HOSTILE TERRITORY

By Stephen Leather

***

SIERRA LEONE. October 1997.

Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd yawned as he watched the line of the sunrise inching down the mountains. He was standing at the edge of a palm-fringed white sand beach, listening to the ocean lapping at the shore. Jock McIntyre, Geordie Mitchell and James ‘Jimbo’ Shortt were sitting around a small campfire. Geordie was making a brew while Jimbo shared out the rations. It was meagre fare; they’d been on half-rations for the first ten days they’d been stranded on the beach and were now so short of food that they’d reduced it to one-quarter rations for the last two days.  Throughout that time, Shepherd had been reporting in to base every morning, asking for a helicopter lift out, and every morning he’d received the same reply: ‘Negative, no air resources available. You’ll have to stay where you are until resources can be spared.’

‘We’re short of rations,’ Shepherd had told the man for the tenth time. ‘We need to be lifted out.’

‘Nothing available,’ the voice over the radio had said. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

That morning Shepherd had been determined not to be brushed off again. ‘Base, we need a lift-out,’ he had said as soon as he made contact. ‘I don’t think you realise the seriousness of our situation.’

The same mantra had been repeated. ‘Nothing available. You’ll have to wait.’

‘Patch Super Sunray into this,’ he’d said, using the NATO signals designation for the most senior officer involved in the operation.  Super Sunray denoted the Commanding Officer of 22 SAS, the most powerful Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army.  Shepherd had no means of knowing where the CO was - he could be in Hereford where he should be, running the overall operation from where he could support it best, or he could be on the ground in Sierra Leone medal hunting.  Until the advent of satellite communications it was understood that the CO would be in the base in Hereford fighting the political battles, but there are few medals to be won there and since the Falklands War the CO had more often than not left the running of the operation to the Ops Officer while he got as close to the front line as he could.

As soon as he had confirmation that the CO was part of the conversation, Shepherd outlined his situation. ‘Boss, we’re very short of rations and we’re short of ammunition.’ Shepherd knew that while he had to explain how precarious their situation was he mustn’t overstate his case - he had no way of knowing if other patrols were in graver situations and being truthful in operational situations was the very essence of SAS soldiering. ‘If we get into a contact with the rebels there’s every chance they’ll over-run us. If that happens you’ll be one patrol short because we gave them the good news ten days ago and if they get a chance at us, they won’t be slow to take revenge. So if you can’t find a helicopter anywhere in Sierra Leone for a lift-out, you’d better order up four body bags instead.’

There was a long silence. ‘Wait out,’ the disembodied voice had said.

Shepherd had sipped his brew as he waited for the Head Shed to come back on the line. The CO’s voice had been impassive.  ‘LZ. Grid 127704. 1200 hours local.’ Shepherd had acknowledged and the connection had been broken. ‘Hallelujah,’ Jock had said when Shepherd told them the news. ‘I was beginning to think I’d never see a Scotch pie or a deep-fried Mars Bar again.’

Jock was a Glaswegian hard man who delighted in playing up to every kilt-swirling, bagpipe-blowing, Irn Bru-drinking Scottish stereotype, but Shepherd knew that despite the lack of a formal education, Jock was one of the most intelligent men he’d ever met. Only a short fuse and a reluctance to suffer fools gladly had prevented him from reaching high rank. He’d risen as high as Sergeant twice but both times had been busted back down to the ranks after settling disagreements -first with an Admin Warrant Officer, and then a Squadron Sergeant Major - with his fists. Had he not been such a good soldier, or had either of the men he flattened been commissioned officers rather than NCOs, he would almost certainly have been RTU’d - sent back to his former unit. But even the SAS was not so well off for good men that they could dispense with a man of Jock’s qualities.

Jock was older than the other three members of the patrol, who had all gone through Selection together. The patrol medic, Geordie Mitchell, had a broad Newcastle accent and looked the least fit of all of them. He had a milk bottle complexion, watery blue eyes and thinning hair that made him seem much older than his years, but he was as tough as an old army boot and a very gifted medic. He had joined the Regiment because it offered the best opportunity to practise his skills in his chosen field - battlefield trauma.

As soon as Shepherd passed on the news they packed up their kit and began making their way along the coast towards the Landing Zone. Their route took them close to an inhabited village, evidently one that the rebels had so far not targeted and destroyed. They skirted it at some distance. A couple of gaunt figures appeared at the edge of the village, watching them pass by, there was no attempt to intercept them. Something didn’t seem right to Shepherd, and it took him a while to work out what it was. Then he had it: there were no dogs.  He realised almost immediately why that was – Sierra Leone was a land where everyone was on the brink of starvation and pets and guard dogs had become just another food source.

Three miles beyond the village they reached a broad stretch of sand, bordered by low scrub, that the Head Shed had designated as the Landing Zone They carried out a recce to make sure the area was secure and then readied the air marker panels so they could mark the LZ when the chopper was close. The panels were reflective plastic which were virtually invisible from ground level but which showed up vividly from the air. Job done, they settled down to wait for the helicopter to arrive.

Just before noon they heard the sound of rotors and saw a black speck in the sky, growing rapidly larger as it flew towards them. They were astonished to see that it was not one of the usual Special Forces choppers - a Puma or Chinook - but a Russian Mi-2 helicopter, known by its NATO nickname of ‘Hoplite’. It looked clumsy and ungainly in flight with the bulge above the cab that housed its engines and air intakes almost as large as the cab itself. ‘Will you look at that?’ Jimbo said. ‘It looks like two helicopters mating.’

‘I don’t care what it looks like,’ Geordie said. ‘Just as long as it gets us the hell out of here.’

‘Keep your fingers crossed about that then,’ Jock growled. ‘From what I remember, it’s got about the same load-carrying capacity and range as a Mini.’

They laid out the air marker panels and went into all round defence mode as it came into land. The downdraught from the rotors lashed the palm fronds and whipped up flurries of sand, almost blinding them.  To their amazement the pilot then shut down the engines, which went against every SF and RAF rulebook.  Shepherd dashed to the pilot’s door and could immediately see the reason for the error. Instead of a fresh faced RAF SF pilot, he saw a middle-aged man in a Russian flying suit with Czech badges on both sleeves.  Shepherd pointed at the rotors and made a whirling sign with his hand but the pilot simply shrugged.

When the dust and noise had finally settled, they discovered that the nationality of the pilot was as surprising as his aircraft. Jerzy was a stocky Czech who looked more like a nightclub bouncer than a pilot.

‘This is the only chopper available?’ asked Jimbo.

‘This is all there is,’ Jerzy said in heavily accented English. ‘You don’t want to fly in it, that’s fine by me. I get paid either way.’ He shrugged carelessly. ‘Anyone who doesn’t want to fly with me can stay here.’

‘No, we’ll fly in it, providing you think you can get it airborne with all of us and our kit on board,’ said Shepherd.

‘We have a lot of fuel on board which we need to get us to Freetown but the only way to find out is try, yes?’ said Jerzy. He grinned. ‘Shall we make a wager?’

‘I don’t suppose you brought any food with you?’ Geordie said. Jerzy shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t think you would have.’ Geordie gave a theatrical sigh, threw his bergen into the Hoplite and clambered aboard. ‘Come on then you guys, chop chop. If we get a move on we might just be in time for an all-day breakfast at a Freetown greasy spoon.’

‘I can see that being a receipe for disaster,’ said Jimbo. ‘I think I’ll stick with ration packs.’

‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ laughed Jock, slapping him on the back. The two men followed Geordie into the back of the helicopter.

Shepherd sat up front with the pilot and the initial frost between them soon thawed as Jerzy went through his preflight checks. ‘What brings you to Sierra Leone?’ Shepherd asked.

‘When the Cold War ended there wasn’t much demand for ex-military helicopter pilots back home so I thought I’d try my luck in Africa,’ said the pilot. ‘Until recently I was earning a reasonable living ferrying airline passengers between the airport and the capital. The airport’s at Lungi on the north side of the Sierra Leone River, Freetown’s on the opposite bank. There’s no bridge so passengers heading for the city either have to take a ferry or a very long road detour - about 180 kilometres - and the roads are far from secure. Anyway, the unrest and the Civil War here has cut the number of civilian flights - and the number of people on them - so that I’m lucky to see one or two passengers a month these days. So until the British Army arrived, I’d been whiling my time away in Freetown, making a dollar where I could, but mostly drinking too much beer and watching satellite TV whenever there wasn’t a power cut. But now I’m - how do you say it? - back on Easy Street because I have a contract with the British Army. They don’t have enough helicopters to support their operations, so I fill in for them where I can.’

‘So you’re a mercenary?’

‘A mercenary?’

‘A soldier for hire.’

Jerzy laughed and slapped his leg. ‘That’s what I am,’ he said. ‘A soldier for hire.’

There was a whining sound from the turbines as he pressed the starter, then the engines coughed like a heavy smoker clearing his lungs and rumbled into life, belching out diesel fumes.  Jerzy shifted the lever into flight idle and the rotors began to turn, slowly at first but accelerating rapidly into a blur of motion as the downwash whipped up such a storm of sand and dust that the beach disappeared from view. His gaze flickered across the gauges, then he gave a thumbs up to Shepherd, and raised the collective. The helicopter lifted on its springs with an almost human groaning sound. Even though they’d been carrying minimum kit, the four passengers on board were stretching the Hoplite to its limits. The helicopter rose painfully slowly, struggling to break free of the ground effect. It juddered in the downwash, its engines screaming and its airframe vibrating so hard it sounded as if it was shaking itself apart.

‘Bloody hell!’ Shepherd said. ‘Good thing we’ve been on starvation rations for a fortnight. If we hadn’t lost a few pounds, I don’t think we’d have got airborne at all.’

‘Jimbo’s just shat himself if that’s any help,’ said Geordie.

The rotors eventually bit into cleaner air and the noise and juddering decreased as the helicopter rose sluggishly from the beach and wheeled away towards Freetown. Looking down, Shepherd could see the scorch marks and devastation as they flew over the ruined village he and his patrol had found when they carried out a recce on their first day in Sierra Leone. It was a reminder, if any was needed, that the orphaned and brutalised children they had freed from the rebels were not yet safe and he made a private vow to himself to do whatever he could to help them.

Shepherd was grateful that the flight to Freetown was a short one because the fuel gauge had been falling like a stone throughout the flight. It was showing close to empty as the helicopter breasted a ridge and approached the capital in the foothills of Mount Auriol. A small cluster of high-rise buildings at its centre rapidly giving way to ranks of ugly concrete buildings and palm-roofed shacks.

Jerzy overflew the civilian heliport and brought the Hoplite in to land at the Sierra Leone Air Force Headquarters near the head of Aberdeen Creek. As the rotors wound down and the dust settled, Shepherd and the others shook hands with Jerzy and then strolled across the cracked and weed-strewn concrete hard-standing towards the barbed wire compound where the SAS Operational Squadron had set up its headquarters.

The first thing they did was to find something to eat and they then went to report to the Operational Squadron commanding officer. He kept them waiting for twenty minutes and when he did see them, his body language and the way his gaze kept straying to the papers on his desk suggested he already had his hands full running his own squadron and the additional presence of Shepherd’s patrol was a distraction that he felt he could do without.

He nodded distractedly as Shepherd completed his report on the task that had brought them to Sierra Leone in the first place: a beach landing that the patrol had organised by what had turned out to be a troop of South African mercenaries, and then spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I’ve nothing for you at the moment lads, and you’ve earned a bit of downtime, so why don’t you check in at the Tradewinds Hotel on Lumley Beach Road?’ He scribbled a signature on a printed form and handed it to Shepherd. ‘It’s one of the few hotels still operating. Just hand that to the owner. We have an arrangement with him, so just relax and take it easy and if I need you for anything, I’ll give you a call.’

Shepherd knew when he was being given the bum’s rush, but it was pointless arguing about it, so he just nodded. ‘No problem, Boss. And do you mind if I raise the plight of those children with some of the aid agencies here?’

The officer frowned as he scratched his chin. ‘Children?’

‘The only survivors of the massacre of an entire village. I told you about it and gave you the map coordinates.’

The officer looked pained. ‘Ah yes, yes, a tragic business, but all too common here, I’m afraid.’

Shepherd waited for the officer to say something else, but when he didn’t Shepherd didn’t pursue the matter.  Since he hadn’t been ordered not to contact the aid agencies, he kept his mouth shut and chose to take the Boss’s silence as acquiescence.

‘And is there transport to get us to this hotel?’ Jock asked. ‘Or are vehicles like choppers around here - as rare as rocking horse shit?’

The officer flashed the Scotsman a tight smile.  ‘There are a few Landcruisers that the mechanics have been working on. They’re beaten-up but driveable, you can take one of those.’

They left the officer and went outside into the blistering sunshine. They chose the least battered and bullet-holed Toyota from a row parked at the side of the compound, helped themselves to some ammunition from the armoury and replenished their rations, then drove out of the base. The road on either side of the gates was lined by the ragged stalls of traders and craftsmen who had set up a sort of informal market there in the hope of attracting trade. The poverty of the country was shown in the limited range of goods on offer, with men and women sitting cross-legged in the dirt selling a handful of plantain bananas, sandals made from recycled car tyres, a couple of battered paperbacks or a few empty tins and bottles or scraps of fabric that must have been reclaimed from the city dump. There was also a metal worker there, his hammers beating out a tinny rhythm as he pounded pieces of scrap metal and flattened tin to make cooking pots and water carriers, while a sweating boy, perhaps his son, pumped the bellows of his primitive forge. Shepherd had never seen such abject poverty and understood why the West had been forced to intervene.

The road was a wasteland of potholes and crisscrossed by tank tracks that had torn up the surface. The Landcruiser bounced and jolted over the ruts as they drove on. Every mile or so they passed the rusting wrecks of vehicles, crashed or ambushed, that had been bulldozed off the road.

As they rounded the head of Aberdeen Creek and turned onto Lumley Beach Road, the views improved dramatically. The palm-fringed, pristine white sands stretched away from them for miles, towards the lighthouse at Cape Sierra Leone and Man of War Bay. The beaches looked as beautiful as any in the world but in this war-torn country there were no tourists to enjoy them and they saw not a soul as they drove along.

‘Looking on the bright side, no one’s going to be hogging the sunbeds around the pool,’ said Geordie.

They passed a few mud-and-thatch huts and an occasional concrete building on the beach side of the road, many of them with sun-faded signs advertising beer and Coke, though they looked more like jails than bars, with steel shutters covering the doors and iron bars across the windows. Almost all were closed and shuttered, vandalised or derelict, many pitted with the marks of gunfire, and with smoke-blackened windows. Several were completely burnt out.

The Tradewinds Hotel proved to be an ugly two-storey concrete block with a flat roof and the familiar bullet-marks on its stained facade. ‘Bloody hell,’ Jock said as he caught sight of it. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a building anywhere in Sierra Leone that hasn’t been shot up.’

‘At least this one’s open for business,’ said Shepherd. ‘Though I’m guessing there won’t be much in the way of room service.’

‘Mate, I’ll be happy if the bed’s got sheets and a pillow,’ said Jimbo.

The owner of the hotel, a paunchy Lebanese with a thick black moustache and slicked-back hair, eased himself out of a cane chair in the lobby, beneath a ceiling fan that turned with a slow, rusty squeak. As they watched him fumble behind the counter for the room keys, they could hear a steady dripping sound from down the corridor. ‘At least we know the water supply’s working,’ Jimbo said with a wink.

‘Even better than that,’ Jock said. ‘There’s a bar as well, and I can definitely see a bottle of whisky on the shelf.’

Geordie grinned. ‘That’s you sorted then, but what are the rest of us going to drink?’

‘Ask someone who cares,’ Jock said. ‘Right, shit, shower and shave and back in the bar in twenty minutes.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Shepherd.

Shepherd let himself into his second-floor room, trying hard not to speculate on how many people might already have slept in the bed since the sheets were last changed. There was a small balcony, but there were bullet holes in the shutters, which did not seem a particularly good omen. He dragged his bed as far from the windows as it would go, exposing a thick carpet of dust where it had been standing. The tiles in the bathroom were cracked and the walls mildewed, and when he turned on the light, there was a rustling sound like dry leaves stirring in a breeze, as streams of brown cockroaches scuttled across the floor and disappeared beneath the bath and into cracks in the walls.

He turned on the shower, more in hope than expectation. To his surprise a stream of brackish water flowed, albeit erratically, and he took his first shower in more than a fortnight. He trampled his filthy clothes underfoot as he showered, killing two birds with one stone. He dried himself on a threadbare towel, hung his wet clothes over the balcony railing and put on some clean ones. Feeling human again, he went downstairs.

The other three had got there well ahead of him, and were sitting at a table in the baffa - the outdoor, tin-roofed drinking area overlooking the beach. Geordie and Jimbo were drinking bottles of beer while Jock had sequestered the bottle of whiskey. It was Jamesons.

‘Thought you only liked Scotch?’ said Shepherd, sitting down at the table.

‘Whiskey’s whiskey,’ said Jock. ‘And the Paddys make a decent enough drop of the hard stuff.’ He poured a large measure into a glass and pushed it across the table towards Shepherd.

‘Got any ice?’ asked Shepherd.

‘The ice out here’ll give you the runs for a week,’ said Jock. ‘But neat whiskey will do wonders for your digestion.’

Shepherd picked up the glass. He sniffed the whiskey and then took a cautious sip. He felt a warm glow spread out from his stomach and he grinned. ‘Nice,’ he said, then emptied the glass with one swallow.

Jock laughed. ‘A convert,’ he said, and refilled Shepherd’s glass.

Shepherd looked around the room. Despite the mosquitoes fogging the air, the relative coolness of the evening breeze was welcome. There were another dozen or so people in the outdoor bar, the usual Third World mixture of local fixers in shiny suits, Western carpetbaggers, wheeler dealers, arms traders and other dubious types who were always drawn to troubled countries like flies to shit. As the four SAS men drank and joked, Shepherd saw two men paying them particular attention. One was Arab-looking, balding and overweight with a gold Rolex on his wrist, and the other a younger man in a linen tropical suit wearing what appeared to be an orange and yellow striped MCC tie.

When Shepherd had walked in they had been sitting on stools at the end of the bar but after a while they moved to the next table and struck up a conversation with the troopers. The Arab-looking man introduced himself as Farid and described himself as a Lebanese trader.

‘And I’m Jonathan Parker,’ the other said, ‘I’m a Brit, out here looking at a couple of business opportunities.’

‘And what line of business would that be?’ Shepherd said.

‘Oh, import-export, that sort of thing,’ said Parker. ‘It’s not every day I get a chance to buy fellow-Brits a drink in this tropical hellhole, so what’ll it be? Same again?’  Shepherd couldn’t help but notice that Parker had cleverly managed to stop any further questioning of what he was doing in the country.

As he went to the bar, Jock and Shepherd exchanged a look. ‘We should have asked for Six drinks,’ Shepherd said.

Farid looked blank, but none of the SAS men needed the cryptic comment explained. They’d all reached the same conclusion: Parker was a member of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service.

The sky was darkening into dusk and Shepherd could see lightning already flashing over the mountains to the east. A few moments later, the bats flitting among the palms disappeared and a curtain of rain began to fall. Within seconds it was drumming on the corrugated iron roof and sending torrents of water sweeping through the street in a foaming brown tide.

Thirty minutes later the storm ended as suddenly as it had begun, the floodwaters ebbed away and the evening chorus of frogs resumed. Clouds of mosquitoes again filled the air and the bats resumed hunting for moths drawn by the flickering glow of the lights. Street traders emerged from the doorways and shacks where they’d been sheltering and set up again around the hotel, lighting candles to illuminate their threadbare selection of goods.

The lights in the hotel and in the buildings across the city flickered and died in one of the frequent power cuts, but after a few seconds of silence there was a rapidly growing noise of generators being fired up all over the city, a metallic chorus counterpointing the incessant croaking of the frogs.

Parker returned from the bar with a second tray full of beers and, Shepherd noted with a smile that he had brought another soft drink for himself. Parker settled himself in his chair, raised his glass to them. ‘Cheers, lads,’ he said.

‘How long have you been in Sierra Leone?’ asked Shepherd. Parker had put a beer down in front of him but he was sticking to the Jamesons. He was rapidly acquiring a taste for the Irish whiskey.

‘Too bloody long,’ said Parker, neatly avoiding the question.

‘What can you tell us about the place?’ asked Jock, ‘other than the fact that it’s a shit-hole.’

Parker smiled. ‘The infrastructure is rudimentary.  Sierra Leone doesn’t even have a railway system. There was a single line with a couple of side-branches but it was only narrow gauge and in any event it closed twenty years ago. However, it does does have the third largest natural harbour in the world, and is one of the world’s biggest producers of bauxite and rutile…’

‘Rutile?’ Jimbo interrupted. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Titanium ore,’ said Parker. ‘The country is also a major producer of platinum, gold, chromide, iron ore, coffee and cocoa, but its greatest sources of wealth are the diamond fields. That’s why this little piece of Africa has been hit by a succession of coups, counter-coups and civil wars. The diamond fields are what they call alluvial, which means they’re accessible to anyone with a shovel and a sieve and so there’s large scale illegal mining.’

Jimbo grinned. ‘I can lay my hands on a shovel or too, lads? What do you say?’

‘Sierra Leone should be one of the richest countries in the world and yet by whatever yardstick you choose, it’s pretty much the poorest ,’ continued Parker. ‘Sierra Leone’s assets and the national wealth are all owned by foreign corporations or lodged in the Swiss bank accounts of politicians and generals. Bribery and corruption runs right through the government here, no matter what their politics. Civil servants and teachers go unpaid, so everyone has to steal in one way or another, just to survive. And since the government has no foreign currency reserves it’s still handing over what’s left of its dwindling stock of assets at knockdown prices. Even the mercenaries fighting here are paid in mineral rights, so all they’re interested in doing is protecting their diamond concessions, not fighting the rebels.’

‘And what about the diamonds?’ Shepherd said. ‘Who makes money out of them? The government?’

‘The trade in them is controlled largely by Lebanese traders like Farid here, and Israelis with connections to the international diamond markets in Antwerp,’ said Parker.

Farid nodded eagerly. ‘I’ve been buying diamonds in Sierra Leone for more than twenty-five years,’ he said. ‘And even while the Civil War has been raging, I’ve still been able to buy a few carats here and there. But every year, even though the mines’ production remains much the same, there are less and less for sale.’

‘Because they’re being smuggled out of the country?’

‘Exactly,’ said Parker.  ‘Liberia, just to the east of Sierra Leone, is one of the biggest diamond exporters in the world. There are even more diamond merchants in the capital, Monrovia, than there are in Antwerp.’

‘So what?’ Jimbo said. He was frowning and clearly having trouble following the conversation.

‘Just this: there are no diamond mines in Liberia,’ said Parker. ‘Every single one of the gemstones that are traded there every year has been plundered from Sierra Leone. The official figures say that two million carats of diamonds are produced for export from Sierra Leone every year, but unofficial figures suggest that at least twice that number are smuggled over the border. They’re known as “blood diamonds” for the obvious reason that an awful lot of blood is spilt in obtaining them.’

‘However,’ Farid said, ‘for the last twelve months, the flow of diamonds through Liberia and Sierra Leone has dropped dramatically. Yet production from the mines has actually risen slightly.’ He spread his hands, palms upwards. ‘What conclusions can we draw from that other than that somewhere in Sierra Leone there is now a large cache of illicit diamonds which everyone - governments, rebels, mercenaries and yes,’ he said with a smile, ‘traders like me, are trying to get their hands on.’

There was a silence while the SAS men digested this. ‘Farid,’ Parker said eventually. ‘I wonder if I could have a private word with these gentlemen?’

Farid pursed his lips in annoyance. ‘Do you not trust me, my friend?’

‘Of course I do. It’s just that this is…’ He paused as if groping for just the right word. ‘It’s... well it’s a delicate, personal matter.’

‘Very well, then. I have some calls to make in any case,’ Farid said, though his expression showed his annoyance. He prised himself out of his chair and lumbered off towards the lobby.

Parker glanced around, making sure that no one else was within earshot. ‘Gentlemen, may I speak frankly for a moment? We are, are we not, in a similar line of business, and I’m guessing that you are at something of a loose end at the moment?’ He waited for a nod from Shepherd before continuing. ‘Then perhaps we may be able to help each other out a little.’

Jock’s hackles were up at once. ‘Helping out Six has cost us a lot of men in the past, including friends of mine.’

‘Just hear me out, that’s all I ask. In theory the government controls the country but in practice it’s barely in control of the capital. The president is still only in his twenties and heads a military junta that has suspended the constitution, political parties and freedom of speech, and rules by decree. However, they’ve proved rather more successful at repressing their own population than at fighting the rebels. The RUF - the Revolutionary United Front - led by a former Army Corporal called Foday Sankoh, controls much of the country, including large parts of the diamond producing areas.’

‘Those army corporals can be bastards,’ Geordie said. ‘Just look what Hitler got up to.’

Parker’s smile remained fixed. ‘The RUF’s first wave of recruits came from among the 80,000 refugees who had spilled into Sierra Leone, fleeing Liberia’s civil war. In a country in which almost every service had broken down and where there was virtually no paid work at all, many people joined the rebels willingly, hoping to be fed and to have some chance of grabbing a share of the loot being plundered on all sides. Those who did not volunteer were either forcibly recruited or killed. The RUF are backed by Liberia. They have no shortage of AK-47s and RPGs, and a few heavy machine guns, but they’ve no armoured vehicles, just Landcruisers, and though they’re usually too strong for the Sierra Leonean Army, they are poorly trained and ill-disciplined and no match for professional troops.’ He paused. ‘However if you should encounter them, you need to be aware that they are absolutely fearless. A mixture of narcotics and juju makes them feel they are invincible and unaffected by bullets, so you’ll have to kill plenty to stop them.’

‘We’ve met some already,’ Shepherd said. ‘They didn’t give us too many problems.’ His three colleagues nodded in agreement.

‘Are you also aware that many of the rebel fighters are boys, some as young as eight or nine?’ said Parker. ‘And young or not, they’re killers. One other thing, almost uniquely among rebel movements around the world, the RUF have no discernible ideology at all. They’re neither right wing nor left wing, they’re not fighting for a better world or to repel invaders or to overthrow the government, they’re just fighting for control of the diamond-producing areas. It’s all about money. Correction. It’s ONLY about money. The RUF have been in control of large parts of those areas for over a year and have used the revenues to buy more and more weapons, fuelling the civil war here and Charles Taylor’s brutal rule in Liberia. And in Sierra Leone, if you control the diamonds, you control the country.’

Shepherd sipped his whiskey and wondered where the conversation was heading.

‘The SLA - the Sierra Leonean Army – are just as bad as the rebels,’ continued Parker. ‘They’re of almost no value to us in counter-insurgency. They’re not trained, they’re rarely, if ever, paid and even their rations are inadequate. They live with their families in what are called barracks, but most are just a collection of mud-walled, one-roomed houses, built by the soldiers themselves. They have to use money from their wages - if they’ve been given any - to pay for the corrugated iron sheets for the roof.  In some barracks, they’re so short of space that two soldiers and their families share each tiny house. They’re supposed to get a uniform, a gun and one bag of rice a month. The senior officers have just cut that allowance in half, so that they can sell the surplus on the black market. It’s not only corrupt but very dangerous, because the last such cut in rations led to an uprising in which 6,000 people were killed in Freetown alone.’

‘And we bitch about our wages,’ said Geordie.

Parker ignored the comment.  ‘The civilian population is preyed on both by the rebels and by government troops, and for every soldier killed there are ten civilian deaths. Many local people call the SLA “sobels” - soldiers by day, rebels by night. The fighting often forces villagers to abandon their crops before they even have time to harvest them and some think that it’s a deliberate policy by the SLA; they collude with the rebels to terrify the villagers until they flee, then harvest the crops for themselves, either to eat or to sell on the black market. Many SLA soldiers have even been known to sell their arms and munitions to the rebels and some find they can do better by defecting to the rebels. Whether they do or not, they are often as brutal as the rebels and as prone to theft, rape, murder and looting. For protection, the civilians have increasingly turned to a grass roots militia called the Kamajors, though they can often be just as corrupt.’

‘Sounds like a bloody nightmare,’ said Shepherd.

Parker nodded. ‘So to sum up: the entire country is up shit creek, in a barbed wire canoe, and without a semblance of a paddle. The rebels are probably only waiting for the end of the rainy season - any day now - before launching another offensive. The Nigerians and their allies have shown no interest in advancing beyond the airport perimeter and the South African mercenaries that you gentlemen ushered into the country a couple of weeks ago have, it seems, ignored their orders to engage the rebels and drive them back from the outskirts of Freetown, and abandoned any pretense of intervening on behalf of the government. Instead they have simply driven the RUF out of some of the most productive diamond mining areas and seized them for themselves.’

‘That’s what you get for using mercs,’ Jock said. ‘There is no task in this shithole of a country that the SAS couldn’t have done for you and it would have been equally untraceable back to HMG, but instead you chose to bring in South African mercenaries. Any one of us could have told you that they’re about as unsavoury and unreliable a bunch as you can imagine, a ragbag of thugs, renegades, soldiers of fortune, deserters from other armies and “kaffir-killers” from South Africa’s apartheid era bush wars.’

Parker shrugged. ‘Our masters had their reasons,’ he said. ‘You know as well as I do that decisions are always made way above our pay grade. Anyway, mercenaries have been a fact of life in Sierra Leone for centuries. Slave traders used them, so did Western traders, but so too did tribal chiefs. The Mende tribe would rent themselves out to anyone, black or white, for a few pounds of tobacco, though they took their real rewards in the plunder they stole and the women they raped, and they grew so powerful that they were beyond the control of any government or army. The situation hasn’t changed, just the identity of those doing the raping and plundering.’

‘Hell’s bells,’ Jimbo said. ‘What a pit of vipers. So why would HMG use these bastards in the first place?’

‘Because they thought they were our bastards, of course,’ said Jock.

‘Little did they know,’ said Jimbo.

Parker’s expression didn’t change. ‘Arguing about the rights and wrongs is pointless. We have to deal with the situation as it is, not as it was or as we’d wish it to be, and in the here and now there are two major problems to deal with. The RUF rebels remain in control of much of the country and continue to threaten the government, but we now also have another rogue element, the mercenaries. They are now in control of the richest diamond mine in the country and since they must know that their position will become untenable in the medium to long-term, we must assume that they are planning a fast exit, taking a fortune in diamonds with them.’ He paused, looking around the circle of faces. ‘So, assuming that you have no current designated tasks and that you’re free to take on targets of opportunity should they arise, there are a couple of ways in which you might be able to assist. As I said, the rebels comfortably outgun the SLA and they also have access to enough weaponry to discourage the ECOMOG troops from taking them on, but we have intelligence about a large RUF arms dump in the interior of the country. It is well protected, both by rebel troops and by natural features - it’s located on a large, low-lying island surrounded by a swamp. We don’t have the air assets available to take it out and nor do the Operational Squadron have the resources to attack it. They have their hands full with their own tasks, but if your patrol could find a way to do so, you would be rendering an invaluable service to the Sierra Leonean population as well as your country’s interests.’

‘How reliable is this intel?’ Shepherd said.

Parker held Shepherd’s look. ‘It’s blue chip: humint, backed by surveillance and signals intelligence.’

Shepherd shrugged. ‘Give us what you have and we’ll take a look at it. You mentioned a couple of ways we could help. What’s the other?’

‘The other would be to help us retrieve the situation in relation to the mercenaries,’ Parker said.

‘You mean clear up the mess you left,’ Jock growled.

‘If you prefer, but that will be a more complex task because the mercenaries have heavy weapons and know how to use them, and we have very little intelligence on how they’ve deployed them yet, so let’s leave that one in abeyance for the moment.’

‘Is this going to be official or off the books?’ asked Jock.

‘A bit of both,’ said Parker. ‘Obviously my bosses know that I’m making this approach but equally obviously they won’t want your involvement made public.’

‘Bloody typical,’ said Jock.

‘Assuming we do pitch in, you may be able to offer a little reciprocal help,’ said Shepherd. ‘Quid pro quo, if you like. The village of Biramayo was destroyed by the rebels a couple of weeks ago. The only survivors are a group of children, boys and girls, mostly about eight to twelve years old. We were operating in their area and rescued them from the rebels. We’d like to get them some help either from HMG or from one of the aid agencies.’

Parker looked pained. ‘We can’t become involved in any humanitarian missions,’ he said. ‘Our resources are already stretched much too thin, but I can put a word in with those agencies and charities that are still operating here; most of them fled when the rebels reached the outskirts of Freetown, but Save The Children and Medicaid International are still here.’

‘No offence, but I’d like to speak to them myself,’ Shepherd said. ‘Just to make sure they fully understand the seriousness of the situation.’

‘They’ve been here a lot longer than you or I have been,’ Parker said. ‘They don’t need any lessons from us about conditions in the country or the dangers that civilians here face, but I can provide you with an introduction to the regional director at Medicaid International, Laurence Beltran, if you like. Officially HMG has no relationship with them but unofficially we maintain contact through informal channels.’

‘Do that,’ Shepherd said, ‘and we’ll see what we can do to help you with your problems.’

They agreed to meet at the SAS’s temporary base the following morning. ‘Well, it’ll keep us entertained at least,’ Jock said after Parker had left.

‘I don’t like the way we don’t get official backing,’ said Shepherd.

‘That’s the way the spooks work,’ said Jock. ‘They need what they call plausible deniability. It’ll be fine.’

‘But if it turns to shit, we’ll be left hanging in the wind,’ said Shepherd.

‘We’re professionals,’ said Jock. ‘It won’t turn to shit. And I don’t know about you but I can resist anything but a challenge.’

* * *

Shepherd was up with the dawn and he sat in the bar as he waited for the others, drinking a cup of coffee made in the Arab style: so strong it was almost a solid rather than a liquid, and laced with several spoons of sugar. The skies had cleared.  The torrential rains of the wet season were already giving way to the dry, dusty Harmattan wind carrying Saharan sand as fine as talc. It covered every surface, piling up in drifts on the doorsteps and sills and hanging in the air like fog. The blue of the sky had faded to a colour so pale that it was almost white and the sun, obscured by the dust, seemed little brighter than the moon. The air was full of the sound of creaks and groans as the building’s timbers dried in the arid wind.

Shepherd was finishing his first cup of coffee when Jock, Jimbo and Geordie arrived. They drank coffee and breakfasted on croissants before heading outside. The men wrapped scarves around their faces but the fine dust penetrated everywhere and Shepherd could feel it in his nose and taste it in his mouth, gritty against his teeth, as they walked towards the Landcruiser.

They returned to the base and at once went to see the Boss of the Operational Squadron, volunteering to go and take out the rebel ammunition dump. Offhandedly the Boss gave the go-ahead to the mission, displaying only minimal interest. ‘I must warn you that I have no resources to spare,’ he said. ‘And I doubt that your Six contact has anything in the way of equipment.’

‘We don’t need much, Boss,’ Shepherd said. ‘Except maybe Jerzy and his Hoplite. The rest we’ll improvise.’

Shepherd left the other three poring over the intelligence that Parker had already supplied and drove down into Freetown to meet the contact at Medicaid International. The houses of the expatriates and richer citizens were colonial era mansions originally built by the British, ranged along the heights of the ridges of Juba Hill and Signal Hill to catch whatever sea breeze there was. They were raised on stilts and shaded by giant cotton and breadfruit trees. The houses must once have been quite splendid but the walls were now stained with damp and many appeared semi-derelict. Those that were still occupied were shielded by high walls topped with razor wire and broken glass. Even the art deco State House on Tower Hill looked decrepit, its balcony railings streaked with rust and its once-pristine white walls pocked and scarred from the rounds and grenades that had struck it during the numerous coups and countercoups.

He turned at the Kissy roundabout, passing through the Lebanese district and along East Street past the bus station, deserted but for one rusting bus with every window broken. Pademba Road Prison dominated the street. Its featureless walls, unbroken by any opening, rose sheer from the edge of the road, but they also showed the scars of shells or grenades. A group of guards glared balefully from behind the gates as he drove past.

The US Embassy, a monolithic grey block overlooking Cotton Tree roundabout, looked untouched from a distance but close up it also showed the scars of gunfire. Gum-chewing armed guards with mirrored sunglasses stared at Shepherd as he passed, and did not respond when Shepherd raised a hand in greeting. The guards at the entrance to the squat, ugly blocks of Wilberforce Barracks had looked far less alert, leaning against the gates or sitting in the dust, their torn and tattered uniforms an indication of their poverty.

At the centre of the city, most of the once beautiful colonial buildings were falling apart, either from neglect or damage. City Hall was derelict, its windows shattered and the doors torn from their hinges. The interior was strewn with rubbish and Shepherd saw a group of ragged children inside, clustered around a smouldering fire. The football stadium, an open concrete bowl, was one of the few structures that seemed relatively untouched. There were rats everywhere and they looked better fed than most of the human inhabitants. Most of the shops, almost all with Lebanese names over the doors, were closed and abandoned.

Medicaid International occupied a dingy warehouse in a side street. The yard was protected by iron gates, but one was broken and hanging from just one of its hinges. The guard glanced incuriously at Shepherd and waved him through. To Shepherd’s surprise, Laurence Beltran turned out to be a woman, French and in her early thirties, with black hair scraped back from her face and tied in a bun. He explained why he was there and told her about Baraka and the other village children, and she heard him out in silence, her gaze never straying from his face. When he’d finished, she thought for a moment and then said, ‘Come with me, I’d like you to meet someone.’

They walked through to a storeroom at the back of the building and she called to a boy who was stacking boxes of medical equipment on the shelves. ‘This is Abiola,’ she said, as the boy walked over to them. He looked about thirteen or fourteen, but with a cold, hard look in his eyes that Shepherd was beginning to recognise. ‘Tell Dan your story,’ Laurence said to him.

‘I was a child soldier,’ the boy said, his voice flat and unemotional.  ‘When the rebels came to my village, they captured me and told me to kill my mother, my father and my baby brother. I refused but they said “Do it, or we will kill you.” I knew they would kill me because they were killing people all around me. So I did it. They made me burn my house down too. They took me and some of the other boys with them, including my friends Buzita and Musa, and marched us to their camp. They took girls too and did bad things to them. Every night they gave us boys tablets with our food. As soon as I took them I began to sweat and my body started trembling. I couldn’t hear properly - there was a roaring, rushing sound in my ears and my sight was so blurred that I could hardly see. I do not know what the tablets contained but they made my heart beat as strong as a lion. I stayed up all night that night and hardly slept for days. At night they showed us war movies on a TV. We watched all the Rambo movies again and again, and they told us we had to kill people the same way. When they thought we were ready, they gave us all rifles and taught us to use them. They gave us each an amulet too. They said it was juju - magic - and would make any bullets fired at us turn to water. By now I was not afraid of anything. They made me the leader of one of their units and we went out on raids every night. We burned many villages and killed many, many people. Sometimes we drank their blood.’

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Shepherd.

‘We were told it would make us even stronger. Sometimes we ate their hearts too. Killing became as easy to me as breathing - I felt no sympathy, no pity for anyone. We captured boys and young girls who were hiding from us in the huts and made them carry the things we stole back to our base and we shot them if they tried to run away.

‘When we were not fighting, we smoked marijuana and snorted brown-brown.’

Shepherd looked at Laurence. ‘Brown-brown?’

‘It’s cocaine mixed with gunpowder,’ she said. ‘The rebels think that it has mystical properties but really it is just another way of maintaining control over the children.’

‘There was always brown-brown on a table inside the hut where we kept the guns and ammunition,’ the boy continued. ‘I took it every day. I didn’t sleep for days on end. I became so crazed that I think even the leaders were frightened of me.  Eventually I went to my hut and fell asleep. Even then I dreamed that I was killing enemies. The noise of firing was deafening. When I opened my eyes, I found that it was no dream. I was on my feet, my rifle in my hands, and I had emptied the magazine into the hut. My friends Buzita and Musa were lying there, covered in blood.’ Tears were trickling down his cheeks as he spoke, and Laurence put an arm around him. ‘I dropped my rifle,’ he said. ‘I ran out of the hut and just kept running and running. The others fired at me, I think, but they did not hit me. I ran for hours until I could run no more and then I collapsed. I don’t remember anything else until I came round here.’ He turned and buried his face in Laurence’s chest. She rubbed his back, between the shoulders.

‘He was close to death when he was brought to us,’ Laurence said. ‘He was malnourished and severely dehydrated and already suffering severe withdrawal symptoms from the drugs, but we nursed him back to health and he helps us now. When other boy soldiers are brought in, they often don’t trust us. For understandable reasons, they regard all adults with suspicion, but Abiola can talk to them in their own language, tell them about his own experiences and win their confidence. It’s a very long process to help them recover from what they’ve been through. The children are so indoctrinated that they even talk like soldiers. I’ve heard boys as young as eight talking about “rations” rather than food, and if they feel happy - and that doesn’t happen very often - they talk about having “good morale”. They die on the battlefield in droves of course but the survivors are told that the others died because they had bad thoughts or had done bad deeds.’

She thanked Abiola and sent him back to his work, then turned to face Shepherd. ‘It’s great that you want to help Baraka and the other children at Biramayo, and we’ll do what we can, but to be honest, even when there was peace here, we were already almost overwhelmed. Sleeping sickness, river blindness and malaria are endemic, and the tsetse flies and mosquitoes kill as many people as the rebels’ She sighed mournfully.  ‘A third of the entire population is displaced. The number of people missing at least one limb runs into tens of thousands. An entire generation has been robbed of their childhood and left with physical and psychological scars that will never entirely heal.’ She placed her hand on Shepherd’s arm. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say this because I’ve always thought of myself as a pacifist, but the greatest service you could do for Baraka and Abiola, and all the other boys and girls here would be to wipe out the men who are brutalising, raping and killing them.’

‘And I never thought I’d hear a charity worker and someone from Six singing from the same hymn sheet either.’

She gave a puzzled smile. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Shepherd. ‘But you can trust me on this – I’ll do what has to be done. You have my word.’

Laurence nodded gratefully. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

* * *

When Shepherd got back to the base, the others were discussing a plan to target the rebel arms dump. ‘I’m not sure how viable this is going to be,’ Jock said. ‘If we’re using the Hoplite, weight is going to be a major problem. We’re not going to be able to carry heavy weapons or major demolition charges.’

‘We don’t need either,’ Shepherd said. ‘What we need is already there; we’ll travel light and use the rebels’ own stuff against them.’

‘Right,’ Jock said. ‘So let’s get to it. Timers, detonators and det cord are no problem but what are we going to use in the way of explosives?’

‘We’ll steal it from the rebels,’ said Shepherd. ‘I have a plan.’

‘Good to hear,’ said Jock.

‘We’ll get the charges from their shells. A demolitions guy showed me how to do it in Hereford.’

‘Clever,’ said Jock. ‘But you’ll need something to force them open.’

‘There’s a blacksmith guy near the gates,’ Shepherd said. ‘We can get him to make us the tools we need.’

‘Get him to make one for Jimbo while he’s at it,’ said Geordie. He ducked as Jimbo threw an ashtray at him.

‘We’ll need some metal for him to work with,’ said Jock.

‘That won’t be a problem,’ said Shepherd.  ‘If you can get me the nose-cone of a shell, I’ll sort the metal.’ While Jock went to raid the base’s ammunition store for a nose-cone, Shepherd headed over to the firing range and gathered up a sackful of spent cartridge cases. He and Jock walked out of the gates and found the metal worker they’d seen the previous day, still turning scrap metal into cooking pots and water carriers.

Communicating in a mixture of broken English and sign language, Shepherd drew the outline of the tool he wanted on a piece of paper. He mimed unscrewing the nose cone and showed the metal worker how it had to fit. ‘Use these,’ he said, showing him the brass cartridge cases.

The metal worker gave him a dubious look. ‘Steel is stronger.’

Shepherd nodded. ‘But steel makes sparks, so use the brass instead. You can keep the metal you don’t use. And I need a brass scoop, like a long-handled spoon. Can you do that for me?’

The metal worker gave him a puzzled look until Shepherd drew another outline for him.

Shepherd didn’t haggle over the price, but just showed the metalworker a $50 bill. ‘That’s yours when it’s done. And I need it today.’

‘Boss, for fifty dollars you can have it yesterday!’ Without taking his eyes off the bill, the metalworker poured some of the cartridge cases into a crucible and set it on his forge, gesturing to his boy to pump the bellows.

When Shepherd went back a couple of hours later, the metal worker greeted him with a beaming smile and produced the tools with a flourish. Shepherd tested them, then shook the metalworker’s hand and handed him the $50 bill. Back inside the base, he rummaged through the stores until he found a wooden mallet. ‘There you go,’ he said to Jock. ‘Tool kit complete.’

They had a final briefing, with Shepherd allocating specific tasks and identifying the RV points in the event of contact with the enemy. In any operation there were always three RVs, at progressively greater distances and time intervals from the target. When the attack was made, the first RV would be good for no more than an hour. The Emergency RV, further from the target, would be open until dusk, and the War RV would be good for a further 24-hours, until the following dusk. After that, anyone separated from the rest of the patrol had to make their own Escape and Evasion and, since there were no air assets to spare other than Jerzy’s Hoplite, and no way of making radio contact with him, the E & E would have to be all the way back to Freetown through seventy miles of rebel-controlled, hostile territory. Hopefully that would remain a last resort.

Shepherd briefed the Czech pilot and within an hour the team was in the air and flying towards

the arms dump. Jerzy kept at low level, skimming the treetops and scattering startled animals as the helicopter flew overhead, its rotors whipping up storms of red dust from the open ground.

Beyond the capital the country looked fertile, with tall trees, broad rivers, savannah grassland with fields of elephant grass and villages of round huts, walled with wattle and daub and roofed with palm thatch. Very little of the land was being cultivated, though, and while they did see one small, neatly furrowed field for growing mealie, most of the patches of cleared land were slowly reverting to jungle.

The marks of war were everywhere: ruined buildings, burned crops and abandoned villages, and though a few orange and mango trees still grew, they were often surrounded by scorched marks where huts had been burned to the ground. The few people visible working the remaining fields all looked very old or very young.  Everyone they saw carried a bush knife and most, even children and old men, had new looking rifles. They were all desperately thin and dressed in rags - some had no clothes at all.

The Hoplite crossed a ridge but then followed the slope down into a broad, shallow valley, meandering towards the sea. A sluggish river ran through it, draining the swamp that they could see in the distance. In the middle of the swamp was the island where the rebel arms dump was hidden amid a sprawl of dense vegetation, vivid green against the browns and greys of the dry hillsides in the far distance.

Jerzy put the helicopter into a hover and dropped them in some scrubland, a safe distance from the swamp. As he clattered into the air and swung away, back towards Freetown, the SAS men took stock of their surroundings before moving forward on foot towards the swamp. They walked in single file, with Shepherd as Lead Scout and Jock as “Tail End Charlie”, while Geordie and Jimbo watched right and left from the middle of the column.

The scrub thickened and became forest, its dense foliage reducing visibility to no more than a few yards. They used their other senses to compensate for the lack of vision, pausing every few yards to listen and scenting the air for any human trace.

Shepherd called a halt as he glimpsed the glint of water between the trees. ‘Silent routine from here,’ he said. They fanned out at the edge of the water and began to move through the swamp, so slow and stealthy that barely a ripple disturbed its surface. They communicated with each other only by sign language and faint clicks of the tongue that from more than a couple of feet away were lost among the buzz of insects and the calls of birds in the canopy above them.

Leeches hanging from leaves and stems twisted towards them as they sensed the heat of the SAS men’s bodies. A water-snake traced the sinuous course across the surface of the water in front of them and clouds of mosquitoes hovered everywhere, kept at bay by the insect repellent the patrol had plastered onto their exposed skin and clothing.

The water had been up to their chests at the deepest part of the swamp but the level was now falling and ahead of them Shepherd could now see the sloping ground at the edge of the island. He gave a caution signal to the others then inched forward, refocusing his eyes, trying to see through the screen of foliage. The rebel guards, bored and restless, gave their locations away by their noise and movement and the patrol were able to slip past them undetected.

They spent some hours checking out the area, locating the rebel huts and the arms dump, and identifying stacks of mortar bombs and artillery shells. There were also sacks of rice, salt, and other foods, bundles of clothes, and piles of bush knives, pans and possessions that must have come from the villages the rebels had looted and destroyed.

They found a place to lie up and waited until the small hours, sweltering in the suffocating heat, before slipping past the half-awake sentries into the arms dump.

While Jimbo and Geordie covered them, Shepherd used his newly-fashioned tool to unlock the nose cones on a succession of shells. He fitted the brass tool over each one, gave it a sharp tap with the wooden mallet and then turned it, the brass edges biting into the steel enough to give the tool purchase. Once he had unscrewed the nose cone, Jock used the brass lever to prise out the high explosive compound inside.

Jock spread the high explosive around the stacks of ammunition as Shepherd prepared the timer and detonators. They stopped when they heard a sudden shout. A rebel soldier, wandering out of his hut to relieve himself, must have caught a glint of metal or seen movement and raised the alarm. ‘Make for the RV,’ Shepherd shouted. ‘I’ll handle the detonation.’

Geordie, Jock and Jimbo melted away into the undergrowth as Shepherd hurriedly finished assembling the detonators and timer.  He heard shouts close by and set the timer for just ten seconds before turning and running into the jungle. A burst of fire ripped through the vegetation above his head. He counted the seconds off in his head as he ran and at the count of ten the rebel arms dump erupted in an inferno of explosions and flying rounds.  He kept his head down as he pushed his way through the undergrowth. After a minute he slowed and looked over his shoulder. The explosions were dying down though the lurid glow of flames still lit up the area. He slid into the swamp and moved away as fast as he dared. Eventually he crawled out of the water onto dry land, hurried on for another fifty yards and then dropped into cover as he heard the sounds of pursuit. Back-lit by the glow from the burning arms dump, he could see the scrubby trees in the swamp shaking as a group of about a dozen rebel soldiers pushed past them.

Shepherd could clearly see their faces, framed by rough, matted dreadlocks into which they had woven fragments of broken mirror glass and brightly coloured threads and ribbons. Each of them had an amulet on a string or leather thong around their neck, the juju emblem that they believed gave them immortality. They looked hot-wired and amphetamine-fuelled, jerking and twitching, eyes never still. They showed no fear or hesitation and made no attempt to conceal themselves as they emerged from the swamp and began to move towards his hiding place in line abreast. None of them looked older than ten or twelve but all carried AK-47s at the ready.

Shepherd’s finger tightened on his trigger but he couldn’t bring himself to fire. They were murderous killers high on drugs and they would kill him without hesitation, but they were still children. He lay down and pushed himself down against the ground, burying himself in the vegetation. He held his breath and tried to stay calm but his heart was pounding fit to bust. He heard them crashing through the undergrowth and then they were gone.

He got to his feet and moved to the left, his mind racing. He had intended to make for the RV but that now wasn’t an option, not with the rebels ahead of him.  His only sensible option was to try to make his own way back to Freetown, but that was a lot easier said than done.

He heard more searches behind him and upped his pace. The faster he moved the more trace he left of his passing, and the rebel group stayed on his trail. An hour before dawn he looped his track, lay up in the cover of a thorn bush, and waited. There were six of them, five boy soldiers and an adult, a stick-thin figure with dreadlocks tied back into a ponytail. He was obviously their commander but he took care not to lead from the front, urging them on from behind while using the partial cover they provided. Shepherd squinted through the site of his rifle drawing a bead on the man’s left eye as he moved slowly forward in three-quarter profile to him. He took a deep breath and as he exhaled, he squeezed home the trigger. He allowed himself a brief smile of satisfaction as the man’s head exploded. The boys looked around trying to work out where the shot had come from but Shepherd had already moved on. Shepherd discarded everything but his weapon and ammunition and belt kit to increase his speed over the ground. He had no food and could move safely only at night, for once he had left the forest and begun to cross the savannah, he was dangerously exposed by day, visible for miles under the pitiless sun.

For two days and nights he moved on and then, exhausted, semi-delirious and now completely without water or food, he was stumbling through a patch of scrub when his eye caught a slight movement from the base of a thorn bush. As he looked at it, he saw an eye staring back at him. He swung his weapon up but in that instant, he heard a voice crying ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ and an African man crawled out from under the tree and stood up, raising his hands over his head.

‘It’s all right, you can put your hands down,’ said Shepherd. ‘Why were you hiding?’

The man grinned. ‘English?’ he said. ‘You’re English, aren’t you? Look at this!’

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a small, cracked and crumpled book with a sun-faded red cover. Shepherd took it from him and read the title: “Soldier’s Service And Pay Book.”

The man’s smile had become even broader. ‘It belonged to my father, Thomas Tucker,’ he said. ‘He fought with the British West African Field Force in the Second World War. He told me many stories of fighting with the Chindits in Burma. I am named after him: Thomas Tucker, Junior.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’m Dan, but why were you hiding?’

‘Because the rebels are here. The RUF. If they find me they will kill me.’

‘I hear you,’ said Shepherd. ‘Looks like we have something in common.’

‘But you have a rifle. You can fight them off.’ He paused, eyeing Shepherd narrowly. ‘You are making for Freetown? We can travel together.’

‘I’m sorry Thomas, I can’t take a passenger.’

Thomas shook his head. ‘I won’t be a passenger. You protect me - be my bodyguard - and I will show you a safe route into Freetown. Very few people know it. And,’ he said as his gaze took in Shepherd’s cracked lips and the empty bottle dangling from his belt. ‘I know where there is water too.’ He held out his own bottle. ‘Go on, drink. There is water nearby.’

Shepherd took the bottle gratefully and took a long pull on it. Almost at once he felt some of his strength and sharpness returning. He looked at Thomas for a moment and then nodded. ‘All right, you’ve got yourself a deal.’

Thomas led Shepherd away, at a tangent to the bearing he’d been following. A couple of miles away, half-hidden in a hollow, was a large baobab tree. ‘Give me your water bottle,’ Thomas said. He climbed its bulbous trunk, hauled himself up and then leaned forward into the crook of two branches. A few moments later, he dropped the bottle down to Shepherd; it was now full of water. Thomas beamed at the look of surprise on his face. We call these trees “the tree of life”. They store water from the wet season.’ He moved out along the branch and leaned down to pull a fruit that looked like a gourd from the underside. He grinned down at Shepherd. ‘They feed us, too.’

He climbed back down and used a bush knife to cut through the hard skin, exposing its white, powdery pulp. He dug some out and handed it to Shepherd. Shepherd ate it greedily; it was the first food of any kind he’d seen in two days. It tasted like a cross between a pineapple and a melon with a tart, citrus tang.

They moved off again and Thomas led Shepherd even further from the route he had been following, crossing a dry river valley and climbing onto a low ridge. He pushed his way through some scrub bush then turned to Shepherd and smiled. They were standing on what appeared to be a narrow pathway running straight as a die into the distance. Although it was flanked on either side by dense scrub, the ground underfoot felt stony and the way itself was mainly grass-covered, burned brown by the sun with a few stunted bushes. ‘It’s an old railway line,’ Thomas explained. ‘It’s been closed for many years, but it’s so dry and stony that almost nothing can grow on it. We can make fast time now.’

To Shepherd’s surprise they arrived at the fringes of Freetown within 24 hours, where the railway track ended, petering out among a sprawling shantytown of crude buildings and lean-to shacks. The stench was overpowering and the watercourse that ran through the area was as foul as any Shepherd had ever seen, yet he saw women scooping drinking water from it. The stink of sewage, refuse and decay mingled with the smoke from cooking fires, and there were clouds of flies everywhere.

As they peered out from cover, they saw a barrier across the road, guarded by rebel soldiers, and patrols moving through the shacks and houses. They waited until after midnight before they moved on. Shepherd still had the scarf around his neck that he’d used to keep the dust from the Harmattan wind out of his nose and mouth. ‘Wind your scarf around your head,’ Thomas said. ‘You’ll need it. There is disease in the air.’ Thomas had a black and white checked scarf around his neck and he pulled it over his mouth and nose.

He led Shepherd into the shantytown, past shacks built from scrap wood and packing cases, their roofs made from rusting corrugated iron or palm fronds. They moved through a maze of alleys and passageways, the stench growing ever stronger. A few mangy dogs growled or barked at them, and one or two figures appeared briefly but the sight of Shepherd’s powerful figure and the rifle he carried was enough to send them melting back into the shadows. Lower on the hillside, where the ferocious heat of the night was unbroken by even a trace of breeze, they reached a dumpsite, where even during the hours of darkness, a mountain of reeking refuse was being picked over by ragpickers moving like ants across its surface. Everything, even the people, was so smothered in grey dust that when they stopped moving, the rag pickers seemed to disappear from sight, merging into the heap on which they stood.

Shepherd’s white skin was blanketed in dust in an instant and he was gagging on the stench, but Thomas urged him on. ‘There are no rebels here,’ he said. ‘There is nothing for them. No food to eat, nothing worth stealing, no women worth raping and no boys to conscript to do their killing. But the dump reaches almost into the heart of the city. It is a highway for us to follow.’

They reached the far end of the dump two hours before the dawn. They slipped across the road, passed through another warren of side streets and passageways and emerged almost in the heart of the city, near the Cotton Tree roundabout. ‘You can find your way from here, I think,’ Thomas said.

Shepherd nodded. ‘What about you?’

‘My brother’s house is not far away. I’ll be safe there.’

Shepherd took out all the money he had and tried to give it to Thomas, but the man shook his head. ‘I did not do this for money. We were comrades in arms. I was the guide, you the bodyguard.’

‘You saved my life,’ Shepherd said. ‘Is there nothing I can do for you?’

‘Say a prayer for my father when you get home. In an English church. That will be more than enough for me.’

Shepherd gripped his hand. ‘Your father would have been very proud of you, Thomas. Thank you.’

‘I hope we will meet again some day, when my country is at peace once more, but now we must hurry, the sun is almost up.’ Thomas turned and disappeared almost at once back into the maze of streets, while Shepherd walked up the slope to the US embassy. The guards looked him over with ill-concealed disgust, but after giving a code word and unloading his weapon, they let him sit outside the guardhouse while a message was sent via the British Embassy. Ninety minutes later, Jock, Jimbo and Geordie roared up in their commandeered Landcruiser to collect him.

‘Thought you’d got rid of me, did you?’ Shepherd said.

‘No such luck,’ Jock growled. ‘We never doubted you’d survive, did we lads?  Though the jury’s out on whether you got here on your E&E skills or just on sheer bloody luck.’

Shepherd slept most of the day. He woke in the early evening and after a shower and some food he met the others in the bar. He told them about Thomas, and about the boy soldiers he’d hadn’t been able to fire on.

‘I’d have pulled the trigger,’ said Jimbo.

‘If it was me or them, so would I,’ said Geordie. ‘But I know what you mean. Killing kids is wrong.’

‘Not if they’re trying to kill you,’ said Jock.

‘They don’t know what they’re doing,’ said Shepherd. ‘The adults play mind games with them and keep them high on drugs. It’s the adults that are to blame. I want to find the bastards who brutalised them and sent them into battle, and make them pay for what they did. I don’t care if I have to kill every rebel from here to the Liberian border; they don’t deserve to live.’

‘I’m up for that,’ said Geordie.

‘And you can count me in,’ said Jimbo.

‘Sounds like we’re going to be busy then,’ Jock said. ‘In the mean time, see if you can find another bottle of Jamesons behind the bar, Spider. It’s your round.’

* * *

For the continuing adventures of Spider Shepherd in Sierra Leone, read Rough Diamonds, where Spider and his mates take on a team of rogue mercenaries. Rough Diamonds is available in the UK for just 77p at - http://tinyurl.com/ob6nfc9

Rough Diamonds is available in the US for 99 cents at - http://tinyurl.com/lan9lsk

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.

Hard Landing is available in the UK for 49p at –  http://amzn.to/xxX2YU

And in the US for less than a dollar at –  http://amzn.to/xWg1E7

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. You can find out more from his website www.stephenleather.com and you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenleather

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