Personal Protection (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) Read Online Free PDF

civilisation, they were forced to switch off their vehicle lights and resort to using night vision goggles.  That slowed them down and the sheikh’s car began to pull away from them. Shepherd saw the lights of the sheikh’s car disappear from view as it breasted a rise and dropped down the other side. He accelerated, driving on the limits of visibility through the NVGs, and as he crested the ridge he saw the black car stationary in the distance ahead of them. It was surrounded by a group of armed men who were dragging the sheikh out of the car.
    There was no point in any further attempts at concealment and Shepherd switched on the lights, floored the accelerator and banged on the horn. In the seat beside him, Rusty slipped off the safety catch on his sub-machinegun. Shepherd cradled his own MP5 on his lap, ready to jump out firing as soon as he brought the vehicle to a halt.  As they closed on the sheikh’s car there was a blinding flash, a roar like a thunder-clap and the Landcruiser was blown high into the air. All three men inside were knocked semi-conscious as it crashed back down with a sickening impact.
    As Shepherd shook his head, trying to clear his blurred vision and silence the ringing in his ears, small arms fire raked the ground around them. There was a screech of tyres as Geordie drove the back-up car between the damaged vehicle and the Chechens, drawing their fire. It pulled up and Jock, Geordie and Jimbo piled out, firing at the muzzle flashes from the Chechens’ weapons. Shepherd twisted around in his seat. Parker lay dazed and semi-conscious on the back seat of the wrecked vehicle. There was more gunfire and Shepherd and Rusty stumbled out and began picking out targets. The firefight was short and bloody, the Chechen ambushers were no match for the SAS in accuracy or rate of fire. 
    The firing ceased and Geordie and Jimbo moved across the desert to the ambushers’ position, weapons at the ready. The group of Chechens were no longer a threat to anyone, each one stone dead, their bodies riddled with rounds.
    Through the ringing in his ears, Shepherd heard Jock’s voice.  ‘You all right, Spider?’
    ‘We’re okay, but what about the sheikh?’ answered Spider. As they scanned the desert around them through their NVGs they realised that there was no sign of the sheikh or his captors.
    After a futile search of the area, the team assessed their options. Jimbo, gung ho, was all for launching an immediate pursuit, but the older, wiser heads prevailed. ‘Think about it Jimbo,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’ve only one vehicle left, we don’t have enough fuel or water to be driving much deeper into the desert, we don’t know what might be waiting for us and if we hit another IED, we’re unlikely to be as lucky a second time. It’s galling I know, but the best option is to head back to the capital, gather what intel we can and plan our next move from there.’
    Geordie nodded in agreement. ‘That makes sense.’
    ‘The one bit of good news in this is that if the sheikh’s cousin had wanted to kill him outright, he’d already be dead,’ said Shepherd. ‘The fact that his body isn’t here shows the cousin wants him alive, either to extract concessions from him directly or to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations with us. Either way, he’s alive and we need to keep him that way.’
    They squeezed themselves into the remaining vehicle and drove back to the capital in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts. Parker was still in shock from the firefight, his normally immaculate clothes torn and stained. There was a livid bruise across the side of his face. When they got back to camp he spoke only to agree to get GCHQ focussed on listening for any communications between the sheikh’s cousin and his surviving Chechens. For the moment, Shepherd and the rest of the team could do nothing more than listen in to the various wavelengths on their comms system.  There was no useful chatter to be heard, but