Moving Targets_An Action-Packed Spider Shepherd SAS Novel

by Stephen Leather

  As the Pinkie accelerated up a hill, they saw an Afghan Army jeep ahead of them, also apparently speeding towards the Inter-Continental. An instant later, a Toyota saloon shot out of a side street and ploughed into the jeep. There was a microsecond’s pause and then both vehicles disappeared in a volcano of smoke and flame as a car bomb detonated.

  The SAS men were some distance from it, but the force of the blast was still powerful enough to lift the Pinkie off the ground. As it thudded back down, bottoming the springs, Geordie whistled. ‘Jesus H Christ,’ he said. ‘If we’d been ten seconds earlier, that could have been us.’

  Jimbo merely twitched the wheel to swerve around the blazing wreckage and put his foot down a little harder, bumping over some debris and scraping the wall of the neighbouring building to get past in a shower of sparks, close enough to feel a brief flash of searing heat from the inferno.

  As the Pinkie crested the last rise and the Inter-Continental came into view, the SAS men could hear the rattle of gunfire above the noise of the engine and saw dark figures outlined by their headlights and the handful of lights still burning in the hotel lobby. They could see the security guards inside the hotel and a few Afghan police outside trying to engage the terrorists. There were muzzle flashes from a score of weapons and they heard the whoosh as a rocket-propelled grenade was fired, followed instantly by the crump of the explosion as it detonated. Shepherd brought his GPMG to bear on the two terrorists who had fired the RPG, loosing off a short burst that ripped through them like a buzz saw.

  The Pinkie screeched to a halt and Jock and Geordie, and then Jimbo, added their firepower to Shepherd’s. There was a sudden slackening of the firing from the terrorists and they began to pull back, though whether this was in reaction to the SAS men’s arrival or because they were making a planned, tactical withdrawal was not clear.

  A moment later a figure in a burqa holding a baby in her arms ran out of the darkness towards the hotel. The Afghan police and the security guards in the hotel froze for a fatal instant, not sure if this was merely a frightened Afghan woman or something more sinister. There were shouts for her to stop, repeated in Pashtu and English, but by then she was already at the entrance to the lobby, stepping across the threshold over one of the bodies of the dead. The figure held up the bundle as if appealing for help for the baby, but in the next instant, the right arm swept down and there was a blinding flash as the suicide vest was detonated. The body disappeared, evaporated by the force of the blast, taking out at least three security guards. No one would ever know if the figure had been a man or a woman, nor whether he or she had really been carrying a baby or just a doll. Hamid had earned his martyrdom.

  As the suicide bomber disintegrated, the blast was contained by the lobby’s concrete walls and channelled out through the bullet-holed plate-glass windows at the front, creating an ice storm of glass fragments that sparkled in the Land Rover’s headlights. It was a beautiful but deadly sight, a billowing cloud of murderous glass shards lacerating anything and anyone in its path.

  The ground shook as the dull thud of the blast echoed from the walls of the darkened buildings. Dense clouds of black smoke and dust swirled around the SAS men, pierced by the glare of tongues of dull red and orange flames licking around the blown-out windows.

  The terrorists emerged from the shadows again and renewed their attack with even greater ferocity. Only a couple of security guards were still fighting back and had the SAS men not arrived, the terrorists would now have been running through the hotel corridors, hunting down any Westerners. Instead, while Jock and Geordie kept up suppressing fire from their GPMGs, Shepherd and Jimbo dived from the Pinkie and began to take out individual targets with their AK-47s, firing and moving, diving and rolling through the dust, using double taps and short, targeted bursts against the wild automatic fire coming from the terrorists.

  Knowing that without armour to protect them they were sitting ducks for an RPG, their two patrol mates fired another burst from their GPMGs, then dived clear of the Pinkie and also began taking out Taliban targets with double taps. The noise of gunfire was deafening and the darkness and the swirling smoke and dust made identifying friend from foe even more difficult, but with a ruthless, clinical efficiency born of years of training and close-quarter combat, the SAS men picked off enemy after enemy. The Taliban were brave enough, emerging from cover to run straight at the guns of the SAS men, firing as they ran, but their rudimentary training made them no match for the most deadly fighting men in the world.

  The firing eventually slowed and then stopped, all the visible terrorists having been eliminated. Shepherd waited another few seconds, scanning the area for movement, then wiped the cold sweat from his brow and shot a glance at the others.

  Geordie was already on his feet, at once turning his attention to the casualties littering the hotel approaches. A gifted medic, he had applied for Selection to the SAS because the Regiment’s constant involvement in ops and combat offered the best opportunities to develop his skills in his specialist area: battlefield trauma.

  The nearest casualty was an Afghan, a woman whose bad luck it had been to be passing the hotel’s security post as the Taliban launched their attack. Geordie felt for a pulse in her neck, then shook his head and prepared to move on to the next casualty. She was beyond help.

  Scanning their surrounds and the roof above them, dimly outlined in a deeper black against the night sky, Jock and Jimbo stayed in defensive positions, alert for any suspicious shape or hint of movement that might herald a suicide bomber stepping out of the darkness, or a sniper preparing to take a shot.

  A crowd had begun to form immediately the firing had ceased, as if that was the signal they had been awaiting, drawn by the bomb blast and the gunfire like moths to a flame. Many of their faces were contorted with hate, though whether that was directed at the Westerners or the Taliban bombers was not immediately clear. Most were probably just curiosity seekers or relatives of hotel employees anxiously waiting for news of them, but Shepherd and his team stayed alert – there might have been more suicide bombers or Taliban gunmen using the crowd for cover.

  A truckload of infantry had now arrived, members of the Royal Anglian Regiment who were stationed on the outskirts of Kabul and had only just arrived in-country. From their youthful faces, nervous expressions and jittery movements it seemed they were experiencing their first posting to a war zone and were not enjoying the experience. Their NCOs shouted, cajoled and bullied them into some sort of defensive line and they then began to expand the perimeter, trying to push the crowd back, away from the casualties and the devastated hotel.

  Afghan interpreters relayed the NCOs’ orders to the crowd. There was no time for niceties. Any Afghan who showed any hesitation when told to move back would be shoved out of the way or flattened if he resisted. Anyone who looked even slightly suspicious, whether through his expression, his posture or even the drape of his clothes, was told to raise his hands above his head. And any movement of the hands towards the body, rather than up and away, would be interpreted as an attempt to reach a weapon or trigger a suicide vest and the man would be shot without warning.

  Not altogether trusting the skills of the infantrymen, Jock and Jimbo kept a wary eye on the crowd while Geordie and Shepherd continued to tend to the wounded. In the flickering light from the fires they saw several men, their faces masked with blood, sprawling or staggering around. One had a neck wound from which blood was pouring. A security guard was rolling around on the ground, screaming in pain as blood spurted from his knee, another was rocking himself like a child, and a third dazedly crawled around on his hands and knees. The rest of the street was littered with bodies and severed limbs.

  Shattered glass from the hotel lobby crunched underfoot as Geordie and Shepherd moved between the casualties. Blood drenched them as they tried to staunch the wounds, until their hands were slippery with it. As Shepherd moved from one casualty to the next, he stumbled and tripped on a severed limb that went skittering
across the street with a hollow, rattling sound. He stooped to pick it up and found that he was holding a wooden leg. There seemed to be scores more, scattered across the street, among the bloodied limbs and body parts of genuine casualties.

  Geordie had also picked up a wooden arm. ‘What kind of fucking sick joke is this?’ he said, throwing it down in disgust.

  Shepherd pointed up the side street next to the hotel, where a ramshackle, mud-brick and corrugated-iron workshop had taken the full force of the blast from the lobby. ‘They must have come from there,’ he said. ‘Afghanistan’s only growth industry: prosthetic limbs for people crippled by landmines, IEDs, bombs and RPGs.’

  There was a brutal pecking order for casualties, based on the speed at which they might die without treatment. Even though blood was still pumping from the security guard’s severed leg, Geordie left him to Shepherd and went to the man with the neck wound first. A piece of glass from the bomb had ripped through the man’s neck, tearing away the flesh, but miraculously it hadn’t severed the arteries. ‘You’re going to be all right,’ Geordie said to the man. ‘Believe it or not, today was your lucky day, because if the wound had been a few millimetres deeper, you’d already be dead.’ He pressed the flap of skin and flesh back into place and covered it with a shell dressing. ‘Hold that in place until the army medics arrive,’ he said, already running to the next victim.

  The guard on the ground was still writhing and screaming in pain. His leg below the knee ended in a ragged stump from which blood was still spurting. Shepherd ripped the man’s trouser leg to fully expose the wound, then clamped a tourniquet around his thigh, trying not to rush, even though there were still more casualties waiting. He was very conscious of his lack of cover and the continuing sound of gunfire as Jock and Jimbo engaged further Taliban fighters who kept emerging from the shadows. Fortunately, their fire was ragged and often unaimed, coming blind from behind low walls or around the corners of buildings, but it would only take one lucky shot.

  Shepherd pushed that thought away and ran to the next victim, a security guard who had been blown off his feet and was wounded by shrapnel and badly burned by the suicide bomb. As Shepherd approached him, the man hauled himself to his feet and, still clutching his weapon, began staggering towards the crowd. The consequences of this badly wounded and disorientated man blundering into a hostile crowd while holding a loaded weapon did not bear thinking about. He had to be stopped. Shepherd sprinted towards him, ignoring catcalls and a couple of stones thrown from the crowd still pressing against the infantry cordon, despite all the threats and warnings that had been issued.

  He grabbed the man’s arm. ‘You’re all right. Let me have your rifle.’ As he turned him away from the crowd he saw the scale of the burns to the man’s face. He’d clearly been close enough to the blast to be flash blinded and deafened by the explosion, and his face and body had also been shredded by shrapnel and flying glass so that his uniform was soaked in blood. He stood there, staring wildly around him, the rifle still grasped in his hands, but he obviously had no idea what had happened to him or where he was. Shepherd shouted at him again, trying to make him understand, but the guard couldn’t see Shepherd’s face and his voice must have sounded as meaningless to his blast-ravaged ears as the buzzing of a wasp.

  Shepherd moved closer and laid what he hoped was a reassuring hand on the guard’s arm, then stretched slowly across him, watching his face all the time, and with the other hand clicked on the safety catch of the guard’s rifle and then pulled it gently out of his hands. He turned the man around and began walking him back towards the hotel, away from the yelling crowd, then sat him down to wait for the army medics.

  There was now only one remaining unexamined casualty – another security guard, who must have been the closest to the suicide bomber when he detonated his bomb. He had been blown out of the hotel entrance by the force of the blast. He lay sprawled on the ground immediately in front of the crowd.

  Shepherd saw one Afghan man, and then another, lean forward between two of the hapless infantrymen and spit on the body before melting back into the crowd. A security guard emerged from the wreckage of the hotel and stood staring down at one of the dead with a look of horror on his face. Shepherd hurried over to him. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Eric,’ said the man, his voice a hoarse whisper. ‘Eric Kirkland.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Eric nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Give me a hand, will you? I think your mate there is past help, but I’m damned if I’m going to leave his body there for those bastards to spit on.’

  When they reached the body, Shepherd waved the crowd back, reinforcing the message with the butt of his rifle. He turned to two of the infantrymen, who were staring at him open-mouthed. They might have been recent recruits, but they already knew enough of the army to suspect that this scruffy, bearded soldier must be part of the legendary SAS. ‘Do whatever it takes to keep these fuckers away from the casualty while we get it out of here,’ he said.

  Either through an injection of courage or out of fear of him, the infantrymen began forcing the crowd back again. A glance at the casualty was enough to confirm that he was beyond all help. Both arms had been blown off in the blast – black flies were already clustering around the bloodied stumps – and the security guard’s head was so charred by burns that even his own mother would not have recognised him. A smouldering flak jacket still encased the upper body, but although it had stopped the explosion from ripping the torso apart, it hadn’t absorbed or deflected the blast and every bone and organ within had been destroyed.

  Shepherd and Eric stooped to pick up the corpse. Lifting a body in which every bone is fractured and every organ ruptured was like trying to pick up a blancmange with a pair of pliers. Every time they tried to lift it, the weight lurched from side to side, like water in a waterbed, and they couldn’t maintain their grip. Each time they dropped it there were laughs and jeers from the crowd.

  Eventually Shepherd pulled a length of timber from among the rubble left by the blast to use as a precarious stretcher. By this time Eric looked close to passing out. He kept his head turned to the side, away from the body, and beneath the streaks of dirt and soot his face was the colour of candle wax, while a nerve was tugging at the corner of his eye.

  He struggled to help Shepherd manhandle the body onto the makeshift stretcher, but eventually they succeeded. ‘You take the front,’ Shepherd said, reckoning that at least that way Eric would have his back to the body.

  As they picked it up again and began to move away, towards the wreckage of the hotel lobby, the crowd bayed like football supporters taunting the opposition. Eric swung round to stare at the crowd, the tic now even more pronounced. ‘Fucking animals,’ he said. ‘Fucking animals.’

  Shepherd kept his voice quiet and level. ‘Just ignore them,’ he said. ‘He’s dead. He’s beyond being upset by them. Don’t let them get to you.’

  Eric’s mouth worked silently as he stared at the mob, but when Shepherd said ‘Move!’ he helped him carry the body into the lobby. Shepherd swept the broken glass and debris from a marble-topped coffee table with his arm and they laid the security guard’s smouldering body on it, a thin spiral of smoke still rising from his flak jacket. They stepped back, wiping the blood and dirt from their hands.

  Astonishingly, Shepherd saw that one of the hotel staff, a pretty Asian girl, was standing behind the reception desk in the middle of the wrecked lobby, apparently unmarked save for a trickle of blood from scratches on her forehead. When the firing stopped, she had waited a few more minutes and then emerged from her hiding place just as Shepherd and the guard came into the lobby with the body. The night wind was blowing through the gaping window frames and she was shivering from cold and fright.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Shepherd said.

  ‘It’s Jasmine.’

  ‘My mates call me Spider, Jasmine. OK, look, the worst is over now, but you’re bound to be in shock. If the
re’s anywhere in this wreck you can find some strong, sweet tea or coffee, now’s the moment to get it. Then you need to find a place where you can sit down – ideally somewhere that isn’t covered in blood and broken glass. All right?’

  As he said it, he heard a faint crackling sound and the smell of scorching flesh again filled his nostrils. Jasmine gave a blood-chilling, hysterical scream, pointing a shaking finger behind him. He whipped around to find that the corpse they had laid on the coffee table was ablaze. The wind blowing through the lobby had reignited the dead man’s flak jacket, which was now burning fiercely. Shepherd sprinted across the lobby, tore a shrapnel-shredded hanging from the wall and smothered the flames with it, the stink of burned wool merging with the smell of charred flesh.

  Jasmine had stopped screaming but she and Eric were both standing there white-faced, mouths gaping open as they stared at the body.

  Shepherd whipped around again at a noise from the rear of the lobby, his weapon following his gaze while his thumb nudged the change lever and his finger tightened on the trigger of the AK-47. He relaxed as he saw it was a bodyguard for one of the political or military bigwigs, peering around the corner, checking if it was safe for them to emerge from the bombproof incident room in the basement to which they’d retreated when the attack began.