Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller (12 page)

‘I just want to know where you are. And if I call you and you don’t answer, there’ll be hell to pay. Understood?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ said Liam quietly.

Shepherd ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘We’ll get through this, I promise.’

Just before Katra served up their steaks, Shepherd phoned Major Gannon at the Stirling Lines barracks at Credenhill, the SAS headquarters that were just a short drive from his home. ‘I need a favour,’ he said.

‘And I’m just the genie to grant it,’ said the Major.

‘I’m going to be a contract killer.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t be the first member of the regiment to follow that career path, but I did have higher hopes for you.’

Shepherd laughed. ‘I should have been more specific,’ he said. ‘I’ll be playing the part of a contract killer and I could do with being brought up to speed on sniping, and explosives.’

‘Sniping’s not a problem, but what were you thinking about in terms of bangs?’

‘Charlie’s going to fix me up with one of her experts, but I figured it wouldn’t do any harm having a demolitions refresher. It was never my field, though like everyone else I did the basics.’

‘And you still have all your own fingers, which is always a good sign,’ said the Major. ‘What’s your time frame?’

‘Days rather than weeks,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’m in Hereford now and I’d like to strike while the iron’s hot.’

‘Pop around after breakfast,’ said the Major. ‘I’ll have something fixed up for you. How’s young Liam, by the way?’

‘Don’t ask.’

S
hepherd arrived at the Stirling Lines barracks at RAF Credenhill just before nine o’clock. He brought his BMW to a halt in front of the barrier and handed his Home Office ID to a uniformed guard. ‘Dan Shepherd, here to see Major Gannon.’

The guard studied Shepherd’s ID, consulted a list on a clipboard and handed the ID back. ‘Do you know where to go, sir?’ he asked. A second guard had walked around the BMW, examining the underside with a mirror on a stick.

‘Oh yes,’ said Shepherd.

The guard raised the barrier and Shepherd drove slowly by the green featureless metal-sided buildings that made up Credenhill, home to the SAS since 1999.

The Major had arranged to meet him by the armoury. As Shepherd drove up he saw him standing by the entrance. He was wearing a black Adidas tracksuit and army boots and had a small backpack slung over one shoulder. He’d put on a bit of weight since Shepherd had last seen him, but he thought better of mentioning it as he shook hands and bumped shoulders with him. Even without the extra weight the Major was a big man, broad-shouldered with a nose that had been broken several times.

‘This is all short notice, isn’t it?’ asked the Major as he pulled open the door and ushered Shepherd inside.

‘Yeah, I was only told yesterday.’

‘I’ve asked Pete to get a few rifles ready and he can talk you through them. Sniping was never one of my specialities. Are you okay to wait a day or two for the explosives briefing? Our best guys are off base at the moment.’

‘No problem,’ said Shepherd. ‘I’ve got some business to take care of in Leeds tomorrow anyway.’

Sergeant Peter Simpson, grey haired and stocky, grinned as the Major and Shepherd walked up to his counter. ‘The proverbial bad penny turns up again,’ he said in a gruff Geordie accent. Simpson was a member of the Royal Logistic Corps, which in SAS slang made him a Loggy. He had been a standard feature in the armoury for all the years Shepherd had been in the regiment and no one knew more about arms and ammunition.

Simpson and Shepherd shook hands, then the sergeant took him and the Major down a corridor lined with wire-mesh cages. He led them into a room at the far end where a number of rifles had been arranged on a wooden trestle table. ‘I thought I’d run through the weapons here and then you can take whatever you want out on to the range.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Shepherd.

The Major stood by the door, his arms folded.

‘Right, as you know, the regiment favours the Barrett M82, the HK PSG1 and occasionally the Dragunov.’ Simpson picked up a rifle and handed it to Shepherd. ‘But this, as you probably also know, is the standard sniper rifle throughout the British Army.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘The Accuracy International L96A1.’

‘Got it in one,’ said Simpson. ‘It’s been the rifle of choice since it replaced the Lee-Enfield L42A1 series in the mid-eighties. Adjustable butt, integrated adjustable bipod and static iron sights, it was designed to achieve first-round hit at six hundred metres but is capable of some pretty serious harassing fire up to eleven hundred total metres. It fires an 8.59mm round, heavier than the usual 7.62mm sniper’s round so is less likely to be deflected over extremely long ranges. It comes with a free-floating stainless steel barrel that can be changed in the field in just over four minutes. In fact, it’s so simply put together that even the average squaddie can carry out most repairs themselves. It’s practically idiot-proof.’ He nodded at the weapon. ‘You can strip it?’

‘Sure.’ Shepherd broke the gun apart into its separate components quickly and efficiently.

When he’d finished, Simpson nodded his approval. ‘That trick memory of yours comes in handy, doesn’t it?’

‘To be honest, it’s muscle memory rather than memorising a check list,’ said Shepherd. ‘I replaced the barrel in complete darkness once, in the desert and under fire.’

‘Let’s see you put it back together then,’ said the sergeant.

Shepherd grinned and reassembled the weapon almost as quickly as he’d taken it apart.

Simpson took it from him and put it back on the table. He picked up a second rifle. ‘This is the L96’s big brother, arguably the best sniping rifle in the world,’ he said. ‘The L115A3. There aren’t too many of these in service because of the price – a hefty twenty-three grand. Most half-decent snipers can hit a man at up to one thousand five hundred metres and even at that distance the round hits with the equivalent energy of a .44 magnum fired close up. One hit, one kill, pretty much. Because of the longer range, it comes with Schmidt and Bender day sights that magnify up to twenty-five times, compared with the L96’s twelve times.’

‘Nice bit of kit,’ said Shepherd approvingly.

‘Fired one?’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘I think we applied for one but it never came, at least not while I was in the regiment. The five-round magazine seemed a good idea. Lets you get off a handful of shots without reloading but a small enough magazine so it doesn’t get in the way. And the folding stock makes it that much easier to put in a backpack in a hurry.’

‘It’s one hell of a gun,’ said the Major. ‘There’s a corporal in the UK Household Cavalry now who holds the world record for a confirmed kill using one of those.’

‘That’s right,’ said the sergeant. ‘Corporal Craig Harrison. He shot and killed two Taliban static machine gunners at almost two and a half thousand metres in Afghanistan in 2009. Then went on to take out their machine gun. All confirmed by GPS because at first the Yanks wouldn’t believe it. They held the record prior to that and were a bit miffed that a Brit could out-shoot them.’

‘That’d mean the round was in the air for three seconds, thereabouts,’ said Shepherd.

‘Makes you think, doesn’t it. If you knew it was coming, you’d have all the time in the world to get out of the way.’

Shepherd rubbed his shoulder. ‘Yeah, but life’s not like that unfortunately.’

‘That’s right, you were hit by a sniper out in Afghanistan, weren’t you?’ asked the sergeant.

‘It was a regular AK-74 so the damage was survivable,’ said Shepherd.

‘You were lucky,’ said the sergeant.

The Major chuckled. ‘If Spider had been lucky, he wouldn’t have been shot in the first place.’

Simpson pointed at the third weapon on the table. ‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted a PSG1, as I know you weren’t a fan,’ he said.

‘I could always take it or leave it,’ said Shepherd. ‘The Präzisionsschützengewehr, German for “precision shooter rifle”, but really it’s only good up to eight hundred metres or so. Personally I was never happy beyond six hundred.’

‘To be fair, it was designed more for multiple targets than for range,’ said the Major. ‘H&K came up with it in response to the massacre at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. The cops couldn’t take out their targets fast enough and it all ended badly. So H&K were asked to come up with a high-accuracy, large-magazine-capacity, semi-automatic rifle and that’s what they did. It’s terrific for taking out a number of targets at five hundred metres or less, not so great for long shots.’ He shrugged. ‘Horses for courses.’

‘I never liked the fact that it doesn’t have iron sights,’ said Shepherd. ‘If you lose your scope, you’re screwed. Plus, it kicks out its casings up to ten metres. That’s fine for the cops, but it’s a bloody liability for a sniper.’

‘So what exactly are you looking for?’ asked Simpson.

‘Basically to familiarise myself with the main sniping rifles and to get in some practice.’

‘I’ve got one of our top snipers waiting at the range,’ said Simpson. ‘How familiar do you want to get with the guns here?’

‘I need to be able to field strip them all, and know the characteristics backwards.’

‘I’ve got all the specs written down for you,’ said Simpson. He picked up the fourth weapon on the table. ‘How about we start with this?’ he said. ‘Any sniper worth his salt has picked up a Dragunov at some point. The squad support weapon of choice for most of the former Warsaw Pact. More for marksmen than snipers, hence the ten-round magazine, but there’s a lot of them about.’

Shepherd nodded and took the weapon from the sergeant. All the Dragunovs he’d handled had been wooden with a skeletonised stock but this one was made from a black polymer.

‘It’s designed so you can use the iron sights at the same time as a scope, so you can take out distant and close targets at the same time,’ said Simpson.

‘Yeah, the sight can be adjusted to a maximum range of twelve hundred metres, but I’ve never heard of anyone making a kill shot at more than half that.’

‘Think you can strip it?’ asked Simpson.

‘No problem,’ Shepherd replied. He began to quickly and methodically break the rifle down into its component parts. He grinned over at the sergeant. ‘Like riding a bike,’ he said.

Shepherd spent two hours stripping and reassembling the sniper rifles under the watchful eye of the sergeant and the Major.

Shepherd decided to use the L115A3 for his sniping practice. He carried it and a box of ammunition to a Land Rover parked outside the armoury. The Major drove them the short distance to the outdoor range. They parked by the entrance and the Major took a red flag from the back of the Land Rover and ran it up a flagpole to show that the range was live while Shepherd took the gun and ammunition inside the brick-built shelter that was open to the target area.

A trooper dressed in black fatigues was standing in front of a wooden table examining paper targets. He turned and nodded at Shepherd. ‘You Spider?’ he asked. He had unkempt red hair and a sprinkle of freckles across his nose.

Shepherd nodded. The trooper held out his hand. ‘Chris Hawkins. They call me Happy.’

They shook hands. ‘You’re the sniper?’ Shepherd asked. Hawkins looked as if he was barely out of his teens, though he must have been in his early twenties.

‘Indeed he is,’ said the Major, walking up behind him. ‘Happy here is the best in the regiment.’

‘How the hell did you get the nickname Happy?’

‘One of the directing staff gave it to me while I was on selection,’ said Hawkins. ‘It was just one of those things. I did it during winter and it was bloody freezing and pissing down, but the worse it got the more I kept grinning. I think I was in shock, to be honest, but by the end of it I was Happy Hawkins.’ He shrugged. ‘It could have been worse. What about you?’

Shepherd grinned. ‘I ate a spider once. A big one.’ He put the rifle on the table.

‘My favourite,’ said Hawkins. ‘You fired one before?’

‘In my day the budget wouldn’t run to it.’

‘Yeah, I think strings were pulled to get a couple.’

The Major laughed. ‘Strings? Bloody ropes, more like. Happy can run you through the basics, but I’m sure your muscle memory will kick in. We can’t do more than a hundred metres or so here but as soon as you’re ready we’ll go out to the Brecon Beacons for some distance work.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let’s get started.’

A
fter hours on the range getting a feel for the rifle, the Major, Shepherd and Hawkins piled into the Land Rover and the Major drove them the forty miles or so along the A438 to the middle of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The Major took the Land Rover off road for a couple of miles until they were in a bleak valley that was well clear of any walking trails.

‘We’ve used this area before for sniping practice and we’ve never had any problems,’ said the Major. He pulled a black nylon kitbag from the back of the Land Rover. ‘You two get set up, I’ll arrange a few targets. What do you think, Spider? A thousand metres?’

‘Sounds about right,’ said Shepherd.

The Major shouldered his bag and jogged off across the rough terrain.

Hawkins looked around for a good vantage point. ‘How about up there?’ he asked, pointing to the left. There was a small plateau about halfway up the slope.

‘Looks good to me,’ said Shepherd.

They had packed the rifle in a waterproof case and Shepherd unzipped it and slung it over his shoulder. Hawkins grabbed a blanket. ‘Might as well make ourselves comfortable,’ he said. He pocketed a box of ammunition. ‘So you were in Afghanistan?’

‘When it first kicked off,’ said Shepherd. ‘You?’

‘Half a dozen times, right up until they pulled out. Was it a shambles when you were there?’

Shepherd chuckled. ‘Nothing changes, huh?’

‘It’s as if the politicians want to start wars but don’t have the balls to win them.’ Hawkins shook his head. ‘Mind you, what the hell were we doing there in the first place?’

‘To be fair, that was where al-Qaeda was training its terrorists.’

‘So we should have just gone in and destroyed the camps. Bombed them. That’s what we have an air force for. Or send in the regiment to do the job properly. But the idea of invading a country like Afghanistan was doomed from the start. If the Russians couldn’t control the place, what chance did we have?’