there was a microphone inside his right cuff.

  Nick Wright, Tommy Reid and four other British Transport Police undercover officers were on the same frequency, as were Brian Ramshaw and a controller at the Management Information and Communications Centre in Broadway. She was monitoring the CCTV cameras at Piccadilly Circus, where Wright and a female BTP officer were with Shepherd, Leicester Square, where Ramshaw was with Reid, and Tottenham Court Road, where the rest of the BTP officers were staked out.

  ‘How’s it going, Stu?’ asked Wright, through the earpiece.

  ‘Bored rigid,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You can pop up for a coffee,’ said Wright.

  ‘Maybe later,’ said Shepherd. The BTP had wanted Wright and Ramshaw on the operation because they had seen Snow White and her crew up close. But they’d decided not to stake out the Trocadero again in case the steamers recognised any of the undercover officers. Four new BTP undercover officers were hanging around the amusement arcades while the officers from Wednesday’s operation were in the tube system. Shepherd was wearing his leather jacket, blue jeans and a grey pullover. Wright had been more creative and was dressed as a priest, complete with dog collar and a shabby document case with the name of an East London church stencilled on the side.

  Shepherd folded his arms, and felt the Glock hard against his left side. He couldn’t get over the fact that armed police were going up against teenagers, but Shepherd couldn’t forget how the boy had casually knifed the little girl. There had been no fear in his eyes, no regret. He’d smiled as he stuck the blade into the child’s flesh. Shepherd wasn’t happy about being taken off ARV duties, but he was glad to have another crack at the Snow White gang. This time he’d be quicker off the mark.

  Eric Tierney had seen it all on the streets of Brixton. On a good day it could be a heart-warming, lively place, vibrant in its ethnicity. On a bad day it was a cross between a third-world slum and a war zone. Over the six years that Tierney had been a paramedic, he’d tended teenage boys with bullet wounds, twelve-year-old girls after back-street abortions, drug overdoses, young men who’d had pub glasses thrust into their faces, underage prostitutes who’d been slashed with razors. On a bad day, Brixton was the closest thing to hell that Tierney could imagine. But it was never dull. Tierney would have hated a nine-to-five job in a factory or office. Not that he’d ever tried one. He’d joined the army from school, and trained as a medic. He’d done ten years in uniform and served in Iraq, then decided that if he didn’t leave before he was thirty he never would. The Ambulance Service had snapped him up and sent him to work in South London where his skill in patching up bullet wounds was a welcome bonus.

  Today Tierney had started work at two and it was only four fifteen but already he had dealt with two heroin overdoses and a toddler who had been knocked out of her push-chair by a bus driver who had the dilated pupils of a drug-user. The police had taken the man for a blood test and the little girl was in intensive care with head injuries.

  The fourth call of the day was to a man lying face down in the street. That was all the information they had. He could be drunk, on drugs, or dead. The driver had the siren and lights flashing but the traffic was heavy and there was no room for the cars ahead to pull to the side, so they had to wait it out.

  The ambulance crawled along the road. Eventually Tierney saw a small crowd of onlookers and a police car with its blue light flashing. He grabbed his resuscitation kit, opened the door and ran down the street. As he got closer to the police car he slowed. The body was on the pavement, close to the road. One uniformed officer was holding back the onlookers, the other was on the radio. Tierney could see why neither was attending to the man on the ground. There was a large pool of blood around him: a body couldn’t lose that much and still be alive.

  Tierney knelt down beside the body, taking care to avoid the blood. He couldn’t see a wound, but there was no doubt that the man had been stabbed or shot. There were no cartridge cases on the pavement and the local gang-bangers tended to use semiautomatics because that was what they used in the movies. The man had probably been stabbed.

  Tierney put a hand on his back, preparing to turn him over.

  ‘CID’s on the way,’ said one of the officers. ‘Best leave the body where it is.’

  ‘I’ve got to confirm that it is a body,’ said Tierney, ‘check for a pulse.’

  ‘Waste of time,’ said the officer.

  ‘Them’s the rules,’ said Tierney, although he knew the officer was right. He felt something hard and oblong under the coat, and frowned. He moved his hand round the body and felt another object, the same shape as the first. He sat back on his heels. His first inclination had been to turn the man over, but now he was having second thoughts. Something was not right – something that was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

  He remembered a poster he’d
seen in Iraq, one of many produced by the Americans. It warned of the dangers of suicide bombers, and on it was a photograph of a vest with pockets that held tubes of dynamite – not oblong blocks like Tierney had felt but tubes like Blackpool rock. Tierney craned his neck and looked at the man’s face. It was pale but definitely Middle Eastern.

  ‘Get those people back,’ Tierney said quietly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked the officer.

  ‘Just move them back, get everybody as far away from here as you can.’

  Tierney reached for the bottom of the man’s coat and pulled it slowly up his legs. Then he rolled it up to the man’s waist. He saw grey canvas and knew his hunch had been right. A few more inches and he could see three pockets, each containing something oblong. Tierney swallowed. His mouth was bone dry.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ asked the officer, his voice a harsh whisper.

  Tierney didn’t reply. He eased the coat higher. It snagged on something and he cursed. He couldn’t reach the coat buttons without turning the body over, and he didn’t want to risk that. It was something for the bomb-disposal experts. But Tierney wanted to be sure. He eased the coat from side to side, then pulled it further up the body. He saw wires. Red and blue. Now he was sure.

  Major Allan Gannon enjoyed his monthly meetings with the head of the Met’s Anti-terrorist Squad. Commander Ronnie Roberts was a career cop who’d worked his way up from the beat in South London, with stints in Special Branch and the Robbery Squad. His office on the eleventh floor of New Scotland Yard overlooked Broadway, and as Gannon stood at the window and looked through the bomb-proof curtains he saw a group of Japanese tourists photographing themselves in front of the famous triangular rotating sign.

  ‘How does it feel to be a tourist attraction?’ asked Gannon.

  ‘It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?’ said Roberts. ‘On the one hand we’re supposed to be Dixon of Dock Green and walking guidebooks for tourists, and on the other we’ve got machine-guns at Heathrow and surveillance operations on terrorists trying to buy anthrax spores over the Internet.’