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

have
killed his father.’
    ‘That’s very sad
but you aren’t responsible for that.’
    ‘I’m not so sure
about that, Geordie. Look, he’s an orphan now. He’s our responsibility.’
    Mitchell came
over to join them and they walked back to the compound together in silence.
Shepherd vouched for the boy to the guard at the gates and then led him to his
tent. ‘Okay Karim,’ he said, sitting down on his cot.   ‘Tell me why you think you know where Jabbaar will be.’
    ‘I spied on two
Afghan soldiers this morning and heard them talking,’ the boy said. ‘They wear
the green uniform of the Afghan Army, but I know they are Taliban. I overheard
one say they were going to Zadran on Saturday, to teach the thieves and whores
there a lesson. That means there’ll be whippings and thieves getting their
hands cut off. It’s the Taliban’s version of sharia law, just like when they
ruled the whole country and there were mutilations and executions almost every
week. They even staged them in the football stadium in Kabul.’
    ‘So, even
assuming that’s really what it is going to happen, why are you so sure that
Jabbaar will be there?’ asked Shepherd.
    Mitchell sat down
on another cot, watching Karim carefully.
    ‘Because he takes
pleasure from such things and Zadran is his home village,’ said Karim.   ‘I told you his name means cruel and he
lives up to it. He runs the opium trade there and has even forced some of the
farmers to surrender their children to him to clear their debts.’
    ‘What do you
mean?’
    ‘Zadran takes the
children. He keeps the pretty ones and the others are taken across the border
to be trained as suicide bombers.’
    Shepherd looked
over at Mitchell. ‘Bastard,’ Mitchell muttered under his breath.
    Shepherd picked
up a map and turned back to Karim. ‘Where is Zadran exactly?’
    ‘In the mountains
about twenty miles east of Jalalabad.’
    ‘Bandit country,’
Mitchell said.
    Shepherd studied
the map. ‘So what do you reckon?’ he asked Mitchell.
    Mitchell
shrugged. ‘Could be right. It’s only a few miles from the tribal areas, so
Jabbaar and his crew could easily slip across the border again. The only way
we’ll find out is to take a look, but we may struggle to convince the Boss on
nothing more solid than the word of a twelve year old kid.’ He paused,
intercepting the boy’s baleful look. ‘No offence, Karim, I’m saying what the
Boss will think, not what I think.’
    ‘Karim was right
before,’ Shepherd said. ‘And apart from any personal reasons, Jabbaar’s a major
target, Number One in the local Taliban hierarchy. Feathers in everyone’s caps
if we nail him.’
    ‘Karim may well
be right again, but there’s another problem,’ Mitchell said, studying the map.
‘Zadran is in a valley that runs eastwards towards the Pakistan border. It’s
cut off from the rest of the country by a 3,000 metre range of mountains and
the only way through them is by means of one of two passes, both of which cut
through narrow defiles that are an ambusher’s dream. Half a dozen well-armed
men could hold off an army there. So we’ll have to insert by helis and on
previous form, as soon as we take off from Bagram, you can bet that the
Taliban’s spies and informers will be passing word that we’re deploying.’
    ‘Then we don’t
take off from Bagram,’ Shepherd said.
    Mitchell gave him
a puzzled look. ‘Meaning?’
    ‘That for this
op, we’ll base ourselves away from Bagram. Fly it in two stages. Drop the helis
in the middle of nowhere until we’re ready for them.’
    ‘But even if we
do have their support, it’ll be of limited use, because we can’t bomb or rocket
targets in the middle of a large, densely populated village, and even if
Jabbaar is in Zadran, by the time we’ve fought our way past the Taliban pickets
and into the market square, the chances are he’ll be long gone.’ Mitchell
paused. ‘That’s if he’s there at all. If he isn’t, and we turn out