Narrow Escape (A Spider Shepherd short story)

by Stephen Leather

  Such well-meaning snippets of information only heightened the tension within the group. They were under no illusions: they knew that however well they performed their E & E, they would at some point be caught and interrogated - the point of the exercise was how long they could avoid it and how well they resisted it when it did happen - but they were all unsure about what was involved during the final phase.

  The night before the exercise, The Bosun gave them a final group talk. ‘Fear of capture by the enemy underpins much of the SAS philosophy,’ he said. ‘The Regiment was formed to operate behind enemy lines and so, by definition, we will always be operating where we are outnumbered and will face a very high risk of being captured. It’s believed that the bond of friendship will inhibit any individual from jeopardising a friend’s life. So to counter the problem of guys talking under interrogation, patrols are kept together for years, if at all possible, and are only split up reluctantly if patrol members have irreconcilable differences. In the Squadrons this is known as getting divorced, and it’s pretty unusual.’ He paused, allowing his gaze travel around the room and making eye contact with each of the eleven men listening to him. ‘Now, let me say at the start, there is no training system which can really prepare you for the reality of being interrogated.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘But we do the best we can. When you are captured, you will be beaten up by the hunter force troops. How severe the beating is will depend on how hard they’ve had to work to get hold of you. You will be shackled from the moment of capture and sometimes they like to use cable ties, which dig into the flesh and hurt you more. They will throw buckets of water over you to keep you cold and in a state of shock, or they might throw you in a pond if there is one handy, but all the time they will be trying to condition you so that the interrogators will find you easier to deal with. They will also put a hood over your head to disorient you and they will keep you disoriented all the time you are in captivity. Take note of what they hood you with. If it’s a sandbag, give thanks because they have a coarse weave. If it’s a pillow case, you’re in for an extra tough ride because the weave is fine and it makes water-boarding much harder for you, because you will feel like you really are drowning. Try to keep the hood away from your face, and try to bite a hole in it, this will allow you to see your surroundings and may help you plan your escape.’ He stopped and let his words sink in before continuing.

  ‘Always pretend to be more tired than you are; keep something in reserve for when the chance of escape presents itself. Always be very polite and call everyone “Sir”. If you’re offered food or drink, take it; it may be your last. When you’re being questioned, stick to the “Big Three”: Number, Rank and Name. When you’re more experienced, you will be told about how to make a controlled release of information, but for now, stick to the basics. Giving away anything more than the Big Three will see you on Platform Four with no second chance.

  ‘When you’re being questioned, the one consolation you’ll have is that at least you’re inside, in the warm. The interrogators will try a mixture of brutality and kindness. They will try to assess what treatment you should have to get you to talk. Don’t antagonise them unnecessarily and don’t try to be a hard man, it will only get you hurt. Just say “Sorry, I cannot answer that question”.

  ‘If you see an opportunity to escape, take it, no matter what the risk. Don’t forget, your captors get tired too, and they will make mistakes that you may be able to capitalise on. Even thinking about that will help keep up your morale.

  The inevitability of what was to come caused Shepherd and most of the others to have a pretty sleepless night. The next day they had their final briefing. Unusually, the trainees found themselves being briefed individually. Shepherd was briefed by The Bosun himself. ‘You’re to run a Rat-Line,’ said The Bosun, ‘replicating being handed from one agent to another in occupied territory. Except for the agents running the Rat Line, all civilians are to be considered as hostile. The RV points you’ll be given will be arranged so that you are always cross-graining the country - we always make the runners come down from the hills into the valleys. Valleys usually have a road or track and a river running through them. For obvious reasons, these are known as “stop lines”. The hunter forces calculate the time for the runners to get to a stop line and move their resources accordingly. So knowledgeable runners will either try to move quicker than the enemy calculate they can, or alternatively, much slower, so they are either in front of or behind the hunter forces.’

  Shepherd nodding, filing all the information away for future use. ‘In addition to the hunters, there will be prisoner-handling troops supported by helicopters,’ The Bosun continued. ‘And if you’re captured, you will be subject to interrogation by the JSIW - the Joint Services Interrogation Wing.’ He pushed a piece of paper across the desk to Shepherd, along with a pen. ‘Sign this,’ he said. Shepherd realised that he had to sign a form saying he agreed to the interrogation. He couldn’t help but smile at the irony as he scrawled his signature.

  The only information Shepherd was given were the co-ordinates of his first contact, a Dead Letter Box. Once he had reached the first DLB, he would find further information about the next stage of his escape route. No other information was provided; he was not even told the location of his drop-off point to begin the E & E; he would have to work that out on the ground for himself.

  The only equipment he was given was a small scale map, printed on silk, similar to the ones issued to downed aircrew in the Second World War, a magnetized belt buckle stitched to his trousers to give him a rough north direction pointer, and a plastic bag to carry water when he was on the hill tops, allowing him to lie up away from water sources. Shepherd was not unduly worried that he had not been given a proper compass, because what he had would be more than sufficient to help him find his way around. He decided to wear the map next to his skin, inside his shirt, where it was unlikely to be found during anything other than a strip-search. There were no rations, no comms equipment, nothing but the map, belt buckle, plastic bag and the clothes he stood up in.

  At the end of the briefing, The Bosun dropped a bombshell, ‘This is Noduff’, he said, meaning it was genuine information, separate from the briefing. ‘PIRA are known to be operating in the area.’

  Shepherd felt a chill at his words. It was only six months since an IRA bomb had ripped the heart out of Manchester and just two months since the Army HQ at Lisburn had been bombed.

  ‘We suspect that they’re hoping to pick up one of the senior guys from the Regiment who are running in the exercise,’ The Bosun said. ‘It’s been known for several years that the Provos would give their eye teeth to get hold of a senior SAS man. Having a few of us running around the Welsh hills without our customary security systems in place will be a temptation that the Provos will find hard to resist.’ He grinned. ‘They probably won’t be particularly interested in small fry such as yourself, but just the same, keep your eyes peeled and stay out of trouble’.

  Finally, and vitally, The Bosun gave Shepherd the co-ordinates of an emergency RV, where he could go if everything went wrong, and even more importantly, the co-ordinates of the War RV. That would only be activated in a genuine emergency if the Regiment wanted everyone back in base ASAP. The Bosun fixed him with his stare. ‘To divulge the location of either of these two RVs under interrogation could put other, more senior members of the regiment in real danger, and will inevitably lead to you being RTU’d. That’s all. Good luck.’

  That night Shepherd was dropped off on the exercise start line. The van, driven by Brummie F, had already dropped off the others at ten minute intervals, several miles apart, and now only McKay and Shepherd were left. The driver had taken an erratic route into the mountains, with a series of seemingly random right and left turns and detours designed to throw off the calculations of any of them who were trying to keep track of their location. Shepherd hadn’t even bothered to try and track the twists and turns; once out of the van, he’d orient himself soon enough. Now,
having driven a few more miles since the last drop, Brummie F once more pulled into the side of the twisting, unlit C road he was following. He glanced over his shoulder at Shepherd and said ‘You’re on, jump to it.’

  Shepherd rested his hand on McKay’s shoulder for a moment. ‘Good luck, mate, see you on the other side,’ he said.

  ‘Not if I see you first,’ laughed McKay.

  Shepherd jumped down from the van and it roared off. He watched the glow of its headlights fade until he was left alone in the gathering darkness. There was still a glow in the western sky from the setting sun and that gave him a direction. He gave his eyes another five minutes to become accustomed to the gloom and then moved off, away from the road, climbing the flanks of the mountain that loomed above him.

  He was fully confident as he set off. He had his silk map, next to his skin, and the magnetised belt buckle on his trousers, so he had everything he needed. He knew that at some point, at a time of their choosing, he was going to be roughed up and interrogated, but though he obviously wasn’t looking forward to that, it didn’t frighten him. He knew that he could get through it because the prize - admission to the ranks of the SAS - was too great for anything to stop him now.

  It was now late autumn, shading into winter, and high in the Welsh mountains where he was heading, he knew he’d face torrential rain, cold winds, night frosts, and long, dark, twelve-hour nights. There were scores of abandoned farms, barns and sheep-folds in the hills, but the refuge they offered was illusory; Shepherd knew he couldn’t use them because the hunter force would regularly check them and if he was anywhere near them, he would be caught.

  However, he also knew that there were massive swathes of bracken all over the hills, dying back to its autumnal brown, which would provide cover and some protection from the elements. There were also a few patches of conifer woodland that had been planted in the 1970s for tax reasons. Those trees were now mature but the timber that would once have gone to make pit props for the Welsh collieries, was no longer needed. After the pit closures of the Thatcher era, only one deep mine now remained in South Wales. As a result, many of the woods were now unkempt, littered with fallen trees and dead-fall branches that made progress through them difficult but provided good cover.

  Despite the darkness, he made fast progress all that night and by first light the next morning he was in position, observing the site of the Dead Letter Box. His instructions were that it was in the north-west corner of an old stone bridge across the fast-rushing stream in the bottom of the valley he had now reached, but there were two stone bridges close together and he was not entirely sure which was the right one. As the sky began to lighten towards dawn, he worked his way down the side of the valley. It was cloaked with a dense covering of bracken and he stuffed fronds of dead bracken into his clothes and hair and then burrowed his way down into a fold in the ground a quarter of a mile above the valley floor.

  From his vantage point, as the light strengthened, he could see the movement of hunter force troops scouring the area and he could hear the sound of helicopters overhead. There was no possibility of reaching the DLB while they were in the area and he resigned himself to lying up in cover throughout the day and then making his way down to the stream after dark.

  It was a grey, overcast day and rain hammered down during the afternoon, soaking steadily into his clothes, but the weather was not severe enough to cause the hunters to abandon their search and it wasn’t until towards sunset that the sound of helicopters ceased and the hunter force troops withdrew. He tried not to resent the thought that they were returning to a hot meal and a warm bed whereas he would be spending another cold and hungry night in the open on the Welsh mountains.

  With the last of the light, he emerged slowly from his hiding place and, constantly scanning the hillsides and the valley floor around him for any hint of movement, he made his way down to the stream. The water-level was high, swollen by the day’s heavy rain, and to reach the Dead Letter Box, he had no option but to lower himself into the rushing waters, gasping at the shock of the cold. He searched the first bridge without finding anything and had to climb out of the water and move downstream to the other one. He lowered himself back into the stream and this time, at the north-west corner of the bridge, he found a waterproof Golden Virginia tobacco tin, wedged into a crack between the stones on the underside of the arch.

  He left the stream in the valley floor at once and took his prize back to the OP he’d made earlier that day. Soaked to the skin, he stripped off his shirt and trousers, wringing as much water as he could from them before putting them back on; his body heat would have to complete the drying process. To his intense frustration, however, the sky was overcast and without any form of light of his own and with no moon- or even star-light to aid him, he was unable to read the message that the tin contained. His only option was to remain where he was until dawn for there was no point in travelling on through the darkness in case he went in the wrong direction.

  He spent the rest of the night resting and sleeping fitfully, suppressing the dull ache of hunger with a few sips of water. He has no rations at all and it could easily be several more days before he ate again, but he could live with hunger easily enough. Water was the only essential and in those rain-soaked mountains, finding that was never going to be a problem.

  He was awake and alert well before first light, waiting impatiently for the light to strengthen enough for him to be able to read the message. As dawn approached, he was at last able to decipher it. It contained only the coordinates and a pass code for the next RV, a Live Letter Box with an agent. The safest option was to lie up for rest of the day in his OP and only move on again after dark, but having already lost the whole of the previous night, Shepherd was growing anxious about reaching the next RV in time and he took a chance on climbing back on to the ridge and crossing the valley beyond in daylight. It was a steep-sided valley with the last 150 feet on either flank covered in loose scree.

  As he started to move through the valley, he caught sight of a movement, a solitary figure in army camouflage - another runner like him - crossing the valley ahead of him. Almost immediately he heard dogs barking and saw a patrol of the hunter force - Paras with dogs and a dog handler - emerging from cover and chasing after the man. One of the Paras spotted Shepherd and pointed at him, shouting enthusiastically. Shepherd assessed his options and decided that his only hope of evading capture was to back his fitness against that of the other runner and try to overtake him. With luck the hunters would overhaul and capture the other runner while Shepherd made good his escape.

  With all need for concealment gone for the moment, he broke into a flat-out run, crashing through the bracken and coming down the hillside in what was more a controlled fall than a calculated descent. He sprinted across the valley floor, crossed a dirt road that ran through it and then hurdled a dry-stone wall. He cleared a stream with a leap, and ran on, his pace barely slackening as he met the rising ground. All the time he was running, he could hear the barking dogs and the shouts of the hunter force in hot pursuit behind him. The other runner was much closer now; either he lacked Shepherd’s fitness or panic and fear of capture was affecting him, but Shepherd was relieved to see that, whoever it was, it was not McKay that he was overhauling.

  As the other runner reached the bottom of the scree slope below the summit and began to scramble up it, Shepherd raced past him, not even turning his head to see who it was, but just as he overtook him, his foot caught on a piece of loose rock and he slipped, lurching into the other man. Shepherd regained his footing and was running on up the slope in an instant but as he turned to shout an apology over his shoulder, he saw that the other runner had lost his balance and slid a few yards back down the scree-slope towards the fast-closing pursuers.

  Shepherd knew it was survival of the fittest, every man for himself now. Above the shouts and baying dogs he could hear the thunder of helicopter rotors behind him, closing fast. If the heli came overhead while he was still i
n the open, the game was up. Whether he went to ground or kept running, it would simply track his movements and direct the hunter force onto him.

  Lungs bursting, he reached the ridgeline and began plunging down the other side, frantically scanning the ground ahead of him for some cover. A hundred yards to his right and a little lower on the slope, he saw a dark circle half-hidden by bilberry and bracken. He sprinted to it, the sound of heli-rotors ever louder in his ears, and found himself on the edge of a water-filled sump hole. There were hundreds of such holes across the Welsh Mountains. Some were dry ‘shake-holes’ formed naturally in the limestone areas as rainwater dissolved the surface rock over millennia and caused it to collapse, but many more were where water-filled bell-pits and sumps, excavated by men digging for coal or other minerals and then abandoned.

  Shepherd did not hesitate. He launched himself into the sump, praying the water was deep enough to cover him. As the ripples subsided, the water was whipped back into spray by the downwash lashing it as the heli overflew him. Heart pounding, he waited for it to go into a hover above him, signalling his location to the hunter force, but instead it flew on and then began flying a search pattern, moving backwards and forwards, quartering the ground to try to locate him, while the hunters continued their search on foot.

  The hunters were advancing from the ridgeline, moving in line a few yards apart. Shepherd heard the sound of boots crunching through the bracken and the snap of dry bilberry stems. He took a deep breath and as he saw the peat at the edge of the sump begin to tremble faintly at the approaching footfalls, he submerged himself face down, gripping onto a rock to keep himself under the surface and began to count the seconds. He held his breath for a slow count of sixty and then, still submerged, began to release the air slowly as he counted down another thirty seconds.

  Unable to remain submerged any longer, he slowly eased himself upwards, breaking the surface with barely a ripple and forcing himself to take only slow, shallow breaths, rather than the huge gulps of air his tortured lungs were clamouring for. He raised his head a fraction and peered through the curtain of bilberry, bracken and grasses. The heli was still flying a pattern further down the hillside, keeping ahead of the advancing hunters, who were now almost 100 yards away and still moving further down the slope.