Dead Drop (A Spider Shepherd short story) (4 page)

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. Will 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?’

‘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?’

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.