Soft Target 05 - Blister

by Conrad Jones

  “Here goes nothing, Chen my friend, this one’s for you and the boys,” Barnes whispered as he turned the ignition key. The engine roared to life and the needle on the rev counter shot around the clock into the redline segment. Barnes leaned over and released the handbrake. He knocked the gear stick into drive and then dived out of the way as the huge motorcar hurtled forward into the boat shed. The tyres were spinning wildly, and there was thick black choking smoke and an ear piercing squealing, as the torque from the powerful engine was transferred to the wheels. The Bentley shot forward like a rocket toward the lightship.

  The man who had his hands raised turned around as the Bentley screamed across the dock. It was only metres away from him when he dived out of its path. The three men on the bridge of the lightship opened fire with their Uzi nine millimetre machineguns. Each magazine clip holds thirty fat nine-millimetre rounds and their weapons clicked empty in less than thirteen seconds. The windscreen of the Bentley was blown to smithereens and the luxurious leather interior was ripped into shreds by the hail of bullets. Despite the deadly maelstrom of machinegun fire, the empty vehicle continued on its final journey at breakneck speed.

  Barnes used the vehicle as a decoy and rushed forward behind as it careered across the quay. He crossed fifty metres of the dock, and waited for the Uzi’s to run empty before kneeling down and taking aim. The red dot sight settled on the heart of one of the x-rays and he squeezed off four rounds. The x-ray moved sideways to reach for a new magazine and the bullets smashed into the windows of the lightship. The three men realised that they were under fire and they retreated into the bridge. Barnes stooped low as he crossed another thirty yards of the dock. The Bentley hit the edge of the dry dock at about sixty miles an hour and it was launched into the air. Such was its momentum it sailed across the narrow gap between the dockside and the lightship and it smashed onto the bow of the vessel. The boat was rocked violently by the impact and the three men in the bridge were thrown to the floor like ragdolls. The Bentley’s fuel tank ruptured and the flammable liquid inside it leaked onto the red hot exhaust pipe. The vehicle was blown into the air where it somersaulted before crashing back down onto the lightship once more.

  Barnes saw the man on the dockside running toward the rear of the boat shed. He disappeared into the dark shadows before Barnes could get a shot off. There was movement on the bridge and one of the terrorists looked through the window. Barnes raised his weapon in a flash and switched it to automatic. He emptied a thirty round clip into the bridge before running across the dock to the ship. Barnes was covered by the hull of the ship, and he could see the bridge through the bowline porthole. He removed his empty magazine and slid in a fresh clip. The Bentley was burning fiercely and one of the tyres exploded. Barnes turned his head away from the explosion instinctively, and ducked beneath the porthole. When he looked through it again an avalanche of nine millimetre bullets greeted him.

  Uri fired a volley at him and then jumped from the Bridge onto the deck. The bullets pinged off the metal hull and ricocheted across the boat shed loudly. Barnes tried to return fire but as soon as he peeped through the porthole he was met with a maelstrom of bullets. Marco emptied a full clip through the porthole to keep Barnes pinned down, while Uri closed the gap between himself and the taskforce man.

  Barnes was running low on ammunition, and he wished that he’d waited for backup. He had three magazines left, when suddenly another machinegun joined the fray. This time it was the familiar sound of a Brugger and Thomet. It was a taskforce weapon for sure. Barnes couldn’t see who was firing it, or where they were, but he was very glad that they were there. He waited two seconds after the Brugger had become silent, and then he peeped through the porthole and prepared to fire at the men on the bridge. Barnes was hoping that the Brugger had pinned them down long enough for him to set himself. He was partly right in his assumption because Marco and the other man had ducked out of the line of fire, but Uri had not. Uri was aiming at the porthole and was waiting patiently for Barnes to show his head. When he did Uri emptied the magazine into his face. Barnes took thirteen bullets in the head, face and neck area in the space of just a few seconds. Three molars and one of his eyeballs were found intact seventy yards away from his body. The remains of the rest of his head were completely unidentifiable.

  Uri leaned against the ship’s rail and looked over into the darkness. A second Brugger had joined in the fire fight but he hadn’t seen where it had been fired from. He could hear Marco on the bridge wittering angrily in Albanian. The man with him was Marco’s cousin, a man called Davida. Uri wasn’t sure if he was really his cousin as the Albanians had a habit of calling everyone their cousin, especially if they were vouching for them for a job.

  “Marco, are you hit?” Uri shouted.

  “No Boss, but I’m very angry,” Marco answered. From Uri’s experience Marco said that a lot.

  “Can you see where the other shooter is?” Uri asked in Albanian. He wasn’t fluent but he could speak a pigeon version when he needed to communicate to them in secret.

  “On the opposite side,” Marco replied in his native tongue. At least that was what it sounded like.

  Uri moved away from the burning car and headed for the stern of the ship. The rails were higher there, and he could crouch down to use it as cover, and move below it easily.

  “We’re coming down Boss, cover us,” Marco shouted in Albanian. Uri could hear them opening the bridge door behind him. He lifted his Uzi over the rail and fired blindly into the dark corners of the boat shed. Thirty, nine-millimetre bullets raked the darkness without any reply. The boat shed was silent. Marco climbed down the steps first and ducked low when he reached the deck. Davida followed him and was half way down when a muzzle flash lit up the darkness. The shooter was on the other side of the boat shed now. They had used the darkness to move silently around the dockside. Davida cried out as four fat hollow points smashed into his back. The soft nosed bullets bounced around inside his ribcage and ripped his internal organs to pieces. He was dead before he hit the deck.

  Marco flipped. He ran the full length of the boat cursing and snarling like a lunatic, while firing one magazine after another around the boat shed. Uri thought that Davida may actually have been related to Marco because of all the fuss he was making. Uri crossed the stern and waited patiently for the shooter to take Marco down. It would be a loss, but only a small one and the shooter would reveal their position. The boat shed remained silent. Whoever was out there was good in fact they were very good. They certainly weren’t as impetuous as the man he had just killed. His bravado had cost him his life. Marco had returned to his dead cousin and Uri thought that he was going to break down into an emotional wreck, until he started rifling through his pockets to steal the dead man’s wallet, and his wrist watch. Uri smiled as his faith in human nature was once again restored, and then he stopped smiling when he saw a red dot on the back of Marco’s skull. Uri was about to shout a warning but he was too late.

  Three shots rang out and Marco’s skull exploded as the bullets ripped through his brain. There was only one exit wound which was around the forehead area, and there was a hole in it the size of a melon. Marco’s brains were sprayed over his dead cousin, and in a wide circular pattern across the deck. Uri couldn’t work out where the shot had come from until he mentally worked out the trajectory in reverse. He looked upward into the roof beams and saw a flicker of movement. He raised the Uzi and squeezed the trigger. The machinegun jerked violently and then clicked empty when the bullets were spent, he ejected the clip and inserted another one with an expert’s touch.

  He was about to fire again when a body fell from the ceiling. It was a fifty feet drop from the beams to the dockside and the body hit the floor with a thump. A Brugger and Thomet sub machinegun clattered across the concrete. Uri ran across the deck and jumped onto the gangplank. He cleared the gangplank in a few long strides and leapt onto the quayside. The body was dressed in an NBC suit and was laid still on the concre
te. Uri ran to the prone body and looked through the visor. The face was black skinned. He leaned over and tugged at the facemask. It came off in his hands as he tugged and he stared into the pretty face of a black woman. There didn’t seem to be any bullet wounds anywhere, Uri surmised that she had probably lost her balance when he’d fired. She was unconscious but she was still breathing.

  “It’s a real shame that I haven’t got more time or I’d take you with me pretty lady,” Uri’s face twisted into an evil grin as he imagined the brutal debauchery that he could carry out on a handcuffed woman in a quiet location. Especially one that was as tough as this one. She would probably live for a month.

  “There’s not much call for pretty women were you’re going,” a deep voice came out of the darkness and Uri turned to look into the swollen face of Tank. Tank hit Uri square on the jaw with an iron fist. All the power generated by seventeen stone of muscle was transferred through four knuckles. The visor shattered and long shards pierced Uri’s face. Uri’s jaw was shattered by the crushing blow. His hands dropped to his sides and his knees buckled beneath him. Tank hit him again on the bridge of the nose. The fragile bone splintered and a sharp fragment of bone protruded from beneath Uri’s right eye. Uri toppled backward onto the dockside and Tank stood over him. He raised the Glock and fired the entire clip. The first six were head shots and the remainder of the seventeen bullets were fired into his chest. Despite being dead Uri’s body twitched for a while. Tank always found that amusing.

  Chapter Forty One

  Blister

  Grace Farrington had a broken leg, concussion and damaged pride. Tank had saved her life in the boat shed, which he reminded her of as often as he could. If he had listened to sense then he would have been in a warm hospital bed when she was shot dead with a terrorist’s Uzi.

  The Terrorist Task Force was devastated by the loss of twelve men that day on the docks, but the threat to the 2012 Olympics never materialised in the terrible manner that it had been planned. Chen’s remains were buried with his family in a leafy graveyard which overlooked the river. There was very little of Chen in the coffin as it was carried through the graveyard, and the undertakers had used bricks to add some weight to the proceedings. It seemed fitting that he’d spent the best years of his working life overlooking the flowing waters of the River Mersey, and now he’d been laid to rest there too.

  The men aboard the Explorer shared mixed fortunes. Big Gordon had survived virtually unscathed, although his skin was always sensitive to heat and sunlight and his lungs were prone to frequent infections. Although he was plagued by nightmares, he lived a long and happy life with his wife and two daughters. By the time he’d become a grandfather for the fourth time he had mellowed somewhat. Brains died from a combination of third degree burns and blood loss, as did Harvey. The crew of the Explorer had to strap them to their bunks as the thirst drove them mad and the blister agent burnt slowly through their skin. Despite the crew’s desperate efforts they could not ease the suffering of their workmates and it was a blessed relief when they finally stopped clinging to life. The other members of the crew suffered varying degrees of lung damage and skin burns. None of them ever returned back to sea, and the truth about what happened to them that night was never revealed. They were all paid six figure sums in compensation for their injuries, although some of them did not live long enough to spend it all as complications from their lung injuries beat them in the end.

  The taskforce was returned to full strength within three months, and though they exist to rid the world of the scourge that is terrorism, their workload was never done. It probably never would be as long as human beings were the dominant species on planet Earth. Man’s determination to dominate other men means that there will always be another terrorist around the corner. They may have different coloured skin and speak in different tongues, but they will always be there.

  Christopher Walsh was never apprehended, but he was known to have supplied blister agent formulas to several rogue states that support terrorism. Nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism is still the biggest threat to Western society, and there are plenty of Christopher Walsh characters out there with the money and the know how to utilise their deadly potential. The mustard gas shells, which were manufactured by the allies in 1943 really did exist, and the shocking events that took place in the Italian port of Bari are well documented. The exact locations of the dumpsites will never be revealed but they are out there, somewhere, waiting to be salvaged.

  Author’s Notes

  My father Congellous Sydney Jones won the Italy Star medal for service with the Royal Navy during World War II. I didn’t realise that he’d been so close to Bari, despite having polished his medals more times than I can remember. I was incredibly proud as a child that my dad had medals for fighting in the war, and he was my hero even when he lost his final battle against cancer. It’s strange how I was drawn to the events which happened in the Italian Port of Bari, without realising the connection, perhaps Dad was guiding me to the source of a good story. Many men died there, and others were affected badly. Congellous came home from the war and fathered Pamela, Catherine, Libby, Graham, Jeanette, myself and Stanley (Tim to me!), so I don’t think he suffered any long term effects himself.