By Stephen Leather
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Published by:
Stephen Leather at Smashwords
Copyright (c) 2015 by Stephen Leather
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CYPRUS.
November 1998.
Dan “Spider” Shepherd was sipping his first coffee of the day as the sweat from his morning run slowly dried on his skin. He’d take a shower in a moment, but for now he was content just to relax and take in the scene around him. To the far north, the listening station’s gleaming white radomes looked like giant mushrooms growing out of the pine forest cloaking the flanks of the mountains. The summit of Mount Olympus had been dusted with the first snow of the winter during the night, but at Akrotiri, 6,000 feet below, it was already hot enough for heat waves to be rising from the shimmering white salt flats towards the north of the Sovereign Base Area. He looked over at Jock McIntyre. ‘What is it they say about Cyprus?’ he said. ‘Ski before lunch, and you can be sunbathing and swimming in the sea couple of hours later.’
‘Know what else they say about Cyprus?’ growled Jock in his grating Glaswegian accent. ‘It’s even less exciting than kissing your grandma.’ Craggy-faced and beginning to grey at the temples, Jock was several years older than his patrol mates. He’d grown up in the Maryhill district of Glasgow and delighted in conforming to every stereotype of the down-market Scot, right down to Irn-Bru and deep-fried Mars Bars. He gave a theatrical sigh. ‘God, I’m bored. Just look at it.’ The sweep of his hand took in the dusty runways, Hardened Aircraft Shelters and admin buildings of the RAF section which occupied most of the SBA. The SAS compound tucked away in a corner, separated by a razor wire fence. A cluster of tents and Portakabins with makeshift canvas awnings to screen them from the Cypriot sun served as accommodation for the two SAS men permanently stationed there, a couple of “scaleybacks” - signallers - and any SAS patrols, like Shepherd’s, who were temporarily based there.
The tents were drawn up in a circle like a wagon train from the Old West, surrounding the concrete admin building, a Cold War hangover still protected by berms and blast walls. Shepherd and his patrol had sole possession of a converted shipping container with a wheezing air conditioning unit attached to the outside that offered some relief from the fiercer heat of mid-summer. Now it was December and the patrol members were happy to soak up the warm, early morning sunlight, perching on upturned crates or any other improvised seating they could find.
‘I’ve run around it, through it, under it and over it,’ Jock said, warming to his theme. ‘And it still doesn’t get any better. I thought Maryhill was dull but it has got nothing on this place. I’m fed up to the back teeth, but no matter how much I beg and plead for an op, or some training, or any kind of action, the Head Shed just ignores me.’
‘God, I wish I could,’ Geordie Mitchell said with feeling. ‘Can you not change the frigging record, Jock? The only thing more boring than being at Akrotiri is listening to you whine about it.’ Pale-faced, pale-eyed and with thinning, sandy hair, Geordie looked like everyone’s idea of an unhealthy specimen, but appearances could be deceptive. He could carry a load in his bergen that would have crippled a lesser man, and would still be slogging onwards when many apparently fitter men had collapsed in shattered heaps. The two of them were best buddies, constantly bickering and sparring like an old married couple but at the merest hint of criticism of either of them by an outsider they would instantly close ranks.
Shepherd stirred himself. ‘I hear you Jock, but I’ve spoken to Base every day with our Sitrep, and every day it has been the same: Nothing To Report. The Ops Officer doesn’t even get back to me. He’s supposed to be your mate, Jock, not mine, so if he’s not talking to you, he won’t be talking to anybody.’ The Ops Officer, Jamie, an “Honourable” from an aristocratic family with a cut glass accent and a Hugh Grant hairstyle, had formed an unlikely friendship with Jock when they were serving in the South American jungles together, tracking down drug runners.
The fourth member of the patrol, Jim “Jimbo” Shortt, stretched his lanky frame and yawned. ‘Like it or not, we’re in Cyprus and people pay good money to go on holiday here, so slap on some Factor 15, Jock, park your grumbling Glaswegian arse in a deck chair and see if you can turn that rancid milk complexion a fetching shade of pink.’ Jimbo stretched out even further and sighed. ‘Seriously, this is the life.’
‘I’ll turn you a fetching shade of black and blue in a minute,’ Jock growled. ‘Sod Cyprus, if they’ve nothing better for us to do, why won’t they let us have some home leave? It’s been the neck end of a year since we last set eyes on Hereford.’
‘You know why,’ Jimbo said. ‘As long as de Vale has any pull, he’ll be keeping us in exile, well out of the way.’
‘He’s already home and hosed anyway,’ Geordie said. ‘His version of events has gone unchallenged and is now the official version, and once it’s official…’ He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Shepherd knew he was right. De Vale, the former Squadron OC, was notorious among SAS men for never missing an opportunity to “big himself up” and for volunteering his men for any op, no matter how reckless or poorly planned. A training exercise De Vale had put together had cost Shepherd’s best mate, Liam, his life. De Vale bore direct responsibility because not only had he ordered the exercise, but he had also overflown Shepherd’s patrol in the support helicopter while they were clinging to a capsized raft in frigid, sub-Arctic waters. Even though they fired a series of distress flares, de Vale had ordered the heli pilot to ignore them and return to base, leaving his men to their fate. A Norwegian coastguard helicopter eventually picked up the other members of the patrol, with Shepherd on the point of death from hypothermia, but by the time the winchman returned for Liam, it was too late. He had slipped beneath the waves and his body was never found.
De Vale had claimed that he was defending the Regiment’s ‘warrior traditions’ by leaving the patrol literally to sink or swim, but Shepherd felt the officer had risked their lives for some worthless point of principle and Liam had paid the price. His SAS comrades agreed with him and, faced with a near-mutiny, the Regiment hurriedly convened a Court of Inquiry. However, to no one’s great surprise, despite damning evidence from neutral observers and participants and Shepherd’s own furious denunciation of de Vale, it concluded that the death had been “a tragic accident for which no blame could be attached to any individual”. Jimbo had summed up the feelings of the SAS men when the verdict was announced - ‘the words “wash” and “white” spring to mind’ he’d said, with venom.
Soon afterwards de Vale was promoted and posted to Special Forces HQ in London, where one of his first actions was to issue a “Warning Order” to Shepherd’s patrol for an imminent active service operation. It meant that they were put into immediate isolation and quarantine, in the SAS’s secret special training camp away from the regiment’s Hereford base. Cut off from the outside world, with even their phone conversations to their wives or girlfriends monitored, they were then sent overseas and could not legally resign from the Army until they were back in the UK, having completed any active service commitments the Regiment required. It was a devious move, and pretty much fool-proof. Shepherd and his team had no choice other than to sit tight and wait it out.
That had been well over six months ago now, and they had been on active service in Sierra Leone and the Middle East, or on stand-by in Cyprus ever since. Shepherd had not seen his wife Sue, nor his new-born baby son Liam in all that time. Requests to return to the UK on leave were ignored and his attempt to fly Sue and Liam out to Cyprus for a visit had also been vetoed. The intense focus required while they were on active service had served to silence the angry clamour of his thoughts for a while, but now they were again just going through the motions in Cyprus, it left him with way too much time for reflection and resentment.
His thoughts were interrupted by a discreet cough. A scaleyback from the Communications Centre - the only soldier in the SAS compound wearing a regulation army uniform - was standing there. ‘Bloody hell, you should be in the SAS, mate,’ Jimbo said, with the ghost of a wink to the others. ‘I never even heard you coming.’
The signaller gave him an uncertain smile and then switched his gaze to Shepherd. ‘Sunray Ops wants a one-to-one with 528 on the Red Line at 15.30.’
In the spare, clipped jargon that ruled military life, he was telling Shepherd that the Operations Officer in Hereford wanted to speak to him on the Top Secret line at half past three that afternoon. Sunray was the Ops Officer and 528 was Shepherd’s personal Operations Number. Everyone in the SAS was given an Operations Number on entry to the Regiment. On ops it allowed the individual to order resupply items over the air without giving any personal details, since the quartermasters department kept a record of sizes for every individual. The process was secure, easy and saved time, and it also meant that details of casualties suffered abroad could be transmitted quickly and securely back to the UK.
Shepherd had put in a request for a one-on-one with the Ops Officer the previous day, though without any great hopes of success. The fact that Jamie had set one up straight away gave him hope that something might finally be in the air. ‘There you are,’ Shepherd said to Jock. ‘The answer to a maiden’s prayer: we may have a job on at last.’
Just before three-thirty that afternoon, Shepherd sauntered into the Communications Centre and was waved towards the sound-proof booth used for communications on the Red Line. In the SAS “need to know” applied here as everywhere else: if you didn’t, you would be kept out of the loop - hence the sound-proof booth. When the Scaley had patched him through, Shepherd found that he could hear the Operations Officer as clear as a bell.
‘Right Spider, what’s the story? And don’t give me any bad news for God’s sake, there’s already a shit-storm going on around here.’
‘There’s no story, Jamie,’ Shepherd said, ‘and that’s the problem. We’ve been stuck in Cyprus twiddling our thumbs for weeks now. The boredom’s driving Jock mad and he’s sending the rest of us up the wall by bumping his gums about it. Can you not find us an op or swing some leave back in Blighty? My son’s first birthday is coming up soon and I’ve barely set eyes on him since he was born. I’m his dad and he won’t even know who I am.’
‘I hope you know that I would do something about it if I could, but the orders came down from on high to keep you guys on a permanent rotation of Ops and Standby until further notice, and I can’t countermand them. You seem to have pissed someone off mightily up there.’
‘You’ve got that right,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’ll tell you the whole story one day, and when I catch the gentleman in question out of uniform, I’ll be punching his teeth so far down his throat, he’ll have to stick a toothbrush up his arse to clean them.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Is there really nothing you can point us at, even a bit of training, just as long as it’s somewhere else?’
‘Hold on,’ Jamie said. ‘There are no ops I can send you on, but I’ll see what else is doing.’
As he waited, Shepherd could hear the faint rustle of papers and the clack of Jamie’s computer keyboard down the line. ‘It’s not an op or training,’ Jamie said at last, ‘but you can have a jolly, if you like. There’s a Hercules leaving Akrotiri for Kathmandu tomorrow morning. Get yourselves on it, if you like the idea. The Hercules will be staying in Nepal for a week and you’ll then return to Cyprus with it, but take all your operational kit with you in case you have to redeploy from there. Otherwise the trip will just be a pleasure cruise. It’s not Blighty I’m afraid, but it’s better than nothing. Report to the Military Attaché at the British Embassy in Kathmandu and leave your military kit with him. Do some trekking, climb Everest if you want to, but make contact with an ex-Regiment climber called “Taff the Rope” while you’re there, will you? We’ve lost track of him but he’s somewhere in Nepal so the Military Attaché should be able to put you in touch with him. Oh and Spider? You think you’re the only one who’s getting earache from Jock? I’ve been listening to his moaning every day for the past month as well, so tell him I hope this will shut him up. Enjoy your holiday.’
Shepherd thanked him and hurried back to the others to break the news. ‘Great news, ladies,’ he said.
‘Where are we off to?’ asked Jock. ‘Singapore? Bangkok? Vegas? Sydney?’
‘None of those, Cinderella. There’s a Herc flying to Nepal tomorrow morning and we’re booked on it, Club Class.’
‘Club Class in a Herc,’ Geordie said. ‘That will be when they warm the steel floor before they make us lie on it, will it?’
Shepherd raised an eyebrow. ‘Not complaining, are you? You can stay here if you want.’
‘Hell no,’ Geordie said. ‘We can get some high altitude trekking and climbing in while we’re there and after a week of that, even a miserable Scots git like Jock might be glad to be back in Cyprus with his feet up.’
‘I’ll check in with Air Movements right now,’ Jock said. ‘Just to make sure we can really get on that flight.’ He hurried off.
They were still sitting on empty crates outside the shipping container, having yet another brew, when Jock came back. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve just seen over by Air Movements,’ he said. ‘Gul the Gurkha. He’s on his way to Nepal on that Hercules and he’s overnighting in the transit accommodation.’
‘Who’s Gul?’ Shepherd said.
‘You won’t know him. He was before your time in the Regiment and he only did one tour and then left because he wasn’t comfortable with the individual thinking philosophy. He was much more comfortable in the group relationships of the Gurkhas, but he was a brilliant soldier, as brave as a lion, and he sailed through the Selection course.’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Shepherd.
‘He’s a living legend,’ said Jock. ‘He did a lot of operations when he was here and developed a great reputation. It was a shame he didn’t stay longer. And I tell you what, you’d much rather have him as an ally than an enemy, because he was a real warrior. When the Falklands war was on, Gul used to infiltrate the Argentinian lines during the night. He’d by-pass or kill their sentries, sneak into one of their eight-man tents and slit the throat of one of the sleeping soldiers. Then he’d gut him and spread his entrails all over the floor of the tent, and then exfiltrate back to his own lines. They say you could hear the screams when the Argentinians woke up in the morning from a mile away. Did wonders for their morale.’
‘I’m guessing the rest of them wouldn’t sleep too easily after that,’ Geordie said. ‘You wonder who’d greenlight something like that.’
‘I’m guessing he was using his initiative,’ said Jock. ‘Anyway, I said we’d see him for a few beers tonight. You can ask him yourself.’
‘After a build-up like that, I’m not sure how wise that would be,’ Shepherd said with a laugh.
‘No danger,’ Jock said. ‘The funny thing is, off-duty, you couldn’t meet a nicer, gentler guy.’
They met Gul in the Transit Mess that evening. He had the typical Gurkha build: short and wiry, with dark skin and jet black hair. He could have been anywhere between his early forties and his mid fifties and the only outward signs of his fearsome reputation as a warrior were his fierce, challenging stare and the proud way he carried himself. But he also had a ready smile and a dry sense of humour, and Shepherd warmed to him at once. The others drank beer as they chatted, but Gul stuck to the customary Gurkha drink of dark navy rum that he gulped rather than sipped.
‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,’ Shepherd said. ‘To me it looks, smells and tastes like engine oil.’
Gul shrugged. ‘All Gurkhas drink it; it’s even written into our terms of service that we’re entitled to a tot of rum a day. On dark nights it keeps out the cold and we also believe that it stops the mosquitos from biting us.’
‘You might be right about that,’ Shepherd said. ‘One whiff of that and I’d definitely be buzzing off somewhere else.’
‘So why are you heading for Nepal, Gul?’ Geordie said. ‘Bit of home leave?’
‘No, I’m on my way home for good. I’ve served my full twenty-two years now, but I’m still on the payroll for a few more weeks, helping out on the MoD’s annual Gurkha remittance and recruiting flight. We’re taking the pension payments out to the retired Gurkha soldiers in Nepal. It’s like Christmas, New Year’s Eve and the fourth of July rolled into one for Nepalis, because the Gurkha pension is often the only cash income for a man’s entire village. The army money is absolutely vital for the local economy.’
‘That’s pretty much how it goes in Hereford,’ said Shepherd. ‘A big chunk of the local economy depends on the Regiment.’
‘At the same time, the Army Gurkha Team is running the annual selection courses for potential recruits to the Brigade of Gurkhas,’ Gul continued. ‘As the Army has downsized, the competition for places in the recruitment process has got tougher and tougher, but to be a Gurkha soldier is still almost every young man’s ambition in Nepal.’ He smiled. ‘And of course we remain the world’s most ferocious fighters.’
‘Present company excepted,’ Jock said, grinning.
Gul’s smile widened. ‘Perhaps, although it would be an interesting contest. In the Anglo-Nepal war of 1814-16, Gurkhas so frightened the British soldiers that they decided to recruit us to fight alongside them, instead of against them, and we’ve been part of the British army ever since. We Gurkhas fear no one and our war cry remains the same: “Jaya Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali” - Glory to Great Kali, Gurkhas approach.’
‘Who’s Kali?’ Geordie asked, pronouncing it to rhyme with “alley”.
‘A four-armed god, whose hands hold a trident, a sword, a severed head and a bowl for catching the blood from the head.’
‘A nice friendly god then,’ Jimbo said with a laugh. ‘My favourite sort.’
‘Are there no other jobs for Gurkha boys than soldiering?’ Shepherd asked.
Gul shrugged. ‘There are some in the commercial security sector but those are invariably reserved for ex-Gurkha soldiers. The only other source of cash income is in the tourist climbing industry but that’s a closed shop to anyone outside of the Sherpas. So the pressures on my country’s young men are already considerable and the political situation in Nepal is only making that worse. The Ruling Family is imploding, dogged by constant claims of corruption, and the main opposition is a Maoist Party with a violent revolutionary agenda. There have already been a number of bloody attacks on remote police stations and district headquarters, and the unrest has now spread to the capital, Kathmandu. In fact things are so desperate that I’ve even been approached to enter Nepalese politics myself.’
‘Why you, Gul?’ Geordie said. He paused for a moment and then hastily added ‘No disrespect intended but, well, you’re just a squaddie like us.’
‘Well, in other countries retired people watch football, but in Nepal we watch soldiering, and though I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, I am quite well known in my country.’
Jock interrupted him. ‘Quite well known? Do me a favour, you’re bloody famous and you know it: the first ever Special Forces Gurkha, with a string of citations and decorations for bravery. I don’t know how you’ll do in politics though. From what I know of you, you’re straight as a die and a man who tells it like it is - an honest man, in fact, and if Nepalese politics is anything like ours, that’s not exactly a qualification for the job.’
Gul smiled. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Anyway, I’ve not made up my mind yet. I’m going to travel round the country with the pension payment delivery and the Gurkha selection courses, sound people out in different parts of Nepal and try to get a feeling for whether they think that I should run for office or not. There will be some risk if I take that path, but if I can help to save my country from civil war, I have to do it. It’s my duty.’
Jock disappeared behind the bar and re-emerged with a bottle of whisky and what was left of the dark rum. ‘A toast then, to Nepal’s next Prime Minister,’ he said, filling their glasses to the brim.
A series of increasingly incoherent toasts followed: to Anglo-Nepali friendship, the Brigade of Gurkhas, the SAS and the “Toon Army” - the last a sop to Geordie who had just heard the previous day’s football results from England and was celebrating a derby win for Newcastle United.
It was well on the wrong side of midnight when they stumbled off to grab a few hours sleep and they took off aboard the Hercules the next morning with dry mouths and pounding heads. As usual Jock and Geordie spent much of the flight asleep. Both had the soldier’s knack of grabbing a few minutes shut-eye whenever the opportunity presented itself and on a long-range flight on a ponderous Hercules, those minutes would stretch into hours. They could drop off almost anywhere - even standing up, Jimbo used to joke - and could sleep through everything including the thunder of the Herc’s engines. Yet at a whisper or a touch on their shoulder, they would both be instantly awake and alert, reaching for their weapons even as their eyes were opening.
Jimbo was also dozing in his netting seat, his chin nodding onto his chest, but Shepherd was wide awake, staring unseeing at the Herc’s metal roof, his mind thousands of miles away, imagining Sue bathing their baby, feeding him and putting him to bed. The ache in his heart was almost unbearable and he had to force himself to think about something else.
After transiting Saudi Arabia, they overnighted in Dubai. There was no crew change-over - the same crew would stay with the aircraft for the duration of the trip. Before leaving Dubai, a number of ammunition boxes were loaded onto the Herc. ‘Why the ammo, Gul?’ Shepherd had asked. ‘Is there a war on?’
‘They’re old boxes, they’re full of cash now,’ said Gul. ‘It’s actually the cash for the Gurkha pensioners. They prefer US Dollars because they can get a better rate of exchange.’
After leaving Dubai and flying over part of northern India, the Hercules seemed to be climbing forever before reaching the height of Kathmandu. On the final part of the flight, they had tremendous views of the high Himalayan peaks, with the stunning panorama of Annapurna, K2, Everest and many other nameless snow-capped peaks laid out before them.
The flight was uneventful but the landing at Kathmandu was hairy to say the least. The city sat 1,600 metres above sea level in Nepal’s central valley, where the warm air rising from the plains met the sheer wall of the high Himalayas. The resulting turbulence threw the Hercules around like a rag doll in a hurricane as the pilot fought to land the giant aircraft and bring it to a halt before he ran out of runway. After landing and bypassing customs and immigration, courtesy of their Nepalese hosts, Shepherd looked around him with interest as they made the short drive into the centre of Kathmandu.
‘Welcome to my beautiful country,’ Gul said, beaming with pride. The patchwork of emerald green rice-paddies and vivid yellow-green millet fields on the valley floor alongside the fast-rushing river gave way to terraces of crops clinging to the precipitous hillsides. Above them rose an endless array of snow-capped peaks, filling the horizon from east to west. Shepherd could pick out the shark’s tooth outline of Kangchenjunga and the sloping summit plateau of Annapurna, but to his disappointment, the highest of all, Everest, was obscured by the whirling cloud of a snow storm engulfing the summit.
He switched his gaze back to the river flowing alongside the road. ‘What river’s that, Gul?’ he asked.
‘The Bagmati, it’s a holy river to Hindus and Buddhists alike. Its waters are believed to purify us and there are many temples alongside it. According to our traditions, the bodies of Hindu dead must first be dipped three times into the river before being cremated on its banks. The chief mourner, who lights the funeral pyre, must also bathe in the river after the cremation.’
‘I was just fancying a dip until you told us that,’ laughed Jock.
As they approached the city Shepherd could see the copper and gold pagoda roofs of the Hindu temples glinting in the sunlight. Kathmandu was much bigger than he had imagined, with a dense urban sprawl of four- and five-storey apartment blocks, many painted in vivid colours - lime green, lavender, orange - that dazzled the eye against the deep azure blue background of the sky. However at street-level the dust and traffic fumes created a brown haze as bad as any smog he’d ever seen.
After they had been dropped off in the city centre, they strolled around for a while, with Gul pointing out some of the sights. ‘Most of the tourists stay in the Thamel district where all the guest houses, restaurants, and shops are concentrated,’ he said.
‘Do we look like tourists?’ Jimbo said with feigned disgust. ‘We want to see the real Kathmandu.’
Gul grinned. ‘Maybe Jhochhen Tol would be more your style then; it used to be known as “Freak Street” in the days in the 1960s and 1970s when Kathmandu was on every hippy’s itinerary… But on second thoughts, maybe not, “Love and Peace” isn’t really SAS style is it? Nor Gurkha-style come to that.’
Shepherd and his mates parted company from Gul outside the British Embassy, but arranged to meet him that night for a meal. They found the Military Attaché, George Jenner, in his office at the Embassy. An urbane, Sandhurst-trained career officer, he greeted them with a broad smile. ‘Welcome to Nepal,’ he said. ‘Anything I can do to help you, just ask. You will need to keep in touch with us, of course, and if you’re going trekking up-country, you will find that comms are a bit of a problem - as you may have noticed, there are quite a few mountains around here and they do tend to interfere with communications. But you can reach this department at any time, day or night, from anywhere in Nepal by using the communications system in the Nepalese Police Posts; there’s one in every town and village. I’m afraid I won’t be available in person after today because I’m going trekking with the Gurkha recruitment team.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ said Shepherd.
Jenner grinned. ‘I’m an ex-Gurkha Officer myself, I simply wouldn’t miss it for the world. But my clerk will look after all your kit and will pass on any messages that come in from Hereford. So if you can make contact through one of the police posts on a daily basis, he’ll keep you updated. Now, anything else I can help you with?’
‘There might be,’ Shepherd said. ‘Do you happen to know a guy called Taff the Rope?’
‘Dai Evans? Yes, I know him. I think he is usually to be found at the Tilcho Hotel, a cheap hotel in Pokhara. It’s three or four hours drive west of here. He’s not a regular visitor to Kathmandu and certainly not to the Embassy; he seems to prefer Nepalese company to ours.’ He hesitated for a few moments, studying them over the rim of his china teacup before continuing. ‘Just one other thing before you go: I believe your old comrade, Gul, was on the same plane as you today.’
‘Not an old comrade of mine,’ Shepherd said, ‘but yes, he flew in with us.’
‘Just a word to the wise then,’ Jenner said. ‘By all means be friendly if you happen to bump into him again, but my advice would be not to get too close to him.’
‘Any particular reason why?’ Jock said, his Glaswegian growl as usual sounding like a declaration of war.
‘Just that I hear he may be harbouring political ambitions,’ Jenner said with a disarming smile, ‘and it wouldn’t do for us to be seen to be actively favouring a member of the opposition in what is quite a sensitive political situation.’
‘Yeah?’ Jock said. ‘Well, he’s a mate and we’re having dinner with him tonight. Get used to it.’
‘It’s nice to see that you haven’t lost any of your diplomatic charm,’ Geordie said to Jock as they walked away from the embassy.
‘Diplomacy my arse,’ Jock said. ‘A mate’s a mate, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Guy’s got a point, though,’ said Shepherd. ‘By hanging out with him, it might look as if the British Government is giving him their support.’
‘So what?” said Jock. ‘He’d make a better politician than the shower we’ve got back in the UK.’
‘No argument here,’ said Shepherd.
They spent the rest of the day exploring Kathmandu and that evening they met up with Gul in a Chinese restaurant. ‘Bloody hell, Gul,’ Jock said, as soon as they were seated. ‘I’ve really been looking forward to my first proper Gurkha curry in years and here we are eating bloody Chinese.’
Gul laughed. ‘Most of the upmarket restaurants in Kathmandu are foreign, my friend, and the best of them are Chinese, so here we are. But next time we meet, we’ll eat Gurkha food. You must come to the recruiting day at the Gurkha base in Pokhara tomorrow. It’s really something to see and there we will eat the real Gurkha food, I promise.’
They left the restaurant much later, after a big meal and quite a few beers and black rums, and strolled back through the still-crowded streets. ‘Bloody hell, will you look at that?’ Jimbo was pointing up the street. Shepherd followed his gaze and saw an aged Nepali carrying a six foot by four foot steel security cabinet on his back up a steep hill. ‘I know from bitter experience that one of those is a four-man lift,’ Jimbo said, ‘but there’s an elderly gent managing it all on his own.’
Gul gave a proud smile. ‘Never underestimate the strength and determination of the Gurkha, my friend. Many of our enemies have made that mistake down the years, and always to their cost.’
Even as they were sauntering along, deep in conversation, Shepherd was still keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. It was so deeply ingrained a part of SAS training that it had become second nature. Now his antennae had detected something in the ebb and flow of the people around them: a group of young men, moving through the crowds behind them with a common purpose.
He double-checked, using the reflection in the windscreen of one of the few cars parked in the street and then alerted the others. ‘We’ve got company,’ he said.
Suddenly sober, everyone’s survival instincts kicked in. From the surrounding alleys a gang of teenage thugs had appeared, armed with a variety of weapons, including Gurkha khukris - vicious knives with a curved blade. The next moment, Shepherd, Gul and the others were locked in a vicious, bloody street brawl with no quarter given, as they fought for their lives. As a thug ran at him, slashing at his face with his khukri, Shepherd swayed back to let the wickedly curved blade whistle past his chest, then doubled his attacker up with a kick to the groin and sent him down and out with a chop to the neck and a stamp with his booted heel to the Nepali’s face as he slumped to the ground.
The next one was already on him, but Shepherd dispatched him with a series of rapid-fire blows: the heel of his hand to the thug’s nose, a raking stamp down the shins and onto the instep - agonising for the victim - and then an elbow to the head put him down.
His last assailant turned and ran for it, even dropping his knife as he did so in his panic to get away, but Shepherd at once turned to target one of the three thugs still surrounding Gul. The Gurkha had already flattened one attacker but was being hard-pressed by the others until Shepherd poleaxed one of them with a blow to the back of his head and spread another’s nose all over his face with a vicious straight-arm punch. Gul meanwhile dealt with the other one, letting out a blood-curdling war cry as he rained down a fusillade of blows on him. Jock, Geordie and Jimbo were finishing off the remnants of the attackers. Battered and bleeding, they scrambled to their feet and stumbled away into the maze of surrounding streets, the last one sped on his way by Jimbo’s Size 12 boot up his backside.
‘That was fun,’ Jock said as they got their breath back. ‘Kathmandu's a lot less boring than Akrotiri any day of the week.’
‘Anyone hurt?’ Shepherd said.
‘Just me,’ Geordie said, examining a deep cut in the side of his hand. ‘Bloody hell, it’s through to the bone. Some of those little bastards had khukris!’
‘Well you’re the patrol medic, aren’t you,’ Jock said, showing not a trace of sympathy. ‘Physician heal thy bloody self, as Shakespeare once said.’
‘In fact that quote comes from the Bible, you ignorant Scots git,’ Geordie said. ‘ And anyway, I’ve got a better idea. It’s a two-handed job, so I’ll tell you what to do while you bloody suture it up for me.’
While Jock patched Geordie up, Shepherd turned to Gul. ‘What was that about?’
‘I don’t know. Street violence like that is almost unknown here. Perhaps they just saw a group of Westerners and thought they’d rob you.’
‘They didn’t seem like they had robbery on their minds,’ said Shepherd. ‘And they can’t have been targeting us deliberately because nobody knew we were in town. Besides, they seemed to be focusing on you, which suggests that you were their target.’
‘He’s right, Gul,’ Jimbo said. ‘They’d followed us from the market area and tried to set up an ambush. It was planned.’
Gul brushed their concerns away. ‘Well, if they were targeting me, it was probably just a case of mistaken identity. Don’t worry about it.’
The following day, Shepherd was coming back from his morning run, chest heaving with the effort required in the thin air, when he saw the Military Attaché striding towards their quarters with a face like thunder. ‘Get your men together,’ he said, ignoring Shepherd’s greeting. When they were all assembled, he let rip. ‘I told you to keep your distance from Gul, but I now discover that not only did you ignore my request but you were also involved in an ugly street brawl with him last night.’
‘News travels fast,’ Shepherd said. ‘ But we were attacked without provocation. What do you expect us to do, let them cut us to pieces?’
‘You should not have been with Gul. As I expressly warned you, it’s an implicit message of British support for his political candidacy, which is not at all the message we wish to send. The Nepalese government is furious and the ambassador has already been summoned to receive a bollocking in person.’
‘So what about our attackers?’ asked Shepherd. ‘What’s being done to trace them? They shouldn’t be too hard to find because they’ll be nursing a few broken noses and black eyes.’
Jenner gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘The Nepalese authorities are keeping a tight lid on the whole affair, because they’re terrified about the detrimental effect that reports of street violence might have on the tourist trade.’ He paused. ‘So, the sooner you four are on the Herc back to Cyprus, the happier I’ll be, and meanwhile I would be grateful if you could avoid making any further waves around here.’
‘So the next time we’re attacked, you’d just like us to lie back and take it, would you?’
Jenner’s eyes hardened. ‘No, I’d like you to make sure there isn’t a next time. And do not see Gul again, that’s an order.’
‘Tough,’ Jock said. ‘You’re not part of our chain of command, so we don’t take orders from you, and we’re seeing Gul this afternoon in Pokhara.’
After their frosty confrontation with Jenner, Shepherd used the Diplomatic Service telegram secure signals system to speak to Jamie, the Ops Officer, back in Hereford and obtain permission to go west.
They then borrowed the MA’s Landrover - without his knowledge, for he’d now left Kathmandu with the Gurkha recruiters. They loaded their operational kit into the Landrover, stocked up with food from the market and then set off for Pokhara. That chilly December afternoon found them on a sports field alongside a spectacular river gorge on the outskirts of Pokhara.
A group of five hundred young Nepalis, all dressed alike in British Army issue physical training kit - blue shorts with a red top and brown canvas shoes - were sitting cross-legged in an atmosphere dripping with tension. They were patiently waiting to be processed, issued with an identifying number and then put through a gruelling series of physical and mental tests. Those that passed would be eligible to join the Brigade of Gurkhas. They were being watched by an audience of several thousand spectators
‘This is just the final stage,’ Gul said. ‘They started with several thousand volunteers and the competition is so fierce that there are always about 25,000 applicants a year, competing for just 200 places. That’s more than 100 for every single place. Recruiting is like the bloody Pied Piper. We send “Galla Wallahs” - former Gurkhas - up into the hills and each of them comes back with a few hundred would-be Gurkha recruits trailing behind him. Most still come from the martial castes: Gurungs and Magars from central Nepal, and Rais and Limbus from the east. They’ve bred soldiers for centuries, but we make sure that Gurkha Selection is free and fair - no one is chosen or excluded because of their caste or their family’s influence. In fact it’s almost the only thing in Nepal that isn’t governed by an accident of birth, geography or caste. Becoming a Gurkha remains a great source of pride and families sacrifice a lot to help their sons prepare for Gurkha Selection. The earnings of those who succeed are enormous by Nepalese standards, enabling their parents to retire and securing the future of their families, but it’s a brutal process; those who fail, return to their villages with only their bus fares.’
‘What’s with the red dot?’ Geordie asked with his usual irreverence, pointing to the mark that many of the young candidates had painted on their foreheads. ‘Is that to help the snipers sight on them?’
‘It’s what we call a tilaka,’ Gul said. ‘It’s a religious thing, before they travel here for Selection - and some have travelled day and night for three days from their villages to get here - they are blessed by a Brahmin who paints a red tilaka on their foreheads. Most of them get a haircut as well.’
Gul explained that the applicants were sorted into groups of fifty and each group rotated through the assessment, ranging from a timed run over an army obstacle course, press-ups, pull-ups, carrying a man over a hundred yard dash using the fireman’s lift, and finally a lung-bursting “doko run”.
‘What’s a doko run?’ Shepherd said.
‘It’s a three mile run carrying a seventy pound doko or rucksack, over dusty, rough and rocky tracks, up a gradient that climbs 1500 feet. The doko is the traditional wicker basket carried on our backs, with most of the weight borne by a broad strap across our foreheads. It’s the toughest physical challenge any British Army recruit has to face, but most applicants succeed.’
‘In the SAS we have the Fan Dance, where we run up and down a mountain,’ said Geordie. ‘It separates the men from the boys, all right.’
‘All the Gurkha applicants are fit to start with,’ said Gul. ‘Fitness is never an issue. The hardest tests to pass are the mental and written ones. The candidates may never have heard English spoken by a native speaker, but if they join the Gurkhas they have to respond instantly to orders in English. So even before they start training we need to be sure that they have the ability to understand and respond instantly to orders. It’s a ruthless process - a bit like SAS Selection.’
‘Not really,’ Jock said. ‘Because if there’d been an intelligence test in SAS Selection let alone a written one, Geordie would never have got through it. He can’t add two and two without a calculator and his handwriting looks like a spider has had diarrhoea and then crawled across a piece of paper.’
‘At least I can write and talk,’ Geordie said. ‘All you and your fellow Picts do is grunt at each other.’
‘What happens if they fail?’ Shepherd said. ‘Is that it?’
‘Not immediately, they can reapply up to three more times until they’re twenty-one, but after that, it’s over for them. It’s heart-breaking to see the faces of those who’ve failed for the final time, because they know that for their families, so much depends on them.’
They fell silent as the tests began. Many in the crowd were former Gurkhas themselves and they watched every move with critical eyes. The group being selected carried out the tests impassively, their faces revealing none of the physical strain and psychological pressure they must have been feeling. ‘Hell fire, Gul,’ Shepherd said, ‘none of them have even broken sweat.’
Gul shrugged. ‘We’re used to living and working at altitude, and everything here is man-carried because our mountain tracks aren’t well-suited to vehicles or horses and carts. But there are a lot of other things for us to get used to. When I joined the Gurkhas, I’d never seen Western food - I brought a piece of yak’s milk cheese with me, wrapped in a leaf, in case I couldn’t eat the Army food.’
‘You weren’t wrong there,' Shepherd said. ‘You don’t have to come from Nepal to find Army food inedible.’
‘I and many of those selected with me also had to be taught to use a knife and fork,’ Gul continued. ‘And after a lifetime of wearing sandals or flip-flops, or going barefoot, we had to adjust to wearing army boots and learn to tie shoelaces. We’d never seen flush toilets or showers either; we used to wash every morning in the icy meltwater of the river. And of course Nepal is a land-locked country, so none of us had ever seen the sea. But do you want to know the strangest thing of all? We live our lives within sight of snow - Annapurna, Everest and the Himalayan peaks fill our northern horizon - but it never snows here in the valleys and the first time most Gurkhas ever experience snow is when they arrive at Catterick for their basic training. Selection is always in December so they do their training in January and February every year.’
‘Poor sods,’ Geordie said with feeling. ‘Catterick’s a shit hole at the best of times, but in winter it’s the arsehole of the world.’
After completing the other tests, the candidates did the doko run, sprinting and scrambling up the steep slopes, indifferent to the magnificent backdrop of the Himalayas. Many collapsed as soon as they reached the finishing line.
‘When do they find out if they’ve passed Selection?’ Jimbo said.
‘Not until later,’ Gul said. ‘There is such pressure to succeed and the price of failure is so high, that some young men have killed themselves after failing. So rather than risk of them throwing themselves into the gorge, we wait until we can break the news in a slightly safer, more controlled environment.’
The applicants were sent off in batches and after watching the first two groups, Jock suddenly said, ‘I’m going to see how they measure up.’ He stripped off his jacket, grabbed one of the spare weighted packs and joined the next group as they began their run up the hill. He trailed in half way down the group and returned, mortified to his friends. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, drenched in sweat and still struggling to regain his breath. ‘They would all pass the SAS Selection course easily.’ He paused. ‘Though I would have beaten them all, of course, if it hadn’t been for the altitude.’
‘Yeah, yeah, the altitude,’ Geordie said, rolling his eyes. ‘That and a dozen beers and a five course dinner last night. That's what you get for being bleeding greedy.’
With all the candidates now sitting in rows back on the sports field, the Gurkha recruiters conferred and then began calling out the numbers of the successful ones.
‘I hate this part,’ Gul said. ‘I can’t stop myself thinking about the heartbreak for those who aren’t called. The lucky ones will be on their way in a few hours; they’ll be issued with their kit and measured for their “mufti” - the civilian suits we wear when off-duty and off-base. But the rest have to go back other villages and dash the hopes, and probably break the hearts, of their families.’
An officious looking Nepali was addressing the crowd through a megaphone. After thanking the candidates, the recruiters and seemingly, everyone else who happened to be in Pokhara that day, he ended by calling on Gul to stand up. The ovation their friend received almost but not quite, drowned out the Nepali’s next words. ‘And please show your appreciation for our British friends from the famous SAS Regiment for coming to Nepal to show solidarity with Gul, as he sets out on his new chosen career path in politics.’
There was a thunderous burst of applause, but the SAS men remained in their seats, with faces set like stone. ‘Bloody hell, we’ve been set up,’ Shepherd said. ‘Gul, did you know anything about this?’
There was a flash of anger in Gul’s eyes. ‘Of course not. I’m hurt that you should even think that I would be party to this.’
‘Then I apologise,’ Shepherd said, ‘but I can tell you the Military Attaché is not going to be too thrilled by this. He says that we can’t be seen to be playing favourites. I’m sorry Gul but I’m afraid it means that we’re going to have to keep our distance from you from now on. I hope you understand.’
‘Of course, my friend, I completely understand, and I can only apologise for the incident. I’m sure the gentleman meant no harm. He was just pleased that you were here. It’s an honour and he wanted to share it, I’m sure.’
They parted firm friends and went in search of Dai Evans - “Taff the Rope”. They soon found his hotel, in a run-down area of the city. ‘Not exactly salubrious, is it?’ Jimbo said as he took in the crumbling plaster and sagging timbers of the low-ceilinged room that served as reception, bar and restaurant for Evans and whatever other guests there might be.
Evans was sitting at the bar with a glass of beer in front of him. He was a man of indeterminate age, with grey hair, washed out blue eyes and a face tanned like shoe leather and so lined and wrinkled that he could have been any age from forty to seventy. He broke into a broad smile when they introduced themselves. ‘I thought I’d dropped off the Regiment’s radar,’ he said. ‘But you’ve managed to track me down. There really is no escape, is there?’
‘So why are you called Taff the Rope?’ Jimbo said climbing onto a stool and waving a barman over. ‘You a hangman then?’
‘Not quite. In my squadron, among others, there was Taff the Pill, who was a medic, and Taff the Valve, a signals technician. I was a climber so they called me “Taff the Rope”, but the nicknames always wound up getting shorter and shorter, so in time, Dai Evans aka Taff the Rope, became known simply as The Rope.’
‘So what’s your story?’ Geordie said. ‘How do you come to be living in this…’ He paused, groping for a tactful word. ‘Erm, this boutique hotel in downtown Pokhara?’
Evans laughed. ‘Boutique as in “The Pits” you mean? Well, I was raised in the valleys of South Wales and like every other male in my valley, as soon as I was old enough, I left school and went straight down the pit; I don’t ever remember any other possibility being mentioned, that was just what we did. I was a strong lad so before long they made me a tunnel ripper, all hand work with pick and shovel, driving tunnels through solid rock. It nearly killed me at first but it gave me the upper body strength that I’ve never lost and that in turn helped me to become a good rock climber.’
The barman plonked bottles of Carlsberg down on the bar and the men grabbed them.
‘The colliery would probably have been the story of my life,’ Evans continued. ‘Twenty years hewing rock and coal, and another twenty wheezing and coughing my way to an early grave from emphysema. But then I discovered that my childhood sweetheart was having an affair with a clerk on the local council.’ He shook his head as if still unable to believe it. ‘I mean, I ask you - a steelworker, a farmer, another miner, fair enough, but a bloody milk and water pen-pusher on the council, that was really adding insult to injury! So I thought sod this for a game of soldiers, I’m not hanging around here to be humiliated. I’m going to join the army, see the world, and get as far away from Wales as I possibly can. So I took a bus to Cardiff and enlisted in an English Infantry Regiment.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘Big mistake. I only found myself being posted to bloody Brecon, didn’t I? I could practically see my home from there. But while I was serving there, I saw some mysterious soldiers who kept themselves to themselves, away from the others in the camp, and who were attempting a mysterious quest known only as “Selection”. I decided I’d give it a go. I was naturally lean and mean, and highly motivated to get out of Wales, and to my own, and probably everyone else’s surprise, I passed the mysterious Selection and found myself as one of the youngest ever members of the SAS Regiment.’ He raised his bottle and Shepherd clinked it with his own. ‘A few weeks later I was in Malaya, working deep in the jungle chasing the last remnants of the Malayan Emergency. Now that was different to the valleys, I can tell you.’
‘Malaya?’ Jock said. ‘Bloody hell, Taff, that was back in the 1960s, wasn’t it? How old are you exactly?’
‘It was the late 1950s actually, but like I said, I was one of the youngest back then, and anyway, don’t you worry, I could still beat any of you to the top of a rock face with one hand tied behind my back.’ He paused and his stare challenged them to disagree. ‘On my way back to the UK with my squadron we found ourselves in Oman, involved in what later became famous in the Regiment as the Jebel Akhdar campaign. For an ex-coal miner to find myself at the top of a ten thousand foot high peak was unbelievable. The views, the clean, clear air and the sense of being almost literally out of this world had a profound effect on me. From then on I was absolutely addicted to climbing. As the SAS began organising itself into troops with various methods of entry into a battlefield, I managed to wangle a position in Mountain Troop. I did every climbing course the military had to offer including the Royal Marines and the RAF Mountain Rescue Training Courses. I spent every spare moment in North Wales at Capel Curig, climbing with the best civilian climbers in Europe, including some who had been on the Coronation climb of Everest in 1953, the first ever successful summit ascent.’
He sipped his beer before continuing. ‘I was so passionate about climbing that I even managed to persuade the SAS Head Shed to send me to train with the French and German military regiments in the Alps, and I kept on and on at them until finally they agreed to finance the long and very expensive training course for me to qualify as an Alpine Guide. But at that point - Sod’s Law - I found myself falling out of love with everything I was doing. Every climb was becoming more and more technical. All I was doing was putting up fixed lines so that non-climbers could carabiner onto the rope and get over the highest cliffs and mountains. I put in place hundreds of fixed lines for the SAS so they could take men and equipment into and across terrain where the enemy least expected them to be. But then, at the point where I had achieved my greatest skill-set, I found…’ He paused, then took a long pull on his beer. ‘I dunno, I suppose you could call it a religion of sorts, but I came to believe that every climb and every mountain should be treated with respect and should be climbed without any artificial aids. So without even realising it at first, I had become a free climber.’
Shepherd had been studying the man as he spoke. Physically he was pretty short and wiry, but the most notable thing about him was the cross-hatching of scar tissue on his hands, arms and legs, so dense that there was not an inch of skin visible that did not bear the white trace-mark of a scar.
Evans intercepted his gaze. ‘Not pretty are they? he said. ‘But I’ve come to like them. They’re souvenirs of my climbs and every one tells a story to me.’
Shepherd laughed. ‘You must know a lot of stories then, that’s for sure.’
‘I’ve climbed more than my share of mountains, that’s true. I never wear gloves or shoes when I’m climbing, but use my extremities - hands, feet, fingers and toes - forcing them into cracks in the rock and using them as anchors or bracing points while I pull the rest of my body upwards to the next hold.’ He paused and gave a rueful smile. ‘As you may have noticed, once you wind me up and start me going, I’m capable of talking non-stop for hours at a time. Let me get some more beers and then you can tell me about yourselves and what brings you to this beautiful lost world of mine.’
After a long night of non-stop talking they persuaded The Rope to take them for a few days recreational climbing in Western Nepal. ‘You’ve missed the best times of year for trekking here,’ he said. ‘Spring is the time for rhododendrons - the colours of the flowers in this pure air and dazzling sunlight, under a sky so dark blue it looks almost purple, are absolutely jaw-dropping, but the clearest skies of all and the best views of the Himalayan peaks, are found after the monsoon in October and November. However, we’ll make the best of it while you’re here, though it’s a shame you can’t stay a bit longer. We could do the Annapurna Circuit, one of the world’s great treks, or even climb the mountain itself, though it has the worst fatality rate of any, even worse than Everest itself. About one in four of the people who attempt to summit Annapurna die in the attempt.’
‘We’ll pass on that one then,’ Jock said. ‘If I’m going to die I want it to be with a gun in my hand, not freezing my tits off on some godforsaken mountain summit.’
‘Fair enough,’ The Rope said with a smile. ‘But apart from Annapurna, another two of the world’s ten highest mountains are also right on our doorstep, Dhaulagiri and Manaslu, along with some of the best rock-climbing you’ll find anywhere, so we’re not short of other challenges. Dhaulagiri is my favourite, it’s name means “dazzling white, beautiful mountain” in Nepali. It’s the most striking and solitary of all the Himalayan peaks, rising almost sheer.’
‘That doesn’t sound too great either,’ Geordie said. ‘Maybe we should just stick to rock climbing and trekking!’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ asked Shepherd.
‘Mate, mountains kill people,’ said Geordie.
‘Not if you know what you’re doing, and you treat them with respect,’ said The Rope.
‘That there’s the problem,’ said Geordie. ‘You know what you’re doing. You’ve had a lifetime acquiring the skills. Me, I’d just be a dead weight on the end of a rope.’
They set off later that morning, driving west with The Rope navigating. The dirt road they were following, flanked by Himalayan Wild Cherry trees, climbed steadily higher, through dense thickets of rhododendron and, higher on the slopes, stands of blue pine. Eventually, well above the tree-line and still climbing higher, it dwindled to a rock-strewn track and then petered out altogether by a police post near the head of a long valley.
‘We’ll use this as base camp,’ The Rope said. ‘You can use the police communications system to keep in touch with the embassy and the Head Shed in Hereford, and if you leave our rations with the Nepalese police, they’ll turn them into delicious curries for us.’ He smiled. ‘The crime rates are pretty low around here, so they’re glad of something to do and a few dollars won’t go amiss with them either.’
Shepherd had brought a climbing rope for each of them, much to The Rope’s disgust. They also had a carabiner on their belt kits. The Rope had nothing but a pouch of resin attached to his belt. ‘So,’ he said, surveying their climbing aids and making no attempt to hide his disapproval, ‘we can be reasonably confident that we have Health and Safety covered, can we?’
‘And what exactly do you do when you fall?” asked Geordie.
The Rope grinned. ‘I don’t.’
‘Well there’s always a first time,’ said Geordie.
‘Aye,’ agreed Jock. ‘And a last.’
The Rope led them off up the track into the mountains, walking alongside the river gorge. To his surprise, Shepherd found himself struggling for breath almost at once. ‘Bloody hell, you sound like my grandad,’ Geordie said unsympathetically, ‘and he died of emphysema.’
‘We’re at almost 15,000 feet here,’ The Rope said. ‘It takes a while to adjust to the altitude and some people take longer than others. There’s no shame in it and no apparent pattern either; sometimes the strongest blokes are the first to suffer. Most people acclimatise fairly quickly but if you do really start to suffer from altitude sickness, the only cure is to go down to a lower level.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine, but tell me, why is the water that aquamarine?’ Shepherd said, playing for time while he got his breath back. ‘I’ve never see water that blue before.’
‘It’s caused by billions of tiny flakes of schist and mica ground from the Himalayan rock by the glaciers and carried down by the meltwater that feed the river,’ The Rope said. ‘When the sunlight strikes the water it makes the whole river sparkle like a jewel.’
As they walked on, Jimbo pointed to a series of cables spanning the chasm ahead of them. ‘What the hell’s that?’
The Rope smiled. ‘It’s called a rope-way, and it’s the only way across the gorge other than climbing down one side and back up the other. Don’t worry, it’s not quite as perilous as it looks.’
‘For some reason, the word “quite” in that sentence, doesn’t reassure me,’ Jimbo said. As they got closer, they saw that the rickety wooden lean-to at the near end of the ropes housed a precarious looking cable car barely big enough for two of them to squash into.
‘Is this thing safe?’ Geordie said, eyeing it with suspicion.
‘It’s still up in the air at the moment, isn’t it?’ The Rope said.
‘That’s what worries me - it’s an awful long way down.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s not the fall that’ll kill you,’ said Geordie. ‘It’s hitting the ground that does the damage.’
The Rope ended the discussion by clambering into the cable car and Shepherd joined him. They pulled another rope to begin winching them across the gorge. It wasn’t the most relaxing of journeys because the car shook, rattled and wobbled from side to side as it made its slow, jerky journey across the gorge. Looking down, Shepherd could see the river so far below them that it looked like an aquamarine thread. ‘These rope-ways are an absolute lifeline to the people here,’ The Rope said. They move people, and every conceivable kind of goods, even livestock, by them.’
They waited while the others hauled the cable car back and crossed, and then moved on. Further up the valley, the gorge ended in a sheer cliff down which a waterfall plunged hundreds of feet in a foaming avalanche of white water that raised a cloud of spray that hung in the air for hundreds of yards around it. ‘The first climb,’ The Rope said, gesturing to the rock face alongside the waterfall. ‘I though we’d start with something gentle and build up from there.’
‘Blood and sand,’ Geordie said. ‘If that’s gentle, I’m not sure I want to be around when we get to severe.’
The Rope went first, dipping his fingers into his pouch of resin from time to time to aid his grip as he scaled the cliff, moving with a smooth confidence, pausing briefly to scan the next stretch of rock and then moving upwards again, making use of the smallest cracks and projections as hand- and foot-holds. He free-climbed but trailed a safety rope for the others as they followed him, their movements slow and hesitant by comparison.
Shepherd was barely aware of the biting cold of the air because he was concentrating so intensely. When he reached the top, the muscles of his forearms were still trembling from the effort and he was finding it hard to breathe again. He looked around while he waited for the others to follow him. Beyond the head of the waterfall, the river ran through an ice-gouged hanging valley, weaving a braided course around the vast drifts and moraines of grey gravel and ice-shattered rock swept down from the mountains in the spring floods caused by the snow-melt. At the far end of the valley, right against the wall of the mountains, he could see the sunlight reflecting from the black, still waters of a lake.
‘There are hundreds of those glacier lakes hereabouts,’ The Rope said, following his gaze. ‘But they all want watching. Every now and again one bursts without warning, with catastrophic consequences for those living further down the valleys.’
‘Thanks,’ Jock said, as he hauled himself over the edge of the cliff. ‘You’re a real bundle of joy, you know that?’
The light was beginning to fade and they turned back at that point, using their ropes and carabiners to abseil back down the rock face they had so laboriously climbed and trekking back down the valley to the police post where the Nepali police had indeed prepared a curry for them, served up with the Nepali beer, Chang, and the fiery spirit, Raksi, distilled from fermented millet.
They spent the next few days enjoying their splendid isolation. They left early each morning and spent each day climbing a different virgin rock face with The Rope. Each time he went first, then lowered a safety rope and encouraged the rest of the team to follow him, making as little use of the rope as they could manage. Whenever one of them got into difficulties over a move, The Rope would give them a little time to solve it themselves and if that failed he would then use his incredible body strength to pull them over the snag until they could start climbing again. Slowly all of them gained in skill and confidence.
They arrived back at the police post on the fifth night to find the garrison on stand-to with the road barricaded and all passers-by were being stopped and searched. The Rope spoke to them in Nepali and then relayed the information to the others. ‘There’s been an incident to the east,’ he said. ‘They won’t say what it was, but it was clearly pretty serious. They are searching for a band of terrorists who are believed to be heading in this direction.’
Shepherd immediately contacted the Embassy from the radio in the police post and when he broke the connection, his face was grim. ‘The Gurkha recruiting party has been ambushed and Gul has been killed, along with several others,’ he said. ‘The Gurkha pension money’s been stolen. The perpetrators are a gang of about twenty Maoist terrorists who are now thought to be heading back towards the tribal areas in the west of Nepal.’
‘No bloody way,’ said Jimbo.
‘Yeah, this is my attempt at humour,’ said Shepherd. ‘Gul’s dead. The bastards killed him.’
‘And so are they,’ growled Jock. ‘They just don’t know it yet.’
The Rope and the patrol had a quick Chinese Parliament to sort out a plan of action; whether they contributed to the discussion or not, everyone took joint ownership of the plan, ensuring that there could be no recriminations after the event.
The Rope took a map from his backpack and traced a route with his finger. ‘They won’t come this way,’ he said. ‘The most likely route for them to take is the parallel valley to the south of us.’
‘So can we intercept them?’ Shepherd said.
‘We would need to climb a three thousand foot sheer wall of rock, but it can be done, if we’re lucky.’
‘Any objections to that idea?’ Shepherd said, but one look around the circle of grim, determined faces was enough to answer his question. With the exception of Jock, they had only known Gul for a handful of days, but they had formed a strong bond with him in that time. But in any case, as a former member of the Regiment they owed him the same duty that they would owe to any SAS man: vengeance on his killers. One look at Jock’s ferocious expression told Shepherd that any Maoist terrorists they encountered were unlikely to continue breathing for long.
They tooled up at once, travelling very light with only their belt kits and weapons. Shepherd, Geordie and Jimbo carried an AR-15 Colt Commando model with a retractable butt. Jock had the patrol heavy weapon, an M-203 Armalite with an underslung grenade launcher.
Almost the first thing every SAS soldier learns is that weapons are never slung except in the most unusual circumstances. They must always be ready for immediate use, so the sling swivels on their weapons were invariably removed to make the weapons lighter. But the fact they were climbing meant that the weapons had to be carried on their backs so they quickly made makeshift slings from parachute cord. They had fixed up The Rope with a spare Sterling 9mm sub-machine gun from the Nepali police post, the boss insisting Spider sign a ledger for the weapon and three magazines of ammunition to satisfy the bureaucracy in Kathmandu. Each of them - even The Rope - also had a coiled climbing rope slung over his shoulder.
They arrived at the foot of the cliff in darkness and The Rope began climbing even before it got fully light. All of them struggled at times, but Jimbo found it the most difficult, struggling to haul his big frame up the often sheer rock face. They paused to eat some rations, clinging to a narrow ledge, then carried on climbing. Shepherd’s fingers were bruised and bleeding and his forearms and shoulders were sore with the effort of hauling himself upwards. But with a cold, furious determination he kept on moving up, working his way from handhold to handhold, each one marked by the faint traces of resin that The Rope’s fingers had left as he pioneered the route.
Shepherd was moving up fast, gaining in confidence, but had just released his hold with his left hand when the flake of rock he was gripping with his right suddenly sheared off. He shouted a warning as the rock plummeted towards the others climbing below him, and felt himself beginning to fall away from the cliff. He made a frantic grab with his left hand and his fingers scrabbled at the rock, then caught. There was a stab of agonising pain as a fingernail was torn off, but his grip held. He hung there for a few seconds, his heart beating wildly, then found a hold for his right hand and, having checked that his comrades below were unhurt by the falling rock, began to climb again.
Snow flurries blew around him from time to time and ice that had formed in shaded crevasses was another hazard, but he kept working his way upwards, focusing only on the next hold, the next move, and avoiding the temptation to keep looking up to see how far there still was to climb.
About a hundred feet from the top they encountered a smooth slab with few visible handholds at the top of which was an overhang - a ledge jutting out at right angles to the cliff. The SAS men paused while The Rope moved slowly ahead, feeling for any tiny crevice or projection from the rock face that would serve as a handhold, inching slowly upwards.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jock said, his chest heaving. ‘The guy is like Spiderman.’
‘Or Spiderman’s dad anyway,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’re in our twenties and he’ll be drawing his pension in a year or two, but he’s leaving us for dead on this climb.’
It took The Rope forty minutes to negotiate those few feet of smooth rock, but at last he had reached the underside of the overhang. He paused there for a couple of minutes, giving his aching muscles what rest he could and bracing himself for the next effort, then he jammed the fingers of his left hand into a narrow crevice, using his thumb to wedge them in place, and launched himself outwards and upwards. The first time his scrabbling fingers fell just short and he dropped back, crashing against the cliff face with an impact that made Shepherd wince, but The Rope merely steadied himself, took a deep breath, and then launched himself again. This time his flailing fingertips caught the very tip of the ledge and held firm. He adjusted his grip a fraction, braced his feet against the smooth rock face for what little extra traction they could give and then, in one movement, pulled his left hand free of the crevice and grabbed at the ledge. He was now hanging, parallel to the ground almost 3000 feet below, but in another astonishing demonstration of his upper body strength, he pulled himself up as easily as a man doing chin-ups in the gym, swung a leg over the ledge and next moment was kneeling on it, lowering a rope to Shepherd and the others, waiting below.
Half-climbing, half-hauled by The Rope, each man in turn joined him on the ledge and from there to the ridge line was a relatively easy climb up a deeply-fissured rock face. It had taken them all day but they finally reached the top. They inched their way forward to look down the other side and in the fading light they could see faint smudges of smoke drifting up from camp fires on the valley floor below them.
They ate the rest of their rations as darkness fell and then, using the ropes, they descended the rock face in stages. Enough moonlight was filtering through the cloud cover to help them navigate their way down the cliff, but the dense thickets of rhododendrons and clumps of scrub alders along the valley floor made the darkness there almost impenetrable, though the faint smell of wood smoke on the breeze showed that the terrorists’ campsite was not far away.
They held a brief whispered discussion at the foot of the cliff. ‘The terrain and the vegetation may make it difficult for us to infiltrate undetected,’ Shepherd said. ‘Without a recce, we don’t know what sentries they’ve got posted and twenty of them will be a challenge if they’re alerted before we get to them. So I think we’d be better moving a little further west. We’ll lie up there and intercept them as they move off after daybreak.’
‘Agreed,’ Jock said. ‘A linear ambush: minimum effort, maximum results.’
They moved away from the cliff, threading their way around the densest patches of rhododendrons, until they reached a track, the dusty ground underfoot shining pale grey in the moonlight. Shepherd turned to The Rope. ‘We’ll set up the ambush here, you stay in cover while we deal with the bastards that killed Gul.’
‘Like hell I will,’ The Rope said. ‘He’s family, I’m family. I’m in this with you.’
Shepherd grinned. ‘I thought you’d say that, but I had to make the offer!’
They chose a place where the track ran through a broad clearing and lay up in cover at the edge of the undergrowth, forming a linear ambush, all on the same side of the track, in a long line and spaced at twenty-yard intervals. Shepherd and Jock stationed themselves at either end with The Rope in the middle, flanked by Geordie and Jimbo.
As the first greying of the sky signalled the approach of dawn, they settled themselves, lying prone with their weapons at the ready and began the long wait.
About an hour after the sun had risen, Shepherd, closest to the terrorists’ camp, heard the first faint sounds of movement and a few minutes later, the first of them came into view, moving cautiously, the barrel of his gun tracking his gaze as he scanned the ground ahead and to either side. Shepherd lay motionless as the man passed, unseeing, within twenty yards of him. He could have killed him in an instant but that would have alerted the rest of the gang and instead he allowed him to pass by. He watched man after man move past in single file, with the two in the middle of the line carrying bulging sacks over their shoulders. Shepherd kept his finger resting on the trigger, waiting for the first shots from Jock that would trigger the ambush.
As the last gang-member came level with him, Shepherd heard the first whip-crack sounds of shots as Jock opened up. Shepherd began firing a heartbeat later, and heard the rattle of gunfire from the others in the same instant. Cool and methodical, Shepherd fired short, targeted bursts, killing man after man. Some returned fire but they lacked the SAS men’s discipline and accuracy, and most of the rounds merely shredded the undergrowth around them. Half a dozen turned and ran, three of them cut down instantly as they did so, but the others plunged into the rhododendrons and were lost from sight.
As the last of the remaining terrorists caught in the open was cut apart by simultaneous bursts from Jock and Jimbo, the SAS men leapt to their feet and sprinted across the clearing, diving into the undergrowth in pursuit of the escaping terrorists. The rhododendrons were almost impenetrable in places, but Shepherd could follow the track of one escaper easily by the bruised and broken leaves and stems he had caused as he ran for his life. There were bloodstains on the ground and a few leaves he had brushed against too, showing that he was wounded, but Shepherd was taking no chances. He checked as he came to an open area surrounded by more thickets of rhododendrons and began scanning the vegetation, using all his jungle fighting experience to refocus his eyes, looking through the foliage rather than at it. On the far side of the clearing, he saw a brief flash of fabric, pale against the dark green leaves and an instant later Shepherd’s rifle barked twice and the body of the terrorist crashed backwards, his own weapon sending a burst of fire upwards into the sky. Still cautious, Shepherd moved forward and made certain with a double-tap to the man’s head.
As he made his way back towards the clearing where the ambush had been set, he heard another double-tap away to his left.
He paused, calling to the others to warn them of his approach, before emerging into the open, rather than risk being shot by mistake. He found Jock, Jimbo and Geordie in all-round defence with one of the sacks on the ground beside them. ‘Where’s The Rope?’ Shepherd said.
‘He went that way, in hot pursuit,’ Jock said gesturing towards the undergrowth. A moment later they heard another double-tap and soon afterwards The Rope appeared, carrying the other sack over his shoulder. ‘I reckon it was the leader carrying that one,’ he said, ‘but I put paid to him.’ He opened the sack, peered inside and then brandished a fistful of hundred dollar bills at them. ‘Life can be a bitch sometimes,’ he said. ‘All through my entire career in the Army and then the Regiment, I used to pray that I’d get a chance to ambush a paymaster one day. Now I’ve finally done it and got my hands on a bloody fortune, and I’ve got no option but to give it back.’
‘Gul’s people need it more than you do,’ said Shepherd. ‘And let’s be fair, none of us are in this for the money.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ laughed Geordie.
* * *
Spider Shepherd left the SAS at the end of 2002 and joined an elite police undercover unit. You can read the first of his undercover adventures in Hard Landing, where he goes undercover in a high security prison to unmask a drugs dealer who is killing off witnesses to his crimes. The Spider Shepherd series continues with Soft Target, Cold Kill, Hot Blood, Dead Men, Live Fire, Rough Justice, Fair Game, False Friends, True Colours, White Lies and Black Ops.
You can read more about Spider at www.danspidershepherd.com and more about Stephen Leather’s work at www.stephenleather.com
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