SOFT TARGET III Jerusalem (SOFT TARGET SERIES)

by Conrad Jones

  The Chinook neared, blasting dust up with the downdraft from its twin rotors. It seemed to hang in the air six feet from the landing pad before finally bumping down on the reinforced roof of the police headquarters. Tank ducked as he ran to the helicopter and slid open the passenger compartment door. Janet Walsh, the Prime Minister’s secretary, shook his hand quickly in greeting and then stepped down from the aircraft. She was followed by the Home Secretary and the Minister of Defence. Tank shook hands with them and then ushered them away from the helicopter to the roof access door. He opened the steel door and then stepped back to allow them to enter the stairwell. There were eight stone steps leading down to the Task Force office.

  “How is the Major?” asked the Minister of Defence.

  “It’s touch and go I’m afraid Minister,” Tank replied as they walked down the steps.

  “And his wife, are we looking after her too?” Janet Walsh asked concerned. The attackers from the previous days had showed no mercy or compassion for the families of the secret service personnel that had been targeted. Armed police and military personnel had been deployed to bodyguard as many possible targets as they physically could. Some families had been moved to secure locations on military bases to ensure their safety.

  “She is with him at the hospital; they’re being guarded by our uniformed division.”

  “And how is Grace?”

  “She’s safe Minister,” Tank said, wishing that he hadn’t asked. It just made him remember how badly he wanted to be with her.

  The group passed through the open plan office toward the lift, which was at the rear of the building. Task Force agents were assembling ready for action. There was black body armour on every chair and every desk that they walked by. Well-oiled machineguns of various makes, shapes and sizes were being checked and tested ready for battle. Utility belts were being fastened, loaded with smoke grenades, stun grenades, fragmentation grenades, spare magazines, combat knives and shiny handcuffs. The agents nodded to him as Tank led the government officials into the lift. They were nearly ready for action, and all they needed now was the order to move.

  The lift door opened, and Tank stepped into the elevator car and pressed an unmarked button, which was situated beneath the button marked basement. He took a bunch of keys from his belt and inserted a skinny silver key into the control panel, and turned it. The key activated authorised access, which allowed the lift to descend to a subbasement, which had been built to service Britain’s biggest listening post and crisis centre. The subbasement had been excavated at the same time the three traffic tunnels were built beneath the River Mersey, so that the public wouldn’t know what was going on beneath the city centre.

  The government used the building of the tunnels as the perfect cover to construct a secret nuclear, biological and chemical proof bunker and command centre, which stretched underneath the city and beyond. The military built an underground service tunnel, which connected the bunker to a state of the art surveillance facility four miles away. The surveillance facility was situated beneath, and inside a derelict preparatory school in a leafy suburb of Liverpool called Woolton. Newborough School was a towering monolith built from dark local sandstone, looking more like a Victorian asylum than a place of learning. The deserted playground, once the setting of epic conker fights, classic games of marbles and mass kiss and chase sessions, was long since overgrown with nettles and weeds. The tall stained glass windows were boarded up and the gigantic rusted metal gates chained and padlocked, disguising one of the most sophisticated spy facilities on the planet. Inside the moss covered old school was a world of computer screens, digital readouts, satellite-tracking units, cipher and deciphers departments, code making and code breaking units, the quickest computers and the sharpest brains that the Western world possessed.

  The lift reached the subbasement and the door slid open to reveal a hive of subterranean activity. They stepped onto a solid rock floor, which was as wide as a dual carriageway road. The walls and ceiling were curved as if they were standing inside a massive reddish sandstone pipe. A military jeep was parked waiting for their arrival. Tank opened the rear door and the Prime Minister’s secretary climbed into the rear seat. The two government aids climbed in unassisted and Tank took the front passenger seat. The driver saluted loosely and put the vehicle into first gear.

  They covered the four miles in less than ten minutes. The conversation was kept to a polite minimum, everyone had their own concerns and undisclosed agendas. The government officials wouldn’t show their hands until they’d received all the information that they required to make an informed decision. The snippets of confidential information that each department had received were pointing to a terrifying scenario. All the relative parties needed to communicate with each other, before any concrete plans could be made.

  They reached the control centre and entered through a revolving glass door, which was designed to be a barrier to a chemical or biological attack. They passed through the doorway into a large reception area, which was encased by bombproof plate-glass walls. To the right, through the glass wall they could see a control room. Banks of computer terminals were lined up in a semicircular pattern, and the floor was terraced like an amphitheatre, rising toward the back of the room. Tank headed left toward a large rectangular conference room. Through the glass walls, Tank saw over a dozen people milling about in small groups, some were uniformed military officers, some ministers from various home office departments. Inside were some familiar faces, and some not so familiar. Tank scanned the busy room, mentally noting who was who. He spotted Chen and the fat controller already seated at the meeting table. The table was polished dark oak, long and somewhat out of place in its high tech surroundings. At one end of the table was a wall packed with digital screens, the other three walls were floor to ceiling plate-glass, like a huge fish tank.

  “Let’s get started ladies and gentlemen please,” Janet Walsh addressed the room in an assertive voice, which belied her polished appearance. The room became silent and people shuffled around the elongated table, looking for a tab with their name on it. It resembled an adult game of musical chairs. Tank wandered through the melee to where Chen and David Bell were seated. Directly across the table from them were two men that Tank didn’t recognise.

  They were dark haired, olive skinned, with deep brown eyes and long black eyelashes. One of the men, who were sat on the left hand side of his colleague, had a sharp hooked nose, which Tank associated with a Jewish heritage. He figured that they were Israeli secret service however there were so many Israeli counter terrorist agencies and clandestine military units that he couldn’t even begin to guess which one they belonged to. He was glad that they were there; they’d been waiting for them to supply vital information about the Palestinian insurgents that had been captured. The general clatter of chairs being scraped as people took their seats quietened and the room fell into a readied silence.

  “I’m not going to waste valuable time introducing everyone; we’ll do that as we progress through the agenda,” Janet Walsh began taking charge of the situation like it was second nature, “I’d like the Task Force to update us first please, if you don’t mind Tank.”

  Tank remained standing and headed toward a digital screen, which was fixed to a white Formica wall, surrounded by smaller screens. He picked up a pen shaped remote and clicked the screen to life. The faces of two men appeared, looking like they’d come second best to a petrol bomb. He clicked again and a third face appeared next to the first two. This man was clearly dead.

  “You’re all aware that a series of well planned assassination attempts have been carried out across the British Isles,” Tank began.

  The faces of Major Stanley Timms, Boris McGuiness, Donald Bangor Jones and Grace Farrington flashed onto the smaller screens in turn, and then disappeared just as quickly.

  “Major Timms, the head of the Terrorist Task Force is in a critical condition in hospital. He was shot by a sniper in his office from almost half a mile
away. Two bullets hit him in the back, and he’s touch and go. Boris McGuiness, a senior officer of Her Majesty’s MI6, and his two sons were shot and killed while on a camping trip to Snowdonia. Donald Bangor Jones, MI5, left for work and his wife and two daughters were killed in a car bomb attack.”

  The room remained deadly silent. Everyone was well aware that whoever had accessed the personal information files of the victims would probably also have their details as well. Every single person in the room was a target, and apparently now so were their families. The single biggest strength of the secret services was that they remained a secret. Their anonymity was their most powerful weapon, and now because of a security breach it had suddenly become their biggest weakness.

  “Assassination attempts were made by sophisticated, well trained, highly skilled personnel, probably of Palestinian extraction,” Tank looked to the Israelis for further comment. The man with the hooked nose stood up, coughed to clear his throat and then spoke in perfect English, with no discernable accent.

  “I am Major Goldstein from the Israeli intelligence department. We can positively identify these two men,” he began pointing to the burns victims that Tank had disabled at his grandmother’s funeral.

  “They are Abdel and Pita Abuhamza, former members of what you would call the Palestine Liberation Organisation. We know that in recent years their focus was not only on the Palestinian situation. They joined a faction of the Axe group, headed up by Yasser Ahmed, involved in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. They were both students and teachers at a camp sponsored by Yasser Ahmed from June two thousand, until two thousand and four. It was at this time that our agencies lost track of them completely.” The Israeli paused as he could see people raising hands to ask questions.

  “Were your agencies aware that they were headed here?”

  “Absolutely not until they were here already, I can assure you that we have been trying to trace these men for years. Our Sayaret Matkal, or Unit-two six nine, is a highly effective counter terrorist unit, and special operations group, working directly under the command of the Israeli intelligence ministry, not the military. They specialise in locating and removing problem terrorist personnel from their own communities, in the West Bank itself. They have made numerous incursions into Gaza and the West Bank looking for these men, without success, which means that they were not there to find. They’d left the country, as this unit does not make mistakes.” The Israeli tapped his pen on his hand to emphasise his point.

  Tank knew of the Sayaret Matkal, they were almost as feared as the SAS, and from what he knew about them, the Israeli was correct. If they couldn’t find the Abuhamza brothers, then they weren’t there to be found. That meant that key terrorist personnel had left the Middle East for an extended period. They did not know why. Where had they been, and more importantly what had they been doing?

  Furthermore, Tank knew that the Israelis had an even better unit than the one in question, if that could be possible. The most feared Jewish outfit is a complete unit of Israeli Arabs, known as the Sayaret Duvedevan. They were called the ‘mistaravim’, or ‘becoming Arab’. This unit dedicated their entire lives to mixing with and integrating into Muslim communities, often taking wives and having families. They had personnel deployed in Muslim communities all over the Middle East, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Israel is a formidable military superpower with a nuclear deterrent. None of its Arab neighbours possesses the military firepower to successfully invade the Jewish state, without risking terrible consequences.

  Its biggest threat to security is Islamic insurgency. Years of constant suicide bombings had forced Israel to send men deep undercover to sniff out the leaders of the terrorist groups. The fragile state of Israel depended upon the information that these clandestine units provided for its existence.

  “What’s known about the other man?” the minister asked.

  “His name is Abu Anbar, born in Palestine to a once wealthy family. He joined the insurgency late in his teenage years, and we know that he spent time at Yasser Ahmed’s training camps. He wasn’t a known associate of the Abuhamza brothers, we wouldn’t have connected them if he hadn’t been killed during this operation,” the Israeli answered.

  “And what do we know about their known associates?”

  The Israeli looked to Tank for support. The tone of the question coming from the floor indicated that the anger felt by everyone was being directed at the Israelis, as if it were their responsibility.

  “Who their known associates are really doesn’t matter right now,” Tank interjected. The man who’d asked the question was sat at the far end of the room dressed in an American military uniform of some description. Tank didn’t know who he was or what rank he was, and he didn’t really care. His days of being concerned about upsetting someone of senior rank were long gone. He answered straight to the Prime Minister’s office, everyone else could whistle.

  “I beg to disagree. It’s vital that we know who they are,” the American blustered defensively.

  “It isn’t,” Tank shot him down quickly, as there was no time for arsing about with the general, no matter what his name was.

  “Agent Tankersley is right,” Janet Walsh interrupted, “we have much more serious problems to discuss.”

  “What can possibly be more important than identifying raghead terrorists, who think they can come over here and play merry hell with all and sundry?”

  “Well if you’d shut up and listen for a minute then you’ll find out,” Tank said politely, thinking that if the General didn’t shut up, then he would throw him through the revolving door.

  “We have found evidence of radioactive materials on board a Syrian tanker that was delivering aggregates to an aluminium plant at the port of Holyhead, Wales,” Tank continued. “We think that the terrorists arrived here on board this tanker.” A picture of the Syrian vessel appeared on the smaller screens again, and then it was replaced by the black and white image of the lower deck glowing. The riveted steel deck was painted with red metal floor paint, and there was a distinct square smudge in the centre of the picture where the huge toolbox had been. The room fell silent again, the American flushed red with embarrassment as he realised that there was much more to this insurgency than first met the eye.

  “We have also found traces of the same materials here in the city centre,” Tank changed the pictures again, and the images from the St. John’s Tower appeared on the screens. The luminous smudges that left a radioactive trail down the towering stairwell and into the shopping precinct flicked across the screens. The final picture was taken on the first floor balcony of the mall. It showed a pool of vomit next to the underground entrance door.

  “We are sure that the secretor of this vomit has been in contact with the same radioactive substances. It has tested positive for both beta, and gamma emitting rays, matching the profile of cobalt and strontium-90. We think that the secretor was exposed to the radiation for an extended period, without any protective clothing. He`s probably dead already. The conundrum we are facing is that we’re almost certain that the material never left the city centre. It was completely cordoned off by our uniformed divisions, and there was air support provided above the area, all fitted with heat sensors. There was nothing reported by any of our units that could be related to this material, our best guess is that it’s beneath that shopping mall somewhere. We are shutting the town centre down completely, and evacuating all built up residential areas situated downwind of the area,” Tank shrugged at the American as he finished, and the man nodded solemnly understanding the severity of the issue.

  “What type of radioactive materials are we talking about?” asked the defence minister.

  Tank was about to answer but the second Israeli, who had so far remained silent, stood up and waved his hand to indicate that he would answer the question. Tank gestured for him to continue, hoping that the Israelis could shine more light on the subject than they already had.

  “I’m Doctor Graff, and I am from th
e Israeli nuclear science department. Our sources have gathered evidence, which will confirm what the Terrorist Task Force is suspecting. We are positive that Axe are in possession of cobalt-60. They also have at least two Russian made thermoelectric generators,” the Israeli explained to a room full of concerned, but confused faces.

  “I can see that this has caused some confusion, please let me explain and you will understand.”

  He walked to the digital screen and removed a computer disk from his jacket pocket, and then slid it into the receiver. The pictures on the screens changed. The image of a remote lighthouse situated in the far northern extremes of the old Soviet Union, surrounded by pack ice appeared. Its revolving light warned shipping that it was approaching the point where the ice flows met the continent. Then a beacon fitted with an aircraft warning light, situated on top of a rocky mountain summit appeared on the screen next to it.

  “These are just two examples of thousands of remote Soviet warning beacons. Marine lighthouses, aircraft warning beacons and remote airfields, which are situated hundreds and hundreds of miles away from the nearest source of electricity. The Russians developed, built and deployed thermoelectric power generators to the far reaches of the former Soviet Union. Their theory was that these units would provide a power source that never needs to be refuelled for a thousand years. They made petrol generators and their maintenance staff obsolete.” The Israeli went quiet.