Soft Target 01 - Soft Target

by Conrad Jones

  In September 1992 the Egyptian group Gama’a al-Islamiya warned the government that tourists must not enter the province of Qena, which was renowned for its ancient archaeological history. In October snipers opened fire on a cruise ship full of German tourists that was sailing on the River Nile. In the same month, a tourist bus was attacked resulting in the death of a British tourist. In total that year, the gunmen had murdered nine foreign nationals. Egypt became a dangerous place to visit and the attacks threatened to do lasting damage to the well-established tourist industry. Terrorism did not need to be sophisticated to work; just one determined man with a weapon was enough to cause mayhem.

  In 1995 the group that was dedicated to the over-throw of Mubarak’s undemocratic government, continued their campaign against Western capitalism within their own country. They had warned all foreign tourists to leave the country immediately, and two days later seventeen Greek tourists were gunned down outside a hotel in Cairo. Yasser had learned much from their discussions about the Egyptian insurgents and the devastating effect that attacks on tourists could have.

  Muktar looked through the glasses again, and panned down to the rock face below the Bright Angel Lodge, following the path of the orange looking zigzag trail. The narrow tourist trail snaked down the canyon wall to the Indian gardens a mile and a half below. His task was simple enough; from sunrise tourists would start to descend the Bright Angel Trail toward the Colorado River. Walkers usually only got as far as the Indian gardens before fatigue, and the heat, forced them to retrace their steps back up the steep trail. As they descend the heat increases, as does the realisation that they have to walk back up. There are no cabs or buses from the canyon floor, no chair lifts or cable cars to relieve weary travellers. If you walk down the Bright Angel trail, then you have to walk back up. Many seasoned hikers had headed off with the intention of reaching the Colorado River, only to collapse, many fatally from dehydration and fatigue.

  These people were not his target today though; he was to wait for the mule trains to start their decent down the narrow path. Muktar was to take three shots at the mules or their riders before moving to the next rifle. He knew that the noise would be sufficient to make the mules panic and cause havoc on the busy, narrow trails. Then he would leave the weapon where it was and move onto the next hidden rifle and begin again. The confusion of the moving shooter, and bullets coming from different positions around the canyon, should make his capture or death more difficult. There would be many deaths if his aim was true and his luck held.

  His task was finally prepared and he headed back toward the lodge. There was time for prayers and one last meal before the mules started their journey down.

  CHAPTER 4

  Las Vegas

  Mido looked out over the balcony at the busy strip. The streets were lined with giant hotels of all shapes and sizes, a medieval castle, a pyramid and even the Eiffel Tower were below him. He paced up and down the balcony nervously, looking from the busy streets below, to the blank screen on the cell phone that he held in his hand. It was as if the answer to his dilemma would appear on the screen if he stared hard enough at it. His hand felt hot and clammy as he held the cell phone tightly. The desert heat had already started to rise making him sweat. The temperature was already in the high nineties and it wasn’t 9am yet. He walked inside to the hotel room and took a cold bottle of water from the fridge. He took a long gulp from the bottle trying to quench the thirst that his hangover had gifted him; Mido had spent the previous night drinking heavily at the bar in the huge hotel casino; it was supposed to be his last night alive after all.

  At around midnight he had been approached by a call girl called Laura, or Lara, he wasn’t sure which and didn’t really care. He had taken her to his hotel room and enjoyed what can only be called a brief encounter, before asking her to leave. His Muslim brothers would not have approved if they had known, but from what he had seen on the news this morning, they were already dead. Whisky always made his head ache in the morning, and today was the mother of all headaches. Today was supposed to be his last before he joined his brothers in heaven; they had completed their tasks already, and now it was his turn. The television news told of nothing but the chaos that Yasser Ahmed and his affiliates had caused in Florida the night before. The problem was that Mido’s part of the plan was messed up. He was alone and did not know what to do next.

  Mido had said goodbye to Hassan in San Francisco three days before and had then made the long drive to Las Vegas across the desert alone. He had met Hassan in a religious terror training camp in the Sudan some years before. Mido was from Iraq, but he had been forced to leave his country shortly after the American and British forces invaded in 2003. The invading armies were using 9/11 as their justification for a war on terror against the ‘axis of evil’. The invading coalition forces had begun a generalised offensive against elements of the Arab world including Mido`s homeland. The reasoning behind the hostile invasion confused Mido and his compatriots as the United Nations had not sanctioned the war. He could almost see the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, as many countries believed the Taliban were giving shelter to Osama Bin Laden, and the US firmly believed that Bin Laden had sanctioned and financially supported the 9/11 attacks.

  Mido’s country was secular with strong links to the West. America and Britain had armed Iraq when its borders were threatened by a Soviet backed Iranian invasion. Iraq and its people were polar opposites in terms of Arab culture to Bin Laden. The general opinion of Mido and his compatriots was that this invasion was a ploy to control Iraq’s oil fields. Resentment and anger spread across the country as it descended into religious civil war. Centuries old feuds resurfaced between Shia and Sunni factions. The illegal invasion had the effect of ratcheting up the tension between the two cultures tremendously. Many of the neighbouring Arab nations started to regard America and the West with hostility. Mido believed that the invasion itself was an unprovoked attack on an independent country and was a form of state terrorism itself. He had stayed in Iraq during the conflict but the removal of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of his army and police forces led to total anarchy. The invaders could not quell the many conflicts that ensued once the regime had fallen, and with the collapse of the infrastructure, Iraqi tribes began to fight amongst themselves to establish their dominance in their ruined country.

  Mido had watched his country fall into disarray as rogue elements from the Iraqi military started fighting amongst each other, and the hospitals and water supplies crumbled into chaos. Insurgents all over the country stockpiled dangerous weapons and ammunition. Mido had joined in a guerrilla war that included improvised explosions, suicide bombing and the sabotage of oil wells. Water and electricity supplies were destroyed by grenade attacks as the opposing ethnic and political factions of Iraqi society continued to do battle with each other.

  Mido felt frightened for his life and left the country, it was when he had left fearing for his life that he met Yasser Ahmed and the others. The training camps were full of angry young Muslim men from a myriad of Islamic countries; it was there that he decided to take the fight for his country’s freedom to the aggressor’s door.

  Yasser Ahmed told Mido and Hassan that once they had been given their task there was to be no further contact between them. Mido told Yasser that he would dispose of his cell phone on his journey across the desert, so that it could not be traced, but instead, he had kept it in the event that something went wrong. It had gone very wrong. He was desperate for an answer, a plan B. He had a rental car in the parking lot beneath the huge hotel. In the boot of the vehicle were three tactical M40-A5 rifles, the same type Muktar had taken for his mission in the Grand Canyon. Mido had trained for many days in the camps in Sudan with similar weapons, and he had learned to use them with deadly accuracy.

  Yasser made the plans for the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas attacks to be almost identical. The idea was that one man with three sniper rifles hidden in different positions could cause chaos
on a large scale. When he arrived in Las Vegas, Mido was to check into three different hotels, he was to book rooms that had balconies overlooking the strip. Then he was to set up a sniper nest in each room. Once his attack was prepared, he was supposed to choose targets on the streets below indiscriminately. Mido was to fire at tourists; however, police officers would be even better. Each attack was to last for three minutes, and then he was to set fire to the room, leave the weapon and travel to the next hotel, where the next rifle was already hidden and waiting for him.

  Once his mission was complete, the authorities would only find one body or kill one shooter. The police would then be left with many questions to answer. How many shooters were there? If there was more than one, had the others got away? Was there one shooter or three? The fires would cause confusion and hamper any investigations that were made, and the police would never know the truth about the number of terrorists that were involved in the plot. They could only assume. The public would believe that there were still terrorists out there hiding somewhere, and people would imagine that extremists were lying in wait everywhere. Every hotel room on the strip could be concealing a sniper waiting for the next best shot to come along, and they may even be lining them up in the sights of a rifle right now. Panic and fear is the one true goal of any terrorist attack, if Mido could complete his grisly task then the streets of Las Vegas would become like a ghost town. Tourists would avoid the city until anxiety settled down, by which time millions would have been lost in revenue.

  The events of the previous night in Florida had made tourist destinations nervous and there was tightened security everywhere. Mido had checked into the rooms easily enough, but all the hotels were checking bags and customers with metal detectors as they entered. He could not find any way of getting his weapons into the buildings, and he could not get access to the balconies armed with his rifles. Mido decided that he needed another drink while he thought things through. For the first time since the illegal invasion of his country, he started to have doubts. He left the room and headed toward the lift.

  Mido stood in the hallway and waited for the lift to arrive, he was grateful that when it did, it was empty. He stepped inside, held the door open for a second, and then pressed the ground floor button and leaned back against the mirrored wall breathing deeply to calm his shattered nerves. Mido had to keep his mind focused; he reached into his pocket and looked at the cell phone again, and then he typed in a text message; ‘Problem at hotel. Can’t get bags in. Advice?’ He pressed send to Yasser’s cell phone number.

  The lift descended at warp speed, and then it stopped suddenly and the doors opened. A man wearing a dark suit and dark sunglasses stepped inside. He rode the elevator, never looking away from Mido all the way to the ground floor. Mido could feel the man’s stare upon him, and it made him even more nervous than before. He was sweating profusely now and his breathing was becoming laboured. A few seconds later, the doors opened and he stepped into the hotel lobby, where the air conditioning cooled him down and he immediately felt more in control. Mido checked that the signal on his phone was still good. The lobby of the giant hotel was nestled beneath a million tons of glass and steel, and although his cell phone had a full signal the screen was blank. ‘They must all be dead,’ he thought, ‘or captured,’ though the news had said nothing of any arrests. He was clutching at straws, trying to think of a course of action but his mind was just a blank. The alcohol from the previous evening had made his head fuzzy and confused.

  He looked around the huge hotel reception area, and in desperation approached the reception desk. “Have there been any messages received for Ramirez?” he asked the peroxide blonde behind the desk. He had used a fake passport when he had checked in, identifying him as a tourist from Honduras. The blond woman went to check the pigeonholes on the wall behind her. “What room are you staying in, Mr. Ramirez?” she asked him with a sigh. Her shift was nearly over and she couldn’t wait to go home. The man who called himself Mr. Ramirez was sweating and he smelled of body odour and alcohol. “I am staying in room 1408,” he answered her while still looking down at his cell phone.

  I am afraid that there is nothing here for you. Would you like to leave your cell phone number here and I will page you if anything arrives?” she said, walking away into the rear office. Mido had already turned to walk away and he did not answer her question, he had also not seen the receptionist taking his passport through to the back office. She had worked in Vegas for too long not be able to spot a fake passport. She picked up the internal phone and dialled security.

  Mido turned and headed down the long walkway that led to the high-class hotel shops. Gucci and Prada stood next to Armani and Chanel. Nothing in the glitzy windows had a price tag on it, and if you needed to ask the price then you couldn’t afford it. The corridor led further into the bowels of the giant hotel and then into a huge casino. He saw the main bar area some distance away, it looked like an oasis in the centre of the football field sized gambling area. Mido walked past a hundred slot machines and then sat on a stool at the bar; he ordered a whisky, straight with ice. He lit a Marlborough and fed a fifty-dollar note into the poker machine that was in front of him on the bar. His head was filled with doubts about what he should do next.

  That’s two dollars and fifty cents for the whisky please, Sir,” the barman said. His fixed Vegas smile never fading.

  I am playing the poker machine. Drinks are free when you’re playing the machines right?” Mido answered through clenched teeth, the air conditioning was now doing little to cool him down or calm his mood.

  You weren’t playing the machine when I gave you the drink, Sir.” The smile did not fade at all.

  Well I am playing the fucking machine now, and I’ll take another whisky, and another, until I am done playing the machine, or are we going to have a problem?” Mido said. He was starting to lose the little composure that he had left.

  No problem at all, Sir, but we really don’t need the bad language though, Sir. We just want you all to have a good time, without the bad language thanks.” The barman replied, still grinning like a Cheshire cat. Mido was close to snapping. What was he doing here drinking and arguing with a person who looked like he had a smile glued permanently to his face? He should be in place, in the first room now. He couldn’t get the rifles into the hotel. He tried to think what to do next, there was no plan B and there were no rendezvous points because this was a suicide mission. What should he do?

  Doubts started to eat into his mind, all the planning and preparation over the months before seemed pointless now. The training in the religious camps had cemented his resolve to sacrifice his life for his god. He wanted to be killed in the Jihad fighting for the freedom of his country, but now it all seemed so far away. The inspirational words of the Imams were a distant echo. The preaching from the Mullahs had seemed to be so absolute, but today he felt different. He could just sit here and get drunk, maybe even get another hooker, who would know? His friends were all dead. Tomorrow he could get into the rental car and head for the coast. He had a bundle of money and fake credit cards. He could leave now. He could live. Maybe this was fate.

  Whatever he decided to do, he wasn’t going to do it right now. He was too confused to make any decisions. Mido decided that he would take his time and think the problem through properly. He needed to retrieve a small bag from the boot of the rental car, as it contained his money and he had just put his last fifty dollars into the poker machine on the bar. He pressed the deal button on the poker machine; it was his last dollar bet. Four aces popped up on the screen and the animations went crazy. The bartender looked over and waved a hand in Mido’s direction. “Four Aces, Sir. It must be your lucky day!” The bartender’s grin faded slightly. Mido had just won the equivalent of a week’s wages.

  Yes, it must be my lucky day after all,” Mido replied. The casino machine manageress came over to Mido to verify the win. She smiled and made a big fuss of handing him his winnings. He took the nine hundred dol
lars from the woman and thanked her. He put the money in his pocket and headed for the parking garage.

  The garage was situated beneath the hotel and Mido walked down a flight of concrete stairs. His mind was made up. He opened a heavy fire door and stepped into the dimly lit garage, he walked toward the far end, the roof was low and the smell of exhaust fumes filled the air. He opened the boot of the blue Ford Mustang with an electronic key. The lid clicked open. He reached in, lifted a small bag out of the boot, and placed it on the floor next to his feet. The three sniper rifles that were in the boot were stripped down and contained in three sports holdalls. Mido looked at them and felt very confused and guilty. He had not completed his mission. His Muslim brothers were dead and he had failed them. “I can’t get the rifles into the hotel,” he thought out loud. The plan had failed but he did not believe that it was his fault. He decided that he would dump the rifles in the Mojave Desert the following day. Maybe he could sell them; he would decide when his mind was clearer.