Read Kill Zone (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) for Free Online Page B

tank. It gave the Chinook the
range and the time in or near the target area to complete the mission and make
the long return flight back to Bagram. Six mopeds were already lashed to the
tailgate and the SAS men clambered up with Lex, each with an AK74 carried on a
sling around his neck with the folding butt closed. Their pockets were jammed
with spare clips for their weapon and their bergens were loaded with more
ammunition.
    As the Chinook’s
crew completed their final checks before take-off, the SAS settled themselves,
sitting or lying on the tailgate among the mopeds.   Lex sat down next to Shepherd. He grinned and nodded at
Shepherd but there was no disguising the apprehension in his eyes. Shepherd
winked at him.
    The din of the
rotors increased to a nerve-jangling roar and the Chinook shook and rattled as
it began to move, almost invisible inside the fog of dust and dirt stirred up
by the groundwash. As Jock had predicted at the briefing, the heli did not rise
vertically into the air but began to rumble down the runway like a fixed wing
aircraft, so heavily laden that its only means of getting airborne was to build
enough forward momentum to generate the necessary lift.
    With the engines
screaming and the whole airframe vibrating and rattling like a boiler about to
explode, the Chinook finally lumbered into the air, its dispensers punching out
clouds of chaff and flares to deflect any missiles that might be launched at
them. Even above the most fortified and heavily protected military base in the
country, the threat of terrorist attacks was never underestimated.
    The Chinook rose
high into the sky as it cleared the immediate area surrounding the base, and
set a course heading due west. Once safe from the prying eyes of the Taliban
spies - who watched all air traffic in and out of the base and reported the
heading of any troop carrying helicopters - the Chinook descended to low-level
and swung round on to its true course, making for the tribal areas.
    The first part of
the flight was in the low sun of the remaining minutes of daylight. To the
north, Shepherd could see the aquamarine ice fields and glaciers high on the
slopes of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, with spindrifts of snow spilling
from the ridges in the ferocious winds at those heights. He tapped Lex on the
shoulder and pointed at the beautiful but forbidding snow-capped peaks as they caught
the last rays of the setting sun, turning gold and then deep blood-red as it
sank to the western horizon. ‘Wow,’ mouthed Lex. ‘That’s awesome.’
    The Chinook flew
on, so close to the ground that the wash of the rotors shook the trees. Its course
twisted and turned as the pilots skirted every town and village and used every
natural feature to screen their flight from view. It almost doubled the
distance to the target but was the best way of ensuring that they would reach
it undetected. The Chinook skimmed a ridge and flew up a narrow valley,
following the course of the braided river channels, the turquoise green
meltwater from the glaciers in the mountains constantly finding fresh ways
through the moraines of rock and gravel washed down by the ferocious spring
floods.
    Night had fallen
and the soldiers put on their Passive Night Goggles. The heli was in total
darkness with the pilots also using PNGs to steer and navigate. Through his own
goggles, Shepherd could see the starlight reflecting from the surface of the
river below them, tracing its course as clearly as if it were floodlit. The
wash of the rotors stirred blizzards of dead leaves from the scrub willows and
the poplars along the banks, and in the yellow-tinged world view through the goggles,
the leaves shone like flakes of gold, circling in eddies around the bare trunks
before the river carried them away.
    He glanced around
him and saw that, true to form, indifferent to the beauty of the natural world
over which they were passing, Jock and Geordie were cat-napping. Not for the
first time, Shepherd