Moving Targets_An Action-Packed Spider Shepherd SAS Novel

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Nonetheless, those are our orders. I hear what you say, but the timelines have been imposed by CENTCOM – US Central Command - who are only able to provide us with one hour’s on-call close air support. Two squadrons - yourselves and G Squadron – will be involved, flying in two waves in six Hercs.’

  ‘Involving two squadrons is just not sustainable,’ Shepherd said. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, there are only four SAS squadrons. Given that one is permanently deployed on counter-terrorist duty and another on QRF, if you deploy the other two together, then when you rotate the first two, the others have to replace them, so there’s no room for anyone to rest or retrain – and if we don’t keep training, our skill levels drop, and they are what separates us from the rest.’

  ‘Granted, granted,’ the CO said, ‘but the two squadrons will only be involved for the brief duration of the op. At its conclusion, G Squadron will return to their normal routine at Hereford. Right,’ he said, hurrying on, ‘I’ve talked it through at length with the Head Sheds in Hereford and Northwood, and this is the plan we’ve formulated. Air Troop will HALO jump into the desert to secure and mark out a Temporary Landing Zone for the Hercs. After landing, both squadrons – one hundred and twenty men using twenty-eight Pinkies, eight scout motorcycles and two ACMAT mother ships – will drive to the Forming-Up Point. G Squadron will set up a fire support base ready to engage the al-Qaeda defences from standoff range and American aircraft will destroy the opium stores. Using the cover of the air strikes and the fire from the FSB, the other squadron – you – will assault the base, overwhelm the defenders, take prisoners for interrogation and then sweep the site for intelligence materials. Under continuing cover from the FSB, you will then withdraw from contact, followed by G Squadron.’ He paused and began reading from his briefing sheet. ‘Now, weaponry: the Fire Support Team will have the standard M2 Browning heavy machine guns and GPMGs on the Pinkies, plus 81mm mortars, MILAN anti-tank missiles and Mk 19 grenade launchers.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Shepherd said. ‘MILANs great. We’re not going to be encountering any tanks but with a range of three kilometres and a joystick to guide them, a good crew will be able to put them right into those cave mouths. The Mk 19 grenade launchers are a great close support weapon too, up to a range of eight hundred metres, but they fire at sixty rounds a minute on rapid fire so they need a shitload of ammo to feed them, which may be an issue. So that’s all good, but the 81mm mortars? Sure, they’ve got a three kilometre range, but they go up thousands of feet - there’s a time of flight of thirty seconds - and that means we can’t fire them into caves, so why would we want to take them on this op?’

  ‘Spider’s right,’ Jock said. ‘And if there’s an aircraft over the target you can’t fire the mortars anyway, and in fact artillery and everything else has to stop as well. We can’t even fire the GPMGs because although they have a very low trajectory, there’s a danger from ricochets.’

  ‘I’ve noted your comments,’ the CO said, ‘and of course you’re free to choose your own personal weapons for the op, but G Squadron, not you, will be manning the fire support base and they will make the decisions about what weapons they’ll deploy. Agreed?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘Agreed, though of course if it all goes tits up because the Fire Support hasn’t done its job properly, it won’t be G Squadron that has to face the consequences, will it?’

  The CO made a fussy gesture with his hand, as if brushing Shepherd’s awkward comments aside. ‘Now, one final point. The aim, as always, is to minimise our own casualties and with that in mind, all troopers will be issued with Strike plate-carrier body armour and the new MSA TC-2000 US helmets.’

  ‘To hell with that,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’ve tested both of those. The body armour weighs a ton and is uncomfortable to wear, slowing us down in the field, and while the helmets obviously provide protection to the head and neck, they also reduce vision and hearing to unacceptable levels. We need to be able to see our enemy and we need to be able to hear what’s going on around us, so as far as we’re all concerned, that’s a non-starter.’

  ‘It isn’t up for negotiation,’ the CO said. ‘The decision has already been reached at a level well above my paygrade, never mind yours, so that is what will be happening and any man who does not wear his body armour and helmet will be RTU’d.’ He paused, studying each man’s face in turn. ‘Any other questions? Then let’s get going, because we don’t have much time. The op is scheduled for the day after tomorrow.’ That provoked a fresh outburst from Jock, but the CO was already heading out of the door.

  They used the remaining twenty-four hours to prepare as well as they could for the op, putting in hours on their improvised firing range honing their close-quarter battle skills, and discussing and visualising every conceivable ‘What if’ so that whatever events might occur, their reaction would be swift and effective. Hopefully.

  CHAPTER 8

  The night before the op, the two squadrons assembled at Bagram for the final briefing, G Squadron having flown in from Hereford earlier that day. The men from Air Troop who would be making the High Altitude Low Opening insertion were all members of Shepherd’s own squadron. Although they were usually away on specialised training or ops, they knew each other well enough to exchange greetings and banter, and Shepherd had actually been through SAS Selection with four of them. As with the rest of the Regiment, they were all known by nicknames: Lefty’s was a reference to his left-handedness, not his political affiliations; Jeeves had briefly worked as a butler in civilian life; Abs’s was a semi-sarcastic tribute to the six-pack he worked so hard to maintain; and Feral was named for his untameable hair and beard, and the way that even the smartest clothes looked scruffy as soon as he put them on.

  There was a three-quarter moon that night, an uncomfortable light for a covert insertion, so Air Troop had to wait until the moon was setting before their Herc pilot took off from Bagram. By the time they reached the drop zone, the only light came from the stars dusting the sky above them. The aircraft was flying at over 20,000 feet and even at ground level the temperature was close to freezing, but when the green light signalling ‘Go’ came on, none of Air Troop’s men hesitated for a second before launching themselves into the darkness where the slipstream pummelled and tore at them. Paras would normally jump one at a time to avoid the risk of becoming entangled in each other’s harness and rigging, but the men of Air Troop were so confident and so supremely skilled that they hurled themselves out of the Herc simultaneously in a bomb-burst formation, giving them enough room to manoeuvre but with the certainty that they would land within close margins of each other.

  They plummeted earthwards for 16,000 feet before their altitude sensors automatically triggered their chutes at 4,000 feet. However, one man’s chute failed to open automatically and by the time he had used the manual control to deploy it, he was so close to the ground that he broke his ankle on landing. The troop’s medic immobilised his foot and gave him a morphine shot while the others began checking the area.

  The site had been chosen on the basis of air reconnaissance imaging that showed roughly level and solid-looking ground, but Air Troop immediately began testing the ground to make sure it was hard enough to withstand the impact of a succession of Hercules landing and taking off again. They then marked out the landing strip, an area of desert a little over 250 metres long and only twelve metres wide. It was far shorter than a conventional runway, but just long enough for the skilled pilots of the SF Squadron to make a successful landing and take-off.

  Air Troop signalled that all was in readiness and within an hour the sound of aircraft engines – a bass rumble like distant thunder – announced the arrival of the first wave of the massive Hercules transports. Lefty and Abs guided them in using infrared torches. The Hercs took it in turn to make a rolling pass along the temporary runway, their loading ramps already lowered, allowing the SAS Pinkies they carried to speed down the ramps before the Hercs took off again.

  As each patrol
cleared the landing strip, they immediately went into all-round defence. They remained in their positions, alert for any sign that the mission had been compromised, until the Hercs returned from Bagram an hour later, bringing in the second wave of SAS men and their vehicles. Once the last group had deplaned, they formed up into two columns with four men on Kawasaki dirt bikes as lead scouts, roaming ahead of each column to prove the route and watch for any sign of enemy ambush. They were followed by the Pinkies, with the ACMAT trucks that were acting as ‘mother ships’ bringing up the rear. Piled high with fuel, water and mountains of ammunition, they were so heavily laden that they were bottoming on their springs.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jock said, impressed despite himself as he saw the column of vehicles stretching away in front and behind them. ‘I bet there hasn’t been an SAS op on this scale since the Second World War.’

  Despite the darkness, made worse by the fine dust thrown up by the vehicles ahead of them, they drove over 100 kilometres across the desert to a pre-planned Lying-Up Point, screened from direct line of sight of the target by a low ridge. They set up a defensive perimeter and stationed observation points on the ridge to keep watch on the target, then remained in cover until the time to launch the attack. They shivered through the cold of the night, then sweated in the searing desert heat as the sun rose higher in the sky.

  At ten o’clock that morning, the engines of the Pinkies roared into life almost as one, tearing apart the stillness of the day as they moved to the start line. They set out at once and as they cleared the ridge their target came into sight just over a mile away: a group of low stone buildings within a compound at the foot of a rocky, near-vertical cliff face. The compound was surrounded by defensive positions. Throughout the Middle East, instead of digging trenches in rocky terrain the inhabitants built drystone walled enclosures known as ‘sangars’ that would be manned by their defenders in the event of an attack. They punctuated every track and stood at the entrance to every village. Al-Qaeda had brought the tradition with them to Afghanistan and built rings of reinforced sangars to provide cover for their fighters. Here, the cliff curved in an arc to either side of the compound’s defences, protecting it from attack from the north-east, north and north-west; any approach from another direction had to be made up a steep slope strewn with scree and fallen boulders from the cliffs above. The only way in for vehicles was a dirt track winding between two huge boulders – an obvious ambush point and potential deathtrap.

  As soon as they broke cover, the pall of dust thrown up by the vehicles marked them out to the enemy, who immediately began launching RPGs at them. G Squadron manoeuvred into position and began returning fire with their heavy weapons. Crews with M2 Browning heavy machine guns and GPMGs put down a barrage of fire while others launched MILAN missiles at the strongpoints and cave entrances, and still others fired the belt-fed Mark 19 grenade launchers that rained down grenades like hail. They kept pouring down suppressing fire onto the enemy, while SAS snipers armed with L82A1 Barrett rifles moved covertly to within a kilometre of the compound. The snipers began taking out individual targets whenever careless or overeager al-Qaeda fighters revealed themselves, some by their muzzle flashes, others rising from cover, ready to take aimed shots they were never to fire.

  Meanwhile, the other SAS squadron, including Shepherd’s patrol, was still roaring onwards to begin the ground assault. Jimbo had the accelerator floored as their Pinkie sped towards the target, sending it bucketing over the ruts with bone-jarring impact, while lurching and swerving from side to side to throw off the enemy’s aim. One Pinkie was less lucky and suffered a direct hit from an RPG. It erupted in a fireball, but the others had no time to contemplate their comrades’ fate as they roared onward. Shepherd was standing upright on the passenger side, firing the Pinkie’s GPMG as they raced towards the foot of the steep slope leading to the compound. As they reached it, Jimbo braked to a savage halt. The vehicle slewed around, skidding in the sand and dust, but before it had even come to a stop, rocking on its springs, the patrol had spilled out into the dead ground. They began scrambling up the rocky, dusty slopes, using every scrap of cover and fire and movement to avoid the torrents of automatic fire from the al-Qaeda fighters in the strongpoints and sangars on the heights above them.

  An instant later, a series of deafening blasts signalled the impact of Maverick missiles fired from a range of ten or twenty kilometres by US Navy F-18 Hornets flying from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf. The missiles turned the opium storage areas into infernos, with belching clouds of oily black smoke almost obscuring the fierce fires burning at their core. Even amongst the heat, smoke and dust of battle, Shepherd could smell the sickly-sweet aroma of burning opium on the wind.

  Within a minute, the scream of fast jets filled the air. The Hornets flashed overhead, making low-level passes and strafing the defences with their rotary cannon. Shepherd’s patrol had advanced rapidly up the east side of the slope and they were forced to dive for cover as one Hornet pilot either mistook their position for an enemy strongpoint or, more likely, as Shepherd thought in the aftermath, was too gung-ho with excitement to care much either way and unleashed a barrage of 20mm cannon shells that smashed into the rocks around them, filling the air with a murderous swarm of jagged rock splinters. Even above the din of combat, Shepherd heard Geordie’s agonised cry as one of the rock splinters sliced his cheek open to the bone. He shouted ‘Geordie! Are you okay?’

  There was a heart-stopping pause before Geordie called out, ‘I’m all right, a scratch is all.’

  ‘Then physician heal thy fucking self,’ Jock said. ‘And be quick about it. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a firefight going on.’ Jock kept giving cover while Geordie patched himself up and Shepherd and Jimbo advanced a few yards further up the slope. They then fired bursts to keep the al-Qaeda heads down as Jock and Geordie, now sporting a blood-soaked field dressing on his cheek, scrambled after them.

  An al-Qaeda machinegun nest – stationed in the gap between two boulders and further protected from frontal attack by a stone and concrete wall linking them – now had the SAS men pinned down, unleashing a hail of fire at any sign of movement. Shepherd and Jimbo tried to fire and move again, but as he broke cover, Shepherd felt a succession of savage blows to his body and was thrown backwards into the cover he had just left. He lay there gasping for breath for a moment, feeling fluid trickling down his thigh. He hurriedly checked himself for wounds and, to his relief, found that an enemy round had smashed into the steel water bottle on his belt. Had the bottle been empty, the bullet could easily have exited through the other side and given him a serious wound in his hip or groin, but it had been full of the water now running down his thigh and that had taken enough momentum off the round for it to do no more than pierce the other side of the bottle and become wedged there.

  He also felt stabs of pain from his chest and ribs and as he examined those, he muttered a silent prayer of thanks for the clumsy body armour he hadn’t wanted to wear but which had just saved his life. Two rounds from something like an AK-47 had smashed into it. The ceramic plates had been driven into his body with such force they had bruised his flesh and threatened to crack his ribs, but they had not been pierced.

  ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers,’ Shepherd said. He spoke into his shoulder mic, giving their position and a sitrep. Within a minute, an American F-14 Tomcat providing close air support had obliterated the strongpoint. The bomb it dropped detonated so close to the SAS men’s own position that they were rocked by the blast wave, but, forewarned, they had wormed their way into deep cover and blocked their ears with their fingers. ‘Good thing it wasn’t that Hornet that nearly wiped us out,’ Jimbo said. ‘He’d probably have bombed us and then dropped ammo and rations to the ragheads up there.’

  Although one strongpoint had been eliminated, there was little let-up in the storm of fire from above and when the neighbouring patrol tried to advance, one trooper was hit by a round in his thigh, below the protection of his bo
dy armour, and was sent sprawling to the ground. Two other troopers sprinted forwards and half carried, half dragged him into cover.

  The RSM in charge of the fire support base, whether concerned that the attack was losing momentum or just desperate for a taste of the action and perhaps a medal for himself, now abandoned the previous plan and led a group of his men forward to join the fighting. His reward was to be hit in the leg by an AK-47 round. Although the wound would increase his chances of a medal, it had been an ill-judged decision to advance, taken by a man famous in the Regiment for his arrogance.

  As he was treated by a G Squadron medic, the close air support aircraft returned to the attack. They kept flying sorties until they had run out of ammunition. By then the volume of enemy firing was beginning to slacken a little under the impact of multiple assaults from the aircraft, the fire support base, the sniper teams and the ground troops who were steadily whittling away the numbers of defenders. MILAN missiles fired directly into the cave mouths had killed the fighters around the entrances and wounded or burst the eardrums of those a little further inside, and no further reinforcements were appearing to aid the hard-pressed defenders as the SAS vice closed around them.

  Jock was first over the top of the slope, lobbing a grenade into an al-Qaeda sangar and then following it the last few feet up the slope. He appeared on the rim of the sangar a heartbeat after the grenade detonated, cleaning out the survivors with staccato double taps that followed so fast on each other they almost sounded like a continuous burst of automatic fire. Geordie was hot on his heels, and Shepherd and Jimbo then breached the next sangar, surprising two al-Qaeda men who scrambled to raise their weapons to meet the threat. Neither succeeded. A third man had thrown down his rifle and raised his right hand as if to surrender, but Shepherd saw his other hand jerk the pin from a grenade dangling from his belt. As he dived towards Shepherd, aiming to blow himself and his enemy to pieces in his final act, Shepherd drilled a double tap through the man’s forehead. He was hurled backwards by the impacts while Shepherd and Jimbo dived over the far side of the trench. They heard the grenade detonate behind them, but, blocked by the thick wall of the sangar, it only added fresh wounds to the body of the already dead al-Qaeda fighter.