Spider Shepherd: SAS: #1

by Stephen Leather

  Shepherd nodded. ‘It’s a pity he’s not on the DS,’ he said. ‘I’ve learnt more from a few days with him than all the time we were in Hereford.’

  Pilgrim led the way back to the village, this time using the track. He exchanged a few words with the alcalde, who was hovering nervously at the edge of the village, his smiles now replaced with a worried frown. Pilgrim shook his hand, murmured some more words of reassurance, then led the patrol away, moving fast towards the RV point for a heli lift-out. Just as dusk was falling, a Lynx helicopter clattered out of the sky. Shepherd and the others threw their bergens into the loading bay and jumped up after them and within five minutes the chopper was airborne again. It was now dark - Shepherd still hadn’t got used to the speed of nightfall in the tropics - and looking down from the chopper, he could see nothing but the dark mass of the jungle, extending to the horizon, unrelieved by any glimmer of light.

  They flew in to the dusty airfield camp on the outskirts of Belize City, half-dead from fatigue, but at once went to the headquarters building for a briefing with the Chief of Staff, an Infantry Colonel with thinning, sandy-coloured hair, fleshy features and sweat patches beneath the arms of his shirt. He came straight to the point. ‘As you know, the Guatemalan Army are making cross-border incursions and appear to be waging a terror campaign. We believe it may be the prelude to a full scale invasion, since they’ve long wanted to take Toledo Province from Belize.’

  ‘Why would the Guatemalans want Toledo?’ Jimbo said. ‘As far as I could see, there’s nothing there but jungle.’

  ‘They want a port on the east side of the continent, giving them access to the Atlantic. Punta Gorda would do that, but an oil company has also been prospecting in Toledo and there are rumours that they’ve found significant deposits.’ The colonel paused, putting the tips of his fingers together and lowering his gaze as if in prayer. ‘It’s a delicate situation. We don’t want to provoke a major international incident, particularly in what the Yanks have always considered their own back yard - and the Guatemalan military junta is closely allied with the US - but we need to stop these incursions. So,’ he said turning to Pilgrim, ‘you are to take a patrol into Toledo, going in with the local Infantry Company as cover, and carry out aggressive patrols in the Mayan reservations spanning the border areas.’

  Pilgrim stared at the Colonel. ‘And what are the rules of engagement?’ he asked.

  The Colonel flushed at the direct question and he dropped his gaze. ‘We are awaiting clarification from the Ministry of Defence about that. So, do what you need to do but don’t on any account get into any more fire-fights with the Guatemalan Army. The diplomatic and political consequences of that could be disastrous, particularly if they take place on Guatemalan soil.’

  Shepherd looked over at Jimbo as the same thought obviously flashed through their minds. They were to carry out aggressive patrols but not fire their weapons? How was that supposed to work? It sounded like standard officer double-think.

  Pilgrim opened his mouth as if he was about to ask another question, but then appeared to change his mind. As they left the headquarters, Pilgrim led Shepherd, Geordie, Liam and Jimbo off to the far side of the compound, away from everyone else. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said, clearly annoyed. ‘They want us to sort it out but won’t give us a direct order to do it. Last time that guy saw action was about twenty years ago - if then - and now all he’s interested in is protecting his pension. Here’s the lesson for today - always question authority; if they want the mission to be done a certain way then let them do it. If it is not your plan it will fail. Nine times out of ten officers haven’t a clue what they’re doing.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Right, you four are going to form the patrol with me.’ He paused, checking their expressions. ‘Assuming that you’re all up for it, because it’s a volunteer operation.’

  Shepherd was already nodding and the other three quickly followed his lead.

  ‘You guys seem to rub along all right together,’ Pilgrim said. ‘But just between ourselves, it’s not necessary to be friends with the rest of a patrol to do the job, though you must have respect for them and no one can force you to work with somebody you don’t respect. But if you want to pull out, now is the time to do it. If you agree to go, then you must give it one hundred per cent, and you must input any ideas you have. One unbreakable rule in the Regiment is that if you have something to say, you say it before the mission. If it goes tits up and you haven’t said anything beforehand, you don’t get to criticise the plan afterwards. Understood?

  The four men nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Now, you all have experience from other units which I don’t have, so let’s hear it,’ said Pilgrim. ‘The mission plan has got to be the patrol plan or it will not succeed. And just so you know, although we operate in areas under the command of officers from the Green Army, the CO of 22 SAS always retains command. He alone makes the strategic decisions affecting the deployment of SAS troops and he cannot be countermanded, not even by the Director of Special Forces. So if the MOD thinks the CO is getting it wrong, the only course of action is to sack him and the implications of that are so serious that it has never happened in the entire history of the regiment. So although the Chief of Staff can brief the patrol, the mission is always referred to Hereford for approval. And if the patrol commander - me in this case - doesn’t agree with the mission he’ll refer it to Hereford knowing that he will be supported without question and the mission blackballed. It happens quite a lot and as a consequence, senior officers treat SAS senior NCO’s with great deference. The downside is that, to keep things under their control, they will often try to use ordinary infantry to do tasks that are beyond their skill set, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Okay, we have twenty-four hours to prepare for the op, make the most of it.’

  He walked away. ‘I’m hungry,’ said Liam almost immediately.

  ‘You’re always hungry,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Hungry enough to eat one of those bugs?’ asked Jimbo.

  Liam pulled a face and Shepherd laughed. ‘If you’re that hungry, ask that trainer for one of his tarantulas,’ Shepherd said. ‘They’re delicious apparently.’

  One of the “big time” trainers had a sideliner mounting tarantulas, rearing up as if they were attacking, on little wooden shields like hunting trophies. He caught them with an improvised net, made from an old mosquito net, and kept them in glass jars before injecting them with formalin - which both killed and preserved them - and then sold them to squaddies as souvenirs.

  ‘Are you off your head?’ Liam said, suppressing a shudder. ‘Nobody in their right minds would eat one of those things. They’re worse than the bugs.’

  ‘I would,’ Shepherd said. ‘If the money was right.’

  ‘A bet?’ said Liam.

  ‘If you think I won’t do it, put your money where your mouth is.’

  There was a moment’s stunned silence. ‘Go on then,’ Geordie said. ‘Twenty quid.’

  ‘I’ll match that,’ said Liam.

  ‘Bloody hell, yeah, I’d pay twenty quid to see that,’ said Geordie. He strode off towards the trainer’s basha and returned a few minutes later with a jar containing a live tarantula. ‘Cost me￡50,’ he said. ‘But it’ll be money well spent, if you’ve got balls enough to eat it.’

  ‘I’ve got the balls,’ Shepherd said, ‘but I’m not doing it for￡60. Make it￡150. Fifty quid each.’

  The three men agreed.

  Shepherd gave a slow smile. ‘All right, bring it on.’

  ‘Would you look at those fangs,’ said Liam, peering into the jar. ‘It’ll bite you before you can bite it.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Shepherd opened the jar, tipped the spider onto the ground and hit it on the head with his rifle butt as it tried to scuttle away. ‘That’s the mercy killing done.’ He took a disposable lighter out of his pocket and blowtorched the spider with the flame.

  ‘You won’t cook it that way,’ Jimbo said.

  ‘I’m
not trying to, I’m just singeing off the hairs, they’re an irritant.’

  ‘Bit like you,’ Geordie said. ‘Get on with it, will you?’

  Shepherd pretended to hesitate, then popped the spider in his mouth, letting the legs drape over his chin for a moment, before crunching it up in a couple of bites and swallowing it.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Liam said, grimacing ‘Now I’ve seen everything.’

  Shepherd opened his mouth to show it was empty and gave a big smile. ‘Easiest hundred and fifty quid I ever made. Some of the local tribes eat them. I read about it before we came out here.’

  ‘You sly sod,’ Geordie said. ‘You set us up, didn’t you?’ He paused. ‘So what do they taste like?’

  ‘Chicken,’ Shepherd said reaching for his water bottle. He grinned. ‘To be honest, more like chicken shit.’

  Jimbo gave a slow smile. ‘I think we’ve found your nickname: “Spider”. What do we think guys?’

  Geordie and Liam nodded. ‘Spider it is,’ said Geordie.

  Shepherd insisted that the three handed over the money as Pilgrim returned with five ration packs which he distributed before they sat down and began their first “Chinese Parliament”, throwing ideas and suggestions for the patrol into the mix, which were then argued over, disputed, and accepted or rejected. Pilgrim controlled the discussion and had the final say, but he was careful to let everyone have their input.

  Shepherd, Geordie and Jimbo had been in the Paras, where a limited amount of opinion from the ranks was permitted, but it was a very new experience for Liam, who had been an infantryman – ‘a crap-hat’ to the ex-Paras, since he wore a black beret rather than their maroon one. During Liam‘s previous military career he had been expected to follow orders without question and if he had any opinions, his wisest course was to keep them to himself. All that had changed now that he was with the SAS. Now everyone’s opinion was at least listened to.

  ‘So,’ Pilgrim said. ‘We need to give the Guatemalan Army a couple of good reasons not to come across the border again, but as the Colonel told us, if we get into another contact with them, we don’t want to kill too many because it’ll create an international shit-storm. So we just want to do enough damage to discourage them, and that means we’re going to be selective. As we’ve just discussed, the only way we will relieve the pressure on Belize is to go deep into enemy territory, find a military base staffed by senior officers and take one or two of them out. The junta won’t care if a few other ranks get killed in cross-border ops, but if we give some senior officers the good news, they’ll soon go off the idea.’

  ‘How will we locate the base?’ Jimbo said.

  ‘We’ll track the course of this river,’ Pilgrim said, pointing at his map. ‘Jungle villages are always close to rivers - the source of food and the only communications route - and soldiers locate next to civilians if they can for administrative reasons: they can get food cooked and laundry washed... and possibly other services that soldiers often seem to want. OK. That’s the plan. All agreed? Then let’s get the preparation done.

  ‘Personal equipment: escape and navigation kit should either hidden or tied to the body. Each of you should be carrying an escape button compass with a wire diamond-tip file hidden in the seam of your clothing to help you escape. You must also carry your personal medical kit and your compass on your body. Wear your ID tags, watch and morphine around your neck tied with para cord and masking tape. The relevant map must always be in your pocket.’

  He waited for a nod of confirmation from each of them before continuing. ‘Belt kit: ammunition, survival kit, survival rations and water bottles. Third, your personal grab bag. Between them they contain the patrol operational equipment, medical pack, radio, demolitions kit and more rations. If the patrol is hit, you just take your grab bag and run.

  ‘Your bergen should contain your cooking kit, spare clothes and sleeping bag - all of which should be made from lightweight nylon parachute material - candles, a hammock and any other thing you feel you might take to make life in the jungle a little bit more comfortable. Each individual SAS guy makes most of the equipment he uses in jungle warfare conditions himself. There’s no shortage of parachutes, so tailor your own kit so you’re comfortable with it. The rationale is simple: if you make it yourself, it’ll be fit for purpose. Lastly we will all wear jungle hats with a piece of yellow ribbon around the rim for identification. If we get into a contact in jungle conditions with minimal visibility, we don’t want any uncertainty about who’s friend and who’s foe.’

  The four men nodded earnestly.

  ‘Okay, it’s your first operational patrol - though as it turned out, your practice patrol wasn’t exactly incident-free - so I’ll be the skills man in the patrol, because I’m the only one with the training and experience. I’ll be signaller and demolitionist, and you’ll be my kit carriers. We’re going to use old fashioned morse code radio comms with a one-time code pad. The reason is that those old morse sets give out a very low wattage when transmitting and are very difficult for enemy direction finding systems to locate. The set has a wire dipole aerial which we have to string through the jungle canopy high above the ground. To deploy it, you tie a fishing weight to it, throw it high into the trees and let it fall back to the ground. To then get it into a straight line through the branches is a painstaking task, also known as a pain in the arse. It’s laborious but effective, so you need to practise that. And whatever else we might communicate to HQ, we never send the correct grid reference of our location. The reason is that it’s not unknown in Special Forces for the grid reference to be passed on to other agencies for other reasons, usually to the detriment of the patrol, but if they don’t know it, they can’t blow it. Now, weapons: we’re going to carry Self-Loading Rifles.’

  ‘Aren’t the SLRs a bit heavy and out-dated?’ Shepherd said.

  Pilgrim nodded. ‘In other circumstances, yes, but they’re very well suited to jungle combat. Although the rifle’s heavy, it fires the standard Nato 7.62 round and that’s the round which packs a real punch. All the new lightweight rounds bounce off trees in the jungle undergrowth, but the Nato round goes straight through them.’

  Pilgrim opened a map and spread it out over the floor. ‘Now RVs,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you the first ones now, then we’ll set them every morning before moving off. First RV here.’ His finger tapped a point on the map. ‘Emergency RV here,’ he pointed to another, ‘open until dusk. The war RV here.’ He moved his finger to a third point. ‘That’ll be good until the following dusk. After that, anyone separated from the patrol will make their own way to the emergency RV. The RV we’ll use will always be in front of any contact we have with the enemy, deeper into their territory, so that we can get on and complete the mission without having to return to base.

  ‘If we’re in a contact and are pursued, a small group like ours always has the advantage in the jungle over a large group. We know that we’ll be outnumbered but large groups are very unwieldy and difficult to control. We all have a map and compass and we can all navigate. Large green army groups only have one compass and map for every ten men. So we can split up and rendezvous later miles away, whereas the large infantry groups can’t.’

  He gave them a moment to let that sink in. ‘One other thing: Belize, and the Toledo District in particular, is now the principal route for Colombian cocaine being shipped to the US. They bring it over the border from Guatemala, while the military there pocket plenty in bribes to look the other way, and send it on into Mexico or ship it out to the cays off the coast - there’s hundreds of them and many are unpopulated - either in light aircraft, which use the dirt roads as air-strips, or fast-boats. The traffickers are more heavily armed than the Belizean armed forces and probably better in a fight, and they’re inclined to shoot first and worry afterwards. They’re ruthless killers, but the good news is that no-one gives a shit about the drug-traffickers and while there’ll be hell to pay if we shoot it out with a platoon of the Guatemalan Army, there won’t
be an international outcry at the news that a few members of some Colombian coke baron’s private army have been wiped out. So if we come across them, it’s open season as far as I’m concerned. Okay, that’s it. Let’s get to work.’

  The next morning, just as dawn was breaking, they were airborne again. As usual, Jimbo and Geordie had closed their eyes as soon as the rotors had begun to turn, and were cat-napping, while Liam was gazing out of the helicopter’s Plexiglas window. Shepherd joined Pilgrim near the open doorway. The SAS veteran was watchful and alert, his gaze raking the terrain as the Puma flew on to the south, as if every building or tree concealed a potential threat.

  Shepherd stared out at the landscape unfolding below them as the Puma tracked the course of a broad, mud-stained river. Beyond the last of the sprawling, rust-coloured shanty-towns on the outskirts of Belize City, long stretches of mangrove swamps gave way to scrub bush and then secondary jungle. As they skimmed over the unbroken canopy of the rainforest, Shepherd saw a dark mountain range looming ahead of them. A few ancient, twisted oak trees maintained a precarious hold on the lower slopes of the summit ridge, but above them, a pine forest stood tall against the sky. It was a bizarre transition, as if they’d suddenly been transported from the rainforest to the Canadian Rockies. As they skimmed over the ridge, the downwash from the rotors stirred up a dust-storm of pine needles and thrashed the wildflowers studding the sandy soil.

  ‘I’ve not seen this before,’ Shepherd said. ‘It’s been dark when we’ve flown in and out. It’s strange isn’t it?’

  Pilgrim nodded. ‘Mountain Pine Ridge,’ he said. ‘Weird place to find a pine forest. And see that?’ He pointed ahead to where the river they were tracking suddenly disappeared from view. As the Puma shot over the edge, Shepherd found himself looking down at a waterfall dropping sheer for five hundred meters. Indifferent to the clatter of the Puma’s rotors, king vultures and orange-breasted falcons were spiralling on the thermals rising up the granite rock-face. The waterfall seemed to bridge two different worlds. The mountains at the head were clad in the pine forest; the bottom of the falls, lost in a mist of spray, was back in dense tropical jungle.