Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2 (19 page)

Towards sunset the Major patched Shepherd into the net with the other teams. ‘We’re going in,’ the Boss said. ‘Alpha 1, can you set LTDs? I’m going to ask for top cover, the jet jockeys are the only heavy stuff we can use, we’re out of artillery range.

The LTDs were laser targeting devices that would be used to bathe the target in a light visible only to the planes or choppers that would attack the stronghold.

Shepherd heard Spud’s reply. ‘Sunray, Alpha 1. I’ll  try but it might not work. We can set them up all right, but they need a level surface to reflect from and the rock face around the caves is as rough as they come. And the valley’s narrow, steep-sided, and twists and turns like a corkscrew. I don’t think the jets will be able to get close enough.’

‘What about the attack helis?’

‘We trained some of the guys down there, remember. We taught them how to catch the Sovs in a crossfire from the valley sides and shoot them down. They may or may not have Stingers, but they can do the job just as well with heavy machine guns and RPGs. They may be up on the ridges above where the top cover might fly and shoot down on them like they did the Sovs.’

There was a silence, broken only by the hiss of static, as the Major took instructions from up the line. ‘We’ll try with LTDs first,’ he said at last. ‘H Hour is 0500 hours. Suppressing fire to keep the Taliban heads down and the Support Group will move up at 0530.’ He paused. ‘One more thing. Our friends are running this operation, and they will be the lead teams going in.’

Shepherd gave a rueful smile. “Our friends” was the standard euphemism for US Special Forces. Not for the first time, it looked like SAS would do the spade work and Delta would get the gongs and glory.

Spud’s voice interrupted him. ‘Sunray, Alpha 1. We’re here, they’re not.’

‘They will be, and they will lead. The decision is from the highest level.’

Shepherd glanced at Lex. ‘Hear that? The White House has spoken, we’re bag-carriers for the Yanks again.’

Just after eleven that night, Shepherd watched through his scope and his PNGs as Spud’s team broke cover and inched their way down the valley sides, through the rubble of rocks and drifts of gravel washed down by the winter floods. One would move while the other covered him, ready to unleash an avalanche of fire if they were detected.

They slipped silently past the defences where Taliban and Arab mujahedeen dozed. He watched as they forded the river, then Spud took the lead up the facing slopes. They paused a quarter of a mile from the cave entrance and placed the first of the laser targeting devices, no bigger than a paperback book. They sited two more LTDs at intervals of fifty yards, then crept back the way they had come. They had covered no more than three quarters of a mile of ground, but it had taken them four hours to do so.

At five that morning, still a couple of hours before dawn, Shepherd heard the roar of jets and the first crumps of explosions as bombs began raining down on the Taliban positions further down the valley.

He looked towards the cave mouth where figures could be seen racing in all directions, like wasps buzzing around a shattered nest. Moments later the first A10 jets roared up the valley towards them, punching out clouds of chaff and flares to throw off any missiles. It pulled a sharp turn well short of Shepherd’s OP, releasing its bomb load as it did so, before swinging away over the valley walls. He watched the parabola of the bomb’s flight, but it fell well short of the caves and detonated harmlessly among the rocks on the valley floor. A second and a third followed and also fell short.

He spoke into the net. ‘Sunray, Sierra 5. They’re throwing bombs but they’re not connecting with the lasers and falling well short. The valley’s too tight, they can’t get close enough.’

He could imagine the reaction from Spud and the other Assault Groups. They would now know this battle was not going to be fought from a distance – it was going to be up close and personal.

‘Sunray, all groups. Intelligence from our friends: the cave system is a labyrinth of tunnels, sealed by iron or steel doors and extending deep into the mountain. They have concrete floors, a ventilation system, hydro-electric power and an armoury of weaponry and ammunition, that could supply an army of two thousand men.’

Shepherd looked across at Taj, who shook his head vigorously. ‘They are natural caves and you would struggle to get more than two hundred men inside them,’ hissed the Afghan.

‘They could have been extended since the Soviet War,’ said Shepherd.

Taj shook his head fiercely.  ‘My friend, I told you, I know these mountains and the people who live here or pass through here. Nothing happens here that I do not get to hear about.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘Sunray, Sierra 5. Our man says that’s BS. They’re just small, natural caves, holding two hundred men, tops.’

‘Maybe, but the friends are not going to believe that until they see it for themselves,’ said the Major.

Just before zero hour, a fresh rain of bombs fell, dropped by B-52s so high above them they were only visible from the contrails in the icy winter sky. The explosions kept the enemy heads down but had little other impact. It had taken the US seventy to ninety Cruise Missiles and a series of saturation bombing raids by B-52s to destroy four al Qaeda training camps sited in open desert in 1998. In this jagged, boulder-strewn terrain,  a target could be within a few yards of an exploding bomb and suffer no more than a ringing in their ears. Shepherd knew that no matter what weight of ordnance the US brought to bear, they could not bomb the mountains into submission. If Bin Laden was here, he would only be flushed out by fighting troops.

At 5.30 am the percussive thud of mortar fire and the rattle of heavy machine guns showed that the ground battle was underway. As dawn broke, they could see the enemy fighters being slowly pushed back, but it was, literally, an uphill struggle for the Paras of the Support Group, attacking an enemy who was well entrenched on the higher ground. Even the air power that normally gave a decisive advantage in any pitched battle was almost nullified in this forbidding, almost impossible terrain. As Spud had warned, the surrounding mountain ridges were close to the height ceiling for attack helicopters and the approach up the valley floor would force them to run a gauntlet of anti-aircraft fire.

Shepherd heard the chopping sound of rotors and saw the dark shapes of a formation of Blackhawks inserting the guys from Delta Force.  The attack choppers were laying down a barrage of suppressing fire from their rocket and machine gun pods, but there was a blizzard of answering fire from both flanks of the valley and the Blackhawks’ array of electronic countermeasures were no defence against crude weapons like heavy machine guns and RPG’s.

As Shepherd watched, an RPG streaked upwards and the lead Blackhawk erupted in flame. It slewed sideways, a rotor clipped the rock face in a shower of sparks, and the next moment the Blackhawk plummeted down, spinning crazily and exploded like a bomb.

The next Blackhawk in the formation emerged through the pall of black smoke and went into a brief hover as its cargo of troops spilled out and took firing positions in one fluid movement. The chopper was already speeding back the way it had come with bullets striking sparks from its fuselage. The next, hit by intersecting streams of HMG fire, made a crash landing and burst into flames. Shepherd counted the figures tumbling from it; only four of its ten-man payload emerged from the wreck. The remaining Blackhawks turned and flew back down the valley, still pursued by enemy fire.

He dragged his eyes away and, while Lex was on maximum alert scanning in all directions for risks, Shepherd began raking the enemy positions through his scope, searching out high value targets, those giving orders. He spotted one figure in black Taliban robes who was directing fire, and at once trained the scope on him and began the firing ritual that he had practised thousands of times. First, the firm but relaxed grip on the weapon, his eye glued to the scope, his mind closed to all distractions. Then the gentle first pressure on the trigger, the sighing exhaled breath and the final smooth, steady pressure on the trigger. Last, the recoil into his shoulder and the familiar sight of a target turning from a living figure one moment to a collapsing lump of dead meat the next.

Shepherd was also target marking for the Assault Teams. He spotted Spud’s group, identifiable by the recognition markings they had placed to indicate their positions. Invisible from ground-level, they were primarily intended to identify their positions to supporting aircraft to prevent “blue on blue” casualties but, from his elevated position above the battlefield, he could clearly make them out. Spud’s team were exchanging fire with muj fighters, but Shepherd saw an HMG in a sanger on the mountainside being brought to bear on them.

‘Sunray, Sierra 5. Patch Alpha 1.’ There was no time for courtesies or wasted words in the heat of battle.

A second later, he heard Spud’s voice, almost drowned by the bark and rattle of small arms fire. ‘Alpha 1.’

‘Sierra 5. HMG, 350 yards bearing 020.’

There was a pause then ‘Alpha 1. I have no visual. Repeat: no visual.’ 

‘Sierra 5. Stand by. Stand by. Will spot it for you. Watch for my phos.’  He reached into his ammo belt for two of the yellow tipped APTP phosphorous rounds. He aimed and fired and at once saw puffs of white smoke against the sanger where the machine gun was sited. A moment later there was the ferocious clatter of Spud’s GPMG and Shepherd saw rounds chewing at the edge of the sanger, blasting stone chips in all directions and striking sparks from the enemy machine gun. There was a whoosh as an SAS trooper with an M203 launched a grenade and a fireball erupted from the sanger. Peering through his scope, Shepherd checked for movement in the sanger, then said ‘Sierra 5. Problem solved.’

‘Ta for that.’

Shepherd began to scan the battlefield again, when Lex suddenly grabbed his arm and pointed ‘What the fuck is that?’

Shepherd followed his gaze and froze. ‘And where the hell did it come from?’ he said.

An armoured vehicle, like a miniature mediaeval castle on tank tracks, was rumbling towards the attackers, its turret swivelling as its heavy machine gun sprayed them with fire. Along each of its armoured steel sides there was a row of five small gun ports and the barrels of AK47s poked from them, spitting more fire. One of the SAS men fired his M203, but the grenade bounced harmlessly off the armour and exploded. A burst of fire from one of the gimpies was no more effective. The attacking troops were scattering as it roared towards them, and when Spud came on the net, Shepherd could hear the urgency in his voice, tinged with what might have been fear. ‘Sunray, Alpha 1. Russian BMPI, tracked, armoured troop carrier. 76 mm gun, ten men firing AK47s from inside. We need support. We’re pinned down and we’ve no Milans or even M72s. Who knew they had armour up here?’

‘Sierra 5,’ Shepherd said. ‘Any weak points?’

‘The tracks,’ Spud said, ‘but we’ve nothing can damage them enough. And the fuel tanks.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Bulbous shapes on the rear doors, but they’re armoured too.’

Shepherd was already loading his  .50 rifle with APTI incendiary rounds. As the BMPI halted, raking the SAS positions with fire, Shepherd took aim and began firing at the rear doors. The shots were marked by white streaks of tracer, and almost at once they drew answering fire from muj fighters, but Shepherd was shielded by the rock ledge and at maximum killing range for their weapons, though well within his. His first shot struck the top of the doors, the armour piercing round punching a hole in the plating. His next was a couple of inches lower. ‘What are you doing?’ said Lex, ‘aim for the bottom where the fuel is.’

‘You can’t ignite the liquid fuel,’ Shepherd said calmly, firing as he spoke. ‘I’m aiming for the gap where there’s a fuel and air mixture, not pure fuel.’ He fired three more rounds and had a sinking feeling as each one failed to ignite the fuel.

He lowered his aim another couple of inches and fired again. The round struck home and in that instant, the armoured vehicle disappeared from sight, engulfed in a cloud of flame. As the inferno began to ease, he could see the vehicle ground to a halt, its machine gun silenced and tongues of flame licking from the gun ports. The hatch was half-open and a blackened limb, barely recognizable as a human arm, protruded from it. Shepherd could think of few worse deaths, but he closed his mind to that thought and raised the scope to his eye again, already seeking fresh targets.

The muj and Taliban fighters were pressing hard and the SAS and Para Support Group’s flank was dangerously exposed, with the Delta Force troops pinned down as they tried to advance alongside them.

‘Where the fuck are the rest of Delta?’ asked Lex.

‘They’re inserting on foot,’ said Shepherd.

The Delta Force troops who had survived the Blackhawk crash were pinned down by heavy enemy fire, and must have called in support from mortars, because two rounds came crashing down. They fell, not on the enemy, but close to where the SAS were.

‘Stop-Stop-Stop!’ Shepherd said. ‘Abort mortars. They’re hitting our guys.’  He fell silent, horrified, as another pair of mortar shells fell. One dropped in dead ground twenty yards from the SAS position, but the other struck the rock they were using as cover and exploded at once. Shepherd saw a body thrown in the air, come crashing down several yards away. It lay exposed and Taliban rounds chewed the ground around it and struck the body, as a dark pool of blood spread around it.