Kill Zone (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) (3 page)

The two groups
formed and moved off,
 
Jimbo and
Geordie leading the way, Geordie’s short steps contrasting with Jimbo’s rangy,
ground-eating stride, but both men covered the ground equally fast, moving up
the sides of the valley as smoothly as if they were on an escalator.

The rest of the
men waited on the valley floor with Jock and Shepherd.
 
Shepherd walked over to the Forward Air
Controller. ‘Keep the jets high,’ Shepherd said. ‘Out of sight and sound. We
don’t want to spoil the surprise for any muj who might be here, now do we?’

Todd appeared at
his elbow. ‘The REs look jumpy,’ he said.

Shepherd looked
across at the engineers, huddled in a group near the back of the
one-tonner.
 
They looked painfully
young, white-faced and twitchy with nerves.
 
‘Not surprising, is it?’ he said. ‘They’re the poor saps who
have to find the devices before the Bomb Disposal guys can deal with them.
 
Wherever they’re serving, none of them
last more than a couple of tours.
 
Once they realise the risks, they leave the Army PDQ, or at least those
of them who are still alive do. Worst job in the army, pretty much.’

He glanced at his
watch and spoke into his throat mic. ‘In position?’ There was a double click in
his ear-piece, followed a moment later by another as Jimbo and Geordie
acknowledged.

‘They’re ready,
Jock,’ said Shepherd. Jock nodded and signalled to the others to move out and
began to lead the advance along the road, his gaze never still, raking the road
ahead and the ground to either side.
 
Todd followed a couple of paces behind Shepherd. They had been moving
forward slowly but steadily for some twenty minutes when they cleared a low
rise and saw the Landrover some way ahead of them, nose down in a ditch at the
side of the road. Two figures were visible, still in their seats, though both
sprawled at odd angles. Another lay in the dirt a yard or so away. Shepherd
felt a surge of anger and wanted to lash out at once at the officer who had
sent them to their deaths, but there was no time for recriminations - they were
all in danger until the job was done. He tried to put the cold focus of his
anger on the enemy, not the man behind him.

When he saw the
Landrover, Todd let out a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a cry and
began to stumble towards it. ‘Freeze!’ Shepherd barked. Todd stopped dead, his
gaze still fixed on the Landrover. ‘There may be an IED or a booby-trap,’
Shepherd said. ‘We wait while the REs clear the area.’ He nodded to the
engineers and they fanned out into a line and began inching their way forward,
some sweeping mine detectors in arcs over the ground ahead of them, while
others probed with thin steel prodders.

‘They’re not
probing for mines are they?’ Todd said, nervously. ‘If they hit a mine with one
of those rods, they’ll blow themselves to pieces.’

‘They’re looking
for command wires,’ said Shepherd.
 
‘Our AWACs and Nimrods can suppress the wireless initiation of devices
but the Taliban usually prefer the old-fashioned methods.’ They watched in
silence as the REs continued the search, moving steadily away from them and
towards the Landrover. Suddenly there was a “Pop” sound in the distance.

Shepherd
recognised the sound immediately. ‘Mortar!’ he shouted.
 

‘Take cover,’
Todd yelled, throwing himself flat and worming towards the ditch at the side of
the road. Up ahead the REs searching for command wires had also flattened
themselves to the ground.

Shepherd smiled
despite the seriousness of the situation. ‘No rush,’ he said, strolling over to
the ditch and squatting down alongside Todd. ‘Time of flight for a mortar is a
good thirty seconds and after that all you can do is hope for the best.’

The seconds
ticked by with agonising slowness. There was no way of predicting where the
mortar shell would fall nor, if it landed close by, any way of avoiding its
murderous shrapnel. The jagged fragments of steel, white hot from the furnace
of the explosion, would blast outwards with devastating force and if it landed
on top you it was game over.
 
After
half a minute of stomach churning tension, there was a loud “crump!” sound that
Shepherd felt in the pit of his stomach as dirt and smoke erupted into the air.
The mortar round had exploded about fifty feet away from the engineers.
‘They’re not after us,’ Shepherd said. ‘They’re after the Search Team.’

A cloud of smoke
and dust dispersed slowly on the breeze and the REs got to their feet, unhurt,
and resumed their slow, methodical search.

Shepherd spoke
into his throat mic. ‘Pickets, keep your eyes peeled for that mortar crew.’

Again there was
the double-click of acknowledgement from Jimbo and Geordie. Shepherd glanced up
towards the ridgelines on either side, and saw a faint movement as the pickets
moved further up the valley, hunting for a position from which they could spot
the hidden mortar crew.

At random
intervals a handful of mortar rounds dropped into the valley, bracketing the
search team as they moved towards the Landrover.

‘Any sign of
them?’ called Jock.

‘They’re well
hidden,’ said Shepherd.

‘Why can’t the
pickets spot them?’ Todd asked.

‘Because the
Taliban are being very cautious,’ Shepherd said. ‘Weapons are ten a penny but
good mortar crews are precious. Takes a long time to train a crew so they make sure
they’re protected.’

There was another
popping sound off in the distance and half a minute later another mortar round
exploded. This time it was much closer to the Search Team and one of the REs,
lying prone in the dirt, was picked up and flung sideways by the blast. He lay
on the ground screaming in pain and fear as a Paratrooper medic ran to him. The
medic crouched over him and pressed a trauma pad onto a wound on his thigh.

‘This is a bloody
nightmare,’ said Todd.

‘He’s probably
all right,’ Shepherd said. ‘Geordie always reckons that if they’re making that
much noise, they’re going to be okay. It’s the ones who make no sound at all
who have serious trauma.’ Shepherd didn’t feel half as calm as he sounded. The
mortar strikes were ranging in on the Search Team, and though that round might
not have been fatal, the next one might well be.

A moment later,
Geordie’s voice crackled in Shepherd’s earpiece. ‘Spotted them - three muj with
a mortar.’

‘Bingo,’ Shepherd
said. ‘Mark them with the LTD.’

‘Laying LTD now.’

Once Geordie had
aimed his laser at the mortar crew the bombers would be able to take it out
with pinpoint accuracy.

‘LTD laid,’ said
Geordie. An instant later, Shepherd heard the Forward Air Controller on the net
to the AWACs, calling in an airstrike.

‘How will we know
when it’s going to happen?‘ asked Todd.

Shepherd
shrugged. ‘We won’t. The first news we’ll get is “Bang!” You ever seen a five
hundred pound bomb go off? It’s quite a show. The LTD doesn’t have to be
anywhere near the target; as long as it’s in line of sight with it, that’s
enough. We’ll not see or hear the jet. The pilot doesn’t even aim, he just
drops it blind and the detector in the nose cone homes in along the laser light
track emitted from the LTD, and steers itself onto the target with the fins on
its tail.’

‘Sounds like a
video game,’ said Todd.

‘It pretty much
is,’ said Shepherd. ‘Except you only get the one life.’

The minutes
ticked by in a silence broken only by the now muted cries of the wounded RE
when suddenly there was vivid flash from the ridge to the north-east.
Red-orange flame and oily black smoke boiled upwards while fragments that might
have been rock, metal - or body parts - were flung out, black against the sky.
A moment later the sound of the blast rolled over them like a clap of thunder,
and the shock wave swept through in a storm of fine dust and debris. As
Shepherd dusted himself down he heard Geordie’s laconic voice in his earpiece:
‘Target neutralised’.

The REs showed
less signs of nerves as they resumed their work and five minutes later there
was an excited shout as one of them reached down into the dirt and held up a
length of a command wire.
 
‘Got
it!’ he shouted.
 
He used a pair of
wire cutters to sever the wire before moving towards the Landrover with the rest
of the REs. Lex and a group of Paras tracked the wire in the other direction,
weapons at the ready. The wire extended to a clump of wind-stunted acacia trees
that had provided cover for the bombers, but they had already fled and the
Paras returned empty-handed.

The REs had
followed the command wire to a device buried by the wrecked Landrover.
 
It contained enough explosive to blow
up the Landrover and anyone near it.

‘It’s safe!’
shouted one of the Res.

Shepherd, Jock
and Todd walked over to the Landrover. Jock checked the bodies for life signs
one by one, even though there was no doubt that they were all stone dead.

They had all been
shot at close range with a semi-automatic weapon. None of their weapons had
been fired. Two of the men were still in their seats. The one who had been
sitting behind the driver had a bullet hole above his left ear and a much
larger exit wound on the other side of his head. The front-seat passenger had
been shot in the back of the head; his blood and brains covered the windscreen.
The driver had had time to jump from his seat, but had then been cut down by a
burst of fire in the back before he had gone a yard. There was no sign of Ahmad
Khan and no blood on the seat he had been occupying, but the floor around it
was littered with ejected 5.45 cases.

The Captain
stared at the cases.

‘That’s right,
they’re from an AK74,’ said Shepherd.

‘Khan shot them,
is that what you’re saying?’

‘What do you
think, Captain? Seriously?’

Todd put a hand
up to his face, covering his eyes. ‘I had no idea.’

‘We warned you,’
said Jock. ‘You can’t trust these ragheads.’

Todd’s face had
gone white. He began to shake and then he threw up over the offside front
wheel. Jock shook his head in disgust.

Shepherd waved
over at the Paras and they came over and began to load the bodies of their dead
comrades into the truck.

Todd walked away
from the Landrover and stood staring at the ground, cradling his carbine.

‘Part of me wants
to give him a piece of my mind, part of me wants to tell him that we all make
mistakes,’ Shepherd said to Jock.

‘Yeah, but not
all mistakes end up with three dead Paras,’ said Jock. He cursed under his
breath. ‘I should’ve stopped them going. I knew it was a mistake. I should have
told the Boss to stop them.’

‘Could have,
would have, should have,’ said Shepherd.

‘I’m just saying,
this is partly my fault.’

‘Don’t be a
prick, Jock. You told them it was a bad idea and you were overruled by a
Captain and a Major.’

‘Ours not to
reason why, eh?’

‘Something like
that.’ Shepherd spat at the ground. ‘We do our best, it’s just sometimes our
best isn’t good enough.’ He nodded over at the Captain. ‘He knows what he did was
wrong and he’ll never make that mistake again.
 
What we need to do is find the murdering bastard and sort
him out.’

Jock nodded.
‘Amen to that.’

* * *

The body bags
containing the dead Paras were heli-ed out later that day, beginning the long
journey home that would end, not with a silent procession through the streets
of the Para Support Group’s base at St Asaph, but in near-anonymous funerals
attended only by their family and close friends. In common with other Special
Forces deaths, the casualties would be acknowledged but the regimental
affiliations of the dead men would be concealed to preserve the secrecy of SAS
operations.

Anyone who
bothered to study the small print of combat deaths would have been surprised at
how many men from the Royal Anglian Regiment had apparently lost their lives in
Afghanistan. It had become so noticeable that in recent months the Mercian and
Yorkshire Regiments had also been used as cover for the deaths of Special
Forces soldiers.

Todd kept a very
low profile over the next few days, but though he was censured, he was allowed
to remain with the SAS Squadron, to Jock’s undisguised disgust. ‘If we’d pulled
that kind of fuck up, we’d have been RTU’d toot sweet,’ he said in his
trademark Glaswegian growl. ‘But as it’s a Rupert, they just put it down to the
learning curve and let him carry on.’

Shepherd nodded.
‘I know, but look, he knows how badly he fucked up and to be honest when we
were young and keen most of us caused cock-ups that could have been just as
disastrous. I don’t know about you, but I certainly thought I knew it all when
I passed Selection.’

‘You’ve got that
right,’ Jock said. ‘I’ve never seen such a cocky bugger.’

Shepherd grinned.
‘I had my moments, didn’t I? Anyway, we’re stuck with Todd for now, and however
hard we are on him about it, I’m sure he’ll be a hell of a sight harder on
himself, so let’s give him a break, okay?’