Influence

by Andrew Snadden

  “FUCK” he shouted out before launching the phone towards the lift door in front of him with the force of a tomahawk missile, causing it to smash into a thousand pieces on impact. With the rage inside him yet to be consoled, he charged towards the elevator door and punched it as hard as he could in an attempt to rid himself of the cortisol building up in his brain. Just as he was about to hit it again, he paused, suddenly realising that he had created a moon like dent in police property and also risked injuring his much needed hand. Foster fell back against the wall and slid down it until he was seated with his hands cupping his face not knowing whether to scream or cry in anger.

  Unknown to his colleagues, Foster hadn't always been the fun loving 'good old boy' he was considered to be. Prior to joining the 'job' he was an off the rails teenager who had displayed a dark and violent temper on more than one occasion that could have had him arrested, or worse. However since joining the disciplined environment of the police service he had been provided with structure and focus which helped him put to rest his troubled past and distract him from his personal demons. However, in this moment, the discipline that had quelled his previous out of control ways had well and truly left him, and he was now lost in tidal wave of rage, his thoughts racing around his head with the speed of the Japanese Bullet train. It wasn't the first time that Foster had suffered with similar racing thoughts. After a recent problem with his mortgage payments increasing, he had been under a lot of stress that had prevented him from sleeping due to the unrelenting worries and thoughts bouncing around inside his skull, there had even been a few occasions where he had lost a sense of himself for short period of time, almost feeling as though he was someone else. The situation with Amy he had just been presented with was hardly going to help matters.

  Ten minutes passed as he sat there motionless, lost inside his blurred thoughts until the voice of O'Keeffe that could be heard coming from the bottom of the stairs, snapped him out of his trance like state. He wiped his face hard whilst sharply inhaling in through his nose and then shouted out to O'Keeffe below that he was coming down. Foster hurriedly collected the larger parts of his smashed phone before noticing the large dent he had caused, with a lack of CCTV in the hall, there was no way he was going to report the damage. How would he explain it anyway.

  At the bottom of the stairs he was met by O'Keeffe who looked at him with a smile and said “Mate we're on a massive job and your hiding and worrying about some chick. I called you, why didn't you answer you loon”.

  “Oh right!? Erm; I think my phone must be playing up” Foster replied with a sense of embarrassment as he felt the remains of his phone in his pocket.

  Unequivocally Not Dull

  Chapter Three

  Three hundred yards into Poland Lane, just outside of the City's boundary, the lights of a detached house illuminated the dark eerie country style lane it inhabited. However this particular lane was definitely not located in idyllic rural surroundings.

  Number 12 Poland lane, a Victorian era house, was less than five hundred metres away from the City's airport; one of the busiest in the country, and less than half a mile away from the large busy industrial site of Highfield. It may have been noisy at times, but there was one positive to the property's seemingly manic surroundings, and that was that no one would have believed it was there, unless they were really looking for it. The lane, though close to busy factories and the airport, still managed to exude a sense of being disconnected, which is just how the deed holder liked it; and needed it.

  The owner, a one Adam Jennings was an unassuming type of guy, almost boring. Well that's what any of his colleagues at Pritchard's estate agents would have said about him. No girlfriend, no known friends and a refusal to attend any work related social functions made him appear quite unequivocally dull. His appearance didn't help much either, beige trousers, beige jackets; beige everything, a thirty eight year old man who may as well have been in his sixties. And that was the point, it made him nigh on invisible to everyone around him. Jennings, unbeknown to his colleagues harboured a dark secret. He wasn't a secret sadist with a passion for chains and whips, a heavy drinker or drug fiend, nor a devil worshipper; he was an extremist!

  Jennings' conversion to Islam had taken place during a backpacking trip in Morocco, where, after being in the country for just a few weeks, he had been attacked by a group of westerner hating thugs. Laying there badly injured, he was saved by a local Muslim man who took him to a hospital and then nursed him back to health in his family home, displaying the famous Islamic tradition of being compassionate and hospitable. Foster pretty much converted the day after he was taken in by the man.

  However, on his return to England his new found religion was not well received by his friends or family who branded him a 'Paki lover', lamenting at how he could have become a Muslim when the large influx of 'them' had ruined Bradford. And as his family pointed out, it had not been the first time he had been influenced by someone and led astray, it had been happening continuously since his secondary school days and was an inherent weakness in his character. But what made it worse this time around was that the influencer had been a foreigner, a bloody Muslim. His parents gave him an ultimatum.......grow up, stick with your 'own' or move to Paki land and never come back, no son of theirs would ever wear a damn Turban or Burhka. The ultimatum and lack of cultural accuracy reflected their racist and ignorant views.

  Upset and deluded with the bigoted views expressed by his family and friends, Jennings moved south to London where he managed to secure a lucrative career in estate agency. Unfortunately the bright city lights and financial rewards of being a successful salesmen in the affluent Richmond area of Greater London had done little for keeping with new found faith's teachings. Yet again, he had been easily led by those around him and set about drinking and shagging his way through the next few years, practically forgetting that he had ever been a Muslim in the process. Jennings was out of control and he knew it but he just didn't have the confidence to say no to the peer pressure, bowing down to it like a Cleopatra era slave.

  One night after bedding an attractive but 'loose' girl, he contracted an extremely painful sexually transmitted infection that felt as though he was passing razor blades through his urethra the following morning. The extreme discomfort meant that he wasted no time in rushing to the closest GUM clinic. With his head held low and still slightly drunk, Jennings walked, or rather fell, into the clinic. To his dismay he saw that a large proportion of the people sat in the waiting room were Chavs and lowlife scum who had probably been on their third or fourth visit that month. The realisation of how he must have looked caused him to develop a deep sense of shame and dirtiness, the type of dirt that just couldn't be washed away with a bit of the Body shops 'Tea tree' hair and body shampoo in a hot shower. Smelling of alcohol and still dressed in the same clothes he had partied in the night before, he left the clinic and swore to himself that he would never shroud himself in such shame again. He needed to repent his sins as soon as he possibly could, so he drove to the nearest Mosque in Kingston, Surrey less than four miles away to seek salvation and forgiveness.

  Like in Morocco, he was welcomed with open arms and given a shower and some fresh clothes to wear. Jennings felt a profound sense of spiritual healing when the head of the Mosque, the Imam, compassionately hugged him and called him brother without judging him. From that moment, he attended the Mosque on a near daily basis, making new enlightened and kind friends from the local Muslim community. These were the type of friends he needed, not the sinning ones currently in his life who just wanted to party and whore themselves. As a result, it didn't take long for Jennings to shun his work colleagues and become aloof and somehow disconnected from his previous life and career. The drinking stopped and the idea of being intimate with a disease riddled western girl made the vomit rise up into his mouth. In his eyes he had been saved from an afterlife in hell.

  As the months passed, Jennings' views on how the British and the West lived, started
to become more and more distasteful to his fellow Muslims at the Mosque, to the extent where after two years of daily worship he was asked to leave. The Imam citing that his hatred for British people and anyone who did not follow Islam was not what they taught. There was no place for hatred and bigotry in their Mosque.

  Distraught and feeling lost once again, Jennings reluctantly left the Mosque at the behest of the Imam, wondering how good Muslims could have rejected him in such a way. As he began to walk out, Jennings heard an argument break out from behind him. When he turned around to see what all the commotion was about he saw a well-dressed, handsome Middle Eastern man remonstrating with the Imam. Jennings had seen this man a couple of times before, although only in passing. He wasn't a regular at worship and his relationship with the Imam had appeared strained, almost hostile at times whenever he was in the Mosque.

  “ALLAH FORBIDS IT, YOU ARE TO STAY AWAY FROM HIM” The Imam shouted.

  Jennings, unable to catch the rest of what the Imam had said, assumed that he had meant that no one was allowed to speak to him as a result his ejection from the Mosque.

  “UNLIKE YOU, HE IS A TRUE BELIEVER. ALLAH CURSE YOU FOR YOUR ACQUIESCENCE OF SINNING!” the man angrily shouted back at the Imam.

  Jennings walked out of the Mosque's doors and onto the busy Kingston street feeling vulnerable and in need of guidance when suddenly his right shoulder was gently gripped by someone from behind him.

  “My brother, the Imam is wrong. A man who sees the sinning of the west like you do should never be cast out of a place of worship. Come brother, come with me, let us leave these cruel men behind and discover Allah's true will for ourselves. My name is Ahmed, Ahmed Mahood!” the man said. His expensive and intoxicating aftershave combined with his swathe good looks and seniority made Jennings feel instantly in awe of the man, which meant one thing; he was going to be vulnerable to his influence.

  “Adam, the name's Adam Jennings, it's a pleasure, a real pleasure brother” Jennings replied with a huge beaming smile.

  That first encounter had taken place six years before and during the time that followed it, the two men had become more like brothers. However the downside to this strong bond was that Jennings' already skewered views about his fellow Brits had now become a little more sinister due to inordinate amounts of brainwashing about the West's sinning ways that had been dished out by Mahood. His ideology was somewhat ironic, considering that on his arrival from Syria in the late eighties, he had set about sleeping with as many western women as he possibly could and taking cocaine by the truck load, not to mention making a little money off selling the white stuff himself. But after a few racist attacks, his long term girlfriend leaving him for another man and the start of the Anglo-middle eastern wars, Mahood had developed a contempt and hatred for the west after his pride had been damaged.

  As a result of his hatred, Mahood had always been on the lookout for new recruits to follow his anti-West ideology, but up until that point he hadn't been too successful in finding someone intelligent enough to be of that greater service; that all changed when he met Jennings. After a period of establishing whether he could trust Jennings, Mahood asked him to attend training camps with him in Somalia and Afghanistan, an opportunity that Jennings leapt at. The only problem with travelling to such places and having connections there, meant that at some point someone would get suspicious, although in his arrogance Mahood would never had believed or let that sort of thing worry him.

  Mahood should have been worried though, because after a raid on a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan by the British SAS and American Delta Forces, documents were found on a laptop that linked him to the camp and its leader. With a bit of field interrogation that was inflicted on one of the enemy soldiers for good measure, the special forces operators had gained some vital intel regarding an attack that was being planned in the UK, although they were not able establish a location or name which meant that it could have been any one of the large proportion of British men who had attended the camp during the year. However when the snitch with links to Mahood had informed Special Branch that he was in possession of assault rifles and planning an attack in the City, the Force had consequently informed the intelligence services who were finally able to confirm who their terrorist was, and demanded that he be instantly apprehended, hence Op Barrier came rapidly into existence.

  In the kitchen of number 12 Poland Lane, Jennings was cleaning one of their six AK47 assault rifles for the hundredth time that night which made Mahood ask him why, as he couldn't understand his gun cleaning obsession. Jennings answered that he wanted to make sure that the weapons were kept in tip top shape before their 'Jihad battle'. The answer made Mahood burst out laughing which drew a sickening puppy dog like expression from Jennings.

  “It's close Adam, don't worry. Just a few days left to wait now!” Mahood said after he stopped laughing.

  While the two men chatted, the four middle eastern men that completed Mahood's terrorist group were sat in the front room watching the football highlights. Unlike Jennings and Mahood, these four lacked any real intelligence which was probably the main reason behind Mahood finding it so easy to recruit them. All he needed to do was to sell them the myth about receiving forty virgins in the afterlife and they would be happy to fight to the death for him. One thing that could be guaranteed with Mahood though, was that there was no way he would be willing to meet Allah any time soon; the virgins would have to wait. Regardless of what Jennings may have believed about him, Mahood was a coward who would escape out of the country after the attack the same way the weapons had come in, and more importantly; alone! Jennings, who was still tending to the rifles began filling a magazine clip with 7.62 calibre rounds, expertly pushing each one down into the clip with his callous covered right thumb, the result of repeatedly loading the same type of magazines in the training camp. Once there was no room left to place any more rounds, Jennings took hold of the clip and offered it up into the magazine housing of the Russian made Kalashnikov AK47 (the weapon of choice for African rebels and terrorists, freedom fighters in some peoples mind) and pushed it home. The rifle with its six hundred and fifty rounds per minute rate of fire was a gun straight out of a Rambo film and if the plan worked, would send searing hot bullets sonically tearing through the flesh of hundreds of victims with nothing to stop them.

  Tired, Mahood left the kitchen to go for a rest upstairs, leaving Jennings with the parting words of “Adam, for goodness sake don't cock that weapon and accidentally fire it or the police will be here within minutes! Anyway it's twenty five to three, you and the others should go to bed too”. No way, Jennings thought to himself, not while the weapons needed checking, and definitely not when those other morons would soon get bored and look for something else to do; like playing with the guns. Jennings just nodded back before continuing with what he was doing.

  The Final Assault

  Chapter Four

  A couple of miles north from Poland Lane in the car-park of the Airport's dedicated police station, a white panelled van and black armoured Land Rover were parked up, filled with twelve nervous members of the Firearm unit's Red and Blue teams. In front of the two vehicles rested a number of BMW X5s that contained pairs of Armed Response Vehicle officers and snipers, who would close nearby roads and provide support to the two teams that would dynamically enter the house.

  The plan had been developed and refined over the previous hours with floor plans of the house being taped to the HQ sports hall floor and room entries practised a hundred times over before the kit was checked. It might have been a short notice operation but this wasn't the first time these guys had been on such a last minute job; albeit without the AK47 wielding terrorist threat they were facing this time. Although they may not have had the time that was normally afforded to them to effectively plan, they had still done a pretty decent job, and besides, operations could still go bent even after weeks of planning, it was just the nature of the game. At least they would have plenty of support from th
e ARV officers with their G36 5.56 calibre rifles and the Snipers with their HK 417 7.62 sniper rifles, the teams reflected.

  “Fifteen minutes from now I want the teams moving up to their FUP” said Chief Inspector Murray over the radio.

  The FUP or Form Up Point was a location where the team would stand by (wait) until they were given the green light to move to their FAP or Final Assault Point where there would be no going back and the raid would start from.

  “Assault coordinator, that's received boss. Red team do you copy?” Marriot enquired.

  “Red team received and standing by” Simpson responded.

  After letting go of his radio transmitter attached to the top of his tactical vest that housed stun grenades, Taser and spare mags, Simpson reached up and switched on the Land rover's red interior lights to illuminate the sealed rear of the vehicle.

  “Thank God for that, I can stop using my torch to locate and attach Foster's Glock retention cable to his seat” Allen joked.

  The Glock 17, 9mm handgun was the weapon of choice for police services and Swat teams around the world because of its ease of use. On the British firearms units the gun was carried in a holster on the officer’s leg and used as a secondary weapon to either the HK MP5 9mm or the HK G36 rifles. In order to keep the weapon attached to the officer at all times there was a flexible and coiled cord attached to the handle of the gun and the officer’s holster. It hadn't taken long for this safety measure to become one of the unit's favourite wind up pranks that consisted of an offending officer sneaking up on their unsuspecting victim, removing the cord clip from their gun and attaching it to something that would end up being dragged away as they walked off. Although it was highly immature and they complained when the joke was on them, it didn't stop any of them from doing it.