‘You’ll have them,’ said Shepherd. He shook the pilot’s hand. ‘But we have to move fast. Can you and Piotr be ready to go in twenty-four hours?’
‘I can be ready in two, if that’s what you want.’
Shepherd grinned. ‘Twenty-four will be fine. We’ll lift up from the base at 0100 hours local tomorrow night.’
* * *
The SAS men spent the evening and the next day fine tuning their plans and assembling the equipment, weapons and ammunition they’d need. They opted to take AK-47’s to match the Russian weapons being used by the enemy. This allowed them to cut down on the amount of small arms ammo they would have to carry themselves as they were confident they would be able to obtain resupplies from enemy stockpiles. As usual, they had cleared the op with the Operational Squadron’s Boss, and as usual, as soon as he had established that they would not be depriving him of any of his own air assets or other precious resources, he nodded distractedly and waved them away. They were planning a fast, in and out operation, so took minimum rations and water, but maximum ammunition.
Parker appeared in the late afternoon and laid a bundle of kit, including a bush-knife, a weapon cleaning kit and a pair of worn, but expensive looking hiking boots on the table in front of them. He then added to Russian grenades to the pile. Shepherd checked the kit over. ‘It’s not perfect,’ he said, ‘and there’s certainly no danger of any of us nicking these boots, but I suppose it will have to do.’
‘Thanks for your gratitude,’ Parker said, with heavy sarcasm. ‘I had agents in half a dozen different countries, scanning the shops and bazaars for bits of kit and getting it all back here from all over the place was a complete logistical nightmare.’
‘I know,’ Jock said. ‘And all us ungrateful bastards have to do now is go off and risk our lives taking on first the Liberian armed forces, and then a bunch of battle-hardened mercenaries armed with heavy weapons supplied by our new best friend. Life just isn’t fair sometimes, is it, Parker?’
Parker ignored Jock and instead looked at Shepherd. ‘Can I have a word?’ he said. ‘In private.’
‘You can say anything you need to say in front of my mates,’ said Shepherd.
‘I’d rather not,’ said Parker. ‘This is for your ears only.’
He walked over to the bar and stood there on his own, waiting for Shepherd to join him. ‘Go on,’ said Jock. ‘You can always tell us what he says afterwards – assuming he doesn’t make you sign the Official Secrets Act.’
Shepherd ambled over to Parker who had taken out a pack of small cigars. He offered the pack to Shepherd but he shook his head. Parker slid a cigar between his lips and lit it with a Swan Vesta match. He blew smoke before he started to talk. ‘You’ve got your head screwed on all right,’ said Parker. ‘You’re not your typical squaddie.’
‘We’re SAS,’ said Shepherd. ‘Typical doesn’t make it through Selection.’
Parker nodded. ‘Like I said earlier, you don’t think like a soldier, you think like a spook.’
‘And like I said, I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’
Parker smiled thinly. ‘What I’m saying is that unlike most of your colleagues, you clearly have options.’
‘Options?’
‘Outside of the SAS. Jumping out of planes with your guns blazing is all well and good when you’re young, but you don’t stay young forever and the time will come when you’re looking for alternative work.’
‘I’m happy doing what I’m doing,’ said Shepherd. ‘I worked bloody hard to get into the SAS, I’m in no hurry to leave.’
‘You have a wife and a young son,’ said Parker. ‘Family’s can make you reassess your priorities.’
Shepherd’s eyes narrowed. ‘How do you know about my family?’
Parker chuckled. ‘I’m MI6, Shepherd. I can pretty much find out anything about anybody. I could tell you a few things about your pal Jock that would change your whole perception of him, for instance.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m not interested.’
‘The point I’m making is that you’re special, Shepherd. You’re a good soldier but that trick memory of yours and the way that your mind works sets you apart from the rest. MI6 could use you. Or MI5 if you’d rather stay at home. But long term, you should think about making the move. You’re a natural.’
‘How do you know about my memory?’ asked Shepherd. His memory was near-photographic but he tended to keep quiet about his talent.
‘I like your suspicious nature, that’ll come in handy, too.’ He patted Shepherd on the shoulder. ‘I’ve seen your Army record. I know everything there is to know about you, and everything I know tells me that you’ll make the perfect intelligence operative.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ said Shepherd.
Parker took out a brown leather wallet that had turned shiny from use and flicked it open. He slid out a business card and handed it to Shepherd. ‘Circumstances change,’ he said. ‘If they do, call me.’
Parker left the bar and Shepherd went back to join the others. ‘What did he say?’ asked Jock.
‘It was weird,’ said Shepherd. He handed Parker’s business card to him. ‘Said he really fancied you and wanted to blow you if you were up for it. Said you were to give him a call.’
Jock’s jaw fell and it was a second or two before he realised that Shepherd was joking. ‘Bastard,’ he growled. ‘You had me going there.’
* * *
Shepherd, Jock, Geordie and Jimbo assembled on the hard standing inside the SAS section of the airbase at 00:50 the next morning and five minutes later they heard the chop of rotors as the Hip helicopter appeared out of the darkness and landed in a storm of dust. The cargo door slid open and Jerzy gave them a thumbs up. He helped them load their bergens and weapons before moving aside to let them climb in while the rotors continued to turn slowly above their heads. Within five minutes they were airborne again and heading east-south-east towards the Liberian border.
Flying at low-level and without lights, the Czech pilot, Piotr, flew over the bush putting grazing animals into panic-stricken flight. The helicopter passed well wide of the remote village of Buedu and flew on to within a couple of miles of the border, before finding a clearing in the bush where they could land. The SAS patrol and Jerzy jumped down and unloaded their kit before the helicopter rose back into the air. The downwash lashed the scrub around them as it turned and flew off to the West. The patrol had gone into all-round defence at once and they remained motionless for several minutes as the sound of the helicopter faded into the distance. Only when they were satisfied that they were alone in the bush did they move off.
Dawn was already streaking the eastern sky as they made their way across the unmarked border and into Liberia. The terrain was a mixture of open scrubland and thick forest and they moved deeper into the country undetected, giving a wide berth to the handful of scattered villages they passed.
They were in silent routine, pausing for ten minutes in every hour to watch, listen and scent the air before moving on. They had been going for four hours when Shepherd at last called a halt at the edge of a clearing on an east facing slope of the hills that they had been crossing. ‘This will do for now,’ he said. ‘We’ll set up a temporary OP here and move on once we know where we’re heading.’ The SAS men took off their bergens and lay up in cover, two on watch, while the others rested.
Jerzy, puzzled, whispered to Shepherd ‘So where is the base we’re making for?’
‘We’re going to find out.’
‘You don’t know where it is?’
‘No, but the pilots flying the Liberian Hinds do and they’re going to lead us to it. All we have to do is track them as they come and go.’
For a while there was no sound but the chorus of birds and insects from the forest. Then, faintly at first but growing steadily louder, they heard the noise of an aircraft engine. As it moved closer they could pick up the staccato beat of rotors. The Hind passed within three or four mile
s of them, heading north-west as it made for the border with Sierra Leone. The patrol moved out at once and were in position under its flight path as the Hind returned from its mission an hour or so later. They took a bearing from its course and tracked it almost due south. Several hours later they cleared a forested ridge and in the distance, through a gap in the trees, they could see the airfield from which the Hinds were operating.
They moved closer, pausing constantly to look and listen and scent the air for any sign of the enemy before moving forward again. They set up an OP in a dense patch of scrub close to the airfield and settled down to watch and wait.
They heard and saw two more Hinds take off and pass almost directly overhead. The jungle camouflage paint of the choppers made them stand out vividly against the sky, and from a distance the attack pods on their stub wings, the bulbous shapes of the pilot’s and gunner’s cockpits, and the double air intakes, gave them the look of ugly flying beetles.
They also saw a huge Russian Cub transport aircraft - the same size as a Hercules but with a different engine note – land and began to unload supplies. ‘That’ll have flown in from Kiev in the Ukraine,’ Jock said, ‘It used to be the Soviets’ export hub of choice, and the Russians still use it now. The Russians play a clever game with weapons exports. All official government to government deals are done in Moscow but they run their under-the-counter deals through the Ukraine so the Russians can show a clean pair of hands to the world.’
They remained in cover for the rest of the day and through the evening. Activity on the airfield slowed and then ceased. Towards midnight they donned their PNG night vision goggles and Shepherd led the team through the scrub and down to the airfield.
The perimeter was secured by a steel chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire. It looked new - perhaps another gift from the Liberians’ Russian sponsors. They could see a group of soldiers illuminated by the pool of light from the guard post at the gates but they saw only one other guard, making a desultory patrol along the fence.
Shepherd decided against cutting the fence. Instead he waited for the guard to pass, then moved along until he saw the faint line of an animal track coming up to the fence and continuing beyond it. There was a hollow beneath the fence that was sufficiently large for the animal to pass through and it was the work of only a couple of minutes to enlarge it enough for the patrol to crawl under the fence. They paused to cover their tracks, pushing the dusty soil back into the hollow, smoothing it down and scattering a few dead leaves across it, then headed stealthily onto the airfield.
There were four Hip helicopters parked at the end of the runway close to the Cub transport aircraft. There were five Hind gunships in a separate wired compound away from the other aircraft; three in the open and the other two inside a hangar, its doors wide open.
There was a guard in a hut just inside the compound, but they could hear his snores as they cut the wire. As Jimbo and Jock provided cover, Shepherd crept over and used his knife to make sure that the guard would never wake up again. He stripped off the dead man’s clothes and replaced them with the South African uniform before dragging the body across to the hangar. There he laid a rifle down next to the body. He stood and admired his handiwork and then waved Jerzy over.
While Geordie searched the store shed for weapons and ammunition, Shepherd and Jerzy checked out each of the gunships in turn. They selected one on the grounds that it was already in the open, fully fuelled and had the pilot’s and gunner’s helmets in the cockpits. They also found some rocket pod reloads for the gunship in the hanger. Shepherd hesitated. ‘Can we re-arm the helicopter if we take these?”
Jerzy shrugged carelessly. ‘Piece of biscuit,’ he said.
Shepherd frowned then he realised what the pilot meant. ‘Piece of cake,’ he said, slapping him on the back. They loaded the rocket pods and then Shepherd took a moment to familiarise himself with the weapons systems of the Hind. He was on the point of calling the others over to the helicopter-gunship when Geordie came running over. ‘Quick Spider, come and give us a lift. I’ve found a couple of AT-5’s in the hangar. They’re the same as our Milan anti-tank rockets. Might be just the job for the bastard mercenaries.’
Shepherd went over to the hanger with Geordie. Jock and Jimbo were already lifting a box and together they loaded four boxes into the passenger compartment of the Hind. ‘Sure you’ve got enough now?’ Jimbo said with more than a touch of sarcasm.
‘You can never have too much of a good thing,’ Jock said, adding a B10 Russian sniper rifle that he had also found to the pile of weapons and equipment.
With Shepherd in the front gunner’s cockpit, Jock and Geordie in the cargo bay, and Jimbo still outside the helicopter, they waited for Jerzy to warm up the Hind. They braced themselves for the storm that was to come once the Liberians realised what was happening.
Jerzy pressed the button to start the engines and they whined and then rumbled into life. The sudden noise provoked a flurry of action among the guards at the gate. Under cover of the noise, Jimbo put a double tap into the dead guard’s head, so that even his mother could not recognise him, then sprinted for the Hind. As he dived into the cargo bay, Jock slid the door shut behind him.
Lights went on in the buildings around the airfield and within seconds the first fusillades of shots rang out of the darkness. Rounds bounced off the armour plating of the helicopter and ricocheted away into the night.
The noise of the rounds hitting the Hind was deafening and made everyone on board flinch, but so far at least, the armour plating had held firm. Shepherd shot a glance over his shoulder at Jerzy, who was sitting in his separate cockpit behind and above him. Jerzy’s face was a couple of shades whiter than usual, but he was managing to maintain his focus on his task, his hand hovering impatiently over the controls as he waited for the engines to come up to running speed. Rounds were still crashing against the helicopter and eventually Jock could take no more. He slid open the cargo door and began blasting away at the muzzle flashes, the dotted tracks of his tracer rounds written on the darkness like a deadly Morse code. His fast and accurate shooting suppressed a lot of the incoming fire and bought Jerzy a little extra time to get used to the controls and to get the gunship airborne.
Jerzy wound up the engines and then raised the collective. The helicopter staggered off the ground, its engines screaming as it dragged itself clear of the ground effect. A stray round struck sparks from the whirling disc of the rotors. Still familiarising himself with the controls, Jerzy steered an erratic course across the airfield and out over the perimeter fence. He was rapidly gaining confidence with the controls and brought the Hind round, gaining a little more height, in a slow turn back towards the airfield.
‘Right you bastards,’ Shepherd muttered under his breath. ‘Let’s see how you like a taste of your own medicine.’ Using the Hinds’ electronic selection and aiming system, he opened up first on the parked Hips, watching as each in turn disintegrated before his eyes when the rockets slammed home and engulfed them in flames.
He saw aircrew sprinting towards two of the Hinds. He held his fire as the crew scrambled aboard and he saw the rotors of one begin to turn slowly. Then he opened up with the wing rocket pods. The first Hind disappeared in a ball of boiling flame. The second was just beginning to lift clear of the ground as the rocket struck it. It slewed sideways, its rotors bit into the concrete and the helicopter went into a frenzied spin around its own axis before smashing into the ground and erupting as its fuel tanks ignited.
Jerzy eased the helicopter around to allow Shepherd to bring the rocket pods to bear on the remaining two Hinds in the hangar and he let loose with two more rockets, obliterating them in an instant and turning the inside of the hangar into an inferno. Only then did he turn his attention to the guards who were still trying to bring down the Hind with ground fire. A couple of bursts from the nose cannon quickly knocked the fight out of them and Jerzy turned the helicopter north-west on a bearing which would take them back across the b
order, making directly for the diamond mines in the Kono district of Sierra Leone.
They crossed the border and flew on, still at low-level. As they cleared the last ridge separating them from the Kono mining districts, Jerzy brought the Hind into a hover and landed in a clearing, where they quickly re-armed the gunship.
At the foot of the ridge, lit by the full moon, they could see the mine workings and spoil heaps that sprawled before them as far as the eye could see. As he took in the green-tinged view through his NVGs, Shepherd gasped at the scale of the devastation. The thickly forested ridges gave way instantly, as if a line had been drawn across the landscape, to a moonscape of pulverised rock, bare, torn earth and poisoned watercourses dyed a lurid, sickly-looking orange. Whole forests had been razed to the ground and the earth stripped down to the bare bedrock.
There was none of the usual noise of the African bush, no choruses of croaking frogs or the sonar of bats at the threshold of hearing. There wasn’t even the whine of mosquitoes. In this desolate, lunar landscape there appeared to be almost no living thing at all. Except for men, of course. For miles around the mine the surface of the plain was pitted with small holes and mounds of excavated gravel each casting a small dense shadow in the moonlight and the darkness was lit by hundreds of pinpricks of light as if glowworms were flitting through the night.
‘Illegal miners,’ Jerzy said. ‘As fast as the mining companies expose the gravels, ready to process them, the illegal miners move in and start digging. They work at night by lantern-or candle-light, digging out the gravel and carrying it in baskets on their heads to the nearest stream. There they sieve it and jig it for any diamonds it may contain. It’s a race against time before the guards get to them. The mining companies and their mercenaries pursue them relentlessly but every night they return. They need the money, you see.’
‘I can understand that,’ said Shepherd.
‘If they strike it lucky, then can make a fortune and take care of their families forever,’ said Jerky. ‘But if they are unlucky…’ He shrugged. ‘Then they die. And a lot of them die, my friend.’
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