Shepherd heard a voice in his earpiece. ‘Speed it up. They’re round us like flies on shit.’ He couldn’t tell if it was Jimbo or Lex.
Drawn by the noise of firing and explosions, tribesmen and Taliban fighters were pouring from their scattered huts and houses and racing over the fields towards the burning building. They fired from the hip as they ran so their bullets went wide. Jimbo and Lex fired methodically, taking out more than a dozen of the Taliban fighters with carefully-placed shots.
Geordie fired a short bust at the wheels of Shepherd and Todd’s mopeds, disabling them so that the Taliban couldn’t use them to give chase. Jock attached the ladder with Todd’s body to the back of Geordie’s moped, then checked it was secure. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ he shouted.
Jock climbed on to the moped attached to Shepherd’s makeshift stretcher. ‘This is going to hurt, Spider, but we’ve got to get you out of here.’
Shepherd nodded, using his hand to keep the pressure on the dressing. Jock kicked the engine into life.
As Jimbo and Lex continued to give covering fire, Jock and Geordie sped away. Shepherd gritted his teeth as the improvised stretcher bumped and jolted over the rough terrain. Jimbo and Lex fired final bursts, climbed onto their mopeds and sped after Jock and Geordie.
Behind them, they heard a barrage of explosions and saw the sky light up with tracer as the fire in the burning building reached the Taliban’s ammunition store.
Every bump and jolt caused Shepherd agonising pain but he clamped his jaw to stop himself from crying out and tried to focus on the column of flame shrinking behind them as they sped towards the heli landing site. They had covered only half the distance when Shepherd heard Geordie’s voice in his earpiece, ‘We’ll have to stop. The jolting’s loosened his trauma pads, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig.’
‘Roger that,’ said Jock, applying his brakes. ‘Alpha 3 and 7 drop back and set up an Immediate Ambush. Buy us a little time.’
The bikes slewed to a halt as Jimbo and Lex peeled off and circled back before jumping off their bikes and diving into cover.
Jock stayed on his moped as Geordie hurried over to Shepherd.
Shepherd felt the fierce pressure on his chest as Geordie slapped on a fresh trauma pack and tightened the bindings with a savage jerk.
‘Are you okay, mate?’ asked the medic.
Shepherd nodded and grunted. He could feel blood still oozing from the wound and it hurt like hell, but he didn’t feel weak and he wasn’t going numb so he figured that the injury was survivable, so long as they got him back to base without delay.
A moment later the agonised bumping and jolting began again as the moped sped on towards the LZ. Behind them there was the chatter of firing as Lex and Jimbo let rip with their AK74s, cutting down three of their pursuers and sending the rest diving for cover. Moments later the SAS men were mobile again, gunning their mopeds as they sped over the dusty terrain towards the hill where the Chinook was already landing, its rotors thundering in the night air.
Lex and Jimbo took up defensive positions while Jock and Geordie manhandled Shepherd’s improvised stretcher onto the tailgate. The helicopter’s six-barrelled M134 Minigun, operated by the co-pilot from the side window, unleashed a further torrent of fire at the Taliban pursuers as they closed on the hill.
Geordie checked Shepherd’s dressing while Jock ran back for the Captain. He threw the body over his shoulder and ran back to the Chinook. Lex and Jimbo fired final bursts at the Taliban fighters and then threw themselves into the belly of the helicopter.
There was a shout of ‘Go! Go! Go!’ and the Chinook’s still-bellowing engines wound up another octave and the airframe juddered and shuddered as the heli lumbered forward.
Shepherd felt a sudden drop in the pit of his stomach as, engines screaming, the Chinook plunged off the hilltop and dropped. The whirling rotors fought to generate lift and then the helicopter started to climb. It climbed higher, swinging away from the pursuit, the tinny rattle of a few last rounds against its armoured fuselage fading as it climbed higher and set a course for the distant base at Bagram.
Shepherd felt the stab of a morphine syrette in his arm. At once his agony began to fade into a hazy blur and he heard Geordie’s voice as if it was coming to him from the bottom of a well. ‘I need to get the bullet out and tie off some of these bleeders.’
Jock shouted over the roar of the engines. ‘We’re airborne. Geordie, do what you need to do.’
Geordie loomed over Shepherd. ‘Spider, I’m going to have to take the bullet out now so I can stem the bleeding.’
‘Just do it,’ said Shepherd, and he gritted his teeth.
Shepherd saw the glint of steel and felt the bite as the scalpel opened the wound further and Geordie began probing for the bullet.
Shepherd grunted and turned to the side to see Lex looking at him, clearly concerned. Shepherd forced a smile. ‘There’s one good thing to come out of this,’ he said.
‘Yeah?’ said Lex. ‘What’s that?’
‘At least I’ll be back with my family for Christmas.’ He closed his eyes and grunted as Geordie dug deep for the bullet.
* * *
Spider Shepherd left the SAS at the end of 2002 and joined an elite police undercover unit. You can read the first of his undercover adventures in Hard Landing, where he goes undercover in a high security prison to unmask a drugs dealer who is killing off witnesses to his crimes. The Spider Shepherd series continues with Soft Target, Cold Kill, Hot Blood, Dead Men, Live Fire, Rough Justice, Fair Game, False Friends, True Colours and White Lies.
You can read more about Spider at www.danspidershepherd.com and more about Stephen Leather’s work at www.stephenleather.com
Hard Landing is available in the UK for 49p at – http://amzn.to/xxX2YU
And in the US for less than a dollar at – http://amzn.to/xWg1E7
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