Spider Shepherd: SAS: #1

by Stephen Leather

  * * *

  Shepherd, Geordie and Jimbo had been put on sick leave while they recuperated, but word of what had happened and the circumstances of Liam’s death spread rapidly around and brought the SAS Stirling Lines base to a state of near-mutiny. To placate the troops, the Regiment convened a Court of Inquiry where the Squadron OC, de Vale, defended his actions vigourously. He appealed to the Regiment’s ‘warrior traditions’, as he called them, to justify leaving his men struggling in a near-frozen sea. ‘It was reasonable to expect that they would be able to right their boat. We preach self-reliance; this was an opportunity for them to demonstrate it.’

  Shepherd’s evidence was pithy and direct. He had burned with a cold fury as he listened to the OC’s self-justification. ‘There are limits to self-reliance,’ Shepherd said when it was his turn to address the court. ‘When you are sent into Arctic waters in weather conditions that lead the submarine commander and the Norwegian coastguard to call for the exercise to be postponed, and you are provided with a supposedly self-inflating boat that first fails to inflate and then capsizes, self-reliance is irrelevant. We are soldiers; our job is to follow orders and complete our task to the best of our ability. The job of our officers is not to needlessly put us into harm’s way as a result of excessive ambition, hubris, ignorance, or point-scoring.’

  De Vale’s gaze had been fixed on a point on the far wall as he listened to Shepherd’s testimony, but he snapped around and glared at Shepherd. Despite further damning evidence from the submarine crew, the Norwegian Coastguard officers, and the other patrol members, the Inquiry found that Liam’s death had been ‘a tragic accident for which no blame could be attached to any individual’. That in turn influenced the subsequent Inquest into Liam’s death held at the Coroner’s Court in Hereford, which also returned a verdict of ‘Accidental Death’. It was, Shepherd knew, a total whitewash.

  Jock McIntyre, a ten-year veteran with the Regiment, who had been brought in to take Liam’s place in Shepherd’s patrol, shrugged his shoulders when he heard the verdict. ‘No surprises there, eh ,Spider?’ he growled in his near impenetrable Glaswegian accent. ‘The coroner here’s always vulnerable to pressure from the Regiment; it takes a strong man not to buckle under it.’ Jock’s seniority should have made him a patrol leader, but he was a man who did not suffer fools gladly and, not for the first time in his military career, he had been busted down to the ranks. On the most recent occasion he had settled an argument with an over-bearing Sergeant-Major by knocking him out with a single punch. Had he not been such a good soldier he would probably have been RTU’d as well. A few days later came the news that de Vale was being promoted and posted to Special Forces HQ in London. Jock merely gave a weary shake of his head. ‘It just goes to prove the old adage that there are three regimental mottos. One: “Who Dares Wins”. Two: “Who Cares Who Wins?” And Three: “Shit Never Sticks To A Regimental Rupert”. But whoever said that life was fair, huh?’

  * * *

  Shepherd’s patrol was on the rest cycle and he was at home still recovering from his ordeal and spending some quality time with Sue getting to know their new-born son, when he was called into camp by de Vale’s replacement as Squadron OC. Geordie, Jimbo and Jock were already there when Shepherd arrived. His name was Allan Gannon. He was a big man with a cleft chin and a nose that appeared to have been broken several times.

  ‘Right gents,’ said Gannon briskly. ‘Time to shake the lead out. I’ve got an active service op for you.’

  Jock exchanged a look with Shepherd. ‘But Boss,’ Jock said. ‘We’re not on operational standby or even re-training. We’re on the rest cycle. D squadron are the next cab off the rank.’

  Gannon gave a sympathetic smile but spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Sorry boys, my hands are tied. The order comes from Special Forces HQ and I can’t countermand it. So I’m giving you a Warning Order for an imminent active service operation. You’ve got forty minutes to call your wives and girlfriends, and sort your kit.’

  Although they’d seen action in Belize at the end of Selection, for the three newly-badged members of the Regiment, this was to be their first planned active service operation and they should have been excited and elated, but Shepherd felt only bitterness and suspicion. When they got outside, he and the others clustered around Jock. ‘I joined the SAS to go on ops,’ Geordie said. ‘But I don’t see why we’ve been pulled off the rest cycle to do it when D Squadron are sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They’re on Standby, this should be their operation.’

  ‘And what did he mean by a Warning Order?’ Jimbo said.

  Jock flashed a cold smile. ‘You have much to learn, Grasshopper. It means we’re being placed in isolation and quarantine, effectively cutting us off from the outside world. Any contact can only be made through the supervisory guard forces, and then only if they sanction it. We’ll prepare for the op at a purpose-built camp away from Stirling Lines. You’ve not seen it yet, but everything we need for the operation is there: ranges, weapons and explosives. There’s also a dedicated admin support group to cater for anything else we might need, but they’re subject to the same restrictions as us.’

  ‘It’s payback from de Vale,’ Shepherd said. ‘This has nothing to do with the operational needs of the Regiment and everything to do with stopping us from going public about the Norwegian fuck up. The Warning Order is a gag, right?’

  ‘Give the man a cigar,’ Jock said. ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  Jock patted Shepherd on the shoulder. ‘What can we do? We get on with preparing for the op. And then, after we’ve done the op, whatever it is, and got back to the UK, if I ever catch our old Boss out of uniform, I’ll beat the shit out of him.’

  ‘You can get in the queue,’ Shepherd said. ‘Liam was my mate and I’ll be first in line for payback.’

  As the others hurried away to break the news to their families and throw their personal kit together, Jock called Shepherd back. ‘One other thing about a warning order. Once a soldier has received one he can’t legally resign, so whatever you decide about your future, you can’t now apply to leave the army until the order has been lifted.’

  ‘What do you think the op will be?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Jock. ‘But I can pretty much guarantee that it’ll be outside of the UK. So far as the top brass is concerned, the further away we are, the better. My guess is that we’ll not be seeing the UK again for a wee while.’

  Shepherd phoned Sue to break the bad news. ‘So you can’t tell me where you’re going or how long you’ll be away or anything at all?’ she said. ‘And meanwhile I have to stay here, the dutiful little wife, with our baby boy, not knowing what’s happening to you or even if you’ll come back at all. Is this what our life is going to be?’

  ‘It is for now, but not forever,’ Shepherd said. ‘That’s all I can say.’

  ‘And that isn’t enough, Dan. And you know it isn’t.’ Shepherd heard the click as the connection was broken and swore violently under his breath as he hung up.

  They transferred to the isolation camp later that morning and at once went into an intensive phase of work-up training. As elder statesman, Jock spoke to them at their first briefing. ‘We’re all angry and frustrated,’ he said, ‘and with good reason, but we need to set that aside for now, and focus only on the task. This isn’t about de Vale, it’s about getting the job done right and getting ourselves in and out of wherever it is in one piece.’

  The op was broken down into phases and each one was dealt with as a separate entity, with the operational details - the where and the when - kept from them until the last minute, ‘Need to know, and all that,’ was Jock’s only comment. Although still unaware of where the mission was to be, they soon had an idea of what it was. They were clearly preparing to secure a beach landing site for an invasion force in an as yet unspecified country. Each phase was practised until perfect and then full scale practice ops were run, combining all the phases
, until the whole system was as flawless as possible.

  Over the following days and weeks they briefed and practised beach marking for assault troops - equipment required and codes; actions on meeting the enemy - weapons and explosives, immediate action drills and after action drills; actions on meeting friendly forces: recognition features, radios and codes and RV procedures; after operational tasks: finding and destroying targets of opportunity; exfiltration or RV with friendly forces.

  The only phase of the operation that they could not prepare for at the isolation camp was the means of entry. This was to be a parachute insertion into the sea off the coast of the intended target country and to prepare for this they had to transfer to the top secret RAF base at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire.

  The briefing by one of their minders about the method of insertion almost provoked a riot. They were to parachute-jump into the sea off the enemy coast and make the sea-to-shore run in an inflatable recce boat. ‘Hold it right there,’ Shepherd said. ‘You’re asking us to insert using the same kind of inflatable recce boat that cost Liam his life and nearly killed the rest of us as well?’

  ‘The faults with the boat have been identified and rectified,’ the minder said. He was in his late thirties with close-cropped grey hair and a jagged scar across his left cheek. ‘You’ll be practising in the Channel not the Arctic, and rescue boats will be patrolling to ensure your safety. Any other questions?’ He closed the file with a snap and walked out.

  At 0230 on a coal black starless night a Hercules lumbered into the air from Boscombe Down, climbing to 10,000 feet as it headed west towards the Isles of Scilly. Shepherd and the rest of the patrol sat on uncomfortable canvas seats with the RAF dispatchers in the back of the aircraft. The recce boat, rigged with a 20-foot drogue parachute, was at the back of the aircraft, lashed to the tailgate and ready to be dropped when the pilot gave the signal,.

  It took several days and nights of trial and error to get to the stage where they had a workable technique. They tried dozens of different permutations of how the drop could be successfully completed, but most were either too dangerous or unworkable and were discarded. They tried high-drop, low-opening, they had dropped the patrol first and then the boat, and they had tried dropping the boat in the middle of the patrol. Nothing seemed to work.

  They used up a huge number of parachutes. Every time a parachute was immersed in sea water it had to be washed in fresh water, dried and tested for decay before it could be used on another drop. As a result, water jumps into the sea were usually made using parachutes near the end of their useful lives, which were then discarded afterwards, but the sheer numbers the patrol required meant the RAF supply chain was hard pressed to keep up with their demands.

  The crew from the Special Forces squadron at RAF Lyneham had heard about the patrol’s experiences in Norway and were sympathetic to their situation, and while everyone involved knew there was a job to be done, that did not mean that anyone should be exposed to unnecessary, life-threatening risks. Because of the lack of trust in the recce boat, the aircrew had taken to carrying a liferaft which they could drop if the recce boat malfunctioned. During the practice runs there was also such an overkill of safety boats in the drop zone, that as Geordie looked around, he exclaimed, ‘Bloody hell, it’s like Dunkirk all over again out here.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ Shepherd said. ‘A death off the Lofoten Islands is one thing, but it’d be a lot harder to hush up something that happens in sight of the British coast.’

  Eventually they worked out a successful technique. The Hercules crew extinguished all lights on the aircraft over the Isles of Scilly, including the external strobe navigation lights. Inside the aircraft every window except the windscreen had been blacked out before take-off. After the skipper made one last call to base to ensure that everything was in place at the drop zone, the aircraft went into a stomach-churning dive towards the sea and at the same time, turned onto an easterly heading. The Hercules was now flying at wave-top height, bouncing on the pressure wave from the ocean as it swept past the cliffs of Cornwall and Devon, visible only as a blacker mass against the moonless, cloud-covered sky.

  In the back of the plane, the deafening noise made speech impossible. The patrol and the RAF dispatchers were strapped into their seats to prevent being thrown around in the darkness. Everyone was wearing passive night goggles, ready to go into action when ordered by the skipper.

  As they neared the drop zone, everyone on board went into the clear-headed, calm mode of professionals with complete confidence in their skills. Over Lyme Bay the engines were throttled back and everyone in the cargo bay immediately unhooked themselves and started to prepare for the drop. Shepherd was already wearing his neoprene wet suit, much better for use in the more temperate waters off the UK than the cumbersome dry suit and much easier to get out of when no longer required. Around his waist he wore a web belt with a sheathed divers knife. He pulled on his main parachute harness followed by his reserve chute. Under it he wedged a pair of fins and then rested the heavy waterproof pack containing his weapon and equipment on his leg as he clipped it to the parachute harness ready for lowering when his chute had deployed. Although this was only a test run, everything had to replicate the real thing.

  As the time to the jump counted down, he felt the familiar tingle of anticipation, mixed with fear. He’d done hundreds of parachute jumps in his time in the Paras and the SAS, but even now, there was always a moment where he wondered if his nerve would fail him as he stood on the brink, looking down. It was part of the reason why they had dispatchers on board: to ‘assist’ hesitant jumpers out of the aircraft. If the dispatchers had to get physical they were backed by the full force of military law; an order to jump from the aircrew was a direct order and to refuse was a court martial offence. If it occurred in a training jump, it was punishable by a couple of years in a military prison, but if it was on an operational jump, it was considered cowardice in the face of the enemy.

  Shepherd’s nerve had never failed him yet, but he never made a jump without the thought flashing through his mind. He stood up with difficulty, trying to tense his legs against the bucking of the aircraft. He lost his balance under the weight he was carrying and he fell over. He was more embarrassed than hurt and he grinned shamefacedly as a dispatcher pulled him to his feet again and checked his equipment was safe to drop. Together they staggered towards the tailgate.

  When they were all in the area of the tailgate they hooked up their parachutes to the overhead steel wires, two on the port wire and two on the starboard wire, allowing the patrol to exit almost simultaneously. That carried a risk, but allowed them to be close together in the air. For safety reasons Paras are trained to exit an aircraft at one second intervals but at over two hundred knots aircraft flying speed that translated into a considerable distance on the ground or in the water. That wasn’t good enough for the SAS so Shepherd and the rest of the four-man team would exit together. While that made for more potential danger in the air it made things in the water much slicker, with the jumpers landing in a tight group.

  The loadmaster opened the tailgate. The noise from the slipstream became almost overwhelming. Shepherd could make out the outline of Portland in the distance and the lights of Swanage on the port side. The Hercules dipped its left wing and turned around the headland into Studland Bay, as the navigator gave a running commentary over the tannoy marking off time to drop in seconds.

  ‘Stand By’ came over the tannoy, followed quickly by ‘Go!’ A dispatcher dropped a small chute into the slipstream. It hung there for a fraction of a second, then filled and disappeared into the darkness. It was attached to the drogue chute on the recce boat and as the chute filled with the slipstream, the boat disappeared into the night with a massive roar.

  The Hercules immediately went into a climbing turn up to 800 feet and turned onto a reciprocal heading to the one it had just been flying. As Shepherd looked down through his PNGs, he could see the recce boat inflating on the calm se
a. Another ‘Go!’ came over the tannoy and he and the rest of the team stepped over the edge of the tailgate into the darkness below.

  He rode the slipstream and felt the nylon ties in his parachute breaking in sequence. He was yanked backwards as the chute deployed and he used the chute risers to stop the pendulum motion. Checking that his chute was fully deployed, he took a quick look around him for the rest of the patrol. He could see them, close but not too close.

  With his parachute safely deployed, he lowered his equipment container on its suspension rope. The technique had the double benefit of preventing him from landing on top of his gear, while at the same time the weight kept him stable as he dropped. He took out his fins and struggled to get them on his feet before concentrating on steering the chute as close to the boat as possible.

  Like the rest of the patrol, he was using a modified free-fall parachute with two L-shaped vents in the rear of the chute, making it very manoeuvrable. By using the toggles on the harness, Shepherd made the chute side-slip steeply, picking up speed and allowing him to get down to the sea quickly. Such manoeuvres were risky as they carried the risk of collapsing the chute, but an experienced Para could cut down substantially on his time in the air by using them, and in a combat zone that might be the difference between life and death. He knew without looking that the rest of the patrol would follow his moves in formation.

  As the sea rushed towards him, he moved his hands to the cutaway mechanism on his shoulders. When he pulled them, the chute would drift away leaving him static in the water, but if he didn’t get it right he could be dragged for miles and almost certainly drowned. A few seconds later, he heard his container hit the water. He pointed his fins and hit the cutaways. He felt the chute drift away and he dropped the last few feet into the sea. He grabbed his equipment container and began to swim towards the boat. When he reached it, he hung from the side for a few moments, then pulled himself into the still-inflating boat, closely followed by the others. Normally there would have been a couple of jokes like ‘I’m getting a sinking feeling about this’, but Liam’s death was still too fresh and too raw in all their minds for even the Regiment’s trademark black humour, and they went about their work in silence.