Kill Zone (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page A

darkness. After that,
there was no more traffic, and the faint glow of a lantern inside the building
was extinguished well before midnight.
    Eventually the
area was in darkness, the cloud cover masked the starlight. They waited another
full hour before assembling the ladder. Shepherd and Todd crept silently towards
the building while the others set up a cordon and covered them. Even if any of
the Taliban managed to escape before the charges were detonated, they would not
avoid the deadly crossfire from the waiting soldiers.
    Shepherd and the
Captain placed the ladder against the wall and, after listening for any sound
from within the building, Shepherd climbed up and began to place shaped charges
against the wall on each floor. He allowed the cables of the initiators to
trail over his shoulder as he moved up. When he’d finished, he slid back down
the ladder without using the rungs, slowing his descent by using his hands and
feet on the outside of the uprights as brakes. He glanced at Todd and mimed
protecting his ears.
    Todd slipped
round the corner and Shepherd followed him, pressing his fingers into his ears
to protect them from the shock wave as he triggered the charges. The blasts of
the three shaped charges came so close together that they could have been a
single explosion.
    Within seconds of
the detonation, Shepherd was on the move, rushing up the ladder with Todd hard
on his heels. The two men stormed through the gaping hole that had been blown
in the top floor wall. A thick fog of dust and debris still hung in the air as
they swung around their AK74s. Four Taliban lay on the floor, killed as they
lay sleeping, their internal organs pulverised by the devastating concussive
force of the blast wave. They moved slowly through the building, clearing the
rooms one at a time.
    The top two
floors were sleeping areas, littered with Taliban dead, but the ground floor
was where the cash was stored and disbursed. As they blew in the walls, the
shaped charges had created a blizzard of hundred dollar bills.   The cash was all in US dollars, traded
for drugs in Pakistan, extorted from businesses in the areas they controlled,
or plundered from the avalanches of cash that the Americans had been pouring
into the country in their attempts to buy the loyalty of warlords and tribal
elders. Stacked on the floor were crates of ammunition, a few rocket-propelled
grenades and a rack of AK 47s.
    They turned over
the last bodies, three men killed as they slept around the fire on the ground
floor. Their faces were contorted in their death agony, but none of them had
the distinctive milky white eye of Ahmad Khan. ‘He’s not here,’ Shepherd said.
‘We missed him. Bastard.’ He looked over at the Captain.   ‘No point in leaving what’s left of the
cash and weapons and ammo for any Taliban who turn up later,’ he said. ‘Flip
your goggles up or turn your back while I get a nice fire going for them. The
flare in your goggles will blind you for ten minutes if you don’t.’
    He dragged a few
bits of bedding, rags and broken chairs and tables together in the centre of
the room, kicked the embers of the fire across the floor and then stacked boxes
of the Taliban’s ammunition next to the pile. He surveyed his handiwork for a
moment, then scooped up a stray $100 bill and set fire to it.   He dropped it onto the pile of debris
and waited until it was well alight before murmuring into his throat mic,
‘Coming out’.
    Todd climbed out
through the hole in the wall first. As Shepherd moved to follow him, he heard
the whiplash crack of an assault rifle and saw Todd fall backwards. There was a
second crack as the Captain dropped to the ground, gouts of blood pumping from
his throat. Shepherd had seen no muzzle flash but heard answering fire from the
SAS cordon and swung up his own weapon, loosing off a burst, firing blind just
to keep the muj heads down before he slid down the ladder and ran over to Todd
and crouched next to him.
    Todd lay