Free Hostile Territory (A Spider Shepherd short story) by Stephen Leather

HOSTILE TERRITORY
    By Stephen Leather
    ***
     
    SIERRA LEONE. October 1997.
     
    Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd yawned as he watched the line of the sunrise inching down the mountains. He was standing at the edge of a palm-fringed white sand beach, listening to the ocean lapping at the shore. Jock McIntyre, Geordie Mitchell and James ‘Jimbo’ Shortt were sitting around a small campfire. Geordie was making a brew while Jimbo shared out the rations. It was meagre fare; they’d been on half-rations for the first ten days they’d been stranded on the beach and were now so short of food that they’d reduced it to one-quarter rations for the last two days.  Throughout that time, Shepherd had been reporting in to base every morning, asking for a helicopter lift out, and every morning he’d received the same reply: ‘Negative, no air resources available. You’ll have to stay where you are until resources can be spared.’
    ‘We’re short of rations,’ Shepherd had told the man for the tenth time. ‘We need to be lifted out.’
    ‘Nothing available,’ the voice over the radio had said. ‘You’ll have to wait.’
    That morning Shepherd had been determined not to be brushed off again. ‘Base, we need a lift-out,’ he had said as soon as he made contact. ‘I don’t think you realise the seriousness of our situation.’
    The same mantra had been repeated. ‘Nothing available. You’ll have to wait.’
    ‘Patch Super Sunray into this,’ he’d said, using the NATO signals designation for the most senior officer involved in the operation.  Super Sunray denoted the Commanding Officer of 22 SAS, the most powerful Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army.  Shepherd had no means of knowing where the CO was - he could be in Hereford where he should be, running the overall operation from where he could support it best, or he could be on the ground in Sierra Leone medal hunting.  Until the advent of satellite communications it was understood that the CO would be in the base in Hereford fighting the political battles, but there are few medals to be won there and since the Falklands War the CO had more often than not left the running of the operation to the Ops Officer while he got as close to the front line as he could.
    As soon as he had confirmation that the CO was part of the conversation, Shepherd outlined his situation. ‘Boss, we’re very short of rations and we’re short of ammunition.’ Shepherd knew that while he had to explain how precarious their situation was he mustn’t overstate his case - he had no way of knowing if other patrols were in graver situations and being truthful in operational situations was the very essence of SAS soldiering. ‘If we get into a contact with the rebels there’s every chance they’ll over-run us. If that happens you’ll be one patrol short because we gave them the good news ten days ago and if they get a chance at us, they won’t be slow to take revenge. So if you can’t find a helicopter anywhere in Sierra Leone for a lift-out, you’d better order up four body bags instead.’
    There was a long silence. ‘Wait out,’ the disembodied voice had said.
    Shepherd had sipped his brew as he waited for the Head Shed to come back on the line. The CO’s voice had been impassive.  ‘LZ. Grid 127704. 1200 hours local.’ Shepherd had acknowledged and the connection had been broken. ‘Hallelujah,’ Jock had said when Shepherd told them the news. ‘I was beginning to think I’d never see a Scotch pie or a deep-fried Mars Bar again.’
    Jock was a Glaswegian hard man who delighted in playing up to every kilt-swirling, bagpipe-blowing, Irn Bru-drinking Scottish stereotype, but Shepherd knew that despite the lack of a formal education, Jock was one of the most intelligent men he’d ever met. Only a short fuse and a reluctance to suffer fools gladly had prevented him from reaching high rank. He’d risen as high as Sergeant twice but both times had been busted back down to the