Tehran Decree (13 page)

The lead car had traveled some thirty feet before
stopping instantly in its tracks after ripping its rubber tires to
shreds and belching clouds of acrid smoke. This completely blinded
the second presidential limousine which hit the back of the lead
vehicle with a deafening thud.

The senior security driver came close to hitting the
wind screen in spite of his belt restraint, but set off the driver
airbag instead. It filled the front seat with a great hiss in less
than two seconds. The president and his two high ranking companions
were lodged on the edge of their seats suspended by their safety
belts. The other cars in the motorcade barely managed to avoid
hitting each other by millimeters. The wisdom of Ellen Monard
insisting they all wear their safety belts was the best move the
motorcade had made so far. She had once befriended Princes Diana
and was mindful of how important the humble safety belt was. They
all sat back in their seats except for president Garner, who
remained on the edge of his seat, fumbling with a vomit bag, which
he filled to capacity after only one attempt.

Monard reached over the president with a box of
tissues and gently cleaned up his face while offering soothing
comments in his ear. She was surprised how bad he actually looked,
his face was deathly white, and his eyes bloodshot. The cigar
smoking incident had severely upset his system
--
he was now
a very sick man.

Although badly shook-up by the sudden attack and
unexpected halting of their vehicles
--
the bevy of service
agents got out of their limousines and took cover behind them
--
rather than remaining in the cars were they were sitting
ducks for snipers. Several of the agents slowly crept towards the
presidential car in order to defend the president from further
attack. Some of the agents began firing in the direction of the
terrorists. The chief in the lead car shouted into his
earpiece.

‘Don’t spare the fire power...we need to get out of
here.’ The driver in the second car turned round and peered over
the back seat; the president was prone on the long seat with his
security advisor wiping his brow with damp paper tissues. Ellen
Monard was grappling with a small oxygen cylinder and fixing the
mask to Garners face as shots ricocheted off the tiled tunnel
walls. Kazeni crouched down with three of his men.

‘We’ve got them pinned down...spread out and continue
using the Dragunov rifles,’ the firing continued unabated with the
security agents gradually moving toward the presidential car.
Several more shots rang out and three of the security agents went
down
--
shot in the head by sniper bullets. Clumps of NSW
police, most of them armed with Glock pistols, were pinned down
along the sides of the tunnel. A few bodies and wounded policeman
lay unattended along the way. Each time a brave constable stuck his
head out of line it was shot off by an eager BIB marksman. Glock
pistols were good everyday hand guns, but near useless where
accurate, sharp shooting, in a poor visibility environment was
required.

The kill rate continued as the terrorist contingent
applied their newly honed sniper skills with the state-of-the-art,
Russian rifles; at this rate it was just a matter of time before
every policeman and US security agent would be picked off. Being
cornered in a tunnel with a superior armed opposing force was the
worst case scenario for the secret service. With the president in
tow, service tactics were based on hit and run procedures, not a
prolonged, static shoot out. A stalemate started to set in with the
odd opportunistic shot being fired. Another thirty minutes elapsed
as one after another service agent succumbed to opportunistic
strikes by the Draganov sniper rifle. Brenda Jones a sergeant in
the New south Wales police was pinned to the wall with three other
police officers unable to move. The whole mess was a

horrible stalemate for a woman who had been used to
achievement throughout her seven years in the police force. Her
father had been a chief constable who had worked his way up the
ranks largely by aggressive organising and daring do. Now it was
Brenda’s turn to show them who was boss. She squinted around a 180
degree arc, crouched down, then ran like hell across the tunnel to
the nearest US security contingent. A volley of nine millimeter
rounds passed within inches of her head. Two agents huddled next to
the fifth and sixth SUV’s welcomed her.

She spent nearly an hour firing opportunistic shots
at the BIB finally wounding one man carrying a RPG launcher.
Determined to even the odds she stepped out from behind the SUV and
fired off her last three rounds at the man killing him
instantly.

It was her last act as the BIB terrorist fired off
his grenade as he fell to the ground. The rocket destroyed both
SUV’s killing Brenda and two other US agents.

Only three agents were left crouching near the first
car leaving just four other agents still inside their vehicles. One
of the terrorist leveled his RPG launcher at the first car and
fired a grenade. The vehicle lifted off the floor and exploded in
flames killing the chief security agent, and his driver. The ear
splitting blast echoed down the tunnel deafening anyone in ear
shot.

Fresh air had now become a luxury in the confined
corridor, all of the air conditioners were out at the airport
turnoff end of the tunnel. Smoke continued to swirl around the
vehicles and several had their conditioners running on the engine,
which only added to the external

pollution. The sickly smell of concentrated carbon
monoxide had now been somewhat muted by the choking stench of
cordite and burning plastic. Death by smoke inhalation had taken
over from the sniper’s bullets. Police began to loose their
protective cover at the sides of the tunnel walls as respiratory
difficulties gave way to coughing fits which revealed their
locations. Bodies began to pile up and suicide at the hands of a
BIB marksman was preferable to being choked to death by the build
up of poisonous fumes. A number of police tried to make a run for
the airport end of the tunnel only to be gunned down by unseen, gas
masked, BIB men.

Chapter Twenty-five

Commisshioner Chester continued switching from one
CCTV camera to another, desperately trying to locate the chief
security agent, and the presidential limousine. The whole tunnel
area was a black hole with dense swirls of gray smoke obscuring
everything in the tunnel.. Occasionally fleeting figures would
appear and just as quickly disappear. Dark twisted shapes came into
view and then vanished as the fog enveloped them. It was impossible
to decipher which vehicle was which amongst the tangled
wreckage.

His mobile buzzed and he snatched it from the
consul.

‘Chester here...’

‘Agent number 23 sir in the presidential car ...we’re
just about finished commissioner...they have the president
surrounded...can you send in your best men now.’

Chester dropped his mobile and stared blankly at the
array of seventeen-inch CRT TV screens
--
the worst possible
nightmare was staring him in the face. He smirked at the American’s
remark and silently mouthed his next statement.

‘Send in our best men?...they’re already in there you
bloody idiot!’

It was like playing chess with the lights off. The
whole thing was the province of the younger man who could think
quickly on his feet...or perhaps that of the older man with a calm
head and clear thinking; coupled with vast experience in violent
confrontations.

He squinted more intensely at the instrumentation in
front of him -- a bank of foggy CRT displays exhibiting
incomprehensible images -- it represented his personal big picture
of the destruction of the presidential motorcade. After all the
work and careful planning which had gone into the protection of the
president it had all come down to this -- a bunch of amateur
terrorists had beaten them at their own game. It was yet another
humiliating defeat the world would not forget, particularly the
Islamic extremist countries.

He stared in anguish at the blurred illegible CCTV
images. Why, oh bloody why, had they not took his advice and
upgraded to modern, hi-tech video cameras, which would have given
them a clearer view of the mess now confronting them? And where
were the HD LCD Monitors he‘d thrown in for good measure. In spite
of all the well thought out recommendations over the years, they
had been completely ignored, even though some of them had been
marked in red as an absolute necessity.

Standing in the monitor room was like staring into a
row of black holes on a foggy winters day. Even so, it wasn’t too
difficult to see the periodic piles of black objects scattered
along the roadside, which turned out to be dead bodies, most of
them secret service agents and policeman, with the odd terrorist
here and there. They wouldn’t be the only dead after the event --
many heads would roll as a result of this international debacle.
Chester was only too aware that his head would be top of the
list.

The Sydney streets were clogged with tourists who had
better camera equipment in their mobile phones than the police HQ
had dotted along the tunnel. How on earth could they fight well
armed, hi-tech terrorists, with useless outdated equipment.

A red light blinked periodically on the computer
consul indicating that the cameras were recording events in the
tunnel. Chester smiled, it wouldn’t be much of a TV show when they
came to playing back the video shots, and there would certainly be
a bloated inquiry over the incident. Unfortunately, the images
would be run through by lower ranks, and assessed by area
commanders. The politicians, who were in a position of real
influence, rarely saw a good police CCTV video playback. If they
did, it would tell then how abominably poor the quality was on
police CRT video monitors. Chester himself had often said it would
be difficult to identify your own mother staring directly into the
camera from a distance of two feet. They were used for their scare
factor, but good identification of human features was often a
problem. They had long been a bit of a joke with the criminal
element and the police alike. He was tempted to smash every
outmoded CRT display with the nearest heavy object.

He was reluctant to pass on the message to higher
authority because he would run into a wall of bureaucracy, which
was designed to give him the run around, and in any case, it didn’t
really matter anymore since the siege was practically over, with
the terrorist having the upper hand from start to finish.

The HQ desk phone rang, just in time to save the
consul displays from being smashed, and Chester leaned over picking
up the receiver.

‘Hello...’

‘Police Minister here commissioner...I’ve just heard
these ruddy terrorists have the upper hand, is that true?’

‘I’m afraid it is sir,’ Chester replied in a barely
audible voice, shot with emotion and suppressed anger.

‘I see...’said the minister, in a scathing tone that
made Chester flinch inwardly.

‘Don’t worry sir, I’ll have several hundred men in
there post haste, we’re converging on both ends of the tunnel.’
Chester felt like a nazi general in Hitler’s bunker promising more
men when non actually existed on paper.

‘They will not get out of there alive sir.’

‘No, and neither will the president at that rate.
We’re having an emergency meeting at government house with major
luminaries in the cabinet, put someone with a bit of gumption in
charge, and tell them to hold the situation...don’t go charging in
willy nilly, keep your men out of the tunnel...then get yourself
over here right now,’ Chester cut the call, his heart in his mouth,
then squinted seethingly at the CRT displays, and smiled
perceptively -- they would be one of his leading excuse for total
systemic failure.

There were of course other valid ingrained reasons
for failure in the line of fire. Inexperienced Sydney police had
never been through an all out terrorist attack on their city
before. Neither had they had any specific counter terrorist
training which might have equipped them better to deal with the
tunnel hijack and subsequent massacre.

Their poor performance could be put down to their
first terrorist baptism of fire -- the drawing of first blood --
they were hardly battle hardened troops and had many lessons to
learn. On top of all that police turnover was alarmingly high and
necessitated the use of near green recruits. There was a big
difference between a civilian police force armed with politicaly
correct inhibiting regulations and modest hand guns, compared to a
free reining paramilitary force like the BIB, armed with a range of
sophisticated weapons specifically chosen for the situation at
hand.

Chapter Twenty-six

Acting president Jenkins frowned at the massive pile
of documents in his IN tray, it was becoming a little too much to
bear after a hard morning with staffers and a rash of irksome
domestic problems. Although exhilarating as it was to be the most
powerful man in the world, the incessant work load came as somewhat
of a shock to him, and decisions seemed to be taking forever. There
was clearly too much consultation between himself and an endless
procession of different parties representing different causes. What
ever happened to free will, when a president could issue an order
that would be carried out immediately, and be devoid of gross
interference by jumped up intermediaries

The emergency phone on the left of his desk rang and
he peered at the device in surprise
--
it was the first time
the phone had ever rung since his inauguration into the White
house.

‘Hello president Jenkins speaking.’

‘Hello sir, FBI director Australia...we have an
emergency, the president has been kidnapped by a group of
terrorists in the cross city tunnel in Australia.’ Jenkins looked
at the phone receiver with a mixture of shock and expectation.
After a few moments he found his voice and deliberately kept it low
key.