Soft Target 05 - Blister

by Conrad Jones

  “I’m not sick Uri, and you will not think I’m sick when we are millionaires,” Christopher spoke sulkily like a grumpy teenager. Uri laughed again and shook his head.

  “Whatever you say, you’re the boss,” Uri said.

  “Yes, I am. You should remember that too,” Christopher replied churlishly as he applied more liquid to the aging pop star. He studied the homeless man’s face curiously. “I recognise you, now where do I know you from?”

  Joe Hammond stared at the fresh faced man. He was sponging his legs with a clear liquid, while another man shaved his head and face. It registered in his fuddled mind that he had spoken to him, and that it would be good to offer a reply. Although his mind was numbed by whisky, he sensed that he was in danger. This place was neither a prison cell or a hospital, and something in the young man’s eyes frightened him.

  “I’m Joe Hammond,” he croaked. Talking had disturbed the phlegm in his lungs and he coughed. It had been weeks since he had spoken to anyone.

  “Who?”

  “Joe Hammond,” he repeated and spluttered again.

  “Joe Hammond, Joe Hammond, now why does that name ring a bell?”

  “I’m a singer, well I was a singer, I’ve been having a hard time recently,” he spluttered again. This time he managed to clear the phlegm in his throat and a globule of green fluid dribbled down his chin.

  “No. I’ve never heard of you, and that is disgusting by the way,” Christopher sneered.

  “Why am I here?” Joe managed to say. His words were slurred by the booze.

  “What did you do with the other one?” Christopher turned to Uri ignoring the drunk.

  “What other one?” Uri replied.

  “The other body you fool.”

  “Oh, you mean your last experiment,” Uri chuckled again as he finished shaving the tramp. He had emphasised the word ‘experiment’, mocking his young employer.

  “You know very well what I mean,” Christopher became a petulant child again.

  “He’s fish food, just like the others.”

  “There is no way they could be washed up, or found floating somewhere?”

  “We turn them into bite size chunks before we dump them Mr Walsh, there’s no need to be concerned,” Uri enjoyed teasing his strange employer.

  “Good, and I’m not concerned. I pay you to be concerned. He is ready to be sprayed. See to it Uri,” Christopher Walsh stood up and removed his rubber gloves. He held Joe Hammond by the chin and turned his face to the left, and then to the right, studying him. “No, I don’t recognise you at all. Make sure you spray his head and face well. If he was to be found I don’t want anyone recognising him. Handcuff him to the bulkhead and put the water out of his reach.”

  “You really are a sick man,” Uri laughed again. He left the cabin and closed the door behind him. Joe was alone and confused. He was more frightened than he had ever been. His brain was fuddled but the snippets of conversation that he had heard terrified him and he was sobering up quickly. He heard the word body, and experiment. The words that stuck in his mind the most were ‘fish food’. It reminded him of black and white gangster movies, or a scene from the Godfather. He struggled against the bonds that tied him but there was no give in them. The door opened again and Uri stepped back into the cabin. He fastened a steel handcuff around Joe’s left hand and dragged the chair over to the bulkhead. He then fastened the empty cuff to a steel pipe, which was fastened to the superstructure. Joe looked at the pipe and followed it up to the ceiling. It led to a showerhead the size of a large dinner plate. Joe didn’t have a clue what to think. He was frozen with fear. Uri placed a box cutter blade on the floor next to Joe and then lifted a two gallon water container onto the table, which was on the opposite side of the room. Joe was really confused when Uri cut the rope that fastened him to the chair. Uri smiled an evil smile as he left the cabin and closed the watertight door behind him.

  “Wait please, I’m Joe Hammond, why am I here?”

  Joe Hammond heard the pipes rattle and he heard a hissing sound coming from the showerhead above him. A vapour poured from the showerhead and fell on to him. He felt a dampness touching his skin and instinctively he tried to get away from it, but the handcuff held him tight. There was nothing he could to avoid the vapour. Maybe it was some kind of fumigation, but he doubted it. There was an odour of garlic in the vapour and he breathed it deep into his lungs through his nose as he tried desperately to identify it. He felt a wave of nausea engulf him and he sat down on the chair again. The effects of the whisky returned with a vengeance and unconsciousness tugged at his mind. Joe wished that he had some alcohol, but he didn’t. There was only water in the room and that was out of his reach. He rested his weary head on his hand and leaned it against the bulkhead. The metal was cool against his skin. It soothed him as he dropped off into a troubled slumber.

  Upstairs in the bridge of the lightship Uri and Christopher Walsh watched the footage from a close circuit television camera which was fixed on Joe Hammond. The ruined pop star had been sleeping for nearly two hours when the first signs of the blister agent started to appear. The skin on his head, face and torso had started to redden. His legs and feet however showed no signs of being burned. Christopher Walsh looked at his wrist watch and made some notes in a scruffy note book. He seemed to be excited by his observations. Uri looked out of the window onto the dock as a Mercedes pulled up behind the panel van. He tapped his boss on the shoulder and pointed out of the window to the newly arrived vehicle.

  “Gari is back, but he is on his own,” Uri said matter of factly.

  “Fucking hell, where are the others,” Christopher ran across the bridge and pressed his face against the glass to cut out the glaring reflection from the lights. He could see the driver climbing out of the vehicle clutching something under his arm.

  “Maybe they had trouble. The vehicle looks damaged,” Uri shrugged as he spoke.

  “Well then, go and find out,” Christopher pointed to the door as if he were sending a naughty dog out of the room for making a bad smell. Uri looked at his boss and smiled crookedly.

  “I will deal with it, don’t worry,” he said.

  “There can be no room for mistakes Uri, none whatsoever,” Christopher was still pointing to the door. Uri looked his boss in the eye and then looked at his outstretched arm. Christopher blushed slightly and dropped the offending limb sheepishly. He realised that he was talking to Uri as if he were an infant. Uri smirked and left the bridge. Cold night air drifted into the lightship and Christopher heard the seagulls calling in the distance. The heavy metal door swung closed again shutting out the noise from the docks.

  He watched the big Estonian man as he climbed from the bridge down eight metal steps onto the foredeck, and from there he crossed a metal gangplank, which had rope handrails onto the dockside. Uri was talking to Gari as he walked around the Mercedes and began pointing at the vehicle as he moved around it. Christopher could see that he was becoming agitated and angry. Gari was following him and talking back in an animated fashion. The two men were arguing. Gari was waving a roll of papers and gesticulating wildly with his hands. Uri stopped circling the car and walked toward Gari quickly. Gari stepped back instinctively and pulled a small knife from his belt buckle. The blade glinted in the darkness. The two men stood looking angrily into each other’s eyes. They were too close to each other for comfort, and it was obvious that neither of them was about to back down. Gari had drawn a blade, which in Eastern Europe was unforgivable, and now he would have to use it or back down.

  Christopher looked at the Mercedes again. He could see that the driver’s window wasn’t there but he thought it had been lowered at first. Then he saw shattered glass glinting all over the seats and in the foot wells. It didn’t bode well. Gari had been sent with two other mobsters to speak to an aging submarine commander and to press him for information. The man would have been in his eighties and probably stunk of his own piss. How difficult could it be for three ruthless gangster
s to interrogate him?

  Uri snarled at Gari and poked a big finger into his chest. Gari made to push Uri with the flat of his hand but Uri was much quicker and he still had the box cutter blade that he had used to release the tramp in his pocket. He swung his right hand in a wide arc too fast for Gari to react. The razor sharp blade sliced through one side of his throat, and out of the other side before he had even felt it strike. A plume of warm blood jetted from his jugular vein and he grasped at the gaping wound with both hands trying to stem the flow. There was a strange hissing sound from his severed windpipe. His legs buckled as his life force sprayed across the dock. Uri looked around the deserted quay to make sure that no one had inadvertently witnessed the confrontation. He grabbed Gari by the belt at the back of his jeans and carried him like a folded suit carrier to the back of the Mercedes. The bleeding man twitched gently but could not offer more of a struggle. There was a thick trail of blood around the vehicle. Uri popped the trunk and heaved the dying man inside. He looked up at the bridge of the lightship and saw that his employer had watched the whole episode. Uri thought that it was probably a good thing that he had. Christopher Walsh wasn’t the only cold blooded killer on the planet. Uri looked at him again and waved toward the vehicle. He picked up the rolls of paper and headed back up the gangplank.

  Christopher opened the heavy steel door and met him on the metal steps. He remained silent and waited for Uri to explain.

  “They encountered the police while they interrogated the old man, Gari was driving and he said the other two were dead,” Uri said gruffly. Christopher nodded understandingly, and waited for him to expand.

  “I told him that he should not have brought the vehicle back to this place and that he should have disposed of it. I told him that he would not be paid for this job, and that he had fucked it up!” Uri was annoyed. “Gari said that if he was not paid he would tell the police where we are and what we are doing here himself, and that is unforgivable. I will deal with the disposal of the vehicle and his body now.” Uri handed the charts to Christopher and he took them without saying a word to the big Estonian man. Uri turned and headed back down the steps toward the gangplank in silence. He reached the dock and climbed into the Mercedes. Uri needed to dispose of both the car and its bloody luggage.

  Christopher Walsh was impressed with his foreman. Uri was a dangerous man who didn’t suffer fools gladly. He smiled as the Mercedes pulled of the quayside and he walked back onto the bridge. He opened the charts and laughed out loud as he studied the details on them. The charts reinforced his theories and he was a step closer to his treasure. There was movement on the camera monitor, which caught his eye and he looked closer to see what stage the experiment had reached. He smiled again as he was just in time to see Joe Hammond trying to chew through his own wrist to get to the water that was out of his reach. His body had become unrecognisable as huge fluid filled blisters had formed all over his head and torso. His legs and feet showed no sign of burns, which was the whole point of this particular experiment. Joe Hammond was gnawing at his wrist bone furiously, desperately trying to escape the handcuffs and get to the water. Obviously, the thirst had kicked in. It was to be his last performance in front of a camera, reality television gone mad.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tank

  John Tankersley sat in the driver’s seat of a black pick-up truck. It was a Japanese copy of the huge American gas guzzlers that are popular in the United States. The cab was fitted with all the bells and whistles that you would expect in a top of the range modern vehicle, plus a few others that you wouldn’t expect. Tank was looking at a computer screen, which had been fitted where the satellite navigation would be, but instead of an aerial map it showed the picture and details of his target. The man he was waiting for was a Polish immigrant who called himself Victor Brastz. The information on the computer had been compiled by the intelligence agencies, and contained a mixture of drug related arrests, firearms offences and serious crime unit reports. The uniformed police divisions had been watching Brastz for years. Eventually he had been implicated in a protection racket and under the threat of serious charges being brought against him, which would have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence he had turned informer.

  Informers, or snitches, as the police called them, are owned by one particular officer who becomes their handler. Only the designated officer is allowed to contact an informer, which helps to protect their anonymity. Victor Brastz was handled by an officer from the serious crime unit, and Tank had hacked into their confidential files to find an Eastern European mobster who was already on the payroll of the police. It had taken less than five minutes to find an informer that they could use. Of course, no one but Tank and the taskforce knew that he was waiting for the snitch. Normally the taskforce would have to go through Victor’s handler before they could speak to him however there wasn’t time for that now. The Serious Crime Unit would be up in arms if they had found out what Tank was about to do, not that it would matter if they did. The Terrorist Task Force didn’t need permission to interrogate a suspect, no matter who they were protected by.

  Victor Brastz was working out in a scruffy bodybuilding gymnasium in the Speke area of the city. It was close to the John Lennon Airport and a passenger jet flew low overhead on its way to land. The area was renowned for drugs and prostitution rackets, and several high profile gang members had been gunned down outside of this gymnasium. Anyone who was anyone in the underworld trained at this gym. It was odd that rival mobsters would train yards away from their archenemies, and yet there was never any violent conflict in the gymnasium, outside was a totally different ballgame.

  Tank was familiarising himself with Victor’s criminal record. It read like a successful organised crime member’s record should do, drug smuggling, people trafficking, bank robbery, kidnapping, hijacking and a not guilty verdict in a triple murder case, which was very impressive for a reasonably young, thirty five year old gangster. Brastz had status and integrity amongst the local crime families, although he had no allegiance to any one in particular. He was one of the many European freelance mobsters who had flooded into the country when the European borders were merged. As far as the local uniformed divisions were concerned he was invaluable as a resource. Tank was going to use the inside knowledge that Victor possessed to find out who was working with Christopher Walsh. If Tank could find out who was on the scientists payroll, then they could take the whole operation down before they could get anywhere near the munitions on the wrecks.

  Victor Brastz stepped out of the narrow stone stairwell, which led from the first floor gymnasium situated above a row of shops. He was accompanied by two men. All three men were wearing sweat stained tracksuits and hooded jackets, and all three men were obviously injecting nandrelone into their buttocks every day. Victor was a heavy set man, pumped up by steroids and looked to weigh about fifteen stones. His face was red and heavy around the jowls, and his neck was covered in acne, which was a classic sign of steroid abuse. The two men with him were slightly smaller, but they displayed the same tell tale signs. Approaching Brastz while he was in their company would only end in a violent conclusion. Tank needed Victor alive and able to talk, shooting him and his friends was not an option at this stage. He watched them walking toward a row of car parking bays at the front of the shops. Tank flicked a switch on the dash and a listening device crackled into life. He focused it on the three men as they reached their vehicles. Victor Brastz leaned against the boot of a sleek Bentley Continental, and the indicator lights flashed as he opened the vehicle by remote.

  “And they say that crime doesn’t pay,” Tank said to himself as he admired the Bentley. It would cost more than Tank earned in a year. He tweaked the listening device, and focused it on the men.

  “What do you need, tabs or needles?” Victor’s voice had come through the pick-up’s speakers. He was completing a steroid deal.

  “What have you got?”

  “Both, but it depends what results you are lo
oking for,” Victor said rummaging around in the boot of the Bentley.

  “I just want to get bigger. I can’t seem to put on anymore muscle,” the younger of the two men spoke with a heavy scouse accent. They were obviously local men attached to one of the organised crime families. Most of the young gang members started off as hired muscle, earning their stripes as bouncers in nightclubs, before moving onto enforcement work and the more lucrative drugs and prostitution rackets. Reputations were made and broken working in the door security world. Cowards were soon exposed, and those with a talent for violence floated to the top of the pile. A few extra kilos of hard, defined muscle didn’t go amiss in the security industry.

  “You will need to stack the drugs by combining needles and tablets together. A tub of one hundred dianabol tablets will cost you fifty notes, and decca-durabolin jabs are eight pound for each needle. You need one two mil needle a day for six weeks, which is two hundred and eighty eight quid plus fifty for the tabs, is three hundred and thirty eight of your crisp English pound notes my friend,” Victor was an excellent sales man. Tank could see why these young hoodlums looked up to him. He was big and he was convincing.