Spider Shepherd: SAS: #1 by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

Fan, the highest mountain in the Brecon Beacons, with a fully-loaded bergen. The fourth week of the hills phase had been a killer. The instructors - the Directing Staff – called it test week and it consisted of six marches on consecutive days with increasing distances and weights carried. The final day was a forty mile march across the Brecon Beacons with a fifty-five pound bergen which had to be completed in less than twenty hours. It had been pouring down with rain the entire march but Shepherd and Liam had completed it in a little over eighteen hours. Those that hadn’t failed or quit went on to do fourteen weeks of weapons, vehicle, demolitions and patrol tactics before they were flown to Belize for the six-week jungle training course.
    ‘I’m not pissed off,’ said Shepherd. ‘Just a bit disillusioned I guess. I don’t feel like we’re getting anywhere, you know?’
    ‘We’ve flown half way around the world,’ laughed Liam. ‘That not good enough for you?’
    Shepherd grinned. ‘You know what I mean, you daft sod.  I thought we’d be part of the elite, the absolute ultimate in soldiering, but-’ he dropped his voice and gestured around them. ‘I mean, this is supposed to be the best Regiment in the world but there’s a real lack of intensity in a lot of the training we’ve been doing. I was more tested on some of the stuff I did with the Paras, and I don’t rate some of the guys we’re training with. A few are keen enough but the others…’  He shrugged. ‘Some of the guys here just aren’t putting in the effort. Seems to me they’re doing the minimum, just enough to get by.’
    ‘Fair comment,’ said Liam. ‘But not everyone wants to be an action hero like us. Some of them will be happy enough with a base or admin post, or signals.’
    ‘Action hero?’
    Liam laughed. ‘You know what I mean. You love it, Dan. The guns, the flash bangs, the jumping out of planes. You’re an adrenaline junkie.’
    ‘Bollocks.’
    ‘You just don’t see it, but it’s true.’ He held up his hands. ‘Hey, I love it as much as you do. That’s why I wanted to join the SAS. Best unit in the army, no question.’
    ‘I’m not doing it for the buzz,’ said Shepherd.
    Liam raised one eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
    ‘Seriously, I’m doing it because the SAS are the best, like you said. The Paras are great, but even they don’t come close.’ He looked around to check that none of the Directing Staff were within earshot. ‘To be honest, I don’t rate some of the trainers and their “big time” attitudes either.’
    ‘I know what you mean,’ Liam said. ‘They’re supposed to lead by example, aren’t they? But a couple of them got the local tribesmen to build their bashas for them - and they’re a lot more luxurious than the others have got, let alone ours. And then they spend a lot of time lying around in them, lording it over the rest of us.’ 
    Only the oldest SAS men had ever served in Malaysia but the use of “bazaar Malay” words was still common in the Regiment.  Barrack rooms, jungle shelters and accommodation areas anywhere in the world were always referred to as the “basha” - the Malay word for hut or shelter.
    ‘That three weeks of “Hard Routine” we did,’ Shepherd said, ‘two-man patrols, carrying minimum kit, sleeping on the ground and eating minimum cold rations, with no cooking allowed - that was the real deal and the way it should be every day, trying to replicate what it’ll be like when we’re actually on active service out in the real world. That’s all I’m saying.’
    ‘You’re a masochist, mate,’ said Liam.
    By now, Geordie Mitchell and Jim “Jimbo” Shortt had also wandered over to join them. Jimbo was a couple of years older than the rest of the team. His pale blue eyes seemed faded by the sun and even in his mid-twenties, there were stress lines etched into his forehead.  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
    ‘Dan’s having a moan about the