SOFT TARGET III Jerusalem (SOFT TARGET SERIES)

by Conrad Jones

  “Elizabeth Bangor-Jones, don’t you dare use that language in this house young lady,” her mother shouted, trying to sound annoyed, but stifling a laugh behind her hand.

  “Yes, Elizabeth Bangor-Jones, don’t use that language in this house,” Catherine mocked and pulled her younger sister’s pigtails.

  “Shut up big bum, anyway I heard you talking to Pamela on the telephone, and I heard you say that you’d touched Jeremy Edward’s dick,” Libby pulled her tongue out. She had been waiting two whole days for the right moment to drop that bombshell.

  “Shut up you little sneak, I did not say that and you shouldn’t be listening anyway, big ears,” Catherine counter attacked but she was crimson with embarrassment. She hadn’t even kissed Jeremy Edwards never mind touching his thingy. He tried to kiss her but his breath smelled so she’d pulled away. All the girls at school fancied Jeremy Edwards and they had bombarded her with text messages trying to get the gory details of their date. Did he feel your boobs? Did he kiss with his tongue? And so on, and so on. Catherine wouldn’t be seeing him again but she just wanted to keep up with her peers, who all seemed to be bonking everyone, so she lied.

  “I’m not big ears and you’re a disgusting slagbag for touching a boy on the dick, I’m telling mummy what you’ve done,” Libby ran toward the bedroom door as if she were about to run to her mother when her mother appeared in the doorway. Libby screeched to halt inches short of a collision.

  “What are you going to tell me then exactly?” Donna asked her startled daughter. Libby flushed redder than her sister had already gone.

  “Nothing mummy, I was so looking forward to the London Eye, everyone at school has been already, it’s just so unfair,” Libby pulled her bottom lip over sulkily.

  “Well your daddy works very hard so that we can live in this house, and so that you can go to your school. Let’s go shopping instead, my treat,” Donna Bangor-Jones knew that her materialistic fashion conscious daughters would sooner be buying designer shoes, than spending time with their father. Retail therapy was all they needed.

  “Great, I really want some Versace shoes mummy, Jeanette Stockton has the most fabulous shoes, I’m so jealous.”

  “I need some too mummy, she can’t have them if I can’t mummy, that’s not fair.”

  “Shut up and stop arguing, the pair of you drive me bananas. Get showered and dressed, the last one to get ready gets the cheapest shoes,” Donna said running back to her bedroom. Her daughters sprang into action, laughing and giggling as they went.

  “Big bum slagbag.”

  “Big ears, sneaky pants.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were climbing into their father’s Porsche Cayenne. He’d been picked up by a driver today because there was no parking at the venue where he’d be working. Donald Bangor-Jones was the Director of Britain’s MI5, military intelligence agency.

  “Ok girls, put your seatbelts on and behave, or we’re going straight back home, no shoes and no shopping,” Donna knew that the threat would keep the peace in the backseat for about three seconds. She looked in the rear view mirror and watched Catherine pinch Libby’s thigh. Libby yelped and scratched her older sister on the forearm in retaliation. Donna Bangor-Jones turned the ignition key and was about to chastise her daughters when the vehicle exploded, blowing every female member of the Bangor-Jones family to bits.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Terrorist Task Force/ Briefing

  Tank was standing by the window of the Task Force meeting room. Normally he’d be looking at the ferries coming and going from the Pierhead but today the protective shutters were down. The Task Force was under attack from enemies unknown. The room was filling up with unit leaders, each of them looked after a six-man team. Chen was on the telephone swapping from one held call to the next, gathering up to date information. He was talking quickly, too quickly. He had to repeat everything he was saying slowly because the callers couldn’t understand him. Chen was slightly built, but strong and lean. His oriental eyes were more rounded than most men of Chinese origin, but his hair was standard issue, jet black and shiny. He had an infectious toothy smile. Tank watched as the smile disappeared from Chen’s face. Chen frowned and grabbed a pen from the desk to make a note. He scribbled a few words before he realised that the pen wasn’t working. Chen clicked the nib into place then tried again. Tank tried to see what he was writing but Chen was using his native Cantonese language and writing right to left.

  The meeting room door slammed attracting Tank’s attention. David Bell had entered the room with an arm full of folders and loose sheets of paper. He’d pushed the door closed with his heel and then leaned his back against it to catch his breath. He was overweight and sweating from the excursion of rushing to the meeting. There was an empty chair four places to his right and he headed for it, letting out a dramatic sigh as reached it. He dropped his files with a clatter onto the desk, much to the amusement of the Task Force agents. The team nicknamed him the fat controller, a character from the Thomas the Tank Engine series, because of his portly figure and superior ambiance. He had a habit of wearing his trousers pulled up to his bellybutton, fastened with a belt, to mask his ample waistline. Although a character of mirth to the team, he was also extremely well respected for his analytical prowess. There was nothing that David Bell didn’t know about terrorist organisations their members or their modus operandi. From the pile of information he’d brought with him, it looked like he’d been busy.

  “I’ve got everything we need so far,” Chen said.

  “When you’re ready ladies and gentlemen,” Tank wrapped his massive knuckles on the table. They looked like they belonged on an old oak tree, knobbly and gnarled, covered in scar tissue. The table had been laid out in an elongated U shape. Chen used a remote control to bring the digital screen to life. There were police identity mug shots on the screen.

  “We’ve got to take things in the order that we became aware of them, not the order that they happened necessarily,” Tank began.

  “The two men at the top of the screen were disabled and arrested at Eccleston church this morning. They were armed with a CheyTac sniper rifle. They were positioned outside a funeral that I was attending. They are currently being treated for first-degree burns, and they’re not talking yet. The Israeli specials and Mossad are convinced that they’re Palestinian guerrillas from the West Bank, but we’re not one hundred percent yet.”

  The screen changed and the burnt out shell of Chen’s Jeep appeared on the screen. It was being loaded onto a low loader by a crane arm on the Holyhead breakwater.

  “At roughly the same time my Jeep was booby trapped,” Chen took over. “The device used was a mercury motion switch, plus timer attached to enough Semtex to send me back to China in a hurry.” Chen smiled his infectious smile, and the Task Force men round the table laughed.

  “Grace Farrington was attacked at the Royal Liverpool hospital two hours later, but the killer got the wrong target. We’re waiting for the Israelis to confirm the dead man’s identity, but we`re sure that he is also a Palestinian terrorist.” Tank paused as a picture of the Major’s blood stained office was flashed onto the screen.

  “The Major is in a critical condition, undergoing surgery as we speak.”

  “Who was shot at the hospital?” asked David Bell.

  “Her name is Caroline Cambell, we’ve run her details through the system and there is no evidence pointing to her being a legitimate target. She was killed by mistake because she was a black female,” Chen answered.

  “Okay, who knew you were going to a funeral today?” the fat controller turned to Tank.

  Tank thought hard for a moment, but there were too many possibilities, it would waste valuable time going down that road, but they had to discuss every question openly as a team. He couldn’t just dismiss the question as irrelevant.

  “Anyone who bought the St. Helens Star last week could have read the obituary columns. Tankersley isn’t a common name; they could have put two and tw
o together. Then you’ve got everyone in this office, all my immediate family, their in-laws and their families, and then anyone that they might have talked to inadvertently.” Tank shrugged, it was a waste of time.

  The fat controller took off his glasses and cleaned them with his tie while he digested the information. He held them up to his mouth and breathed on the lenses, before clearing the mist with the tie again.

  “Who knew that Chen was dispatched to Holyhead today?” he asked without looking up from his spectacle cleaning.

  “Only Major Timms,” Chen answered.

  The fat controller raised his eyebrows in surprise and opened his mouth a little to dramatise the expression he’d made.

  “Why does that surprise you so much?” Chen responded defensively.

  “It just seems odd that only your commanding officer would know where you are,” David Bell shrugged.

  “Normally Tank would know too but he wasn’t here this morning,” Chen explained. “The investigation hadn’t even begun when I left for Holyhead this morning. I was sent to confirm if there was anything to actually investigate.”

  “Therefore someone either followed you, or Major Timms told them where you were going,” The fat controller speculated. It was all still guesswork but he was right. There were only a few scenarios that could work.

  “I don’t like what your insinuating Bell,” Chen said, his face reddened and all signs of his smile had gone.

  “I thought you wanted me here to analyse the information you have, I’m doing just that,” the fat controller put his glasses back on, and he secured them by pushing them to the top of the bridge of his fat round nose with his middle finger. He looked like he’d given Chen the bird across the table.

  “I think we should calm down and study what we have here, every one of us in this room is hurting right now, but the facts are the facts.”

  There was a tense silence in the room. So far, two questions had been asked and there was already conflict in the air. Tank focused his blue eyes on the fat controller and nodded for him to proceed.

  “Okay, to summarise then, the firearm captured at the churchyard is a foreign CheyTac Bushmaster sniper rifle. The same model used by Palestinian militias.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement. The CheyTac was cheap and efficient. It fired a high-powered large bore bullet capable of dropping a horse at fifteen hundred yards, if the shooter was good enough to hit it. It also came with a built in suppressor, which made it silent and deadly at long ranges.

  “There were sixteen bullets fired at the Major. Fourteen were removed from the drawers of the filing cabinets and are too badly damaged to analyse. Two were removed from his body and are being analysed now by ballistics, however on first inspection they appear to be similar calibre to the bullets that the snipers were carrying at the church.”

  “Are they similar or the same?” Chen asked.

  “Similar, not the same because the bullets were not carrying out the same job, one was a long distance shot which required more sophisticated aerodynamics, and the other was a close distance assassination attempt. The bullets have the same manufacturer and are the same calibre, but one was made for its destructive qualities, and the other for its accuracy.” Tank pointed out the difference.

  “If we combine the ballistic evidence with the information we gleaned from Chen’s Jeep then we’re dealing with experts,” the fat controller interrupted. Everyone turned to listen to him. It was obvious that he’d already noticed the attackers’ methodology.

  “The equipment they are using is state of the art, as is their technical ability to use it.”

  “They’re also well financed, passage aboard a tanker from the Middle East doesn’t come cheap, especially if you’re carrying weapons,” said Tank, “I can’t believe that they came all this way to attack the Task Force, it doesn’t add up. Even if they’d managed to kill us all, what could they achieve?”

  Blank faces stared back at Tank. He was right. Dead agents would be replaced the next day by new agents, who were just as well trained and equally as deadly. The public would never be aware of the assassinations because the Task Force didn’t exist, in the public realm there was no such agency. The phone rang and Tank picked it up.

  “If you’re right, then there must be an alternative motive behind the attacks. They could be a red herring, a smoke screen to stop us seeing what they’re here to do. We may not find out until it’s too late,” the fat controller thought aloud. He looked at Tank’s face and realised that whoever was on the line had given him bad news.

  “Chen we need all the forensic evidence from the St. John’s Tower examined immediately,” Tank held the phone on his shoulder while he barked a succession of orders, keeping the caller on the line.

  “You recovered a palm print from the shopping centre, didn’t you? Have we had the results back yet?”

  “Yes, but it’s come out negative. We don’t have him on file and the Israelis are checking theirs along with the others,” Chen answered. “What’s the problem?”

  “The team on the Syrian tanker have found traces of radioactive material on board the ship.”

  The room descended into a stunned silence, which was disturbed by a second telephone ringing. It was the line, which linked them directly to government headquarters.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Grace Farrington

  Grace knew that she’d been moved, she sensed the motion of the gurney being pushed and it had made her feel sick. Felling sick was a revelation because she hadn’t felt anything for such a long time. There had been people around her, many people. She sensed being lifted and then a strange glowing feeling in her veins, as if they’d injected a different kind of drug into her system. At one point, she thought she’d heard her mother crying but it could have been a distant memory. Her mother cried a lot, when she was happy and when she was sad, and sometimes when she was in between. She was sure she hadn’t heard Tank’s voice for a while, not today anyway. Grace wondered where he was, she wondered where she was too.

  Then she heard shooting far away in the distance. She was sure it was gunfire, but she wasn’t sure why she was sure. She just was. It sounded far enough away not to be too concerned for the moment. Then there had been more fuss, more noise, men shouting and barking orders, and her mother crying again. Grace wondered why Tank didn’t just come and sort it out; he was good at sorting things out, especially trouble. Although she’d thought about him she couldn’t remember what he looked like, in fact she couldn’t remember what anyone looked like. She tried hard to focus on his face. It seemed to be very important that she could remember him.

  A shadowy shape entered her mind’s eye; it was the silhouette of a man. The shape was thick and bulky, muscular around the chest and shoulders. The picture sharpened and she saw his shaved head, just a hint of darker shadow over the ears and above the neckline where his hair root was thicker and still showed. His skin was tanned and rough; there was scar tissue above the eyes left behind by years of competing in the ring. His eyes were creased at the edges, laughter lines or wrinkles depending on what mood he was in. Then the eyes came into focus and they were sky blue. The man smiled at her, white teeth set in a Desperate Dan jaw. It was Tank, that’s what he looked like. She remembered and it made her feel like smiling, but she couldn’t of course.

  The face wavered in her memory and the man’s eyes filled with tears. Teardrops ran freely down his face and she could feel herself being carried off the floor. There was the sound of gunfire again but this time it was in her dream, and there was wind, lots of wind, like a helicopter nearby. There was sand and it was hot, like a desert somewhere. She wasn’t sure how she knew it was a desert, but she did. Then she saw the face above her; he leaned close and kissed her cheek. He whispered something to her as the engine noise got louder and the wind blew stronger. The helicopter lifted gently in her dream and it carried her up and away from him. She could still see him. Tears stained his dusty face as they traced a path d
own his cheeks. Grace didn’t want to leave him again. She felt pain in her arm. Her bicep felt sore, so did her shoulder, and her back ached. Her nervous system was communicating with her brain again, telling her that it had suffered severe trauma and was in pain. Grace Farrington sensed the daylight beyond her eyelids. They flickered nervously and then she opened her eyes and woke up.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Boris McGuiness

  Boris McGuiness was forty-three years old, but he was much fitter than most men of his age, which he was proud of. He stood six feet tall and weighed around twelve stones in his underwear. His hair was platinum blond and completely untameable. It stuck up, curled up and stuck out at will, he’d long since given up trying to control it. It was just a curly blond mop, but it characterised him. Boris had two teenage sons, Kenneth was thirteen, and Fernando was fifteen. They both inherited their hair from their father and when the three of them were together, they looked like three peas in a pod. Boris tried to spend as much time as he could with his sons, but the pressures of work didn’t always allow it as often as he would have liked. They’d lost their mother five years earlier in a tragic suicide, and Boris had felt guilty ever since.