Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies Read online

  They frogmarched him down the corridor and then turned left. Then along another corridor and through an open door that led down into a dusty basement. It was a big room, twenty times the size of his cell. There was a cage at the far end, about four feet square and four feet high. There were several chairs and tables stacked against a wall and a pair of what looked like stocks with holes cut out for legs or arms. Shepherd gritted his teeth. It was a torture chamber, there was no doubt about that. They’d done the isolation thing, they’d stripped him of his clothes and deprived him of food and water. Now they were moving on to the next stage. The pain.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He’d get through it. He knew he’d get through it. This wasn’t about killing him, it was about hurting him. The pain would go eventually.

  There were several metal hooks in the ceiling and in the middle of the floor a coil of rope. More men came into the room. Two of them wore long dishdashas and were carrying AK-47s, one was holding a machete and three were holding canes. The men he’d hit earlier were nowhere to be seen so he figured they were still out of commission. That gave him some small comfort, though he knew it was a pyrrhic victory at best. It didn’t matter how many of them he punched or kicked, there’d always be more to take their places.

  One of the men tucked his cane under his arm and picked up the rope. He grabbed a chair and stood on it before threading the rope through a hook. The men holding Shepherd grabbed the free end of the rope and used it to tie his wrists behind his back. They were talking to each other in Pashto, and laughing. The man with the other end of the rope yanked it savagely and Shepherd was forced forward. He grunted but then screamed as it was yanked again. Red-hot bolts of pain seared through his shoulders. The men laughed even more and the rope was pulled again, lifting his feet off the floor. Shepherd roared. There was nothing he could do to alleviate the pain, all he could do was hang there and scream.

  Charlotte Button’s phone rang. It was Yokely. ‘I have some good news for you,’ he said. There was a buzz on the line as if he was calling from overseas, or from a plane. She rolled over and looked at the digital clock on her bedside table. It was just after six o’clock in the morning and as it was a Saturday she had been hoping for a lie-in.

  ‘I’m all ears,’ she said, sitting up and running a hand through her hair.

  ‘The NSA had a synchronous satellite taking photographs and video of the area in the days before the attack. And the CIA had two drones pass over.’

  ‘Can I see the footage, Richard?’

  ‘That’s why I’m calling. I can arrange a feed for you this afternoon, if that suits.’

  ‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘What do you need from me?’

  ‘I’ll give you a number to call, talk to a guy named Eric. Put him in touch with your technical people and you should be able to watch it from the comfort of Thames House.’

  ‘You’re a star, Richard. Have you had a chance to look at the footage?’

  ‘No, but Eric tells me there’s some coming and going that might be helpful.’

  Button remembered the call that she had listened to the previous night. She asked the American to stay on the line while she ran downstairs to her kitchen and picked up her notebook. ‘Can you check a Pakistan number for me?’ she said. She gave Yokely the number, and he repeated it back to her. ‘It’s a girl, Pakistani but with good English, I think her name is Salma. The MI6 guy who was running Raj looks like he might have been talking out of school.’

  ‘And that’s how the operation was blown?’

  ‘It’s possible. Let me know what you find out about her.’

  ‘And how are you getting on with nailing a location for Spider?’

  ‘I’m on the case,’ said Button.

  ‘I’ve put out a few feelers but haven’t come up with anything,’ said Yokely. ‘I hope he’s hanging in there.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Button.

  Shepherd came to, coughing and spluttering. He was lying on the basement floor in a pool of water. He realised that he must have passed out again and they’d thrown a bucket of water over him. He tried to roll over but he had lost the use of his arms so he lay where he was and tried to suck up some of the water off the floor. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, or how long he’d been down in the basement.

  The pain was unbearable, but he had no option other than to bear it. The only saving grace was that the pain stayed the same. It didn’t get worse, it didn’t come and go in waves, it was simply searing, unrelenting pain and all he could do was to scream and wait for it to stop. It was usually unconsciousness that saved him. Sometimes he passed out after a few minutes, once he lasted as long as an hour by his reckoning, but when he did slip into unconsciousness they would let him down, throw water over him and wait for him to recover. There were no questions, there was nothing they seemed to want from him, so there was nothing he could say that would stop them. It was part of the process; that was what kept running through his mind like a mantra. It wasn’t personal. It was going to happen no matter what he did or said. And at some point it would stop. All he had to do was to take one breath at a time and eventually they would take him back to his cell.

  Hands grabbed him and dragged him to his feet. The rope was pulled through the hook, his arms went up behind his back, and the screams started again. He had been screaming for so long that it no longer felt as if the screams were coming from him. It was just noise, part of the process, and nothing to do with him.

  Chief Petty Officer Adam Croft was deep in thought, walking across the DEVGRU compound, a cluster of brick buildings around a car park that was part of the Dam Neck Fleet Training Centre in Virginia Beach. The military loved initials as much as any bureaucracy, and DEVGRU was itself short for NAVSPECWARDEVGRU, which was in itself a shortened version of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group. But to the outside world, DEVGRU was known as the Navy SEALs, the best of the best. Croft was due to give a presentation about decision-making in combat to a group of new recruits and was starting to regret not having made some sort of PowerPoint presentation.

  ‘Adam!’ The shout stopped him in his tracks. It was Shaun Allen, another chief petty officer and a close friend. The two men were often mistaken as brothers – they had the same square jaw, piercing blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair. Croft waited until Allen caught up with him. ‘Adam, Gold commander wants you in his office, stat.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘He didn’t say. But it looks like someone’s lit a fire under his arse.’ Lieutenant Commander Dick Blanchard was in charge of Gold squadron, nicknamed the Knights. The Knights were the best of the best and Blanchard was one of the most experienced commanders in DEVGRU, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, both in Desert Storm in 1991 and in the Iraqi War of 2003.

  ‘I’m on my way to deliver a talk to the new intake.’

  ‘He says right now.’

  Allen slapped him on the back and headed off. Croft jogged over to Blanchard’s offices. A man in his fifties was just leaving. He was grey haired and had thin lips. He was wearing civilian clothes – a dark blue blazer and light brown chinos, black shoes with tassels on them – but Croft found himself saluting the man as he walked by him. He knocked on the open door. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Croft, yes, come in.’ Blanchard gestured at a chair in front of his desk. ‘Take a load off.’ Croft sat down. ‘How are your HALO skills?’ asked Blanchard.

  Croft ran a hand through the stubble on his head. It had been over a year since he’d done a High Altitude, Low Opening jump. ‘I’ve done more than a dozen free-falls this year but none over five seconds, sir,’ he said.

  ‘But it’s like riding a bike, right?’

  Croft smiled. Sure, he thought, if you were riding a bike vertically downwards at more than a hundred and twenty miles an hour. ‘Pretty much, sir.’

  ‘I’ve got a job that needs doing and I need you on board, Croft.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘
It means you going back to Pakistan. Bit of déjà vu, it turns out. Do you remember Dan Shepherd, of the British SAS?’

  Croft nodded slowly. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘He was with you on Operation Neptune Spear.’

  ‘I remember, sir.’

  ‘Well, Mr Shepherd has managed to get himself into a bit of a situation and I’ve been tasked with getting him out of it. I’m putting together a team from Gold but you’ve met the man so I want you along. Are you up for that?’

  Croft didn’t have particularly fond memories of Dan Shepherd, but he’d been stuck as an instructor for going on eighteen months and was keen to get back into action, so he nodded enthusiastically. ‘Hell yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you’d say,’ said the commander. ‘I’m planning on an eight-man team, two groups of four. I’m tasking Lieutenant Jake Drake with the mission but on each group I want a man who knows this Shepherd.’

  He leaned over and tapped at an intercom. ‘Send Lieutenant Drake in,’ he said.

  A few seconds later, the door opened. The lieutenant was in desert camouflage fatigues. He was a few inches shorter than Croft with broad shoulders and a steely grey crew cut. The fact that his skin was dark from the sun and he was sporting a bushy beard suggested he was just back from Iraq or Afghanistan.

  ‘Jake, this is Adam Croft, he’ll be with you on the Pakistan mission.’

  Drake nodded and shook hands with Croft. The lieutenant had big hands and a strong grip. ‘Good to have you on board,’ he growled.

  The commander motioned for Drake to sit down. ‘Jake and I have already done a lot of the pre-mission planning,’ he said. ‘We’re looking at an eight-man team. Jake’s already briefed five men from Gold squadron, you bring the number up to seven and we’re looking for one more, specifically someone who’s met Shepherd and who’s still serving.’

  ‘Guy Henderson,’ said Croft without hesitation. ‘He was on Operation Neptune Spear and he was tasked with hand-holding Shepherd. Did a good job, too.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Here, Virginia Beach,’ said Croft. ‘He’s with the Pirates.’ The Pirates was the nickname of Black Squadron, which specialised in reconnaissance and surveillance.

  DEVGRU was split into four assault squadrons codenamed Gold, Silver, Blue and Red. Each squadron contained fifty men, split into three troops. The troops were further divided into teams of fighters and snipers. The fifty men in Black squadron were reconnaissance and surveillance and Grey squadron was tasked with maritime missions.

  ‘Which troop?’

  ‘I’m not sure, sir.’

  Blanchard scribbled a note on the pad in front of him. ‘Outstanding,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to the Pirates commander and get him attached to our unit.’ He put down his pen and sat back in his chair. ‘Jake will bring you up to speed operation-wise. This is going to be way different from Operation Neptune Spear. No low-level helicopter flying, not after the Charlie Foxtrot we had last time.’

  Croft smiled at the commander’s use of the acronym. Charlie Foxtrot, Cluster Fuck. And while Operation Neptune Spear had been touted as a success, it had come close to complete failure when one of the two helicopters had crashed.

  ‘We’re still waiting for a definitive location from the Brits,’ said the commander. ‘All we know is that it’ll be close to the border with Afghanistan. Once we have the location we’ll be utilising a HALO jump to effect the rescue. And once we have the targets in safe-keeping and close to the border, we’ll send in birds to evac.’

  ‘Understood, sir,’ said Croft. ‘Any idea when we’ll have a location?’

  ‘They’re saying they hope to have it within the next few days. So I need you to work with Jake to make sure that you’re up to a thirty-thousand-feet HALO. He’ll check your marksmanship, too. The bad guys won’t be giving up their hostages without a fight.’

  ‘Hostages plural?’ said Croft.

  ‘Shepherd is being held with another Brit, a Pakistani, who is an MI6 asset. MI6 is the British equivalent of the CIA. He’s been in captivity for considerably longer than Shepherd so we’re not sure what state he’s in.’ He nodded at Drake. ‘Right, I’ll let you get Croft settled in and you need to start training tomorrow. But remember, no gossip, no chit-chat. No one needs to know what you’re training for. I’ll get Henderson over to you as soon as I can.’

  The two men stood up and headed out of the office.

  ‘Oh, one thing, Jake. The beard’s going to have to go. You’ll be jumping with oxygen. That goes for all the guys just back from the sandpit – no facial hair.’

  ‘Not a problem, sir. The damn thing itches anyway.’

  ‘That must have been one hell of a thing, Operation Neptune Spear,’ Drake said to Croft as they walked along the corridor.

  Croft had been the leader of the mission and the ranking non-commissioned officer. At the time he’d been a ten-year veteran of the Navy SEALs and had spent half of those years serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘It was awesome,’ said Croft. ‘I don’t see anything will ever come close.’

  ‘It was ballsy, right from the get-go,’ said Drake. ‘Flying in without telling the Pakistanis, storming the compound and taking out the target without a single casualty.’

  ‘We lost a bird,’ said Croft. ‘But yeah, no casualties.’

  ‘I was so pissed that I wasn’t on the team,’ said Drake. ‘Found out like everyone else when it was on CNN. I’d have given anything to have been there.’

  ‘Luck of the draw,’ said Croft.

  ‘Yeah, I know. I had an uncle die in the second tower that went down on 9/11. He was a banker. They never found his body. They didn’t find the bodies of anyone on his floor.’ He grimaced. ‘Hell of a way to die. Minding your own business, just another day in the office, and some bastards you’ve never even thought about crash a plane into your building. Fucking cowards.’

  Croft nodded but didn’t reply. He figured that while what the al-Qaeda terrorists did on 9/11 was pure evil; the men who had taken control of the planes hadn’t been cowards. Evil, certainly, but cowards rarely went on suicide missions. It took a particular sort of bravery to carry out a mission knowing that it would end in certain death. It wasn’t anything that Croft had ever been asked to do, and he wasn’t sure what his reaction would be if it was ever asked of him. Undertaking dangerous missions went with the turf for Navy SEALs, but there was always the expectation that while there might be casualties, generally missions were survivable.

  ‘Never heard that a Brit was on the mission,’ said Drake. He pushed open the door that led to the parade ground.

  ‘It was secret squirrel,’ said Croft, following the lieutenant outside. ‘He was a spook but he’d been with the SAS back in the day. He carried a weapon but he was there more as an observer.’

  ‘They’re good, the SAS,’ said Drake. ‘Damn good.’

  ‘Damn good,’ said Croft. ‘He was as hard as nails. We had him in at the rehearsals at Camp Alpha. We practised the operation a hundred times at a mock-up of the Bin Laden compound and Shepherd was tireless. Good shot, too. As good as anyone on Team Six. But man, he whined like a little girl.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘On the day, when we took out Bin Laden. He goes all teary eyed and starts asking me why we didn’t take him prisoner.’

  ‘Bin Laden? What did he want, a trial?’

  Croft shrugged. ‘Said we shot him when he was unarmed.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, boo-hoo. I don’t remember anyone in the Twin Towers carrying guns. What was his name again, this guy?’

  ‘Shepherd. Dan Shepherd.’

  ‘So what was a Brit doing on the mission anyway?’

  ‘The commander didn’t tell you?’

  ‘All he told me was that we’re bailing out two Brits, one white and one a Pakistani. He’s not over-chatty, the commander.’

  ‘Well, the intel about Bin Laden. It came from the Brits.’

  Drake’s jaw dropped. ‘You’re shittin
g me.’

  ‘Nah, they had intel. There were rumours that the Brits had an inside man within al-Qaeda. They gave the intel to us and that’s why we put the compound under the microscope.’

  ‘They kept quiet about that, all right.’

  ‘Yeah, the CIA was happy enough to take the credit and the British spooks wanted to protect their source so it worked out well for everyone. They even made that movie about it, remember? Zero Dark Thirty. The one that skated over why our bird crashed. Made it look like one woman was responsible for tracking him down. So no one ever knew the truth.’ He grinned. ‘Now that Navy SEALs movie with Charlie Sheen. That was a movie!’

  Drake clapped him on the back. ‘We’ve taken over an empty building for our quarters,’ he said. ‘There’s a room each for sleeping and a kitchen and two shared bathrooms. We’re to stay out of general circulation until the operation is over.’

  ‘I heard that the guy who killed him is unemployed and lives on disability benefits,’ said Drake.

  ‘Yeah, I heard that,’ said Croft.

  ‘Is it true, do you think?’

  Croft shrugged. He knew exactly what had happened to the SEAL who had fired the shots that killed the world’s most wanted man on 2 May 2011. Croft had led the mission and Croft had pulled the trigger. But his name had never been made public and the CIA had pumped out disinformation to make sure that no one ever would know. Al-Qaeda was composed of thousands of fanatics who would happily sacrifice themselves to avenge Bin Laden’s death, so Croft was quite happy that his identity was a closely kept secret. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Anyway, you get to run this operation, right?’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Drake.

  Lex Harper wound down the window of his white Transit van and blew a tight plume of smoke as he watched the BMW turn into the supermarket car park. He was on the outskirts of Manchester. It was early evening and there were only half a dozen cars parked up. He flashed his lights, just once. The BMW stopped, then headed in his direction and pulled up next to the van. Jony Hasan climbed out. He was a British-born Bangladeshi, in his mid-twenties with skin the colour of mahogany and slicked-back hair that glistened with gel. He was wearing a black leather jacket and black jeans, and pointed black boots with silver tips.