Soft Target 02 - Tank

by Conrad Jones

  A small waiting area was located on the left, similar to a small living room with two comfortable chairs. They were occupied by two scruffy looking men in their fifties, who were sat in an awkward silence trying to avoid eye contact with each other. They stood from their seats as the three huge skinheads entered the room, and froze like rabbits caught in the full beam of an oncoming juggernaut.

  “Look mate I think there has been some kind of mistake, I was just about to leave when you came in,” one of the men started to say, his eyes widened in fear.

  “Oh I don’t think there is any mistake you little pervert,” Dano said grabbing the little man by the throat. He picked him off his feet and threw him against the window. The glass shattered and the man fell to the floor clutching his face, blood was flowing from between his fingers. Clarky looked at the broken window and laughed; he picked the man up from the floor and launched him toward the shattered pane. He smashed through the window into the cold night air and landed in a broken heap on the stone cobbles of the alleyway behind the building. Dano looked out of the window and laughed insanely with the other two skinheads at the twitching body below. The second punter tried to make a break for freedom but he ran straight into Pinn. Pinn slashed a razor sharp carpet blade across the man’s face almost splitting his nose into two pieces. He grabbed the bleeding man by the back of his neck and flung him toward the staircase. The man clattered down the narrow stairs breaking several wooden banister rails on his way down, and sprayed the walls with blood from his wound.

  Two doors opened simultaneously down the hallway. Startled prostitutes and their half dressed customers headed toward the staircase. Dano, Clarky and Pinn positioned their massive frames across the hallway blocking any escape route. The two punters were grabbed and thrown to the floor. Three pairs of Doc Martins boots rained down on the two men inflicting a savage barrage of blows. Pinn held one of the men by the throat on the floor and slowly carved the numerals 18 into his cheek with his carpet knife. The man ran screaming down the stairs and out into the night bleeding from the knife wound. The second man had not managed to pull his trousers up over his exposed buttocks as he tried to escape in a panic. The three skinheads carved 18th brigade across his arse, laughing uncontrollably as they cut him.

  The two prostitutes screamed as they watched the carnage unfold in the hallway, but they stopped screaming when the big skinheads let the punter go and turned toward them.

  “Now then girls, let’s have a little fun before we burn this place to the ground. What do you think about giving us a couple of freebies?” Dano sneered as he approached the two scantily clad women. One of them backed away but he grabbed her roughly by the back of her hair with his right hand and tore the skimpy thong that she wore away with the other.

  “Go and get the petrol. This shouldn’t take very long, then you can have a go when I’ve finished,” Dano said as he and Clarky pushed the women into the room and closed the door behind him with his boot.

  Pinn left Clarky and Dano to have their way while he fetched the petrol can from the van. He punched a telephone number into his cell phone and dialled the offices of the Organised Crime Unit at police head-quarters. Pinn was undercover for two years. He had lived and breathed the 18th Brigade as he infiltrated into its ranks. Pinn knew that the retaliation attacks against the Russian Mafia were scheduled for 9pm but he had not been alone long enough to alert his commanding officers. He was connected and explained briefly that Russian interests were about to come under attack all over the North West of the country. Pinn informed his head office that following the attack at the brothel several Brigade units were heading to a Russian owned casino in Liverpool. Their mission was to rob it and then destroy the building.

  With the Organised Crime Unit alerted he headed back into the brothel. At the top of the stairs Pinn stepped over the prone body of the old madam. She was still clutching her stomach and gasping for breath. Pinn stood over her, one big boot on either side of her chest.

  “Where is the money you old slapper?” Pinn growled. The old woman curled up trying to protect herself, she had seen Pinn’s carpet blade handy-work earlier and she was terrified. She stayed mute in a foolish attempt to protect her employer’s business interests. Pinn lifted his right foot and whilst holding onto the banister rail he stamped his heel into her face. She screamed and scrambled away from the skinhead into the waiting area. She peeled back a section of carpet to reveal a floor safe, blood and saliva drooled from her swollen lips onto the safe dial. The madam opened the safe and then cowered in the corner of the room as far away from Pinn as she could get. Pinn took a large bundle of notes from the safe and counted it quickly.

  “Eight-grand, that’s not bad. Your tarts must have been very busy,” Pinn said stuffing the money into his jacket pocket, “now this will have to be between me and you. Do you think I can trust you not to say anything?”

  The frightened woman nodded silently. Her mascara had run down her cheeks in a cascade of tears. Her face was swelling along the jawbone as if she had a boiled egg beneath her skin and her chin was caked in blood.

  Pinn took a Colt .45 from his waistband and pointed it at the brothel manager. She squeezed her eyes shut trying to escape the inevitable. The big undercover agent screwed a suppressor to the barrel of his Colt and then pressed the gun into a cushion to further silence the weapon.

  “I can’t trust an old slapper like you to keep your big gob shut,” Pinn said in a whisper. He pulled the trigger four times and the woman’s face disintegrated into a bloody inhuman mess. A red fan of blood and flesh dribbled down the wall behind her. Pinn closed the safe and covered it with the carpet then headed for the hallway and closed the waiting room door, hiding the dead woman from view. He doused the staircase and waiting area with fuel while the grunting and slapping noises continued from the bedroom down the hall.

  Eventually the two prostitutes emerged from the bedroom looking like they had stepped from a car wreck. They staggered off on shaky legs down the stairs into the night, hiding their nudity with small towels. Dano stepped out of the room laughing as he fastened his trousers and he patted Clarky on the back in a twisted gesture of companionship.

  “I think we should visit a casino for the rest of the evening gentlemen,” Dano said as he tossed a lit match onto the fuel soaked carpet; the corridor erupted into an inferno as they ran down the stairway toward their van.

  The 18th Brigade executed similar missions across every Russian backed business in Manchester and Liverpool. The police switchboards were swamped. It took the British fire departments eighteen hours to bring the flames across the region under control.

  Chapter 17

  Yuri

  Yuri was struggling to breathe. He was strapped to a chair in the basement of large building in London. He did not think it was the Saudi embassy, but the personnel that had removed him from the boot of the Mercedes were definitely Arabs. His memory of how he had ended up in the trunk of a car was hazy. He had delivered the message to the Saudi diplomat and intervened when it looked like he was approaching the British police in the station. He had guided the crying Arab away from the police to the left luggage lockers and then used evasion tactics to disappear. He remembered entering a corridor on the way to his vehicle. He could also remember a shadow to his left and then a blinding pain in his nose. When he came round he was trussed up like a prize pig in the boot of a vehicle. His nasal passages were blocked with congealing blood and his mouth was covered with duct tape, so he was suffocating slowly. Yuri had lost count of the number of men and woman he had processed through interrogation over the years. He had watched his prisoners without the slightest prick to his conscience. Many of them tied to chairs and gagged just like he was now. The gravity of the situation was not lost on Yuri. The processing had not even begun yet and he was frightened. He had tortured enough people himself to know that few people resisted the pain of torture and even fewer actually survived.

  Yuri was a member of a Russian Special F
orces Unit, Alpha Group, also known as Spetsgruppa A. They were a specialised counter-terrorism group of seven hundred agents, who were selected from the cream of Russian elite units. The Spetsgruppa A primary function was to carry out urban counter-terrorism missions under direct control of the Russian government. They had no military commanders. By Russian standards Alpha Group were lavishly supported and funded to ensure they were armed with state of the art arms and munitions. Yuri was involved in several hostage situations where chemical agents were employed and they were required to operate in full NBC (nuclear, chemical, biological) equipment. In 1979 he was part of a small group of Russian Special forces that captured the Amin’s Palace in Afghanistan triggering the first Soviet Afghan war. Sixty members of Alpha Group seized the palace and killed two hundred elite Afghan troops, along with the Afghan president Hafizullah Amin. Yuri was promoted to Sergeant following the mission.

  His introduction to interrogation came later in October 1985 when his unit was sent into Beirut where four Russian diplomats were taken hostage by militant Sunni Muslims. The diplomats were the first Russian nationals to be targeted by Islamic extremists. By the time Alpha Group was deployed and delivered to Beirut one of the hostages had already been murdered. Yuri and his team met with a KGB operative who was active in the area for a substantial length of time. He had gathered information and identified the kidnappers. The next step was to identify the perpetrators’ families, which didn’t take very long. Yuri and his elite squad quickly captured twenty-five members of the kidnappers’ families and held them captive. The Russian Alpha Group then severed the little fingers of every Arab person that they held captive and delivered them to the Sunnis with a warning that there would be no negotiations. If the Russians were not released immediately then the families of the Muslim kidnappers would be delivered to them in pieces. The Russian hostages were released immediately and no Soviet national was taken hostage in the Middle East for over twenty years.

  After the collapse of the Soviet Union the armed forces were not paid their wages for months on end. Yuri realised that his years of loyalty and service were not being rewarded financially. As the Soviet Block approached bankruptcy their armed forces disintegrated. There was more money to be made for men of his calibre working for the rising Russian entrepreneurs as security and enforcement officers. He had started working for Roman Kordinski earning more money in a day than the army paid him in a month. Working for Roman had involved capturing and processing many business rivals. Processing, usually involved long periods of torture and death. The bodies of rivals were dumped in public places as a warning to potential enemies.

  Now he was strapped to a chair and the roles were reversed. The screaming faces from years past of his victims flashed by in his mind. The mumbled pleading of men and women to end their lives quickly, rather than endure any more torture echoed in his thoughts. He had never heard them properly before, but now they seemed very clear. Yuri decided that he would tell the Saudis whatever they wanted to know in order to speed up his death. He was a war hero for many years but this was a contest with only one winner. There was nothing to be gained from protecting Roman Kordinski now.

  A bright light was switched on and Yuri heard people entering the room behind him. The Arabic tones of at least three men were close by. Yusuf took hold of the duct tape and ripped it from the Russian’s face. Yuri breathed in cool fresh air in huge gasps, the feeling of suffocation passed quickly.

  “My name is Yusuf and I am head of security for the Kellesh family. I am sure that a man of your experience realises that I need information from you. I do not care how long it takes or what we need to do to you to persuade you to part with it. Where is Jeannie being held?” Yusuf said taking the top off a cold bottle of water. He placed the bottle to the Russians lips and allowed him to drink from it. Yuri swallowed the cold water and tasted the copper flavour of his own blood at the back of his throat.

  “She was taken from this country twenty-four hours after she was captured. She was flown via Marrakesh to Russia. Our people there have her under armed guard but I do not know where exactly.” Yuri said telling the truth, he really didn’t know where she was though he guessed that she might be at the hospital facility in Dagestan. It was too early to pass on speculative information.

  “Who exactly do you work for?” Yusuf asked allowing the Russian another sip of water.

  “Mosvar Barayev is the nephew of a Chechen warlord. He gives me my orders. I do not know who ordered the kidnap directly,” Yuri lied, although he couldn’t understand why he was lying exactly. Perhaps all his military training was taking over.

  “Unfortunately that is your first lie. You are a Russian Jew, ex-Special Forces; you have spent most of your life killing Chechens, so I very much doubt that you are working for them now. One more time, who are you employed by?” Yusuf poured the rest of the water over the Russian’s head making him blink as the liquid ran into his eyes.

  “The Chechens moved into Moscow years ago. They pay better money than the Russian Mafia. I don’t care if they are Muslims or not, their money is the same colour as yours,” Yuri lied again, hoping that the Saudi’s knowledge of the Soviet underworld was not in-depth enough to make his lies too obvious.

  “I am disappointed that you think we are so stupid Yuri. I hoped that we could conclude our meeting quickly with the minimum of noise, however it seems that you are determined to hear yourself screaming,” Yusuf said waving his hand to a colleague who was behind Yuri. The Saudi security man struggled to carry a large truck battery which he placed between Yuri’s feet. There were leads attached to each terminal. At the end of each lead was a copper spring-loaded crocodile clip. The guard took out a switchblade and proceeded to cut the Russians pants and underwear from his body exposing his genitalia. The feeling of being naked made Yuri feel incredibly vulnerable and he squirmed uncomfortably against his restraints. It was a classic interrogation technique especially when processing female prisoners. The threat of rape was all the more ominous when the captive was naked. Being naked exposed a person to their true vulnerability. The security guard clipped one of the spring-loaded clamps to Yuri’s exposed testicles causing him to cry out in pain. The copper clamp bit into the delicate skin drawing blood and crushing the soft organ beneath simultaneously. Tears filled Yuri’s eyes as he anticipated the electric shock that he knew was soon to follow.

  “Who do you work for Yuri?” Yusuf asked lighting a cigarette. The guard attached the second spring-loaded clamp to the end of the Russian’s penis. The copper teeth pierced the skin and Yuri gritted his teeth against the pain. Yusuf nodded to the guard and he switched the battery power on. Yuri twitched violently in the chair as the voltage entering his genitals was increased. He finally released a scream that came from the bottom of his soul and echoed through the basement of the building. The pain through the most sensitive parts of his being was indescribable.

  “Stop! Stop the fucking thing. Please stop,” Yuri pleaded gasping for breath as the power was turned off. The muscles in his throat constricted, and he felt like a hot knife was stuck into his groin. “Roman Kordinski, I work for Roman Kordinski. The girl is probably at a hospital facility in Dagestan.”

  Yusuf remained silent waiting for the Russian to expand on the information he had given. He nodded to the Saudi guard and the voltage was switched on again. Yuri’s body went taught as the electricity passed through his singeing testicles. The sweet acrid smell of burning flesh filled the room and Yuri screamed again. The veins in his face and neck pulsed beneath his sweat soaked skin.

  “Fuck you, you bastard,” Yuri snarled as the voltage mercifully subsided again, “the Chechens have a hospital in Dagestan. Kizlyar is the name of the town. They rent beds and surgeons to the Russian Mafia out of sight of the Russian authorities. It is heavily defended.” Yuri lowered his head exhausted from the pain. He saw that the tip of his penis was blackening from the electric shocks. The pain in his abdomen was excruciating, and he knew that the way h
is heart was pounding signalled that he would not live through much more of this treatment.

  “Why would a Russian celebrity like Roman Kordinski kidnap Jeannie Kellesh? He would hardly need ransom money,” Yusuf mused out loud. The Russian stayed silent, barely conscious, his chin was resting on his chest.

  “Get the others,” Yusuf ordered, and a Saudi guard opened the door and summoned three more security staff into the room.