Tall Order: The 15th Spider Shepherd Thriller

by Stephen Leather

  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.’

  ‘A beer would be nice!’ shouted one of the troopers.

  ‘A beer would be fucking marvellous,’ agreed Gearie. ‘But you’ll have to settle for water or juice. I don’t need to tell you guys to stay hydrated but please, stay the fuck hydrated.’

  Several of the troopers had clearly been at the base before, as they strode purposefully towards one of the tents. Shepherd and Martin followed them inside. Two large fans supplied a much-needed breeze. Two trestle tables had been covered with white paper tablecloths and bulldog clips fixed to hold them in place. There was a stainless steel tea urn on one table with stacks of white mugs and cartons of milk and the two troopers headed straight for it. On the floor next to the tea urn was a large plastic bowl filled with bottles of water and ice. Martin grabbed a bottle, tossed it to Shepherd, then opened one for himself and drank greedily. Shepherd took several gulps of water but it was tea he really wanted so he went over to the urn and poured himself a mug.

  ‘You Brits really love your tea,’ said Martin.

  ‘Our army marches on it,’ said Shepherd, adding a splash of milk.

  There were two large platters of sandwiches on one of the tables and Shepherd grabbed a couple. Martin followed suit and they carried their food over to a bench and sat down. A dozen or so troopers had followed them into the tent and were hoovering up the sandwiches.

  ‘So do you know all these guys?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Some of them by sight and I’ve worked with a couple of them on the range, but they’re mostly new faces,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘But you’re SAS, right?’

  ‘Former SAS,’ said Shepherd. ‘I left almost twenty years ago.’

  Martin frowned. ‘You quit early?’

  ‘I was twenty-four. My wife didn’t think it was a good idea for the father of her child to be in Special Forces.’ He shrugged. ‘She was probably right.’

  Martin nodded. ‘It’s not a job for a married man,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair on the wives and to be honest, you don’t want warriors worrying about their loved ones in combat, you want them focused on the matter in hand.’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘And are you still together? You and the wife?’

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘She died,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘And the kid?’

  ‘Liam?’ Shepherd grinned. ‘He’s doing fine. He flies choppers for the Army Air Corps.’

  ‘Chip off the old block?’

  ‘Not really. I don’t think he has any interest in combat, it’s the flying he likes.’ Shepherd took a bite of his sandwich. He wasn’t used to being open about his family situation with people he barely knew. Usually when he was undercover everything he said was a lie, pretty much, but he figured that Martin deserved some degree of honesty. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Why did you leave the SEALs?’

  ‘It wasn’t by choice.’

  Shepherd frowned. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Long story.’ Martin took a long pull on his water bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Let’s just say that towards the end I started to get a bit too enthusiastic about what I was doing.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘It happens.’

  ‘I thought I had it under control. And I don’t think I was any different from the rest of my team. But an officer thought otherwise and the psych board agreed with him.’

  ‘Officers can be twats sometimes.’

  ‘They might have had a point. I was starting to take risks. We’d have a plan and we’d go in and I’d start doing my own thing. And you know as well as I do that SF ops are all about teamwork. You have to trust every member of your team and it’s fair to say I became less of a team player.’ He shrugged. ‘Even though I knew what the problem was, I couldn’t deal with it. So I was out. Tried to get into the FBI and the DEA and Homeland Security but my shitty psych evaluation followed me around.’

  ‘This Hakeem Khaled. You were with the SEALs when you saw him?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  Shepherd chuckled. ‘I’m pretty much a mushroom on this operation.’

  Martin frowned, not understanding.

  ‘A mushroom,’ Shepherd explained. ‘Kept in the dark and fed bullshit.’

  Martin laughed. ‘I get it. Need to know and you don’t need to know.’

  ‘They said you were a witness and that you were off the grid. They wanted me to get you back in harness and that’s all I was told.’

  Martin nodded and took a bite of his sandwich and swallowed it whole before continuing. ‘I was working security at a shopping mall. It was the night that plane was shot down at JFK. I spotted a group of ragheads taking a MANPAD launcher out of a vehicle. Khaled was there. I came under fire and Khaled bolted. But I’ll never forget what he looked like.’

  ‘And that’s when you went off the grid?’

  ‘Another long story. And I’m pretty sure that it’s still classified. Let’s just say I was given a choice. A bullet in the head or stay off the grid for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Hobson’s choice,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘To be honest, it saved my life. If I’d stayed where I was I’d probably have swallowed a bullet. I’m much happier now. I get to dive, most of my clients are good people, the Indonesians are great. All the sunshine I can handle, and nightlife that’s second to none. I can’t wait to get back.’

  Shepherd sipped his tea. ‘You could have said no.’

  ‘Not come?’ Martin shook his head. ‘I walked away from my old life but that doesn’t mean I walked away from my country. That bastard killed hundreds of innocent people, he deserves to be hunted down and killed like a rabid dog. No, I’m happy to be here. And I’ll happily pull the trigger if I have to.’

  ‘Your role is to identify him, remember?’ said Shepherd.

  Martin grinned. ‘And I’ll have an AK-47 in my hand,’ he said. ‘Remember that.’

  Chapter 74

  Present Day, Incirlik Airbase, Turkey

  S hepherd and Martin were finishing off their sandwiches when Captain Gearie walked over. He pulled up a folding chair and sat down.

  ‘A little bird tells me you’ve been through something like this before,’ he said to Shepherd.

  ‘An attack on a cave complex?’ He nodded. ‘Yeah, but it was a long time ago.’

  ‘Do you wanna talk me through the op?’

  ‘Sure. We started with Air Troop carrying out a HALO jump into the desert to mark out a landing area for the Hercs that ferried on the rest of the equipment. We had two squadrons using twenty-eight Pinkies, eight scout motorbikes and two Acmat motherships. G Squadron set up a Fire Support Base and we had air support from the Yanks.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ said the captain, sitting back and folding his muscular arms.

  ‘What’s a Pinkie?’ asked Martin.

  The captain laughed. ‘They were Land Rover 110 HCPUs. The re
giment used them as Desert Patrol Vehicles from the mid-eighties. They had a wheelbase of 110 inches and a 3.5-litre V8 diesel engine and an array of mounts so they could take a range of weapons. Some boffin discovered that pink was the perfect camouflage colour in the desert so they were all painted pink. Hence Pinkies, or Pink Panthers.’

  ‘No desert camo then?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Seriously, pink was just as effective. Though you did look a bit of a prat driving through urban areas. Even when they changed over to desert camo colours the nickname stuck, and they used them right up until 2014.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘They were a bit cumbersome, it has to be said. You could only get one in a Chinook and up to four in a Hercules.’

  ‘Sounds like you were geared up for a full-on war,’ said Gearie. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘They wanted it to be spectacular,’ said Shepherd. ‘They flew in so much kit it was unreal. The Acmat motherships were just overkill.’

  ‘Acmat?’ repeated Martin.

  ‘Acmat vehicles are basically supply trucks able to cross rough terrain and carry supplies and ammunition for smaller units,’ said Shepherd. ‘They in turn have to be protected from attack, which slows down any operation. But that was how the powers-that-be wanted it done back then and we had no choice other than to follow orders.’

  ‘What weapons did you have?’ the captain asked.

  ‘The fire support team had Browning heavy machine guns and we had GPMGs on the Pinkies, plus eighty-one-millimetre mortars, Milan anti-tank missiles and MK-19 grenade launchers.’

  ‘And a couple of kitchen sinks?’

  ‘Yeah, the Head Sheds were in overdrive.’

  ‘Why the eighty-one-mill mortars? They go up thousands of feet, so what good are they against caves?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. Plus we had US aircraft overhead. Who the hell fires mortars in the air when you have air support?’

  ‘What air support did the Yanks give you?’

  ‘They had US Navy F-18 Hornets flying from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf, firing Maverick missiles.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said the captain. ‘So this was no surprise attack, then?’

  ‘Well, we went in under cover of darkness but we attacked at ten o’clock in the morning. They would have heard us coming anyway. They’d protected the cave entrances with reinforced sangars and the only way in was a dirt track between two huge boulders. As soon as they saw our dust they let loose with RPGs and G Squadron retaliated with machine-gun fire and we had snipers trying to pick off their guys from almost a kilometre away. As G Squadron put down suppressing fire we went in with the Pinkies, guns blazing.’

  Gearie shook his head in amazement. ‘Casualties?’

  ‘Surprisingly few considering what we were asked to do,’ he said. ‘We took the caves, killed a lot of bad guys, and at the end of the day we had two dead and six injured.’

  ‘Hopefully we’ll do better than that,’ said the captain. ‘We’ll have the full briefing when we get to Bagram but I can tell you now there’ll be no full-frontal assault. We’ll be going in at night with full night-vision gear and hopefully it’ll all be over before they even know we’re there.’ He stood up. ‘Right, next stop – Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘We’ll be hitting the ground running so get your game faces on.’

  The troopers filed on to the plane, several holding bags of sandwiches and fruit. Shepherd and Martin went up the ramp and strapped themselves in. Five minutes later they were in the air, heading east. Martin was back in his resting position, arms folded, staring straight ahead.

  The second leg was just shy of six hours, then Shepherd’s ears popped as the Hercules began its descent. The plane went into a steep dive, then performed a couple of tight turns before levelling off and landing, presumably to minimise the chances of being shot down on approach.

  After a couple of minutes of taxiing, the Hercules came to a halt and the engines began to wind down. Captain Gearie was first to his feet.

  ‘Right gentlemen, welcome to Camp Bagram. I need all the gear off within thirty minutes, we run our checks and then we’re off. We need to get to the target before dawn otherwise we’ll have to lie up throughout the day and none of us want that.’

  The ramp came down and with it a blast of cold air. It was night and the sky was cloudless and peppered with stars. Shepherd and Martin headed down the ramp, breath feathering from their mouths.

  ‘I forgot how cold it gets at night,’ said Martin.

  ‘Very different from Bali,’ said Shepherd.

  The Land Rover started up and began to reverse out. They moved out of its way. Troopers wheeled trail bikes down the ramp and the DVPs started up, filling the fuselage with foul fumes.

  At its peak, Bagram Airfield was the busiest military airbase in the world, handling almost four hundred take-offs and landings every day. There was a town of forty thousand foreign inhabitants and almost ten thousand local workers built around two massive runways capable of dealing with any size of military aircraft, including the largest, the Russian-built Antonov transport plane. Once the coalition forces had pulled out of the country, the base had been handed over to the Afghan Armed Forces and the US-led Resolute Support Mission. The Resolute Support Mission was there to help and advise the Afghan troops, though there were almost three thousand US personnel involved in counter-terrorism missions and the SAS always had troops there.

  Gearie strode over to Shepherd and Martin, accompanied by a squat bearded sergeant, one of the ones Shepherd had recognised on the plane.

  ‘Jacko here will fix you up with your weapons, and he’ll be shadowing you throughout the operation,’ said the captain.

  The sergeant grinned at Shepherd and the two men shook hands.

  ‘Spider and me go back aways,’ said Jacko.

  ‘That we do,’ said Shepherd.

  Trevor Jackson was a Bristol-born paratrooper who had joined the regiment about three months before Shepherd had left and had done a mountain survival course with him. Jacko was just about the worst skier Shepherd had ever seen and after one of many tumbles Shepherd had had to carry him down a mountain with a sprained ankle.

  ‘Nice that now it’s me taking care of you and not the other way around,’ said Jacko.

  ‘I don’t need babysitting,’ said Martin.

  ‘It’s not about babysitting, it’s about making sure that you reach the objective,’ said Gearie. ‘If we get there and you’re not with us the whole operation will have been a waste of time. We don’t know how much contact we’ll have, if any, en route – all I’m saying is that your priority is to stay alive rather than to be shooting at hostiles.’

  Martin nodded. ‘Hoo-ya,’ he said.

  ‘Here’s a bit of information for you that you might or might not know,’ said the captain. ‘You know how you Yanks love to say hoo-ya when you’re all fired up?’

  Martin grinned. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you know where it comes from? Why soldiers say it?’

  Martin frowned. ‘It’s just a noise.’

  ‘It’s more than that,’ said Gearie. ‘It’s the phonetic spelling of HUA – Heard, Understood, Acknowledge.’

  ‘I did not know that,’ said Martin.

  ‘Then I bet you also don’t know that it was we Brits that first used it. And it was first used here, in Afghanistan, back in the 1800s.’ He patted Martin on the shoulder. ‘History lesson over. You get yourself kitted up. We’re moving out in about thirty minutes.’

  Jacko grunted something and headed towards a tent. Shepherd and Martin followed. There were two troopers in desert camouflage inside the tent. Shepherd figured they were Loggys, there to provide logistical support. There was an HK416 on a table with half a dozen ammunition clips. Shepherd picked it up and checked the action.

  One of the Loggys looked at Martin. ‘You the one that wanted an AK-47?’

  Martin nodded.

  ‘We’ve got two. One with a folding stock.’

  ‘I’ll take the regular stock
,’ said Martin. ‘I’m not planning on hiding it.’

  The Loggy bent down and pulled a Kalashnikov from a metal trunk and handed it to Martin. ‘What do you want in the way of magazines?’ he asked. ‘We actually have a 75-round drum magazine, but it’s really only for the aficionados. We have all the 30-round magazines you can carry.’

  ‘Four should do it,’ said Martin. He looked at Shepherd.

  ‘Four sounds about right,’ said Shepherd. One hundred and twenty rounds should be more than enough. If he needed more than that then it meant they were hopelessly outgunned.

  The Loggy looked over at Shepherd. ‘I’ve got polymer tens, twenties and thirties for the HK416,’ he said.

  ‘Four clips of thirty’ll be fine,’ he said.

  Martin took his four magazines and duct-taped them together in twos, nose to tail. It was an old trick that could save a second or two when changing magazines. All you had to do was pull out the empty one, flip the bundle around and slot in the fresh one without having to grope around for a replacement.

  Jacko waited until Shepherd and Martin had checked their weapons and magazines before speaking, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Right, as the boss said, I’ll be shadowing you. I know Spider knows what he’s doing but former Navy SEAL or not you’re a newbie to me so I’m going to have to take my captain’s word for it that you’re combat-ready. I won’t be holding your hands, but when I say jump you guys need to jump. I won’t be asking you twice.’

  ‘All good,’ said Shepherd.

  Martin nodded.

  ‘We’ll be on one of the four by fours,’ continued Jacko. ‘You two will be in the rear seats and need to keep your eyes open for activity either side. We’ll be in the middle of the convoy but that doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax – we need all eyes looking for trouble. Once we arrive at the target, we’ll be in the third wave going in, so hopefully it’ll be under control by then. If it’s still hot, you two are active members of the team.’