Kill Zone (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) (5 page)

‘Right, I’m
thinking all we need is six, four to form a defensive cordon around the
building and stop our one-eyed friend, or anyone else for that matter, from
escaping, and a two-man assault group. Geordie will be the team medic for
emergencies.’ He looked across at the Captain. ‘Spider’s got explosives
experience, so I suggest that he and you form the assault group. That gives you
the chance to be in at the kill.’

‘That’s fine by
me,’ said Todd.

Jock looked at
Shepherd. ‘Sure,’ said Shepherd.

‘All good,’ said
Jock.
 
‘Now, arms. All of us will
carry AKS 74s, the ones with the folding butts, that can be slung across the
chest ready for immediate use. We’re using them because weight restrictions are
going to be very tight and the 5.45 cal ammo the AK 74 uses is very light, so
we can carry a lot of it. Each man will also carry a three foot length of a
sectional ladder, for the assault on our friends’ hide-out.’ He glanced at
Todd. ‘Don’t worry, we often use them. They’re standard kit for
Counter-Terrorist teams, short enough to carry in vehicles - or on mopeds - and
obtainable from most heavy lift aircraft.  In theory you can make a ladder
as long as you want it, but, judging from the description of the target, we’ll
not need more than eighteen feet.  It’s a three-storey building and like
all assaults we’ll be doing it top down, because it’s impossible to clear a building
by going up the stairs. Even a kid with a catapult can be enough to stop a
highly-trained team of experts.’ He nodded at Shepherd. ‘Explosives?’

‘I’m thinking of
using shaped charges of standard issue, PE4 to effect entry by blowing holes
through the walls.’
 
Shepherd
paused.
 
‘Have you done any
demolitions, Captain?’ Captain Todd shook his head.
 
‘Well, the shaped charges are PE4 plastic explosives held in
triangular-shaped sections of plastic material.   Because the charge is
shaped, it will go through any material: metal, brick, concrete, whatever,
without a lot of collateral damage.  Provided you protect your ears, you
can stand quite near to it, even as close as one or two yards if you’re feeling
really lucky, although you’re a lot safer if you’re around a corner when it
goes off.  Obviously it requires an initiation set to get it to explode
and we’ll be using a Number 33 electric detonator - a length of cable and an
initiator, either battery or exploder.’

Todd frowned.
‘There may be twelve or even more Taliban fighters inside the building. Are you
confident that an assault team of two will be enough? And, apart from the
AK74s, what weapons we’ll be using to clear the rooms inside the building of
the Taliban?’

‘A dustpan and
brush would be handy,’ Jock said, provoking a burst of laughter from the
others.

‘There won’t be
any Taliban to deal with because anyone inside that building will be dead,’
explained Shepherd.
 
‘What kills
anyone inside a room when a shaped charge detonates is not the debris blown in
by the explosion but the sudden increase in air pressure.  It’s known as
“over-pressure” and it instantly destroys most of the organs in the human
body.’ He showed Todd a well-thumbed booklet full of columns of figures.
‘Normally SAS demolitions work with a precise amount of PE4, calculated using
these tables in response to the thickness and materials of the walls to be
breached and the estimated size of the rooms beyond. You then fill the plastic
form that holds the shaped charge with just the right amount of PE4 to breach
the walls.’

‘So what form
will we be using for this?’ Jimbo asked.

Shepherd
shrugged. ‘Well, we’ve got what are probably double-skinned mud-brick walls,
and rooms of around two hundred square feet, but knowing that a rat’s nest of
Taliban are going to be hiding inside those walls, including the bastard who
killed three of our guys, I’m not too worried about precision, so screw them,
let’s just go for P for Plenty and pack in enough PE4 to destroy a reinforced
concrete wall, never mind a mud-brick one. Any objections?’ No voices were
raised in protest.
 
Jock patted him
on the back.

‘Lastly, RVs,’
Jock said. ‘First RV here.’ His finger jabbed at a point on the map. ‘Emergency
RV here,’ he pointed to another, ‘open until daybreak. The war RV is here,’ he
said, moving his finger to another point further from the target. ‘That’ll be
good until midnight the following night. After that, anyone separated from the
main group will have to make their own E and E. Okay, that’s it. Sunset’s at
sixteen-fifty hours local time today. Final briefing at fifteen hundred hours,
take-off at sixteen hundred.’

The briefing
over, the men filed out of the room.
 
Jock and Shepherd stayed behind until they were alone with the Captain.

Todd looked at
Jock. It was clear that the trooper had something on his mind.

‘Permission to
speak frankly,’ said Jock.

‘Of course,’ said
Todd, frowning.

Jock nodded.
 
‘We all fuck up somewhere along the
way, Captain, and it takes balls to admit it when we do. But only a total twat
fucks up twice. With that proviso, we’re with you all the way, but if we are
going to work together on this job, there is one other thing we also need to
get clear. As you may already have noticed, this isn’t the green army; when
we’re at work, experience counts more than rank. If I or Spider or Geordie or Jimbo
or any of the others tell you to do something, we don’t expect to have a
fucking discussion about it. If one of us tells you to fire, all we ever want
to hear from you is “Bang!” Got it?’

Todd nodded.
‘Understood.’

Jock smiled.
‘Then we’re good to go,’ he said. ‘Let’s go get that bastard and give him the
good news.’

As they left the
room, Lex hurried over to Shepherd. ‘What’s the story?’ he asked.

‘What have you
heard?’ asked Shepherd. Jock walked away but Shepherd called him back.

‘Nothing much,’
said Lex.
 
‘Just that there’s
something up.’

‘It’s Ahmad Khan.
We think we know where he is.’

‘And you’re going
after him?’

‘That’s the
plan,’ said Shepherd.

‘Spider, I want
to come.’ He put a hand on Shepherd’s shoulder. ‘I need to be on this mission.’

‘It’s SAS only,’
said Jock. ‘Sorry, mate.’

‘Guys, please. It
could have been me in that Landrover. If you hadn’t had a word, I’d have
volunteered. So one of those guys died in my place.’

Shepherd nodded
at Jock. ‘He’s got a point.’

‘So he’s claiming
Singing Twat like the Captain?’

‘Droit de
Seigneur,’ said Shepherd.
 
‘Look, a
bird in the hand, right? We’re not even sure where Billy is. Lex is here and
ready to go.’

‘What the hell
are you talking about?’ asked Lex, totally confused.

Jock ignored him
and continued to stare at Shepherd. ‘If he comes with us, he’s your
responsibility,’ he said.

‘Not a problem.’

‘Okay. I’ll tell
the Captain.’

‘I can go?’ asked
Lex.

‘Get your kit,’
said Shepherd. ‘No overnight gear. Grab an AK74. And lots of ammo. All you can
carry.’

* * *

Just before four
that afternoon, the six-man team jogged over to the concrete hard standing
where a Chinook waited, its twin rotors already turning idly. The cargo area of
the massive helicopter, normally big enough to house two Land Rovers, was
almost entirely filled by a huge additional fuel tank. It gave the Chinook the
range and the time in or near the target area to complete the mission and make
the long return flight back to Bagram. Six mopeds were already lashed to the
tailgate and the SAS men clambered up with Lex, each with an AK74 carried on a
sling around his neck with the folding butt closed. Their pockets were jammed
with spare clips for their weapon and their bergens were loaded with more
ammunition.

As the Chinook’s
crew completed their final checks before take-off, the SAS settled themselves,
sitting or lying on the tailgate among the mopeds.
 
Lex sat down next to Shepherd. He grinned and nodded at
Shepherd but there was no disguising the apprehension in his eyes. Shepherd
winked at him.

The din of the
rotors increased to a nerve-jangling roar and the Chinook shook and rattled as
it began to move, almost invisible inside the fog of dust and dirt stirred up
by the groundwash. As Jock had predicted at the briefing, the heli did not rise
vertically into the air but began to rumble down the runway like a fixed wing
aircraft, so heavily laden that its only means of getting airborne was to build
enough forward momentum to generate the necessary lift.

With the engines
screaming and the whole airframe vibrating and rattling like a boiler about to
explode, the Chinook finally lumbered into the air, its dispensers punching out
clouds of chaff and flares to deflect any missiles that might be launched at
them. Even above the most fortified and heavily protected military base in the
country, the threat of terrorist attacks was never underestimated.

The Chinook rose
high into the sky as it cleared the immediate area surrounding the base, and
set a course heading due west. Once safe from the prying eyes of the Taliban
spies - who watched all air traffic in and out of the base and reported the
heading of any troop carrying helicopters - the Chinook descended to low-level
and swung round on to its true course, making for the tribal areas.

The first part of
the flight was in the low sun of the remaining minutes of daylight. To the
north, Shepherd could see the aquamarine ice fields and glaciers high on the
slopes of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, with spindrifts of snow spilling
from the ridges in the ferocious winds at those heights. He tapped Lex on the
shoulder and pointed at the beautiful but forbidding snow-capped peaks as they caught
the last rays of the setting sun, turning gold and then deep blood-red as it
sank to the western horizon. ‘Wow,’ mouthed Lex. ‘That’s awesome.’

The Chinook flew
on, so close to the ground that the wash of the rotors shook the trees. Its course
twisted and turned as the pilots skirted every town and village and used every
natural feature to screen their flight from view. It almost doubled the
distance to the target but was the best way of ensuring that they would reach
it undetected. The Chinook skimmed a ridge and flew up a narrow valley,
following the course of the braided river channels, the turquoise green
meltwater from the glaciers in the mountains constantly finding fresh ways
through the moraines of rock and gravel washed down by the ferocious spring
floods.

Night had fallen
and the soldiers put on their Passive Night Goggles. The heli was in total
darkness with the pilots also using PNGs to steer and navigate. Through his own
goggles, Shepherd could see the starlight reflecting from the surface of the
river below them, tracing its course as clearly as if it were floodlit. The
wash of the rotors stirred blizzards of dead leaves from the scrub willows and
the poplars along the banks, and in the yellow-tinged world view through the goggles,
the leaves shone like flakes of gold, circling in eddies around the bare trunks
before the river carried them away.

He glanced around
him and saw that, true to form, indifferent to the beauty of the natural world
over which they were passing, Jock and Geordie were cat-napping. Not for the
first time, Shepherd marvelled at their ability to fall asleep anywhere, even
on their way to a job that might see them killed, riding in a bucketing Chinook
with the thunder of the rotors so loud it was rattling their teeth.

They had been
flying for over five hours, when he heard the pilot’s voice in his earpiece.
‘LZ in fifteen minutes.’

Jock and Geordie
were instantly as awake and watchful as the others, their weapons at the ready
in case the LZ was compromised. A quarter of an hour later, the Chinook cleared
a low ridge, dropped to the floor of a plateau and then rose again, following
the steep slopes of the round-topped hill they had identified from the map. The
heli came to a hover and landed as the groundwash stirred up a storm of dust
and debris.

Jock, Geordie, Jimbo
and Lex jumped down and went into positions of all-round defence while Shepherd
and the Captain unloaded the mopeds. They remained crouched and watchful as the
Chinook took off, rolling forward and plummeting off the hill-top, building
speed to generate additional lift. It crawled into the sky, then wheeled away
to fly a circuitous holding pattern twenty or thirty miles away, far enough
away to avoid any risk of compromise to the operation but near enough to make a
fast return when a signal on the tactical beacon called it back to the LZ to
extract the team once their job was done.

The team took a
few more minutes to watch and listen, allowing their hearing to become attuned
to the quietness of the night after the din of the heli. They scanned the
surrounding countryside for any movement or sign that might suggest they had
been spotted. All was dark and quiet, and eventually Jock signalled to them to
move out.
 
He led the column of
mopeds down the hill before looping around to make their way to the target.