Auspocalypse Now

2. Mostafa, ISF

The Iraq Security Force, ISF, immediately mobilised and quarantined the University area, but the fire was so fierce it was the following day that they had their first chance to investigate the blast at the laboratory.

The Baghdad News had run a short article on the explosion on the evening of the blast. The ISF had picked up on that and was shutting down any further reporting of the event. The loan shark had heard the explosion and that night had read that short report. He decided to pass on the vial to a contact who once fought with the Iraqi Hamas faction. He wanted to distance himself from anything to do with the medical facility blast incident and prayed that the ISF would not come knocking.

In the meantime, Yasin had landed in Brisbane Airport via Perth. He had a cousin living in Nerang, a suburb of the Gold Coast. He was in the process of contacting him.

The ISF had worked through the wreckage of the laboratory and found the area where the scientists were working. They had checked the logs and discovered that they were a body short. It didn't take them many hours to visit each home of each of the logged workers and discover that Yasin's apartment had shown signs of a hasty exit. Yasin was the only scientist living alone. The ISF then explored Yasin's family background and soon discovered one relative, a cousin, living in Australia. A check of the flight details at the airport showed Yasin had boarded a flight pretty much the same time the laboratory had exploded. It all stacked up, they needed to talk to Yasin and have him explain why the explosion had occurred.

The ISF sent a team of three agents to Australia to track down Yasin. One of the men worked for the religious zealot who had guessed that Yasin had taken a vial of the latest version of the virus.

The rogue agent, Mostafa, had been tasked to recover the virus and kill Yasin. Travelling with a government agency behind you, meant that resources in foreign lands were easy to acquire. A local Iraqi sleeper agent had been pre-warned that the team of three agents were on their way and that they would need arming. The sleeper met the team in a storage unit not too far away from the airport and presented them with a medium sized innocuous looking suitcase. Inside the suitcase were three handguns, a box of ammunition and silencers and three combat knives. Local weapons laws were irrelevant to them, especially as they did not believe in them. The sleeper agent had also included 3 burner phones in the suitcase with each phone containing the other burner phone numbers. He had purchased the burner phones from three different shops on the way to the storage unit.

Mostafa knew that the two agents accompanying him were a threat to his mission for the religious zealot. He wanted to ensure he had a clean run at tracking down Yasin and eliminate any interference from his fellow agents before they could update the ISF in Iraq on their progress. Mostafa also didn't want to give away any clues as to his own whereabouts, to anyone. He wanted to cut all ties to the ISF in order to deliver the virus back to the religious zealot.

The suitcase of weapons was Mostafa's first break. As the sleeper agent had opened the suitcase and handed the three ISF men their weapons, Mostafa naturally took the magazine, checked it was full, turned his back and made conversation about the silencer as he screwed it on, he casually turned around and shot all three of them in the chest and while they were prone, on the ground, he head shot each of them. He then dragged the bodies into the storage unit. He contemplated setting the storage unit on fire, but considered it too great a risk as the bodies would be discovered and the local Police would be alerted. He planned to come back and do it before he returned to Iraq.

He took the ammunition with him, one silenced pistol and a knife were enough, carrying the other weapons were unnecessary for what he had planned. He also pocketed the three burner phones. Mostafa took a bunch of keys from the dead sleeper agent's pocket, locked the storage unit and took his car. He had worked out that he had 24 hours to recover the virus and await further instructions from the religious zealot before the ISF would miss their team in Australia.

Using the most sophisticated burner phone, Mostafa then used a few different apps and tracked down a route to Yasin's cousin's address, a town-house in Nerang. Easy enough to get to and now he had a car, which also had in-built satellite navigation. It didn't take him long to get used to driving on the left, as he didn't want to attract attention from the Police Highway Patrol, he drove at the speed limit and carefully made his way South. During the journey, Mostafa rang Yasin's cousin to try and persuade him to deliver Yasin to him. The cousin sounded alarmed, so Mostafa didn't pursue it and told the cousin he would be in touch tomorrow.

That afternoon, Mostafa arrived at the cousin's town-house. It was located in a small complex, set back from the main road. He parked on the main road, walked the 50 metres to the door and rang the bell. The young, six year old daughter came to the door. She was doing as she had been taught and didn't open the door, in English, through the door, she asked who was there. Mostafa answered in Mesopotamian Arabic. "A friend of your father's." The child was thrilled to hear her language spoken and without thinking, opened the door. Mostafa scooped her up as he walked past her and confronted the cousin.

Yasin's cousin had been trying to persuade his wife to go away for a few days. He hadn't told her about the phone call from the ISF. She had argued with him that it was not a good time, too many things were happening and that they would go away when she was ready. They hadn't heard the doorbell ring and their argument was disrupted by a strange man bursting into the room carrying their young daughter.

The wife sensed the threat from the stranger and threw herself at him, arms flailing. She scratched his neck. Mostafa dropped the young daughter and punched the wife in the face, splitting her nose wide open, bright red blood spewed all over her face and she fell to the floor. Mostafa then drew a gun and told the cousin to sit his wife and daughter at the far end of the dining table and to take a seat at the nearest end. Mostafa then questioned the cousin as to where Yasin could be.

The cousin had tried to be brave and refused to give Mostafa any indication of Yasin's whereabouts. Mostafa demanded the cousin's mobile and on checking the messages saw the texts with Yasin. Mostafa now had a link to Yasin. Mostafa asked a few more questions of the cousin establishing exactly where they had arranged to meet.

The cousin was of no further use to Mostafa nor were his family, they could all contact the police once he was gone. Mostafa stood up from the dining table, pistol whipped the cousin, who fell across the table. He then turned towards the wife and daughter, muttered "Asalaamu alaikum". They watched horrified, frozen to their seats, as he screwed the silencer onto the pistol and with zero emotion he shot and killed the wife first and then the daughter. As he moved towards killing the cousin, the cousin rugby tackled him and wrestled him to the ground. It was not a fair fight, Mostafa was quite fit and experienced in hand to hand combat, he quickly dominated the fight, sat on the cousin and shot him in the head.

As Mostafa rose, he considered his next actions, took the cousin's mobile and calmly left the house, closing and locking the front door, returned to the car and commenced his drive to the Gold Coast.

The commotion in the town-house had not gone unnoticed. Mrs Anderson, who lived opposite and was now in her seventies, was not very mobile. She tended to spend much of her day sitting behind the curtains, drinking tea and watching life going on outside. Although elderly, she had an acute sense of hearing. She had seen Mostafa walk into the quiet off-street area and scoop up the neighbours young daughter as she had answered the door. A short while later she heard 3 muffled pops. The silencer on Mostafa's gun was working effectively but it didn't totally eliminate the sound of gunshots. Had he closed the front door on entering the town-house, Mrs Anderson wouldn't have heard a thing. Mrs Anderson rang the local police station, convinced something bad had happened. She was on first name terms with the desk sergeant, given the number of times she had spoken to him about littering, parking and noise complaints in her street. The desk sergeant dutifully entered her concerns into his computer, logging the call. As it was from Mrs Anderson, he gave it a very low priority, he would get a patrol to look into it over the next few days.