Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Gul’s people need it more than you do,’ said Shepherd. ‘And let’s be fair, none of us are in this for the money.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ laughed Geordie.

  PLANNING PACK

  ARABIAN GULF.

  November 1998.

  Dan “Spider” Shepherd was standing on the flight deck of an RAF Hercules C-130, leaning on the back of the pilot’s seat and anxiously scanning the horizon ahead of them in the first faint light of dawn. The plane’s two pilots and the flight engineer were also scanning forwards, but it was the navigator, head down over his instruments, his face lit an eerie green by the light of his radar screen, who was the first to break the silence. ‘The target should be on the nose now, range two and a half miles,’ he said. He had a soft West Country accent that made Shepherd think of sheep and rolling hills.

  Shepherd strained his eyes even more, squinting into the growing glow of dawn light, and at last spotted it: the long sleek shape of a modern warship, its grey hull at first barely distinguishable from the water around it and marked out mainly by the curl of white water at the knife-like prow slicing through the waves. The ship had slowed as the Hercules approached and was now barely making headway through the waves. ‘I see it,’ he said. ‘Eleven o’clock.’

  Shepherd watched the outline of the sleek, streamlined grey superstructure and the huge stars and stripes flag fluttering from the stern grow sharper as they closed rapidly on it. His thoughts were interrupted by the captain of the Hercules who was pointing at another C-130 that was already circling the almost stationary destroyer. ‘They’ve already started the drop,’ he said, ‘you’d better get to the rear and prepare to jump. Wouldn’t want you being late.’

  The op had landed in their laps out of a clear blue sky just the previous day. Shepherd and his patrol mates - Jock McIntyre, Geordie Mitchell and Jimbo Shortt - had been making a leisurely return to Cyprus from Nepal, a journey that had begun on a sombre note with the funeral of their Gurkha mate, Gul, killed in an ambush by Maoist terrorists in Nepal’s “Wild West”. A few days earlier, Gul had been telling them about the Bagmati river that flowed through his native city of Pokhara - a holy river to Hindus and Buddhists alike - and the Hindu tradition of the dead being dipped into the river three times before being cremated on its banks. Only a few days later, they found themselves having to stand and watch as Gul’s own dead body was ceremonially bathed and then placed on his funeral pyre and burned to ashes.

  Shepherd’s patrol had exacted a full measure of revenge on Gul’s killers - within forty-eight hours of his death, none of them remained alive - and the grief that the SAS men felt for their lost comrade was no less intense for having to be so brief. Like soldiers the world over, they had to put the loss of their comrades and mates behind them almost at once despite the bonds formed by men who had looked death in the eye together. To spend too long mourning lost comrades was merely to invite reflections on their own mortality, and in the crucible of close-quarter combat those distracting thoughts could all too easily lead to it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Neither Shepherd, nor any of his patrol mates were in any hurry to return to twiddling their thumbs in the SAS compound at Akrotiri in Cyprus. When they were offered the chance to break the journey with a stay in a luxurious hotel in the Gulf, courtesy of the RAF, they did not need a second invitation. As soon as he got to his room, Shepherd’s first thought was to phone Sue in Hereford. It would still be early evening in England and he imagined her giving Liam his tea, spooning baby food into him. The phone rang and rang, and he was about to hang up when Sue answered. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Sorry I’ve not been in touch.’

  ‘Where are you? England?’ He winced at the excitement in her voice, knowing that he was going to have to disappoint her.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘So where are you then?’ Her voice was markedly colder now.

  ‘I can’t tell you where we’ve been - need to know and all that, but let’s just say that communications weren’t the best, and as far as a signal for a mobile goes, forget about it. This is the first chance I’ve had to call you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, I’m used to it by now.’

  He winced at the flat, faintly angry tone in her voice.

  ‘Will you be home for Liam’s birthday?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. I hope so.’

  There was a pause. ‘Is this how it’s going to be, Dan? Liam growing up and his father never being there for his birthdays, his first words, his first steps, his first day at school, for anything at all?’

  ‘Come on, Sue. No, of course it won’t be like that.’

  ‘Are you sure about that? Because whenever it comes to a battle between Liam and me on one side and the SAS on the other, it seems to me that the Regiment always wins.’

  Shepherd swallowed what he was about to say, realising that it would only fuel the fires, and instead said ‘It’s my job, Sue, but once I’m back in the UK, it’ll all be different, I promise.’

  ‘And when will that be?’

  Shepherd grimaced. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Can’t you ask someone?’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that.’

  ‘Someone must know? An officer?’

  ‘They’re moving us around. As soon as I know something concrete, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘But even then, you and I both know that nothing will change. As long as you’re in the Regiment, it’ll always be your first priority.’

  Shepherd didn’t argue with her because he had a feeling that she was probably right. There was a long silence and when Sue spoke again, her voice was even more flat and expressionless. ‘I’ll have to go, the baby’s crying.’

  Shepherd had not heard any sounds of crying down the line, but he didn’t challenge her over it.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said again. ‘Just let me know when you’re coming home.’

  ‘Of course I will….’ he started to say, but the line had already gone dead. He swore loudly to himself as he slammed the phone down, then went down to the bar to bury the memory of the strained conversation with a few beers.

  He slept fitfully and woke early, taking his customary six-mile run at dawn. Afterwards he showered and relaxed over breakfast by the pool, drinking coffee and eating croissants with his patrol mates. As usual in hot countries and fierce sunlight, Geordie’s skimmed milk complexion was turning pinker by the moment and he was continually arranging and rearranging the strands of his pale, thinning hair, trying to cover his scalp.

  ‘Will you stop fiddling with that comb-over,’ Jock said. ‘If you need to cover your bald patch, I’ll buy you a yarmulke.’

  ‘I haven’t got a bald patch,’ Geordie said, as his mates stifled laughs and snorts of disbelief. The patrol medic and an unchallenged expert in battlefield trauma, Geordie’s wispy hair, pale skin and general air of diffidence sometimes led men to underestimate him - always to their cost, for he was as tough as the sole of an army boot, and in a fight, almost as skilled as inflicting injuries as he was at healing them.

  ‘You’re right,’ Jimbo said, stretching to his full six-foot plus height to peer down at the top of Geordie's head. ‘It’s more of a hair patch on the edge of a bald desert.’

  Jock took a bite of his croissant as he stared out over the hotel’s palm-fringed gardens, watching the streams of high-end Mercedes and BMWs speeding along the motorway towards the gleaming steel and glass towers of the city. ‘It’s amazing,’ he said. ‘I came here on a job years ago and none of this was here at all. There were no buildings taller than three stories - and most of them were built from mud bricks. The roads were dirt or potholed concrete, and the airport was a landing strip with a so-called terminal that was just a prefab building and a cluster of Portakabins. Now look at it.’

  ‘I know, it’s incredible isn’t it?’ Geordie said. ‘Mind you, Maryhill, where you come from, is the same. It was a complete sh
it-hole a few years ago and now look at it: a complete shit-hole.’ He ducked as Jock launched the half-eaten croissant at his head.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about Maryhill,’ Jock said. ‘A Geordie git like you would never…’ He broke off and his face darkened as he caught sight of a familiar figure making his way towards them. ‘Look what the cat just dragged in,’ he said, his voice showing his contempt. ‘Is there no bloody escape?’

  Tall, urbane-looking and wearing a linen tropical suit and a panama hat, no one would have mistaken the newcomer for anything but an Englishman. He had a nonchalant, slightly distracted air, but those who watched him closely would have noticed that Jonathan Parker’s sharp eyes missed nothing going on around him. His cover was as a businessman - ‘a little import-export, old boy,’ as he liked to say - played up to the stereotype of the gentlemen amateur Englishman abroad, but in reality he was an MI6 agent. Shepherd and his mates had already crossed paths with him more often than they would have wished, including having to repair the damage from a botched MI6 operation in Sierra Leone. His arrival was always greeted by them with groans, for they knew it was almost invariably the harbinger of difficult and dangerous work for them. More often than not - as in Sierra Leone – it involved clearing up a mess that Six themselves had created.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jonathan,’ Shepherd said. ‘We didn’t even know ourselves that we’d be here until yesterday evening. How did you track us down?’

  ‘You seem to turn up everywhere,’ Geordie said. ‘The proverbial bad penny.’

  ‘Like a bad dose of the clap that even antibiotics won’t shift,’ said Jimbo.

  ‘Nice image,’ said Shepherd. ‘But appropriate.’

  ‘Pure coincidence old chap,’ Parker said, ignoring the insults. ‘I just happened to be out here on business.’ He smiled as he saw their looks of contempt. ‘Business that won’t involve you, you’ll be sorry to hear. But something else has cropped up which will require your urgent attention.’

  Geordie scowled at him. ‘I thought you said it wouldn’t involve us.’

  ‘My business won’t. Today I’m just a messenger boy for someone else, but I’m afraid it still means that your sunshine holiday is about to be interrupted. You are to report to the British Embassy immediately. A car is waiting outside to take you there.’

  ‘What’s that all about?’ Jimbo said.

  Parker raised an eyebrow. ‘Surely you know better than to ask? Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. But I’m sure your “Head Shed”, as you so charmingly put it, will enlighten you.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now chop, chop, chaps, tempus fugit and all that.’

  ‘Tempers what now?’ Geordie said.

  ‘He means time’s pressing,’ Jock said, whose carefully cultivated image as a monosyllabic Glaswegian hard case was rumoured to conceal a mind sharp and well-tutored enough to be able to read the Classics in the original Greek and Latin.

  It was Standard Operating Procedure for Shepherd and his patrol mates always to leave their kit ninety per cent packed and ready so that they could make a fast exit whenever a call to action came. Within a few minutes of Jonathan Parker’s unwelcome arrival, the SAS men were in a car with smoked windows and diplomatic plates, speeding towards the British Embassy.

  It was an old stone colonial-era building with a fountain playing in its manicured gardens, but the perimeter wall and the gates had been reinforced against the perils of a more modern age, with coils of razor wire along the top of the wall and arc lights and CCTV cameras at regular intervals. There was a group of heavily-armed guards manning the gates. Even though the SAS men were travelling in an Embassy car, they still had to wait while the guards ran a mirror on a steel pole underneath the vehicle, looking for bombs. The guards then scrutinised their IDs minutely before allowing them through. Even though the country was a long-standing British ally, it also played host to its share of potential jihadists - any one of whom would happily launch an attack on the embassy.

  As soon as they had announced themselves at the reception desk, they were taken to the secure communications room, a windowless concrete box, deep in the basement below the building. ‘528 to speak to Sunray Ops,’ Shepherd said to the signals technician manning the equipment - his personal Operations Number and the radio codename for the Ops Officer at Hereford. Shepherd then entered the sound-proof booth, preventing even the technician from overhearing anything that was said. When the technician had made the connection, Shepherd found that it wasn’t only the Operations Officer who wanted to speak to him. The Commanding Officer was also on the diplomatic secure line. There was no preamble, no enquiries about his health and well-being, no wasted words at all. ‘A situation has developed which you and your patrol will have to deal with,’ the Operations Officer said. ‘The Hercules you came in is waiting to fly you to an RV with a US warship at the following co-ordinates.’ Shepherd scribbled down the latitude and longitude references, noting immediately that it was somewhere in the southern Mediterranean. ‘You are to make a water para-drop to RV with the warship, and will then carry out your assigned task. The operation is being planned for you in Hereford by the Operations Oversight Team.’

  Shepherd frowned to himself. The Operations Oversight Team was a group of respected elder statesmen from the SAS ranks whose usual job was to ensure that the patrol planning for active service operations was robust and professional enough to give the patrols carrying them out every chance of being successful. Over the years the system had saved many lives by reining in the more gung-ho patrol commanders and concentrating on efficiency and results. He knew that any plan they came up with would be fine, but he would still much rather have been in control of his own destiny, planning the op with his own patrol rather than relying on the input of outsiders, no matter how skilled and experienced they might be.

  ‘The matter is so sensitive,’ the CO said, ‘that no further information will be transmitted to you at this point. When you make the RV, you will be supplied with everything the Operations Oversight Team has calculated that you will need, and you will also be joined there by an additional patrol member, who will be bringing the Patrol Planning Pack by hand.’

  The fact that the Planning Pack was being couriered to them rather than communicated over the secure line reinforced the sensitive nature of the operation, whatever it was.

  ‘One final point,’ the CO said. ‘While you are in-country where you are now, you are to liaise with General Said, the head of the local Royal Guard. He is a friend of HMG who we have trained in the past and he will supply you with any logistical support that you need to get you to the RV.’

  Shepherd remained silent while the Embassy car drove them back to their hotel - need to know applied to chauffeurs even more than signals technicians - but he broke the news to his patrol mates as soon as they were safe from prying eyes and ears.

  While Shepherd rounded up the RAF Hercules crew, Jock and Geordie jumped into a taxi waiting on the rank outside the hotel and set off to meet the General.

  ‘Don’t forget we need ammo,’ Jimbo shouted at them as they were clambering into the taxi. ‘We’re almost out after the contact in Nepal!’

  A couple of hours later Jock and Geordie returned, driving a Royal Guard pick-up truck. Loaded in the back were four state-of-the-art steerable static line parachutes and a stack of boxes of .223 ammo for their Colt Commando model AR-15’s: the lightweight, air-cooled, semi-automatic ArmaLite rifles that, due to their accuracy and reliability were their weapon of choice on many of their ops. Jock carried the M-203, an AR-15 with an underslung 79mm grenade launcher that used the same ammo, to give the patrol a bit of short-range punch if it were needed. Thoughtfully, they had also called in at the souq - the market - in the ancient heart of the city and had managed to buy an assortment of rubber waterproof bags. The para drop would be into the sea alongside the US Navy warship and the waterproof bags would protect their weapons and equipment and save them having to waste a lot of time cleaning and drying it.

>   They spent the rest of the day preparing for the drop and later that night they set off for the air force base where there Hercules was waiting. The flight to the RV was the usual Herc experience: long, boring, noisy and uncomfortable, and it was a relief when Shepherd at last saw the US warship ahead of them. As he watched the other Hercules dropping its parachutes, Shepherd was surprised to see that the single personnel chute floating down was followed by six much larger cargo parachutes with heavy loads swinging beneath them. ‘How much kit do they think we need?’ he muttered. ‘It looks like they’ve sent the entire Quartermaster’s stores.’

  Each of the containers was efficiently collected from the sea by the men manning one of the powerful ship’s boats and winched up to the deck of the destroyer. When the first Hercules had finished its drop, it wheeled away and departed to the north in the direction of Cyprus, the black smudges of the wash from its props staining the sky behind it.

  ‘Right, let’s get on with it,’ said the loadmaster, whose world-weary expression was designed to show that he’d seen it all and done it all and wasn’t remotely impressed by having an SAS patrol aboard. He swung the door open and at once the noise in the loading bay redoubled, the thunder of the engines sounding louder than ever, but still almost drowned by the roar of the slipstream.

  The patrol hooked their bergens onto the parachute harness and then hooked the static line onto the overhead cable, ensuring they were safely anchored. After a cursory safety check, the Loady shouted to them ‘Stand by! Watch the lights!’

  Shepherd had done hundreds of Para jumps in his time, first with the Paras, and then the Regiment, and probably knew the drill better than even the loadmaster himself. He nodded and fixed his gaze on the light panel above the open door.

  Shepherd kept staring at the red light and the instant that it changed to green he propelled himself through the doorway. Immediately he was riding the slipstream as the lumbering shape of the Herc disappeared ahead of him. He felt the jerk as the static line triggered the ripcord and his chute deployed above him. After the deafening noise inside the aircraft, the silence was stunning. He took a moment to check that the three other chutes had also opened safely, then concentrated on his own tasks. He lowered his container on its rope below him, and looking down, he began steering towards one of the waiting boats. The container entered the water just before he splashed down into the sea himself, and almost as soon as he broke surface strong hands were reaching down and pulling him aboard.