Spider Shepherd: SAS: #2 (24 page)

‘Keep moving!’ McIntyre bellowed as Shepherd paused for a split-second, fumbling with the magazine as he changed it. ‘Do you think the fucking Taliban are going to politely stop firing and wait for you to change magazines before they shoot your arse full of holes?’

‘You’re lovely when you’re angry,’ Shepherd said, laughing, before he dived and rolled again. As he fired the double-taps, he counted the rounds religiously and changed the magazine still with one round in the chamber, so the pistol was never unloaded and he always had the means to take down an attacker. Not bad,’ McIntyre said, as they took a breather after a couple of hours intensive practice and had a brew. Shepherd smiled to himself, it was as much praise as McIntyre could ever bring himself to give about anything.

‘Shall I tell you something weird?’ McIntyre said, as he stirred about half a pound of sugar into his brew. ‘Did you know that British police can’t fire double-taps because of a legal ruling that if you hit the target with the first shot, the second one constitutes excessive force.’ He gave a bleak smile. ‘Fucking ridiculous I know, but it’s true. So if you shoot a bad guy, you have to hope he’s dead, because if not, he gets a free shot at you before you can fire again.’

While Shepherd was practising his shooting drills, Karim had returned with a shalwar kameez for him. When he tried it on, Shepherd wrinkled his nose. ‘Bloody hell, Karim, I know I said worn and patched, but I don’t remember saying anything about it stinking.’

Karim grinned. ‘But won’t the smell just make it seem more authentic, Spider?’

‘And was there any change from the dollars I gave you?’

Karim’s smile grew even broader. ‘Strangely enough, it was just the right amount.’

‘Do you know, I had a funny feeling, it was going to be!’ He paused. ‘Now I’ve done my training, Karim, but there’s one piece of kit, I need you to use. When we’re in Zadran and I give you the nod, you’ll have to fire a flare to alert McIntyre and Mitchell and the others that we need them to come in all guns blazing. See this?’ He showed him a pouch about the size of two packs of cigarettes and then took out a metal tube three inches long, fitted with a screw end and a small trigger. ‘This a gun to fire mini-flares. They were designed originally for people on yachts, but they’re perfect for our purpose too. These are the flares,’ he said, pulling them out of the pouch. ‘See the green and red coloured bands on the ends? They show the colour of the flare: a green flare signals “Go!” to our friends, a red one warns of danger.’ He winked at Karim. ‘But you’ll only need green ones. Screw the flare on, press the trigger and it throws the flare up to 400 feet in the air. My mates will be watching for the signal and as soon as they see it, they’ll come and join the party. But Karim, let’s get one more thing clear. If you’re to come to Zadran with me, you have to do exactly as I say, when I say it. And that means you fire the flare when I tell you, and then you drop to the ground and stay flat, whatever happens, until I tell you it’s safe.’

‘You want me to be a coward?’ Karim said, resentful.

‘No, I want you to stay alive. The Taliban are no respecters of youth and nor are the automatic weapons they fire. But don’t worry, do as I say and you’ll have your revenge on Jabbaar, but I need to concentrate on my own job without having to keep half an eye on you. OK?’

Karim nodded. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do as you say.’

Shepherd had a final briefing with the rest of the team the next day. They would be inserting separately, with Shepherd and Karim making directly for Zadran, aiming to lie up nearby overnight, and then enter the village early the next morning, while the rest of the team left on the helicopters.

Shepherd was dressed in his shalwar kameez, its odour only marginally improved by a night in the open, hanging on the barbed wire fence. Although it still appeared to be the typical Afghan clothing, Shepherd had modified the long shirt. As he was right-handed, he had unpicked the seam of the shirt all the way from the left shoulder down to the waist and then fixed Velcro strips to both sides of it, so that when closed, the shirt appeared untouched. He wore his Glock pistol in a holster so well-concealed that even someone searching him for weapons would be almost certain to miss it. Unlike a normal shoulder holster, this one fitted tight into the left armpit, and, even to a practised eye, left no outward sign that he was carrying a weapon at all, but when he needed to access it, he simply had to rip the Velcro open with his left hand and draw the pistol with his right. It took less than a second to draw and fire. To complete his disguise, he was wearing the usual Afghan knitted skullcap. He hadn’t shaved for three days and his skin was nut brown from hours under the relentless Afghan sun.

An hour after sunset,  Shepherd led Karim out to a waiting Blackhawk heli. It had landed within the SF compound itself, and while Taliban spies might still report it taking off, they could not see who or what it was carrying.

Karim was saucer-eyed as he clambered into the heli. ‘Frightened?’ Shepherd said, as he watched him looking around the interior.

The boy’s eyes were shining as he met his gaze. ‘No Spider, just excited.’

The heli took off and flew a diversionary route, flying west until out of sight of Bagram, before descending to low-level and switching onto its true course. The pilot was already wearing Passive Night Goggles. As well as his own, Shepherd had brought a pair for Karim and showed him how to use them. The boy was speechless for some time, gazing out into the darkness with a look of complete wonder on his face.

The Blackhawk put them down at an LZ twelve miles from Zadran and disappeared into the night, while they began a three hour walk through the darkness before finding a place to lie up close to Zadran.

Soon after dawn the next morning, Shepherd roused the boy and after drinking a few mouthfuls of water and eating some high energy snacks, they set off for Zadran. It was another clear and sunny morning and as they walked along the dirt-road towards the village, their feet scuffing in the dust, they were surrounded by clouds of butterflies, feeding on the nectar of the dog roses, juniper, thyme and lavender growing wild along the earth banks dividing the track from the surrounding fields. The peaks of the mountains of the Hindu Kush were visible to the north, permanently white-capped even in the heat of high summer, and standing out in stark relief against the azure blue of the sky.

‘It’s a beautiful country, Karim,’ Shepherd said, as he looked around him. ‘You’ll have to show me it one day, when the Taliban have gone and people can live normal lives again.’ At the sound of his voice, a shrike flew out of a thorn bush giving a rasping call to show its anger at being disturbed. Its prey, a small lizard, remained impaled on a thorn.

In contrast to the beauty of the country around Zadran, the village - large enough to qualify as a small town - was scarred and ugly, after decades of fighting. They passed through a wasteland of shelled and bombed mud-brick buildings, the facades of those still standing as scarred by bullet holes as the pock-marked faces of smallpox victims.  Beyond them was a shanty town of rusting shipping containers where burqa-clad women and small children peered out at them from the dark interiors. ‘We call this area Khair Khana,’ Karim whispered. ‘Container city.’

As the sun rose higher, a growing number of villagers were now in the streets. Shepherd attracted some curious or suspicious glances and there were a few muttered comments as they passed - strangers were always objects of suspicion in Afghanistan - but he was now well into his role, head bowed, mouth hanging open, and his eyes apparently unfocussed, staring at nothing, and none challenged them. Several people recognised Karim and called out greetings and queries about his companion, but he replied with grave respect, and they appeared to accept his explanations, while Shepherd’s lack of a weapon and his vacant, unmanly demeanour, disarmed any remaining suspicions.

They reached the large open space that served as the market square and sat among groups of men talking in the open fronted teahouse at one side of the square. Karim ordered mint tea for them, paying with a few crumpled Afghani notes. As they sipped their drinks, the smells of the market assaulted their senses: the stench of animal dung  and the stink of fumes from the decrepit trucks and swarms of mopeds, battling with the fragrance of sandalwood, cloves and spices from one stall. Most of the others were only battered crates and cardboard boxes, and the stall holders squatted in the dust alongside their meagre wares: used lightbulbs, sandals cut from old tyres, empty cans and bottles, second-hand clothes, with bloodstains on some suggesting their origins.

Alongside the staples of Afghan life - rice, green tea, sugar - the food stalls sold radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes and grapes, but few could afford the meat from the stall where the butcher flicked half-heartedly at the flies swarming over his wares and a tethered goat awaited its turn under the knife.

An ice-seller sat on a wooden cart drawn up in the shade of a mulberry tree with a few fruits still clinging to the topmost branches. A trickle of water ran from beneath the sackcloth shrouding the square blocks of ice that were cut from the river in winter and stored in caves to preserve them from the summer heat.

As Shepherd and Karim sipped their mint tea in silence, awaiting the promised arrival of the Taliban, Mitchell’s SAS group were twenty miles away looking at the sky and waiting for the flare that would tell them that they were needed at Zadran. The squad leaders, including Mitchell, were sitting up front with the pilots, while the others stood on the skids and lashed themselves to the side of the helis with air dispatch harnesses fastened with a quick-release mechanism. The pilots fired up the engines, and then they sat, engines idling and rotors turning slowly as the minutes ticked away and the sun rose higher in the sky.

Shepherd and Karim had been sitting in the tea-house for over an hour when they heard the noise of engines and a commotion at the eastern side of the town. A few moments later a convoy of Taliban pick-ups came sweeping into the square. The fighters jumped down and began herding the population into the middle of the square. Four of them burst into the tea-house and drove out the customers, including Shepherd and Karim, with kicks and blows.

They were pushed towards a cordon of other Taliban who were searching every man. There was a shout as a fighter produced a Bollywood cassette tape he had found in one villager’s pocket. Face ashen with fear, the man was dragged to one side and punched to the ground. Shepherd and Karim were now close to the front of the line and Shepherd was feeling uncomfortably aware of the Glock pistol in his armpit as a Taliban fighter stared at him, then shouted at him in Pushtu. Shepherd said nothing, letting his mouth hanging open and a dribble of spittle run from it, while Karim stammered an explanation. Suddenly there was the loud noise of a back-firing moped. At once, seizing his chance, Shepherd threw himself to the ground, covering his head with his arms and crying out in terror.

There was a burst of laughter from the Taliban fighters. One kicked him in the ribs and another spat on him, showing his contempt, but Shepherd’s apparent terror had disarmed any suspicions they might have harboured about him. Karim helped him up and they moved on, unsearched and unchallenged, the mocking laughter of the Taliban fighters pursuing them, but Shepherd was also smiling to himself.

When the last of the villagers had been searched, another Taliban Toyota pick-up was driven into the market square, carrying two men and one woman in a burqa. It stopped in the middle of the square and the victims were pushed from the tailgate and allowed to fall to the ground. The woman’s hands were tied behind her back and she fell heavily. As she was dragged back to her feet, Shepherd could see a spreading bloodstain on the cloth visor covering her face.

Shepherd had now spotted Jabbaar and began trying to work his way through the crowd towards him, but people were pressing forward, apparently eager for the spectacle to come and, afraid of losing touch with the boy, he had to bide his time. The villager who had been found with a cassette tape was the first to face Jabbaar’s wrath. The man was dragged forward and Jabbaar confronted him, brandishing the cassette tape and shouting in his face, so close to him that the man’s own face was flecked with spittle.

Some of the Taliban fighters were wearing lengths of electric cable wrapped around their waists like belts. They now untied them, took a couple of turns around their wrists and then began to use them as whips, lashing them down onto their helpless victim. The last few inches of frayed copper wire of the cables had been exposed, drawing blood as the lashes sliced angry weals across the man’s back. Jabbaar himself used a thin, barbed branch torn from a thorn bush as a whip, flogging the victim until he lay still in a spreading pool of his own blood.

The second victim, accused of theft, was then dragged forward. Two soldiers held him, while another two gripped his right arm and he was forced to kneel in front of Jabbaar. He clicked his fingers and a man wearing a surgeon’s mask, whether for hygiene or to conceal his identity, stepped out of the crowd. He placed a scuffed brown leather case on the ground, took out a hypodermic and injected the man’s arm, then tied a tourniquet around his forearm with a strip of thin leather. There was a murmur of anticipation from the crowd as the surgeon then produced a scalpel from his bag. Playing to the crowd, he held it above his head for a moment, so it gleamed in the sunlight.

The victim still stared straight ahead, only the set of his jaw and a pulsing vein in his temple betraying his emotion as the surgeon began to cut through the flesh around his wrist. As blood spurted out, he cut the tendons and then broke the wrist with a sound like the snap of a breaking stick that echoed around the hushed square.