Spider Shepherd 10 - True Colours by Leather Stephen

Author:Leather, Stephen [Leather, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2013-07-17T17:00:00+00:00

AFGHANISTAN, 2002

Ahmad Khan and Captain Todd flew to the Jalalabad base on a Blackhawk helicopter and then drove the final thirty miles to the SAS Forward Operating Base in a convoy of armoured Land Rovers as soon as it was light. It was ‘bandit country’ and all the occupants of the Land Rovers, including Khan, were armed. Khan had a scarf around his head and face, concealing his identity from any Taliban spies who might be watching from the shadows.

He looked around him with interest as they approached the Forward Operating Base. The road that led up to the gates was studded with huge concrete blocks, forcing any vehicle to slow down and weave from side to side as it approached, preventing suicide bombers from driving a truck packed with explosives straight into the gates.

The base was small, surrounded by razor-wire fences and berms bulldozed out of the stony soil, providing blast protection and cover for those inside. From what he could see, it looked much less well equipped than the American bases. Beyond the berms, Khan could just glimpse the tops of rows of shipping containers and tents and a heavily sandbagged, mud-brick building, the only permanent structure on the site. Around them were sandbagged emplacements from which protruded the barrels of General Purpose Machine Guns, and the much thicker firing tubes of mortars.

Bulldozers had flattened everything within half a mile of the perimeter in all directions, removing any cover for insurgents and giving the defenders of the base a clear field of fire. The cleared ground included the flattened rubble of a series of buildings, and as they passed them, Khan wondered whether they had merely been sheds or barns, or had once been people’s houses.

When they reached the gates, the British soldiers travelling with them were waved through after a brief check of their ID, but when Todd and Khan tried to follow them, the two armed guards blocked their way. Khan could see the looks of contempt aimed at his black dishdasha and AK-47, but he kept his expression neutral and looked away as Todd first talked and then argued with them, his voice rising as he became increasingly frustrated.

As the captain argued with the guards, two soldiers walked over. They were not dressed like the other British soldiers he had seen, but wore shorts and sun-faded T-shirts. They were no taller than he was and did not appear particularly powerfully built, but from their lean, muscled physiques and air of relaxed self-confidence, Khan suspected they were special forces.

He heard the bigger of the two men refer to the other as ‘Spider’, presumably a nickname. Spider looked at Khan’s weapon, and then nudged his colleague. ‘Clock that, Geordie?’ he said beneath his breath. The AK-74’s orange plastic stock and magazine made it very distinctive, and Khan could tell from their expressions that they knew that this newer, improved version of the AK-47 was rare enough in the Taliban’s armoury for it only to be issued to its commanders and its most elite troops.

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