Free Dead Drop (A Spider Shepherd short story) by Stephen Leather

DEAD
DROP
    By Stephen Leather
    ****
    July 2002.
    Afghanistan.

 
 
    Dan ‘Spider’
Shepherd shifted position slightly, trying to ease the pressure from the rocks
beneath him and the ammo belt pressing into his chest. He lay prone, scanning
the terrain through his sniperscope. A rough dirt road ran along the foot of
the hillside below their observation post, leading to the village away to the
east, a cluster of mud-brick buildings, surrounded by terraced fields, thick
with the vivid pink blooms of opium poppies. The heat was ferocious, rising in
waves from the stony hillside around them, while high above vultures were
circling on the thermals, the feathers at their wingtips extended like claws as
they flexed in the updraft. Shepherd could feel beads of sweat trickling down
his brow, the salt and the moisture attracting still more of the flies that had
been buzzing around them since they set up the OP.
    ‘Instead of lying
there scratching your arse, Geordie,’ Shepherd said. ‘Can you not use your
ninja skills to catch a few of these bloody flies?’
    Geordie Mitchell,
lying next to him on the rock ledge, gave him a sideways look. ‘No chance,’ he
said. ‘Your flies, your problem.’ He was in his early thirties but looked
older. His pale blue eyes seemed as sun-faded as his fatigues and the stress of
continual active service had etched deep lines into his face.
    ‘They’re
attracted to rancid smells,’ Jock McIntyre said in the gruff Scottish growl
that made every sentence sound like a declaration of war. ‘So it’s not
surprising they’ve gone for you.’ His round face and open features gave him a
guileless look that had led many to underestimate him. It was a dangerous
mistake to make for he was as hard as Aberdonian granite.   ‘Anyway, pal,’ he said. ‘Look on the
bright side: if they’re buzzing round you, at least they’re leaving us alone.’
    The fourth member
of the group, Lex Harper, a Para who acted as Shepherd’s spotter - part
target-spotter, part-bodyguard - whenever he was on sniper ops, smiled to
himself but didn’t join the banter, keeping his gaze ranging over the terrain,
alert for any movement or anything out of place.
    Shepherd settled
himself again, gently placing his sniper rifle on the rock. He’d already zeroed
the rifle and scope but the least knock could throw it off a fraction of an
inch which would be more than enough to turn a kill into a miss.
    Mitchell gave a
theatrical sigh. ‘You’re so precious with that bloody rifle it’s a wonder you
don’t raise your pinkie when you fire it.’
    Shepherd
grinned.   ‘You’d be precious with
it, if I was ever dumb enough to trust it to you,’ he said.   ‘It’s state of the art kit and it cost
the Regiment well over £20,000 but it’s worth every penny. I could drill you a
new arsehole from a mile and a half away with it.’
    ‘For fuck’s sake
don’t do that,’ McIntyre said. ‘He does enough farts with the one he’s already
got. I don’t think I could stand them in stereo.’
    Harper and
Mitchell chuckled. Banter and swearing was the norm in the Regiment – it
was the glue that bound them together.
    Shepherd put the
spotter scope back to his eye. A temporary checkpoint had been set up on the
road directly below them, manned by two Afghan troops and four of Harper’s
mates from the Para Support Group, who always supported the Regiment on ops.   The site for the checkpoint had been
well chosen. It was set in dead ground, where the road dipped down to ford a
river that had been a torrent of snow melt in the spring, but was now as dry
and lifeless as the landscape around it. Hidden in the dip, the checkpoint was
invisible to people approaching from either direction until they were almost
upon it. If, as the Intelligence suggested, Taliban insurgents were planning a
raid on the village to kill or kidnap the local headman, they would have no
more than a few seconds warning of the checkpoint and no time to take