Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2

by Stephen Leather

  All of them wore PNGs, turning the night into an eerie, yellow-tinted landscape. Shepherd watched as Lex prepared himself and stopped him as he began to put his trauma dressing into one of the pockets of his jacket. ‘Word to the wise,’ he said. ‘Keep your dressing on your left chest or left arm where you can get to it straight away; even a delay of a few seconds while you fumble with your pocket could be fatal. And keep your morphine syrettes on a bit of para cord round your neck, that way you can get to it straight away if you’re hit.’

  The first obstacle was the narrow but fast-flowing river. The only way across was to get into the water and that meant taking off their clothes because wet clothes at night would be a killer. He stripped off his clothes and tied them in a bundle, gesturing for Lex to do the same. ‘I’ll cross first,’ Taj said, ‘I’ve been doing this since I was a boy.’

  ‘What about my boxers?’ asked Lex.

  ‘Everything,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can dry yourself after you’ve crossed but wet clothes will stay wet.’ He chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, Lex, you haven’t got anything we haven’t all seen before.’

  Taj pulled off his clothes revealing a back as hairy as a bear’s. ‘Give me a rope,’ he said. Shepherd handed him his tac line, a coil of nylon rope with a carabineer on one end. Taj secured one end with a quick release knot to the trunk of a larch just above the water’s edge. He put his pack back on, hoisted his bundle of clothes onto his head and, holding his rifle aloft in his other hand, slipped into the river and moved away.

  The bitterly-cold current was fierce but he never seemed to slip or stumble and soon afterwards Shepherd saw him clamber out on the far bank and secure the rope around a boulder. Shepherd sent Lex next and then began to edge across after him. He let out an involuntary gasp as he lowered himself into the icy water. It rose above his waist, lapping against the bottom of the bergen on his back, as he began to inch across, grateful for the rope, for the current tugged at him and the rocks underfoot were smooth and slippery.

  As he approached the bank, he threw his bundle of clothes onto the ground ahead of him and pulled himself out. He heard Lex’s teeth chattering and hissed to him ‘Rub yourself dry with your shirt or you’ll freeze.’ He took his own shirt from his bundle and began to do the same, his flesh burning in the cold. Taj, impassive, had already dressed, as if a stark naked crossing of a freezing river was all in a day’s work.

  Shepherd retrieved the rope and they moved off. The ground sloped steeply upwards and the cold was soon forgotten with the effort of climbing. Taj moved with a slow, relentless stride. They climbed higher, a zig-zagging ascent as the track wound its way across the face of the mountain, pausing frequently to watch and listen, waiting for the blood to cease pounding in their ears as they searched for any trace of noise or movement in the darkness above them.

  As the gradient increased, they had to use their hands to haul themselves upwards. They passed the snow line, clambering on across hard frozen snow and ice-covered rocks that made every step a gamble, and still the ridge was high above them. The Afghan winter was coming on and it was ferociously cold. The physical effort left Shepherd and Lex fighting for breath, but Taj, born and raised in the mountains, was totally unfazed by it.

  After what seemed an eternity of crawling slowly upwards, his head pounding from oxygen deprivation and with the dead weight of his bergen making every step an ordeal, Shepherd saw the crest of the ridge no more than fifty yards above them. Taj had stopped, waiting and listening once more, and he now signalled to Shepherd and Lex to get down. The two men flattened themselves to the ground, pressing their faces into the gritty snow. Taj drew his curved Afghan knife and moved up the mountainside. He paused just below the ridgeline, and then moved forward again and disappeared from their sight.

  The minutes dragged and Shepherd was about to move up the slope when a dark shape appeared on the ridge above and to their right. The next instant, it slid down the mountainside, gathering ice and stones in a miniature avalanche as it fell. A second later, another dark form followed it. As it fell, Shepherd heard Taj’s voice in his earpiece. ‘Come up, it’s clear.’

  When they reached the ridge, Taj was cleaning his knife. ‘Two,’ he said, baring his teeth in a savage smile. ‘But both were sleeping.’ He slid the knife back into its sheath.

  ‘Did they have radios?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘No, and the Taliban often sends sentries to such places for a week or more before they’re relieved, so it may be some time before their disappearance is discovered.’

  If Shepherd had had any remaining doubts about Taj’s value and trustworthiness, they were now completely resolved. He had risked his own life to clear the way for Shepherd and Lex. A few moments later, they were looking down into the upper reaches of the Tora Bora valley. The rock-strewn slopes were as bleak and featureless as the surface of the moon. There were no trees or grass, just bare ice, rock and scree. They began the descent into the valley, moving even more cautiously now, inching their way, climbing down the rock faces and crossing the open slopes from boulder to boulder, using the natural cover and avoiding the loose screes that would give them away.

  Two hours before dawn, they reached the position Shepherd had identified from the surveillance imagery and set up their OP overlooking the caves. Two huge boulders jutting from the mountainside provided cover and some shelter from the bitter wind. In front of them, a rock ledge a few metres wide, part-covered with a thin layer of gritty soil, gave them a platform from which they could observe the caves and the track leading to them.

  Shepherd wormed his way forward, feeling the ammo vest on his chest catching on small stones and projecting edges of rock. Still wearing his PNGs, Shepherd scanned the area, searching for suspiciously regular shapes or movement that would give away the presence of enemy soldiers or equipment, but the goggles didn’t have much magnification and the yellow tint blurred his vision.

  He took off his goggles and used the sniper scope to focus first on the area surrounding the caves. The sniper scope had a twenty-five fold magnification without having the same distortion as the PNGs, and it picked up a lot of ambient light. He was able to identify a series of defensive sangers just above the track and what might have been the barrels of heavy weapons in some of them, clearly outlined against patches of fresh snow.

  He turned his attention to the caves and saw something. Activity. Heavily armed men, some in turbans and black robes and others in what looked like white Arab robes, entering and leaving.

  Shepherd wormed his way back to Taj and Lex in the deeper shadows at the foot of the boulders and checked his radio channel. ‘Sunray, Sierra 5. Eyes on the target. Much activity, defensive positions and heavy weapons. At least fifty men visible outside the caves.’

  He heard the other OPs checking in, adding their intelligence. There was now no doubt that, at the least, they were looking at a substantial Taliban or al Qaeda stronghold. But it was also possible - and Shepherd felt a jolt of adrenaline at the thought - that they had found Bin Laden’s lair.

  He could imagine the buzz of excitement at the Head Shed at Bagram and even more so in London and Washington. The intelligence was now not from rumour or satellite surveillance, but from eyes on the ground, and he knew that it would galvanize the Regiment into action. His earpiece crackled again. ‘Sierra 5, Sunray. Maintain Eyes On and wait out.’

  As dawn broke, he carefully removed the protective foam from his rifle, took his sniper scope from his grab bag and assembled the rifle, zeroing them to one point. He laid it down on the foam rubber, careful not to give it the least knock that might throw it off, then settled down for what experience told him would be a long wait. In theory, a Quick Reaction Force could be on its way, if not within minutes, at least within hours. In practice, days might pass before an order to attack was given, as the various arms of the forces of the two nations jostled for position, and the politicians and spin doctors in Whitehall and Capitol Hill positioned themselves to claim the credit if succ
essful and deflect the blame if not.

  Throughout the day they watched a steady flow of arrivals and departures from the caves. Near midday, one of the Taliban’s red Toyota pick-ups pulled up at the foot of the track to the cave. The back was packed with soldier monks with kohl-rimmed eyes and the forked tails of their black turbans flying in the breeze. They looked like young boys, but each of them clutched an RPG or an AK47. While the driver painstakingly turned around, what appeared to be a delegation made their way up to the cave. They remained inside for forty minutes and then emerged and drove off again. Shepherd reported the sighting over the net, one more piece of the jigsaw in place.

  Towards sunset the Major patched Shepherd into the net with the other teams. ‘We’re going in,’ the Boss said. ‘Alpha 1, can you set LTDs? I’m going to ask for top cover, the jet jockeys are the only heavy stuff we can use, we’re out of artillery range.

  The LTDs were laser targeting devices that would be used to bathe the target in a light visible only to the planes or choppers that would attack the stronghold.

  Shepherd heard Spud’s reply. ‘Sunray, Alpha 1. I’ll try but it might not work. We can set them up all right, but they need a level surface to reflect from and the rock face around the caves is as rough as they come. And the valley’s narrow, steep-sided, and twists and turns like a corkscrew. I don’t think the jets will be able to get close enough.’

  ‘What about the attack helis?’

  ‘We trained some of the guys down there, remember. We taught them how to catch the Sovs in a crossfire from the valley sides and shoot them down. They may or may not have Stingers, but they can do the job just as well with heavy machine guns and RPGs. They may be up on the ridges above where the top cover might fly and shoot down on them like they did the Sovs.’

  There was a silence, broken only by the hiss of static, as the Major took instructions from up the line. ‘We’ll try with LTDs first,’ he said at last. ‘H Hour is 0500 hours. Suppressing fire to keep the Taliban heads down and the Support Group will move up at 0530.’ He paused. ‘One more thing. Our friends are running this operation, and they will be the lead teams going in.’

  Shepherd gave a rueful smile. “Our friends” was the standard euphemism for US Special Forces. Not for the first time, it looked like SAS would do the spade work and Delta would get the gongs and glory.

  Spud’s voice interrupted him. ‘Sunray, Alpha 1. We’re here, they’re not.’

  ‘They will be, and they will lead. The decision is from the highest level.’

  Shepherd glanced at Lex. ‘Hear that? The White House has spoken, we’re bag-carriers for the Yanks again.’

  Just after eleven that night, Shepherd watched through his scope and his PNGs as Spud’s team broke cover and inched their way down the valley sides, through the rubble of rocks and drifts of gravel washed down by the winter floods. One would move while the other covered him, ready to unleash an avalanche of fire if they were detected.

  They slipped silently past the defences where Taliban and Arab mujahedeen dozed. He watched as they forded the river, then Spud took the lead up the facing slopes. They paused a quarter of a mile from the cave entrance and placed the first of the laser targeting devices, no bigger than a paperback book. They sited two more LTDs at intervals of fifty yards, then crept back the way they had come. They had covered no more than three quarters of a mile of ground, but it had taken them four hours to do so.

  At five that morning, still a couple of hours before dawn, Shepherd heard the roar of jets and the first crumps of explosions as bombs began raining down on the Taliban positions further down the valley.

  He looked towards the cave mouth where figures could be seen racing in all directions, like wasps buzzing around a shattered nest. Moments later the first A10 jets roared up the valley towards them, punching out clouds of chaff and flares to throw off any missiles. It pulled a sharp turn well short of Shepherd’s OP, releasing its bomb load as it did so, before swinging away over the valley walls. He watched the parabola of the bomb’s flight, but it fell well short of the caves and detonated harmlessly among the rocks on the valley floor. A second and a third followed and also fell short.

  He spoke into the net. ‘Sunray, Sierra 5. They’re throwing bombs but they’re not connecting with the lasers and falling well short. The valley’s too tight, they can’t get close enough.’

  He could imagine the reaction from Spud and the other Assault Groups. They would now know this battle was not going to be fought from a distance – it was going to be up close and personal.

  ‘Sunray, all groups. Intelligence from our friends: the cave system is a labyrinth of tunnels, sealed by iron or steel doors and extending deep into the mountain. They have concrete floors, a ventilation system, hydro-electric power and an armoury of weaponry and ammunition, that could supply an army of two thousand men.’

  Shepherd looked across at Taj, who shook his head vigorously. ‘They are natural caves and you would struggle to get more than two hundred men inside them,’ hissed the Afghan.

  ‘They could have been extended since the Soviet War,’ said Shepherd.

  Taj shook his head fiercely. ‘My friend, I told you, I know these mountains and the people who live here or pass through here. Nothing happens here that I do not get to hear about.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘Sunray, Sierra 5. Our man says that’s BS. They’re just small, natural caves, holding two hundred men, tops.’

  ‘Maybe, but the friends are not going to believe that until they see it for themselves,’ said the Major.

  Just before zero hour, a fresh rain of bombs fell, dropped by B-52s so high above them they were only visible from the contrails in the icy winter sky. The explosions kept the enemy heads down but had little other impact. It had taken the US seventy to ninety Cruise Missiles and a series of saturation bombing raids by B-52s to destroy four al Qaeda training camps sited in open desert in 1998. In this jagged, boulder-strewn terrain, a target could be within a few yards of an exploding bomb and suffer no more than a ringing in their ears. Shepherd knew that no matter what weight of ordnance the US brought to bear, they could not bomb the mountains into submission. If Bin Laden was here, he would only be flushed out by fighting troops.

  At 5.30 am the percussive thud of mortar fire and the rattle of heavy machine guns showed that the ground battle was underway. As dawn broke, they could see the enemy fighters being slowly pushed back, but it was, literally, an uphill struggle for the Paras of the Support Group, attacking an enemy who was well entrenched on the higher ground. Even the air power that normally gave a decisive advantage in any pitched battle was almost nullified in this forbidding, almost impossible terrain. As Spud had warned, the surrounding mountain ridges were close to the height ceiling for attack helicopters and the approach up the valley floor would force them to run a gauntlet of anti-aircraft fire.

  Shepherd heard the chopping sound of rotors and saw the dark shapes of a formation of Blackhawks inserting the guys from Delta Force. The attack choppers were laying down a barrage of suppressing fire from their rocket and machine gun pods, but there was a blizzard of answering fire from both flanks of the valley and the Blackhawks’ array of electronic countermeasures were no defence against crude weapons like heavy machine guns and RPG’s.

  As Shepherd watched, an RPG streaked upwards and the lead Blackhawk erupted in flame. It slewed sideways, a rotor clipped the rock face in a shower of sparks, and the next moment the Blackhawk plummeted down, spinning crazily and exploded like a bomb.

  The next Blackhawk in the formation emerged through the pall of black smoke and went into a brief hover as its cargo of troops spilled out and took firing positions in one fluid movement. The chopper was already speeding back the way it had come with bullets striking sparks from its fuselage. The next, hit by intersecting streams of HMG fire, made a crash landing and burst into flames. Shepherd counted the figures tumbling from it; only four of its ten-man payload emerged from the wreck. The remaining Blac
khawks turned and flew back down the valley, still pursued by enemy fire.

  He dragged his eyes away and, while Lex was on maximum alert scanning in all directions for risks, Shepherd began raking the enemy positions through his scope, searching out high value targets, those giving orders. He spotted one figure in black Taliban robes who was directing fire, and at once trained the scope on him and began the firing ritual that he had practised thousands of times. First, the firm but relaxed grip on the weapon, his eye glued to the scope, his mind closed to all distractions. Then the gentle first pressure on the trigger, the sighing exhaled breath and the final smooth, steady pressure on the trigger. Last, the recoil into his shoulder and the familiar sight of a target turning from a living figure one moment to a collapsing lump of dead meat the next.

  Shepherd was also target marking for the Assault Teams. He spotted Spud’s group, identifiable by the recognition markings they had placed to indicate their positions. Invisible from ground-level, they were primarily intended to identify their positions to supporting aircraft to prevent “blue on blue” casualties but, from his elevated position above the battlefield, he could clearly make them out. Spud’s team were exchanging fire with muj fighters, but Shepherd saw an HMG in a sanger on the mountainside being brought to bear on them.

  ‘Sunray, Sierra 5. Patch Alpha 1.’ There was no time for courtesies or wasted words in the heat of battle.

  A second later, he heard Spud’s voice, almost drowned by the bark and rattle of small arms fire. ‘Alpha 1.’

  ‘Sierra 5. HMG, 350 yards bearing 020.’

  There was a pause then ‘Alpha 1. I have no visual. Repeat: no visual.’

  ‘Sierra 5. Stand by. Stand by. Will spot it for you. Watch for my phos.’ He reached into his ammo belt for two of the yellow tipped APTP phosphorous rounds. He aimed and fired and at once saw puffs of white smoke against the sanger where the machine gun was sited. A moment later there was the ferocious clatter of Spud’s GPMG and Shepherd saw rounds chewing at the edge of the sanger, blasting stone chips in all directions and striking sparks from the enemy machine gun. There was a whoosh as an SAS trooper with an M203 launched a grenade and a fireball erupted from the sanger. Peering through his scope, Shepherd checked for movement in the sanger, then said ‘Sierra 5. Problem solved.’