Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies (31 page)

‘There was a red pick-up truck in the courtyard,’ said Button.

‘Red’s not an uncommon colour, but I’d say it’s a fair assumption that they were heading to the fort,’ said Singh. He sat back in his chair. ‘It doesn’t help us with an ID, though, there are no registration numbers to check and all the fighters have their faces covered.’

‘The important thing is that we know they rushed to reinforce the fort at short notice.’

‘They knew the Pakistanis were coming,’ said Singh. ‘Somebody tipped them off.’

‘They were looking for a fight.’ She rubbed her chin. ‘They could have just run off, but instead they sent in reinforcements.’

‘Someone in the SSG talked, then?’

‘Possibly,’ said Button. ‘But whoever leaked, it was obviously at the last minute.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘Can you call up Bashir’s phone for me?’

‘Sure,’ said Singh. He cleared the centre screen and went to the secure website. He tapped in the password, pressed his index finger on the computer’s fingerprint reader, then sat back as the spreadsheet loaded.

‘I saw the texts from last night and listened to the evening call,’ said Button. She gestured at the spreadsheet. ‘Looks like he was on Skype again this morning.’

Singh clicked on the speaker icon. ‘Hi, baby, what’s up?’

‘Missing you, honey,’ she said. ‘This bed is way too big without you in it.’

‘What are you doing today, baby?’

‘Shopping,’ she said. ‘Then dinner with girlfriends.’

‘I wish I was there with you, baby.’

‘Me too, honey,’ she said. ‘Please get them to send you back soon. I hate being away from you.’

‘Me too,’ said Bashir.

‘When will you know?’

‘It’s Saturday so I can’t do anything until after the weekend. I’ll go in and see my boss on Monday.’

‘Do you think it’s about what happened at Parachinar?’

‘I don’t know, baby.’

‘That wasn’t your fault, they have to know that.’

‘I’m sure they do, baby, but I’ll have a better idea where I stand after the weekend.’

‘What about the military? What are they saying?’

‘They’re keeping quiet. I think they’re embarrassed more than anything. It shows they don’t control that whole area. They send in their best-trained soldiers and almost all of them were killed.’

‘I’m just glad you’re safe, honey.’

‘I am, baby, nothing’s going to happen to me here.’

‘Stay safe and come back to me soon, honey.’

‘I will, baby. Kiss, kiss.’

‘Kiss, kiss,’ she said back to him, and ended the call.

‘Does she work for Six?’ Singh asked. Button shook her head and Singh grimaced. ‘That’s awkward.’

‘Isn’t it just?’ said Button.

‘Pillow talk?’

‘I have a horrible feeling that might be the case,’ she said.

There were several text messages back and forth between Salma and Bashir, mainly of the ‘I love you, I miss you’ variety.

There were two other calls, both to UK numbers. The first one was to Bashir’s parents, a five-minute call basically asking about his extended family and telling them he would be up to see them the following week. The second call was to a plumber asking for someone to come out and deal with a leaking tap.

Singh tapped away at the keyboard as he checked out both numbers. The first was a house in Coventry, the second the main switchboard number of Pimlico Plumbers.

‘What do you think?’ asked Singh.

‘I think we need to know a bit more about Taz Bashir,’ said Button. ‘What do you think? Can you pull info on him without raising red flags?’

‘Of course, I’ll get right on it,’ he said. ‘I ran a check on Spider’s sat phone.’

‘And?’

‘He made a call to you from Cherat. Then it was off. It was switched on shortly after the attack. Just for thirty seconds. Then it went off and has been off ever since.’

‘Any calls or texts made?’

Singh shook his head. ‘Not after the call to you. I think they were just checking it. They probably realise that if it’s on we can track it.’

‘Can you keep a watching brief on it?’ asked Button.

‘Already in hand,’ said Singh.

Shepherd lay facing the wall as the bolts to his cell door were drawn back. He heard the door open and footsteps. He tensed, expecting a beating, but then he heard the scrape of plastic against the floor and then footsteps and the door being closed and bolted. He sat up, wincing at the pain that lanced through his shoulders. He groped around and felt a plastic bowl. He probed inside it and his fingers touched water. He lifted the bowl to his lips and sipped slowly. He had to fight the urge to gulp the water down as he didn’t know how long it would have to last him. He put the bowl down and realised that there was a second bowl there. He probed it with his fingers and felt something soft. He picked up the bowl and sniffed the contents. It was rice and chicken. He sat with his back against the wall and ate slowly. The food and water were a good sign. They wanted to keep him alive. He doubted that the beatings had stopped, but at least the food and water would give him a chance to build up his strength. He chewed slowly. The first few swallows were physically painful but it got easier. He sipped some more water and then ate some more rice. He didn’t know how long it had been since he had last eaten, but the rice and chicken were possibly the tastiest meal he had ever eaten.

He wondered what the next stage of his interrogation would be. They’d used isolation, they’d beaten him and tortured him. Now they were feeding him. First the stick, and then the carrot. Soon they would talk to him. They would ask him questions and he would have to decide how much to tell them.

Back when he was on the Escape and Evasion section of SAS Selection he’d been told to say nothing other than to give his name, rank and number. To give any other information meant being immediately RTU’d. But this wasn’t SAS Selection, this was the real world. On the Escape and Evasion course, an officer would eventually appear and announce that the exercise was over. That wasn’t going to happen to Shepherd this time. His captors would continue to torture and interrogate him until they got what they wanted and refusing to talk would only make them torture him even more. In the real world, when you were tortured you talked. And you begged. And you screamed.

Shepherd chewed slowly as he considered his options, though he knew the truth was that they were very limited. There was no way of escape that he could see. He doubted that anyone was going to come to his rescue. All he could do was to take it one minute at a time. Every minute he was alive was a victory.

‘OK?’ shouted Drake above the noise of the engines of the C-23 Sherpa transport aircraft.

‘All good!’ shouted Croft.

Drake looked over at Henderson. ‘Guy?’

‘Rock and roll,’ said Henderson. They were fifteen thousand feet above the Virginia countryside and about to jump out of a ‘perfectly serviceable plane’, a phrase that always seemed to be on the lips of the US National Guard aircrew-men who were doing the flying for them. There were just the three of them jumping, with Drake serving as jumpmaster. He knew the jumping abilities of the SEALs from Gold Squadron but Croft and Henderson were unknown qualities and he needed to check them out.

If all went to plan they’d make four jumps during the day, possibly five. They would be packing their own chutes between jumps. SEALs always jumped with chutes they’d packed themselves, that way there was no one to blame if a chute malfunctioned. They’d be pulling their own ripcords for the first jump, and there was no need for oxygen. Drake just wanted to be sure that the two men could maintain a stable position in free-fall. Assuming the basics were good they’d move up to thirty thousand feet and start jumping with oxygen.

‘From fifteen down to nine I want you both in the stable position,’ shouted Drake. ‘From ten down to three you can have a bit of fun but stay close. At three you pull your mains. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ said Croft.

‘Got it,’ said Henderson.

The co-pilot twisted around in his seat. ‘Approaching the jump zone,’ he shouted.

The three SEALs pulled their goggles down over their eyes. They were wearing pale green jumpsuits and black backpacks containing their main chutes. On their chests were their reserve chutes, each fitted with an automatic opening device that used a small computer that would step in and open the reserve automatically in the event of an emergency.

The side door began to open inwards and upwards, revealing the green fields far below. There were a few wisps of cloud between nine thousand and ten thousand feet, otherwise the visibility was perfect.

The co-pilot began counting down with his fingers. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

‘Go!’ shouted Drake.

Croft jumped first, throwing himself headlong into the slipstream and immediately adopting a perfect stable position, head back, arms and legs outstretched, his hips the lowest point of his body.

Henderson followed almost immediately and Drake was right behind him.

Drake wheeled to the left to put some distance between himself and the other two men, then he turned back to the right. Croft was in a near-perfect stable position about fifty feet away, his arms and legs barely moving in the wind. Henderson’s left leg was bent awkwardly and his toes weren’t pointed up enough so he was tilting to the left. As Croft watched, Henderson began to turn clockwise but then he corrected himself. The leg straightened and the turning stopped.

Drake took a quick look at the altimeter on his right wrist. In ten seconds they had fallen a thousand feet and were already close to terminal velocity – 120 miles per hour. From now on they would drop a thousand feet every five and a half seconds.

Croft maintained his perfect stable position. He began a slow clockwise turn but quickly corrected it.

Drake moved his arms back and lowered his head and went into a faster dive, taking him closer to Henderson, then snapped back into a stable position. He was about twenty feet away from Henderson, whose legs had begun to move up and down, buffeted by the wind. Drake crabbed around so that he was facing Henderson. ‘Legs!’ he mouthed.

Henderson nodded and tensed his legs. The shaking stopped and his position stabilised. Drake flashed him the OK sign – a circle formed by the thumb and first finger of his right hand – and then crabbed away.

Drake took another look at his altimeter. Twelve thousand feet. He pushed his arms and legs out further, slowing his descent slightly, so that Croft and Henderson appeared to fall away from him. By the time they reached ten thousand feet he was about fifty feet above them.

Croft moved his arms to his side, bent at the waist, and did two quick forward somersaults and then snapped back into the stable position. Drake was impressed. He was even more impressed when Croft did a double back flip.

Henderson was less creative but he managed some very respectable sideways crabbing and a full three-sixty turn before they reached three thousand feet. Drake waited until he saw both men’s chutes open before he pulled his own ripcord.

He saw both men land – Croft hit the ground running and took four or five steps before stopping, and Henderson managed to flare his chute perfectly so that he landed on both feet and stood where he was. It was the perfect landing, but Drake wasn’t sure whether it had happened through luck or judgement. His own landing was somewhere in between; he hit the ground with his left foot slightly ahead of the right and took just one step before he stopped. The parachute dropped behind him and tugged at his harness. Drake quickly ran downwind of the chute to collapse it, then gathered up the rigging and chute in his arms. Croft and Henderson did the same.

A National Guard Humvee was heading their way across the grass while overhead the plane was descending towards the airfield, some twenty miles away.

‘Well done, both of you,’ said Drake as he walked over to Croft and Henderson. ‘Guy, you were a bit loose on exit but you got it together. And your landing was A1.’ He nodded at the approaching Humvee. ‘We’ll head back to the airfield, pick up the automatic-opening chutes and go straight back up.’

‘I always feel happier pulling my own ripcord,’ said Croft.

‘I hear you,’ said Drake, ‘but we’ll be opening at nine hundred feet and at terminal velocity there’s no room for error.’

‘Yeah, but what if the automatic opening fails?’ asked Croft.

‘It won’t,’ said Drake. ‘Never has, never will.’

‘Hypothetically, then?’

Drake laughed. ‘Hypothetically, if you get to five hundred and it hasn’t opened, you can still pull the ripcord. But it won’t fail, you can count on that. There’s much more chance of you pulling too soon or too late if you do it manually, and if that happens then the landing could be compromised.’

Croft nodded, but Drake could see that the man wasn’t convinced.

‘I need you focused on tracking the equipment pods we’re dropping,’ he said. ‘The danger is that you lose the pods because you’re too focused on your altitude, or you’re so busy concentrating on the pods that you mistime the opening.’

‘Understood,’ said Croft.

Drake slapped him on the back. The Humvee pulled up in front of them and they climbed on board. ‘You’ll enjoy it, trust me,’ said Drake as the Humvee moved off.

Lex Harper smiled down at the man tied to the chair, then drew back his hand and slapped him. The man groaned and his eyelids flickered. The stun gun had been as effective as Jony had promised; one burst to the man’s neck and he had gone out like a light. Shakeel Usmani had remained unconscious in the back of the Transit van all the way back to the industrial unit on the outskirts of Bradford that Harper had rented for cash. Just to be on the safe side, Harper had used duct tape to bind Usmani’s arms and legs and to hold a piece of cloth between his teeth. The unit was big enough to drive into and with the metal shutter door down no one would know what was going on inside.

Harper had tied Usmani to a chair and taken the gag out of his mouth before slapping him awake.

Usmani groaned and tried to focus on Harper’s face.

‘Wakey, wakey,’ said Harper.

Usmani looked around. He tried to move his arms but they were securely taped to the chair. ‘What the hell is this?’ he asked.