Hostile Territory (A Spider Shepherd short story)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘How reliable is this intel?’ Shepherd said.

  Parker held Shepherd’s look. ‘It’s blue chip: humint, backed by surveillance and signals intelligence.’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘Give us what you have and we’ll take a look at it. You mentioned a couple of ways we could help. What’s the other?’

  ‘The other would be to help us retrieve the situation in relation to the mercenaries,’ Parker said.

  ‘You mean clear up the mess you left,’ Jock growled.

  ‘If you prefer, but that will be a more complex task because the mercenaries have heavy weapons and know how to use them, and we have very little intelligence on how they’ve deployed them yet, so let’s leave that one in abeyance for the moment.’

  ‘Is this going to be official or off the books?’ asked Jock.

  ‘A bit of both,’ said Parker. ‘Obviously my bosses know that I’m making this approach but equally obviously they won’t want your involvement made public.’

  ‘Bloody typical,’ said Jock.

  ‘Assuming we do pitch in, you may be able to offer a little reciprocal help,’ said Shepherd. ‘Quid pro quo, if you like. The village of Biramayo was destroyed by the rebels a couple of weeks ago. The only survivors are a group of children, boys and girls, mostly about eight to twelve years old. We were operating in their area and rescued them from the rebels. We’d like to get them some help either from HMG or from one of the aid agencies.’

  Parker looked pained. ‘We can’t become involved in any humanitarian missions,’ he said. ‘Our resources are already stretched much too thin, but I can put a word in with those agencies and charities that are still operating here; most of them fled when the rebels reached the outskirts of Freetown, but Save The Children and Medicaid International are still here.’

  ‘No offence, but I’d like to speak to them myself,’ Shepherd said. ‘Just to make sure they fully understand the seriousness of the situation.’

  ‘They’ve been here a lot longer than you or I have been,’ Parker said. ‘They don’t need any lessons from us about conditions in the country or the dangers that civilians here face, but I can provide you with an introduction to the regional director at Medicaid International, Laurence Beltran, if you like. Officially HMG has no relationship with them but unofficially we maintain contact through informal channels.’

  ‘Do that,’ Shepherd said, ‘and we’ll see what we can do to help you with your problems.’

  They agreed to meet at the SAS’s temporary base the following morning. ‘Well, it’ll keep us entertained at least,’ Jock said after Parker had left.

  ‘I don’t like the way we don’t get official backing,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘That’s the way the spooks work,’ said Jock. ‘They need what they call plausible deniability. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘But if it turns to shit, we’ll be left hanging in the wind,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘We’re professionals,’ said Jock. ‘It won’t turn to shit. And I don’t know about you but I can resist anything but a challenge.’

  *

  Shepherd was up with the dawn and he sat in the bar as he waited for the others, drinking a cup of coffee made in the Arab style: so strong it was almost a solid rather than a liquid, and laced with several spoons of sugar. The skies had cleared. The torrential rains of the wet season were already giving way to the dry, dusty Harmattan wind carrying Saharan sand as fine as talc. It covered every surface, piling up in drifts on the doorsteps and sills and hanging in the air like fog. The blue of the sky had faded to a colour so pale that it was almost white and the sun, obscured by the dust, seemed little brighter than the moon. The air was full of the sound of creaks and groans as the building’s timbers dried in the arid wind.

  Shepherd was finishing his first cup of coffee when Jock, Jimbo and Geordie arrived. They drank coffee and breakfasted on croissants before heading outside. The men wrapped scarves around their faces but the fine dust penetrated everywhere and Shepherd could feel it in his nose and taste it in his mouth, gritty against his teeth, as they walked towards the Landcruiser.

  They returned to the base and at once went to see the Boss of the Operational Squadron, volunteering to go and take out the rebel ammunition dump. Offhandedly the Boss gave the go-ahead to the mission, displaying only minimal interest. ‘I must warn you that I have no resources to spare,’ he said. ‘And I doubt that your Six contact has anything in the way of equipment.’

  ‘We don’t need much, Boss,’ Shepherd said. ‘Except maybe Jerzy and his Hoplite. The rest we’ll improvise.’

  Shepherd left the other three poring over the intelligence that Parker had already supplied and drove down into Freetown to meet the contact at Medicaid International. The houses of the expatriates and richer citizens were colonial era mansions originally built by the British, ranged along the heights of the ridges of Juba Hill and Signal Hill to catch whatever sea breeze there was. They were raised on stilts and shaded by giant cotton and breadfruit trees. The houses must once have been quite splendid but the walls were now stained with damp and many appeared semi-derelict. Those that were still occupied were shielded by high walls topped with razor wire and broken glass. Even the art deco State House on Tower Hill looked decrepit, its balcony railings streaked with rust and its once-pristine white walls pocked and scarred from the rounds and grenades that had struck it during the numerous coups and countercoups.

  He turned at the Kissy roundabout, passing through the Lebanese district and along East Street past the bus station, deserted but for one rusting bus with every window broken. Pademba Road Prison dominated the street. Its featureless walls, unbroken by any opening, rose sheer from the edge of the road, but they also showed the scars of shells or grenades. A group of guards glared balefully from behind the gates as he drove past.

  The US Embassy, a monolithic grey block overlooking Cotton Tree roundabout, looked untouched from a distance but close up it also showed the scars of gunfire. Gum-chewing armed guards with mirrored sunglasses stared at Shepherd as he passed, and did not respond when Shepherd raised a hand in greeting. The guards at the entrance to the squat, ugly blocks of Wilberforce Barracks had looked far less alert, leaning against the gates or sitting in the dust, their torn and tattered uniforms an indication of their poverty.

  At the centre of the city, most of the once beautiful colonial buildings were falling apart, either from neglect or damage. City Hall was derelict, its windows shattered and the doors torn from their hinges. The interior was strewn with rubbish and Shepherd saw a group of ragged children inside, clustered around a smouldering fire. The football stadium, an open concrete bowl, was one of the few structures that seemed relatively untouched. There were rats everywhere and they looked better fed than most of the human inhabitants. Most of the shops, almost all with Lebanese names over the doors, were closed and abandoned.

  Medicaid International occupied a dingy warehouse in a side street. The yard was protected by iron gates, but one was broken and hanging from just one of its hinges. The guard glanced incuriously at Shepherd and waved him through. To Shepherd’s surprise, Laurence Beltran turned out to be a woman, French and in her early thirties, with black hair scraped back from her face and tied in a bun. He explained why he was there and told her about Baraka and the other village children, and she heard him out in silence, her gaze never straying from his face. When he’d finished, she thought for a moment and then said, ‘Come with me, I’d like you to meet someone.’

  They walked through to a storeroom at the back of the building and she called to a boy who was stacking boxes of medical equipment on the shelves. ‘This is Abiola,’ she said, as the boy walked over to them. He looked about thirteen or fourteen, but with a cold, hard look in his eyes that Shepherd was beginning to recognise. ‘Tell Dan your story,’ Laurence said to him.

  ‘I was a child soldier,’ the boy said, his voice flat and unemotional. ‘When the rebels came to my village, they captured me and told me to kill my mother, my
father and my baby brother. I refused but they said “Do it, or we will kill you.” I knew they would kill me because they were killing people all around me. So I did it. They made me burn my house down too. They took me and some of the other boys with them, including my friends Buzita and Musa, and marched us to their camp. They took girls too and did bad things to them. Every night they gave us boys tablets with our food. As soon as I took them I began to sweat and my body started trembling. I couldn’t hear properly - there was a roaring, rushing sound in my ears and my sight was so blurred that I could hardly see. I do not know what the tablets contained but they made my heart beat as strong as a lion. I stayed up all night that night and hardly slept for days. At night they showed us war movies on a TV. We watched all the Rambo movies again and again, and they told us we had to kill people the same way. When they thought we were ready, they gave us all rifles and taught us to use them. They gave us each an amulet too. They said it was juju - magic - and would make any bullets fired at us turn to water. By now I was not afraid of anything. They made me the leader of one of their units and we went out on raids every night. We burned many villages and killed many, many people. Sometimes we drank their blood.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ asked Shepherd.

  ‘We were told it would make us even stronger. Sometimes we ate their hearts too. Killing became as easy to me as breathing - I felt no sympathy, no pity for anyone. We captured boys and young girls who were hiding from us in the huts and made them carry the things we stole back to our base and we shot them if they tried to run away.

  ‘When we were not fighting, we smoked marijuana and snorted brown-brown.’

  Shepherd looked at Laurence. ‘Brown-brown?’

  ‘It’s cocaine mixed with gunpowder,’ she said. ‘The rebels think that it has mystical properties but really it is just another way of maintaining control over the children.’

  ‘There was always brown-brown on a table inside the hut where we kept the guns and ammunition,’ the boy continued. ‘I took it every day. I didn’t sleep for days on end. I became so crazed that I think even the leaders were frightened of me. Eventually I went to my hut and fell asleep. Even then I dreamed that I was killing enemies. The noise of firing was deafening. When I opened my eyes, I found that it was no dream. I was on my feet, my rifle in my hands, and I had emptied the magazine into the hut. My friends Buzita and Musa were lying there, covered in blood.’ Tears were trickling down his cheeks as he spoke, and Laurence put an arm around him. ‘I dropped my rifle,’ he said. ‘I ran out of the hut and just kept running and running. The others fired at me, I think, but they did not hit me. I ran for hours until I could run no more and then I collapsed. I don’t remember anything else until I came round here.’ He turned and buried his face in Laurence’s chest. She rubbed his back, between the shoulders.

  ‘He was close to death when he was brought to us,’ Laurence said. ‘He was malnourished and severely dehydrated and already suffering severe withdrawal symptoms from the drugs, but we nursed him back to health and he helps us now. When other boy soldiers are brought in, they often don’t trust us. For understandable reasons, they regard all adults with suspicion, but Abiola can talk to them in their own language, tell them about his own experiences and win their confidence. It’s a very long process to help them recover from what they’ve been through. The children are so indoctrinated that they even talk like soldiers. I’ve heard boys as young as eight talking about “rations” rather than food, and if they feel happy - and that doesn’t happen very often - they talk about having “good morale”. They die on the battlefield in droves of course but the survivors are told that the others died because they had bad thoughts or had done bad deeds.’

  She thanked Abiola and sent him back to his work, then turned to face Shepherd. ‘It’s great that you want to help Baraka and the other children at Biramayo, and we’ll do what we can, but to be honest, even when there was peace here, we were already almost overwhelmed. Sleeping sickness, river blindness and malaria are endemic, and the tsetse flies and mosquitoes kill as many people as the rebels’ She sighed mournfully. ‘A third of the entire population is displaced. The number of people missing at least one limb runs into tens of thousands. An entire generation has been robbed of their childhood and left with physical and psychological scars that will never entirely heal.’ She placed her hand on Shepherd’s arm. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this because I’ve always thought of myself as a pacifist, but the greatest service you could do for Baraka and Abiola, and all the other boys and girls here would be to wipe out the men who are brutalising, raping and killing them.’

  ‘And I never thought I’d hear a charity worker and someone from Six singing from the same hymn sheet either.’

  She gave a puzzled smile. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Shepherd. ‘But you can trust me on this – I’ll do what has to be done. You have my word.’

  Laurence nodded gratefully. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  *

  When Shepherd got back to the base, the others were discussing a plan to target the rebel arms dump. ‘I’m not sure how viable this is going to be,’ Jock said. ‘If we’re using the Hoplite, weight is going to be a major problem. We’re not going to be able to carry heavy weapons or major demolition charges.’

  ‘We don’t need either,’ Shepherd said. ‘What we need is already there; we’ll travel light and use the rebels’ own stuff against them.’

  ‘Right,’ Jock said. ‘So let’s get to it. Timers, detonators and det cord are no problem but what are we going to use in the way of explosives?’

  ‘We’ll steal it from the rebels,’ said Shepherd. ‘I have a plan.’

  ‘Good to hear,’ said Jock.

  ‘We’ll get the charges from their shells. A demolitions guy showed me how to do it in Hereford.’

  ‘Clever,’ said Jock. ‘But you’ll need something to force them open.’

  ‘There’s a blacksmith guy near the gates,’ Shepherd said. ‘We can get him to make us the tools we need.’

  ‘Get him to make one for Jimbo while he’s at it,’ said Geordie. He ducked as Jimbo threw an ashtray at him.

  ‘We’ll need some metal for him to work with,’ said Jock.

  ‘That won’t be a problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘If you can get me the nose-cone of a shell, I’ll sort the metal.’ While Jock went to raid the base’s ammunition store for a nose-cone, Shepherd headed over to the firing range and gathered up a sackful of spent cartridge cases. He and Jock walked out of the gates and found the metal worker they’d seen the previous day, still turning scrap metal into cooking pots and water carriers.

  Communicating in a mixture of broken English and sign language, Shepherd drew the outline of the tool he wanted on a piece of paper. He mimed unscrewing the nose cone and showed the metal worker how it had to fit. ‘Use these,’ he said, showing him the brass cartridge cases.

  The metal worker gave him a dubious look. ‘Steel is stronger.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘But steel makes sparks, so use the brass instead. You can keep the metal you don’t use. And I need a brass scoop, like a long-handled spoon. Can you do that for me?’

  The metal worker gave him a puzzled look until Shepherd drew another outline for him.

  Shepherd didn’t haggle over the price, but just showed the metalworker a $50 bill. ‘That’s yours when it’s done. And I need it today.’

  ‘Boss, for fifty dollars you can have it yesterday!’ Without taking his eyes off the bill, the metalworker poured some of the cartridge cases into a crucible and set it on his forge, gesturing to his boy to pump the bellows.

  When Shepherd went back a couple of hours later, the metal worker greeted him with a beaming smile and produced the tools with a flourish. Shepherd tested them, then shook the metalworker’s hand and handed him the $50 bill. Back inside the base, he rummaged through the stores until he found a wooden mallet. ‘There you go,’ he sai
d to Jock. ‘Tool kit complete.’

  They had a final briefing, with Shepherd allocating specific tasks and identifying the RV points in the event of contact with the enemy. In any operation there were always three RVs, at progressively greater distances and time intervals from the target. When the attack was made, the first RV would be good for no more than an hour. The Emergency RV, further from the target, would be open until dusk, and the War RV would be good for a further 24-hours, until the following dusk. After that, anyone separated from the rest of the patrol had to make their own Escape and Evasion and, since there were no air assets to spare other than Jerzy’s Hoplite, and no way of making radio contact with him, the E & E would have to be all the way back to Freetown through seventy miles of rebel-controlled, hostile territory. Hopefully that would remain a last resort.

  Shepherd briefed the Czech pilot and within an hour the team was in the air and flying towards

  the arms dump. Jerzy kept at low level, skimming the treetops and scattering startled animals as the helicopter flew overhead, its rotors whipping up storms of red dust from the open ground.

  Beyond the capital the country looked fertile, with tall trees, broad rivers, savannah grassland with fields of elephant grass and villages of round huts, walled with wattle and daub and roofed with palm thatch. Very little of the land was being cultivated, though, and while they did see one small, neatly furrowed field for growing mealie, most of the patches of cleared land were slowly reverting to jungle.

  The marks of war were everywhere: ruined buildings, burned crops and abandoned villages, and though a few orange and mango trees still grew, they were often surrounded by scorched marks where huts had been burned to the ground. The few people visible working the remaining fields all looked very old or very young. Everyone they saw carried a bush knife and most, even children and old men, had new looking rifles. They were all desperately thin and dressed in rags - some had no clothes at all.