Read Spider Shepherd: SAS: #1 Online

Authors: Stephen Leather

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Short Stories, #War & Military, #Genre Fiction, #War

Spider Shepherd: SAS: #1 (3 page)

‘You’re looking at it,’ Harry said, gesturing at a drab house, one of a row of a dozen or so standing just outside the fence. The only clue that one of them contained something of value was the ring of trenches, manned by Bosnian soldiers, that encircled the houses and the muddy ruts and potholes that hundreds of vehicles and thousands of feet had worn in the dirt road and across the waste ground surrounding them.

‘That’ll be our guide,’ Harry said, as a Bosnian wearing filthy blue jeans and a combat jacket and carrying a Kalashnikov emerged from the doorway of one of the houses and beckoned to them. ‘I’m Ibrahim,’ he said, ‘but everyone calls me Ibro.’ Shepherd studied him with interest. His eyes, so dark that they looked almost black, made a vivid contrast to his face which was as pale as if he had spent years underground. ‘There are no suntans in Sarajevo, my friend,’ Ibro said, intercepting Shepherd’s look. ‘We are all nocturnal here, or those of us who wish to stay alive anyway.’

He led them to the third house in the row. From the outside it appeared no different than its neighbours but as they reached the doorway they saw that it had been completely gutted inside, leaving an empty shell with walls and ceilings reinforced with concrete and steel girders. A ramp just inside the door led down into a dark opening barely wide enough for two men to pass each other.

Four Bosnian soldiers lounging against the walls gave them a suspicious look but made no effort to stop them as Ibro led them into the tunnel. He took a breathing mask from a row hanging on nails driven into the walls at the mouth of the tunnel and gestured for the soldiers to do the same. Carrying the laser target designator between them, Shepherd and Gus the ammunition technician struggled into the tunnel. Even through the mask, the air Shepherd breathed was stale and the mildewed stench made him want to gag. The walls to either side were stained with mould and slime and he heard the steady drip of water somewhere ahead of them.

A rudimentary system of lamps spaced at irregular intervals cast pools of yellow light onto the ground, giving just enough light for them to see their way. The tunnel was cut through solid rock, the marks made by the picks that had dug it clearly visible in the walls. Iron supports had been used to reinforce the first section, their surfaces streaked with orange rust, but the Bosnians must have run out of iron and steel beams, for the remainder of it was shored up with a motley assortment of wooden props. ‘My dad was a miner,’ Diesel said, his voice muffled by his face-mask. ‘He would not have been impressed with those pit props.’

Thin metal rails had been laid in the floor of the tunnel, suggesting that a primitive railway was used to transport goods but there was no sign of any carts or trucks and Shepherd resigned himself to having to carry the LTD marker all the way into the city. The tunnel was only five foot three inches high and Shepherd, who was more than six inches taller than that, had to duck down to avoid cracking his head on the roof.

The strain of carrying a heavy weight while bending over meant he was mightily relieved to see the glow of light that at last signalled the end of the tunnel ahead. They emerged in the underground garage of one of the city’s shell-battered apartment buildings. Shepherd and Gus set the LTD marker down with sighs of relief. Ibro beckoned them towards a grating set high in the wall, which offered them their first view of Sarajevo. ‘Welcome to our beautiful city,’ he said with a bitter laugh.

Just outside the building, Shepherd could see more trenches manned by Bosnian troops. Beyond them, as far as the eye could see, there was not a single undamaged building. The years of shelling had reduced almost all of the houses to rubble, and though some of the Soviet era apartment blocks still stood, they had been reduced to skeletons, with their reinforced concrete pillars supporting only empty space. One gable end still stood but it was so pitted by small arms fire, and so pierced and shattered by shelling that it looked more like filigree than concrete. They could hear the constant rumble of mortars and artillery in the distance and every now and again the crash and thud of a round impacting in the surrounding streets.

‘What now?’ Harry said.

‘Now we wait for nightfall, my friend. Nothing moves here by day, but at night the city comes alive.’

They made themselves as comfortable as they could. Diesel and Spud, like soldiers of the world over, snatched the chance to close their eyes and catnap, but Harry remained alert, conferring with Ibro in whispers. Shepherd kept staring out into the darkening streets. A few men came and went through the tunnel, each one, like Ibro, as pale as a ghost. The traffic increased as night fell.

At last, at a word from Ibro, Harry roused his men and Ibro led them out into the street. They moved slowly, picking their way through a morass of rubble and shell craters. Even though the front and back walls of almost every apartment building they passed had been blown out and shell holes in the roof and upper floors had left them half open to the elements, Shepherd could glimpse people still living in them, like troglodytes in their caves. Using whatever wood they had managed to scavenge despite the risks from snipers, several had lit small fires set in the middle of what might once have been their living room floors. The glow of those small fires and the flickering light of an occasional candle was the only illumination in the whole of the city, for every street light had been shattered and the night sky was moonless and overcast.

Shepherd and the others used their PNGs - Passive Night Goggles - but though Ibro had none, he seemed as keen-eyed and sure-footed as a cat in the darkness as he led them on through the streets, making for the outskirts.

The shelled and burnt out wrecks of four cars littered one street, one of them blown onto its side by the blast that had destroyed it and, from the reddish-brown stains of dried blood that were still visible on the dashboard and the inside of the door, had also killed its occupants. The seats had been taken, probably for use as makeshift furniture by some of those living in the bombed-out wrecks of buildings. The doors, boot lid and bonnet of another wrecked car had been converted by one desperate family into a sort of steel igloo, erected in a patch of scrubby, weed-strewn ground that seemed to have escaped the worst of the shelling. A woman squatted cross-legged in the entrance, holding a small child to her breast, while two others sat in the dust at her feet. Her eyes met Shepherd’s for a brief moment. He had never seen such a look of utter, blank desolation on a human face before and he looked away, embarrassed.

‘See those?’ Ibro said, pointing to a strange pattern of red marks on the ground in front of them.

Shepherd grimaced. ‘They look like bloodstains.’

Ibro nodded. ‘We call them “Sarajevo Roses”. They mark the places where people have been killed by Serb mortar fire. Mortar rounds landing on concrete make a fragmentation pattern that looks a bit like the scattered petals of a rose. Those of us who are left stain them with paint or red resin as a memorial to those who were killed, and as a reminder to ourselves and others of what the Serbs have done to us.’ He waved his arm around. ‘ You’ll see hundreds, maybe even thousands of them around the city. Each mortar round kills or wounds one or two more people, and often many more than that. A dozen people were killed and 130 wounded when a mortar shell exploded among people watching a football match a few weeks ago, and another dozen were killed a few days later while they were queueing for drinking water. Water has been scarce from the start, because the first thing the Serbs did when they besieged the city was to sever the pipes that brought water into the city from the reservoirs in the hills. The worst massacre of all was when a mortar shell hit the Markale market.’ A shadow passed over his face. ‘Seventy were killed that day and more than twice that number were seriously wounded. Among the dead were my wife and son.’

There was a long silence. Shepherd looked away, not sure what to say. As much as a distraction as anything else, he gestured at a sign reading “Pazite, Snajper!”

‘What does that mean?’ he said. ‘I’ve seen quite a few of them.’

Ibro gave a weary smile. ‘It means “Beware, Sniper!”. The Serbs have so many snipers in positions overlooking in the city that you’ll see the signs in a lot of the streets. The sniper fire in the main street, Ulica Zmaja od Bosne, leading to the airport, is so constant and so dangerous that it’s known as Sniper Alley.

As if to confirm his words, there was a crack and whine as a rifle shot struck a concrete wall at the corner of the street and ricocheted away. A few moments later there was the crump of a heavy explosion as a mortar round struck a few streets away. ‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘Those bastards up in the hills have had things their own way for long enough. Let’s get this show on the road. Dan, you’re going to be operating the LTD with Gus.’

They reached the outskirts of the city and, using every scrap of cover, moved on into the rubble-strewn wilderness that surrounded Sarajevo. They crossed what once must have been crop-fields or pasture but now looked like the pictures Shepherd had seen of First World War battlefields: water-filled shell holes, mud and rubble, and the splintered trunks of shrapnel-ripped trees. Harry’s gaze was never still, continually scanning the ground for a suitable site for an OP. Finally he gave a nod of approval. ‘This will do. We’ll dig in here and wait for dawn. I’ll take the first watch, then Diesel, Spud and Dan.’

Gus fussed around, setting up and testing the LTD, then joined the others trying to snatch a little sleep while Harry stayed on watch. Shepherd had the last watch of the night and as the pre-dawn light began to strengthen, he shook the others awake and they stood-to in all-round defence for half an hour either side of the dawn. When it was light enough, Shepherd could see that Harry had chosen their location well. A low rise, studded with rubble, boulders and a couple of tree stumps gave them cover but they also had an uninterrupted view of a long section of the ridge-line and hills above them.

They ate some of their rations and drank some water, then went to work. ‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘Diesel and I will provoke a reaction, Spud, you target spot, while Dan marks those targets for our friends upstairs.’ He spoke into his radio: ‘Foxtrot Eight, Top Cat. Stand by.’

The reply was almost instantaneous: ‘Roger that.’

Harry and Diesel moved away in opposite directions, using all their field craft and every inch of cover to avoid detection by the Serbs. Shepherd caught glimpses of them from time to time as they slipped across patches of open ground. About twenty minutes later he heard Harry’s voice in his headset. ‘In position, stand by.’

‘In position,’ Diesel echoed a moment later.

‘Foxtrot Eight. Top Cat.’ Harry said

Again the reply was instantaneous: ‘Roger that.’

Shepherd heard the roar of fast-jets echoing from the hillsides above him and glimpsed black specks against the sky as he crouched over the LTD, his gaze fixed on the ridge-line. There was a whoosh and a roar from half a mile away to his right as Harry loosed off an M-79 round at the ridge. Shepherd caught a momentary glimpse of Harry haring away, moving fast towards a new location before the retaliatory fire came in. Then he focused his whole attention on the ridge. He saw the plume of smoke from where the grenade had struck and exploded, and a moment later a mortar opened up from nearby. Its first shell fell short of Harry’s firing point and there was no time for a second shell. Shepherd flashed the LTD onto the mortar position for a couple of seconds, and it was enough. Moments later there was a blinding flash and an eruption of earth and smoke from what remained of the mortar site.

Diesel was already launching another M-79 round, provoking more Serb mortars and artillery into action and they met a similar fate as Shepherd painted each target in turn with the LTD, and the F-16 pilots took their revenge for the shooting down of their comrade earlier that week, their laser-guided bombs blasting the guns and reducing their crews to bloody fragments.

The hairs rose on Shepherd’s neck as he saw the hot streak of a SAM missile flash upwards, but the F-16s’ counter-measures, pumping out chaff and flares while their ECM jammed the enemy radar, saw it fly wide of his target and detonate harmlessly. Fire was now erupting all along the ridge as more Serb mortar and artillery positions were drawn into exchanging fire, only to be blitzed almost immediately once by bombs or missiles.

Shepherd was working with relentless speed, switching the LTD from target to target, firing short identifying bursts of laser light, and then shutting it down. At his side, Gus was constantly monitoring the device, muttering to himself as its operating temperature continued to rise. Both men had to flatten themselves as a heavy machine gun opened up from the ridge, firing rounds that smashed into the stones and rubble surrounding them with a sound like a pneumatic drill. Shrapnel and sharp stone fragments flew in all directions, scything through the air like murderous hornets, but Shepherd had spotted the muzzle flashes and marked the machine gun nest for the fast jets, and it too disappeared in a searing explosion.

The Serbs eventually ceased firing back even when directly targeted, but Shepherd and the rest of the patrol remained in cover throughout the rest of the daylight hours. Soon after dark Harry and Diesel rejoined them. ‘That’s given them something to think about,’ Harry said, with a broad grin. ‘Good work everyone and well done, Dan, not bad for a Para. Right, I’ve spoken to Sunray and, as usual, now the hard work’s been done, the Yanks are coming in to take over. So we can get back to the job we were supposed to be doing in the first place. And with luck, I can then get back to Hereford and a few pints of decent beer.’

Other books

Redemption by La Kuehlke
A Perfect Heritage by Penny Vincenzi
The Tight White Collar by Grace Metalious
Forever in Love by W. Lynn Chantale
Midnight Grinding by Ronald Kelly
Secret for a Song by Falls, S. K.


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024