Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd short story) Read Online Free PDF Page B

from landing on top of his gear, while at the same time the weight kept him stable as he dropped.  He took out his fins and struggled to get them on his feet before concentrating on steering the chute as close to the boat as possible.
    Like the rest of the patrol, he was using a modified free-fall parachute with two L-shaped vents in the rear of the chute, making it very manoeuvrable.  By using the toggles on the harness, Shepherd made the chute side-slip steeply, picking up speed and allowing him to get down to the sea quickly.  Such manoeuvres were risky as they carried the risk of collapsing the chute, but an experienced Para could cut down substantially on his time in the air by using them, and in a combat zone that might be the difference between life and death. He knew without looking that the rest of the patrol would follow his moves in formation. 
    As the sea rushed towards him, he moved his hands to the cutaway mechanism on his shoulders.  When he pulled them, the chute would drift away leaving him static in the water, but if he didn’t get it right he could be dragged for miles and almost certainly drowned. A few seconds later, he heard his container hit the water.  He pointed his fins and hit the cutaways. He felt the chute drift away and he dropped the last few feet into the sea. He grabbed his equipment container and began to swim towards the boat.  When he reached it, he hung from the side for a few moments, then pulled himself into the still-inflating boat, closely followed by the others.  Normally there would have been a couple of jokes like ‘I’m getting a sinking feeling about this’, but Liam’s death was still too fresh and too raw in all their minds for even the Regiment’s trademark black humour, and they went about their work in silence.
    It took them several minutes before they were organised and able to start the boat’s outboard engine.  As they did so, a safety boat manned by the Royal Marines from Poole loomed out of the darkness.  ‘Everything okay, guys?’ called a voice. 
    ‘Just hunky dory,’ Jock growled. ‘But where will you be next time, when we do it for real?’
    * * *
    The atmosphere in the briefing room was tense.  Although it was large enough to seat a couple of SAS squadrons, there were only ten soldiers present, including the four members of Shepherd’s patrol. A Yeoman of Signals sat at the back of the room, a senior NCO from the dreaded ‘Scaly Back’ signals squadron who monitored the signals that the patrols sent in from the field.  Scalies did not take part in operations, but if women in the bars and clubs they frequented somehow formed the impression that they were part of an operational squadron, they did little to set the record straight. 
    The officers all sat on a raised dais. It wasn’t quite a stage but it was raised high enough to enable them to look down on the men sitting below them. The new OC of Shepherd’s squadron sat at one end of the platform, his watching brief to ensure fair play and that the operation was viable. The man leading the briefing was the Operations Officer, second in seniority only to the CO.  He was accompanied by his Intelligence Officer, a captain in the Intelligence Corps, there to supply whatever Intel was available.  Universally known and despised by the combat troops in the field, the Intelligence Corps’ nickname of ‘The Green Slime’ spoke volumes. The captain was barely out of his twenties with a crop of old acne scars across his forehead. A major from the Army Legal Services sat uncomfortably next to him. Dressed incongruously in neatly-pressed camouflage fatigues, he was there in his official capacity to ensure that what the patrol was ordered to do was legal and in accordance with the Rules of Engagement.  His unofficial role, unstated but understood by everyone present, was to ensure that if any shit was attached to the operation, none of it went any higher than the Patrol Commander.
    Jock looked