Spider Shepherd: SAS: #1

by Stephen Leather

  Parker returned from the bar with a second tray full of beers and, Shepherd noted with a smile that he had brought another soft drink for himself. Parker settled himself in his chair, raised his glass to them. ‘Cheers, lads,’ he said.

  ‘How long have you been in Sierra Leone?’ asked Shepherd. Parker had put a beer down in front of him but he was sticking to the Jamesons. He was rapidly acquiring a taste for the Irish whiskey.

  ‘Too bloody long,’ said Parker, neatly avoiding the question.

  ‘What can you tell us about the place?’ asked Jock, ‘other than the fact that it’s a shit-hole.’

  Parker smiled. ‘The infrastructure is rudimentary. Sierra Leone doesn’t even have a railway system. There was a single line with a couple of side-branches but it was only narrow gauge and in any event it closed twenty years ago. However, it does have the third largest natural harbour in the world, and is one of the world’s biggest producers of bauxite and rutile…’

  ‘Rutile?’ Jimbo interrupted. ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Titanium ore,’ said Parker. ‘The country is also a major producer of platinum, gold, chromide, iron ore, coffee and cocoa, but its greatest sources of wealth are the diamond fields. That’s why this little piece of Africa has been hit by a succession of coups, counter-coups and civil wars. The diamond fields are what they call alluvial, which means they’re accessible to anyone with a shovel and a sieve and so there’s large scale illegal mining.’

  Jimbo grinned. ‘I can lay my hands on a shovel or too, lads? What do you say?’

  ‘Sierra Leone should be one of the richest countries in the world and yet by whatever yardstick you choose, it’s pretty much the poorest ,’ continued Parker. ‘Sierra Leone’s assets and the national wealth are all owned by foreign corporations or lodged in the Swiss bank accounts of politicians and generals. Bribery and corruption runs right through the government here, no matter what their politics. Civil servants and teachers go unpaid, so everyone has to steal in one way or another, just to survive. And since the government has no foreign currency reserves it’s still handing over what’s left of its dwindling stock of assets at knockdown prices. Even the mercenaries fighting here are paid in mineral rights, so all they’re interested in doing is protecting their diamond concessions, not fighting the rebels.’

  ‘And what about the diamonds?’ Shepherd said. ‘Who makes money out of them? The government?’

  ‘The trade in them is controlled largely by Lebanese traders like Farid here, and Israelis with connections to the international diamond markets in Antwerp,’ said Parker.

  Farid nodded eagerly. ‘I’ve been buying diamonds in Sierra Leone for more than twenty-five years,’ he said. ‘And even while the Civil War has been raging, I’ve still been able to buy a few carats here and there. But every year, even though the mines’ production remains much the same, there are less and less for sale.’

  ‘Because they’re being smuggled out of the country?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Parker. ‘Liberia, just to the east of Sierra Leone, is one of the biggest diamond exporters in the world. There are even more diamond merchants in the capital, Monrovia, than there are in Antwerp.’

  ‘So what?’ Jimbo said. He was frowning and clearly having trouble following the conversation.

  ‘Just this: there are no diamond mines in Liberia,’ said Parker. ‘Every single one of the gemstones that are traded there every year has been plundered from Sierra Leone. The official figures say that two million carats of diamonds are produced for export from Sierra Leone every year, but unofficial figures suggest that at least twice that number are smuggled over the border. They’re known as “blood diamonds” for the obvious reason that an awful lot of blood is spilt in obtaining them.’

  ‘However,’ Farid said, ‘for the last twelve months, the flow of diamonds through Liberia and Sierra Leone has dropped dramatically. Yet production from the mines has actually risen slightly.’ He spread his hands, palms upwards. ‘What conclusions can we draw from that other than that somewhere in Sierra Leone there is now a large cache of illicit diamonds which everyone - governments, rebels, mercenaries and yes,’ he said with a smile, ‘traders like me, are trying to get their hands on.’

  There was a silence while the SAS men digested this. ‘Farid,’ Parker said eventually. ‘I wonder if I could have a private word with these gentlemen?’

  Farid pursed his lips in annoyance. ‘Do you not trust me, my friend?’

  ‘Of course I do. It’s just that this is…’ He paused as if groping for just the right word. ‘It’s... well it’s a delicate, personal matter.’

  ‘Very well, then. I have some calls to make in any case,’ Farid said, though his expression showed his annoyance. He prised himself out of his chair and lumbered off towards the lobby.

  Parker glanced around, making sure that no one else was within earshot. ‘Gentlemen, may I speak frankly for a moment? We are, are we not, in a similar line of business, and I’m guessing that you are at something of a loose end at the moment?’ He waited for a nod from Shepherd before continuing. ‘Then perhaps we may be able to help each other out a little.’

  Jock’s hackles were up at once. ‘Helping out Six has cost us a lot of men in the past, including friends of mine.’

  ‘Just hear me out, that’s all I ask. In theory the government controls the country but in practice it’s barely in control of the capital. The president is still only in his twenties and heads a military junta that has suspended the constitution, political parties and freedom of speech, and rules by decree. However, they’ve proved rather more successful at repressing their own population than at fighting the rebels. The RUF - the Revolutionary United Front - led by a former Army Corporal called Foday Sankoh, controls much of the country, including large parts of the diamond producing areas.’

  ‘Those army corporals can be bastards,’ Geordie said. ‘Just look what Hitler got up to.’

  Parker’s smile remained fixed. ‘The RUF’s first wave of recruits came from among the 80,000 refugees who had spilled into Sierra Leone, fleeing Liberia’s civil war. In a country in which almost every service had broken down and where there was virtually no paid work at all, many people joined the rebels willingly, hoping to be fed and to have some chance of grabbing a share of the loot being plundered on all sides. Those who did not volunteer were either forcibly recruited or killed. The RUF are backed by Liberia. They have no shortage of AK-47s and RPGs, and a few heavy machine guns, but they’ve no armoured vehicles, just Landcruisers, and though they’re usually too strong for the Sierra Leonean Army, they are poorly trained and ill-disciplined and no match for professional troops.’ He paused. ‘However if you should encounter them, you need to be aware that they are absolutely fearless. A mixture of narcotics and juju makes them feel they are invincible and unaffected by bullets, so you’ll have to kill plenty to stop them.’

  ‘We’ve met some already,’ Shepherd said. ‘They didn’t give us too many problems.’ His three colleagues nodded in agreement.

  ‘Are you also aware that many of the rebel fighters are boys, some as young as eight or nine?’ said Parker. ‘And young or not, they’re killers. One other thing, almost uniquely among rebel movements around the world, the RUF have no discernible ideology at all. They’re neither right wing nor left wing, they’re not fighting for a better world or to repel invaders or to overthrow the government, they’re just fighting for control of the diamond-producing areas. It’s all about money. Correction. It’s ONLY about money. The RUF have been in control of large parts of those areas for over a year and have used the revenues to buy more and more weapons, fuelling the civil war here and Charles Taylor’s brutal rule in Liberia. And in Sierra Leone, if you control the diamonds, you control the country.’

  Shepherd sipped his whiskey and wondered where the conversation was heading.

  ‘The SLA - the Sierra Leonean Army – are just as bad as the rebels,’ continued Parker. ‘They’re of almost no valu
e to us in counter-insurgency. They’re not trained, they’re rarely, if ever, paid and even their rations are inadequate. They live with their families in what are called barracks, but most are just a collection of mud-walled, one-roomed houses, built by the soldiers themselves. They have to use money from their wages - if they’ve been given any - to pay for the corrugated iron sheets for the roof. In some barracks, they’re so short of space that two soldiers and their families share each tiny house. They’re supposed to get a uniform, a gun and one bag of rice a month. The senior officers have just cut that allowance in half, so that they can sell the surplus on the black market. It’s not only corrupt but very dangerous, because the last such cut in rations led to an uprising in which 6,000 people were killed in Freetown alone.’

  ‘And we bitch about our wages,’ said Geordie.

  Parker ignored the comment. ‘The civilian population is preyed on both by the rebels and by government troops, and for every soldier killed there are ten civilian deaths. Many local people call the SLA “sobels” - soldiers by day, rebels by night. The fighting often forces villagers to abandon their crops before they even have time to harvest them and some think that it’s a deliberate policy by the SLA; they collude with the rebels to terrify the villagers until they flee, then harvest the crops for themselves, either to eat or to sell on the black market. Many SLA soldiers have even been known to sell their arms and munitions to the rebels and some find they can do better by defecting to the rebels. Whether they do or not, they are often as brutal as the rebels and as prone to theft, rape, murder and looting. For protection, the civilians have increasingly turned to a grass roots militia called the Kamajors, though they can often be just as corrupt.’

  ‘Sounds like a bloody nightmare,’ said Shepherd.

  Parker nodded. ‘So to sum up: the entire country is up shit creek, in a barbed wire canoe, and without a semblance of a paddle. The rebels are probably only waiting for the end of the rainy season - any day now - before launching another offensive. The Nigerians and their allies have shown no interest in advancing beyond the airport perimeter and the South African mercenaries that you gentlemen ushered into the country a couple of weeks ago have, it seems, ignored their orders to engage the rebels and drive them back from the outskirts of Freetown, and abandoned any pretence of intervening on behalf of the government. Instead they have simply driven the RUF out of some of the most productive diamond mining areas and seized them for themselves.’

  ‘That’s what you get for using mercs,’ Jock said. ‘There is no task in this shithole of a country that the SAS couldn’t have done for you and it would have been equally untraceable back to HMG, but instead you chose to bring in South African mercenaries. Any one of us could have told you that they’re about as unsavoury and unreliable a bunch as you can imagine, a ragbag of thugs, renegades, soldiers of fortune, deserters from other armies and “kaffir-killers” from South Africa’s apartheid era bush wars.’

  Parker shrugged. ‘Our masters had their reasons,’ he said. ‘You know as well as I do that decisions are always made way above our pay grade. Anyway, mercenaries have been a fact of life in Sierra Leone for centuries. Slave traders used them, so did Western traders, but so too did tribal chiefs. The Mende tribe would rent themselves out to anyone, black or white, for a few pounds of tobacco, though they took their real rewards in the plunder they stole and the women they raped, and they grew so powerful that they were beyond the control of any government or army. The situation hasn’t changed, just the identity of those doing the raping and plundering.’

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ Jimbo said. ‘What a pit of vipers. So why would HMG use these bastards in the first place?’

  ‘Because they thought they were our bastards, of course,’ said Jock.

  ‘Little did they know,’ said Jimbo.

  Parker’s expression didn’t change. ‘Arguing about the rights and wrongs is pointless. We have to deal with the situation as it is, not as it was or as we’d wish it to be, and in the here and now there are two major problems to deal with. The RUF rebels remain in control of much of the country and continue to threaten the government, but we now also have another rogue element, the mercenaries. They are now in control of the richest diamond mine in the country and since they must know that their position will become untenable in the medium to long-term, we must assume that they are planning a fast exit, taking a fortune in diamonds with them.’ He paused, looking around the circle of faces. ‘So, assuming that you have no current designated tasks and that you’re free to take on targets of opportunity should they arise, there are a couple of ways in which you might be able to assist. As I said, the rebels comfortably outgun the SLA and they also have access to enough weaponry to discourage the ECOMOG troops from taking them on, but we have intelligence about a large RUF arms dump in the interior of the country. It is well protected, both by rebel troops and by natural features - it’s located on a large, low-lying island surrounded by a swamp. We don’t have the air assets available to take it out and nor do the Operational Squadron have the resources to attack it. They have their hands full with their own tasks, but if your patrol could find a way to do so, you would be rendering an invaluable service to the Sierra Leonean population as well as your country’s interests.’

  ‘How reliable is this intel?’ Shepherd said.

  Parker held Shepherd’s look. ‘It’s blue chip: humint, backed by surveillance and signals intelligence.’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘Give us what you have and we’ll take a look at it. You mentioned a couple of ways we could help. What’s the other?’

  ‘The other would be to help us retrieve the situation in relation to the mercenaries,’ Parker said.

  ‘You mean clear up the mess you left,’ Jock growled.

  ‘If you prefer, but that will be a more complex task because the mercenaries have heavy weapons and know how to use them, and we have very little intelligence on how they’ve deployed them yet, so let’s leave that one in abeyance for the moment.’

  ‘Is this going to be official or off the books?’ asked Jock.

  ‘A bit of both,’ said Parker. ‘Obviously my bosses know that I’m making this approach but equally obviously they won’t want your involvement made public.’

  ‘Bloody typical,’ said Jock.

  ‘Assuming we do pitch in, you may be able to offer a little reciprocal help,’ said Shepherd. ‘Quid pro quo, if you like. The village of Biramayo was destroyed by the rebels a couple of weeks ago. The only survivors are a group of children, boys and girls, mostly about eight to twelve years old. We were operating in their area and rescued them from the rebels. We’d like to get them some help either from HMG or from one of the aid agencies.’

  Parker looked pained. ‘We can’t become involved in any humanitarian missions,’ he said. ‘Our resources are already stretched much too thin, but I can put a word in with those agencies and charities that are still operating here; most of them fled when the rebels reached the outskirts of Freetown, but Save The Children and Medicaid International are still here.’

  ‘No offence, but I’d like to speak to them myself,’ Shepherd said. ‘Just to make sure they fully understand the seriousness of the situation.’

  ‘They’ve been here a lot longer than you or I have been,’ Parker said. ‘They don’t need any lessons from us about conditions in the country or the dangers that civilians here face, but I can provide you with an introduction to the regional director at Medicaid International, Laurence Beltran, if you like. Officially HMG has no relationship with them but unofficially we maintain contact through informal channels.’

  ‘Do that,’ Shepherd said, ‘and we’ll see what we can do to help you with your problems.’

  They agreed to meet at the SAS’s temporary base the following morning. ‘Well, it’ll keep us entertained at least,’ Jock said after Parker had left.

  ‘I don’t like the way we don’t get official backing,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘That’s the way the
spooks work,’ said Jock. ‘They need what they call plausible deniability. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘But if it turns to shit, we’ll be left hanging in the wind,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘We’re professionals,’ said Jock. ‘It won’t turn to shit. And I don’t know about you but I can resist anything but a challenge.’

  * * *

  Shepherd was up with the dawn and he sat in the bar as he waited for the others, drinking a cup of coffee made in the Arab style: so strong it was almost a solid rather than a liquid, and laced with several spoons of sugar. The skies had cleared. The torrential rains of the wet season were already giving way to the dry, dusty Harmattan wind carrying Saharan sand as fine as talc. It covered every surface, piling up in drifts on the doorsteps and sills and hanging in the air like fog. The blue of the sky had faded to a colour so pale that it was almost white and the sun, obscured by the dust, seemed little brighter than the moon. The air was full of the sound of creaks and groans as the building’s timbers dried in the arid wind.

  Shepherd was finishing his first cup of coffee when Jock, Jimbo and Geordie arrived. They drank coffee and breakfasted on croissants before heading outside. The men wrapped scarves around their faces but the fine dust penetrated everywhere and Shepherd could feel it in his nose and taste it in his mouth, gritty against his teeth, as they walked towards the Landcruiser.

  They returned to the base and at once went to see the Boss of the Operational Squadron, volunteering to go and take out the rebel ammunition dump. Offhandedly the Boss gave the go-ahead to the mission, displaying only minimal interest. ‘I must warn you that I have no resources to spare,’ he said. ‘And I doubt that your Six contact has anything in the way of equipment.’

  ‘We don’t need much, Boss,’ Shepherd said. ‘Except maybe Jerzy and his Hoplite. The rest we’ll improvise.’

  Shepherd left the other three poring over the intelligence that Parker had already supplied and drove down into Freetown to meet the contact at Medicaid International. The houses of the expatriates and richer citizens were colonial era mansions originally built by the British, ranged along the heights of the ridges of Juba Hill and Signal Hill to catch whatever sea breeze there was. They were raised on stilts and shaded by giant cotton and breadfruit trees. The houses must once have been quite splendid but the walls were now stained with damp and many appeared semi-derelict. Those that were still occupied were shielded by high walls topped with razor wire and broken glass. Even the art deco State House on Tower Hill looked decrepit, its balcony railings streaked with rust and its once-pristine white walls pocked and scarred from the rounds and grenades that had struck it during the numerous coups and countercoups.