NARROW ESCAPE

By Stephen Leather

***

BRECON BEACONS, WALES.

December, 1996

Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd woke in the dead of night, instantly alert at the sound of a low voice off in the distance. He raised his head. In the faint starlight filtering through the open door of the wooden hut that served as their quarters, he could see an SAS sergeant moving along the row of sleeping men on the other side of the room. The sergeant stooped to shake a soldier by the shoulder and murmured something to him, and the man dressed hastily and gathered his kit, then made for the door. The sergeant moved on, waking three others, but passing Shepherd’s bed without a glance in his direction. He ushered the last of the men outside and closed the door quietly behind him. A few moments later, Shepherd heard a truck start-up and rumble out of the camp.

He lay back, his mind racing. There had been 120 candidates for SAS Selection when they started almost five weeks earlier. By the previous night only fifteen remained and now another four had gone, unless - and the thought gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach - the four who had just left the room were the chosen ones who’d passed Selection, and Shepherd and the others were about to be woken and sent back to their former units.

He couldn’t think of any reason why he would be being rejected; his fitness was damn near perfect and his near-photographic memory meant he rarely slipped up when it came to navigation. He was relieved to hear his friend Liam McKay still quietly snoring in the next bed. Pass or fail, at least they would do so together. They’d met on the first day of Selection and bonded instantly, both with the same will to succeed and the same refusal to accept second best. Shepherd closed his eyes and sighed. Every muscle in his body was aching from the relentless pounding he had gone through over the previous fortnight. It was a brutal, unending succession of day and night route marches and speed marches over ever-increasing distances, carrying ever greater loads in his bergen.

At the halfway point of Selection they had performed the ‘Fan Dance’, ascending and descending the three thousand feet high Pen y Fan three times in four hours,. That had been tough, but the previous day had been the hardest test of all, an endurance march crossing seventy miles of the Welsh mountains, with a bergen weighing well over twenty-five kilos, plus a rifle, belt kit and water. They had to navigate using only map and compass - no GPS - and were forbidden to use any tracks or roads. The off-road terrain was unforgiving: bogs, peat hags, tussocks of mat grass, screes, steep ridges and wind-blasted summits to climb, and icy mountain streams and rivers to ford. It had tested Shepherd to his limit.

‘Green army”’- regular army - exercises always started with a roll-call, but there was none at the start of any of the tests in SAS Selection. If you weren’t where you were supposed to be at the appointed time, you had ruled yourself out of Selection. There was no right of appeal, no excuses accepted; the only thing to do then was pack your kit and get out.

Before they began the endurance march, they were given two six-digit grid references. They weren’t allowed to write them down and had to memorise them, an easy enough task for Shepherd. He had only to glance at a sheet of paper for the contents to be committed to his memory, be it a list, a photograph or a map. The first grid reference was the final RV point he had to make for, a summit cairn in the west of the Brecon Beacons. The second was unexplained, just a reference number.

For a night and much of the next day, Shepherd had marched on through wind, rain and a sudden hailstorm that had coated the ground and chilled him to the bone. Now, as he began to make the ascent to the summit, sweat dripping from him, the straps of his bergen sawing at his shoulders, he saw one of the other candidates climbing the hill ahead of him.

He felt no concern at that; they had been sent off at fifteen-minute intervals to prevent anyone playing ‘follow my leader’ and tracking a more able candidate ahead of them, and Shepherd had been one of the last to set off. The other man reached the checkpoint and began to shrug off his bergen, but the instructors waiting there shook their heads and pointed along the ridge to another summit a mile or so away. There was a burst of swearing from the candidate and Shepherd heard his words carried to him on the wind: ‘No, this is the fucking finishing line. I’ve done what I was tasked to do. That’s it!’ After a further angry exchange, the candidate dropped his bergen in the dirt and stormed off down the hill, following a track towards the distant road, a ribbon of tarmac in an ocean of rock and rough moorland.

The instructors, deadpan, moved the bergen to one side, then stood watching Shepherd as he toiled up the last slope. He was close to exhaustion, fighting to keep his legs moving, but he kept his expression neutral, registering neither surprise nor disappointment as they checked him off on a list and then pointed him towards the next peak. Leaden-legged, his muscles burning with the effort, he plodded on, but had gone only another fifty yards when he heard footsteps running after him. ‘Okay,’ an instructor said. ‘That’s your lot.’ It had been a test, Shepherd realised. Or a dirty trick, depending on your point of view.  ‘There’s a truck waiting in a lay-by at the second grid reference we gave you,’ said the instructor. ‘Do you remember it?’

Shepherd nodded. He had kept quiet about his near-photographic memory, but even if he hadn’t remembered the grid reference he wouldn’t have admitted it, for forgetting it would have meant an automatic RTU - Return To Unit, thrown off the Selection course. He hesitated for a moment, uncertain if he had passed or failed, but there was no answer to be read in the instructor’s inscrutable expression - he merely turned and jogged back up to the top to await the next candidate toiling up the slope.

Shepherd checked his map and then moved off the summit plateau, beginning the long descent following a sheep trail winding away down the hillside. He reached the road almost an hour later and found a truck parked up. There was no sign of the other man, who had either ignored the RV or had already been whisked away.

Shepherd shrugged his bergen off his shoulders and used the last of his strength to hoist it into the back of the truck. He hauled himself up after it, lay down at the front and, with the soldier’s ingrained knack of grabbing rest at any opportunity, he was asleep almost at once.

Over the next couple of hours, the remaining candidates appeared, or those of them still standing, anyway. Three more men were missing. They had gone through all the other stages, but had failed at this final hurdle, either dropping out themselves or being thrown out by the instructors. Those who had survived the test clambered into the truck one by one and slumped down, most of them too exhausted to speak. McKay worked his way to the front of the truck and sat down alongside Shepherd. ‘What do you reckon?’ he said. He’d lived in England since he was five, but his accent still carried a hint of Northern Irish brogue. ‘Have we passed or what?’

‘No idea,’ Shepherd said. ‘As far as I know, I did nothing wrong, but they sometimes seem to chuck blokes off for no apparent reason, so I’m not counting on anything just yet.’ He fell silent as one of the instructors appeared at the tailgate of the truck. ‘You’re done,’ said the instructor, a sergeant in his mid-forties. ‘You’ll find out tomorrow whether you’re in or on your way to Platform 4.’  All of them now knew that it was an SAS in-joke, shorthand for being RTU’d. Although there still was a Platform 4 at Hereford Station, no trains had departed from it for years, but back in the days when the SAS first arrived in Hereford after long service in the Far East, the trains to London had departed from Platform 4, and the old phrase had stuck.

That had been the previous evening, and now Shepherd’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps, scuffing the gravel and rattling the wooden steps of the hut. The first faint glow of dawn was showing in the sky as one of the instructors strode in. ‘Let’s get to it,’ he said. ‘Continuation Training begins today. I want you outside in five minutes.’ He paused. ‘And don’t get complacent. You’ve passed Selection, but there’s a long way to go - around another twelve months before you become a badged member of the Regiment - and not all of you will make it that far.’ He turned on his heel and strode out again.

Shepherd jumped out of bed and began to pull on his kit. McKay winked at him as he struggled into his own gear. ‘A few words of congratulation would have been nice,’ said McKay.

Shepherd grinned. ‘This is the SAS, mate. They don’t do “Well done”, they just do “Get on with it”. And we’re lucky to get that.’ He sighed with relief. ‘I tell you, I’m bloody relieved, I wasn’t sure if we’d passed.’

‘Come on. You’re one of the fittest guys here. I always knew that provided I kept pace with you, I wouldn’t be RTU’d.’

After the acutely physical mountain bashing of Selection, Shepherd and the other ten successful candidates were thrown straight into the Continuation process.  There was no time to feel good about themselves, just more pressure being heaped upon them, but it was during the Continuation phase that Shepherd began his love affair with the Regiment, and it also gave him an understanding of the SAS’s affinity with Wales.

The training process followed a simple, tried and tested formula.  First, the theory of a subject was taught in a lecture room by the permanent training staff.  Then Shepherd and his comrades were taken into the Welsh mountains to test their knowledge of the subject in a series of exercises.  On these they were always accompanied by members of one of the Sabre Squadrons, who had now been drafted in to judge the trainees’ competence.

During the following months, Shepherd spent long periods alone on the Welsh hills, learning how to use the terrain to give cover, whether moving by day or night, and mastering the SAS’s complicated system of rendezvous drills, in which they linked up only to attack their target, then separated again to make their return to a safe zone. He notionally destroyed power stations, oil refineries, coal mines, power lines and rescued kidnapped VIPs, and along the way, he discarded most of what he had learned in his time in the Paras.  He quickly realised that when the Paras deployed, they always looked for trouble, having the numbers and resources to deal with it.  The SAS, on the other hand, went out of their way to avoid trouble until they could deal with it on their own terms, not through any fear but because the task at hand was what mattered, and getting into avoidable contacts with enemy troops was just a needless distraction from it.

Like the rest of the regular army, the Paras were trained to have a standard reaction to particular circumstances, so that everyone operated in the same way and one that was predictable to the Army hierarchy. The SAS training was designed to produce precisely the opposite result; the Regiment wanted every individual to react differently to circumstances, while still achieving the mission objectives.

As he trained, Shepherd found himself slyly observing the Sabre Squadron troopers.  The first thing he noticed was that whether they were training or relaxing they were always remarkably reticent about themselves. They weren’t even forthcoming with details of rank and name, always using a pseudonym or a nickname instead, and any discussion of their private lives was absolutely taboo.  He also noticed that when they offered advice, they were not overly concerned as to whether it was taken on board by the trainees or not.

Whenever Shepherd was in the field with one or more of the Squadron guys, he saw that they were all exceptionally gifted practical soldiers. Their ability to use the natural features in the terrain was an eye-opener for him. He had previously walked in straight lines across country, descending steep ridges and scree slopes, ploughing through marshes on the valley floor, or chest-high bracken, then climbing straight up the opposite side of the valley, confident in his own fitness to get him where he wanted to be.  By following the example of the Sabre men Shepherd learned to navigate over the terrain, using the ground to conserve energy and avoid potential enemy positions.

His particular favourite among the Sabre Squadron guys was a man known as ‘The Bosun’. Nobody knew why he had the nickname, everybody just assumed that at some stage in his career he had served in the Navy.  He had what Shepherd was coming to recognise as the typical SAS build, no more than medium height, with a wiry frame, and no obvious muscles. When The Bosun was out on the hills he had a rangy, ground-eating and apparently tireless stride. He was the source of many pieces of military wisdom that stayed with Shepherd for the rest of his career.  ‘Hide in plain sight’ was one of them, ‘and by that I mean get in close to the enemy where they won’t look for you,’ he said.  ‘Animals can hide in folds in the ground, so can humans.’

Another figure that Shepherd became aware of during this period was a driver from the Regiment’s transport pool.  He drove one of the Transit vans that they used to get around Wales, because the threat from the Provisional IRA had led the MoD to decree that units should no longer use military vehicles.  He had the nasal accent of someone from the back streets of Wolverhampton, but there was the faintest trace of something else there as well, that Shepherd could not quite identify.  He was known as ‘Brummie F’, the F - in true SAS take-no-prisoners style - standing for ‘FLUB’: Fat Lazy Useless Bastard. Brummie F was surly and short-tempered with the other drivers, but he was constantly trying to ingratiate himself with the trainees, offering titbits of supposed inside information to help them in their various tests.  Shepherd had formed a powerful dislike for him even before the driver overstepped the mark and The Bosun overheard him asking one of the trainees about the upcoming E & E exercise, the final hurdle in the SAS Selection and Training Process.  The Bosun gave him an earful of abuse and then cautioned all of the trainees, ‘Don’t trust that bastard. There’s something about him I don’t like. In my book, he’s a wrong ‘un.’

Nearing the end of the training phase, Shepherd was both slightly surprised and immensely proud that he still had not been sent to ‘Platform Four’ for failing the training, but he knew that the E&E exercise was not only the last stage, but also the hardest.  It always took place right at the end of Continuation Training, when the final decision was made on whether the trainees were good enough to join a Sabre Squadron, and Shepherd knew that the failure rate was high.

The night before they began the E & E, The Bosun called them all together for a briefing. ‘Inside the Regiment,’ he said, ‘an E & E exercise is considered to be the pinnacle of professional soldiering.  It is the individual without any kit or assistance against the enemy, the terrain and the climate, using his military skills to achieve an objective.  Even if you fall short and are captured, the opportunity is still there to redeem yourself, depending on how you deal with the interrogation that will follow.’

The Bosun explained that E & E was so important to the Regiment that every badged soldier and officer must do an E & E every couple of years.  In the Sabre Squadrons this was usually achieved by an exercise abroad, leaving the UK by Herc, parachuting into enemy territory with no kit and making an E & E across very hostile terrain. In Cold War days, many were held in Denmark and the Danes got into the spirit of it so much that they practically closed the whole country down. They advertised the exercises on television, showed pictures of typical hides and bootprints, gave children a holiday from school to take part in searches and offered prizes for information leading to capture. It was the ultimate test: you were good or you were caught. According to The Bosun, the new favourite area was in the French Pyrenees where the troops of the Parachute Battalions of the French Foreign Legion take great delight in trying to get their hands on the famous SAS men.

‘Foreign trips are for later,’ said The Bosun.  ‘First you have to complete an E & E in those Welsh hills you already know and love. You’re known as “runners”, the guys looking for you are “the hunters”, and as well as you novices, there will also be a number of senior SAS guys doing the exercise - not that you’ll see any of them, of course.’

‘What do you think?’ Shepherd said to McKay as they were walking back to their quarters.

‘About what?’

‘About E & E. I reckon that given a little luck most of us guys should be able to evade the enemy forces. It’s the Welsh countryside, how difficult can it be?’

‘It’s not about evading capture,’ said McKay. ‘Everyone gets caught eventually. All you’re doing is postponing the inevitable.’

Shepherd frowned. ‘You don’t think we’ll get brownie points for evasion?’

‘Sure. You don’t want to get caught right away. But the longer you stay out there, the weaker you’ll get. And you’ll need your strength to survive interrogation. That’s the phase that worries me, the interrogation thing. I’ve heard little or no talk about the Resistance to Interrogation part and that’s what I’m dreading the most.’

‘I guess so,’ Shepherd said. ‘Maybe that’s why there’s been no talk, because no one wants to think about it.’

Over the course of their Continuation Training they had gleaned various bits of information about the final exercise from the instructors. ‘Beware shepherds,’ one of the instructors told them.  ‘Not you, Spider. The guys that look after sheep. They’re on the hills every day riding on horseback or quad bikes.  If they see you, they will normally travel miles to check you are OK, but when an E & E is running, they’re given a few quid to report your whereabouts to HQ. So if they spot you, you’re not operating correctly.’

Another instructor had offered Shepherd some advice about the interrogation phase. ‘If you’re caught and your captors hit you, it’s out of frustration,’ the instructor had said. ‘It’s because they figure that you are unlikely to talk, so chalk it up as a small victory. The better you’re doing, the harder they’ll hit you.’

Such well-meaning snippets of information only heightened the tension within the group. They were under no illusions: they knew that however well they performed their E & E, they would at some point be caught and interrogated - the point of the exercise was how long they could avoid it and how well they resisted it when it did happen - but they were all unsure about what was involved during the final phase.

The night before the exercise, The Bosun gave them a final group talk. ‘Fear of capture by the enemy underpins much of the SAS philosophy,’ he said.  ‘The Regiment was formed to operate behind enemy lines and so, by definition, we will always be operating where we are outnumbered and will face a very high risk of being captured. It’s believed that the bond of friendship will inhibit any individual from jeopardising a friend’s life. So to counter the problem of guys talking under interrogation, patrols are kept together for years, if at all possible, and are only split up reluctantly if patrol members have irreconcilable differences.  In the Squadrons this is known as getting divorced, and it’s pretty unusual.’ He paused, allowing his gaze travel around the room and making eye contact with each of the eleven men listening to him. ‘Now, let me say at the start, there is no training system which can really prepare you for the reality of being interrogated.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘But we do the best we can. When you are captured, you will be beaten up by the hunter force troops.  How severe the beating is will depend on how hard they’ve had to work to get hold of you. You will be shackled from the moment of capture and sometimes they like to use cable ties, which dig into the flesh and hurt you more. They will throw buckets of water over you to keep you cold and in a state of shock, or they might throw you in a pond if there is one handy, but all the time they will be trying to condition you so that the interrogators will find you easier to deal with. They will also put a hood over your head to disorient you and they will keep you disoriented all the time you are in captivity.  Take note of what they hood you with. If it’s a sandbag, give thanks because they have a coarse weave.  If it’s a pillow case, you’re in for an extra tough ride because the weave is fine and it makes water-boarding much harder for you, because you will feel like you really are drowning. Try to keep the hood away from your face, and try to bite a hole in it, this will allow you to see your surroundings and may help you plan your escape.’ He stopped and let his words sink in before continuing.

‘Always pretend to be more tired than you are; keep something in reserve for when the chance of escape presents itself. Always be very polite and call everyone “Sir”.  If you’re offered food or drink, take it; it may be your last.  When you’re being questioned, stick to the “Big Three”: Number, Rank and Name. When you’re more experienced, you will be told about how to make a controlled release of information, but for now, stick to the basics. Giving away anything more than the Big Three will see you on Platform Four with no second chance.

‘When you’re being questioned, the one consolation you’ll have is that at least you’re inside, in the warm. The interrogators will try a mixture of brutality and kindness.  They will try to assess what treatment you should have to get you to talk.  Don’t antagonise them unnecessarily and don’t try to be a hard man, it will only get you hurt.  Just say “Sorry, I cannot answer that question”.

‘If you see an opportunity to escape, take it, no matter what the risk. Don’t forget, your captors get tired too, and they will make mistakes that you may be able to capitalise on.  Even thinking about that will help keep up your morale.

The inevitability of what was to come caused Shepherd and most of the others to have a pretty sleepless night. The next day they had their final briefing.  Unusually, the trainees found themselves being briefed individually. Shepherd was briefed by The Bosun himself.  ‘You’re to run a Rat-Line,’ said The Bosun, ‘replicating being handed from one agent to another in occupied territory. Except for the agents running the Rat Line, all civilians are to be considered as hostile.  The RV points you’ll be given will be arranged so that you are always cross-graining the country - we always make the runners come down from the hills into the valleys.  Valleys usually have a road or track and a river running through them. For obvious reasons, these are known as “stop lines”. The hunter forces calculate the time for the runners to get to a stop line and move their resources accordingly. So knowledgeable runners will either try to move quicker than the enemy calculate they can, or alternatively, much slower, so they are either in front of or behind the hunter forces.’

Shepherd nodding, filing all the information away for future use. ‘In addition to the hunters, there will be prisoner-handling troops supported by helicopters,’ The Bosun continued. ‘And if you’re captured, you will be subject to interrogation by the JSIW - the Joint Services Interrogation Wing.’ He pushed a piece of paper across the desk to Shepherd, along with a pen. ‘Sign this,’ he said.  Shepherd realised that he had to sign a form saying he agreed to the interrogation. He couldn’t help but smile at the irony as he scrawled his signature.

The only information Shepherd was given were the co-ordinates of his first contact, a Dead Letter Box. Once he had reached the first DLB, he would find further information about the next stage of his escape route. No other information was provided; he was not even told the location of his drop-off point to begin the E & E; he would have to work that out on the ground for himself.

The only equipment he was given was a small scale map, printed on silk, similar to the ones issued to downed aircrew in the Second World War, a magnetized belt buckle stitched to his trousers to give him a rough north direction pointer, and a plastic bag to carry water when he was on the hill tops, allowing him to lie up away from water sources.  Shepherd was not unduly worried that he had not been given a proper compass, because what he had would be more than sufficient to help him find his way around.  He decided to wear the map next to his skin, inside his shirt, where it was unlikely to be found during anything other than a strip-search. There were no rations, no comms equipment, nothing but the map, belt buckle, plastic bag and the clothes he stood up in.

At the end of the briefing, The Bosun dropped a bombshell, ‘This is Noduff’, he said, meaning it was genuine information, separate from the briefing. ‘PIRA are known to be operating in the area.’

Shepherd felt a chill at his words. It was only six months since an IRA bomb had ripped the heart out of Manchester and just two months since the Army HQ at Lisburn had been bombed.

‘We suspect that they’re hoping to pick up one of the senior guys from the Regiment who are running in the exercise,’ The Bosun said. ‘It’s been known for several years that the Provos would give their eye teeth to get hold of a senior SAS man.  Having a few of us running around the Welsh hills without our customary security systems in place will be a temptation that the Provos will find hard to resist.’ He grinned.  ‘They probably won’t be particularly interested in small fry such as yourself, but just the same, keep your eyes peeled and stay out of trouble’.

Finally, and vitally, The Bosun gave Shepherd the co-ordinates of an emergency RV, where he could go if everything went wrong, and even more importantly, the co-ordinates of the War RV. That would only be activated in a genuine emergency if the Regiment wanted everyone back in base ASAP.  The Bosun fixed him with his stare. ‘To divulge the location of either of these two RVs under interrogation could put other, more senior members of the regiment in real danger, and will inevitably lead to you being RTU’d. That’s all. Good luck.’

That night Shepherd was dropped off on the exercise start line. The van, driven by Brummie F, had already dropped off the others at ten minute intervals, several miles apart, and now only McKay and Shepherd were left. The driver had taken an erratic route into the mountains, with a series of seemingly random right and left turns and detours designed to throw off the calculations of any of them who were trying to keep track of their location. Shepherd hadn’t even bothered to try and track the twists and turns; once out of the van, he’d orient himself soon enough. Now, having driven a few more miles since the last drop, Brummie F once more pulled into the side of the twisting, unlit C road he was following. He glanced over his shoulder at Shepherd and said ‘You’re on, jump to it.’

Shepherd rested his hand on McKay’s shoulder for a moment. ‘Good luck, mate, see you on the other side,’ he said.

‘Not if I see you first,’ laughed McKay.

Shepherd jumped down from the van and it roared off. He watched the glow of its headlights fade until he was left alone in the gathering darkness.  There was still a glow in the western sky from the setting sun and that gave him a direction. He gave his eyes another five minutes to become accustomed to the gloom and then moved off, away from the road, climbing the flanks of the mountain that loomed above him.

He was fully confident as he set off. He had his silk map, next to his skin, and the magnetised belt buckle on his trousers, so he had everything he needed. He knew that at some point, at a time of their choosing, he was going to be roughed up and interrogated, but though he obviously wasn’t looking forward to that, it didn’t frighten him. He knew that he could get through it because the prize - admission to the ranks of the SAS - was too great for anything to stop him now.

It was now late autumn, shading into winter, and high in the Welsh mountains where he was heading, he knew he’d face torrential rain, cold winds, night frosts, and long, dark, twelve-hour nights. There were scores of abandoned farms, barns and sheep-folds in the hills, but the refuge they offered was illusory; Shepherd knew he couldn’t use them because the hunter force would regularly check them and if he was anywhere near them, he would be caught.

However, he also knew that there were massive swathes of bracken all over the hills, dying back to its autumnal brown, which would provide cover and some protection from the elements. There were also a few patches of conifer woodland that had been planted in the 1970s for tax reasons. Those trees were now mature but the timber that would once have gone to make pit props for the Welsh collieries, was no longer needed. After the pit closures of the Thatcher era, only one deep mine now remained in South Wales. As a result, many of the woods were now unkempt, littered with fallen trees and dead-fall branches that made progress through them difficult but provided good cover.

Despite the darkness, he made fast progress all that night and by first light the next morning he was in position, observing the site of the Dead Letter Box.  His instructions were that it was in the north-west corner of an old stone bridge across the fast-rushing stream in the bottom of the valley he had now reached, but there were two stone bridges close together and he was not entirely sure which was the right one. As the sky began to lighten towards dawn, he worked his way down the side of the valley. It was cloaked with a dense covering of bracken and he stuffed fronds of dead bracken into his clothes and hair and then burrowed his way down into a fold in the ground a quarter of a mile above the valley floor.

From his vantage point, as the light strengthened, he could see the movement of hunter force troops scouring the area and he could hear the sound of helicopters overhead. There was no possibility of reaching the DLB while they were in the area and he resigned himself to lying up in cover throughout the day and then making his way down to the stream after dark.

It was a grey, overcast day and rain hammered down during the afternoon, soaking steadily into his clothes, but the weather was not severe enough to cause the hunters to abandon their search and it wasn’t until towards sunset that the sound of helicopters ceased and the hunter force troops withdrew. He tried not to resent the thought that they were returning to a hot meal and a warm bed whereas he would be spending another cold and hungry night in the open on the Welsh mountains.

With the last of the light, he emerged slowly from his hiding place and, constantly scanning the hillsides and the valley floor around him for any hint of movement, he made his way down to the stream. The water-level was high, swollen by the day’s heavy rain, and to reach the Dead Letter Box, he had no option but to lower himself into the rushing waters, gasping at the shock of the cold. He searched the first bridge without finding anything and had to climb out of the water and move downstream to the other one. He lowered himself back into the stream and this time, at the north-west corner of the bridge, he found a waterproof Golden Virginia tobacco tin, wedged into a crack between the stones on the underside of the arch.

He left the stream in the valley floor at once and took his prize back to the OP he’d made earlier that day. Soaked to the skin, he stripped off his shirt and trousers, wringing as much water as he could from them before putting them back on; his body heat would have to complete the drying process. To his intense frustration, however, the sky was overcast and without any form of light of his own and with no moon- or even star-light to aid him, he was unable to read the message that the tin contained. His only option was to remain where he was until dawn for there was no point in travelling on through the darkness in case he went in the wrong direction.

He spent the rest of the night resting and sleeping fitfully, suppressing the dull ache of hunger with a few sips of water. He has no rations at all and it could easily be several more days before he ate again, but he could live with hunger easily enough. Water was the only essential and in those rain-soaked mountains, finding that was never going to be a problem.

He was awake and alert well before first light, waiting impatiently for the light to strengthen enough for him to be able to read the message. As dawn approached, he was at last able to decipher it. It contained only the coordinates and a pass code for the next RV, a Live Letter Box with an agent. The safest option was to lie up for rest of the day in his OP and only move on again after dark, but having already lost the whole of the previous night, Shepherd was growing anxious about reaching the next RV in time and he took a chance on climbing back on to the ridge and crossing the valley beyond in daylight. It was a steep-sided valley with the last 150 feet on either flank covered in loose scree.

As he started to move through the valley, he caught sight of a movement, a solitary figure in army camouflage - another runner like him - crossing the valley ahead of him. Almost immediately he heard dogs barking and saw a patrol of the hunter force - Paras with dogs and a dog handler - emerging from cover and chasing after the man.  One of the Paras spotted Shepherd and pointed at him, shouting enthusiastically. Shepherd assessed his options and decided that his only hope of evading capture was to back his fitness against that of the other runner and try to overtake him. With luck the hunters would overhaul and capture the other runner while Shepherd made good his escape.

With all need for concealment gone for the moment, he broke into a flat-out run, crashing through the bracken and coming down the hillside in what was more a controlled fall than a calculated descent. He sprinted across the valley floor, crossed a dirt road that ran through it and then hurdled a dry-stone wall. He cleared a stream with a leap, and ran on, his pace barely slackening as he met the rising ground. All the time he was running, he could hear the barking dogs and the shouts of the hunter force in hot pursuit behind him. The other runner was much closer now; either he lacked Shepherd’s fitness or panic and fear of capture was affecting him, but Shepherd was relieved to see that, whoever it was, it was not McKay that he was overhauling.

As the other runner reached the bottom of the scree slope below the summit and began to scramble up it, Shepherd raced past him, not even turning his head to see who it was, but just as he overtook him, his foot caught on a piece of loose rock and he slipped, lurching into the other man. Shepherd regained his footing and was running on up the slope in an instant but as he turned to shout an apology over his shoulder, he saw that the other runner had lost his balance and slid a few yards back down the scree-slope towards the fast-closing pursuers.

Shepherd knew it was survival of the fittest, every man for himself now. Above the shouts and baying dogs he could hear the thunder of helicopter rotors behind him, closing fast. If the heli came overhead while he was still in the open, the game was up. Whether he went to ground or kept running, it would simply track his movements and direct the hunter force onto him.

Lungs bursting, he reached the ridgeline and began plunging down the other side, frantically scanning the ground ahead of him for some cover. A hundred yards to his right and a little lower on the slope, he saw a dark circle half-hidden by bilberry and bracken. He sprinted to it, the sound of heli-rotors ever louder in his ears, and found himself on the edge of a water-filled sump hole. There were hundreds of such holes across the Welsh Mountains. Some were dry ‘shake-holes’ formed naturally in the limestone areas as rainwater dissolved the surface rock over millennia and caused it to collapse, but many more were where water-filled bell-pits and sumps, excavated by men digging for coal or other minerals and then abandoned.

Shepherd did not hesitate. He launched himself into the sump, praying the water was deep enough to cover him. As the ripples subsided, the water was whipped back into spray by the downwash lashing it as the heli overflew him. Heart pounding, he waited for it to go into a hover above him, signalling his location to the hunter force, but instead it flew on and then began flying a search pattern, moving backwards and forwards, quartering the ground to try to locate him, while the hunters continued their search on foot.

The hunters were advancing from the ridgeline, moving in line a few yards apart. Shepherd heard the sound of boots crunching through the bracken and the snap of dry bilberry stems. He took a deep breath and as he saw the peat at the edge of the sump begin to tremble faintly at the approaching footfalls, he submerged himself face down, gripping onto a rock to keep himself under the surface and began to count the seconds. He held his breath for a slow count of sixty and then, still submerged, began to release the air slowly as he counted down another thirty seconds.

Unable to remain submerged any longer, he slowly eased himself upwards, breaking the surface with barely a ripple and forcing himself to take only slow, shallow breaths, rather than the huge gulps of air his tortured lungs were clamouring for. He raised his head a fraction and peered through the curtain of bilberry, bracken and grasses. The heli was still flying a pattern further down the hillside, keeping ahead of the advancing hunters, who were now almost 100 yards away and still moving further down the slope.

Shepherd heard the hunters again perhaps twenty minutes later, heading away from his position, though the heli continued its search of the area. At one side of the sump there was a small overhang of peat with a screen of bilberry fronds and trailing mosses partly shielding it from view. Shepherd was able to haul his upper body out of the freezing water and huddle there, but he remained immersed to his waist all day, not daring to emerge from his hiding place or even glance upwards, for he knew that the white of an upturned face would be an immediate giveaway to a watcher in the heli high overhead.

Even when the sound of the rotors at last faded and finally ceased, he remained motionless, knowing that the hunters would almost certainly have set up an OP, and would be lying up in cover not far away, watching for the movement that would betray him. There was no option but to remain where he was until dark. As he had learned to do in his early training, he retreated into himself, forcing his mind to ignore the signals from his body telling him how cold he was. Whenever his falling core temperature brought him close to shivering, he began flexing every muscle in his body in turn. He made small, imperceptible movements beginning with his fingers and toes and moving up his body until he had raised his temperature a little and then he went back into his state of semi-suspension, mind alert, but body motionless.

Hard though he tried to still the anxiety gnawing at him, as he waited out the daylight hours, he knew that he was falling ever further behind his self-imposed schedule. He had hoped to reach the Live Letter Box that night but the brush with the hunter force and the hours lost lying up in the sump-hole made that problematic at best. He knew now that he was going to have to be less cautious if he was to have any chance of completing his task in the allotted time span.

As soon as night fell, he emerged from his hiding place and set off. He kept moving fast over the ground but in the pitch blackness he was constantly stumbling, tripping and falling. He plunged into another sump hole, unseen in the darkness, and then found himself sliding out of control down a scree slope, with a small avalanche of dislodged rock crashing down around him.  He knew the noise of the rock-fall could have been heard a mile away and he increased his speed still more.

He was exhausted by the time he reached the Live Letter Box, a derelict barn in a field that had once been a small meadow but had now reverted to moorland. It was just before first light and he set up an OP in a copse of brambles, worming his way in underneath them, breaking the stems off at ground level where necessary and obscuring the break marks by smearing mud over the stems. By the time the cut foliage wilted and died, he would be long gone. He spent the day observing the barn, willing away the hours until nightfall, when he could go down there and obtain the details of the next RV. All the time, the clock was ticking and he did not yet know how many more stages there would be before he reached the final RV.

He observed the barn throughout the day. No one entered or left it and he saw no trace of movement, but half an hour after nightfall that evening he saw a gleam of light from inside. He emerged from cover and moved in complete silence over the ground, every sense straining for sound or movement as he approached the barn and crept in through the doorway, fists clenched, poised either for fight or flight.

The light source was a hurricane lamp torch in a corner, with another held by the agent, who was sitting on a pile of fallen rubble watching the doorway. The man stood up, yawned and stretched as he caught sight of Shepherd. He gave his pass code number and Shepherd responded with his. ‘That’s the formalities out of the way,’ the agent said. ‘Here, take this.’

He gave him a piece of stale bread and then produced a hip flask, poured a shot of rum into the cap and passed it to him. Shepherd ate the bread in half a dozen bites, ignoring the blue mould speckling its crust, and then gulped down the rum. He was desperate to get the coordinates of the next RV and get moving straightaway, but the agent showed no sign of urgency and began asking him all sorts of questions about the exercise. He was particularly interested in Shepherd’s account of evading the hunter force and asked him a string of questions about it. Grinding his teeth, but realising that this was just another way of ratcheting up the tension in the runner, Shepherd masked his impatience and gave answers, albeit rather terse ones, to each question.

At length, the agent stopped toying with him and gave him the coordinates of his next RV. ‘It’s a linear RV in a wood,’ he said. ‘The next agent will be somewhere along the track and you will recognise him because he will be whistling. You will say “The pigeons are back in the loft”, and he will reply “But my cat will chase them”. Got that?’

Shepherd nodded, impassive. Giving runners embarrassing passwords to say was just another way of taking them out of their comfort zone. ‘That’s it?’ he said.

The agent nodded. ‘But obviously you can’t study your map here. You have to leave the area of the RV before you can do so.’

Shepherd turned on his heel and left the barn without another word. He made his way back up the hillside to the site of his OP and then unbuttoned his shirt and pulled out his map. The moon was in its final quarter and, unlike the previous night, there were enough cloud breaks overhead for him to read his map by its light. He stifled an inward groan at the amount of ground he still had to cover. He took a direction of march and then replaced the map next to his skin and set out. He kept moving throughout the remainder of the night and almost all the day that followed. Speed marching, and running wherever the ground allowed him to do so, he crossed several more steep-sided valleys before he at last reached the wood he was seeking just at last light.

A rough forest track, newly marked with tyre treads, led into the wood, but he avoided that, moving around the perimeter of the wood and then making his way in through the trees. The wood was of conifers mixed with splintered mountain oak A tangle of fallen trees, uprooted in winter storms, fallen branches and dense undergrowth and brambles made his progress painfully slow.

Had time not been an issue, he would have set up an OP as usual, remaining in cover and observing the site of the RV until he was sure it was safe. But he no longer had the luxury of time and with night falling he knew that it would take him a long while to extricate himself from the wood and get back onto the moors. He figured there was only a 24-hour window in which to reach the last RV. If he arrived there after that time, he would find the RV deserted and he would be deemed to have failed Continuation at the very last stage and would be RTUed. He had no way of knowing what might be waiting for him in the wood, but he felt that he simply had to press ahead and take his chances, even though he was abandoning all the standard operating procedures that were designed to keep him safe.

He found the path he was seeking in the heart of the wood. As he stepped out onto it, he saw a movement, a dark figure emerging from behind a tree to his left. As he approached, to his surprise, Shepherd made out the bulky figure of Brummie F, who stopped a few yards from him. Shepherd’s anxiety and impatience made him careless. ‘Why the fuck are you not whistling?’ he said.

Brummie F smiled and then his gaze switched to look past Shepherd’s shoulder. There was a faint sound behind him and as he turned, something hard smashed against the back of his head and he slumped to the ground, semi-conscious. He was dimly aware of a set of footsteps moving away, and his hands and feet being bound with cable ties and a hood pulled over his head. Then one of his captors gave a piercing whistle and at once Shepherd heard an engine start nearby and saw the glow of headlights through the cloth of his hood. He realised that the hood was not sacking, but a fine-woven cloth, and even in his dazed state he remembered The Bosun’s warning about water-boarding. He managed to suck a bit of the fabric into his mouth and began working it between his teeth, trying to bite a small hole through it.

He was picked up, carried through the wood and then thrown into the back of a van. The door slammed and a moment later, the van set off. He felt it slipping and sliding, struggling for grip in the mud and leaf litter, then accelerating away as it reached the gravel track at the edge of the wood. They drove for no more than a couple of miles before he felt the van descending a steep slope and the engine note changed as the ground became rougher. The van bounced and jolted, and he heard a scraping sound as the chassis grazed against a rock. Then it lurched to a halt and the engine was switched off.

In the sudden silence, Shepherd could hear the faint ticking of the metal of the engine as it began to cool. He braced himself for what was to come. The van doors swung open and he was dragged out, thrown to the ground and then boots began thudding into his body. He heard the van start up and drive off again, but then all his attention was focussed on squirming around, trying to take most of the impacts on his arms and back, to protect his head, ribs and balls as much as he could. However, with four men going at him from all sides, some of the kicks and blows inevitably got through. There was a sharp stab of pain as a boot smacked into his side. It felt like a cracked rib but that was the least of his worries. Even while he was still soaking up the beating, a sense of unease filled his mind. He had been expecting to be captured and interrogated at some point, and rough treatment would inevitably be a part of that, but something about this did not feel quite right.

The beating continued for several minutes and when the blows and kicks at last stopped, he felt himself picked up again and then thrown into a deep pool of water. Hands pressed on his shoulders, forcing him down and holding him under the surface. He held his breath as long as he could but then, lungs bursting, he took an involuntary breath and inhaled a lungful of water.

Coughing and gagging, he was hauled out of the water, kicked and punched and then forced back under the surface again. He was held under so long this time that he blacked out and did not come to until he was lying on the ground, coughing and retching as water gushed out of his mouth. He was dragged back to his feet and he heard one of his captors mutter ‘Free his legs, we’ve carried him enough.’

Shepherd felt a fresh chill go through him. The accent was Northern Irish - Londonderry maybe - and he had yet to meet or hear of anyone in the SAS who came from there.

He felt the pressure on his ankles ease as one of them cut through the cable tie binding them, though they left in place the one biting viciously into his wrists. Two of the men seized his arms and dragged him over the rough ground. He stumbled on the loose rocks underfoot, half-slumping as if still barely conscious and allowing his head to loll to one side. His captors, cursing as his weight dragged on their arms, kicked at his shins to force him to keep moving.

After stumbling a few more yards, he heard the protesting squeak of rusty hinges and the creak of an opening door, and was pushed inside a building. The next moment the hood was ripped from his head. His captors stood in a semi-circle facing him. There was no sign of the bulky figure of Brummie F; he must have been the man who are driven off in the van. Each of the remaining four men was wearing a black balaclava with crude holes cut for the eyes and mouth. There was a battered wooden table and a couple of chairs inside the small building, but no other furniture.

Keeping up the pretence of being on the point of collapse, he let his knees buckle and his chin sink onto his chest but, looking sideways from under his eyebrows, he took in his surroundings. He was in a small, low-ceilinged and windowless building, its walls built from upended railway sleepers, with a cladding of metal sheeting. The floor was thick with fine dust - he could see the scuff marks his captors had made in it as they’d dragged him in. He realised at once what the building was; he had seen similar ones several times before. It was a disused magazine for explosives, usually found in a quarry or colliery, and the fact that the van had gone down a steep slope just before arriving here and he had heard an echo outside, suggested to him that he was being held in a quarry.

‘We know you have an emergency RV point,’ one of them said. Shepherd took him to be the leader from the way the others deferred to him. ‘All you have to do is tell us where it is and you’re free to go.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’m afraid I cannot tell you that.’ He was rewarded with a punch that filled his mouth with blood.

‘You can tell us now or later,’ the man said. ‘We have plenty of time, but you will tell us in the end. The only question is how much of a beating you want to take and how many times you want to go back under that water outside.’

Shepherd was forced to stand in a stress position, on tiptoe, arms outstretched leaning forward against the wall. Any attempt to move or change his position resulted in another beating. As the questioning continued, it became clear that while the leader of them was relatively sophisticated, the other three were mere thugs. Each time he politely refused to answer, more blows and kicks rained in on him.

Three more times he was hooded and dragged outside. The first time he was hung by his arms from an overhead gantry, the smell of rusting iron strong in his nostrils, and feeling an agonising pain in his arms as they took the full weight of his body. After what might have been an hour or more, he was taken down, interrogated, and then tied face down across a railway line. ‘There’s a train due down this track in a few minutes,’ the a leader said. ‘Tell us what we want to know or we’ll leave you here and you’ll be in three pieces when the train’s passed over you.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything,’ Shepherd said. He knew that the rails digging into his chest and waist could not be from a normal railway; they were too close together for that. It had to be a narrow gauge track used by the quarry company, and if the explosives magazine was disused, the chances were long odds on that the railway was too. Even the sound of something rumbling towards him along the track, sending vibrations through the rails beneath him did not faze him. There was no other noise, no sound of an engine, suggesting it was just an old bogey wagon being pushed along the tracks.

The thugs realised that Shepherd had called their bluff and gave him the most savage beating yet before water-boarding him again until he passed out. When he recovered, they started dragging him back inside the hut for further questioning. Whenever they took him outside he was always hooded, but in every conscious moment he had been gnawing at the cloth of the hood and had now succeeded in biting a small hole in it. He slumped down as if passing out again and let his head drop back for a few moments. Squinting through the hole in the cloth, he was able to see enough to confirm his suspicions, he was being held in an abandoned quarry. Just behind the magazine there was a rock face scarred and terraced by decades of stone extraction, and at the foot of it was a sloping mound of fallen rock and quarry waste. He didn’t manage to see  any more of his surroundings before he was dragged the last few yards to the magazine and thrown inside. His hood was removed and the interrogation began again.

The unease he had felt at the start had now hardened into something else. These men were either genuine SAS and some of the most gifted actors he had encountered, or they were not SAS at all, but something much more threatening: members of the Provisional IRA. If the former, disclosing the whereabouts of the Emergency RV would result in him being RTUed, but if they were Provos, as he suspected, then giving them the information they wanted would merely hasten his death and put more SAS men at risk.

Even though he was still being beaten, he was thinking more rationally, and he knew that whether they were SAS or Provos, he had to get away. Even if they were well disguised SAS, if he did not escape soon, he was going to miss the final RV and with it his chance of ever joining the Regiment. If they were Provos, whether or not he gave them information that they wanted, he would be killed. Although the others were masked, if he got free, he could identify Brummie F as a Provo sleeper inside the British Army, and Brummie F didn’t look the kind of man who would stay silent too long under interrogation if the Special Branch, let alone the SAS got hold of him. The knowledge that Brummie F was a sleeper was alone enough to guarantee Shepherd’s execution, probably with the Provos’ traditional bullet to the back of the head, blowing off his face so that his funeral would have to be with a closed casket.

There was nothing to be gained by any further delay; it would simply guarantee more beatings and water-boardings for no gain. However he needed a little light if he was going to make good his escape. Alert for the first sign of light seeping under the door of the magazine, for the first time he began to offer his interrogators a little more than the “Big Three” of number, rank and name and started trying to engage the leader in a dialogue. He waited until he was given another beating to offer a reason for the change heart, and this time he cried out with simulated pain and begged them to stop. ‘I’d tell you the RV if I knew it,’ he said. ‘But I don’t. The agent I was due to meet was going to tell me.’

The leader smiled. ‘He won’t be telling anyone anything. But what I asked you was where the emergency RV is. And you do know that, don’t you? You were given that at  the start of the exercise.’

Shepherd hesitated, playing for time. He saw one of the thugs raise his fist and step towards him again, but the leader held up his hand, stopping him in his tracks. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear what he has got to say first.’

‘I can’t feel my hands at all,’ said Shepherd. ‘The tie is so tight it’s cut off my circulation. If you free my hands I’ll tell you what you want to know.’ As he saw the leader hesitate, worrying his lip between his teeth as he stared at him, weighing him up, Shepherd added ‘there are four of you, I’m hardly going to be able to escape, am I?’

He waited, trying to keep his expression impassive and his body language cowed while the leader wrestled with the decision and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Try anything, soldier boy, and you’re fekkin dead.’ He pulled a pistol out of his shoulder holster and covered him with it, then jerked his head towards one of the others. ‘Untie him.’ As the man hesitated, giving Shepherd another suspicious look, the leader barked. ‘I said untie him, didn’t I? What are you waiting for?’

Muttering under his breath, the man took out a knife, walked round behind Shepherd and sawed through the cable tie. Shepherd felt a momentary relief as the pressure on his wrists eased but that was followed by agonising pains in both hands as the blood began to flow back into them. He made a meal of it, however, bending double cursing and crying out at the pain he felt, while rubbing his hands and fingers together, trying to get feeling and movement back into them.

He kept cursing and rubbing his hands together until one of them stepped forward and gave him a punch to the head that made his ears ring. He straightened up. The four of them were watching him, tensed and ready for any move he might make. Only the leader had drawn his weapon. It was a fairly crude, old-fashioned Soviet Makarov pistol, possibly supplied by Gaddafi - not a weapon that an SAS man or a British Army soldier would carry. Shepherd could also see that the safety catch was still on. He was finally sure that the men were Provos and his life expectancy would be measured in hours or even minutes if he did not escape.

‘I can show you where the RV is,’ Shepherd said, eyes downcast, voice barely above a whisper, the picture of a broken man. ‘There’s a silk map around my waist, next to my skin.’

The leader rounded on one of the others.  ‘I told you to search him, you fekking eejit,’ he said.

‘You said to search him for weapons, not maps,’ the man said, his injured tone heightening his nasal Derry accent. ‘I patted him down, so I did, and he was clean.’

He moved towards Shepherd. ‘Put your hands on your head.’ As Shepherd did as he was told, the man ripped his shirt open and pulled out the silk map. He spread it on the table and the four men crowded around, peering at it, and keeping only half an eye on Shepherd. There would be no better chance. He hunched his shoulders and let his head sink back onto his chest, offering the least threatening posture possible to them, waited a second and then launched himself. His first target was the leader, and he crumpled as Shepherd’s savage kick caught him in the balls. The man’s pistol flew out of his hands and skittered away across the floor, but Shepherd was already dropping the next man with a punch to the throat.

He head-butted the third man and felt the man’s nose splinter. He shoved him into the fourth man and sprinted for the door.

He burst outside. He already knew his escape route. There was no point in trying to outrun his pursuers across the quarry floor and up the access road. His only possible route was the one where they would not be able to follow: straight up the cliff face. He sprinted and scrambled up the sloping mound of rockfall and quarry waste at its foot, dodging from side to side as he heard the sound of running feet across the quarry floor behind him, hoping to throw off their aim if - when - they fired at him.

He reached the face of the cliff and began to climb, swarming up hand over hand, using as hand-holds the marks of picks and drills left by the quarrymen. The first shots rang out, ricocheting from the rock around him. One bullet struck the cliff so close to him that rock splinters needled his face, but he forced himself to ignore it, focusing only on the next handhold as he carried on climbing up the face of the cliff.

He knew that every foot of height he could gain swung the odds further in his favour. Even in the most skilled hands, the killing range of a pistol was remarkably short - about twenty yards maximum - and it took SAS troopers weeks and thousands of rounds on Close Quarter Battle training before they could guarantee to drop a target with a double-tap at that range. He was certain that the Provos would have had nothing like the same amount of practice, and neither they nor their weapons would be anywhere near as accurate. Just the same, all it would take would be one lucky shot, to send him tumbling back down the cliff to his death. He buried the thought, swinging himself onto a narrow rock-ledge.  A ribbon of light had now appeared at the top of the cliff as the line of the sunrise began to inch down it. He heard more shooting from below him, but this time punctuating the ragged staccato fire of the Provos, there was a rhythmic sound like a double clap of hands in a confined space. He glanced down. A fifth figure had appeared in the quarry, behind the Provos. Two of them were already sprawled in the dirt and as the survivors turned to face the threat, firing as they did so, the rhythmic double-taps sounded twice more. Their shots went wide of the target, but both of them in turn were hurled backwards by the impacts, their arms thrown wide as they crashed to the ground with dark stains already spreading across their chests.

‘Unless you’re enjoying the exercise, you might want to come down again now!’

Shepherd recognised the voice at once. He scrambled back down the cliff, picked his way past the four bodies at the foot of the cliff, and stood facing The Bosun. ‘I don’t know whether to hug you or punch you,’ Shepherd said.

‘I can live without both of those options,’ said The Bosun, grinning.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Almost as long as you. Just keeping an eye on you. We found the agent you should have met in the woods, and we’ve been watching this lot since they brought you here. We were hoping that the cell leader would turn up as well, so we didn’t rush to the rescue straightaway.’ He grinned again ‘Anyway, though it’s not quite the way we would have planned your Resistance to Interrogation session, it seemed to work out all right in the end.’

‘Good thing one of them didn’t manage to put a round in me though, isn’t it?’ Shepherd said. ‘Otherwise there’d have been five bodies for you to sort out.’

‘Those IRA guys always over-estimate their ability with pistols,’ The Bosun said. ‘I was in more danger from ricochets off the rock than you were.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘You’re okay, aren’t you? Spider, if at any point it had really turned to shit, I would have moved in.’

Shepherd heard an engine note and saw a white van driving down the track into the quarry. ‘Relax, it’s one of ours,’ The Bosun said.

It pulled to a halt alongside them. Two men in green fatigues got out and with a nod to The Bosun, they began unloading demolitions kit: plastic explosive, det cord and detonators, from the back of the van.

‘So what happens now?’ Shepherd said.

The Bosun checked his watch. ‘We’ll tidy this up. These four will just disappear. Brummie F will go back to Dundalk and his masters will realise that their operation went tits up and hopefully won’t try it again.’

‘I meant about me,’ said Shepherd.

The Bosun chuckled. ‘What happens in the Regiment, stays in the Regiment, but you won’t be a member if you don’t get to the final RV in time. So you go on with your exercise, you’ve not got much time. Remember the coordinates for the emergency RV? That’s where you’re heading.’

‘Right,’ Shepherd said. ‘And Bosun? Thanks, I owe you one.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘You can buy me a beer when I see you in Hereford.’

Shepherd retrieved his map from the table in the magazine, took a quick glance at it to orient himself, and then set off up the steep ramp leading out of the quarry. He had another ten miles to cover in the remaining hours of daylight and this time he was going to OP it before going in.

Ten minutes later, as he reached the rim of the quarry, there was a warning shout and a few moments later, the dull crump of explosives, followed at once by another, deeper sound, like the rumbling of an earthquake. He felt the ground tremble beneath his feet and as he looked back, he saw the whole rock-face where he’d been climbing just minutes before was now sliding and crashing down onto the quarry floor with a thunderous roar.

A fog of dust swirled around the quarry.  A breeze began to blow away the dust and Shepherd saw that the place where the bodies had been lying was now hidden beneath hundreds of tons of fallen rock. He turned away and concentrated on the rough terrain that lay ahead of him. He knew he was only hours from winning the prize that he’d set his heart on – membership of the SAS. And that once he was admitted to the ranks of the most respected Special Forces unit in the world, his life would never be the same again.

THE END

Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd left the SAS at the end of 2002 and joined an elite police undercover unit. You can read the first of his undercover adventures in Hard Landing, where he goes undercover in a high security prison to unmask a drugs dealer who is killing off witnesses to his crimes. The Spider Shepherd series continues with Soft Target, Cold Kill, Hot Blood, Dead Men, Live Fire, Rough Justice, Fair Game, False Friends and True Colours.

There are also a number of Spider Shepherd: SAS short stories, including Natural Selection, Warning Order, Hostile Territory, Rough Diamonds, Personal Protection, Friendly Fire, Dead Drop and Kill Zone.

Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful eBook authors and his eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. In 2011 alone he sold more than 500,000 eBooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. Born in Manchester, he began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV.

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