Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2

by Stephen Leather

  He paused. ‘Anyway, we need to overhaul the terrorists before they get much further into the Depression, because the terrain from here on in is very difficult. In the Second World War, the first and second Battles of El Alamein were fought between here and the coast. Both commanders constructed their defensive lines there because they could not be outflanked - the Depression and its surrounding cliffs were thought to be impassable, not just to tanks but to any military vehicles. That wasn’t quite true - there are ways through and the Long Range Desert Group, who often guided the original SAS across the Western Desert to their targets, sometimes used them - but the terrain is treacherous. Do you know what fech fech is?’

  He was greeted with blank looks and he grinned. ‘It’s the Arabic word for a very fine powdery soil - as fine as talc - that’s been eroded from the rock of the surrounding plateaus by the desert wind and then washed down by flash floods into the Depression. It forms a subsoil like quicksand, but it is not easily detectable from the surface because it’s usually hidden beneath a thin crust, so it forms a huge hazard for people and particularly for vehicles. You can be driving along and suddenly find the ground disintegrating beneath you, burying your vehicle - and any people inside it - in quicksand. Fech fech is very common in the Qattara Depression, making it almost a no-go area for vehicles - probably even lightweight buggies like these - unless you know the safe routes. There are dry lakes too, with a hard crust covering deep, cloying mud, which can be equally hazardous.’

  ‘But then it’s potentially hazardous for the terrorists too.’

  ‘True, but they’ve been operating in this area for some time, and it would be surprising if they had not discovered at least one safe route through it.’

  ‘Then we just have to follow them,’ Jimbo said.

  Jock shook his head. ’Except that following them along a narrow, well-defined track would just be laying ourselves open to ambush.’

  ‘We could outflank them then, go north of the Depression and intercept them at the far side.’

  ‘We could,’ Joe said, ‘but to do that we would have to cross “The Devil’s Gardens”, as they’re still known: the minefields that stretch from the edge of the Qattara Depression all the way to the Mediterranean. Around three million mines were laid before the battle of El Alamein and most of them are still there beneath the sands, growing more and more unstable with every passing year. They reap a steady harvest of Bedouin herdsman and others crossing the desert, and I’m not anxious to add ourselves to the total.’

  ‘So, no time like the present,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’ll deal with the terrorists tonight, before they get the chance to move any further into the Depression. How does that sound?’

  Everyone nodded in agreement. Still riding their buggies, the SAS men began moving down the escarpment, moving slowly to avoid raising dust and using every ounce of tradecraft and every scrap of cover to avoid detection by the terrorists a couple of miles away. At the foot of the escarpment, they passed through the ruins of an abandoned settlement, perhaps once the site of a small, now dried-up oasis, with the crumbling remnants of the walls of the mud brick buildings looking more like collapsing termite mounds as they slowly returned to the earth from which they’d come. The patrol moved on, closing to within half a mile of the terrorist camp and then set up an OP and watched them covertly for the remaining hours of daylight, before finalising their plan of attack.

  At last light, the gang, evidently confident that they were now so far from civilisation that they were totally safe, lit a large fire in the centre of the laager and began to prepare their evening meal. Despite the hostage rescue the previous night, they evidently now felt so secure, deep in their own desert heartlands, that they didn’t even bother to post sentries.

  As always, darkness fell in the desert with the suddenness of a light being switched off. Shepherd and his patrol mates remained watching and waiting as the terrorists prepared and ate their meal, and they stayed in cover while the flames from the campfire died down and the terrorists eventually settled themselves on the ground to sleep.

  The SAS men waited another hour until all was quiet then, following the agreed plan, they split into two groups and began working their way around the outside of the circle of parked vehicles, placing a standard charge of plastic explosive from the Packet Easy on the fuel tank of each vehicle. They connected them all with detonating cord to form a large “ring main”, with a trigger wire leading back to their OP Position. The patrol then settled down and waited for dawn.

  ‘Did you know that the Arabic word for dawn is Fagr? It means “explosion”,’ Joe whispered to Shepherd as the first light began to illuminate the eastern horizon. ‘Because when it arrives, the dawn comes up like a bomb.’

  Shepherd smiled. ‘Very appropriate in this case, then. Because it’s definitely going to be like that this morning.’

  As the first rays of light appeared in the east, and the group of terrorists began to show the first signs of stirring, Shepherd pressed the fire button on the Shrike exploder he was holding. In a heartbeat the pick-ups disappeared, engulfed by an eruption of flame and smoke, as the explosive charges detonated the fuel tanks. Even as the thunderclap sounds of the explosions were still rumbling across the desert, the SAS men were already mounting their desert buggies. Like Apaches attacking an Old West wagon train, they circled the laager at high speed. Steering with one hand, and firing indiscriminately into the inferno with the other, they unleashed such a barrage of fire that it was almost impossible for the terrorists, cramped in the tight area inside the circle of burning vehicles, to avoid being hit. Barely awake, and blinded by the smoke and flames of their burning vehicles, the terrorists themselves had no targets to aim at and what ragged and sporadic return fire they produced flew well wide of the speeding SAS men.

  Only one man attempted to escape the inferno. A terrorist, driven by desperation or panic, leapt to his feet despite the relentless firing from the SAS men, sprinted towards the circle of burning vehicles and dived through the wall of flame. His hair, beard and loose robe were instantly ignited by the flames and he became a human torch, staggering blindly forward, screaming his agony until Shepherd slewed his buggy to a halt and put him out of his misery with a double tap. No other terrorists emerged from behind the curtain of flames and after several more minutes of carnage, Shepherd stopped firing and signalled to the others to withdraw.

  They reassembled at the RV point a couple of miles away at the foot of the escarpment. ‘The Third Battle of El Alamein,’ Jock said. ‘Shame it won’t be as famous as the first two.’

  ‘Pity you called us off, Spider,’ Geordie said, ‘I was just starting to enjoy that. Ee, there were more fireworks than the fifth of November on the Town Moor.’

  Jock gave him a pitying look. ‘Is there anything, anywhere in the world, that you can look at and not be reminded of some aspect of Newcastle?’

  ‘Yeah, your face,’ Geordie said. ‘That just reminds me of my arse.’

  ‘We didn’t finish them off,’ Jimbo said. ‘And there are bound to be a few survivors. My mum always taught me to tidy up after myself, so should we not be mopping up?’

  Joe shrugged and glanced up at the sky, where vultures, circling high on the thermals, were already beginning to gather. ‘What we didn’t kill, the desert will,’ he said. ‘With no transport and no water, even those who weren’t killed or wounded are not going to last for long.’

  ‘Strange we didn’t hear any dissent from up above,’ Shepherd said, gesturing to the radio at his shoulder. ‘They’ll certainly know where we’ve been and if they’ve managed to get a satellite overhead will know what we’ve been doing too. I hope we haven’t upset them so much that they won’t pick us up. It’s a long ride back to civilisation from here and, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a feeling that when you’ve seen one desert, you’ve seen them all.’ They wheeled away and began gunning their buggies along the steep track back up the escarpment. Behind them, the vultures, havi
ng circled lower and lower, were already landing and beginning to squabble over their prey.

  FRIENDLY FIRE

  THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES.

  November 2001.

  For eight hours Spider Shepherd had been lying up in a sand dune overlooking the six-lane highway that slashed through the desert like a knife. It was a moonless night, the blackness dotted with so many stars that looking up made his head spin. He lay motionless, peering through his sniper scope, watching and waiting for any movement in the shadows. To his right, far off in the distance, were the lights of a city and beyond it, close to the sea, the diffused yellow glow of the oil terminals that gave the Gulf state its immeasurable wealth.

  To his left, about a hundred yards away, was a clump of small concrete buildings and rusting pick-up trucks. Several of the buildings seemed to have been abandoned but, in some, oil lamps flickered behind wooden shutters. From time to time, Shepherd heard the reedy cry of a sick baby.

  ‘Target mobile, said a voice in his ear. There was a faint double-click in his earpiece as he acknowledged, still peering through his scope towards a jumble of concrete and mud-brick houses flanking a narrow, high-walled passage. The houses were half a mile away, on the other side of the highway, but that wasn’t a worry. The rifle he was using was accurate at well over double that distance.

  At first he saw nothing, but then a black-clad figure slipped from the passage, crossed the street and disappeared again into an alley at the far side. Shepherd continued to track the man and focused on his face. ‘Target acquired. Positive ID,’ he murmured into his throat-mic. Shepherd’s memory was photographic and one quick look at the surveillance photograph in his top pocket had been enough.

  ‘Wait out.’

  He saw the shadowy figure disappear and then reappear where the mud brick walls and buildings gave way to the empty scrub and desert beyond the city. There he paused and made a final scan of his surroundings before moving across the open ground towards the road that led from the airport into the city. Tomorrow was the ruler’s birthday and other heads of state, including a representative of the Queen, would be traveling along this road from the airport to the palace. MI6 had come across intel that one of al-Qaeda’s top bomb-makers had arrived in the Gulf state on a mission to attack one of the VIP convoys. The ruler was a close friend of the British Prime Minister and had agreed to allow the SAS to operate in his country, provided the mission remained totally covert.

  As he checked out the target through his scope, Shepherd saw he was carrying a mobile phone. It would be the trigger for the massive bomb that two days earlier had been buried at the roadside. There were four oil drums full of explosives and it had taken three men the best part of two nights to dig the hole, taking cover every time they saw headlights heading their way. Now the bomb was buried and ready to be armed and that was the job of the bomb-maker. The three other members of the bomb-maker’s team were being taken out by other teams. There would be no arrests, no trials, no publicity, just three bodies buried deep in the desert.

  Slowly, deliberately, he took a series of deep breaths, preparing himself for the shot. The man came to a halt again, peering along the dusty road, then crouched down in the shallow ditch at the roadside. Shepherd murmured into his throat mic. ‘I have the target. Positive ID. Clear engage?’

  ‘Clear engage. Stand By, Stand By. Fire when ready!’

  It had to be a head shot, a clean, instantaneous kill, to stop the bomb-maker activating his device. Shepherd sighted on the bridge of the man’s nose, took up the first pressure on the trigger, then exhaled in a long, slow breath, and squeezed the trigger home. He barely felt the recoil, but the bomber dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  ‘Target down,’ said Shepherd.

  Two dark shapes emerged from the darkness and ran to the body. One of them turned it over with the toe of his boot. There was no need to check for vital signs. The bullet Shepherd had fired had drilled a neat hole in the bomber’s forehead and punched a fist-sized exit wound in the back of his head.

  Shepherd slung his rifle across his back and ran towards the men, just as the dark shape of a Puma helicopter, flying without lights or markings, came skimming in over the sea. As he reached the men, the helicopter went into a hover a couple of feet above the ground, throwing up a whirlwind of dust. Shepherd and the other troopers jumped aboard, dragging the body with them. They were airborne in seconds, flying back towards the sea. When the helicopter was half a mile from land, one of the troopers kicked the body out of the open door. ‘God bless all who sail in her,’ he scowled as the body spun through the air and splashed into the waves far below.

  * * *

  Back at base, Shepherd was disassembling his rifle, carefully wrapping the telescope mount and the scope in foam rubber to protect them, and then slipping his scope into his grab bag. He looked up as a grizzled-looking figure in shorts and tee-shirt walked over to him. ‘All right, Spider?’ It was Billy Armstrong. He’d gone through selection with Shepherd five years ago and, like him, was a keen runner. It was Armstrong who had thrown the bomb-maker’s body out of the chopper.

  ‘Like shooting fish in a barrel… and just about as interesting.’

  Armstrong grinned. ‘They tell me the entry hole was an inch and a half northeast of his nose. You’re losing your touch.’

  ‘And you’d know?’ Shepherd said, laughing. ‘A man who couldn’t hit his own arse with a shovel.’ He rubbed his chin with his hand. He hadn’t shaved in four days. ‘I’ll be glad to get back home,’ he said. ‘Only two more days.’

  ‘Wishful thinking, mate,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘What? You’re shitting me.’

  ‘Fraid not, you’re on your way to Doha.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘You know better than to ask and, even if I knew, I know better than to tell you, but I’ll bet any money that wherever you are going, it isn’t Hereford.’

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Apparently not. They’ve got something for me but they’re being all secret squirrel about it.’

  ‘When do I go?’

  ‘You should have left already.’

  Shepherd groaned. ‘I need to call my wife. She’s going to hit the roof when she hears this.’

  ‘No time, Spider. Seriously.’

  * * *

  Shepherd flew into the Doha International Air Base, better known as “Camp Snoopy”, later that morning. Twenty years before, Doha had been a small town in a dusty, desert kingdom of Qatar with a lot of oil and not much else. Now it was a city of a million citizens with a cluster of gleaming tower blocks rising out of the desert sands. The American base was next to the international airport and was used as the main jumping-off point for troops and equipment heading into Afghanistan.

  Shepherd had had no sleep other than a quick catnap during the two-hour flight, but the adrenaline was pumping as he looked around, taking in the hive of activity. Trucks and forklifts roared across the concrete as crates of ammunition and supplies, and more trucks and armoured vehicles were loaded into giant C5s and C17s. As each was loaded, it taxied out to the end of the runway and took off, its engines belching black fumes as the aircraft laboured upwards under maximum load. Before it was out of sight, the next C5 had taxied into position, ready to begin its own take-off run.

  The sprawling base was the hub for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of operations that included Iraq and Afghanistan. The invasion of Afghanistan had begun just four weeks earlier and the base was a hive of activity. There were vast areas of concrete hard-standing, acres of toughened hangars and warehouses, shielded by concrete blast walls, and communications centres and control rooms deep below ground in air-conditioned, blast-proof chambers carved out of the solid rock. Above ground there was the usual US base sprawl of McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks and all the other home comforts US forces expected wherever they deployed. It wasn’t like that in the rather more homespun British section, a small corner of
the base allocated to the trusted partners in George Bush’s “war on terror”.

  As Shepherd stood on the concrete next to the Hercules transport plane, easing the stiffness from his limbs, a Land Rover pulled up. ‘You Shepherd?’ asked the driver, a Geordie lad who looked as if he was barely out of his teens.

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ said Shepherd. He tossed his kitbag into the back of the Land Rover and climbed in. The driver set off across the airfield towards the SAS sector, a compound within a compound, a functional collection of tents, Portakabins, shipping containers and two breeze-block buildings, all surrounded by a double razor-wire fence, and shielded by berms bulldozed out of the sands. Three times on their way across the base, they were flagged down while their ID was examined by gum-chewing men in unbadged combat fatigues.

  The driver dropped Shepherd at the gates of the SAS compound and sped off. As Shepherd showed his ID to the guard on the gate, he heard a shout. ‘Spider! They’ve not got you on this Sunday school outing as well?’

  One of the group of men sitting on upturned crates and sun-faded chairs next to a shipping container got to his feet with a big grin on his face. He had the typical SAS build: no more than medium height and a body built for endurance rather than raw power. Next to the young troopers who were sitting around him, his lined face and hair flecked with grey made him look even older than his forty years.

  ‘Fuck me, Spud,’ Shepherd said. ‘I thought you’d be drawing your pension by now.’ Jake ‘Spud’ Edwards had been one of his trainers back at the SAS Stirling Lines camp in Hereford.