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

to have been
shooting up a village that’s just going about its daily business, the Head Shed
will have our guts for garters.’
    ‘We’ll do it
covertly,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll infiltrate the village and call the rest of
you in when I’ve got a positive ID on Jabbaar and his crew.’
    ‘And the boy?’
    ‘Will come with
me. He’ll be my passport into Zadran. I’ll be his long lost uncle and he can
vouch for me to the locals.’ He intercepted Mitchell’s dubious look. ‘He’s got
the right to be there; Jabbaar killed his father.’
    ‘If you say so,
but I’m guessing the Boss will take some convincing.’
    ‘Then let’s go
persuade him.’ He turned to the boy. ‘Now if this is going to work, I’ll need
the right tribal dress, Karim, which is where you come in. I need a shalwar
kameez.’
    ‘I’ll get you the
best money can buy.’
    ‘No, no, I want
the opposite of that. It needs to be old, shabby and poor quality. I’m going to
pose as a poor relative of yours, so I need to look the part. See what you can
do, OK?’ He handed him a few dollars. ‘But Karim, you’re not to leave Bagram
yourself. Pay one of the other boys to go the bazaar for you, if you need to,
but you stay on the base. At least we know the Taliban can’t get at you here.
You stick to us like camel shit on an army boot, okay?’
    They walked with
the boy up to the gates of the compound and then he hurried off. While they
waited for him to return, Shepherd called a briefing for the team he wanted and
outlined his plan to use Karim to get close to Jabbaar. Major Gannon heard him
out in silence, but then shook his head emphatically. ‘No can do, Spider. He’s
a twelve year old kid.’
    ‘He’s a twelve
year old Afghan kid and that makes him twelve going on twenty-five in the
West,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’s seen and done things that the wildest street kid in
the UK couldn’t even imagine.’
    ‘He’s twelve,
Spider. There’s no getting away from that.’
    ‘He’s a
twelve-year-old orphan whose father was butchered by the Taliban. And he wants
revenge. And to be honest, boss, I think he’s entitled. This isn’t England, he
can’t go to the cops. He can’t go to anyone. Except us. And if we don’t help
him, his father’s murderer goes unpunished.’
    ‘I’d be happier
if you went and the kid stayed here.’
    ‘But he’s my
ticket in, I can’t get into Zadran without him.’
    ‘But even setting
aside the ethics of using the boy in an op at all, can you begin to imagine the
international media shit-storm that would erupt if word of this ever got out?
They’ll be accusing us of using Afghan kids as human shields.’
    ‘But word won’t
get out because there’ll be nothing to say I’m British. It’s the ultimate
deniable op. If I’m killed - and you know I won’t be captured, because I’ll top
myself before I’ll let that happen - there’ll be no traceable kit, no paper
trail, nothing. I’ll just be some dead foreigner, an Arab, an Uzbek, a Chechen
or a Turkoman, meddling in an Afghan feud and paying the price for it. My death
won’t even rate a line in the Kabul newspapers, let alone the outside world.’
    ‘But even if I
agree to it, how do you propose to get into Zadran without being rumbled?’
    Shepherd smiled
as he realized that the Major was starting to come around. ‘I’m going to pose
as a shell-shocked local - thanks to the US bombing there’s a lot of them
about. I’m going to be Karim’s uncle. He can speak for me if we’re stopped and
since I’m shell-shocked, I won’t be speaking at all. And better yet, I’ll be
unarmed-’
    ‘Are you off your
head?’ said Gannon. ‘Have you looked in a mirror recently?’
    ‘Just hear me
out. In Afghanistan, every adult man carries a weapon. If you’ve no weapon, you
can’t be an adult and so you’re treated as a semi-imbecile. There’s no better
way to disarm suspicion than to be someone who is beneath contempt, not worthy
even of