Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Why you, Gul?’ Geordie said. He paused for a moment and then hastily added ‘No disrespect intended but, well, you’re just a squaddie like us.’

  ‘Well, in other countries retired people watch football, but in Nepal we watch soldiering, and though I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, I am quite well known in my country.’

  Jock interrupted him. ‘Quite well known? Do me a favour, you’re bloody famous and you know it: the first ever Special Forces Gurkha, with a string of citations and decorations for bravery. I don’t know how you’ll do in politics though. From what I know of you, you’re straight as a die and a man who tells it like it is - an honest man, in fact, and if Nepalese politics is anything like ours, that’s not exactly a qualification for the job.’

  Gul smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Anyway, I’ve not made up my mind yet. I’m going to travel round the country with the pension payment delivery and the Gurkha selection courses, sound people out in different parts of Nepal and try to get a feeling for whether they think that I should run for office or not. There will be some risk if I take that path, but if I can help to save my country from civil war, I have to do it. It’s my duty.’

  Jock disappeared behind the bar and re-emerged with a bottle of whisky and what was left of the dark rum. ‘A toast then, to Nepal’s next Prime Minister,’ he said, filling their glasses to the brim.

  A series of increasingly incoherent toasts followed: to Anglo-Nepali friendship, the Brigade of Gurkhas, the SAS and the “Toon Army” - the last a sop to Geordie who had just heard the previous day’s football results from England and was celebrating a derby win for Newcastle United.

  It was well on the wrong side of midnight when they stumbled off to grab a few hours sleep and they took off aboard the Hercules the next morning with dry mouths and pounding heads. As usual Jock and Geordie spent much of the flight asleep. Both had the soldier’s knack of grabbing a few minutes shut-eye whenever the opportunity presented itself and on a long-range flight on a ponderous Hercules, those minutes would stretch into hours. They could drop off almost anywhere - even standing up, Jimbo used to joke - and could sleep through everything including the thunder of the Herc’s engines. Yet at a whisper or a touch on their shoulder, they would both be instantly awake and alert, reaching for their weapons even as their eyes were opening.

  Jimbo was also dozing in his netting seat, his chin nodding onto his chest, but Shepherd was wide awake, staring unseeing at the Herc’s metal roof, his mind thousands of miles away, imagining Sue bathing their baby, feeding him and putting him to bed. The ache in his heart was almost unbearable and he had to force himself to think about something else.

  After transiting Saudi Arabia, they overnighted in Dubai. There was no crew change-over - the same crew would stay with the aircraft for the duration of the trip. Before leaving Dubai, a number of ammunition boxes were loaded onto the Herc. ‘Why the ammo, Gul?’ Shepherd had asked. ‘Is there a war on?’

  ‘They’re old boxes, they’re full of cash now,’ said Gul. ‘It’s actually the cash for the Gurkha pensioners. They prefer US Dollars because they can get a better rate of exchange.’

  After leaving Dubai and flying over part of northern India, the Hercules seemed to be climbing forever before reaching the height of Kathmandu. On the final part of the flight, they had tremendous views of the high Himalayan peaks, with the stunning panorama of Annapurna, K2, Everest and many other nameless snow-capped peaks laid out before them.

  The flight was uneventful but the landing at Kathmandu was hairy to say the least. The city sat 1,600 metres above sea level in Nepal’s central valley, where the warm air rising from the plains met the sheer wall of the high Himalayas. The resulting turbulence threw the Hercules around like a rag doll in a hurricane as the pilot fought to land the giant aircraft and bring it to a halt before he ran out of runway. After landing and bypassing customs and immigration, courtesy of their Nepalese hosts, Shepherd looked around him with interest as they made the short drive into the centre of Kathmandu.

  ‘Welcome to my beautiful country,’ Gul said, beaming with pride. The patchwork of emerald green rice-paddies and vivid yellow-green millet fields on the valley floor alongside the fast-rushing river gave way to terraces of crops clinging to the precipitous hillsides. Above them rose an endless array of snow-capped peaks, filling the horizon from east to west. Shepherd could pick out the shark’s tooth outline of Kangchenjunga and the sloping summit plateau of Annapurna, but to his disappointment, the highest of all, Everest, was obscured by the whirling cloud of a snow storm engulfing the summit.

  He switched his gaze back to the river flowing alongside the road. ‘What river’s that, Gul?’ he asked.

  ‘The Bagmati, it’s a holy river to Hindus and Buddhists alike. Its waters are believed to purify us and there are many temples alongside it. According to our traditions, the bodies of Hindu dead must first be dipped three times into the river before being cremated on its banks. The chief mourner, who lights the funeral pyre, must also bathe in the river after the cremation.’

  ‘I was just fancying a dip until you told us that,’ laughed Jock.

  As they approached the city Shepherd could see the copper and gold pagoda roofs of the Hindu temples glinting in the sunlight. Kathmandu was much bigger than he had imagined, with a dense urban sprawl of four- and five-storey apartment blocks, many painted in vivid colours - lime green, lavender, orange - that dazzled the eye against the deep azure blue background of the sky. However at street-level the dust and traffic fumes created a brown haze as bad as any smog he’d ever seen.

  After they had been dropped off in the city centre, they strolled around for a while, with Gul pointing out some of the sights. ‘Most of the tourists stay in the Thamel district where all the guest houses, restaurants, and shops are concentrated,’ he said.

  ‘Do we look like tourists?’ Jimbo said with feigned disgust. ‘We want to see the real Kathmandu.’

  Gul grinned. ‘Maybe Jhochhen Tol would be more your style then; it used to be known as “Freak Street” in the days in the 1960s and 1970s when Kathmandu was on every hippy’s itinerary… But on second thoughts, maybe not, “Love and Peace” isn’t really SAS style is it? Nor Gurkha-style come to that.’

  Shepherd and his mates parted company from Gul outside the British Embassy, but arranged to meet him that night for a meal. They found the Military Attaché, George Jenner, in his office at the Embassy. An urbane, Sandhurst-trained career officer, he greeted them with a broad smile. ‘Welcome to Nepal,’ he said. ‘Anything I can do to help you, just ask. You will need to keep in touch with us, of course, and if you’re going trekking up-country, you will find that comms are a bit of a problem - as you may have noticed, there are quite a few mountains around here and they do tend to interfere with communications. But you can reach this department at any time, day or night, from anywhere in Nepal by using the communications system in the Nepalese Police Posts; there’s one in every town and village. I’m afraid I won’t be available in person after today because I’m going trekking with the Gurkha recruitment team.’

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ said Shepherd.

  Jenner grinned. ‘I’m an ex-Gurkha Officer myself, I simply wouldn’t miss it for the world. But my clerk will look after all your kit and will pass on any messages that come in from Hereford. So if you can make contact through one of the police posts on a daily basis, he’ll keep you updated. Now, anything else I can help you with?’

  ‘There might be,’ Shepherd said. ‘Do you happen to know a guy called Taff the Rope?’

  ‘Dai Evans? Yes, I know him. I think he is usually to be found at the Tilcho Hotel, a cheap hotel in Pokhara. It’s three or four hours drive west of here. He’s not a regular visitor to Kathmandu and certainly not to the Embassy; he seems to prefer Nepalese company to ours.’ He hesitated for a few moments, studying them over the rim of his china teacup before continuing. ‘Just one other thing before you go: I believe your old comrade, Gul, w
as on the same plane as you today.’

  ‘Not an old comrade of mine,’ Shepherd said, ‘but yes, he flew in with us.’

  ‘Just a word to the wise then,’ Jenner said. ‘By all means be friendly if you happen to bump into him again, but my advice would be not to get too close to him.’

  ‘Any particular reason why?’ Jock said, his Glaswegian growl as usual sounding like a declaration of war.

  ‘Just that I hear he may be harbouring political ambitions,’ Jenner said with a disarming smile, ‘and it wouldn’t do for us to be seen to be actively favouring a member of the opposition in what is quite a sensitive political situation.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Jock said. ‘Well, he’s a mate and we’re having dinner with him tonight. Get used to it.’

  ‘It’s nice to see that you haven’t lost any of your diplomatic charm,’ Geordie said to Jock as they walked away from the embassy.

  ‘Diplomacy my arse,’ Jock said. ‘A mate’s a mate, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Guy’s got a point, though,’ said Shepherd. ‘By hanging out with him, it might look as if the British Government is giving him their support.’

  ‘So what?” said Jock. ‘He’d make a better politician than the shower we’ve got back in the UK.’

  ‘No argument here,’ said Shepherd.

  They spent the rest of the day exploring Kathmandu and that evening they met up with Gul in a Chinese restaurant. ‘Bloody hell, Gul,’ Jock said, as soon as they were seated. ‘I’ve really been looking forward to my first proper Gurkha curry in years and here we are eating bloody Chinese.’

  Gul laughed. ‘Most of the upmarket restaurants in Kathmandu are foreign, my friend, and the best of them are Chinese, so here we are. But next time we meet, we’ll eat Gurkha food. You must come to the recruiting day at the Gurkha base in Pokhara tomorrow. It’s really something to see and there we will eat the real Gurkha food, I promise.’

  They left the restaurant much later, after a big meal and quite a few beers and black rums, and strolled back through the still-crowded streets. ‘Bloody hell, will you look at that?’ Jimbo was pointing up the street. Shepherd followed his gaze and saw an aged Nepali carrying a six foot by four foot steel security cabinet on his back up a steep hill. ‘I know from bitter experience that one of those is a four-man lift,’ Jimbo said, ‘but there’s an elderly gent managing it all on his own.’

  Gul gave a proud smile. ‘Never underestimate the strength and determination of the Gurkha, my friend. Many of our enemies have made that mistake down the years, and always to their cost.’

  Even as they were sauntering along, deep in conversation, Shepherd was still keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. It was so deeply ingrained a part of SAS training that it had become second nature. Now his antennae had detected something in the ebb and flow of the people around them: a group of young men, moving through the crowds behind them with a common purpose.

  He double-checked, using the reflection in the windscreen of one of the few cars parked in the street and then alerted the others. ‘We’ve got company,’ he said.

  Suddenly sober, everyone’s survival instincts kicked in. From the surrounding alleys a gang of teenage thugs had appeared, armed with a variety of weapons, including Gurkha khukris - vicious knives with a curved blade. The next moment, Shepherd, Gul and the others were locked in a vicious, bloody street brawl with no quarter given, as they fought for their lives. As a thug ran at him, slashing at his face with his khukri, Shepherd swayed back to let the wickedly curved blade whistle past his chest, then doubled his attacker up with a kick to the groin and sent him down and out with a chop to the neck and a stamp with his booted heel to the Nepali’s face as he slumped to the ground.

  The next one was already on him, but Shepherd dispatched him with a series of rapid-fire blows: the heel of his hand to the thug’s nose, a raking stamp down the shins and onto the instep - agonising for the victim - and then an elbow to the head put him down.

  His last assailant turned and ran for it, even dropping his knife as he did so in his panic to get away, but Shepherd at once turned to target one of the three thugs still surrounding Gul. The Gurkha had already flattened one attacker but was being hard-pressed by the others until Shepherd poleaxed one of them with a blow to the back of his head and spread another’s nose all over his face with a vicious straight-arm punch. Gul meanwhile dealt with the other one, letting out a blood-curdling war cry as he rained down a fusillade of blows on him. Jock, Geordie and Jimbo were finishing off the remnants of the attackers. Battered and bleeding, they scrambled to their feet and stumbled away into the maze of surrounding streets, the last one sped on his way by Jimbo’s Size 12 boot up his backside.

  ‘That was fun,’ Jock said as they got their breath back. ‘Kathmandu's a lot less boring than Akrotiri any day of the week.’

  ‘Anyone hurt?’ Shepherd said.

  ‘Just me,’ Geordie said, examining a deep cut in the side of his hand. ‘Bloody hell, it’s through to the bone. Some of those little bastards had khukris!’

  ‘Well you’re the patrol medic, aren’t you,’ Jock said, showing not a trace of sympathy. ‘Physician heal thy bloody self, as Shakespeare once said.’

  ‘In fact that quote comes from the Bible, you ignorant Scots git,’ Geordie said. ‘ And anyway, I’ve got a better idea. It’s a two-handed job, so I’ll tell you what to do while you bloody suture it up for me.’

  While Jock patched Geordie up, Shepherd turned to Gul. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘I don’t know. Street violence like that is almost unknown here. Perhaps they just saw a group of Westerners and thought they’d rob you.’

  ‘They didn’t seem like they had robbery on their minds,’ said Shepherd. ‘And they can’t have been targeting us deliberately because nobody knew we were in town. Besides, they seemed to be focusing on you, which suggests that you were their target.’

  ‘He’s right, Gul,’ Jimbo said. ‘They’d followed us from the market area and tried to set up an ambush. It was planned.’

  Gul brushed their concerns away. ‘Well, if they were targeting me, it was probably just a case of mistaken identity. Don’t worry about it.’

  The following day, Shepherd was coming back from his morning run, chest heaving with the effort required in the thin air, when he saw the Military Attaché striding towards their quarters with a face like thunder. ‘Get your men together,’ he said, ignoring Shepherd’s greeting. When they were all assembled, he let rip. ‘I told you to keep your distance from Gul, but I now discover that not only did you ignore my request but you were also involved in an ugly street brawl with him last night.’

  ‘News travels fast,’ Shepherd said. ‘ But we were attacked without provocation. What do you expect us to do, let them cut us to pieces?’

  ‘You should not have been with Gul. As I expressly warned you, it’s an implicit message of British support for his political candidacy, which is not at all the message we wish to send. The Nepalese government is furious and the ambassador has already been summoned to receive a bollocking in person.’

  ‘So what about our attackers?’ asked Shepherd. ‘What’s being done to trace them? They shouldn’t be too hard to find because they’ll be nursing a few broken noses and black eyes.’

  Jenner gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘The Nepalese authorities are keeping a tight lid on the whole affair, because they’re terrified about the detrimental effect that reports of street violence might have on the tourist trade.’ He paused. ‘So, the sooner you four are on the Herc back to Cyprus, the happier I’ll be, and meanwhile I would be grateful if you could avoid making any further waves around here.’

  ‘So the next time we’re attacked, you’d just like us to lie back and take it, would you?’

  Jenner’s eyes hardened. ‘No, I’d like you to make sure there isn’t a next time. And do not see Gul again, that’s an order.’

  ‘Tough,’ Jock said. ‘You’re not part of our chain of
command, so we don’t take orders from you, and we’re seeing Gul this afternoon in Pokhara.’

  After their frosty confrontation with Jenner, Shepherd used the Diplomatic Service telegram secure signals system to speak to Jamie, the Ops Officer, back in Hereford and obtain permission to go west.

  They then borrowed the MA’s Landrover - without his knowledge, for he’d now left Kathmandu with the Gurkha recruiters. They loaded their operational kit into the Landrover, stocked up with food from the market and then set off for Pokhara. That chilly December afternoon found them on a sports field alongside a spectacular river gorge on the outskirts of Pokhara.

  A group of five hundred young Nepalis, all dressed alike in British Army issue physical training kit - blue shorts with a red top and brown canvas shoes - were sitting cross-legged in an atmosphere dripping with tension. They were patiently waiting to be processed, issued with an identifying number and then put through a gruelling series of physical and mental tests. Those that passed would be eligible to join the Brigade of Gurkhas. They were being watched by an audience of several thousand spectators

  ‘This is just the final stage,’ Gul said. ‘They started with several thousand volunteers and the competition is so fierce that there are always about 25,000 applicants a year, competing for just 200 places. That’s more than 100 for every single place. Recruiting is like the bloody Pied Piper. We send “Galla Wallahs” - former Gurkhas - up into the hills and each of them comes back with a few hundred would-be Gurkha recruits trailing behind him. Most still come from the martial castes: Gurungs and Magars from central Nepal, and Rais and Limbus from the east. They’ve bred soldiers for centuries, but we make sure that Gurkha Selection is free and fair - no one is chosen or excluded because of their caste or their family’s influence. In fact it’s almost the only thing in Nepal that isn’t governed by an accident of birth, geography or caste. Becoming a Gurkha remains a great source of pride and families sacrifice a lot to help their sons prepare for Gurkha Selection. The earnings of those who succeed are enormous by Nepalese standards, enabling their parents to retire and securing the future of their families, but it’s a brutal process; those who fail, return to their villages with only their bus fares.’