The guards at the checkpoint started to shout as they swung up their weapons, but the figure had now almost reached them. Shepherd was already on auto-pilot, running through a sequence of actions so often practised that they were almost instinctive. The head of the burqa-clad figure now filled Shepherd’s sniperscope - only a head-shot would stop a bomber triggering a device. He took up the first pressure on the trigger, but even as he exhaled, squeezed the trigger home and felt the recoil, he saw that he was too late. A micro-second before the shot, the burqa-clad figure’s had slapped against its chest and in that instant, there was a blinding flash. A moment later Shepherd heard the thunder-clap of an explosion and the shock wave swept over them in a whirlwind of dust and dirt. There was the whine and whirr of shrapnel fragments overhead and then the spattering sound of softer, human debris falling to earth around him.
Shepherd lifted his head. The site of the checkpoint was now as blood-soaked as a halal butcher’s yard. A pall of oily smoke was rising from a crater in the centre of the dirt road where the burqa-clad figure had been standing when the device detonated. The man – for Shepherd had no doubt that it had been man passing himself off as a woman - had disappeared completely, with only a few shreds of blood-stained and smoke-blackened blue fabric to show he had ever existed. The troops who had been manning the checkpoint were sprawled around the crater, their bodies contorted into unnatural positions by the force of the blast. The two men who had been closest to the bomber were so mangled as to be almost unrecognisable as human. Partially shielded by their dead comrades, the four others were still alive - so far at least - but all were wounded. Shepherd knew that suicide bombers routinely packed shards of steel, sharp stones and fragments of broken glass around their devices to increase the carnage from the blast. All the men were bleeding badly, one with blood pumping in spurts from the stump that was all that was now left of his right arm. Nearby, the severed limb was dangling obscenely from the branch of a stunted acacia tree.
In his earpiece, Shepherd heard Mitchell, the patrol medic, calling in a casevac as he broke cover and sprinted down the hillside towards the bomb-site, where the Paras’ own medic was already working frantically to tie a tourniquet around what was left of the soldier’s arm.
Shepherd swung his rifle back towards the brow of the ridge, and caught a glimpse of the pick-up as it reversed back out of sight. He squeezed off a quick shot but he was at maximum range and with no time to aim it would have been a miracle if he had hit the target. A moment later he saw a cloud of dust billowing above the ridgeline as the driver span the pick-up around and raced away.
Shepherd could already hear McIntyre in his earpiece, calling in an air-strike on the pick-up, but he knew that the response, whether a Warthog - an A10 Thunderbolt with a rotary cannon that could spit out almost 4,000 rounds a minute - or a stub-winged Blackhawk firing chain guns and Hellfire missiles ,would take four or five minutes to reach the area. By then the Taliban killers who had sent the suicide bomber to his death would already have hidden their vehicle from sight in some cover or abandoned it and gone to ground.
They saw the distinctive shape of a Warthog in the sky to the west a few minutes later but there were no rumbles of explosions nor bursts of distant cannon-fire; the Taliban had obviously made good their escape.
The helis arrived soon afterwards to casevac the dead and wounded. Shepherd and his team helped to load them onto the casevac helis and then clambered into the Chinook that would fly them back to the base at Bagram. Bagram was home to more than seven thousand troops, most of them American, housed in huge tented compounds. And while the area surrounding the base was nominally controlled by the coalition forces, it still came under daily rocket attack.
As soon as they landed back at Bagram they went into an immediate debrief with Major Allan Gannon who had been in overall charge of the operation. Gannon was a big man with a strong chin, his hair bleached from the unrelenting Afghan sun. He was in his shirtsleeves and had a black and white checked keffiyeh scarf tied loosely around his neck as he led the debrief in the windowless, underground briefing room, its air-conditioning a welcome respite from the furnace heat of the Afghan summer.
As the others focussed on the implications of the Taliban’s new tactic of disguising suicide bombers in burqas, Shepherd found himself thinking through the sequence of events he had witnessed. As he did so, he felt a growing sense of unease. ‘How did they know?’ he said eventually.
Major Gannon frowned. ‘How did they know what?’ he asked.
‘It wasn’t a regular checkpoint,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’d never had troops there before and we hadn’t been in position for more than an hour. So how did the Taliban know we were there? They don’t have suicide bombers wandering around the countryside on the off chance they’ll bump into a patrol or a checkpoint. They target them at places where they know troops will be.’
Mitchell nodded in agreement, his face still blood-spattered from working on the casualties.
‘So the intel was planted?’ said the Major. ‘They lured our boys out there to blow them up?’
‘Or the op was bubbled,’ Shepherd said. ‘Compromised before it had even started. Either way, there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.’
‘It’s not the first time either,’ said Mitchell.
‘Seems like everything’s being bubbled at the moment,’ said The Major. ‘It looks as if all our air and ground movements are being monitored.’
‘It’s not surprising,’ McIntyre growled, ‘given the small army of domestics, barbers, cleaners, washers up, dhobi wallahs, chai wallahs, et bloody cetera, that we have hanging around the base.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ said Mitchell. ‘There are fucking hundreds of them kicking around Bagram. No one notices them, they’re just part of the furniture, which makes it all the easier for them to pick up information and pass it on to the Taliban. It’ll only take someone to leave a memory stick lying around and they’ll have the crown jewels.’
‘But our ops are getting compromised too’ Shepherd said. ‘And our compound is a self-contained, sterile zone. We don’t have any domestics because we do our own chores, so whatever the source of today’s compromise, it didn’t come from us.’ He looked over the Major. ‘I think you’re right, Boss. I think they’re clocking our flights in and out.’
Gannon shrugged. ‘It’s a big base, and they’re not going to kick out all the Afghans. The place wouldn’t function without them. All we can do is keep our own security water-tight and have everything on a need to know basis.’
‘Which we already do anyway,’ McIntyre said.
Shepherd nodded. ‘Agreed. But if we need Green Army support on an op, let’s give them the absolute minimum of notice.’
‘Aye, right enough,’ McIntyre said. ‘The less time they know something, the less chance of it being compromised.’
* * *
Shepherd was up at dawn the next morning and before the heat of the day became too oppressive he went out for a run around the sprawling, six thousand acre base. As usual he did his running in his boots with a rucksack containing a concrete-block wrapped in old newspapers on his back. As he came out of the gates of the Special Forces’ compound in the dim pre-dawn light, his eye was caught by a movement on the main runway. Lit by the harsh glare of floodlights and watched over by heavily armed American soldiers, a line of a dozen men, all hooded and dressed in identical orange jump suits, were shuffling towards an unmarked transport plane. They were shackled hand and foot, their chains clanking and rattling as they were hustled across the concrete hard-standing and up the loading ramp into the aircraft. By the faint light of the emergency lighting inside the loadspace, Shepherd could see each man being chained to a ring-bolt fixed to the steel floor. Then the ramp was closed and as Shepherd began running around the perimeter, he could hear the engines wind up and saw the plane taxi out and take off into the breaking dawn.
Shepherd had run ten miles and the sun was well above th
e horizon by the time he came back towards the gates of the Special Forces compound, sprinting the last four hundred yards flat out. He came to a halt, chest heaving, alongside a familiar figure, an Afghan boy squatting in the dust, with a kettle boiling on a small spirit stove. The boy beamed when he caught sight of Shepherd. ‘Salaam alaikum, Spider. Mint tea?’
‘Alaikum salaam, Karim,’ Shepherd said between gasps. ‘Hell yes, but give me a moment to get my breath back and drink some water first.’ He drained the plastic bottle he’d been carrying, wiped the sweat from his brow and then took the cup of hot, sweet green tea from Karim, paying him with a dollar bill from the pocket of his shorts.
Only twelve years old, with dark, fathomless eyes, and a foot-dragging limp, the result of a broken ankle that had never been properly set, Karim was one of dozens of Afghan Artful Dodgers wheeling, dealing and hustling on the margins of the base. As well as mint tea, he changed money, sold cigarettes singly or in packs, and claimed to be able to lay his hands on almost anything else as well. The first time they’d met, he’d offered to sell Shepherd a Kalashnikov, and just the previous week he’d had a sackful of antiquities, small stone carvings that had been stolen by grave robbers from some ancient site or perhaps even looted from the wrecked Kabul museum. Shepherd liked the boy’s spirit and cheeky sense of humour and had got into the habit of stopping to chat to him every morning. Karim was teaching him Pushtu and in return, although the boy already spoke excellent English, Shepherd was teaching him some English slang that wasn’t in any textbook.
‘So how’s business, Karim?’ he said.
‘Slow, Spider, I need more customers like you.’
‘So what’s this week’s special offer – gold bars? Stinger missiles?’
The boy pretended to be hurt. ‘Don’t mock me, Spider. I can be very useful to you. I don’t just sell things,’ He smiled slyly. ‘I can sell you information too.’
‘About what?’ said Shepherd.
‘About the Taliban. No one pays any attention to boys like me. I can go anywhere and everywhere, and I keep my eyes and ears open.’
‘Oh come, on, Karim. You’re telling me stories here. The Taliban don’t go around talking in front of strangers.’
Karim broke into a big smile and spread his arms wide. ‘Me? I’m just a simple cripple boy trying to make a living selling tea and cigarettes. No one pays me any attention, Spider. I’m invisible.’
Shepherd smiled despite himself. ‘Simple is one thing you’re not, Karim, but you need to be careful saying things like that. You’re just a kid, you don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for.’
‘I might be young in your country, Spider, but not here. We Afghans grow up fast - we have to. You pay others for information. Pay me and you will not regret it, I promise.’
‘No, forget it, Karim. If the Taliban even suspect you of spying on them, it’ll be your death sentence.’ He pointed a finger at him. ‘I’m serious now. The Taliban are dangerous people, you don’t want to give them an excuse to hurt you.’
The boy grinned. ‘They won’t suspect - like you said, I’m just a kid.’ He gave Shepherd a calculating look. ‘I’ll tell you something anyway - how do you say it? - a free sample. Don’t pay me anything now, but if you find I spoke the truth, I’ll trust you to pay me afterwards.’
‘Karim, stop this.’
‘I’m serious, Spider. I have some information that might be useful to you. How can you turn that down?’
‘I can turn it down because I don’t want to put you in the firing line.’
‘But I already have the information. All I would be doing is to pass it to you.’
Shepherd thought for a few moments and then sighed. ‘All right then, what do you know?’
‘Some Taliban fighters will be coming to our village. They know that the American aid money is being delivered and they’ve told the head man of the village that they want half of it.’
‘How do you know this?’ Shepherd said.
‘I heard the elders arguing about it. They don’t want to pay, but they’re frightened the Taliban will kill them if they don’t.’
Shepherd thought for a moment. ‘Do you know the name of the local Taliban leader?’
‘There are two. One is Hadir, named for the sound thunder makes in the mountains. The other is Jabbaar. His name means “Cruel” in our language, and he’s well-named. one of them is bound to be there with the fighters, because our head man refuses to negotiate with his underlings.’ He nodded enthusiastically. ‘That’s good information, isn’t it, Spider?’
‘Yes, Karim, it is.’
‘Worth money?’
‘Possibly. But I want you to promise me that you’ll be careful. Eavesdropping on elders is one thing, but keep well clear of the Taliban.’
Karim laughed. ‘I will, Spider. I’m not stupid.’
Shepherd put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘I’m serious about this, Karim.’
The boy looked into his eyes. ‘I know you are, Spider. You are a true friend, I know that.’
Shepherd went straight over to the Major’s tent and told him everything that he had learned from the boy. The next day at “morning prayers” – the daily briefing with the Boss – the Major announced that the intel appeared to be good. ‘The Taliban know that they’re losing the main battle and they’re increasingly turning to coercing the local villages into giving them support, supplies and cash. And they certainly know that the US aid budget is distributed in cash, by the bucket-load, in an attempt to buy the support of the villagers.’
‘And the names he mentioned?’
‘Both check out.’ The Major flicked through a series of images on his laptop until he found the ones he was seeking. ‘Take a look at these.’ Shepherd and the others leaned in to study the grainy surveillance imagery of two Afghan men. The Boss pointed to the first of them. ‘Jabbaar seems to be a particularly nasty piece of work even by Taliban standards, and his side-kick, Hadir, isn’t much better. The intel we have suggests they’re living over the border, somewhere in the tribal areas, but as you know, it’s a porous border hereabouts, so they won’t have any difficulty infiltrating to carry out raids or do a bit of cash and carry – the villagers have the cash and the Taliban carry it away.’
‘Then let’s go take a look,’ Shepherd said. ‘But what about Karim?’
‘The kid? Pay him a few dollars from the bribes fund. And if we get the Taliban head honchos, pay him some more. OK, final brief at 1600 hours. Insert by heli tonight, set up an OP and see what happens.’
* * *
As Shepherd was preparing his kit outside his tent later that morning the guard at the gate called to him. ‘A local is asking for you,’ he said. As Shepherd walked over to the gate, he saw a tall Afghan, dressed in an expensive looking shalwar kameez. ‘Salaam alaikum,’ he said. ‘I’m Spider, what can I do for you?’
‘Alaikum salaam,’ the man replied, touching his hand to his heart in the traditional Afghan gesture. ‘My name is Qaseem. You know my son, Karim.’ His beard was long and straggly, rust-coloured at the bottom and greying close to his chin.
‘Your son is a clever boy,’ said Shepherd. ‘Very entrepreneurial.’
‘He is very enthusiastic,’ said Qaseem. ‘I am very proud of him, but I fear for him also, which is why I am here.’ Qaseem hesitated and glanced around him. ‘He talks about you a lot and that worries me.’ He saw Shepherd frown and hurried on. ‘I mean no offence and am suggesting nothing improper. I don’t believe my son has anything to fear from you, but by being seen talking to you so often, he is putting himself in danger. Not all men here are what they seem. It would only take a word from one of them to those who are enemies of us both, to put my son’s life at risk.’
‘I understand,’ said Shepherd. ‘But he spends a lot of time in our compound, not just with me.’
‘If he is trading, if he is selling you cigarettes or tea, then no one cares. But he spends time talking to you, and he behaves as if he
was your friend.’
‘I think of him as a friend,’ said Shepherd. ‘I have a young son myself. Much younger than Karim, but I would be very happy if my boy grew up to be like your son.’
The man smiled. ‘I thank you for that, but you must understand that the friendship of a British soldier can be a dangerous thing during times like this.’
Shepherd nodded. ‘Again, I hear what you’re sending and I understand you. But you’re talking to me now, in full view of other Afghans. And Karim has told me that you work for the Americans as an interpreter. Surely nothing that your son does represents any greater risk than what you do yourself?’
‘I am a man, and I know the risks involved,’ Qaseem said. ‘I’m well aware that the fact that I work for the Americans means that my son will probably be an orphan before he is grown up; his mother, my wife - may she rest in the peace of Allah - died giving birth to him. I do not deceive myself that the Taliban cannot reach those who collaborate with the faranji, but I’m willing to take the risks for myself, because whatever happens to me, the money the Americans pay me will at least buy my son a better future… if he survives. But he is a child, still. If he is seen to be too close to the occupiers, or is suspected of passing information to faranji soldiers, there will be no future for him.’ Qaseem placed his hand on Shepherd’s arm, holding his gaze. ‘Insh’allah that will not happen. Afghanistan is a poor country. A farmer may earn only a few dollars for an entire year’s work. Even a teacher, as I used to be, earns only a pittance. Suddenly you Westerners are among us, scattering dollars like the chaff when the wheat is threshed. My son’s head has been turned. He dreams of riches and neglects his education. He thinks that one day he will go to America, make his fortune, drive a big car and act like a movie star.’ He paused. ‘I do not blame him, he is young, but I am not as naïve as my son. I know that when the Americans tire of this war, they will leave without a backward glance, just like the Russians and, yes, like you British too in the past. And when they do, they will abandon their so-called friends to their fate, just as they did in Vietnam. We shall again be a forgotten country and what will become of my son then? So for his sake, I beg you not to encourage him in his daydreams nor put him at risk. Please send him away from you.’
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