Dead Drop (A Spider Shepherd short story) (3 page)

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.