Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies Read online

  Ahead of them was a range of hills, dotted with straggly bushes at the bottom, bare rock near the summit. There was still a chill in the air though the sun was now fully above the horizon.

  ‘Your friend is unusual, right?’ said another of the troopers. His name was Naveed. Like Sunny he was in his twenties, but shorter and stockier and lighter skinned. ‘Seems like most Brits end up fighting for al-Qaeda, not against them.’

  Another of the troopers nodded in agreement. His name was Ziad and he seemed to be the oldest member of the Echo and Foxtrot teams. The left side of his face had been burned at some point in the past and had healed badly, leaving a pale splodge of scar tissue just below his cheekbone. ‘Why do they do that? Why would someone born in the UK think it was a good idea to become a jihadist in Syria or Iraq?’

  Shepherd shrugged. ‘They’re kids, usually. They think it’s exciting.’

  ‘That’s it?’ said Naveed. ‘It’s a game?’

  ‘They’re indoctrinated by the imams,’ said Ziad. ‘They’re brainwashed. It happens in Pakistan too. But what I don’t understand is why anyone lucky enough to be born in the UK would throw it all away.’

  Sunny nodded in agreement. ‘Especially the ones who did those bombs in London. When was that?’

  ‘It was 2005,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘That made no sense to me,’ said Sunny. ‘They were born in Britain, weren’t they? Britain was their home. So why blow yourself up in your own country?’

  ‘Like I said, they’re brainwashed,’ said Ziad. ‘It can happen to anyone. It’s like training a dog. And trained dogs can be the most dangerous.’

  The trucks came to a halt. Kassar climbed out of the cab and opened the tailgate. He helped the men out and they lined up and checked the weapons. They had stopped at the base of the hills. Colonel Jamali strode over, his G3 shouldered.

  ‘Spread out as we go up, we’ll meet together at the summit,’ said the colonel. He nodded at Shepherd. ‘Just to let you know I have added two snipers to the group. They’ll stay on the ridge.’

  ‘Good to know,’ said Shepherd.

  The colonel nodded again and then headed up the slope. His men fanned out behind him.

  ‘Right, up we go,’ said Kassar. ‘Keep up the colonel’s pace, but don’t overtake him.’ The captain grinned at Shepherd. ‘He likes to lead from the front.’

  Shepherd lay on his stomach and peered down at the fort below them. There was a single guard in the turret atop the fort but he appeared to be asleep. Shepherd looked over to his left. One of the colonel’s snipers was already in position, looking through the telescope sight of his Heckler & Koch PSG1 semi-automatic sniper rifle. It wasn’t the rifle that Shepherd would have chosen for the job. Its main feature was its rapid rate of fire, it wasn’t the most accurate of weapons. Heckler & Koch came up with the design following the terrorist killings at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The West German police discovered that they couldn’t target the terrorists quickly enough and eleven members of the Israeli team were killed. Heckler & Koch were asked to design a semi-automatic rifle that was both accurate and had a large magazine and that same year they came up with the PSG1, mechanically based on the G3.

  The colonel’s second sniper had set up a few yards to Shepherd’s right. He was using a more accurate Dragunov rifle with a black polymer stock. The rifle had the PSO-1 optical sight mounted on a side rail so that it didn’t block the iron sight line. Shepherd had trained with the gun and the sight and was a fan of both. The gun was accurate to more than 1,300 yards and the sight came equipped with an illuminated rangefinder grid and a bullet drop compensation elevation adjustment facility.

  The colonel raised his hand and motioned for the men to head down the hill. He led from the front with teams Alpha and Bravo fanning out behind him in a wedge shape. Two of the troopers were holding wooden frames on to which C4 explosive had been fixed.

  Captain Sipra’s Charlie and Delta teams were to the colonel’s left. Two troopers were carrying the shaped charges for the main doors at the front of the fort.

  Shepherd and Kassar got to their feet. The captain checked that his men were prepared and motioned for them to head down the hill.

  Shepherd bent down in a crouch over his MP5, his finger outside the trigger guard, scanning the ground in front of him. It was a steep slope of stony red soil and the most efficient way of moving down was to make a series of zigzags. Stones were cascading down the slope but there wasn’t much the troopers could do about that. Shepherd narrowed his eyes and focused on the guard in the turret. The man was slumped against the wall, his head back and his mouth open.

  It took them just four minutes to reach the bottom of the hill and jog to the wall. It was built of local stone that had become weathered over the years from the relentless desert winds. The blocks fitted perfectly and mortar didn’t seem to have been used. The colonel and Captain Sipra led Charlie and Delta teams around the side of the fort, sticking close to the wall, heading for the main door at the front of the building. Captain Ali and his Alpha and Bravo teams headed for the rear door. Shepherd and Kassar followed with teams Echo and Foxtrot. Shepherd found himself between Ziad and Sunny, both cradling G3s.

  They reached the wall and stood with their backs to it. From somewhere inside the fort, a cock crowed. Captain Ali was already at the door, supervising the two troopers with the shaped charges. The charges were affixed to wooden frames about two feet square on the end of ten-foot poles. The men holding the poles stood either side of the door, placed the charges in the middle of the two wooden doors and turned their faces away. The charges were shaped so that almost all the energy went forward; there would be little in the way of a blast at the side, just noise and a flash.

  Captain Ali nodded and moved to the side. As he did, a small black object thudded into the sand by his feet.

  Shepherd stared at the metal object in horror. ‘Grenade!’ he shouted. Barely had the word left his mouth when a second grenade hit the ground, this one landing in between two of Sipra’s troopers. Shepherd recognised them as Soviet-made F1 grenades, nicknamed the limonka by the Russians because of their lemon-like shape. The weapon’s statistics raced through his mind – the standard time delay for the fuse was between three and a half and four seconds, the grenade contained about sixty grams of TNT, and the explosion was deadly up to about thirty metres.

  He was dimly aware of an explosion on the other side of the fort. He knew immediately it was a grenade detonating and not one of the shaped charges. The shaped charges made a dull thudding sound as all the explosive energy was aimed inwards. The sound Shepherd heard was that of a grenade exploding, sending lethal shrapnel in all directions.

  Time had slowed to a crawl as it always did when Shepherd was in a combat situation. He was aware that a second had already passed since the first grenade had landed at Sipra’s feet. Sipra’s mouth was open and he was staring at the grenade, but not moving. Shepherd knew that there was nothing he could do to help the man. He was dead. So were the two troopers holding the shaped charges. They still had their faces turned to the side so hadn’t seen the grenades.

  Shepherd turned to look at Kassar. Kassar’s eyes were wide and fearful but his feet were rooted to the spot. Only Ziad was moving, his left knee high in the air, his G3 in his right hand, running back along the wall. Shepherd counted off another second in his head. His mind was running the numbers. The nearest grenade was twenty metres away. The kill zone was thirty metres – if he was standing up. If he was down on the ground and his head was away from the source of the blast, twenty metres was survivable. On a good day.

  He grabbed Kassar by the neck of his armoured vest and twisted him round and then thumped him in the back. Kassar dropped his weapon and started to run. Shepherd ran with him, one step, then another, then he reached the count of three in his head and knew that hitting the ground was the only option. He pushed Kassar down and fell on top of him and then the two grenades exploded, almost as one. The double blast knocke
d the breath from his body. He wiggled his toes to check that his legs were OK. His ears were ringing as he pushed himself up on to his knees and rolled Kassar over. Kassar’s eyes were wide and staring but he was alive. His mouth opened and closed like that of a stranded fish. ‘It’s OK, you’re OK,’ said Shepherd. His voice sounded as if it were coming from the end of a very long tunnel but at least his eardrums didn’t seem to have burst. He dragged Kassar by the scruff of his neck towards the wall.

  He heard shots from up the hillside and realised that the colonel’s snipers were firing at the fort. He looked up and saw a rifle barrel sticking out of one of the upstairs windows and almost immediately heard the distinctive deep pop-pop-pop of an AK-47 being fired on fully automatic.

  He pulled Kassar to his feet and they both hugged the wall while they looked around. The only part of Captain Ali to be seen was his head, still in the Kevlar helmet. The rest of his body had been vaporised by the explosion. The two troopers holding the shaped charges had been ripped apart though their charges hadn’t gone off. One of the troopers had lost an arm though the hand was still gripping the pole that had held the charge. Both had lost their legs and blood had pooled around the stumps.

  There was another flurry of AK-47 fire above their heads. Shepherd looked up. There were now three AK-47s firing up at the hillside. He held his MP5 to his chest. From where he was standing it was impossible to get a clear shot at the men on the upper floor. But if he moved out, he’d be a sitting duck.

  Two of the men in Team Echo were down, possibly dead. Ziad was down but as Shepherd watched he got to his feet and grabbed for his rifle. Shepherd opened his mouth to shout a warning but before he could say anything Ziad was cut down in a hail of bullets. Sunny was standing with his back to the wall, frozen. The shrapnel seemed to have missed him completely. His gun was at his feet. Naveed was farther along the wall. He seemed more composed than Sunny but was clearly out of his depth. There was another trooper on the floor on the other side of the door, sitting on the ground, blood streaming from a neck wound. He was reaching out with his right hand as if pleading for help. Kassar moved towards the injured man but Shepherd held him back. ‘We can’t help him,’ said Shepherd. ‘We need to get this sorted first.’

  He ducked involuntarily as he heard a loud whooshing noise overhead. He looked up to see the warhead of an RPG streaking through the sky, leaving a greyish trail in the air behind it. Two seconds later there was an explosion at the summit of the hill. Shepherd hoped that the sniper, whichever one it was, had managed to get out of the way.

  He heard a rapid footfall to his right and saw Colonel Jamali come around the corner, followed by three troopers. The trooper in the middle was missing the lower part of his left leg and they had a makeshift tourniquet below his knee. They placed the injured trooper on the floor by the trooper with the neck wound and one of them pulled out an emergency dressing and slapped it on the man’s neck.

  The colonel hurried towards them, keeping his back to the wall. He stepped over the shaped charges to get to Kassar and Shepherd. ‘What’s your situation, Captain?’

  Kassar stared at the colonel, a slight frown on his face as if he didn’t understand the question.

  ‘Captain Ali is dead,’ said Shepherd. ‘We have two troopers active plus myself from Echo and Foxtrot.’

  Two more of the colonel’s men came around the corner. They looked as if they were about to run for the hill but Shepherd waved for them to get back to the wall.

  ‘They’d just fired an RPG and they’ve got AK-47s and grenades. At the moment they don’t realise we’re down here but as soon as they do it’ll only take a couple of grenades and it’ll all be over.’

  The colonel nodded grimly. ‘Captain Kassar and I will lay down covering fire so that you can get to the hill. You can lay down covering fire so that we can join you.’

  ‘That’ll be suicide,’ said Shepherd. ‘We’re outgunned now. Shit, we were probably outgunned the moment we got here.’

  ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  Shepherd gestured at the shaped charges. ‘We can still blow the door. Fight them from the inside.’

  The colonel looked at the charges and nodded. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

  Shepherd let his MP5 hang on its sling as he picked up the poles connected to one of the shaped charges. He pried the fingers of the dismembered arm off the pole and let it fall to the ground.

  The colonel picked up the second shaped charge and pressed it against the door.

  Shepherd looked at Kassar. ‘Turn your head and cover your ears,’ he said. ‘As soon as the door is blown we go in, you go to the right, I’ll take the centre. Tell Sunny and Naveed to follow you. Just shoot anyone with a weapon.’

  The captain relayed the instructions to Sunny and Naveed as Shepherd pressed his shaped charge against his side of the door. ‘On three,’ said the colonel. Shepherd nodded and turned his head to the side, away from the door. ‘One, two, three.’

  On three, Shepherd tensed and flicked the switch. The pole jerked in his hands and he felt as much as heard the dull thud as the explosive went off. He heard the door crash inwards and he dropped the pole, grabbed his MP5 and swung it up, his finger automatically slipping inside the trigger guard. He had the weapon set for single shots; it was no time to be wasting ammunition on fully automatic.

  Colonel Jamali was already stepping through what was left of the smashed and smoking door, his G3 up at his shoulder.

  The doors opened into a courtyard where there were three rusting pick-up trucks parked in a line. Half a dozen chickens were sheltering under the vehicles and in the far corner of the courtyard two tethered goats were bleating in panic. There was a balcony running around the upper level, and as Shepherd stepped across the threshold two men, their faces wrapped in black-and-white chequered keffiyeh, leaned over and took aim with their AK-47s. The colonel fired twice and the shooter on the left fell back, his chest a bloody mess, his weapon tumbling from his hands and clattering down on one of the pick-up trucks. Shepherd fired once and the second man’s head exploded in a shower of red.

  Overhead Shepherd heard but didn’t see the whoosh of an RPG warhead heading for the hills. He was aware of Kassar moving to his right and Sunny and Naveed moving behind him. One of them, Sunny or Naveed, Shepherd wasn’t sure which, let loose a hail of bullets even though there was no one to shoot at.

  A door opened on the far side of the courtyard and a figure in a brown salwar kameez appeared holding something in his right hand. Shepherd shot him twice and a grenade tumbled from the man’s fingers as he fell to the ground. ‘Grenade!’ shouted Shepherd and he ducked down. The colonel dropped behind one of the pick-up trucks and Kassar threw himself to the floor just as the grenade exploded. Most of the blast was absorbed by the vehicles, but several pieces of shrapnel whistled dangerously close to Shepherd. He heard the pop-pop-pop of an AK-47 and straightened up to see rounds thwacking into the door panel of the truck that the colonel was hiding behind. He looked up and saw the shooter, a giant of a man who was so big that he made the AK-47 he was holding look like a toy. Shepherd fired a double tap and caught the man just below the throat with both shots. Blood spurted over his barrel-like chest and he slumped over the balcony.

  There was firing above his head and Shepherd knew that if they were going to take them out they would have to cross the courtyard to shoot back at them. He turned and waved at Naveed and Sunny to move ahead. Naveed nodded and ran forward, bent at the waist, but Sunny hesitated. ‘Move!’ shouted Shepherd, but the man had frozen.

  The colonel was up now, running towards the far end of the courtyard. He turned and began firing up at the balcony. Shepherd heard screams and almost immediately a body tumbled to the ground. Shepherd ran to join him as the colonel provided covering fire with single well-placed shots.

  Kassar had found a spot behind one of the trucks that gave him a clear view of the balcony at the rear of the fort. He fired a short burst and there was a scream fro
m overhead.

  Shepherd looked around. To his left there were stone steps leading to the upper level. He waved at the colonel, then pointed at himself, then at the stairs. The colonel nodded. Shepherd ducked behind one of the pick-up trucks, using it as cover as he headed for the steps. The colonel fired a long burst, raking the balcony. Kassar crouched behind another pick-up, laying down more covering fire.

  There was a gap of about twenty feet between the last pick-up truck and the steps. Shepherd looked up at the balcony before making his run, but stiffened as he saw the warhead of an RPG poking over the railing. He caught a glimpse of the man behind the RPG peering through the sights. He fired twice but the rounds ricocheted off the metal railing. ‘RPG!’ he shouted, just as the warhead kicked into life.

  Time seemed to freeze again. Shepherd could see the warhead, a plume of smoke behind it. He turned to look at the colonel. The colonel was holding his G3 in front of his chest as he stared up at the RPG. He turned and glanced at Shepherd. The sunglasses hid his eyes but there seemed to be the faintest hint of a smile on his face. He began to move, but slowly, as if he knew it was futile. The warhead was heading straight for him. He was as good as dead, and he knew it.

  As Shepherd’s body reacted instinctively, his mind was racing. What happened next depended on the type of warhead that had been fired. If it was a TBG-7V or an OG-7C then there was going to be one hell of an explosion as both were anti-personnel warheads. The OG-7C was a fragmentation grenade with a kill radius of seven metres. The TBG-7V was a thermobaric warhead using heat to do the damage, and it would kill anything within ten metres. The best-case scenario would be that it was a PG-7VR dual warhead, designed to destroy armoured vehicles and fortified targets, as the second warhead might well not explode.

  Shepherd leapt up on to the bonnet of the nearest pick-up truck. He saw Sunny staring at him, open mouthed. ‘Sunny, get down!’ yelled Shepherd. He jumped off the bonnet, his MP5 held out in front of him. The explosion was deafening and hit him just before his feet touched the ground, thumping him in the back like a blow from a sandbag. He roared in pain and hit the ground hard, falling on top of his weapon and then rolling over twice.