Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2

by Stephen Leather

  THE ROPE

  CYPRUS.

  November 1998.

  Dan “Spider” Shepherd was sipping his first coffee of the day as the sweat from his morning run slowly dried on his skin. He’d take a shower in a moment, but for now he was content just to relax and take in the scene around him. To the far north, the listening station’s gleaming white radomes looked like giant mushrooms growing out of the pine forest cloaking the flanks of the mountains. The summit of Mount Olympus had been dusted with the first snow of the winter during the night, but at Akrotiri, 6,000 feet below, it was already hot enough for heat waves to be rising from the shimmering white salt flats towards the north of the Sovereign Base Area. He looked over at Jock McIntyre. ‘What is it they say about Cyprus?’ he said. ‘Ski before lunch, and you can be sunbathing and swimming in the sea couple of hours later.’

  ‘Know what else they say about Cyprus?’ growled Jock in his grating Glaswegian accent. ‘It’s even less exciting than kissing your grandma.’ Craggy-faced and beginning to grey at the temples, Jock was several years older than his patrol mates. He’d grown up in the Maryhill district of Glasgow and delighted in conforming to every stereotype of the down-market Scot, right down to Irn-Bru and deep-fried Mars Bars. He gave a theatrical sigh. ‘God, I’m bored. Just look at it.’ The sweep of his hand took in the dusty runways, Hardened Aircraft Shelters and admin buildings of the RAF section which occupied most of the SBA. The SAS compound tucked away in a corner, separated by a razor wire fence. A cluster of tents and Portakabins with makeshift canvas awnings to screen them from the Cypriot sun served as accommodation for the two SAS men permanently stationed there, a couple of “scaleybacks” - signallers - and any SAS patrols, like Shepherd’s, who were temporarily based there.

  The tents were drawn up in a circle like a wagon train from the Old West, surrounding the concrete admin building, a Cold War hangover still protected by berms and blast walls. Shepherd and his patrol had sole possession of a converted shipping container with a wheezing air conditioning unit attached to the outside that offered some relief from the fiercer heat of mid-summer. Now it was December and the patrol members were happy to soak up the warm, early morning sunlight, perching on upturned crates or any other improvised seating they could find.

  ‘I’ve run around it, through it, under it and over it,’ Jock said, warming to his theme. ‘And it still doesn’t get any better. I thought Maryhill was dull but it has got nothing on this place. I’m fed up to the back teeth, but no matter how much I beg and plead for an op, or some training, or any kind of action, the Head Shed just ignores me.’

  ‘God, I wish I could,’ Geordie Mitchell said with feeling. ‘Can you not change the frigging record, Jock? The only thing more boring than being at Akrotiri is listening to you whine about it.’ Pale-faced, pale-eyed and with thinning, sandy hair, Geordie looked like everyone’s idea of an unhealthy specimen, but appearances could be deceptive. He could carry a load in his bergen that would have crippled a lesser man, and would still be slogging onwards when many apparently fitter men had collapsed in shattered heaps. The two of them were best buddies, constantly bickering and sparring like an old married couple but at the merest hint of criticism of either of them by an outsider they would instantly close ranks.

  Shepherd stirred himself. ‘I hear you Jock, but I’ve spoken to Base every day with our Sitrep, and every day it has been the same: Nothing To Report. The Ops Officer doesn’t even get back to me. He’s supposed to be your mate, Jock, not mine, so if he’s not talking to you, he won’t be talking to anybody.’ The Ops Officer, Jamie, an “Honourable” from an aristocratic family with a cut glass accent and a Hugh Grant hairstyle, had formed an unlikely friendship with Jock when they were serving in the South American jungles together, tracking down drug runners.

  The fourth member of the patrol, Jim “Jimbo” Shortt, stretched his lanky frame and yawned. ‘Like it or not, we’re in Cyprus and people pay good money to go on holiday here, so slap on some Factor 15, Jock, park your grumbling Glaswegian arse in a deck chair and see if you can turn that rancid milk complexion a fetching shade of pink.’ Jimbo stretched out even further and sighed. ‘Seriously, this is the life.’

  ‘I’ll turn you a fetching shade of black and blue in a minute,’ Jock growled. ‘Sod Cyprus, if they’ve nothing better for us to do, why won’t they let us have some home leave? It’s been the neck end of a year since we last set eyes on Hereford.’

  ‘You know why,’ Jimbo said. ‘As long as de Vale has any pull, he’ll be keeping us in exile, well out of the way.’

  ‘He’s already home and hosed anyway,’ Geordie said. ‘His version of events has gone unchallenged and is now the official version, and once it’s official…’ He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Shepherd knew he was right. De Vale, the former Squadron OC, was notorious among SAS men for never missing an opportunity to “big himself up” and for volunteering his men for any op, no matter how reckless or poorly planned. A training exercise De Vale had put together had cost Shepherd’s best mate, Liam, his life. De Vale bore direct responsibility because not only had he ordered the exercise, but he had also overflown Shepherd’s patrol in the support helicopter while they were clinging to a capsized raft in frigid, sub-Arctic waters. Even though they fired a series of distress flares, de Vale had ordered the heli pilot to ignore them and return to base, leaving his men to their fate. A Norwegian coastguard helicopter eventually picked up the other members of the patrol, with Shepherd on the point of death from hypothermia, but by the time the winchman returned for Liam, it was too late. He had slipped beneath the waves and his body was never found.

  De Vale had claimed that he was defending the Regiment’s ‘warrior traditions’ by leaving the patrol literally to sink or swim, but Shepherd felt the officer had risked their lives for some worthless point of principle and Liam had paid the price. His SAS comrades agreed with him and, faced with a near-mutiny, the Regiment hurriedly convened a Court of Inquiry. However, to no one’s great surprise, despite damning evidence from neutral observers and participants and Shepherd’s own furious denunciation of de Vale, it concluded that the death had been “a tragic accident for which no blame could be attached to any individual”. Jimbo had summed up the feelings of the SAS men when the verdict was announced - ‘the words “wash” and “white” spring to mind’ he’d said, with venom.

  Soon afterwards de Vale was promoted and posted to Special Forces HQ in London, where one of his first actions was to issue a “Warning Order” to Shepherd’s patrol for an imminent active service operation. It meant that they were put into immediate isolation and quarantine, in the SAS’s secret special training camp away from the regiment’s Hereford base. Cut off from the outside world, with even their phone conversations to their wives or girlfriends monitored, they were then sent overseas and could not legally resign from the Army until they were back in the UK, having completed any active service commitments the Regiment required. It was a devious move, and pretty much fool-proof. Shepherd and his team had no choice other than to sit tight and wait it out.

  That had been well over six months ago now, and they had been on active service in Sierra Leone and the Middle East, or on stand-by in Cyprus ever since. Shepherd had not seen his wife Sue, nor his new-born baby son Liam in all that time. Requests to return to the UK on leave were ignored and his attempt to fly Sue and Liam out to Cyprus for a visit had also been vetoed. The intense focus required while they were on active service had served to silence the angry clamour of his thoughts for a while, but now they were again just going through the motions in Cyprus, it left him with way too much time for reflection and resentment.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a discreet cough. A scaleyback from the Communications Centre - the only soldier in the SAS compound wearing a regulation army uniform - was standing there. ‘Bloody hell, you should be in the SAS, mate,’ Jimbo said, with the ghost of a wink to the others. ‘I never even heard you coming.’

 
The signaller gave him an uncertain smile and then switched his gaze to Shepherd. ‘Sunray Ops wants a one-to-one with 528 on the Red Line at 15.30.’

  In the spare, clipped jargon that ruled military life, he was telling Shepherd that the Operations Officer in Hereford wanted to speak to him on the Top Secret line at half past three that afternoon. Sunray was the Ops Officer and 528 was Shepherd’s personal Operations Number. Everyone in the SAS was given an Operations Number on entry to the Regiment. On ops it allowed the individual to order resupply items over the air without giving any personal details, since the quartermasters department kept a record of sizes for every individual. The process was secure, easy and saved time, and it also meant that details of casualties suffered abroad could be transmitted quickly and securely back to the UK.

  Shepherd had put in a request for a one-on-one with the Ops Officer the previous day, though without any great hopes of success. The fact that Jamie had set one up straight away gave him hope that something might finally be in the air. ‘There you are,’ Shepherd said to Jock. ‘The answer to a maiden’s prayer: we may have a job on at last.’

  Just before three-thirty that afternoon, Shepherd sauntered into the Communications Centre and was waved towards the sound-proof booth used for communications on the Red Line. In the SAS “need to know” applied here as everywhere else: if you didn’t, you would be kept out of the loop - hence the sound-proof booth. When the Scaley had patched him through, Shepherd found that he could hear the Operations Officer as clear as a bell.

  ‘Right Spider, what’s the story? And don’t give me any bad news for God’s sake, there’s already a shit-storm going on around here.’

  ‘There’s no story, Jamie,’ Shepherd said, ‘and that’s the problem. We’ve been stuck in Cyprus twiddling our thumbs for weeks now. The boredom’s driving Jock mad and he’s sending the rest of us up the wall by bumping his gums about it. Can you not find us an op or swing some leave back in Blighty? My son’s first birthday is coming up soon and I’ve barely set eyes on him since he was born. I’m his dad and he won’t even know who I am.’

  ‘I hope you know that I would do something about it if I could, but the orders came down from on high to keep you guys on a permanent rotation of Ops and Standby until further notice, and I can’t countermand them. You seem to have pissed someone off mightily up there.’

  ‘You’ve got that right,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’ll tell you the whole story one day, and when I catch the gentleman in question out of uniform, I’ll be punching his teeth so far down his throat, he’ll have to stick a toothbrush up his arse to clean them.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Is there really nothing you can point us at, even a bit of training, just as long as it’s somewhere else?’

  ‘Hold on,’ Jamie said. ‘There are no ops I can send you on, but I’ll see what else is doing.’

  As he waited, Shepherd could hear the faint rustle of papers and the clack of Jamie’s computer keyboard down the line. ‘It’s not an op or training,’ Jamie said at last, ‘but you can have a jolly, if you like. There’s a Hercules leaving Akrotiri for Kathmandu tomorrow morning. Get yourselves on it, if you like the idea. The Hercules will be staying in Nepal for a week and you’ll then return to Cyprus with it, but take all your operational kit with you in case you have to redeploy from there. Otherwise the trip will just be a pleasure cruise. It’s not Blighty I’m afraid, but it’s better than nothing. Report to the Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Kathmandu and leave your military kit with him. Do some trekking, climb Everest if you want to, but make contact with an ex-Regiment climber called “Taff the Rope” while you’re there, will you? We’ve lost track of him but he’s somewhere in Nepal so the Military Attaché should be able to put you in touch with him. Oh and Spider? You think you’re the only one who’s getting earache from Jock? I’ve been listening to his moaning every day for the past month as well, so tell him I hope this will shut him up. Enjoy your holiday.’

  Shepherd thanked him and hurried back to the others to break the news. ‘Great news, ladies,’ he said.

  ‘Where are we off to?’ asked Jock. ‘Singapore? Bangkok? Vegas? Sydney?’

  ‘None of those, Cinderella. There’s a Herc flying to Nepal tomorrow morning and we’re booked on it, Club Class.’

  ‘Club Class in a Herc,’ Geordie said. ‘That will be when they warm the steel floor before they make us lie on it, will it?’

  Shepherd raised an eyebrow. ‘Not complaining, are you? You can stay here if you want.’

  ‘Hell no,’ Geordie said. ‘We can get some high altitude trekking and climbing in while we’re there and after a week of that, even a miserable Scots git like Jock might be glad to be back in Cyprus with his feet up.’

  ‘I’ll check in with Air Movements right now,’ Jock said. ‘Just to make sure we can really get on that flight.’ He hurried off.

  They were still sitting on empty crates outside the shipping container, having yet another brew, when Jock came back. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve just seen over by Air Movements,’ he said. ‘Gul the Gurkha. He’s on his way to Nepal on that Hercules and he’s overnighting in the transit accommodation.’

  ‘Who’s Gul?’ Shepherd said.

  ‘You won’t know him. He was before your time in the Regiment and he only did one tour and then left because he wasn’t comfortable with the individual thinking philosophy. He was much more comfortable in the group relationships of the Gurkhas, but he was a brilliant soldier, as brave as a lion, and he sailed through the Selection course.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘He’s a living legend,’ said Jock. ‘He did a lot of operations when he was here and developed a great reputation. It was a shame he didn’t stay longer. And I tell you what, you’d much rather have him as an ally than an enemy, because he was a real warrior. When the Falklands war was on, Gul used to infiltrate the Argentinian lines during the night. He’d by-pass or kill their sentries, sneak into one of their eight-man tents and slit the throat of one of the sleeping soldiers. Then he’d gut him and spread his entrails all over the floor of the tent, and then exfiltrate back to his own lines. They say you could hear the screams when the Argentinians woke up in the morning from a mile away. Did wonders for their morale.’

  ‘I’m guessing the rest of them wouldn’t sleep too easily after that,’ Geordie said. ‘You wonder who’d greenlight something like that.’

  ‘I’m guessing he was using his initiative,’ said Jock. ‘Anyway, I said we’d see him for a few beers tonight. You can ask him yourself.’

  ‘After a build-up like that, I’m not sure how wise that would be,’ Shepherd said with a laugh.

  ‘No danger,’ Jock said. ‘The funny thing is, off-duty, you couldn’t meet a nicer, gentler guy.’

  They met Gul in the Transit Mess that evening. He had the typical Gurkha build: short and wiry, with dark skin and jet black hair. He could have been anywhere between his early forties and his mid fifties and the only outward signs of his fearsome reputation as a warrior were his fierce, challenging stare and the proud way he carried himself. But he also had a ready smile and a dry sense of humour, and Shepherd warmed to him at once. The others drank beer as they chatted, but Gul stuck to the customary Gurkha drink of dark navy rum that he gulped rather than sipped.

  ‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,’ Shepherd said. ‘To me it looks, smells and tastes like engine oil.’

  Gul shrugged. ‘All Gurkhas drink it; it’s even written into our terms of service that we’re entitled to a tot of rum a day. On dark nights it keeps out the cold and we also believe that it stops the mosquitos from biting us.’

  ‘You might be right about that,’ Shepherd said. ‘One whiff of that and I’d definitely be buzzing off somewhere else.’

  ‘So why are you heading for Nepal, Gul?’ Geordie said. ‘Bit of home leave?’

  ‘No, I’m on my way home for good. I’ve served my full twenty-two years now, but I’m still on the payr
oll for a few more weeks, helping out on the MoD’s annual Gurkha remittance and recruiting flight. We’re taking the pension payments out to the retired Gurkha soldiers in Nepal. It’s like Christmas, New Year’s Eve and the fourth of July rolled into one for Nepalis, because the Gurkha pension is often the only cash income for a man’s entire village. The army money is absolutely vital for the local economy.’

  ‘That’s pretty much how it goes in Hereford,’ said Shepherd. ‘A big chunk of the local economy depends on the Regiment.’

  ‘At the same time, the Army Gurkha Team is running the annual selection courses for potential recruits to the Brigade of Gurkhas,’ Gul continued. ‘As the Army has downsized, the competition for places in the recruitment process has got tougher and tougher, but to be a Gurkha soldier is still almost every young man’s ambition in Nepal.’ He smiled. ‘And of course we remain the world’s most ferocious fighters.’

  ‘Present company excepted,’ Jock said, grinning.

  Gul’s smile widened. ‘Perhaps, although it would be an interesting contest. In the Anglo-Nepal war of 1814-16, Gurkhas so frightened the British soldiers that they decided to recruit us to fight alongside them, instead of against them, and we’ve been part of the British army ever since. We Gurkhas fear no one and our war cry remains the same: “Jaya Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali” - Glory to Great Kali, Gurkhas approach.’

  ‘Who’s Kali?’ Geordie asked, pronouncing it to rhyme with “alley”.

  ‘A four-armed god, whose hands hold a trident, a sword, a severed head and a bowl for catching the blood from the head.’

  ‘A nice friendly god then,’ Jimbo said with a laugh. ‘My favourite sort.’

  ‘Are there no other jobs for Gurkha boys than soldiering?’ Shepherd asked.

  Gul shrugged. ‘There are some in the commercial security sector but those are invariably reserved for ex-Gurkha soldiers. The only other source of cash income is in the tourist climbing industry but that’s a closed shop to anyone outside of the Sherpas. So the pressures on my country’s young men are already considerable and the political situation in Nepal is only making that worse. The Ruling Family is imploding, dogged by constant claims of corruption, and the main opposition is a Maoist Party with a violent revolutionary agenda. There have already been a number of bloody attacks on remote police stations and district headquarters, and the unrest has now spread to the capital, Kathmandu. In fact things are so desperate that I’ve even been approached to enter Nepalese politics myself.’