Narrow Escape (A Spider Shepherd short story) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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