Personal Protection (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Good luck for who?’ was the baleful reply, but Parker ignored him. He sat down at their table, opened the briefcase and took out a typewritten document. The heading ‘TOP SECRET - UK EYES ONLY’, was the highest possible security classification. ‘We have an intel update,’ Parker said. ‘Sigint suggests that the sheikh’s cousin is now supported by a band of Chechens and they have succeeded in infiltrating the country through one of its porous desert borders. They are now believed to be in hiding.’

  ‘You mean you’ve lost them,’ said Jimbo. ‘I tell you, you secret squirrel boys would be lucky to find your arses using both hands.’

  Parker ignored Jimbo and passed the sheet of paper over to Shepherd. ‘They pose an immediate, serious threat to the safety of the sheikh. You will need to take a closer role in his protection until the situation is resolved.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s necessary,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’ve trained the sheikh’s PES for exactly this kind of eventuality. They’re well-armed, well-motivated, and well-trained, and they’re well on top of the situation. I’d back them against a Chechen rabble any day. We should be returning to the UK, not staying to nursemaid them when they don’t need it.’ There was a rumble of agreement from the others.

  ‘Be that as it may, you will be required to remain here for the time being,’ said Parker. He took the sheet back from Shepherd and put it in the briefcase. ‘The safety and security of the sheikh is of vital importance to HMG’s interests and influence in the region. I shall be remaining here as well.’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ Jock growled.

  ‘And I will keep you updated on any additional intel we receive,’ Parker said, as if Jock hadn’t spoken. Parker stood up and walked away. Shepherd swore. It was clearly a fait accompli and they had no choice in the matter.

  A couple of days later Shepherd received a summons to the sheikh’s palace. He was ushered into a marble-pillared receiving room and a few minutes later the sheikh appeared, alone. They sat together on a large overstuffed sofa. ‘I’ve been contacted by my cousin, who wants to meet me to talk over our problems,’ said the sheikh. ‘He wants me to meet him alone at a remote location in the desert where we will be safe from prying eyes and can maintain secrecy from the various tribal factions.’ He held up his hand as Shepherd began to protest. ‘A reconciliation or at least an arrangement with my cousin would bring great benefits to my country,’ he said. ‘It would unify our nation and also neutralise the greatest potential source of threat to my rule. So it is a prize worth risking much for.’

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘You will be putting your life at risk, Ya Seedee. Out on your own, in the desert? It’s asking for trouble.’

  ‘My cousin has guaranteed my safety on his honour,’ said the sheikh.

  Shepherd wanted to tell the sheikh that a man’s word counted for nothing when imaginable wealth and power were at stake, but he held his tongue, not wanting to appear disrespectful.

  ‘If I reject his offer, my own honour will be impugned, so I am morally obliged to meet him and have agreed to do so,’ the sheikh continued. ‘We are to meet alone without any advisers or bodyguards.’

  ‘Ya Seedee, with respect, this breaches every rule of bodyguard training that we have instilled in your men. If they are not with you, they cannot protect you.’

  ‘Nonetheless that is my wish.’ The sheikh’s tone was that of a man whose word was law and Shepherd knew there was nothing he could do to change his mind.

  Shepherd returned to base and briefed Parker and his SAS team. ‘We can’t allow him to do this,’ said Shepherd. ‘But I don’t see how we can stop him.’

  ‘He can be stubborn,’ said Parker.

  ‘Can’t you explain how stupid he’s being?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘He’s an absolute ruler,’ said Parker. ‘Western educated, but he’s not going to let me tell him what to do.’

  ‘But you can tell him how dangerous it’ll be.’

  ‘He knows that already, I’m sure. But he thinks he can trust his cousin, obviously.’

  ‘Then you need to tell him that he can’t trust him. Come on Jonathan, the cousin wants to meet the sheikh alone in the desert. How is that going to end well?’

  ‘It seems to me that our option is to follow him covertly,’ said the MI6 man.

  ‘So you’ll be coming with us, will you?’ asked Jimbo, his voice loaded with sarcasm.

  Parker swallowed. ‘Actually yes, I will.’

  Jock scowled. ‘Do me a favour, You’ll be more of a hindrance than a help; we’ve no room for passengers or dead weight.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist,’ said Parker. ‘I was given the responsibility of ensuring the safety of the sheikh, and my neck is on the line if anything goes wrong.’

  ‘All right,’ Shepherd said, after a lengthy pause. ‘But if anything kicks off, do as you’re told and keep out of the way. This isn’t a job for amateurs. Right, we need vehicles. Jimbo, what can we get our hands on before sunset tonight?’

  Jimbo uncoiled his lanky frame. ‘There’s nothing armoured, the best we can do at this notice is a couple of 4 x 4s - Toyota Landcruisers.’

  ‘Then they’ll have to do,’ Shepherd said. ‘But because of the risk of IED’s, we need to reinforce the floors with sandbags.’

  ‘Sandbags?’ said Parker.

  ‘It’s pretty rudimentary protection but it’s better than nothing,’ said Shepherd. ‘Jimbo and Geordie, you get that sorted, and Jock, you take care of the weapons. I doubt that the Chechens won’t have any armour, but a couple of GPMGs will take out their vehicles if it all goes tits up.’

  At sunset that night, they took up positions from where they could observe the two main entrances to the sheikh’s palace. Shepherd, Rusty and Parker were in the lead vehicle, and Jock, Geordie and Jimbo in the other. Just after midnight, with the capital’s streets deserted, Shepherd saw a nondescript black car drive out of the rear gates of the palace. The way the guards on duty snapped to attention told him that the driver was the sheikh. Shepherd passed the word to Jock’s group over the net and they began to track the sheikh as he drove across the city towards the desert.

  They followed him without difficulty until he left the tarmac road and set off across the desert on a graded track. Away from civilisation, they were forced to switch off their vehicle lights and resort to using night vision goggles. That slowed them down and the sheikh’s car began to pull away from them. Shepherd saw the lights of the sheikh’s car disappear from view as it breasted a rise and dropped down the other side. He accelerated, driving on the limits of visibility through the NVGs, and as he crested the ridge he saw the black car stationary in the distance ahead of them. It was surrounded by a group of armed men who were dragging the sheikh out of the car.

  There was no point in any further attempts at concealment and Shepherd switched on the lights, floored the accelerator and banged on the horn. In the seat beside him, Rusty slipped off the safety catch on his sub-machinegun. Shepherd cradled his own MP5 on his lap, ready to jump out firing as soon as he brought the vehicle to a halt. As they closed on the sheikh’s car there was a blinding flash, a roar like a thunder-clap and the Landcruiser was blown high into the air. All three men inside were knocked semi-conscious as it crashed back down with a sickening impact.

  As Shepherd shook his head, trying to clear his blurred vision and silence the ringing in his ears, small arms fire raked the ground around them. There was a screech of tyres as Geordie drove the back-up car between the damaged vehicle and the Chechens, drawing their fire. It pulled up and Jock, Geordie and Jimbo piled out, firing at the muzzle flashes from the Chechens’ weapons. Shepherd twisted around in his seat. Parker lay dazed and semi-conscious on the back seat of the wrecked vehicle. There was more gunfire and Shepherd and Rusty stumbled out and began picking out targets. The firefight was short and bloody, the Chechen ambushers were no match for the SAS in accuracy or rate of fire.

  The firing ceased and Geordie an
d Jimbo moved across the desert to the ambushers’ position, weapons at the ready. The group of Chechens were no longer a threat to anyone, each one stone dead, their bodies riddled with rounds.

  Through the ringing in his ears, Shepherd heard Jock’s voice. ‘You all right, Spider?’

  ‘We’re okay, but what about the sheikh?’ answered Spider. As they scanned the desert around them through their NVGs they realised that there was no sign of the sheikh or his captors.

  After a futile search of the area, the team assessed their options. Jimbo, gung ho, was all for launching an immediate pursuit, but the older, wiser heads prevailed. ‘Think about it Jimbo,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’ve only one vehicle left, we don’t have enough fuel or water to be driving much deeper into the desert, we don’t know what might be waiting for us and if we hit another IED, we’re unlikely to be as lucky a second time. It’s galling I know, but the best option is to head back to the capital, gather what intel we can and plan our next move from there.’

  Geordie nodded in agreement. ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘The one bit of good news in this is that if the sheikh’s cousin had wanted to kill him outright, he’d already be dead,’ said Shepherd. ‘The fact that his body isn’t here shows the cousin wants him alive, either to extract concessions from him directly or to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations with us. Either way, he’s alive and we need to keep him that way.’

  They squeezed themselves into the remaining vehicle and drove back to the capital in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts. Parker was still in shock from the firefight, his normally immaculate clothes torn and stained. There was a livid bruise across the side of his face. When they got back to camp he spoke only to agree to get GCHQ focussed on listening for any communications between the sheikh’s cousin and his surviving Chechens. For the moment, Shepherd and the rest of the team could do nothing more than listen in to the various wavelengths on their comms system. There was no useful chatter to be heard, but as evening approached the sheikh’s PLB began to transmit. They gathered around a monitor as the signal from the PLB began moving towards their HQ. Thinking the sheikh was on his way back, they suspended operations. Three hours later, as the signal showed that the PLB was entering the city, they went to intercept the sheikh and escort him back to his palace only to discover it wasn’t the sheikh but a Bedu tribesman bearing a small box. Inside it was the sheikh’s severed little finger, complete with the signet ring containing the PLB.

  Rusty interrogated the Bedu but after a couple of minutes it was clear what had happened. Rusty gave a weary shrug of his shoulders. ‘He’s innocent,’ he said. ‘Just a tribesman the bad guys flagged down and paid a few dollars to deliver the box.’

  ‘It’s a proof of life from the sheikh’s cousin,’ Shepherd said. ‘It’s a sign that they want to negotiate. If they hadn’t, they would have sent us his head instead.’

  Shepherd and the rest of his team sat down with Parker to discuss their options. Parker seemed more concerned about the possibility of the British Government losing influence in the region. ‘We cannot have the cousin taking control of the country,’ said the MI6 man flatly.

  ‘I’m more concerned about getting the sheikh back alive,’ said Shepherd. ‘You need to fake interest in opening negotiations while we find a way to separate the sheikh from his captors.’

  ‘If we’re going to do that,’ Jimbo said. ‘It would probably help if we knew where he was.’

  Geordie whistled in mock admiration. ‘Your flair for stating the bleeding obvious never ceases to amaze me, Jimbo.’

  They back-tracked the route of the PLB and eventually pinpointed an isolated oasis in the middle of the Great Sand Sea Desert, fringing Ar Rub’ al Khali - the Empty Quarter. They studied maps and satellite imagery of the area and then assessed their options. ‘There’s only one road into the oasis’ Shepherd said. ‘It’s not going to be easy. There’s a real risk of IEDs and any approach will obviously be monitored by the Chechens. If they see us coming there’s every chance that the sheikh will be killed out of hand. Suggestions?’ He looked over at Rusty.

  ‘The only way to approach the oasis is going to have to be across the Great Sand Sea,’ Rusty said. ‘It’s an area of sand dunes the size of Wales and pretty much impassable unless you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘Which you do, of course,’ said Shepherd.

  Rusty grinned. ‘If we are going to do it,’ Rusty said, ‘we’re going to have to find some vehicles that can cope with the terrain.’

  Jimbo nodded. ‘And the place to start looking for those would be the garages at the palace. The sheikh seemed to have enough exotic vehicles in there to make an entire premiership football team green with envy. The presidential guards’ vehicles are also kept there.’

  The sheikh’s garage was the size of a supermarket with more than fifty vehicles and a team of overalled mechanics. There were five Bentleys, a gold Rolls Royce, and several supercars that Shepherd had only ever seen on TV. There were a dozen Range Rovers in various colours, several with attachments on the back for hawks to perch on while the sheikh was out hunting. Most of the sports cars were red – Shepherd lost count of the number of Ferraris and Porches.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Geordie, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the ranks of gleaming cars. ‘How does he decide what to drive?’

  ‘He has a similar problem deciding which of his wives to test-drive,’ said Rusty.

  ‘Can we take the Ferraris?’ asked Geordie. ‘Pretty please?’

  ‘We need desert vehicles,’ said Jimbo. At the far end of the massive garage was a line of military vehicles, including three ‘Pink Panther’ Land Rovers. The Land Rovers, painted a pinkish hue to blend into the desert sand, were a favourite among SAS reconnaissance team and were usually fitted with machine guns and larger fuel tanks. ‘I’d go with these,’ said Jimbo.

  ‘Personally, I’d prefer the Dodge Power Wagon,’ said Rusty, pointing at two bright red SUVs. ‘The Pinkie started out as a good idea but it quickly got bogged down in the usual morass of MoD planning and general incompetence. It was given an operational requirement range of one thousand miles and consequently had to carry a couple of hundred gallons of fuel. So it ended up as an overweight, underpowered, useless piece of kit that could not deliver its crew or weapons where they were required.’

  Shepherd looked at Jimbo. Jimbo shrugged but didn’t argue.

  ‘The Dodge was originally developed as a military stores carrier during the Second World War, but it’s been continually upgraded ever since for civilian roles,’ said Rusty. ‘It’s been used throughout the Middle East by the oil companies to travel deep into the remotest regions searching for oil. It has an excellent power to weight ratio and in the right hands is capable of travelling anywhere.’

  ‘But the Pinkies are painted to blend in with the background colour of the desert,’ Jimbo said. ‘The Dodges are bright red. They’ll be seen from miles away.’

  ‘They’re painted red so they’re visible from the air,’ Rusty said, ‘and can be found easily in an emergency. But once we’ve splashed some pink paint on them, they’ll blend.’

  ‘We’ll not be travelling in daylight when we’re approaching the target,’ Shepherd said. He patted Jimbo on the shoulder. ‘Rusty has the local knowledge of local, we have to trust his judgement, so the Dodges it is.’

  Jimbo nodded. ‘No sweat.’

  Shepherd winked at him. ‘Now, Comms: we’ll be maintaining radio silence unless there’s a crisis, so we’ll take Motorola body sets with sets in each vehicle. Scaly Beebop will organize frequencies that won’t be compromised by the IED suppression system we’ll be using. Weaponry: Jock, can you sort that out and we’ll see to the rest of the kit? They’ve no armoured vehicles or artillery, but they may have mortars and GPMGs.’ Jock nodded.

  ‘I’ll take charge of water supplies,’ Rusty said. ‘I’m going to nip down to the local souq and pick up a few chuggles.’

  ‘Chuggles?’
said Jimbo, frowning.

  ‘They’re carriers for cooling drinking water,’ Rusty said. ‘They’re made from hessian sacking with a metal pouring spout.’

  ‘Do me a favour, that’s sacking, isn’t it?’ said Jimbo. ‘You can’t carry water in a sack.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, you can. They’re made by Indian craftsmen and can be bought cheaply in any souq in the Middle East. They’re made from closely woven hessian and when filled with water, the hessian expands to become waterproof enough to carry water without losing too much of it. You tie them to the sides of your vehicle and as the airstream blows over the hessian, it cools down your drinking water. They’re brilliant - far more efficient than modern water coolers.’

  Jimbo’s expression remained sceptical, but Rusty was already on his way out of the door. The rest of the team spent several hours kitting out the vehicles with weaponry, equipment, fuel and a little food. ‘Eating is not going to be a priority on this job,’ Geordie said, tossing a few packs of assault rations into one of the Dodges, ‘so these will do the job.’

  They also fitted a camera system on the back of the other vehicle, consisting of a telescopic carbon fibre pole which could be raised up to 150 feet using hydraulic pressure. The pole was strong but so thin it was almost impossible to see at any distance over a couple of hundred yards. At the top of the mast there were a range of small high-resolution cameras, including infra-red and thermal imaging as well as colour cameras for daytime use. ‘We’ll be able to use the cameras to view ahead of our route through the sand dunes,’ Shepherd said. ‘It’ll cut down the number of recces we have to do.’

  At the final briefing that evening, Rusty talked them through the techniques for driving over dunes of soft sand. ‘Sand dunes are shaped by the wind,’ he explained. ‘On the windward side they’re convex and can be several hundred metres in height. On the lee side they’re usually concave. The skill to driving in the dunes is to accelerate up the windward side until you’re almost at the top, but then you must take your foot off the throttle and use the impetus of the vehicle to just clear the crest. Then you can coast down the lee side using the remaining impetus of the vehicle and gravity to keep up your momentum. If you’re going too fast, you risk the vehicle plunging down the lee side and turning turtle with potentially serious consequences for the crew. If you are going too slowly you will be constantly getting bogged down in the sand. That means a lot of digging and the use of sand channels - perforated aluminium sections in a sort of flattened-out U-shape. In areas where the sand is soft we might have to offload the vehicle and carry the stores to where the vehicle has been moved to. Trust me, that’s bloody tiring and uncomfortable in those extreme temperatures. So whoever’s doing the driving has to know what’s doing.’