by Conrad Jones
You will find our rooms very cold, my old friend. I see from the news that your business trip was successful,” replied the voice, recognition and excitement in his tone.
Yes, the trip was a remarkable success; however it is time to bring my plans for the British to fruition. How are my brother and sister? I hope that they have been well looked after. I would like to see them soon whilst we are working on our plans. They have been in exile too long. Their time for hiding from my enemies is over. We will meet at the cold room the day after tomorrow. I would like to be able to meet with my brother and sister shortly after the meeting. You must tell no one of my arrival here in this country, I cannot trust anyone.”
Yasser pressed the call terminate button and headed the vehicle toward the exit barriers. He inserted the ticket and the automatic payment machine requested the exit fee. Yasser placed a credit card into the machine in order to pay. The machine illuminated a red light, which indicated that the card had been declined. An alternative method of payment was requested on the digital screen. Yasser placed an alternative credit card, which was linked to a separate bank account. The barrier lifted slowly. Yasser realised that the international security services had identified his bank account and had frozen it. He headed west on to the M56 Motorway away from Manchester Airport. He followed the signpost, which directed him toward Warrington in Cheshire; that would be his home for a while.
As Yasser Ahmed was making good his escape, Tank and the Terrorist Task Force had desperately tried to contact Manchester Airport security. They had informed them that a Middle Eastern woman using an Iraqi passport was a terror suspect and that she must be detained. The control room radioed the instructions over the airwaves.
Mallory and all units, we have a target female Asian national who has just disembarked from the Orlando, flight forty-two. She is to be considered dangerous, possibly armed. She should be between passport control and baggage collection. I want you to use a low profile approach please, do not panic the other passengers but apprehend her immediately.” The static voice from the control room boomed through the security guards radio.
What a fucking day I’m having chasing bloody nuisances around the airport!” Mallory said to no one. The security guards and armed police officers searched all the way through the terminal walkways and found nothing. They searched passport control, and went into the baggage collection area but all the passengers from flight forty-two were gone. Mallory retraced his steps back to the terminal corridors and checked inside the disabled toilets; they found a pastel coloured tracksuit, pink training shoes and some sunglasses. Armed police officers stood in the empty luggage collection hall where their owners had already collected the bags from Orlando. There was no sign of the Iraqi woman. Two lost and lonely cases went around on the conveyor belt repeatedly. The nametags on them indicated that they had belonged to Yasmine Ahmed.
CHAPTER 12
Liverpool
Tank saw the punch coming and moved to his left quickly, he lowered his left shoulder and swung a vicious left hook toward his opponent’s head. The punch landed, stunned the smaller man and made him drop his guard. Tank moved swiftly for a big man and in seconds he had his opponent in a chokehold. “I’ve got you, Chen, my boy. I’ve got you. Come on now tap out or pass out, it’s your choice!” Chen was choking. The guillotine lock that Tank had applied across his windpipe could kill him in seconds. Mixed martial arts rules are similar to the rules in wrestling. If you tap your opponent, or the canvas, with your hand, then you lose but you live to fight another day. Chen hated tapping out to the big man. He knew that Tank would go on about it all bloody day when they got back to the taskforce office.
Faz stood ringside leaning through the ropes; a white sweat towel was hanging around her neck. She was watching the boys sparring, which they did three times a week. Faz was cooling down, having finished her session with Tank earlier. She loved sparring with him because it was such a challenge. He was big, strong and very quick. Grace Farrington, who everyone called Faz, had been born in Liverpool but was of West Indian origin, her dark skin was shiny with sweat as she watched Chen choking in the boxing ring. Tank was applying even more pressure to the little Chinaman’s throat. “Come on, Chen, just tap out and it will all be over. A better opponent has beaten you. Tap out or pass out. Tap out or pass out!” Tank was talking through clenched teeth.
Tap out, Chen, or none of your shirts will fit you anymore; your neck size will be three sizes smaller!” Faz shouted. “You’d better let him go, Tank, he’s turning blue.”
Suddenly Chen stopped struggling and went limp in Tank’s arms. Tank felt the Chinaman stop struggling; his dead weight signalling the mental alarm bells in his head. Tank loosened the grip on Chen’s throat and was straining his head round to look at Chen’s face. Tank was worried that he had hurt his friend and colleague; panic was setting in. Chen’s eyes suddenly snapped open and he pulled away from the big man’s grip, moving like lightening. Tank was rooted to the canvas, confused and shocked. Chen ducked and threw an uppercut that hit Tank under the chin. Tank’s knees buckled and he collapsed, stunned onto the canvas, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Chen stood over him laughing. “You cheat, you horrible, nasty little man, I don’t believe I fell for that.” Tank spat out his gum shield and rubbed his jaw dramatically for effect. He rolled over onto his belly, looking at Faz for sympathy or support. None was forthcoming. Faz had her hand over her mouth mimicking that she wasn’t laughing. “Nothing wrong with that, he never tapped out. You’re getting slow in your old age, Big Fellah!” She laughed and threw her towel over Tank’s head.
We’d better call that a day, and get back to the office.” Tank stood and walked toward the shower room with his arm around Chen’s shoulders. “You know I’m going to have to get you back for the bloody liberty you’ve just taken don’t you.” Tank laughed.
The three Terrorist Task Force officers met in the gym car park and climbed into Faz’s Jeep Cherokee. “How’s the research into the Axe group going, Chen?” Faz asked as she started the Jeep and turned the radio down simultaneously as the Arctic Monkeys blared out from the speakers. Chen was an expert on terror groups and their operational histories. What he didn’t know, he researched. “It’s been very interesting so far. It seems our man Yasser Ahmed fell out of favour with the more mainstream leaders of al-Qaeda about the time of his sister’s reported death. We don’t know for sure, but it looks like he reported her death to cover up that he was smuggling her and his brother out of the country. It would seem somebody threatened to kill his family if he didn’t conform to the group’s demands,” Chen paused.
So he reports that his brother and sister have been killed in an air strike, and makes them disappear. He is obviously a smart boy. What’s his relationship with al-Qaeda like now, then?” Tank asked.
It appears they don’t have one at all. Yasser’s methods were extreme and he was just as ruthless with his Islamic enemies; he wouldn’t conform to the leadership so he set up his own group, Axe. It seems he is very popular with the fanatics. All their funding comes from Saudi and Syria we think. We know he had recently been to Spain shortly before the Madrid bombings,” Chen said excitedly. “The Madrid Bombings took place on March 11, 2004 and targeted the busy commuter train network that serviced the city, killing one hundred and ninety-two people, and injuring over two thousand more. Although it was originally blamed on a Spanish terrorist group it had soon become clear that it had been carried out by members of a Moroccan based Islamic group. Again we can only assume that Yasser Ahmed was involved. We also know that he was in the Somali camps at the same time as Omar Khan, six months before he carried out the London bomb attacks on 7/7. We think the fact that the Spanish immediately pulled their troops out of Iraq after the Madrid attacks gained Yasser Ahmed a great deal of support and more financial backing.” Chen finished speaking and he wound down the window, still hot from his workout.
So what does a bloke have to do to be more extreme than th
e guys in al-Qaeda? How can you be more extreme than the extremists?” Faz asked exasperated.
Yasser Ahmed and his cronies hijacked a minibus containing an Iraqi basketball team that were planning to begin a tour of America. They beheaded them on video with a kitchen knife. Ahmed sent the tape to Islamic news stations and internet sites as a warning to anyone else wanting to play Western sport; enter the Olympics etcetera, etcetera. Ahmed did most of the cutting himself. He’s a first class psychopath. He also seems to be very good at recruiting other psychopaths to go and kill innocent people and themselves, in the name of his cause. Some incidents we can link to him directly, but there are plenty of incidents that we think he was the inspiration behind, rather than the logistical brains.” Chen knew that Yasser Ahmed had been linked to far too many terror attacks to have been physically involved in them all himself. However, he was definitely the inspirational motivation for thousands of extremists to follow. “We have been told he takes his inspiration from some of the early Egyptian extremists. For instance on the 17th of November 1997, six terrorists disguised themselves as security guards at a temple in Luxor. They were armed with automatic weapons and knives and they followed a group of Swiss tourists to the tomb of the Pharaoh Hapshepsut. They launched an all out attack on the tourists, killing them all. By the time the Egyptian police arrived, many of the victims had been disembowelled or beheaded. All the terrorists were killed in the ensuing gun battle but the horror of their methods and the impact it had worldwide did not go unnoticed by the likes of Yasser Ahmed.” Chen added to enforce the point that the more terrifying the attack, the further reaching its effects become.
Wasn’t there some link with the Axe group and what happened at the university shooting in Virginia Tec? I seem to remember something about ‘Axe’ being mentioned in the SWAT team’s reports,” Tank said.
Surely that was one mentally deranged student who lost the plot?” Faz said.
We will never know that for sure, but there are some interesting theories. This guy Sueng Hui Cho was a Korean Muslim. He was studying English literature at the University but the building where he killed thirty of his thirty-two victims was the engineering department. People have speculated that he may have had a grievance against them in particular. On the day itself he’d left the dorm room by 5.15am. According to statements accredited to his roommates this was unusual, not his normal pattern of behaviour. No one seems to know what he did between leaving the dorm and 7.15am when he killed his first female victim. The resident caretaker of the building was killed next, they think that he ran to her assistance and was also shot by Cho. Then Cho takes chains and locks with him to the Engineering building and chains all three entrance and exit doors shut. He goes up to the second floor and manages to shoot fifty-five students and teachers. A total of thirty-two dead and one hundred and seventy rounds fired. He had enough ammo on him to cause mayhem. One man with two guns caused fifty-seven wounded, and thirty-two dead. All caused by just one man on a mission.” Chen recounted the details demonstrating his enormous capacity for retaining information.
That could have been just like the Las Vegas plot if the NSA hadn’t stopped the perpetrator. The Grand Canyon could have been much worse too if the SERT hadn’t arrived when they did,” Faz interrupted.
That’s exactly my point. These attacks don’t need to be complicated. We know that the SWAT teams that responded to the shooting in the Virginia Tech breached the entrance doors by shooting through the chains with 00 gauge shotguns. The noise of the shotguns tipped Cho to the fact that they’d arrived, so he put the gun to his head and blew his brains out. We don’t know what was troubling this kid and we never will, but he sent a package to NBC News giving us some clues. The tape rants on about cruel students and criticises the Christian faith. The kid also has the words `ISMAEL AX’ written on his arm in red ink. Now there are two famous literary characters called Ishmael; one is from the novel, Moby Dick and the other is a religious character. Ishmael was one of the two sons of Abraham in the bible. He was eventually sent away from Abraham and his story is revered in the Muslim faith. There they tell the story of how Ishmael took plates of food to the statue idols in the mosque. He goes back later the same day and of course the food is still there. The statues have not eaten the offerings. Therefore, he determined that the idols are false. In the story, he took an axe and destroyed them all. Therefore Ishmaels Axe was the destroyer of false gods.”
You can’t be implying that Cho was a terrorist?” Tank asked thoughtfully.
No, of course we can’t say that for certain, but beyond his mental stability what was his motivation? We can’t dismiss that this could have been his own act of Jihad. Look at his videotape when we get back to the office. Compare that to the images of homicide bombers and other martyrs; you can’t ignore the similarities. He displays himself with several weapons depicting himself as a warrior or soldier. He shows his willingness to commit acts of violence and to accept his own death. Look how long he took to plan this. You can’t say the man just suddenly shot people in a fit of rage. The evidence shows he made videos; he bought weapons. He bought chains and padlocks to keep his victims in the building, and the police outside. This amount of preparation is not the actions of a lunatic. It is all premeditated and planned. The connection to the Ishmael legend is just speculation but think about it. I am convinced that the Axe group has taken their name from Ishmael’s story.”
Yasser Ahmed is a dangerous man. If he can persuade and motivate individuals or small groups of people to go out and kill indiscriminately in this country, as he has done elsewhere, then we have a serious problem. Question is what’s he planning next and where is he now?” Tank said, more to himself than anyone else.
CHAPTER 13
TTF Office
Tank, Chen and Faz stepped out of the elevator into the TTF nerve centre. The room was buzzing with excitement, but not the positive kind. The faces in the room showed real concern; some were almost white with fear. Major Stanley Timms waved a hand in the air. He was standing across the room signalling them into his office. “What’s the score, Major? What do you know that we don’t?” Asked Chen; his Liverpool accent had always made Tank smile.
Chen was born in the city centre in the sixties. Like most of the large cities in Britain, Liverpool had a large `China Town’ area. The Chinese restaurants and bars were always busy, acting as a magnet to those who enjoyed the oriental cuisine. It was in ghetto-like areas that Chen was most at home. His scouse accent enabled him to blend into the crowds and talk to the indigenous inhabitants without raising suspicion. His ability to speak Cantonese as though he had lived in China all his life meant that he could draw information from within the Chinese communities countrywide. His father had been a restaurant owner and a Wing-Chun Kung-fu teacher. He had passed on his art to Chen beginning at an early age. Many a bigger man had made the mistake of thinking that Chen’s small frame was a physical weakness.
We have DNA results back from the lab. The suitcases left at Manchester airport were tagged and bar-coded as belonging to Yasmine Ahmed. The credit card used in Orlando was linked to the bank accounts frozen after the attacks there. Now we have the CCTV footage of an Asian woman fitting Yasmine Ahmed’s description checking in her bags at Orlando. Now watch this.”
Major Stanley Timms was an ex-Royal Marine; he had a war record that Hollywood couldn’t write. He had been involved in the famous Yomp across the Falkland Islands that the Royal Marines had achieved on their way to recapture Port Stanley. The Royal Marines had been sent to the islands to spearhead the attack when they were invaded by Argentina. The Marines had been air lifted to a point so remote on the islands that the Argies never thought that anyone could launch an attack across such harsh terrain on foot. They had underestimated the capability of a pissed off platoon of Royal Marines and the Argentine army was defeated in days.
The Major’s shoes were always like liquid black glass, the type of shine only an ex-squaddie can achieve. He sat back on t
he edge of his desk, keeping his back rigid, and pointed to the screen with his pointer. Tank would have laughed at any other time; it always reminded him of old black and white war films when Major Timms got out his pointer. However, today it wasn’t funny.
The picture on the screen was poor quality but it showed passengers walking down a wide corridor, following visible signs to passport control. Timms pressed the pause button and slowed the film down. He pointed to the right hand side of the screen. A female with long black hair, in a casual pastel coloured tracksuit, opened the door that led into the disabled toilets, situated between the air bridges and passport control, next to the ladies toilets. In what seemed like just a matter of minutes, what appeared to be a male baggage handler wearing a baseball cap and a high-viz jacket, emerged from the disabled bathroom.
The DNA on the bags that were checked in was male. Let me introduce Mr. Yasser Ahmed. Not only is he on the loose in Britain, but he is also here right under our bloody noses.” Major Timms started to redden as he spoke. The implication of this mad man operating on their turf did not need to be spelled out. “We know that he tried to use the marked credit card to get out of the long stay car park. The yanks had already frozen the accounts while he was up in the air. If he had tried to pass through passport control we would have had him. Someone had to park a car there ready and waiting for him to use when he landed. We know that he has been into this country recently, therefore he already has supporters and contacts here. We have to assume that he is either stopping here on his way back to the Middle East, or he’s here to carry out further attacks on British soil.” Timms turned, walked around the desk and picked up a small manila file. He ejected the DVD that he had just played and inserted another. “This is a copy of a statement sent to the New York Times, CNN and the BBC,” he handed around copies of the transcript and pressed play on the remote. The screen came to life with images of the men involved in the recent attacks that had been carried out in American tourist centres. They were dressed in their Islamic Warriors’ costumes in their suicide videos. The film showed the terrorists carrying machine guns, wearing headbands and talking of their imminent death and glory. The scenes changed only briefly as one after the other, the now dead terrorists acted out their swan songs, their legacy. “Home of the brave and land of the free, you shall be no more. Our glorious brothers will strike fear into the heart of your people. Your people will know the pain of death and destruction in their homes. You bring your crusades once again to our lands, now we return the favour and bring ours to you,” a now dead terrorist boasted from the screen.
