TARGET BRITAIN: a political thriller Read online

  TARGET BRITAIN: a political thriller

  by Owen Bennett-Jones

  Target Britain: a political thriller

  Copyright © 2013 by Owen Bennett-Jones

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  v1.0 last updated 3.26.2013

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  “I have two words for you. Predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking.” -- President Barack Obama, May 2010

  03:45, 1st October, Dera Chamak, Baluchistan, Western Pakistan

  Slumped in his chair at the top of the watchtower overlooking his home, Mahmud scanned the village and the moonlit valley below. He caught a glimpse of the mullah, always the first up, making his way to the mud-built mosque for morning prayers. A goat chewing a plastic bag looked up and, not bothering to move, watched the cleric waddle by. Down in the compound that surrounded his house Mahmud heard the sound of wood being snapped and, turning, saw the old widow who cooked for him lighting the fire for breakfast. Hunched, she poked at the crackling twigs with a bit of rusty wire, dipping her head to avoid inhaling the smoke and coughing with a weak hacking sound. She was covered from head to foot with a sky blue burqa. She must realise we have visitors, Mahmud thought.

  The walls that surrounded the house were a shade over six feet high – tall enough to prevent prying eyes. Inside the sandy earth was compacted with years of use, hard but still uneven. In one corner waste paper and bits of straw swirled in the light breeze. Close to the house there was a dilapidated, off-white four by four, which Mahmud had acquired in return for a week’s labour helping build a neighbour’s house. Unable to find spare parts he had never been able to make it run. Hens pecked at the ground leaving white specks of droppings behind them. Beside them was a scrappy, unkempt vegetable patch. The plants – carrots and some dirty, pale red tomatoes with yellow patches were protected from the hens by short sharp sticks stuck into the ground. A plastic 5-litre car oil container that the old lady used to water the plants lay on its side nearby.

  The visitors had arrived shortly after midnight and Mahmud reckoned they must be Uzbeks. When he had opened the gate for them he had only been able to see their bloodshot, yellowing eyes looking out from intricately folded red and white keffiyehs. They had been carrying not only Kalashnikovs and anti-tank missiles but also a Barrett M107 sniper rifle. A new one by the look of it.

  One of them was cradling his arm in a cloth sling.

  Mahmud looked past the gate, down the sandy street to see if anybody had noticed their approach. On the horizon there was the familiar silhouette of the massive mountain range to the west. Its slopes rose steeply from the desert floor and Mahmud made out the shape of a steeply sided V. The Mouth of the Jackal as the locals called it: the narrow pass that formed the easiest route to and from Afghanistan. It was probably where they had come from.

  “As salaam a laikum. Problem?” Mahmud had asked pushing the tip of his forefinger into his own arm, screwing up his face to indicate pain.

  “OK,” the man had muttered shaking his head, “No problem.”

  Since he hadn’t heard any gunfire that night Mahmud calculated the men must have been walking for some time before they reached his home just inside Pakistan. A perfect place of refuge for those moving back from the frontline.

  Mahmud opened the clanking metal gate that was the only way through the wall that surrounded his home, and counted the men in. Five in all; one wounded. The first through seemed to be the leader. His clothes hung loosely on his thin frame except where an ammunition belt was strapped diagonally across his chest. “Mirvani,” he thanked Mahmud in heavily accented Pashtu and then pointed east where dawn would break, slowly lifting his outstretched arm from horizontal a few degrees upward to symbolise the rising sun and then pointing at the gate.

  So, they’d be off mid-morning. Mahmud would have to skip school. Next, the man pointed at the watchtower and slipped a $100 dollar note into Mahmud’s hand.

  That worried him. It probably meant they feared the Americans were in pursuit. But it never occurred to Mahmud to turn the men away. “On my honour….” He muttered to himself. After all, how many times had he sat on his father’s knee and listened to the pig story.

  “A pig was fleeing some hunters when it burst into a farmer’s house,” his father used to tell him and his brother Jasir. The story had always brought a sparkle to his father’s eye. At least that’s how Mahmud remembered it. “So the hunters, on horseback, surrounded the house and shouted to the farmer: ‘Flush it out!’”. Mahmud thought back to how he used to listen, nestling his head into his father’s long, greying beard in the oscillating, slightly nasal tones of the Baluch language.

  “But he refused. ‘This pig may be the most unclean beast on Allah’s good earth,’ the farmer declared, ‘but it’s seeking sanctuary. On my honour I will protect it!’”

  The story always ended with the defiant farmer killing a hunter, whose fellow tribesmen in turn fired through the flimsy farmhouse walls until both farmer and pig were dead. But as many fathers had told many wide-eyed children: “It was a praiseworthy death.”

  So by tribal tradition, and by way of respecting his father’s memory, Mahmud would allow the Uzbeks to stay as long as they liked. In fact Mahmud felt guilty taking the $100 but they’d offered it and if they had a rifle like that, it looked like they could afford it. And if he was to make it to London, he needed all the cash he could put his hands on.

  As the men crossed into the compound Mahmud pointed at a side door that gave access to a room at the end of the house in which the Uzbeks would find some quilts on the concrete floor.

  “You are welcome,” he said, holding back the desire to ask where they had come from and how the man had been injured. Maybe at breakfast, Mahmud thought.

  As the men filed into their quarters Mahmud went to the main part of the house to fetch them a jug of water and a glass. They’d be thirsty.

  *****

  7,500 miles away in the Creech Airbase, 40 minutes’ drive from Las Vegas, Captain Jack Nielson of the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing settled into his padded chair and focused on the bank of screens in front of him. It was the start of another night shift.

  “Good morning, sir.” It was Sergeant Tate. Sense of humour aside, Nielson liked him. Compared to most of his kind, recruited only for their computer skills, Tate was well turned out, respectful and quiet. In fact, he was almost military. Tate was responsible for the weapons and the laser targeting system.

  Captain Nielson grunted: “Hey!”

  To his right First Lieutenant Palmer was settling down too, tapping his keyboards and checking his screens like a pilot preparing for a real take-off. “How’s the boy?” Nielson enquired. Palmer’s son had been off school with flu.

  “My view – he’s good to go. His
mother’s view – he’s too ill to move a muscle. I think she just likes the company at home. Someone to fuss over.”

  “Well,” Neilson grinned, “that’s why you’re the intell guy. Working out what the enemy is thinking.”

  Palmer frowned but Neilson cut him off. “Only kidding.”

  Although the three men were preparing to do a day’s flying, none of them would ever leave the ground. Six days a week they pecked their partners on the cheek, patted their children on the head and walked down the pathways of their suburban homes. They slid into their cars, switched on the radio and started a commute in which they drove from peace to war. Once inside Creech they controlled the unmanned airborne vehicles or drones that patrolled more and more of the world’s surface. The spies in the sky, keeping planet earth safe for Americans.

  All three wore flight helmets and green, fire-resistant flight suits.

  “The helmets, we need,” Nielson had explained when Tate and Palmer first came under his command: “they have headphones, microphone and they cut out the air con and the server hum. And all hands-free,” he said raising his open palms. Tate and Palmer nodded. But everyone wore the helmets. It was the flight suits they couldn’t understand.

  “You signed up to fly Reaper drones, right? So now you get to wear the kit,” Nielson said. “Gentleman, I used to fly B52s bombing people from 30,000 feet. I didn’t see a damn thing,” he told them. “Up, release weapons and back home again. Zip. But with these drones you can watch these towel heads for days on end. You can see them get up at three in the morning and go outside for a piss. Feels like you know them. I even saw one guy fucking a goat.”

  Tate and Palmer screwed up their faces in incredulity.

  “As God is my witness,” Nielson raised his hand as if taking an oath. “Infra red pictures as clear as you two before me. The back end of that goat was white hot. We put it up on YouTube but the Chaplain asked us to take it down. Which was a damn shame: it had 10,000 hits in just over an hour and in my view, gentlemen, could have established itself as an all-time, most-viewed classic.”

  Palmer: “You still got it?”

  “Only if you have your flight suit on.”

  Nielson always began his shift with the same routine. He pushed and pulled one of the stubby joysticks on the metal desk in front of him causing the Reaper’s cameras to rise and fall relaying terraced valley sides, then the red sunrise and back down again to the arid valley floor. It had become a ritual. A way of feeling his way into the day’s flight. “Gentleman, we have a SG-9 Reaper airborne carrying four hellfires and two 500 lb bombs.”

  Tate glanced up and saw the six weapons depicted in neon red on the bottom right hand corner of his leftmost screen.

  “Copy that”

  “How long we been airborne?”

  “22 hours,” Tate answered. And his voice going into a sing-song patter mimicking an air hostess: “We have three hours flying time before we land at Kandahar airport, the gateway to Afghanistan. Please put back your watches seven centuries!” No one laughed. They’d heard it too often.

  “What we got eyes on?” Nielson looked right at Flight Lieutenant Palmer.

  Palmer scrolled through messages on his screen. They were variously written by a colonel in Kabul working on a desktop, the on-duty intelligence officer in Kandahar Air Base in a tent by the runway whose laptop was actually on his lap and a two-strong reconnaissance unit dug in five miles from the Pakistan border. They made their contributions to the Reaper’s dedicated, secure chat room in terse one-line, often misspelt, messages typed into a hand-held device not much bigger than a mobile phone. From time to time a symbol like a coat of arms appeared in the top right-hand corner of both the chat room and the pictures coming from the drone. That indicated that someone in the Pentagon was logged in, monitoring the flight and everything being written in the chat room.

  “It’s a pattern of life job. We have a fortress type house just on the border,” Palmer said. “The guy you can see sitting with a gun on his knees looks like he is in the courtyard but in fact is on a watchtower. Probably 20 feet up. And get this. At 02:21 hours local...” Palmer paused as he typed instructions into his keyboard, “.... we have an unusual social occasion. Five men turn up to say hi. They are armed. The gate opens. Looks like they were expected. Very few words exchanged. They go into the building.”

  As he spoke, the images he was describing came up on the screens in Nevada, Kabul, Kandahar and Washington. And on the reconnaissance unit’s hand-held.

  A scratchy voice came over the headsets. It was the reconnaissance unit.

  “Hey, that could be from yesterday evening. We heard it popping off in the next valley down from us.” The speaker paused, apparently consulting a map. “Must have been Grid square 321 740 at around 18:00 hours local. Yesterday evening, Copy?”

  “Copy that,” Palmer flicked through the logs – streams of data flickered down his screen.

  “No images, missed that one,” he said.

  The colonel in Kabul broke in. “I got it. It’s in the overnights. Firefight 18:15 between 12th Corps Marines and a group of five or six insurgents. One Marine injured in action. Enemy casualties unknown. The group of five cut and run 18:25 heading southeast. Looks like we’ve found ourselves some murderous bastards.”

  Neilson decided it was time to reassert his authority.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, we have a possible target and we are fully armed. Palmer, check the timings tally and get ticking your checklist. Tell the lawyers I want clearance. Tate make sure we’re good to go ...”

  “Copy that,” they both replied.

  “... and I am going to have a closer look at this bastard on the watchtower.” As he spoke he pressed a zoom button next to his joystick, magnifying the infrared picture on the screen. The heat of Mahmud’s body appeared in white, like a ghost. “Let’s put the laser on this goon.”

  “Copy that.”

  “And Palmer, I want the Grims airborne. Far as I’m concerned letting gunmen into your home at night is suspicious behaviour. Certainly is in Vegas.”

  “Copy that.”

  *****

  “Fawcett Street. And as quick as you like mate.” As he spoke, Jaz Khan’s last passenger of the night slipped his hand around his girlfriend’s waist and guided her into the back seat of the minicab. She giggled and through his rear view mirror Jaz could see her glossed red lips moving in for an ill-aimed snog.

  Drunk. But at half past two in the morning Jaz didn’t expect much else. And anyway, drunk could mean a big tip.

  As Jaz drove down Earls Court Road the sharp smell of perfume mixed with alcohol caught in his throat. He lowered his window a couple of inches. On both sides of the road there were rows of parked Range Rovers, Porsches and the occasional rusty hatchback. Their windscreens reflected the glow of orange streetlights softened by a fine, cold drizzle.

  “Shut it can you? I’m trying to warm her up not freeze her.” More giggles. So, no tip then. Jaz glanced in the mirror again and wondered whether they were actually having sex.

  He thought back to the time three years before when a 15-year-old girl had disappeared from the village. With rumours circulating about what had become of her, the father called a village meeting or jirga. Battling with his humiliation at losing control of his daughter, he announced he had no idea where she was. It took another month for the truth to emerge – the girl had escaped to the Rais – a neighbouring tribe – and had married a boy there in an apparent love match. As best as it could be established it seemed the young couple had seen each other only twice prior to her elopement and never exchanged words. But that they had somehow communicated become clear when the father searched his daughter’s room and found various love notes concealed under her bed.

  Jaz knew that his being selected for the raiding party was a mark of respect; a rite of passage for a 16-year-old Chamaki. A chance to prove himself. He’d borrowed a Kalashnikov from a neighbour and been the first waiting at the pickup that wo
uld take them to the boy’s village. The girl’s uncle had already gone ahead, starting the day before, on foot so as to identify the house. It would be his job to guide the raiders in.

  The night was ideal with the moon offering little light as they drove - headlights off - along the sandy track that led to Rais territory. The father was at the wheel driving slowly whilst another of his brothers sat beside him. The three younger men - all from the village but none of them direct relatives – were in the back of the pickup letting the cold night air bite into the their faces cooling their sense of anticipation. The father would decide what was to happen that night but Jaz, more excited than nervous, knew that one way or another there was violence ahead. If they captured him, the boy would die and, as for the girl, Jaz shrugged his shoulders: he’d know soon enough.

  After an hour’s driving the car stopped and the father lowered the window to listen for any sounds that would indicate they had been observed. Jaz felt time slowing down and wondered if the others could hear his heart pounding. Embarrassed by his nerves he held his gun to his chest thinking it might help muffle or obscure the sound. There was a sharp whistle from behind a nearby rise in the ground and, recognising his brother, the father whistled back and opened the door. Following his cue the others all climbed down from the pickup.

  They were moving on foot now, the three younger ones still silent as the father and his two brothers led the way, occasionally pointing towards a dark patch on the horizon about a mile away. As they came closer Jaz could make out the high walls that surrounded the house where presumably the young lovers were sharing a bed. He spat to indicate his disgust, if only to himself then stopped as the father whispered in his ear that he wanted Jaz to skirt round to the back the house.