Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2

by Stephen Leather

  ‘The Taliban have killed his father.’

  ‘That’s very sad but you aren’t responsible for that.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that, Geordie. Look, he’s an orphan now. He’s our responsibility.’

  Mitchell came over to join them and they walked back to the compound together in silence. Shepherd vouched for the boy to the guard at the gates and then led him to his tent. ‘Okay Karim,’ he said, sitting down on his cot. ‘Tell me why you think you know where Jabbaar will be.’

  ‘I spied on two Afghan soldiers this morning and heard them talking,’ the boy said. ‘They wear the green uniform of the Afghan Army, but I know they are Taliban. I overheard one say they were going to Zadran on Saturday, to teach the thieves and whores there a lesson. That means there’ll be whippings and thieves getting their hands cut off. It’s the Taliban’s version of sharia law, just like when they ruled the whole country and there were mutilations and executions almost every week. They even staged them in the football stadium in Kabul.’

  ‘So, even assuming that’s really what it is going to happen, why are you so sure that Jabbaar will be there?’ asked Shepherd.

  Mitchell sat down on another cot, watching Karim carefully.

  ‘Because he takes pleasure from such things and Zadran is his home village,’ said Karim. ‘I told you his name means cruel and he lives up to it. He runs the opium trade there and has even forced some of the farmers to surrender their children to him to clear their debts.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Zadran takes the children. He keeps the pretty ones and the others are taken across the border to be trained as suicide bombers.’

  Shepherd looked over at Mitchell. ‘Bastard,’ Mitchell muttered under his breath.

  Shepherd picked up a map and turned back to Karim. ‘Where is Zadran exactly?’

  ‘In the mountains about twenty miles east of Jalalabad.’

  ‘Bandit country,’ Mitchell said.

  Shepherd studied the map. ‘So what do you reckon?’ he asked Mitchell.

  Mitchell shrugged. ‘Could be right. It’s only a few miles from the tribal areas, so Jabbaar and his crew could easily slip across the border again. The only way we’ll find out is to take a look, but we may struggle to convince the Boss on nothing more solid than the word of a twelve year old kid.’ He paused, intercepting the boy’s baleful look. ‘No offence, Karim, I’m saying what the Boss will think, not what I think.’

  ‘Karim was right before,’ Shepherd said. ‘And apart from any personal reasons, Jabbaar’s a major target, Number One in the local Taliban hierarchy. Feathers in everyone’s caps if we nail him.’

  ‘Karim may well be right again, but there’s another problem,’ Mitchell said, studying the map. ‘Zadran is in a valley that runs eastwards towards the Pakistan border. It’s cut off from the rest of the country by a 3,000 metre range of mountains and the only way through them is by means of one of two passes, both of which cut through narrow defiles that are an ambusher’s dream. Half a dozen well-armed men could hold off an army there. So we’ll have to insert by helis and on previous form, as soon as we take off from Bagram, you can bet that the Taliban’s spies and informers will be passing word that we’re deploying.’

  ‘Then we don’t take off from Bagram,’ Shepherd said.

  Mitchell gave him a puzzled look. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘That for this op, we’ll base ourselves away from Bagram. Fly it in two stages. Drop the helis in the middle of nowhere until we’re ready for them.’

  ‘But even if we do have their support, it’ll be of limited use, because we can’t bomb or rocket targets in the middle of a large, densely populated village, and even if Jabbaar is in Zadran, by the time we’ve fought our way past the Taliban pickets and into the market square, the chances are he’ll be long gone.’ Mitchell paused. ‘That’s if he’s there at all. If he isn’t, and we turn out to have been shooting up a village that’s just going about its daily business, the Head Shed will have our guts for garters.’

  ‘We’ll do it covertly,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll infiltrate the village and call the rest of you in when I’ve got a positive ID on Jabbaar and his crew.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Will come with me. He’ll be my passport into Zadran. I’ll be his long lost uncle and he can vouch for me to the locals.’ He intercepted Mitchell’s dubious look. ‘He’s got the right to be there; Jabbaar killed his father.’

  ‘If you say so, but I’m guessing the Boss will take some convincing.’

  ‘Then let’s go persuade him.’ He turned to the boy. ‘Now if this is going to work, I’ll need the right tribal dress, Karim, which is where you come in. I need a shalwar kameez.’

  ‘I’ll get you the best money can buy.’

  ‘No, no, I want the opposite of that. It needs to be old, shabby and poor quality. I’m going to pose as a poor relative of yours, so I need to look the part. See what you can do, OK?’ He handed him a few dollars. ‘But Karim, you’re not to leave Bagram yourself. Pay one of the other boys to go the bazaar for you, if you need to, but you stay on the base. At least we know the Taliban can’t get at you here. You stick to us like camel shit on an army boot, okay?’

  They walked with the boy up to the gates of the compound and then he hurried off. While they waited for him to return, Shepherd called a briefing for the team he wanted and outlined his plan to use Karim to get close to Jabbaar. Major Gannon heard him out in silence, but then shook his head emphatically. ‘No can do, Spider. He’s a twelve year old kid.’

  ‘He’s a twelve year old Afghan kid and that makes him twelve going on twenty-five in the West,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s seen and done things that the wildest street kid in the UK couldn’t even imagine.’

  ‘He’s twelve, Spider. There’s no getting away from that.’

  ‘He’s a twelve-year-old orphan whose father was butchered by the Taliban. And he wants revenge. And to be honest, boss, I think he’s entitled. This isn’t England, he can’t go to the cops. He can’t go to anyone. Except us. And if we don’t help him, his father’s murderer goes unpunished.’

  ‘I’d be happier if you went and the kid stayed here.’

  ‘But he’s my ticket in, I can’t get into Zadran without him.’

  ‘But even setting aside the ethics of using the boy in an op at all, can you begin to imagine the international media shit-storm that would erupt if word of this ever got out? They’ll be accusing us of using Afghan kids as human shields.’

  ‘But word won’t get out because there’ll be nothing to say I’m British. It’s the ultimate deniable op. If I’m killed - and you know I won’t be captured, because I’ll top myself before I’ll let that happen - there’ll be no traceable kit, no paper trail, nothing. I’ll just be some dead foreigner, an Arab, an Uzbek, a Chechen or a Turkoman, meddling in an Afghan feud and paying the price for it. My death won’t even rate a line in the Kabul newspapers, let alone the outside world.’

  ‘But even if I agree to it, how do you propose to get into Zadran without being rumbled?’

  Shepherd smiled as he realized that the Major was starting to come around. ‘I’m going to pose as a shell-shocked local - thanks to the US bombing there’s a lot of them about. I’m going to be Karim’s uncle. He can speak for me if we’re stopped and since I’m shell-shocked, I won’t be speaking at all. And better yet, I’ll be unarmed-’

  ‘Are you off your head?’ said Gannon. ‘Have you looked in a mirror recently?’

  ‘Just hear me out. In Afghanistan, every adult man carries a weapon. If you’ve no weapon, you can’t be an adult and so you’re treated as a semi-imbecile. There’s no better way to disarm suspicion than to be someone who is beneath contempt, not worthy even of notice. And, of course, though I’ll not appear to be carrying a weapon at all, I’ll have a pistol, tucked away.’

  ‘So that’s you sorted then,’ McIntyre said, after a pause. ‘But how are the rest of us going to be inserting?�
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  Shepherd smiled. ‘We send a couple of helis out into the desert, close enough to be able to get to me in minutes. When I need you I’ll fire a flare.’

  ‘You figure any spies won’t know what you’re up to?’ asked the Major.

  ‘We can muddy the water by using half a dozen Hughes 500 helis. Even though they’re small, they pack a hell of a punch. They can be used as gunships – they’re fitted with seven-shot rocket pods and 7.62 miniguns - or as troop carriers with one guy sitting next to the pilot and two, or even four more, at a pinch, strapped to the outside and standing on the skids. We can use six of them and stagger their departures from Bagram and no one will know they are meeting up.’

  ‘So you call them in at the last moment?’

  ‘They’ve got a range of a couple of hundred miles and a top speed of 160 miles an hour, and they’re small and relatively quiet, so you can be less than two minutes flying time away from the target and be undetected by anyone there… which is just as well, because that’s probably the maximum time I’ll have before the Taliban start cutting my dick off and feeding it to me.’

  ‘Okay,’ the Boss said at last. ‘You’ve just about convinced me. I’ll get the paperwork sorted. We’ve got three days to prepare; let’s make the most of them.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Shepherd said. ‘It’s a while since I’ve done any CQB training. I’ll need a hand to build a Killing House I can practise in.’

  ‘I’ll go one better,’ McIntyre said. ‘Once we’ve built it, I’ll train you up as well. You may be the dog’s bollocks when it comes to sniping, but there’s no one better than me when it comes to CQB.’

  Shepherd and the team spent a few hours stacking sand-bags to form a Killing House about thirty feet square, where he could practise his shooting drills. McIntyre rigged up targets of various sizes at irregular intervals around it and Shepherd began his training, with McIntyre a hard taskmaster. ‘You’re best with a 9mm Glock,’ he said. ‘It’s a little bigger than the Browning, but it’s a beautiful weapon and it has no safety catch - and the split second that saves you might just be a life-saver too. If you’ve not used one before, you just have to remember that there’s a hard pull on the trigger for the first shot, but after that it’s just a short single pull to fire the rest of the magazine. You’ve got one in the spout and twelve in the mag, giving you thirteen shots, and you need to count the double taps as you fire them, so you’ve always got one shot left as you change magazines.

  ‘You need to practise both shooting methods too. You already know the instinctive method, one-handed and effective up to ten or twelve metres range. If you can point you can shoot. But you also need to go a bit more old school and practise the Weaver method we used to use back in the day. It’s a two-handed stance and it’s more accurate at ranges from ten to twenty metres but slower than the instinctive method. Any further from Jabbaar than that and you might as well put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye, because no matter how good a shot you are, you’re only going to hit him by accident, not design. Ready? Right, let’s get to it. You need to fire a couple of thousand rounds before I’m convinced you’re ready... and that’s supposing you manage to hit the target now and again. If you don’t, it’s going to be a long night.’

  As Shepherd had admitted, it was some time since he’d practised his CQB skills, and he was rusty at first, slow to draw and change magazines, and with a couple of his shots just missing the killing zone: the triangle of head and upper body, where a double tap was certain to be fatal.

  ‘That was shite,’ McIntyre said, after his first session. ‘You missed with two shots out of twenty-four. That might be good enough for the infantry, but you’re not in the fucking infantry, you’re in the SAS and we expect perfection - do it again.’

  Shepherd did better on his second attempt and began to get back into the rhythm of CQB, drawing, firing a double-tap, rolling onto the ground and firing another double-tap, standing up and firing another, and then going to ground again, a constant rhythm of fire and movement, trying to ensure that he was never a static target, even when re-loading. Years of ops and practice in the Killing House at Hereford were meant to ensure that any SAS man could change magazines even while rolling across the ground, but Shepherd’s focus on his sniping skills, and the continuous deployments on CT ops, meant that he had practised his CQB skills much less often in recent years.

  ‘Keep moving!’ McIntyre bellowed as Shepherd paused for a split-second, fumbling with the magazine as he changed it. ‘Do you think the fucking Taliban are going to politely stop firing and wait for you to change magazines before they shoot your arse full of holes?’

  ‘You’re lovely when you’re angry,’ Shepherd said, laughing, before he dived and rolled again. As he fired the double-taps, he counted the rounds religiously and changed the magazine still with one round in the chamber, so the pistol was never unloaded and he always had the means to take down an attacker. Not bad,’ McIntyre said, as they took a breather after a couple of hours intensive practice and had a brew. Shepherd smiled to himself, it was as much praise as McIntyre could ever bring himself to give about anything.

  ‘Shall I tell you something weird?’ McIntyre said, as he stirred about half a pound of sugar into his brew. ‘Did you know that British police can’t fire double-taps because of a legal ruling that if you hit the target with the first shot, the second one constitutes excessive force.’ He gave a bleak smile. ‘Fucking ridiculous I know, but it’s true. So if you shoot a bad guy, you have to hope he’s dead, because if not, he gets a free shot at you before you can fire again.’

  While Shepherd was practising his shooting drills, Karim had returned with a shalwar kameez for him. When he tried it on, Shepherd wrinkled his nose. ‘Bloody hell, Karim, I know I said worn and patched, but I don’t remember saying anything about it stinking.’

  Karim grinned. ‘But won’t the smell just make it seem more authentic, Spider?’

  ‘And was there any change from the dollars I gave you?’

  Karim’s smile grew even broader. ‘Strangely enough, it was just the right amount.’

  ‘Do you know, I had a funny feeling, it was going to be!’ He paused. ‘Now I’ve done my training, Karim, but there’s one piece of kit, I need you to use. When we’re in Zadran and I give you the nod, you’ll have to fire a flare to alert McIntyre and Mitchell and the others that we need them to come in all guns blazing. See this?’ He showed him a pouch about the size of two packs of cigarettes and then took out a metal tube three inches long, fitted with a screw end and a small trigger. ‘This a gun to fire mini-flares. They were designed originally for people on yachts, but they’re perfect for our purpose too. These are the flares,’ he said, pulling them out of the pouch. ‘See the green and red coloured bands on the ends? They show the colour of the flare: a green flare signals “Go!” to our friends, a red one warns of danger.’ He winked at Karim. ‘But you’ll only need green ones. Screw the flare on, press the trigger and it throws the flare up to 400 feet in the air. My mates will be watching for the signal and as soon as they see it, they’ll come and join the party. But Karim, let’s get one more thing clear. If you’re to come to Zadran with me, you have to do exactly as I say, when I say it. And that means you fire the flare when I tell you, and then you drop to the ground and stay flat, whatever happens, until I tell you it’s safe.’

  ‘You want me to be a coward?’ Karim said, resentful.

  ‘No, I want you to stay alive. The Taliban are no respecters of youth and nor are the automatic weapons they fire. But don’t worry, do as I say and you’ll have your revenge on Jabbaar, but I need to concentrate on my own job without having to keep half an eye on you. OK?’

  Karim nodded. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do as you say.’

  Shepherd had a final briefing with the rest of the team the next day. They would be inserting separately, with Shepherd and Karim making directly for Zadran, aiming to lie up nearby overnight, and then enter the villag
e early the next morning, while the rest of the team left on the helicopters.

  Shepherd was dressed in his shalwar kameez, its odour only marginally improved by a night in the open, hanging on the barbed wire fence. Although it still appeared to be the typical Afghan clothing, Shepherd had modified the long shirt. As he was right-handed, he had unpicked the seam of the shirt all the way from the left shoulder down to the waist and then fixed Velcro strips to both sides of it, so that when closed, the shirt appeared untouched. He wore his Glock pistol in a holster so well-concealed that even someone searching him for weapons would be almost certain to miss it. Unlike a normal shoulder holster, this one fitted tight into the left armpit, and, even to a practised eye, left no outward sign that he was carrying a weapon at all, but when he needed to access it, he simply had to rip the Velcro open with his left hand and draw the pistol with his right. It took less than a second to draw and fire. To complete his disguise, he was wearing the usual Afghan knitted skullcap. He hadn’t shaved for three days and his skin was nut brown from hours under the relentless Afghan sun.

  An hour after sunset, Shepherd led Karim out to a waiting Blackhawk heli. It had landed within the SF compound itself, and while Taliban spies might still report it taking off, they could not see who or what it was carrying.

  Karim was saucer-eyed as he clambered into the heli. ‘Frightened?’ Shepherd said, as he watched him looking around the interior.

  The boy’s eyes were shining as he met his gaze. ‘No Spider, just excited.’

  The heli took off and flew a diversionary route, flying west until out of sight of Bagram, before descending to low-level and switching onto its true course. The pilot was already wearing Passive Night Goggles. As well as his own, Shepherd had brought a pair for Karim and showed him how to use them. The boy was speechless for some time, gazing out into the darkness with a look of complete wonder on his face.

  The Blackhawk put them down at an LZ twelve miles from Zadran and disappeared into the night, while they began a three hour walk through the darkness before finding a place to lie up close to Zadran.