Dead Drop (A Spider Shepherd short story) Read Online Free Page B

quarters.
    ‘Relax,’ Mitchell
said, sensing Shepherd’s tension. ‘The QRF’ll be here inside ten minutes and
then we’ll get all of them. And if we get Hadir alive, we might even get good
intel out of him.’
    ‘Give me five
minutes with him,’ McIntyre growled, ‘and I’ll have him singing like a fucking
canary. He’ll-’ He broke off as there was a sudden commotion in the village.
The driver of the Toyota jumped out of it and ran to Hadir, and whatever he
said to him was enough to galvanise the Taliban into action. Hadir and his men
began running back to their pick-up.
    ‘I don’t get it,’
Mitchell said. ‘They couldn’t have been more relaxed a minute ago, so what’s
stirred them up now? They haven’t even collected their cash.’
    ‘They’ve been
tipped off,’ said Shepherd.   ‘This
op’s been compromised like the rest. Someone’s seen the QRF leave Bagram and
got a warning to them.’
    ‘How?’ Mitchell
said.
    Shepherd
shrugged. ‘Who knows - cell phone, radio comms, or a fucking ouija board -
what’s it matter? They’ve been tipped off and they’re getting away.’
    He pressed the
scope to his eye. There was no time for his usual meticulous preparation for
the shot - Hadir had already reached the Toyota and was clambering into the
passenger seat. As the pick-up began to move, Shepherd sighted and fired in one
movement, taking up the first pressure on the trigger, breathing out and
squeezing the trigger home in the space of less than a single second. He felt
the recoil against his shoulder and simultaneously through his scope he saw the
Taliban leader hurled back in his seat, arms flung outwards and a corona of
blood spray around his head. It had been a lucky shot, Shepherd knew, but they
all counted.
    As the driver
span the wheel and slewed the pick-up around, Hadir tumbled from the vehicle,
sprawling in the dust. The exit wound had blown the back of his head off and he
was stone dead as he hit the ground.
    The pick-up
slowed for a second but the Taliban made no attempt to retrieve the body. As
the driver gunned the engine, the fighters fired bursts of automatic fire
towards the site of the muzzle flash from Shepherd’s rifle.   One of the fighters fired an RPG round
from his launcher but it was at extreme range and its automatic detonation
after its four and a half second flight meant that it exploded short of the OP,
though it was still close enough for Shepherd to feel the searing heat of its
blast and hear shrapnel pinging off the rocks around them.
    The remaining
Taliban fighter had now jumped onto the pick-up and it roared off with the men
still loosing off wild bursts of fire.
    Shepherd fired twice
more, but both shots missed their target as the Toyota bucked and bounced over
the rutted road, heading back towards the border. Mitchell, McIntyre and Harper
were at maximum range for their AK74s but also kept up a steady fire of short,
targeted bursts, in the hope of at least delaying the Taliban until the
heli-borne QRF arrived, but the pick-up accelerated away, and within a minute
it was even out of range of Shepherd’s AI .50. When the QRF eventually arrived,
all that remained of the Taliban was the body of the dead Hadir.
    At the debrief
back at base later that day, there was much frustration and furious
recriminations all round, but the source of the compromise remained unknown.
Shepherd was still fuming when he went for his morning run the next day, so
much so that he almost missed the vertical chalk mark scratched above the dead
drop in the rockface, signalling that Karim wanted a meet.
    When Shepherd
told Mitchell about it, he insisted on riding shotgun on him for the meet.
‘It’ll be quite like old times,’ Mitchell said. ‘I did it for a couple of years
in the Middle East, providing cover for MI6 guys working out of the
embassies.   If you’re going to a
dead drop you’ve got to have support because the chances of compromise are very
high; it’s how agents get