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KILL
ZONE
    By Stephen Leather
    ****

 
    October 2002.
    Afghanistan.

 
 
    Spider Shepherd
squatted on his heels outside his tent, drinking his first brew of the day from
a battered mug as he watched the wind stirring dust devils from the dirt floor
of the compound. The dust covered every surface, leaving everything as brown
and drab as the wintry Afghan hills that surrounded him. Unshaven and wearing a
tee-shirt and fatigues worn and sun-faded from long use, Shepherd drank the
last of his brew and tossed the dregs into the dirt. ‘Why does a brew never
taste right out here?’ he asked.
    Sitting next to
him with his legs outstretched was Geordie Mitchell, an SAS medic who was a
couple of years older than Shepherd. ‘That’d be one of those rhetorical
questions, would it?’ said Geordie. He had a floppy hat pulled low over his
head. His hair was thinning and his scalp was always the first area to burn
under the hot Afghan sun.
    Shepherd stood up
and stretched. ‘It just never tastes right, that’s all.’
    ‘It’s because we
use bottled water, plus the altitude we’re at affects the boiling point of the
water, plus the milk is crap. Plus the sand gets everywhere.’ Geordie stood up
and looked at his watch, a rugged Rolex Submariner. ‘Soon be time for morning
prayers,’ he said.
    The two men
strolled across the compound, their AK47s hanging on slings on their backs. They
heard raised voices at the entrance to the compound and headed in that
direction.
    They found a
young SAS officer, Captain Todd, in the middle of a furious altercation with the
guard at the gates. Like all the Regiment’s officers, Harry Todd had been
seconded to the SAS from his own regiment for a three-year tour of duty, and
was on his first trip with them.   He’d only been in Afghanistan for two months and he was finding it tough
going. As if his Oxford, Sandhurst and The Guards background was not already
enough to raise hackles among the men he nominally led, Todd’s blond hair
flopped over his eyes like a poor man’s Hugh Grant and, despite his youth, his
nervous habit of clearing his throat made him sound like some ancient brigadier
harrumphing over the Daily Telegraph in the Army & Navy Club.
    Shepherd had
managed to avoid the Captain so far, which suited him just fine. The Major had
realised that Todd was going to be an awkward fit and soon after he’d arrived
he had detached him from the Squadron to the Intelligence Clearing Centre,
largely with the aim of keeping him from getting under everybody’s feet. The
Clearing Centre was where all the intelligence received was collated and
evaluated. It came from a variety of sources; satellite and drone surveillance
imagery, communication intercepts from GCHQ, and humint – human
intelligence – in all its varied forms, from “eyes on” information from
SAS observation posts right down to tip-offs of often dubious value from
assorted spies, grasses and ordinary Afghans with grudges against their
neighbours.    Todd’s job was
to sift the intelligence as it came in and then brief the OC - the Boss - at
the morning prayers held at 0800 every day. Like documents passing across some
bureaucrat’s desk, the intelligence was divided into three categories: “For
Immediate Action” that might be acted on within hours or even minutes;
“Pending”, for events that might be coming up in the near future; and “File For
Future Use”. Documents in the latter category often disappeared into the back
of a filing cabinet and never saw the light of day again. Much of his work was
humdrum and routine, but Todd had clearly been looking for an opportunity to
show his worth and by the look of it, he had decided that today was the day.
    Todd was standing
next to an Afghan in a black dishdasha, with an AK 74 slung across his back.
Initially Shepherd was more interested in the weapon than the Afghan - its
orange plastic furniture and magazine made it easy to identify as the updated
and improved