Dead Drop (A Spider Shepherd short story) (5 page)

‘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 village 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.

Soon after dawn
the next morning, Shepherd roused the boy and after drinking a few mouthfuls of
water and eating some high energy snacks, they set off for Zadran. It was
another clear and sunny morning and as they walked along the dirt-road towards
the village, their feet scuffing in the dust, they were surrounded by clouds of
butterflies, feeding on the nectar of the dog roses, juniper, thyme and
lavender growing wild along the earth banks dividing the track from the
surrounding fields. The peaks of the mountains of the Hindu Kush were visible
to the north, permanently white-capped even in the heat of high summer, and
standing out in stark relief against the azure blue of the sky.

‘It’s a beautiful
country, Karim,’ Shepherd said, as he looked around him. ‘You’ll have to show
me it one day, when the Taliban have gone and people can live normal lives
again.’ At the sound of his voice, a shrike flew out of a thorn bush giving a
rasping call to show its anger at being disturbed. Its prey, a small lizard,
remained impaled on a thorn.

In contrast to
the beauty of the country around Zadran, the village - large enough to qualify
as a small town - was scarred and ugly, after decades of fighting. They passed through
a wasteland of shelled and bombed mud-brick buildings, the facades of those
still standing as scarred by bullet holes as the pock-marked faces of smallpox
victims.
 
Beyond them was a shanty
town of rusting shipping containers where burqa-clad women and small children
peered out at them from the dark interiors. ‘We call this area Khair Khana,’
Karim whispered. ‘Container city.’

As the sun rose
higher, a growing number of villagers were now in the streets. Shepherd
attracted some curious or suspicious glances and there were a few muttered
comments as they passed - strangers were always objects of suspicion in
Afghanistan - but he was now well into his role, head bowed, mouth hanging
open, and his eyes apparently unfocussed, staring at nothing, and none
challenged them. Several people recognised Karim and called out greetings and
queries about his companion, but he replied with grave respect, and they
appeared to accept his explanations, while Shepherd’s lack of a weapon and his
vacant, unmanly demeanour, disarmed any remaining suspicions.

They reached the
large open space that served as the market square and sat among groups of men
talking in the open fronted teahouse at one side of the square. Karim ordered
mint tea for them, paying with a few crumpled Afghani notes. As they sipped
their drinks, the smells of the market assaulted their senses: the stench of
animal dung
 
and the stink of fumes
from the decrepit trucks and swarms of mopeds, battling with the fragrance of
sandalwood, cloves and spices from one stall. Most of the others were only
battered crates and cardboard boxes, and the stall holders squatted in the dust
alongside their meagre wares: used lightbulbs, sandals cut from old tyres,
empty cans and bottles, second-hand clothes, with bloodstains on some
suggesting their origins.

Alongside the
staples of Afghan life - rice, green tea, sugar - the food stalls sold
radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes and grapes, but few could afford the meat from
the stall where the butcher flicked half-heartedly at the flies swarming over
his wares and a tethered goat awaited its turn under the knife.

An ice-seller sat
on a wooden cart drawn up in the shade of a mulberry tree with a few fruits
still clinging to the topmost branches. A trickle of water ran from beneath the
sackcloth shrouding the square blocks of ice that were cut from the river in
winter and stored in caves to preserve them from the summer heat.

As Shepherd and
Karim sipped their mint tea in silence, awaiting the promised arrival of the
Taliban, Mitchell’s SAS group were twenty miles away looking at the sky and
waiting for the flare that would tell them that they were needed at Zadran. The
squad leaders, including Mitchell, were sitting up front with the pilots, while
the others stood on the skids and lashed themselves to the side of the helis
with air dispatch harnesses fastened with a quick-release mechanism. The pilots
fired up the engines, and then they sat, engines idling and rotors turning
slowly as the minutes ticked away and the sun rose higher in the sky.

Shepherd and
Karim had been sitting in the tea-house for over an hour when they heard the
noise of engines and a commotion at the eastern side of the town. A few moments
later a convoy of Taliban pick-ups came sweeping into the square. The fighters
jumped down and began herding the population into the middle of the square.
Four of them burst into the tea-house and drove out the customers, including
Shepherd and Karim, with kicks and blows.

They were pushed
towards a cordon of other Taliban who were searching every man. There was a
shout as a fighter produced a Bollywood cassette tape he had found in one
villager’s pocket. Face ashen with fear, the man was dragged to one side and
punched to the ground. Shepherd and Karim were now close to the front of the
line and Shepherd was feeling uncomfortably aware of the Glock pistol in his
armpit as a Taliban fighter stared at him, then shouted at him in Pushtu.
Shepherd said nothing, letting his mouth hanging open and a dribble of spittle
run from it, while Karim stammered an explanation. Suddenly there was the loud
noise of a back-firing moped. At once, seizing his chance, Shepherd threw
himself to the ground, covering his head with his arms and crying out in
terror.