Shepherd studied him for a few moments. ‘If that’s what you want, I’ll do as you ask. You’re his father, and I have no right to go against your wishes - but with your permission, I’d like to tell him face to face. I’ll not mention that I’ve spoken to you, but I’ll say it’s not safe for him to be seen talking to me any more. OK?’
Qaseem nodded. ‘Thank you. You are an honourable man. I doubt we shall meet again but-’ Again he touched his hand to his heart. ‘May you travel safely.’
Shepherd smiled, touched his own heart and gave the traditional reply Karim had taught him. ‘And may you not be tired.’
When he’d finished sorting his kit, Shepherd took a stroll around the perimeter before setting off across the base to find Karim. He located him outside the American PX, selling Russian watches to a group of Yank new arrivals. ‘Every one guaranteed to have been taken from the wrist of a dead Soviet soldier,’ Karim was saying with gruesome relish, deep in his sales pitch. ‘Only twenty dollars each.’
Shepherd waited until he’d clinched a sale, then led him off to one side, out of earshot. ‘I’ve been thinking, Karim,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to more careful about being seen with me. It’s putting you at unnecessary risk. It’s one thing for you to be peddling stuff around the base, but being seen every day talking to a special forces guy like me is too risky.’
Karim gave him a suspicious look. ‘My father has talked to you, hasn’t he?’
Shepherd started to deny it, but Karim looked away and shook his head. ‘You spoke to him,’ he said flatly. ‘Please do not lie to me.’
‘OK, yes, he spoke to me. But what he said made sense to me anyway.’
Karim’s eyes started to fill with tears, but he brushed them away with an angry swipe of his hand. ‘I thought you were my friend.’
‘I was – I am, I just don’t want to be the cause of you getting hurt or worse.’
‘I have done nothing wrong, Spider,’ said the boy.
‘I know that,’ said Shepherd. ‘But I can’t put your life at risk. It’s not fair.’
Karim looked at him with teary eyes. ‘And what if I hear something useful;? Something that might save the lives of you and your friends? What would I do with information like that? Just forget it, and see you die? Is that what you want?’
Shepherd thought for a few moments. ‘I’ll tell you what. There’s a way for us to stay in touch without putting you at risk. I’ll set up a dead drop – a dead letter box for us to use.’
‘A dead drop? I do not understand.’
‘If you want to get in touch with me or you have information, you can put a note in the dead drop and I’ll take it and leave money for you there. And if you’re ever in danger, you can also use it as a live drop - a live letter box - to tell me that you need to meet.’
Karim beamed, his anger forgotten. ‘I have read of this.’ He rummaged through his sack of items for sale and produced a battered Cold War spy novel. ‘An English officer gave me this.’ He grinned. ‘Or anyway, it used to belong to him. I read it. Spies use these dead drops, don’t they?’
‘Well we don’t do it quite like the characters in novels,’ Shepherd said. ‘But you’ve got the general idea.’
‘So I will be your spy?’
‘Karim, no. I’m just showing you a way that you can continue to talk to me without anyone seeing you, that’s all.’
The boy nodded seriously. ‘I understand,’ he said.
‘OK, now spies in the books have their dead drops in cities, but our dead drops are always in a natural feature, like a fissure in the rock, or a cleft in a tree. To signal that there’s a message, you just leave a mark that can be seen by a casual glance, so you don’t have to check the dead drop itself, you just walk past and glance that way. There’s an exposed rock face, in a little dip about 400 yards to the west of the gates of our compound and far enough away from the main buildings and the perimeter fence that pausing there won’t arouse any suspicion if anyone happens to be watching. I need you to go and look for it later, OK?’
Karim nodded and wiped his eyes with the back of his hands.
‘There’s a crack about an inch wide at the base of the rock, where the winter frosts have penetrated it over the years,’ continued Shepherd. ‘It’s a few inches deep, so anything you put in there won’t be seen. Pretend you’re getting a stone out of your sandal or something and you can squat down and you’ll be hidden from sight. I’ve marked it with a chalk line on the rockface above it - when you’ve found it, rub out the chalk mark with your finger. Make a fresh mark when you want to alert me. A horizontal line will signal that there’s a message in the dead drop, a vertical one is asking for a live drop - a meeting. If you - or I - ask for that, be at the place at sunset that night or on each subsequent night until the meet. I will check the dead drop when I’m taking my morning run, and you must do the same every day. He paused ‘And Karim? Not a word about this to anyone else, OK?’
Karim nodded, face solemn. ‘Thank you Spider. Don’t worry, I won’t let you down.’
‘I know you won’t. But listen, don’t take any risks whatsoever around the Taliban. No amount of information about them is worth risking your life for. Now I want you to repeat everything I have just said to you so that I know you haven’t forgotten anything.’
* * *
Major Gannon had talked to the American agents running the AID programme and discovered the date of the next convoy distributing US dollars to a series of villages and small towns, including Karim’s home village. Shepherd put together his preferred four-man team - himself, McIntyre, Mitchell and Harper - to piggyback on the convoy and then set up an OP overlooking the village.
‘What’s to stop them from just attacking the convoy?’ Harper said.
‘Nothing, except they know that if they do, they’ll be killing the goose that’s laying the golden eggs,’ said Shepherd. ‘If they keep ambushing the convoys, either they’ll stop altogether or they’ll be so heavily protected that it’ll be a suicide mission for the Taliban. But if they wait for the Yanks to deliver the cash to the villages and then demand a share of it from the headmen, they’ll get a lot more money with next to no risk.’
The following day they rode out of Bagram in an armoured truck, sharing it with six US soldiers and a pile of plastic-wrapped bundles of US dollar bills in different denominations stacked in the middle. ‘You’d be tempted, wouldn’t you?’ Harper said, eyeing up the mound of money. ‘I mean, I don’t expect the villagers give receipts, since half of them can’t write anyway.’
‘Perhaps we can persuade the Taliban to give us their share,’ McIntyre said with a grin.
American Humvees loaded with troops rode Point and Tail End Charlie ahead and behind the truck as they drove towards the mountains, while a Blackhawk armed with Hellfire missiles and 7.62mm machine guns flew top cover above them.
A few miles from the village the convoy passed through a dense stand of cedar and pine trees and it slowed to walking pace for a few seconds so that the SAS team could jump down, forward roll to absorb the impact of their fall and then disappear among the trees. They went to ground as the convoy accelerated again, rumbling on towards the village. An hour later, having distributed the cash, it returned the way it had come. By then, Shepherd had already led the others in to set up the OP on a steep hillside overlooking the village. The slopes were densely wooded but a landslide the previous winter had swept away part of the tree cover, giving them a clear sight of the whole village. They settled in and waited for the Taliban to arrive.
McIntyre lay back with his head on his bergen and closed his eyes. ‘Unless anyone’s got any objections, I’ll take the second watch,’ he said. ‘I’m knackered and it’ll be a long night because unless the Taliban are fucking psychic, they won’t get word that the cash has arrived in time to get here before morning.’ Within two minutes, they could hear his soft snores.
‘Unbelievable,’ Shepherd said. ‘Is there anywhere that guy can’
t fall asleep?’
‘Only when he’s in your bed, shagging your wife,’ Mitchell said, ducking as Shepherd launched a pine cone at his head.
They remained on watch, two awake and two resting, throughout the night, but as McIntyre had predicted there had been no sign of the Taliban by the time the first rays of the rising sun began to light the mountain peaks high above them. About ten that morning, however, a Toyota pick-up trailing a column of dust swept along the dirt-track road that ran down from the mountains guarding the Pakistan border. Through his spotter-scope, Shepherd watched a group of heavily armed “soldier monks” jump out in the middle of the village, their distinctive garb of black robes, red sashes and kohl-rimmed eyes marking them out as Taliban, even without the AK-47s and RPG launchers they carried.
Shepherd was on the net at once, calling up the Quick Reaction Force from Bagram, even before a nervous looking group of village elders had appeared to welcome the Taliban leader. ‘Pity,’ Shepherd said, studying the man through the scope, ‘That’s not Jabbaar, it’s the Number Two, Hadir.’
‘Then he’ll have to do,’ Mitchell said. Dozing a moment before, he was now on maximum alert. Shepherd had already zeroed his scope and rifle, and he kept it trained on Hadir, tracking his movements as he strutted across the village square. The Taliban group were 1,200 yards away from the OP, but that was comfortably within his range - kills with AI .50s had been recorded at distances of a mile and three quarters.
‘Relax,’ Mitchell said, sensing Shepherd’s tension. ‘The QRF’ll be here inside ten minutes and then we’ll get all of them. And if we get Hadir alive, we might even get good intel out of him.’
‘Give me five minutes with him,’ McIntyre growled, ‘and I’ll have him singing like a fucking canary. He’ll-’ He broke off as there was a sudden commotion in the village. The driver of the Toyota jumped out of it and ran to Hadir, and whatever he said to him was enough to galvanise the Taliban into action. Hadir and his men began running back to their pick-up.
‘I don’t get it,’ Mitchell said. ‘They couldn’t have been more relaxed a minute ago, so what’s stirred them up now? They haven’t even collected their cash.’
‘They’ve been tipped off,’ said Shepherd. ‘This op’s been compromised like the rest. Someone’s seen the QRF leave Bagram and got a warning to them.’
‘How?’ Mitchell said.
Shepherd shrugged. ‘Who knows - cell phone, radio comms, or a fucking ouija board - what’s it matter? They’ve been tipped off and they’re getting away.’
He pressed the scope to his eye. There was no time for his usual meticulous preparation for the shot - Hadir had already reached the Toyota and was clambering into the passenger seat. As the pick-up began to move, Shepherd sighted and fired in one movement, taking up the first pressure on the trigger, breathing out and squeezing the trigger home in the space of less than a single second. He felt the recoil against his shoulder and simultaneously through his scope he saw the Taliban leader hurled back in his seat, arms flung outwards and a corona of blood spray around his head. It had been a lucky shot, Shepherd knew, but they all counted.
As the driver span the wheel and slewed the pick-up around, Hadir tumbled from the vehicle, sprawling in the dust. The exit wound had blown the back of his head off and he was stone dead as he hit the ground.
The pick-up slowed for a second but the Taliban made no attempt to retrieve the body. As the driver gunned the engine, the fighters fired bursts of automatic fire towards the site of the muzzle flash from Shepherd’s rifle. One of the fighters fired an RPG round from his launcher but it was at extreme range and its automatic detonation after its four and a half second flight meant that it exploded short of the OP, though it was still close enough for Shepherd to feel the searing heat of its blast and hear shrapnel pinging off the rocks around them.
The remaining Taliban fighter had now jumped onto the pick-up and it roared off with the men still loosing off wild bursts of fire.
Shepherd fired twice more, but both shots missed their target as the Toyota bucked and bounced over the rutted road, heading back towards the border. Mitchell, McIntyre and Harper were at maximum range for their AK74s but also kept up a steady fire of short, targeted bursts, in the hope of at least delaying the Taliban until the heli-borne QRF arrived, but the pick-up accelerated away, and within a minute it was even out of range of Shepherd’s AI .50. When the QRF eventually arrived, all that remained of the Taliban was the body of the dead Hadir.
At the debrief back at base later that day, there was much frustration and furious recriminations all round, but the source of the compromise remained unknown. Shepherd was still fuming when he went for his morning run the next day, so much so that he almost missed the vertical chalk mark scratched above the dead drop in the rockface, signalling that Karim wanted a meet.
When Shepherd told Mitchell about it, he insisted on riding shotgun on him for the meet. ‘It’ll be quite like old times,’ Mitchell said. ‘I did it for a couple of years in the Middle East, providing cover for MI6 guys working out of the embassies. If you’re going to a dead drop you’ve got to have support because the chances of compromise are very high; it’s how agents get knocked off all the time.’
‘Bloody hell, Geordie,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’m going to see a kid. The meet’s inside the base and he probably only wants to shake me down for some money because his tip-off proved right.’
‘Just the same, you need someone watching your back. It’s not just the direct threat. If anyone else is taking too much interest, you want to know about it, don’t you?’
Shepherd knew better than to argue with his more experienced colleague. At six that night, he strolled out of the Special Forces compound and walked around the perimeter fence towards the meeting place. Mitchell had already been in position for an hour, in cover nearby, watching for anyone approaching the meeting place or observing it from a distance.
When Shepherd got to the edge of the dip where it was sited, he got a double click in his earpiece that told him the area was clear. He found Karim already there, sitting on a rock with his back to him.
‘So Karim,’ he said. ‘Come to get some more money…’ The words died on his lips as Karim turned to face him. The boy’s face was ashen and his eyes were red from crying. ‘What the hell’s happened?’
‘Jabbaar’s men came back to our village to avenge the killing of Hadir,’ said Karim, stumbling over the words. ‘They took all the tribal elders away, and they took my father too.’
‘Your father? What the hell was he doing there? He’s an interpreter for the Americans, he must have known he’d be targeted.’
‘My grandfather was dying. My father had gone to see him in secret, to say his last farewell, but someone must have seen him and betrayed him, because the Taliban knew he was there.’
‘Then we’ll set up an operation to rescue him,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’ll get the lads on it right away. Don’t worry, we’ll sort this out, Karim, I promise.’
The boy shook his head. ‘It’s too late. Just before dawn, my grandfather’s neighbour heard the noise of a vehicle stopping outside the house. He waited until it drove off, then went outside. My father’s body had been thrown on the ground outside my grandfather’s door. He had been tortured; his fingernails had been pulled off and his body was covered with burns and knife cuts. But there was worse…’ He stopped, fighting for self-control. ‘They had cut off his manhood and stuffed it in his mouth… the sign they use to mark informers.’
‘Oh hell, Karim, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘He had bled to death. My only consolation is that my grandfather never saw his son like that, for he also died that night, in his sleep.’ He paused and when he spoke again, his voice had a colder, steelier edge. ‘It is now a blood feud for me. My father is dead, killed by Jabbaar.’ He spat on the ground as he said the name. ‘I was my father’s only son, I live now only to avenge him. It is a matter of honour: either Jabbaar or I must die. Wi
ll you help me, Spider?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘We’ll find him, Karim, I promise you that.’
‘And when we find him, he dies?’
‘Yes Karim,’ said Shepherd. ‘We find him and he dies.’
Karim held his gaze. ‘We don’t have to find him, I already know where he is, or at least, where he will be in three days’ time,’ he said quietly.
Shepherd held up his hand. ‘Don’t tell me the rest until we’re in a more secure area. You can come with us back to the compound. At least we don’t have to worry about you being seen with me any more, because the Taliban will already have your card marked. If they’ve killed your father, they will come after you as well, the first chance they get.’ He spoke into his throat-mic. ‘Geordie, we’re heading back now.’
‘We?’ Mitchell said.
‘Yes, the boy’s coming in with us.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘I’ve no choice. I’ll explain later.’
‘Are you sure you’re not getting a little too personally involved with the boy, Spider?’
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