SOFT TARGET III Jerusalem (SOFT TARGET SERIES)

by Conrad Jones

  Chen turned on a digital screen and punched grid references into a map function. An aerial view of the city centre appeared. He zoomed onto the tower. Tank walked by the screen and removed his suit jacket. It was still damp. He looked at the images and tried to be objective as he watched the Armed Response Unit preparing to storm the tower. The satellite picture became magnified, and he could clearly see four men on the circular roof of the old restaurant. They were positioned at twelve, three, six and nine o’clock on the circle. Each one was holding onto a nylon fibre rope, which was anchored to the centre column, ready to drop over the edge and crash through the windows. Standard forced entry technique, if the area was clear of explosives. At this moment in time, the policemen didn’t know if the area was clear or not. Tank set the coms channel to secure, which prevented all but the Task Force personnel from receiving it.

  “Griffin, are the response team set?” Tank asked his unit leader at the scene.

  “Roger that, the stairwell team entered five minutes ago, a second team are set to disable the lift.”

  Chen accessed a file that held detailed plans of the St. John’s Tower and the adjoining shopping mall. At first glance, there was nothing remarkable to note on the ground floor layout. Chen clicked on the first floor file. Although the plans showed the structure of the tower there was no shared floor space. He clicked the second floor file and they swapped anxious glances.

  “What’s that?” Tank asked. Chen was far more clued up on architectural design. He was more clued up on most things, his brain was like a sponge, and he absorbed information at a frightening rate.

  “It’s a fire escape. The planning department would have stipulated that the tower would have to have an alternative exit, and this point is the first opportunity that the architect has to build an exit from the stairwell. It leads into the second floor of the shopping precinct,” Chen looked Tank in the eye. They were both thinking the same thing.

  “Griffin, get your team up to the second floor of the mall,” Tank said over the coms channel, “there’s a fire exit leading from the tower’s stairwell into the shopping centre. If anyone wants to escape from that tower, that’s the only other way out.”

  “Roger that, we’re on our way, do you think this is a set up Tank?” Ryan Griffin asked. He gathered the unit and in seconds, they were sprinting toward the shopping centre’s escalators.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind, Ryan, someone is going to try and leave that tower through that doorway.”

  Chen tugged the sleeve of Tank’s shirt and pointed to the screen, it looked like the armed response men were opening the lift doors with a wrecking bar. Tank sat down heavily in a chair. He rubbed a big hand over his baldhead slowly, which meant something bad was going to happen.

  Chapter Nineteen

  David McLean/ Top of the Tower

  David McLean couldn’t see what was going on around him, because Nasik had put duct tape over his eyes and then put sunglasses on him. There was nothing wrong with his hearing or his sense of smell though. He could hear helicopter engines coming and going. There were two at least, one smaller than the other. He was convinced that one of them had flown directly above the tower briefly; he was sure they were coming to rescue him, but then it moved off and never came back. He could also hear boots far away stomping up the stairs, he wasn’t sure at first, it had been a distant rumbling but now he was positive that someone was coming for him.

  The problem was that he could smell gas. At first, he thought it was the adhesive on the duct tape that he could smell, but as the odour became stronger, he had to accept that it was gas. He was drifting between controlled concern and complete panic. The men on the stairs would get him and turn the gas off, and then he could go home to his wife and family. When he thought positive thoughts he calmed himself momentarily, but he couldn’t help but fear the worst. His colleague had been shot. He heard Nasik firing a gun repeatedly; obviously, he didn’t know what he was firing at, not that it mattered. He’d been tied up and was so scared he’d peed himself.

  David McLean was sure the dark skinned man had left, but he was confused as to why he had taped a piece of wood beneath his arm, and his hand was taped too. If only he could see what was going on he wouldn’t be so afraid, or that’s what he thought anyway. The truth was far more frightening.

  David McLean heard metal straining. It was being forced and bent. The response team was forcing the lift doors open, hundreds of feet below. The renting grinding sound travelled up the lift shaft to him. Then he heard shouting, frightened voices echoing up the shaft. He was sure he could make out someone shouting the word, grenade. Then time seemed to stand still, and his senses became ultra-aware. He sensed movement on the stairs, and outside the restaurants windows, which couldn’t be possible because they were hundreds of feet up. He heard glass splintering, but the noise came from several different locations. Then he felt a wind. It began like a whisper but within seconds, it had become a roaring whirlwind, which grew hotter as it grew louder.

  The grenade that Nasik had placed beneath the body in the elevator car had ignited the propane gas in the lift shaft. The enormous shaft acted like a chimney flue and the flames shot skyward in a blazing back draft. David McLean was acutely aware of voices shouting, ‘armed police, drop your weapon’, but he thought the gunman had gone; he didn’t understand that they thought he was the gunman. Then the hot wind turned into a raging inferno, and he felt incredibly calm as his flesh blistered and burned from his bones. He breathed in the flames and he felt a sizzling sensation in his lungs as the delicate tissue frazzled. He was aware of four men screaming, and their screams fading as they were blown back out of the windows that they had entered through. Then everything made complete sense and he was confused no more.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ryan Griffin/ Nasik

  Ryan Griffin led his unit into the St. John’s shopping mall and headed for the escalators, which were situated in a central square. The square could have been in any mall, in any big city, anywhere in the Western world. It had polished marble tiles, glass elevators and stainless steel escalators. There were huge terracotta planters strategically positioned around the mall. The square was lined on three sides by fast food outlets from every corner of the planet, Chinese food, Indian food, pizza and pasta, sushi, fish and chips and the obligatory McDonalds. The deserted escalators were running. The only sound in the mall was being made by an ornamental fountain, the splashing water echoed through the empty precinct. Ryan used hand signals to direct the unit to split into two, one team on each escalator.

  They headed up the moving staircases to the first floor. They reached a square, which mimicked the floor below, except the food outlets had been replaced by designer shops. The shop doors were open, the lights were on, but the floor was deserted. It had been evacuated in a hurry. There was movement at the far end of the east aisle. A uniformed policeman appeared, looking for any stragglers that needed to be evacuated, and preventing any opportunist looters from raiding the empty department stores. Ryan made an ok sign with his right hand and the policeman waved back and carried on his way.

  The Task Force units headed up to the second floor. They reached the top of the escalators and took up defensive kneeling positions; both units protected each other’s flank. Ryan Griffin took stock of the situation. He checked his compass. The tower should be situated north east of the escalators, but he couldn’t see anything that resembled a fire exit leading to it. He signalled one unit to move fifty yards down the left hand side of the precinct, and the other to take up a firing position on the right. To the left hand side were four wide shop fronts, Primark, Next, Armani and Diesel, but there was nothing that looked like an exit. Long plate glass windows stretched down both sides of the aisle, but there were no breaks in the facades.

  “Can you tell from the plans where exactly the tower exit joins the mall?” Ryan asked over the coms unit.

  Chen stood up close to the screen in the office and studied the p
lans. He pointed to the screen as he spoke.

  “There should be four retail units situated on the left hand side of the precinct, can you confirm that?” Chen had to ask in case the plans weren’t current.

  “Roger that.”

  “The exit should be situated between the third and fourth unit,” Chen explained.

  Ryan Griffin signalled his men to move down the aisle to the third unit, Armani. Mannequins poised in the window dressed in the latest hideously expensive gear, emblazoned with the famous eagle brand; then there was a four feet wide, floor to ceiling mirror, then the Diesel store. There was no obvious fire exit, it could`ve been built over and blocked off by construction work. He looked at the mirrored section again, and noticed there was a groove running down the centre of it. The surface of the mirror was polished to a gleaming finish with a smoked effect. On the left hand panel there was a smudge. Griffin approached the mirror, and he studied the smudge up close. It was an almost perfect handprint. He put his fingertips along the bevelled edge and pulled. The mirror panel hinged toward him revealing a set of wooden fire doors behind it, they’d been left open and there was a thick chain hanging from the locking bars. At the end of the chain was a heavy padlock with a blackened ragged hole through it. Ryan removed his Kevlar glove and held the padlock in his palm. It was still red hot.

  “Tank, you’re right,” Griffin said. “Someone has shot the lock securing the fire exit. There’s no sign of them here but they’ve left a print.” He called one of the Task Force men over and pointed to the print while he was talking to his superiors. The man removed a small haversack from his back and placed it on the floor next to the mirrored door. He unzipped it and took out an A4 sized plastic sheet, which he peeled away from its backing. He smoothed the plastic film over the handprint, and then pressed it firmly. The imprint was then slid onto the screen of a palm top computer and sent to the Task Force headquarters. The computers there would search every international database that existed to identify the owner of the print. The plastic swatch was sealed in a bag to be returned to the forensic lab later for DNA analysis.

  “The lock is still hot, they can’t have gone far,” Griffin said.

  “Chen will run the print, see if you can trace them,” Tank replied.

  “Roger that.”

  Ryan signalled the unit to head toward the precinct balcony. The balcony ran the full length of the exterior of the mall and was lined with shops. There was a canopy above, which protected shoppers from the rain, and a waist high metal railing to prevent them tumbling over the edge of the second floor. They stepped out of the mall onto the balcony and took up positions covering both directions. Ryan looked to the left; the second floor pavement was empty. He looked right, nothing moved.

  Ryan walked to the railing and leaned over it to get a better view of the floors below, still nothing. He looked out over the second floor balcony across Williamson Square. The near distance of the city centre was deserted. There were police cordons in the distance and the odd stragglers running toward them, but the area around the mall was silent. A lone female appeared from the ticket office of the Playhouse theatre two hundred yards away. She looked confused. The normally vibrant city centre where she had worked every day for twenty years was empty, fast food wrappers blew across the deserted square. A uniformed police officer had noticed her from the cordon and he called her to him through a megaphone. His words were lost in the wind.

  Ryan signalled for the unit to descend to the first floor. Fifty yards away was a wide, open concrete staircase, which connected the two upper floors. They moved in formation, guns pointed horizontally at the ready, they descended in silence. At the bottom of the wide steps the unit automatically split into two teams, one team stayed on the stairs and covered the first floor from a position of high ground, while the second team scanned the balcony in both directions. The unarmed policeman that they had encountered earlier was twenty yards away down the shopping aisle that led back into the mall. He looked a little perturbed when confronted with a Task Force unit bristling with automatic weapons.

  “Any sign of life officer?” Ryan shouted.

  “I thought I heard someone coming down the steps where you are, sounded like they were dragging a suitcase with wheels on. You know the ones I mean? Like you take on holidays. They have wheels so you don’t have to carry them. You know what I mean, don’t you?” the policeman waffled. His voice was very nasal, almost camp.

  “I get the picture constable. Where did they go?”

  “That’s the bizarre thing about it, one minute he was there. At least I`m guessing it was a him. I shouldn’t speculate really should I?”

  “Look, just tell me where you saw them?” Ryan Griffin looked at his sniggering troopers and rolled his eyes. One of his unit bent his hand at the wrist, limp wristed, indicating that the policeman was a poof.

  “Sorry, I’m really sorry, it’s all the guns, and they’re making me nervous you see.”

  “Where did you see the fucking bloke, with the fucking wheeled suitcase?” the Task Force man hissed through gritted teeth. The uniformed policeman flushed red and his eyes filled with tears. He looked like he was about to start blubbering when he pointed to a set of double fire doors. Above the doors, it had a sign designating it as a restricted area, authorised personnel only. There was another sign, which had the silhouette of a goods lorry on it; it stipulated that only delivery bay staff had access.

  “I didn’t actually see him,” said the policeman. His voice was trembling now, he was close to crying. He rambled on. “The only place they could’ve gone was through there, but it`s locked so I couldn’t follow them. My boss told me not to leave the shops under any circumstances, because they’re unlocked, and people will sue the police, so I was worried.”

  Ryan was about to order the Task Force unit to enter the subterranean delivery area when the gas in the St. John’s tower exploded.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tank

  Tank put his head in his hands when the armed police team lifted the dead body that Nasik had left in the lift. In the theatre of guerrilla warfare against terrorist extremists, you have to assume that everything left behind by the enemy is a booby trap. Unfortunately, the domestic law enforcement agencies are not trained to encounter enemy soldiers on their own streets. Their behaviour is alien to them. The fragmentation grenade had injured one policeman seriously, which was bad enough, but it had also ignited the propane gas cylinder that Nasik had hurled down the shaft as a parting gift.

  The explosion in the lift in turn, ignited the escaping gas from the kitchen area. The Terrorist Task Force men could only watch in fascinated horror as the policemen abseiled through the windows into the old restaurant, only to be blown back out of them in a maelstrom of burning gas and debris. Although the four men were badly burned by the explosion, they twisted and grasped at thin air on their long journey to the concrete streets below. There was no feeling of sour grapes toward the policemen and their ill-advised Chief, just a bitter feeling of sorrow for those men that had just wasted their lives. A gut wrenching feeling of empathy for their families, when they watched the national news later, only to see their loved ones died because of a series of mistakes. They were human pawns in a lethal game of political chess, sacrificed to enhance the ego of an ambitious autocrat.

  “Griffin, where are you and your team?” Chen asked over the coms.

  “We’re currently on the north east side of the precinct; situated on the first floor balcony. We’ve received information that a possible suspect may have entered the delivery bay, situated beneath the mall.”

  Tank pulled up the plans for the basement areas. The delivery bay was like a labyrinth of loading platforms and storage areas. The shopping precinct was situated in the centre of a vast pedestrianized zone. Traffic of any description was only given access during the night, outside of trading hours. Two separate subterranean basements serviced the hundreds of shops above. On top of the twenty or so service roads,
that Tank had already counted, there were a myriad of stairwells and goods lifts. Stock was inventoried by department store staff in the vast underground warehouses, and then dispatched as needed into the goods lifts.

  “Even if that was a suspect, you’ve got no chance of tracking anyone down there without sensors,” Tank didn’t want his men walking into another trap. There had been enough surprises for one day. “Bring your men in; we need a debriefing before we launch a response.”