Free Spider Shepherd: SAS: #1 by Stephen Leather Page B

than using the track itself. They had been following the trail for about an hour when they saw ahead of them the place where the Mayan villagers had obviously been attacked, for the vegetation to either side of the track was splashed with blood and the ground soaked with it. Two dead monkeys lay in the dirt, still bound to the wooden pole on which the Mayan villagers had been carrying them when they were attacked.
    Pilgrim took in the scene, his expression unreadable, then led the patrol back about a hundred yards and signed to them to huddle around him. ‘They may be lying up in ambush,’ he said. ‘They use monkeys as a food source so I can’t see that they would have left them behind.  I’m sure Guatemalan rations aren’t so ample that they’d ignore some good protein when they had it.’ He paused. ‘Liam, Geordie, Jimbo, take the far side of the track. Dan and I will take this one. Move twenty paces, scent and listen for one minute, then another twenty paces, and so on. We need to clear the area to a hundred yards past the place where the Maya were attacked. Safety catches off - if they’re there, you’ll have no more than a fraction of a second to see them and fire. This isn’t a drill, lads, this is for real. So keep your wits about you.’
    The other three crossed the track and at a signal from Pilgrim, they melted into the jungle and began to advance. ‘You’re lead scout,’ Pilgrim breathed in Shepherd’s ear. He nodded, and began to inch through the jungle, keeping the dusty track on his left just visible on the periphery of his vision. Shepherd was totally focussed, leaving no sign and making no sound, but scanning the jungle ahead and to either side at every step, tracking the path of his gaze with the barrel of his weapon, alert for any movement or sound, or the slightest thing out of place, that might give warning of an enemy. After twenty paces he paused, listening intently then, hearing nothing, he moved on. Shepherd sensed that Pilgrim was behind him, though the veteran SAS man made not a sound as he moved through the jungle.
    Shepherd moved even more cautiously as they approached the scene of the ambush, raking the vegetation with his gaze, though the wall of foliage seemed as blank and impenetrable as a rock face. He paused once more, listening intently and sniffing the air and had just taken a pace forward again when there was an explosion next to his right ear. The foliage in front of him was blasted into shreds and he glimpsed a figure in camouflage fatigues toppling backwards, blood spurting from a hole punched in his chest, while his weapon stitched a line of tracer across the jungle canopy. Shepherd threw himself flat as firing erupted all round him. He targeted a muzzle flash, a speck like a firefly in the jungle gloom and saw another Guatemalan soldier crumple to the ground as the burst Shepherd had fired tore the vegetation apart. Pilgrim was firing more short staccato bursts and the others were firing too though, his ears still deafened from Pilgrim’s first shot, Shepherd registered that only by the shredding of the leaves as the rounds struck home.
    The answering fire ceased almost at once with any remaining Guatemalan soldiers either dead or fleeing through the jungle. The SAS men remained in firing positions until their hearing had cleared and the jungle birds and animals that had scattered in panic began to return to the canopy. Pilgrim signed to Shepherd to follow him and began to inch his way forward again. They checked the bodies of the two Guatemalans, both stone dead, eyes rolled up into their heads, and with ants already swarming over the corpses, and then moved on, clearing the area and making sure the Guatemalans really had fled before returning to the ambush site.
    ‘You all right?’ Pilgrim said, his voice sounding to Shepherd’s damaged hearing like the buzzing of a wasp.
    Shepherd nodded, shamefaced. ‘I never even saw the guy till you fired.’
    Pilgrim