Moving Targets_An Action-Packed Spider Shepherd SAS Novel

by Stephen Leather

  Every few yards Shepherd held up his hand and stopped, remaining motionless as he listened, watched and scented the air, alert for the tiniest sign that an enemy might be lying in wait. The dense undergrowth appeared impenetrable but, like his patrol mates, he had learned to look through, rather than at the undergrowth. It could be a life-saving skill, revealing the shadowy outline of a figure in hiding beyond the fronds and leaves.

  They settled into their jungle routine, familiar to everyone but Rupert, taking drinking water from the many streams they crossed, and marching for fifty minutes and resting for ten minutes in every hour, with the rest period mainly given over to burning off leeches with a cigarette lighter. They made good progress except when Rupert marched blindly into thorn bushes and attempted to force his way through, but was ripping his clothing, equipment and skin to pieces until Shepherd told him to stop. ‘You have to relax if you get caught up in this and take a pace or two backwards to release yourself. We call it the “wait a minute vine”, take your time and it’s harmless, but fight it like you are doing and by last light you will be weak from loss of blood. If you look above your head you will also see how you are making the undergrowth move, that can be spotted miles away by a local or a jungle tracker, so take it easy, okay?’

  Despite Rupert’s problems, they arrived near the target village ahead of schedule and, leaving the others lying up, Shepherd went on a recce. He found a spot on the jungle edge from where he could see the village, its patchwork of crop fields and the surrounding jungle. A large communal building - the village longhouse - with palm leaf sides and a corrugated iron roof, was surrounded by several smaller family houses constructed from the same materials.

  The sides of the large communal building were open to the elements and he could see clearly a large group of Asians, mainly men but with some women, carrying out weapons training. There were also groups of local women and children wandering about the village and pigs and dogs rummaging for titbits, but no men were visible. It did not take him long to spot them. The tribesmen were being used as sentries, but were clearly untrained.

  As Shepherd scanned the jungle fringes, he caught the aroma of local tobacco on the breeze - wrapped in a dried leaf, it was smoked by many of the tribesmen. He looked along the line of the undergrowth and caught sight of a tell-tale plume of smoke less than fifty yards away.

  As he was mentally running through his options, the faint smell of food came drifting from the village and suddenly the sentries started to make their way home, abandoning their posts, moving across a dry rice field, and vaulting over the burnt branches and tree trunks that had been felled to provide the fertiliser to produce the vital crop.

  Shepherd waited until all the men had returned to the village, then made his way back to the rest of the patrol. ‘Fire up the radio, Rupert, will you?’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get a signal off to Swanbourne.’

  Rupert hesitated. ‘I’m afraid I can’t get a signal, Spider. The tree canopy is preventing the signal getting through and hitting the satellite dish.’

  ‘Then why haven’t you connected the end-feed aerial instead of the dish?’ Shepherd said wearily.

  ‘I’ll sort him out, Spider,’ Jimbo said. ‘We haven’t got a lot of time to waste.’ He dug a hand into one of the pouches on his belt and pulled out a fishing weight and a reel of fishing line. ‘Like everything in my belt-kit, Rupert,’ he said, ‘these things are multi-purpose. They’re part of my escape kit and if I’m on the run, I can use them to catch fish, but if I need to put an aerial through the trees I can tie the fishing line to the weight, throw it through the branches and use the line to pull the aerial through. If you’d asked, I’d have sorted it out for you ages ago.’

  Within minutes comms had been established and Spider was speaking to the Adjutant at Swanbourne. He brought him up to speed on the situation around the village and told him that the Herc doing the parachute drop should adjust its heading to avoid some obstacles on the ground. ‘There’s a probability that the drop will be opposed by the terrorists. We’ll attempt to minimise that risk, and in the event of injuries among the parachutists we’ll be able to provide first aid on the DZ.’

  Immediately after ending the call, Shepherd briefed the others. ‘Right guys, it will be dark soon and we need to get a move on. Jimbo, you take Rupert and sit on the edge of the tree-line where you can see the sentry positions of the tribesmen. When the drop starts, if the tribesmen try to interfere, put down suppressing fire. While you’re doing that, Geordie and I will work our way across the rice field to get closer to the terrorists. That’s where the serious opposition will be, but we have got to try to get our hands on the main man. We should have enough moonlight to find our way without making too much noise. It’s a dangerous operation, and once the drop starts everyone will be on full alert, so we’ll have to rely on a little bit of luck going our way.’

  Shortly after first light the tribesmen on sentry duty went back to their posts around the rice field. Hours passed in almost total silence but then the village dogs suddenly started barking. They had heard the Herc in the distance. The innumerable times that Shepherd and his mates had been in cover waiting for a re-supply drop had attuned his ears to the unique sound. The tribesmen, whose ears were accustomed to filtering out the background noises of the jungle, also picked it up, though most of them were probably unaware of what the noise was.

  The last people to hear it were the terrorists. First alerted by the noise of the dogs when they heard the rumble of the Herc’s engine note growing louder as it approached, they came tumbling out of the communal hut. Many of them were carrying their weapons but others were unarmed, and rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

  With a deafening roar the Herc, painted a light grey and with minimal RAAF markings, flew over the village at combat drop height, about 500 feet, with jumpers leaping off the open rear ramp. When five jumpers were in the air, the Herc did a tight bank to the left, turning hard to get back on track and continue the drop.

  There were shouts from the terrorists and those with weapons spread out and started to shoot at the guys hanging below the parachutes. Shepherd and Geordie, comfortably lying across a half-burnt tree trunk began to take out the most dangerous of the terrorist shooters. Suddenly there was a burst of tracer that seared a blinding white track across the sky, moving closer and closer to one of the jumpers.

  ‘There’s a Light Machine Gun behind that tree over there,’ Geordie said.

  ‘He’s mine,’ Shepherd said, taking aim with his FN at the tree. He fired a couple of rounds which went straight through the trunk and the LMG operator staggered back and fell to the ground.

  ‘Bloody hell, I knew the FN was powerful but I didn’t realise it was that heavy duty,’ Geordie said.

  ‘It’s the round that packs the real punch,’ Shepherd said. ‘It’ll knock a hole through a brick wall.’

  They kept picking targets from among the terrorists and in the background they could hear the sound of firing from Jimbo and Rupert, making sure the local sentries kept their heads down and stayed out of the fight.

  In the air the jumpers were frantically pulling down hard on the parachute risers, making the chutes slide quickly sideways through the air, releasing just before hitting the trees for the landing in the tree canopy. Some of the jumpers were lucky enough to land in the rice field where they quickly got their kit together and joined in the battle.

  After the Herc dropped its fifth and final stick of jumpers Shepherd spotted a couple who had become entangled in the forest canopy. Both dazed from the hard impact with the trees, they were hanging limply a couple of hundred feet from the ground. One of the terrorists had also noticed them. He drew his comrades attention to them with loud cries and a group of them began to shoot at the easy targets. Shepherd stood up in full view, shouted to gain their attention and draw their fire, then, with support from Geordie, began to pick off the terrorists one by one. Only when the sounds of battle began to die down did the two jumpers
manage to lower themselves to the ground and were then given a quick medical check by Geordie.

  It took well over an hour before all the paratroopers were accounted for, all of them safe and well except for minor scrapes and bruises. Even with small sticks of five, they had become scattered over a wide area and by the time they arrived at the RV with the British SAS men the fighting was almost over. Once the last terrorist had been killed, Shepherd and his men went through the bodies, but none of them was the man they had glimpsed in Zurich. The Adjutant was keen to carry out a search and sweep in an attempt to locate the terrorist leader, and Shepherd, though he suspected it would be a waste of time, reluctantly agreed.

  The area around the village was littered with dead terrorists. The villagers had fled into the jungle. During the sweep, the patrol found the tracks of a group of terrorists heading away from the village into dense primary jungle. The Adjutant was keen to follow but Shepherd advised caution. ‘They can travel quicker than we can because we have to find and follow their tracks and if we get too close, they can drop a guy or two off to ambush us and delay us even further.’

  Shepherd summoned the HIP helicopter to fly them back to Port Moresby and on arrival he spoke to Jock on the sat phone to discuss their next move. ‘We’ve taken out some of the terrorists,’ Shepherd said, ‘but not the leader and a few others, who all scarpered into the jungle as soon as the firefight started. And we don’t know how many others, including previously trained men and sleepers, he’ll also be able to call on.’

  ‘We’ll have to assume that he has enough men for the job he’s planning,’ Jock said. ‘And I’ve got a fair idea what it might be. There is a Chinese state visit to Australia next week. Several of the head honchos, including the supreme leader, are involved. If you were an Uyghur terrorist looking for a spectacular, that would certainly provide it. Small scale stabbings, shootings and bombings are not going to affect things, but as the old saying goes, cut off the head and the body dies. They can’t get to him in Beijing because the state is too powerful and too well organised, and they’d be betrayed or detected before they’d got within miles of him. So they need to do it on neutral territory and where better than a country that has never witnessed any major terrorist incidents, so its security forces are likely to be lax and complacent?’

  ‘Anything from GCHQ?’ Shepherd said.

  ‘There was a bit of a flurry immediately after the firefight, but now it’s all gone quiet. I reckon he’s worked out that we’re intercepting their comms and imposed radio silence on his men. We’ll have to assume that they’ll be reverting to old-style comms in future - with our luck that’ll be handwritten notes and bloody carrier pigeons.’

  ‘If we’re right that Australia’s the target will they be able to enter the country undetected?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Jock said. ‘They can either fly in among some of the tens of thousands of Chinese tourists that arrive there every year, or they can ship out from Port Moresby or somewhere more discreet, either bribing someone in the Papuan Defence Force to use one of their patrol craft or on board a fishing boat or a tramp steamer. Port Moresby is only seventy-five kilometres from Cape York and the Torres Straits Treaty allows free movement of indigenous people without passports or visas between PNG and the Torres Strait Islands, for fishing, trading or family reunions, so local boats don’t get much in the way of inspections. They could trans-ship to an Australian-registered boat on one of the islands in the Straits - there are plenty to choose from - and then sail into any port they like.’

  ‘So, assuming getting into Australia is no problem, how do they guarantee being able to reach their target when they get there?’

  ‘They’ll already have identified some event that the Chinese leadership has to attend. We’ll need to get the Chinese itinerary from the Aussies and identify likely targets from that. Oh, and from my preliminary conversations with them, the Aussies seem to be adamant that while they don’t mind you guys advising and assisting them, no way do they want you directly involved if anything goes down. Personally I think that’s down to the Aussie inferiority complex, but be careful not to tread too heavily on anybody’s toes.’

  Shepherd grinned. ‘I don’t know what you mean Jock. Me, treading on toes? As if.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ Jock growled. ‘Anyway they’ll have plans for countering terrorist attacks on the major potential targets on the Chinese itinerary, so you need to see them and evaluate them. They will no doubt be comprehensive and expertly thought through, just like ours for the UK, but the question is whether the plans will stand up when the shit hits the fan. Everyone is always happy until plans are put to the test and then they start crapping themselves because they haven’t given them enough attention. I’ll let you go in a minute, but one other thing, Spider. I had a call from the Yorkshire Skunkworks, you know that strange little factory that has come up with a lot of really useful bits of kit over the years. It’s like something out of the nineteenth century: a small forge and all sorts of metal-working tools, I’d swear they’ve even got steam-hammers in there somewhere. They employ highly-skilled old guys who worked in the Sheffield steel industry in the days when there was such a thing, plus a couple of new-fangled techie guys who do all the computer stuff. They’ve come up with a prototype of a harpoon style device designed to penetrate through solid doors or single brick walls. It could be a useful method of entry device because it’s air-powered, so there’s no problem with explosive overpressure damaging people inside the besieged building. However the Skunkworks emphasised that it is a prototype and hasn’t had a lot of testing, so they’re giving us a chance to run the rule over it. I thought the quickest way of getting it to you was by FedEx. It should be with you shortly so keep your eyes open for it. I suggest you get Geordie and Jimbo to test fire it a few times and see if it’s any good.’

  CHAPTER 26

  Later that day the SAS team flew into RAAF Richmond, near Sydney - the base for the Australian Air Force Hercules fleet. Shepherd immediately set up a meeting with Captain Jake Handy, the Intelligence Officer of the Australian SAS counter-terrorist team. They met in a windowless basement room beneath the control tower building, next door to the classified documents registry for the base. It was also the temporary repository for the top secret contingency plans for potential terrorist targets in Canberra and the Greater Sydney area - the only places the Chinese delegation would be visiting.

  Handy spread a number of files on the table. They were dark red in colour with a large black “X” on the front and “TOP SECRET” in capital letters above it. ‘It’s bloody madness, Spider,’ he said. ‘I wrote the bloody files, I gave them the classification I thought they deserved and now I’m not allowed to take the bloody things out of this building. I can tell you word for word what is in each of them but, technically I can’t let you see them. As I said, it’s bloody madness.’ He gave Shepherd a wink and pushed the files across the table. ‘However, as the saying goes, What the eye doesn’t see, the heart can’t grieve over. Fill your boots, mate, and tell me what you think.’

  Shepherd flicked idly through the files. Five had been marked for special attention: “Parliament Building, Canberra”, “Chinese Consulate, Camperdown, Sydney”, “Casino, Sydney”, “Opera House, Sydney” and “Harbour Bridge, Sydney”. ‘I’ll just get a general idea of what you’ve got on each of the potential targets,’ he said, ‘but then my team will do ground recces to get familiar with what’s out there. It’s difficult to assess which of the targets they might go for, but I think we’ll have a much better idea once we’ve had a look on the ground. We know they are ruthless and well prepared, and I suspect they will be looking for maximum publicity for their cause. The death of the Chinese leader would guarantee that, but even more so if it happened in a really prominent place, so there’s no chance of a news blackout being imposed so it’s hushed up or ignored by the media. We saw it in the dry runs they carried out at the Acropolis and the Louvre, and if I’m right about that,
it would make the Harbour Bridge or the Opera House the most likely sites.’ He pushed the files to one side and glanced through the official itinerary. ‘Is this subject to change?’

  ‘No mate, set in stone. It’s even been published in the bloody newspapers. Day One, CT - Capital Territory - Days Two and Three, Sydney. What haven’t been published, obviously, are the security details - the search teams and cordons around the various targets, and so on. But anyone who knows their business will be able to work out what’ll be going on in the background. Even the timings are in the public domain, so people can get to see him, though the only ones who will make the effort will probably be the demonstrators, for and against. I tell you what, mate, there’s going to be plenty of riots and demos. It could get pretty ugly.’

  Shepherd studied the itinerary again, then abruptly stood up. ‘Like I said, we’ll need to carry out a recce on the ground, but on paper, I would say that this is the most plausible site,’ he said, tapping his finger on the last entry on the itinerary. “A gala performance by the Chinese State Opera at the Sydney Opera House”. I presume security is too tight at the Australian Parliament to make that a realistic target?’

  Handy nodded. ‘Fort Knox without the gold, mate.’

  ‘Then the Opera House is the one event you can absolutely guarantee Comrade Chou won’t miss, and you couldn’t have a more iconic place for an assassination.’ He held Handy’s gaze. ‘How can we work together with you on this? As you know, we’ve got a lot of expertise and a lot of recent experience in dealing with his kind of scenario, but obviously we don’t want to be barging in where we’re not welcome.’