Free Rough Diamonds (A Spider Shepherd short story) by Stephen Leather

ROUGH DIAMONDS
    By Stephen Leather
    ***
     
    SIERRA LEONE. October1997.
     
    ‘Penny for them?’ growled Jock McIntyre. Jock was a hard-bitten Glaswegian whose rough, no-nonsense ways concealed a keen intelligence. Had ‘intellectual’ not been something of an insult where Jock came from, he might even have admitted to the title, for the SAS rumour mill claimed that he could read the Iliad in the original Greek.
    Shepherd realised that the question was directed at him. ‘Penny for what?’ he said. He took a long pull on his glass of Jamesons whiskey. It was Jock who had introduced him to the brand and he had developed a taste for it, albeit mixed with soda water and a few ice cubes thrown in for good measure. They were billeted at the Tradewinds Hotel, overlooking Lumley Beach, west of the Sierra Leonean capital. In different circumstances it would have been an idyllic location with palm-fringed, white sand beaches fringing the turquoise sea, but decades of rampant corruption, military coups, insurrection and civil war had left the country destitute, and as violent and lawless as anywhere on earth.
    ‘You know what,’ said James “Jimbo” Shortt. ‘You keep drifting off in your own little world.’
    ‘Probably because you keep boring the pants off him,’ said Jock. ‘He’s missing his wife and kid, that’s what it is.’
    Jimbo  raised his beer to Shepherd. ‘I know the feeling. I miss my missus and would much rather be back at home than stuck in this mosquito-ridden hell-hole.’
    ‘At least Sierra Leone is sunny,’ said Geordie Mitchell, the fourth man at the table.
    ‘Sunny? You call this sunny?’ said Jimbo. ‘It’s hell on earth, that’s what it is.’
    ‘I’m just saying, give me a hot country over a cold one, every time,’ said Geordie. ‘At least when it’s hot you can drink a cold beverage.’ He nodded at the ice cubes in Shepherd’s glass. ‘Not that I’d be tempted to touch the ice here.’
    ‘He deserves whatever he gets for adulterating a perfectly good whiskey,’ said Jock.
    Shepherd grinned. ‘There’s a machine in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I checked. There’s a filter on it so it’s all good.’
    ‘You hope,’ said Geordie. ‘I’ll stick with the beer. No one ever got the runs from beer.’
    ‘You still haven’t answered the question,’ said Jock. ‘What’s on your mind?’
    Shepherd grinned. ‘I was just thinking of all the shit I’ve been through over the last few days,’ he said. He took another long pull on his whiskey. ‘I’ve helped to usher a rapacious bunch of South African mercenaries into Sierra Leone, been forced to trek seventy miles through the bush with no food and no water, witnessed some of the worst atrocities I’ve ever seen, been pursued through the jungle by a group of drug-crazed boy soldiers who were not even in their teens. And I’ve had to put up with Jimbo’s boring stories. I’m not sure how much I can take.’
    ‘At least we’re never short of excitement in the SAS,’ said Geordie. ‘Unless Jimbo’s telling us a tale, of course.’
    ‘Fuck you very much,’ said Jimbo.
    ‘Seriously though, this God-forsaken country is getting me down,’ said Shepherd. ‘I mean, how the hell are we supposed to deal with what goes on here?’ He took a long pull on his drink. ‘I’ve seen Sierra Leonean girls as young as eight who’ve been raped, and boys not even in their teens who’ve been forced to murder their own parents. Kids kept high on a lethal cocktail of amphetamines, cocaine and gunpowder, so that they can be used as killing machines and cannon fodder.’
    ‘That’s Africa for you,’ said Jock.
    ‘It doesn’t matter where it’s happening,’ said Shepherd. ‘It’s wrong. It’s just plain wrong. I keep wondering how I’d feel if it was my boy being treated like that.’
    ‘Liam’s still in nappies,’ said Jimbo. ‘And England’ll never go that way.’
    ‘You say that, but look at Yugoslavia,’ said