Kill Zone (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) Read online

  ‘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 hilltop, 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.

  Jock and Shepherd rode at the head of the column, with Lex, Todd and Jimbo behind them and Geordie as “Tail-end Charlie” at the rear of the line. They rode without lights, their Passive Night Goggles allowing them enough vision to avoid potholes and obstacles in the path. They passed through fields of opium poppies. Milked of their sap, the remaining seed heads had withered and dried brown and hard under the fierce Afghan sun and as the mopeds passed between them, they made a rattling sound that Shepherd could hear above the sound of the moped engine.

  Jock led the way up a ridge, following the ghostly line of an animal track and passing the skeleton of a long dead goat. Stripped by vultures of its flesh, patches of skin still clung to the bleached bones, mummified by the sun and the dry cold wind that was constantly blowing through the mountains.

  The night was icy, the wind stinging their faces as they cleared the top of the ridge. Jock checked his GPS, signalled to the rest of the team, silenced his engine and freewheeled down the slope, towards the dark, indistinct shape of a tall building set into a fold of the hills.

  They hid the mopeds in a clump of trees a hundred yards from the target and moved forward on foot, carrying the sections of ladder and the prepared charges, and leaving a faint trail of their boot-prints on the frost-covered ground. Shepherd caught a whiff of woodsmoke on the breeze as they approached from downwind, and a moment later, the tall shape of the target building loomed out of the surrounding darkness, the wall facing them glowing an eerie yellow through the goggles as it caught and reflected the moonlight filtering through the clouds.

  There was a straggle of huts and outbuildings surrounding it and a pile of rubble that might once have been another house. While the others kept watch on the main building, Jimbo and Geordie made sure that all the outbuildings were deserted.

  They dug in and watched the main building. In the early hours of the night, two small groups of men arrived and left again. Another hour passed and then a solitary figure, shrouded by a black cloak, emerged from the door and disappeared into the darkness. After that, there was no more traffic, and the faint glow of a lantern inside the building was extinguished well before midnight.

  Eventually the area was in darkness, the cloud cover masked the starlight. They waited another full hour before assembling the ladder. Shepherd and Todd crept silently towards the building while the others set up a cordon and covered them. Even if any of the Taliban managed to escape before the charges were detonated, they would not avoid the deadly crossfire from the waiting soldiers.

  Shepherd and the Captain placed the ladder against the wall and, after listening for any sound from within the building, Shepherd climbed up and began to place shaped charges against the wall on each floor. He allowed the cables of the initiators to trail over his shoulder as he moved up. When he’d finished, he slid back down the ladder without using the rungs, slowing his descent by using his hands and feet on the outside of the uprights as brakes. He glanced at Todd and mimed protecting his ears.

  Todd slipped round the corner and Shepherd followed him, pressing his fingers into his ears to protect them from the shock wave as he triggered the charges. The blasts of the three shaped charges came so close together that they could have been a single explosion.

  Within seconds of the detonation, Shepherd was on the move, rushing up the ladder with Todd hard on his heels. The two men stormed through the gaping hole that had been blown in the top floor wall. A thick fog of dust and debris still hung in the air as they swung around their AK74s. Four Taliban lay on the floor, killed as they lay sleeping, their internal organs pulverised by the devastating concussive force of the blast wave. They moved slowly through the building, clearing the rooms one at a time.

  The top two floors were sleeping areas, littered with Taliban dead, but the ground floor was where the cash was stored and disbursed. As they blew in the walls, the shaped charges had created a blizzard of hundred dollar bills. The cash was all in US dollars, traded for drugs in Pakistan, extorted from businesses in the areas they controlled, or plundered from the avalanches of cash that the Americans had been pouring into the country in their attempts to buy the loyalty of warlords and tribal elders. Stacked on the floor were crates of ammunition, a few rocket-propelled grenades and a rack of AK 47s.

  They turned over the last bodies, three men killed as they slept around the fire on the ground floor. Their faces were contorted in their death agony, but none of them had the distinctive milky white eye of Ahmad Khan. ‘He’s not here,’ Shepherd said. ‘We missed him. Bastard.’ He looked over at the Captain. ‘No point in leaving what’s left of the cash and weapons and ammo for any Taliban who turn up later,’ he said. ‘Flip your goggles up or turn your back while I get a nice fire going for them. The flare in your goggles will blind you for ten minutes if you don’t.’

  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 ro
lled 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.