Moving Targets_An Action-Packed Spider Shepherd SAS Novel

by Stephen Leather

  Fortunately for the attackers, the defensive positions had not been planned with any sophistication. The dozens of sangars and other fire positions did not have interlocking arcs of fire, and the heavy weapons did not have designated defensive fire targets. Two other patrols had now breached the last ring of defences and together the SAS men began eliminating the remaining visible resistance. The al-Qaeda fighters still outside the caves emerged from cover and began taking on the attackers in open combat. That was not a wise move; they were outgunned and facing men who were infinitely better trained and more highly skilled, so the firefight was only ever going to have one conclusion. However, the al-Qaeda fighters continued to charge at the SAS, firing their weapons until they ran out of ammunition. The last two left alive ran at the nearest SAS men, brandishing knives, until they too were cut down with precise double taps. Shepherd couldn’t decide if they were incredibly brave or simply deluded and believed that death in combat would earn them a place in heaven.

  Using hand signals to communicate, Shepherd and Jimbo then stationed themselves either side of one of the cave entrances and switched on the Maglite torches slung under the barrels of their AKs. Shepherd counted down on his fingers while Jock and Geordie unleashed a barrage of fire into the cave. When he reached ‘zero’, the other two ceased fire and in that same instant Shepherd and Jimbo sprinted into the cave entrance, diving and rolling to throw off the aim of any surviving defenders.

  They found themselves in a chamber carved out of the solid rock. The entrance was littered with bodies, while carpets spread on the floor in the centre of the cave still bore traces of the meal the al-Qaeda fighters had been eating when the attack began. Shepherd took out one enemy, then dived into cover behind the body of another, killed earlier in a MILAN missile blast. As enemy rounds smacked into the corpse, Shepherd rolled to one side and double-tapped another shooter, whose AK-47 carved an arc of impacts upwards into the cave roof, sending ricochets whining in all directions as he fell back, stone-dead. Shepherd dropped back into cover as the ricochets and stone chips filled the air, then sprinted onwards. The echoes of a double tap to his left told him Jimbo had eliminated another fighter.

  They barrelled down a long stone passageway and emerged into another chamber carved out of the mountain, this one lined with crates of weapons and ammunition piled up to the roof. Unbelievably, given the infernal noise of the firefight outside, they found deep in the cave three al-Qaeda fighters who had slept through the whole combat. Shepherd and Jimbo kicked them awake and they opened their eyes to find themselves looking down the wrong end of two AK-47 barrels. Shepherd kept them covered while Jimbo cable-tied their wrists and ankles. Jock and Geordie had now also arrived, having completed the mopping-up of the first cave, and they dragged the three captives outside, ready to be taken back to Bagram for interrogation.

  Shepherd and Jimbo had meanwhile begun a sweep of the cave, gathering up two laptops and a sheaf of papers stacked on a weapons crate the al-Qaeda fighters had been using as a table. They then began searching the bodies of the dead for mobile phones and found three, which they added to their haul. They also checked the faces of the dead, but recognised none of the al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders they had seen in photographs circulated in intelligence briefings. ‘Well Muj 1 definitely wasn’t here,’ Shepherd said. ‘Nor any of his top echelon.’

  ‘And given the lack of senior commanders here, I doubt if the intel from that little lot will justify the risks and casualties we took,’ Jimbo said.

  Shepherd nodded. ‘But I tell you what, even if all this lot contains is their search history on Amazon, by the time Tony Brown-Nose’s spin doctor has got hold of it, I’ll bet this will be hailed as the greatest cache of intelligence material since the capture of an Enigma machine in World War Two.’

  With the search complete, they joined their comrades in forming a defensive perimeter while SAS demolition experts entered the caves and laid charges of plastic explosive to destroy the arsenal of weapons and ammunition Shepherd and Jimbo had found. With the charges laid, they pulled back to the slopes below the cave entrance, shielded from the shock waves and any rocks dislodged by the blast. When the charges were detonated, there was a deep bass rumble and Shepherd felt the ground lurch beneath him. Smoke and flames jetted from the cave entrances and debris spattered down on the slopes around them. When the smoke cleared, the cave entrances had completely disappeared, replaced by a broken jumble of rocks.

  They pulled back to their vehicles and moved out in a phased withdrawal. Some of the Pinkies had been destroyed or damaged in the firefight and those not fit to drive were completely destroyed by the SAS demolitions men, rendering even their parts unsalvageable by the Taliban. The remaining vehicles had SAS men clinging to the outside of the doors and the rear bumpers as they drove back towards the TLZ at a more leisurely pace than when they’d made the journey in the opposite direction.

  Back at Bagram later that afternoon they carried out a debrief, a noisy and fractious process with many SAS troopers angry about an op that had brought so little tangible reward and cost them six casualties in addition to the two who had died when their Pinkie had been hit by an RPG. The CO remained imperturbable, describing the op as a triumph in the best traditions of the Regiment. I don’t underplay our own casualties - even one is one too many - but when we compare that with enemy losses … ’ He paused and studied a sheet of paper he was clutching. ‘We killed ninety-three terrorists and captured three more, together with a priceless cache of intelligence material.’

  ‘Now I know you’re talking bullshit,’ Jock said, his face puce with anger. ‘None of us were counting bodies before we pulled out, and if you’ve been hit by a Maverick or a MILAN missile there’s precious little left to count anyway, so don’t tell us “ninety-three enemy dead” and expect us to believe it. Don’t make me laugh. It’s like US bodycounts in Vietnam: exactly ninety-three dead and all of them terrorists, including the babies.’

  ‘And where was Muj 1 and the other al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in all this?’ Geordie said, backing up his mate. ‘Nowhere to be bloody seen, as we suspected. We didn’t do this op for intel, or to take out terrorists leaders, or even for ninety-three dead terrorists. We did it because our prime minister wanted something – anything – that he could wave at his new best friend in the White House to show we were playing our part.’

  The debrief broke up in acrimony soon afterwards. G Squadron flew out that night, heading back to Hereford, but for Shepherd’s patrol it appeared there was to be no early exit from Afghanistan and to their disgust they found themselves back in their compound on the far side of the base, still on QRF duty. Shepherd explored his tender ribs with his fingers and then gingerly eased off his shirt and examined himself in the cracked mirror dangling from a rusty nail in the doorpost of their hut. There was a large purpling bruise on the right side of his ribs and another one directly over his heart. ‘Too close for comfort that one,’ Geordie said. ‘If it hadn’t been for the body armour, we’d have been inscribing a new name on the plinth of the regimental clock.’

  The post-op debrief had taken place under conditions of maximum security – ‘Top Secret: UK Eyes Only’, the highest possible classification – yet within forty-eight hours the story of the raid had been plastered all over the pages of the newspapers. A copy of that day’s front page of The Sun was faxed through to Bagram from Hereford and Jimbo brought it over to the others while they were sitting in the last rays of the afternoon sun, wondering what the night might bring.

  ‘Take a look at that,’ Jimbo said, tossing it down in front of Jock. He picked it up, his scowl deepening as he read the headline: VCs ALL ROUND FOR SAS HEROES. The story was sensationalised almost beyond recognition. It claimed that the HALO jump had been ‘the first ever HALO jump into enemy territory by the SAS under combat conditions’ - which, as Jock sourly noted, ‘is perfectly true if you don’t count the one the Regiment did into up-country Aden way back in 1965, and the further insertion i
nto the Musandam Peninsula in Oman in the 1970s.’

  ‘Blimey Jock, if you were in on those, you’re even older than you look,’ Geordie said, with a wink to the others.

  ‘I heard it from the Old and Bold who were there,’ Jock said, refusing to rise to the bait, ‘but I guess dressing this one up as if it was the first is just part of the Whitehall sales pitch to the media.’

  The Sun story ended by quoting the same ludicrous figure for terrorists killed and other details that only someone who had witnessed the debrief – or had read the report circulated only to the most senior military commanders and the prime minister – could have known. ‘What a pile of bollocks,’ Jock said, tossing it aside. ‘The only true bit is where they said the op took place in Afghanistan.’

  Shepherd picked it up and quickly scanned it. ‘I notice the RSM gets a prominent mention,’ he said, ‘and that’ll not hurt his medal chances, but for once I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, because this has the fingerprints of the PM’s spin doctor all over it.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ Jock said. ‘After all, like Geordie said in the debrief, what’s the point of getting us to risk our lives attacking some low-grade target the Yanks could have flattened with a couple of cruise missiles, if you can’t brag about it afterwards to your new Texan best friend?’

  As its headline suggested, the Sun article was calling for Victoria Crosses and other medals to be dispensed liberally among the SAS men who had carried out the raid, but none of them believed that was ever likely to happen. Sure enough, when the CO announced the decorations for the raid, there was only a DSO for him and the Military Cross for the two squadron commanders. The other ranks – even the wounded RSM – got nothing, not even a mention in dispatches.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sabit Kusen had remained in Afghanistan for only a few months. Al-Qaeda was coming under increasing pressure from the Americans and their allies, who were bombing and rocketing them out of a succession of their former strongholds. At first the leaders and a group of battle-hardened fighters, including Sabit, were forced to take refuge in the White Mountains and the Tora Bora caves. There he was introduced to a tall, hook-nosed man known to his followers simply as ‘The Leader’, a devout, ascetic individual with a punishing personal regime of fasting and prayer. When the Americans began bombing and then attacking the Tora Bora caves too, Sabit was part of the small group of bodyguards that formed an escort for The Leader as he fled through the snows of the high mountain passes to a refuge in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan.

  Once safely there, Sabit put a proposal to him. In return for a pledge of funding for his own particular aims, Sabit volunteered to pick up the torch of jihad and take the war once more to the great cities of the faranji imperialists. He would strike at some of the highest-profile targets in the world, planning and carrying out the attacks himself, but leaving The Leader and al-Qaeda to claim all the credit for them.

  Two weeks later, armed with a letter of introduction from The Leader, Sabit left Pakistan using forged documents supplied by an al-Qaeda sympathiser in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. He flew to Saudi Arabia, where he was met by an al-Qaeda contact at the airport in Jeddah and then driven deep into the desert to a nomad encampment. It was so lavishly equipped and its black tents were surrounded by so many gleaming, top-of-the-range SUVs, it was clear that the occupants were no ordinary nomads.

  Although they shared his religion, his hosts were at first suspicious, even hostile, and when he produced the letter from The Leader, even though it caused a noticeable thaw in the atmosphere, they remained dubious about Sabit’s value to them.

  ‘Allah be praised, we have our own army of fighters and martyrs,’ their leader said. ‘Why should we pay you and your men to fight for us?’

  ‘The bravery and the success of you and your fighters has echoed around the world,’ Sabit said, applying a generous coating of honey to his words. ‘But your success has put the infidels on their guard. Arabs are the object of suspicion wherever they go, whereas our people are still seen merely as tourists or businessmen. I look like any other Chinese and no one sees me as a threat. I can go where you cannot and pass in a crowd without arousing a trace of suspicion. The Americans and their running dogs are stupid. They think all terrorists are Arabs. While they are searching men in Arab robes, we will be at work. And when the time is right, inshallah, we shall strike blows at the infidels from which they will not recover. We do not yet seek publicity for our own cause – quite the reverse. So, if you agree, we will carry out the actions, but you will claim the credit for al-Qaeda and the glory of Allah.’

  Looking around the group, measuring the impact of his words, he knew he had them and a deal was soon agreed. Sabit would mount successive operations against two of the highest-profile targets in the West. In return, al-Qaeda’s Saudi backers would provide him with funding for a further spectacular operation of his own, against another equally high-profile target, but with one important difference. This time the victims would not be Western capitalists and imperialists, but the cruel oppressors of his own people.

  Sabit was already plugged into a network of exiles from his homeland, a worldwide web of contacts among whom were young men bent on avenging themselves against their persecutors, as well as older ‘sleepers’ apparently fully assimilated into their new countries’ customs and ways of life, but also awaiting a call to action against their people’s oppressors. Other menial recruits – cannon fodder – were supplied by his Saudi mentors. These young Muslims from a variety of countries, poor and ill-educated, were willing to martyr themselves for a combination of reasons: religious devotion, dreams of the seventy-two virgins awaiting them in paradise, and a more practical desire to provide their families with money they could never generate from a life of toil. The Saudi backers also provided Sabit with a desert training camp where he could prepare his troops for the first of the battles to come.

  The training programme he devised – based on his own special forces training and the more unorthodox but equally effective methods of the mafia’s enforcers – included enough physical-fitness work to sharpen their reactions and condition them to unquestioning obedience to his orders. There was no need for more fitness conditioning than that; they were not regular troops and would not be marching into battle or travelling long distances across country to reach their targets.

  They were also trained in unarmed combat and the use of firearms, including close-range drills and the handling of explosives. Before going into action, each man would be issued with a necklace and wristbands of detonating cord; a handheld device activated by a ‘dead man’s hand’ trigger would detonate the explosive when the pressure on it was released, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Al-Qaeda did not care whether their men were recognised after death, but Sabit had powerful reasons for not revealing the identities of his own recruits. His plan depended on the oppressors of his people remaining unaware that they were his ultimate target until it was too late to do anything to stop him.

  CHAPTER 10

  In the aftermath of the raid on the al-Qaeda base in Afghanistan, Shepherd and his patrol mates were still stuck at Bagram, doing fitness training, practising their skills and counting down the days until the end of their period on QRF. ‘Just six more days,’ Jock said, ‘and then they’ll have to send us back to Hereford for some R & R. I’ve been away so long, I’ve forgotten what my missus looks like.’

  ‘Believe me, Jock,’ Geordie said. ‘That’s a good thing.’

  Jimbo’s laughter turned into a groan as he saw the OC – Officer Commanding – walking across the compound towards them. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Just when you think things can’t get any worse.’

  They answered in monosyllables as the OC made uneasy small talk about the weather and the state of the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, waiting for him to reveal the real purpose of his visit. ‘You men have already gone above and beyond on this posting,’ he said, ‘and you’re
certainly overdue for some leave.’

  ‘But?’ Shepherd said, after waiting in vain for the OC to come to the point.

  The OC gave a nervous smile. ‘There’s always a but, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is with you,’ Jock growled. ‘So spit it out.’

  ‘Well … the departing general in command of British forces in Afghanistan has planned a large-scale sweep-and-search operation south-west of Herat, near the Iranian border. The area has supposedly long been pacified and so has not been visited by troops for several months. The op is the general’s pet project, if you like, his own last hurrah before heading home as well as a welcome present for his successor.’

  ‘Or possibly he’s jealous of the kudos and publicity generated by our raid on that al-Qaeda base,’ Geordie said, ‘and wants a bit of publicity for himself.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ the OC said, his forced smile beginning to crumble around the edges, ‘the general has insisted that every available man should be rounded up for the operation, even if it means that the patrol bases are left undermanned.’

  ‘Great,’ Jock said. ‘So he’s going to round up anyone capable of standing upright and holding a rifle, which means half the soldiers drafted into the op are going to be from rear echelon units with minimal infantry skills and little or no battle experience.’

  The OC gave a tight smile. ‘The general is also insistent that all the special forces in country must take part in the operation.’