In charge of the facility was another Loggy, a lanky corporal with a receding hairline and jug-like ears. His name was Adam Hess and he was also a long-serving member of the regiment staff. The major explained what he wanted to do and Hess disappeared through a door.
‘This is a simple enough scenario,’ Gannon explained to Martin. ‘You’re going to be entering a cave system so the killing house won’t be of much use to you. Caves tend not to have doors to kick down. So we’ll run you through this CQB room. As soon as you go through that door you’re in play. There are a number of rooms and I won’t tell you how many. You move from room to room and in each room there’ll be a scenario that you have to deal with. You’ll be using live ammo – try to stay on target but there’s rubber insulation around the walls that will absorb any stray rounds. Spider and I will be with you but we’ll only be observing.’
Martin nodded. ‘Got it,’ he said.
Hess opened the door and stepped into the corridor. ‘Ready when you are, sir,’ he said.
‘You okay, Dean?’ asked the major. There was a line of dark green ear defenders on a bench and they each grabbed a set and pulled them on. Shepherd preferred not to train with ear defenders but in the confined area of the CQB area shots from the Kalashnikov would be loud enough to cause long-term hearing damage.
‘Ready when you are, Dean,’ Gannon said.
Martin nodded and turned to face the door, the barrel of his AK-47 pointing at the ground. As the major reached out for the handle, Martin flicked off the safety, and as the major pushed the door open his finger slipped over the trigger and he dropped into a crouch. He had the Kalashnikov up against his left shoulder, noticed Shepherd, so that he could look around the door without exposing himself.
The door opened further, revealing a cut-out of a terrorist holding a pistol. Martin fired smoothly, two shots to the chest and a third to the head. He did it on the move and immediately he had fired the third shot he was already scanning the room.
There was no furniture in the room and no decorations, none of the frills of the killing house, which used lots of props and projection screens to make the situations look as real as possible. The CQB area was as basic as it came, but it was a good test of judgement and reflexes and so far Martin was doing just fine.
The door to the next room was to the left and Martin kept the AK-47 against his left shoulder as he moved towards it, still in a half crouch. Gannon and Shepherd followed behind him.
Martin saw the two figures a fraction of a second before Shepherd and he was already firing. Both figures were holding automatic weapons but the one on the left had a flak jacket with SWAT printed across it and a baseball cap with POLICE above the peak. The figure on the right was wearing a leather jacket and aiming directly at them. Martin ignored the cop and fired three times at the villain, putting two rounds in the chest and one in the head.
They surveyed the room and as they did a third cut-out flipped up from the floor, another villain, this time with a sawn-off shotgun in his hands. The three shots from the AK-47 almost sounded like one.
Shepherd’s eyes were watering from the cordite and he wiped them with the back of his hand. Martin was already moving to the next door and transferring the Kalashnikov to his right shoulder in a smooth action. He scanned the doorway from outside, then stepped through. Hess had been cunning; there were four figures this time, two obvious bad guys in the corners facing the door. The one to the left was holding a machete above his head, the one to the right an M16. Martin made the correct call and shot the villain with the gun – bang-bang-bang – and as he did he kept moving away from the figure with the machete. But as he moved he saw the other two figures. One was a hostage, a scared woman standing in front of a swarthy man holding a handgun. They were in the corner to Martin’s right. It was a tough shot, though one that Shepherd had taken many times, but Shepherd was used to it and Martin was seeing it for the first time.
Martin turned his attention to the hostage-taker, sighted for a fraction of a second and fired once. The round smashed into the man’s face, just six inches from the top of the hostage’s head. Then he turned in a smooth, fluid movement, dropped down on to one knee and shot the guy with the machete, twice in the chest. The third shot, to the head, came a fraction of a second later.
The major took off his ear defenders and blew a loud whistle. ‘Exercise over,’ he said.
Martin clicked on the safety and stood up. He was breathing slowly and evenly and there was no sign of the pressure that he had been under.
‘Nice shooting,’ said Gannon. ‘Very nice.’
He looked over at Shepherd and Shepherd nodded in agreement. ‘Pretty much faultless,’ he said.
‘You always do the three shots?’ asked Gannon. ‘A double tap to the chest and one to the head?’
‘I had a couple of close calls in Afghanistan,’ said Martin. ‘Fighters with bulletproof vests under their clothing. Happened to me twice. I put two shots to the heart and moved on to the next target and in both cases I knocked them to the ground but they were still able to get off a shot. I put the first one down to a fluke but after it happened again I decided to always make sure the guy was down before moving on.’
‘To be honest, you’re so quick it’s not a problem,’ said Gannon. ‘What I would say is that if you’re going up against multiple targets you might want to just do head shots. Your aim is good enough.’
Martin nodded. ‘Sounds sensible.’
‘And can I ask you, when was the last time you had a Kalashnikov in your hands?’
Martin grinned. ‘Three weeks ago.’
The major and Shepherd exchanged confused looks and Martin laughed.
‘I’ve a couple of diving buddies who live in Cambodia and I fly over to see them every now and again. They’ve got access to one of the army ranges near Phnom Penh and I get to play with whatever I want pretty much. Up to and including RPGs and hand grenades. You can play with anything there providing you’ve got the money.’
‘Lucky for us,’ said Gannon. ‘I don’t think we need to do anything with you. You’ve no bad habits, you make good decisions, you’re fast and you’re accurate. In fact, if you wanted to join us I could probably pull some strings.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, thanks,’ said Martin.
Shepherd’s mobile phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out. It was Patsy Ellis. He walked out into the corridor and took the call.
‘How’s it going?’ asked Ellis.
‘Martin is good to go,’ said Shepherd. ‘His eyes are sharp, he’s combat-ready and like I said before, he’s as fit as they come. Probably pass Selection if he went for it.’
‘Good,’ said Ellis. ‘There’s a team on hold in Gibraltar, waiting for you.’
‘By “you” I assume you mean the two of us. Me and Dean?’
‘Do you have a problem with that?’ she asked.
‘What’s the mission? What’s the objective?’
‘To neutralise an enemy of the state.’
‘So the team has been told to shoot to kill?’
‘We’re hardly going to go all that way to make an arrest, are we? This man is responsible for hundreds of deaths and if he isn’t stopped will kill hundreds more. Your man Martin is the only one who knows what he looks like. He needs to be there and I need you there to keep an eye on him. The SAS will handle the neutralisation. You just have to point them in the right direction.’
Shepherd didn’t say anything.
‘What am I supposed to read into your silence?’ said Ellis eventually.
‘Nothing,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m good.’
‘This is your ticket back into operations, you realise that?’
‘That’s the carrot, is it? I do this and I get to walk away from the CCTV screens?’
‘Do you want to stay on attachment with the Super-Recognisers? Because I can certainly make that happen.’
‘No. I want to do what I do best.’
‘Then you need t
o prove yourself. If you don’t, the Willoughby-Brown business is always going to be hanging over you.’
‘So I was being punished by being assigned to the Met? You admit that?’
‘It’s not about being punished, Dan. It just puts you in a less sensitive position. Jeremy had a lot of friends – you might find that hard to believe but it’s true. Some of those friends would prefer it if you left the service, frankly. But you have a lot of friends, too. Now, if you were to be part of an operation that ended in the neutralisation of a terrorist of the stature of Hakeem Khaled, some of the former might be less inclined to keep you out in the cold.’
‘I don’t suppose I could have that in writing, could I?’
Ellis snorted softly. ‘Charlotte did say you had the driest sense of humour,’ she said. ‘But it’s time to put up or shut up. If you don’t want to go on the mission, I can get someone from the SAS assigned to babysit Martin.’
‘No, I’ll do it,’ said Shepherd.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Ellis.
The line went dead before Shepherd could reply.
Chapter 73
Present Day, Gibraltar
S hepherd and Martin arrived at Gibraltar Airport on a scheduled British Airways flight that left London at just after seven o’clock in the morning and arrived on the Rock at eleven o’clock local time. They were casually dressed in jackets and jeans. Two men in desert fatigues were waiting at the bottom of the steps and whisked them away to a sand-coloured Land Rover while the rest of the passengers filed their way into the terminal. The men were both in their late twenties with neatly trimmed beards and skin burned brown from the sun. They said nothing as they drove to a hangar at the far end of the airfield where a grey C-130 Hercules transport aircraft was waiting, its rear ramp down.
The Land Rover slowed and drove up the ramp into the hold, which was packed with equipment, including half a dozen Yamaha trail bikes and three stripped-down off-road vehicles, all painted the same sandy-brown as the Land Rover. The off-road vehicles were four-seaters, open at the sides and with no windscreens. There was a rack on the back for carrying equipment that could also be used for the evacuation of casualties, and more storage space on the roof. They had small wheels and high suspension and their engines had been muffled. Shepherd and Martin climbed out of the Land Rover. They were each carrying a small holdall containing boots and fatigues, courtesy of the major. There was no need for anything else – the operation would be over within a few hours of the Hercules touching down at Bagram Airbase, one way or another.
There were a dozen troopers already strapped into seats lining the fuselage. Two sergeants who Shepherd recognised were standing at the front of the hold and they both nodded at him. He nodded back.
A man in his mid-thirties wearing desert fatigues and a floppy hat, grey-haired and clean-shaven, walked towards Shepherd and Martin. ‘Spider?’ he asked.
‘That’s me,’ said Shepherd. He held out his hand and the two men shook.
‘Captain Wayne Gearie,’ said the officer. ‘I’ll be running the show.’
‘This is Dean,’ said Shepherd. ‘Dean is the one who’ll be ID-ing our primary target.’
The captain shook hands with Martin. ‘We’ll be picking up extra gear once we’re in Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘I’m told you want an HK416 and an AK-47? We’ve got both.’ He looked at his watch, a black plastic Casio. ‘Okay, we’re ready to go, so strap yourselves in and I’ll talk to the pilots. I’m sure you’ve been on enough of these birds to know that facilities are primitive so if you need to pee or worse we’ve got plastic bags available.’
Shepherd and Martin stashed their holdalls in nets lining the fuselage, and then pulled down two spare folding seats and fastened the harnesses. The two men who had collected them from the plane finished tying down the Land Rover and took their places.
The rear ramp slowly rose up and clicked into place, the engines burst into life and after a couple of minutes the Hercules began to move. Several of the troopers had already closed their eyes and stretched out their legs. Like soldiers the world over, they grabbed sleep and food whenever they could.
Captain Gearie had taken out an iPad and was studying it. Martin folded his arms and stared ahead, clearly deep in thought. Shepherd figured Martin had a lot to think about. One moment he was a diving instructor in Bali, living under an assumed name and thinking that his past was behind him, the next he was on a plane flying into a virtual war zone with a group of Special Forces soldiers intent on killing a wanted terrorist. It was one hell of a jump. It was a big jump for Shepherd, too. It had been a long time since he’d been in action with the SAS and he just hoped that he’d be able to get through it without making any mistakes, because mistakes in combat tended to be fatal.
There were two young troopers to his right and he realised they were staring at him. He smiled and nodded. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘You’re Spider Shepherd, right?’ said the trooper nearest him.
‘Last time I checked,’ said Shepherd.
‘Mate, you’re a fucking legend.’ The trooper shook his hand. He was in his early twenties, tanned and with a long beard. ‘I’m Dave Hughes but everyone calls me Shaver. This is Creepshow.’
Creepshow was also in his twenties, short but stocky and well muscled. He leaned around Shaver and shook Spider’s hand. ‘You ate a fucking giant spider on jungle phase, right?’ asked Creepshow.
‘It was a long time ago,’ said Shepherd.
‘Those bastards are huge,’ said Creepshow. He had a West Country farmer’s accent and piercing blue eyes. Shepherd knew that the SAS men often wore brown contact lenses when on operations in the Middle East, but this mission was at night so changing eye colour was pretty low down the list of priorities.
‘So you guys have been out here before?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Afghanistan?’ said Shaver. ‘Twice. It’s usually Syria I get sent to.’ He jerked a thumb at Creepshow. ‘This is his first time. But he’s been in Syria more times than me.’
‘How is it over there?’
‘It’s a shithole,’ said Shaver. ‘They’re all shitholes.’
Creepshow nodded enthusiastically. ‘Fucking shitholes. The last couple of missions we’ve been after British jihadists. Fuck knows why they want to fight for ISIS out there.’
‘It doesn’t make sense, does it?’ said Shepherd.
‘Not if you’re born in the UK, it doesn’t. They’re from good families a lot of them. Better educated than me, some of them. Fuck me, if they want to fire guns, join the fucking army. Why sign up with a group of tossers who go around raping kids and throwing poofters off roofs?’
‘And your mission was what?’ asked Shepherd.
‘To take the bastards out,’ said Creepshow. ‘Easier to deal with them out there. You just get them in the crosshairs and pull the trigger. If they go back to the UK they get Job Seeker’s Allowance and a council house while they plan their attacks. If the authorities make any moves against them they start screaming about their human rights, don’t they?’
‘It’s bloody madness,’ said Shaver. ‘I’ve seen two of the faces on our hit list in the papers back in the UK. One of them’s been on bloody TV saying that he’s realised the error of his ways. Fucking bullshit. That’s one sort of leopard that never changes its fucking spots.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the politicians fucking it up for everyone. They should just let us do our job.’
‘Well, they’re letting us do it today, that’s for sure,’ said Shepherd.
‘This raghead we’re after, what’s he done?’ asked Shaver.
‘What have you been told?’
‘Just that he’s a high-value target and it’s shoot to kill.’
‘That’s about right,’ said Shepherd.
‘But who is he? He must be important to go to all this trouble.’
‘Word is he did the football stadium bombing. Planned it, anyway. And he’s been active for years.’
�
�Bastard,’ said Shaver. He nodded at Martin. ‘And what’s the Yank’s story?’
‘He’s seen the guy, up close. We need him for the ID.’
Shaver settled back in his seat and stretched out his legs. ‘I hope I get the first shot,’ he said. ‘Who the fuck bombs a football match? If they want to attack the cops or the army, or the government, then I get that. When we’re out in the desert and they attack us, that’s fair. But blowing up civilians just out to watch a game of footie, that stinks.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Creepshow. ‘Fucking cowards.’
Shepherd didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure that the SAS trooper was right. Cowards didn’t blow themselves up. It took a very peculiar sort of bravery to end your life for a cause. Any cause. The attack was appalling and the victims were innocents, but there was nothing cowardly about strapping explosives to your body and blowing yourself up. Khaled was the coward. Khaled was the one who planned the attacks and used others to carry them out, then ran away to hide in the desert. Khaled probably thought he was safe, that he had all the time in the world to plan his next atrocity. But he was wrong.
The four-engine turboprop Hercules had a cruising speed of about three hundred and seventy miles an hour, so when it began to descend after just seven hours in the air, Shepherd knew they were still some distance from Afghanistan. The Hercules had no windows in the fuselage so he had no idea where they were landing, and after the plane had taxied to a halt and he’d walked down the rear ramp he was still none the wiser. They had parked close to a tented area, a few hundred yards from a basic terminal topped by a glass-sided control tower. There was a wire perimeter fence patrolled by armed men wearing desert fatigues and there was a low range of mountains in the distance. There were several dozen planes parked close to the terminal, none with any airline livery that he could see. His best guess would be that they were at a military airbase somewhere in Turkey.
The captain strode down the ramp and put on a pair of Oakleys. ‘Right, we’ll be refuelling here and picking up a new flight crew,’ he said. ‘There’s a shower block here if anyone wants to use it and there’s food and drink.’
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