Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2 (30 page)

He dragged a few bits of bedding, rags and broken chairs and tables together in the centre of the room, kicked the embers of the fire across the floor and then stacked boxes of the Taliban’s ammunition next to the pile. He surveyed his handiwork for a moment, then scooped up a stray $100 bill and set fire to it.  He dropped it onto the pile of debris and waited until it was well alight before murmuring into his throat mic, ‘Coming out’.

Todd climbed out through the hole in the wall first. As Shepherd moved to follow him, he heard the whiplash crack of an assault rifle and saw Todd fall backwards. There was a second crack as the Captain dropped to the ground, gouts of blood pumping from his throat. Shepherd had seen no muzzle flash but heard answering fire from the SAS cordon and swung up his own weapon, loosing off a burst, firing blind just to keep the muj heads down before he slid down the ladder and ran over to Todd and crouched next to him.

Todd lay sprawled in the dirt, blood still spouting from his throat. The first round had struck his head, close to the left ear, gouging out a chunk of skull.  The second had torn out Todd’s larynx. Either wound might have been fatal, the two together guaranteed it. Shepherd cursed under his breath, took a syrette of morphine and injected him, squeezing the body of the syrette to push out the drug like toothpaste from a tube. He began fixing a trauma dressing over the wounds, even though he knew he was merely going through the motions, because nothing could save the Captain now. Death was seconds away, a minute or so at the most.

Once the dressings were in place he cradled Todd’s head against his chest, listening to the wet, sucking sound of the air bubbling through his shattered larynx as blood soaked his shirt.

The Captain grabbed at his arm as his body began to shudder.  There were more bursts of fire off to Shepherd’s left.  Todd was staring at Shepherd, his eyes fearful. ‘You did good, Captain,’ Shepherd said. ‘You did good.’

A fresh spasm shook Todd, his eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped sideways to the ground.

As Shepherd looked up, he saw a movement in the shadows by a pile of rubble at the edge of the compound. A dark shape resolved itself into a crouching figure and Shepherd saw a milky-white eye staring at him, though, seen through his goggles, it glowed an eerie yellow. Shepherd grabbed his weapon and swung it up but in the same instant he saw a double muzzle flash. The first round tugged at his sleeve, but the next smashed into his shoulder, a sledgehammer blow knocking him flat on his back, leaving the burst of fire from his own weapon arcing harmlessly into the sky.

A further burst of fire chewed the ground around him, and his face was needled by cuts from rock splinters, though they were no more than gnat bites compared with the searing pain in his shoulder. From the corner of his eye, Shepherd saw Jock swivelling to face the danger and loosing off a controlled burst of double taps, but Ahmad Khan had already ducked into cover behind the rubble.

Shepherd looked down at his shoulder. There was a spreading pool of blood on his jacket, glistening like wet tar in the flickering light of the muzzle flashes as his team kept up a barrage of suppressing fire.

Jimbo ran over, pulling a field dressing from his jacket. ‘Stay down,’ he shouted and slapped the dressing over the bullet wound. Shepherd took slow, deep breaths and fought to stay calm. ‘Geordie, get over here !’ shouted Jimbo. ‘Spider’s hit!’

Geordie sprinted over, bent double. He looked at Todd but could see without checking that the Captain was already dead.  He hurried over to Shepherd. ‘You okay?’ he asked.

Shepherd shook his head. He was far from okay. He opened his mouth to speak but the words were lost as he coughed and choked and his mouth filled with blood. Helpless, he saw the dark shape of the Taliban killer move away, inching around the rubble heap and then disappearing into the darkness beyond. He tried to point at the escaping Afghan but all the strength had drained from his arms.

‘I’m on it,’ said Jimbo, standing up and firing a burst in the direction of the escaping Afghan.

Spider tried to sit up but Geordie’s big, powerful hand pressed him flat again. ‘Keep still and let me work on you,’ he growled.  Geordie clamped the trauma pad over the wound, compressed it and bound it as tight as he could. ‘Oboe! Oboe! All stations minimize,’ said Geordie into his mic, SAS-speak ordering all unnecessary traffic off the radios. Geordie looked down at Shepherd and slapped him gently across the face. ‘Stay with me Spider.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘I’m all right,’ he said, though each word was a strain.

Geordie spoke into his mic again. ‘Oboe! Oboe! We have casualties: Alpha 1, Alpha 5. One KIA, one serious trauma of the right shoulder and chest. He needs fluids fast and we’ve no plasma or saline because of weight limits. We have to get him out of here. Request immediate casevac. Repeat: one serious trauma of chest and shoulder, request immediate casevac.’

Geordie was leaning over Shepherd again. ‘I can’t give you morphine yet, Spider, we need you alert for this. We’re going to have to take you out Red Indian style.’

Jock rushed over with a section of the ladder that Shepherd had used to gain access to the building. Jock and Geordie lifted Shepherd onto the ladder and tied him to it with a nylon tac line.

Jock nodded over at the body of the Captain. ‘We’re taking him with us,’ he said.

Geordie nodded. Todd was dead but the SAS made a point of not leaving its people behind, no matter what the circumstances.

Covered by fire from Jimbo and Lex, they ran with their makeshift stretcher to the first RV point where they’d left the mopeds. Geordie began lashing the end of the ladder to the back of one of them, leaving the other end and Shepherd’s feet trailing in the dirt.  Jock ran to get another section of ladder and lashed Todd to it before dragging it back to the mopeds.

Shepherd heard a voice in his earpiece. ‘Speed it up. They’re round us like flies on shit.’ He couldn’t tell if it was Jimbo or Lex.

Drawn by the noise of firing and explosions, tribesmen and Taliban fighters were pouring from their scattered huts and houses and racing over the fields towards the burning building. They fired from the hip as they ran so their bullets went wide. Jimbo and Lex fired methodically, taking out more than a dozen of the Taliban fighters with carefully-placed shots.

Geordie fired a short bust at the wheels of Shepherd and Todd’s mopeds, disabling them so that the Taliban couldn’t use them to give chase.  Jock attached the ladder with Todd’s body to the back of Geordie’s moped, then checked it was secure.  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ he shouted.

Jock climbed on to the moped attached to Shepherd’s makeshift stretcher. ‘This is going to hurt, Spider, but we’ve got to get you out of here.’

Shepherd nodded, using his hand to keep the pressure on the dressing.   Jock kicked the engine into life.

As Jimbo and Lex continued to give covering fire, Jock and Geordie sped away. Shepherd gritted his teeth as the improvised stretcher bumped and jolted over the rough terrain. Jimbo and Lex fired final bursts, climbed onto their mopeds and sped after Jock and Geordie.

Behind them, they heard a barrage of explosions and saw the sky light up with tracer as the fire in the burning building reached the Taliban’s ammunition store.

Every bump and jolt caused Shepherd agonising pain but he clamped his jaw to stop himself from crying out and tried to focus on the column of flame shrinking behind them as they sped towards the heli landing site. They had covered only half the distance when Shepherd heard Geordie’s voice in his earpiece, ‘We’ll have to stop. The jolting’s loosened his trauma pads, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig.’

‘Roger that,’ said Jock, applying his brakes.  ‘Alpha 3 and 7 drop back and set up an Immediate Ambush. Buy us a little time.’

The bikes slewed to a halt as Jimbo and Lex peeled off and circled back before jumping off their bikes and diving into cover.

Jock stayed on his moped as Geordie hurried over to Shepherd.

Shepherd felt the fierce pressure on his chest as Geordie slapped on a fresh trauma pack and tightened the bindings with a savage jerk.

‘Are you okay, mate?’ asked the medic.

Shepherd nodded and grunted. He could feel blood still oozing from the wound and it hurt like hell, but he didn’t feel weak and he wasn’t going numb so he figured that the injury was survivable, so long as they got him back to base without delay.

A moment later the agonised bumping and jolting began again as the moped sped on towards the LZ. Behind them there was the chatter of firing as Lex and Jimbo let rip with their AK74s, cutting down three of their pursuers and sending the rest diving for cover. Moments later the SAS men were mobile again, gunning their mopeds as they sped over the dusty terrain towards the hill where the Chinook was already landing, its rotors thundering in the night air.

Lex and Jimbo took up defensive positions while Jock and Geordie manhandled Shepherd’s improvised stretcher onto the tailgate. The helicopter’s six-barrelled M134 Minigun, operated by the co-pilot from the side window, unleashed a further torrent of fire at the Taliban pursuers as they closed on the hill.

Geordie checked Shepherd’s dressing while Jock ran back for the Captain. He threw the body over his shoulder and ran back to the Chinook.  Lex and Jimbo fired final bursts at the Taliban fighters and then threw themselves into the belly of the helicopter.

There was a shout of ‘Go! Go! Go!’ and the Chinook’s still-bellowing engines wound up another octave and the airframe juddered and shuddered as the heli lumbered forward.

Shepherd felt a sudden drop in the pit of his stomach as, engines screaming, the Chinook plunged off the hilltop and dropped. The whirling rotors fought to generate lift and then the helicopter started to climb. It climbed higher, swinging away from the pursuit, the tinny rattle of a few last rounds against its armoured fuselage fading as it climbed higher and set a course for the distant base at Bagram.

Shepherd felt the stab of a morphine syrette in his arm. At once his agony began to fade into a hazy blur and he heard Geordie’s voice as if it was coming to him from the bottom of a well. ‘I need to get the bullet out and tie off some of these bleeders.’

Jock shouted over the roar of the engines. ‘We’re airborne. Geordie, do what you need to do.’

Geordie loomed over Shepherd. ‘Spider, I’m going to have to take the bullet out now so I can stem the bleeding.’

‘Just do it,’ said Shepherd, and he gritted his teeth.

Shepherd saw the glint of steel and felt the bite as the scalpel opened the wound further and Geordie began probing for the bullet.

Shepherd grunted and turned to the side to see Lex looking at him, clearly concerned. Shepherd forced a smile. ‘There’s one good thing to come out of this,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’ said Lex. ‘What’s that?’

‘At least I’ll be back with my family for Christmas.’ He closed his eyes and grunted as Geordie dug deep for the bullet.

* * *

Spider Shepherd left the SAS at the end of 2002 and joined an elite police undercover unit. You can read the first of his undercover adventures in Hard Landing, where he goes undercover in a high security prison to unmask a drugs dealer who is killing off witnesses to his crimes. The Spider Shepherd series continues with Soft Target, Cold Kill, Hot Blood, Dead Men, Live Fire, Rough Justice, Fair Game, False Friends, True Colours and White Lies.

You can read more about Spider at
www.danspidershepherd.com
and more about Stephen Leather’s work at
www.stephenleather.com

Hard Landing is available in the UK for 49p at – 
http://amzn.to/xxX2YU

And in the US for less than a dollar at – 
http://amzn.to/xWg1E7

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