Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Leather, Stephen

  ‘It’s one hell of a gun,’ said the Major. ‘There’s a corporal in the UK Household Cavalry now who holds the world record for a confirmed kill using one of those.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the sergeant. ‘Corporal Craig Harrison. He shot and killed two Taliban static machine gunners at almost two and a half thousand metres in Afghanistan in 2009. Then went on to take out their machine gun. All confirmed by GPS because at first the Yanks wouldn’t believe it. They held the record prior to that and were a bit miffed that a Brit could out-shoot them.’

  ‘That’d mean the round was in the air for three seconds, thereabouts,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it. If you knew it was coming, you’d have all the time in the world to get out of the way.’

  Shepherd rubbed his shoulder. ‘Yeah, but life’s not like that unfortunately.’

  ‘That’s right, you were hit by a sniper out in Afghanistan, weren’t you?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘It was a regular AK-74 so the damage was survivable,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘You were lucky,’ said the sergeant.

  The Major chuckled. ‘If Spider had been lucky, he wouldn’t have been shot in the first place.’

  Simpson pointed at the third weapon on the table. ‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted a PSG1, as I know you weren’t a fan,’ he said.

  ‘I could always take it or leave it,’ said Shepherd. ‘The Präzisionsschützengewehr, German for “precision shooter rifle”, but really it’s only good up to eight hundred metres or so. Personally I was never happy beyond six hundred.’

  ‘To be fair, it was designed more for multiple targets than for range,’ said the Major. ‘H&K came up with it in response to the massacre at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. The cops couldn’t take out their targets fast enough and it all ended badly. So H&K were asked to come up with a high-accuracy, large-magazine-capacity, semi-automatic rifle and that’s what they did. It’s terrific for taking out a number of targets at five hundred metres or less, not so great for long shots.’ He shrugged. ‘Horses for courses.’

  ‘I never liked the fact that it doesn’t have iron sights,’ said Shepherd. ‘If you lose your scope, you’re screwed. Plus, it kicks out its casings up to ten metres. That’s fine for the cops, but it’s a bloody liability for a sniper.’

  ‘So what exactly are you looking for?’ asked Simpson.

  ‘Basically to familiarise myself with the main sniping rifles and to get in some practice.’

  ‘I’ve got one of our top snipers waiting at the range,’ said Simpson. ‘How familiar do you want to get with the guns here?’

  ‘I need to be able to field strip them all, and know the characteristics backwards.’

  ‘I’ve got all the specs written down for you,’ said Simpson. He picked up the fourth weapon on the table. ‘How about we start with this?’ he said. ‘Any sniper worth his salt has picked up a Dragunov at some point. The squad support weapon of choice for most of the former Warsaw Pact. More for marksmen than snipers, hence the ten-round magazine, but there’s a lot of them about.’

  Shepherd nodded and took the weapon from the sergeant. All the Dragunovs he’d handled had been wooden with a skeletonised stock but this one was made from a black polymer.

  ‘It’s designed so you can use the iron sights at the same time as a scope, so you can take out distant and close targets at the same time,’ said Simpson.

  ‘Yeah, the sight can be adjusted to a maximum range of twelve hundred metres, but I’ve never heard of anyone making a kill shot at more than half that.’

  ‘Think you can strip it?’ asked Simpson.

  ‘No problem,’ Shepherd replied. He began to quickly and methodically break the rifle down into its component parts. He grinned over at the sergeant. ‘Like riding a bike,’ he said.

  Shepherd spent two hours stripping and reassembling the sniper rifles under the watchful eye of the sergeant and the Major.

  Shepherd decided to use the L115A3 for his sniping practice. He carried it and a box of ammunition to a Land Rover parked outside the armoury. The Major drove them the short distance to the outdoor range. They parked by the entrance and the Major took a red flag from the back of the Land Rover and ran it up a flagpole to show that the range was live while Shepherd took the gun and ammunition inside the brick-built shelter that was open to the target area.

  A trooper dressed in black fatigues was standing in front of a wooden table examining paper targets. He turned and nodded at Shepherd. ‘You Spider?’ he asked. He had unkempt red hair and a sprinkle of freckles across his nose.

  Shepherd nodded. The trooper held out his hand. ‘Chris Hawkins. They call me Happy.’

  They shook hands. ‘You’re the sniper?’ Shepherd asked. Hawkins looked as if he was barely out of his teens, though he must have been in his early twenties.

  ‘Indeed he is,’ said the Major, walking up behind him. ‘Happy here is the best in the regiment.’

  ‘How the hell did you get the nickname Happy?’

  ‘One of the directing staff gave it to me while I was on selection,’ said Hawkins. ‘It was just one of those things. I did it during winter and it was bloody freezing and pissing down, but the worse it got the more I kept grinning. I think I was in shock, to be honest, but by the end of it I was Happy Hawkins.’ He shrugged. ‘It could have been worse. What about you?’

  Shepherd grinned. ‘I ate a spider once. A big one.’ He put the rifle on the table.

  ‘My favourite,’ said Hawkins. ‘You fired one before?’

  ‘In my day the budget wouldn’t run to it.’

  ‘Yeah, I think strings were pulled to get a couple.’

  The Major laughed. ‘Strings? Bloody ropes, more like. Happy can run you through the basics, but I’m sure your muscle memory will kick in. We can’t do more than a hundred metres or so here but as soon as you’re ready we’ll go out to the Brecon Beacons for some distance work.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let’s get started.’

  After hours on the range getting a feel for the rifle, the Major, Shepherd and Hawkins piled into the Land Rover and the Major drove them the forty miles or so along the A438 to the middle of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The Major took the Land Rover off road for a couple of miles until they were in a bleak valley that was well clear of any walking trails.

  ‘We’ve used this area before for sniping practice and we’ve never had any problems,’ said the Major. He pulled a black nylon kitbag from the back of the Land Rover. ‘You two get set up, I’ll arrange a few targets. What do you think, Spider? A thousand metres?’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ said Shepherd.

  The Major shouldered his bag and jogged off across the rough terrain.

  Hawkins looked around for a good vantage point. ‘How about up there?’ he asked, pointing to the left. There was a small plateau about halfway up the slope.

  ‘Looks good to me,’ said Shepherd.

  They had packed the rifle in a waterproof case and Shepherd unzipped it and slung it over his shoulder. Hawkins grabbed a blanket. ‘Might as well make ourselves comfortable,’ he said. He pocketed a box of ammunition. ‘So you were in Afghanistan?’

  ‘When it first kicked off,’ said Shepherd. ‘You?’

  ‘Half a dozen times, right up until they pulled out. Was it a shambles when you were there?’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘Nothing changes, huh?’

  ‘It’s as if the politicians want to start wars but don’t have the balls to win them.’ Hawkins shook his head. ‘Mind you, what the hell were we doing there in the first place?’

  ‘To be fair, that was where al-Qaeda was training its terrorists.’

  ‘So we should have just gone in and destroyed the camps. Bombed them. That’s what we have an air force for. Or send in the regiment to do the job properly. But the idea of invading a country like Afghanistan was doomed from the start. If the Russians couldn’t control the place, what chance did we have?’
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  ‘Ours not to reason why,’ said Shepherd. ‘You sound pretty disillusioned.’

  Hawkins snorted. ‘Not with the regiment. I love it. Can’t imagine being anywhere else. But disillusioned with the politicians who run our country? How can you not be? Especially with the way they fucked up Iraq and Afghanistan. It was different for you, maybe. You went in at the start when everyone was gung-ho. I was there towards the end, and it was obvious it had been a major ’-up. The Afghans hated us, the Taliban were just waiting for us to leave and the public had had enough.’ He grinned. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to rant.’

  ‘Nah, I understand completely. I’ve been on missions before where you have to wonder if the top brass knew what they were doing.’

  ‘The Major said you left the regiment because you had a kid.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘Liam. He’s seventeen now.’

  ‘Will he join the regiment?’

  Shepherd laughed harshly. With a drugs conviction Liam would be hard pressed to follow any half-decent career, but he figured it best not to tell too many people until he’d had a chance to sort it out. There was still a possibility that he could persuade the cops not to charge his son. ‘I don’t think so. He’s never shown any signs of wanting to sign up. I guess I wasn’t the best role model while he was growing up. I was away a lot and when I was with his mum there were always arguments.’

  ‘She didn’t want you to be in the SAS?’

  ‘She wanted a husband, not a voice over the phone, which is what I was for most of our marriage.’ He shrugged. ‘What about you? Married?’

  Hawkins shook his head. ‘A girl in every port,’ he said. ‘Actually, that’s bollocks. The odd passing ship, maybe, but no one steady. Who has the time?’

  ‘Married to the regiment?’

  ‘You know what it’s like. We can be sent anywhere at short notice, we can’t tell anyone where we are or what we’re doing. Not many will put up with that.’ He gestured at the plateau. ‘Let’s get set up.’

  He led the way up the slope. It was steep in places and Shepherd had to scramble up on all fours. The plateau was about eight feet wide and twelve feet long. Hawkins threw down the blanket. He opened a leather case and took out a pair of powerful binoculars. ‘Let’s see how the Major is getting on.’

  Shepherd unslung the rifle and flipped out the bipod and the folding stock before placing it on the blanket. There was a bulbous suppressor on the end of the barrel to cut down on the flash and noise.

  ‘You’ll like this,’ said Hawkins, passing the binoculars to Shepherd. Shepherd scanned the bleak countryside and found the Major. He was about a kilometre away, placing a watermelon on the ground. The Major then straightened up and put a transceiver to his mouth. The transceiver on Hawkins’ waist crackled. He picked it up.

  ‘How’s that, Happy? Over.’

  ‘Looks good, boss,’ said Hawkins. ‘But what have you got against fruit?’

  The Major went back to his kitbag and pulled out a second watermelon. He placed it to the right of the first one. The next item he pulled from the kitbag was yellow and smaller than the watermelon. Shepherd laughed. It was a honeydew melon, about half the size of the watermelon. It was followed by a mango, a grapefruit and an apple. Shepherd handed the binoculars back. ‘I hope he doesn’t start putting out grapes.’

  Hawkins laughed. ‘We could ask him to do a William Tell.’

  ‘Best not,’ said Shepherd, lying flat and putting his eye to the scope. ‘You know why snipers got called snipers?’

  ‘Snipers snipe, I thought that was all there was to it.’

  ‘It’s from the bird, the snipe. It’s one of the hardest birds to hunt. They’re hard to find and almost impossible to creep up on, and when they fly they have this erratic way of flying that makes them hard to target. Back in the day when hunters sold their kills at the market, only the best shooters would bring in snipe. So they became known as snipers.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Hawkins.

  ‘You learn something new every day,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘That’s true. Then you die and forget it all.’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘Happy really is a terrific nickname for you,’ he said. He got himself into position. He shoved a rolled-up piece of cloth under his shirt around his right shoulder then he used his left hand to support the butt of the rifle, placing it next to his chest and resting the end of the rifle butt on it. By balling his hand into a fist he could raise the butt, and relaxing his hand would lower it.

  Hawkins put the transceiver to his mouth. ‘Boss, we’re ready here, over.’

  ‘I’ll give you plenty of room, over,’ replied the Major.

  Shepherd placed the butt of the rifle firmly in the pocket of his shoulder. The cloth pad he had placed there would minimise the movement from his pulse and breathing. He gripped the pistol grip of the stock with his right hand, using his bottom three fingers to keep the stock pressed firmly against his shoulder. He slipped his thumb over the top of his pistol grip. Only when he was completely happy with his grip did he place his index finger on the trigger.

  He took several breaths to calm himself, then wiggled his elbows until he felt completely relaxed. He rested his cheek against the stock.

  ‘Okay,’ said Hawkins. ‘Just follow the same procedure as you did at the range. Visualise. Focus. Relax. Aim. Breathe. Count one, two, three. shoot. Control the trigger. Follow through.’

  Shepherd didn’t reply. He was totally focused on the target, the watermelon on the far left. He had to find his NPA, the Natural Point of Aim. He kept his head in the same position but looked away from the scope, to the right. Then he looked back. The crosshairs had drifted slightly. He adjusted his position and repeated the move, looking away and back. The drift was less this time. He corrected his position. This time the crosshairs remained on the target.

  ‘You’re holding your breath,’ said Hawkins. ‘Only hold your breath when you’re ready to take the shot.’

  Hawkins was right, Shepherd realised. It was the tension kicking in. He allowed himself to breathe again as he focused on the watermelon. The crosshairs rose and fell as he breathed in and out.

  He mentally prepared himself for the shot. The trigger had to be pulled when the sight picture was perfect and done in such a way that the rifle didn’t move. And the trigger had to be squeezed so that the balance of the rifle wasn’t compromised. So many things could go wrong that he had to be totally focused. A poor marksman anticipated the recoil by moving his shoulder forward when the trigger was pulled. Jerking the trigger was another fault – it had to be pulled back smoothly, and the action had to be continued after the shot was fired. Flinching was another problem, where the whole body overreacted to the sound of the shot, to the point where sometimes the sniper closed his eyes.

  The follow-through was as important as actually firing and Shepherd ran through every step in his mind, visualising everything that needed to happen to make the shot perfect. Even after the shot had been made, Shepherd had to keep his cheek pressed against the stock. The finger had to stay on the trigger until all the recoil had dissipated. He had to keep looking through the scope. He had to stay totally relaxed. Actually pulling the trigger was only a small part of what was necessary to be a successful sniper. It was a process, and every part of that process was vital. He blinked, looked away, and then looked back through the scope. The crosshairs were centred on the watermelon. He took a breath and concentrated, focusing on the target and nothing else. All that mattered was the target, he had to zone out everything else. He exhaled, breathing tidally. His finger tightened on the trigger. He inhaled, exhaled halfway, then held his breath and began counting in his head – one, two, three.

  As he got to three he slowly started to apply pressure on the trigger. He made the movement smooth and firm, knowing that the slightest jerk would throw the shot off. The cartridge exploded and the stock kicked against his shoulder. Even though the shot had been made he continued to squeeze the trigger
until it was fully back, and then released it slowly.

  He saw the round slam into the ground to the left of the watermelon and kick up a small divot of earth.

  ‘Three inches to the left,’ said Hawkins, watching through his binoculars. ‘Slightly down.’

  Shepherd smiled thinly. There was nothing to be ashamed of in missing with the first shot with an uncalibrated weapon. There were two knobs on the scope. The top one zeroed the point of impact vertically, the one on the side compensated for windage and affected the POI horizontally.

  He adjusted the top knob first, by one click. That would put the next round slightly higher, hopefully by six inches. Then he adjusted the side knob, which would move the next round to the right.

  He relaxed, breathed tidally, and looked through the scope again. His second shot kicked a large chunk out of the side of the watermelon. ‘Not bad,’ said Hawkins. ‘One click should do it.’

  Shepherd clicked the side knob and prepared to make his third shot. It smacked into the centre of the watermelon and it disintegrated into a mass of red and green pulp.

  ‘Confirmed kill,’ said Hawkins.

  Shepherd took aim at the second watermelon and hit it dead centre. His fifth shot destroyed a honeydew melon, then he reloaded.

  ‘Fruit cocktail anyone?’ laughed Hawkins.

  ‘I’m surprised I got up to speed so quickly,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Nah,’ said Hawkins. ‘It’s like riding a bike. You never lose it.’

  Shepherd drove to Leeds first thing on Monday morning. He had phoned ahead and DS Drinkwater hadn’t been around but another detective on the case, DC Shaun Allen, had agreed to see him at eleven o’clock. Shepherd had to park on the street a short walk away from the city centre station and, after a brief wait on a plastic chair in reception, a side door opened and a man in a grey suit waved him over. ‘Mr Shepherd?’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘Dan,’ he said, figuring it would be better to get on first-name terms with the detective.

  ‘Detective Constable Shaun Allen,’ said the detective. They shook hands. Allen was in his mid to late thirties with blond hair cut short and the start of a paunch that was straining at the jacket of his suit. ‘Come on through.’ He led Shepherd down a corridor to an interview room where a second man was waiting for them. He was in his late twenties, a few inches taller than Allen with receding dark brown hair and black square-framed spectacles. He was sitting on the far side of a table with a closed file in front of him and simply watched as Shepherd followed Allen into the room. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Paul Drinkwater,’ said Allen. ‘He’s in charge of Liam’s case.’