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

Shepherd. ‘That was only a few years ago and they were carrying out ethnic cleansing like there was no tomorrow. Snipers were shooting pregnant women and kids in Sarajevo. And Sarajevo is just a hop, skip and a jump from London.’
    ‘Yugoslavia’s different,’ said Jock. ‘It was never a real country anyway. Like Jimbo said, it’ll never happen in England.’ He grinned. ‘And once we’ve rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall and thrown out the English, we’ll be as happy as Larry north of the border.’
    ‘You know that the English built Hadrian’s Wall to keep the Scots out?’ said Jimbo.
    Jock shook his head. ‘Nah, you Sassenachs rewrote the history on that. We built it because we couldn’t stand the sight of you.’
    Geordie raised his glass. ‘At least we’re here,’ he said.
    ‘The cavalry has arrived?’ said Shepherd sourly. ‘I don’t think so, Geordie. Looks to me like we’re doing more harm than good. What’s the first thing we did on arriving here? They get us to organise a beach landing for an unnamed invasion force that turned out to be a bunch of South African mercenaries that the spooks had armed and recruited. What was the first thing the Mercs do when they landed? They ignored the job they’d been hired for – ie to engage the rebels – and instead the went rogue  and made straight for the diamond fields. There they drove the rebels out of the diamond fields and grabbed the stocks of diamonds for themselves.’
    ‘Aye, you can’t get decent help these days,’ growled Jock.
    ‘It’s not funny,’ said Shepherd.
    ‘It’s the way of the world, Spider,’ said Jock. ‘Mercenaries fight for money, that’s the nature of the beast. If they can see a way of getting more cash from a situation, they’ll take it.’
    ‘So that’s why you were so deep in thought?’ said Geordie.
    ‘I want to do something to help, I just don’t know what,’ said Shepherd.
    ‘That’s because we’re soldiers, we follow orders,’ said Jock. ‘Someone else does the thinking, we do the fighting.’
    ‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Jimbo, and he banged his glass against Geordie’s.
    ‘There must be something we can do to help the poor sods who live in this godforsaken country,’ said Shepherd.
     ‘Better men than us haven’t managed to find a way to sort out the problems of this shithole,’ said Jimbo.
    ‘We’re the Pilgrims,’ said Geordie. ‘There are no better men than us.’ He was only a couple of years older than Shepherd and Jimbo, but the stress lines around his eyes and across his forehead made him seem much more than that. He paused, giving Shepherd a calculating look. ‘So spit it out then, Spider. Where has all your deep thought got you to so far?’
    ‘The reasons for some of the things that have happened here are now pretty obvious,’ he said.  ‘Fact One: We’ve come across a lot of obnoxious shits in our line of work - it goes with the turf - but the rebels here are the worst I’ve ever encountered: torturers, child rapists, child murderers and thieves, stripping Sierra Leone of the resources needed to rebuild the country and give children like the ones we met some sort of hope for the future. Fact Two: The people we helped to bring ashore are now making the country’s problems even worse.  They’ve gone straight from the landing beach to the diamond fields and are plundering the diamonds which could and should be used for the good of the Sierra Leonean people. This is one of the poorest nations on earth but once more the people are being robbed of their rightful inheritance and pushed ever deeper into poverty.’
    ‘So cut to the chase,’ Jimbo said. ‘We agree: it’s shit and shouldn’t be happening, but we could read that in a Guardian editorial. The question is: what do you want to do about it?’
    ‘Hang fire a minute,’ Geordie said as Shepherd was about to speak. ‘Incoming slime.’
    ‘I thought I could smell something,’ Jock said, following his