Rough Diamonds (A Spider Shepherd short story) Read Online Free PDF Page B

had provided, they knew the location of the compound where the mercs had based themselves. Shepherd told Jerzy to bring the helicopter in to land two miles from their compound. As soon as they touched down, Jimbo and Geordie disembarked, taking the AT-5s with them. The made their their way on foot through the diamond fields towards the compound. ‘Did you know the Russians treat each of these as a three-man load?’ Jimbo said, grunting under the strain of lifting one of the boxes. 
    ‘Yeah?’ Geordie said. ‘Well we’re not fucking Russians, we’re the Pilgrims, so get on with it.’
    They disappeared into the darkness. Shepherd, Jerzy and Jock waited in the helicopter as the minutes ticked by. Over half an hour had elapsed when they heard a burst of firing. At once Jerzy wound up the gunship and took off. They skimmed over a sprawling township that had grown up to service the mines, a sea of mud huts and tar-paper shacks lapping against a handful of concrete buildings. More shacks surrounded the razor-wired perimeter of the mining compound itself, and within that was a smaller and even more formidable-looking compound with chain-link fencing protected by triple coils of razor wire and blast-proof berms bulldozed out of the mine tailings. Floodlights and observation towers raised on wooden poles punctuated the fence, giving it the appearance of a Second World War PoW camp.
    Within the inner fence was a circle of shipping containers, their roofs protected by sandbags. They had been arranged around a patch of trampled red earth, forming the compound’s helicopter-pad.  Scattered around the compound were ex-Soviet vehicles - BTR-60 armoured troop transports, BRDM combat reconnaissance vehicles and two tracked ZSU-23-4 radar-guided anti-aircraft guns.
    The helicopter rose to clear a heap of mine-tailings then swooped down in a gut-churning plummet to the floor. Jimbo and Geordie were already engaging the mercenaries in a vicious firefight.  Shepherd saw muzzle flashes below the helicopter and tracer fire arcing up towards the Hind. Jerzy threw the helicopter into a violent turn, corkscrewing around as the tracer rounds scythed past, narrowly missing the gunship and flaring like explosions in Shepherd’s night vision goggles. His headset crackled into life as Jock spotted the source of the problem at once. ‘The ZSU-23-4s are radar controlled,’ he said. ‘They’re activating automatically as soon as you show up on their radar. Give me a moment and I’ll poke their eyes out.’
    As Jerzy held the helicopter in level flight for a few seconds, Jock took aim from the doorway of the cab with the B10 Russian sniper rifle he had liberated from the Liberian airfield. He squeezed off several rounds into the Radomes, putting them out of action and reducing the 23-4s to firing by line of sight. ‘Problem solved,’ Jock said laconically. ‘Your turn now.’
     Jerzy flew the Hind in towards the target in the classic Russian figure-of-eight attack pattern, giving Shepherd the opportunity to pick out targets as he needed to.  Small arms fire from the mercenaries was now cracking and banging against the armoured metal skin of the Hind as Jerzy threw the helicopter around to throw off the aim of the 23-4s.
    Shepherd could hear the chatter of firing as Jock laid his sniper rifle aside and opened up with the mini-gun from the door of the cab, laying down a torrent of fire on the merc positions. There were more muzzle flashes from the mercenaries’ weapons as they returned fire. Ground fire filled the air around the helicopter with bursts of tracer rounds searing upwards, cutting through the darkness  like oxyacetylene torches. Tracer rounds always looked much larger and closer at night and in the cramped gunner’s cockpit of the Hind they looked as big as footballs to Shepherd.
    There was a bigger flash as one of the 23-4s opened fire again. It seemed impossible that anything could fly through the blizzard of rounds without