Read Narrow Escape (A Spider Shepherd short story) for Free Online Page A

information that they wanted, he would be killed. Although the others were masked, if he got free, he could identify Brummie F as a Provo sleeper inside the British Army, and Brummie F didn’t look the kind of man who would stay silent too long under interrogation if the Special Branch, let alone the SAS got hold of him. The knowledge that Brummie F was a sleeper was alone enough to guarantee Shepherd’s execution, probably with the Provos’ traditional bullet to the back of the head, blowing off his face so that his funeral would have to be with a closed casket.
    There was nothing to be gained by any further delay; it would simply guarantee more beatings and water-boardings for no gain. However he needed a little light if he was going to make good his escape. Alert for the first sign of light seeping under the door of the magazine, for the first time he began to offer his interrogators a little more than the “Big Three” of number, rank and name and started trying to engage the leader in a dialogue. He waited until he was given another beating to offer a reason for the change heart, and this time he cried out with simulated pain and begged them to stop. ‘I’d tell you the RV if I knew it,’ he said. ‘But I don’t. The agent I was due to meet was going to tell me.’
     The leader smiled. ‘He won’t be telling anyone anything. But what I asked you was where the emergency RV is. And you do know that, don’t you? You were given that at  the start of the exercise.’
    Shepherd hesitated, playing for time. He saw one of the thugs raise his fist and step towards him again, but the leader held up his hand, stopping him in his tracks. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear what he has got to say first.’
    ‘I can’t feel my hands at all,’ said Shepherd. ‘The tie is so tight it’s cut off my circulation. If you free my hands I’ll tell you what you want to know.’ As he saw the leader hesitate, worrying his lip between his teeth as he stared at him, weighing him up, Shepherd added ‘there are four of you, I’m hardly going to be able to escape, am I?’
    He waited, trying to keep his expression impassive and his body language cowed while the leader wrestled with the decision and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Try anything, soldier boy, and you’re fekkin dead.’ He pulled a pistol out of his shoulder holster and covered him with it, then jerked his head towards one of the others. ‘Untie him.’ As the man hesitated, giving Shepherd another suspicious look, the leader barked. ‘I said untie him, didn’t I? What are you waiting for?’
     Muttering under his breath, the man took out a knife, walked round behind Shepherd and sawed through the cable tie. Shepherd felt a momentary relief as the pressure on his wrists eased but that was followed by agonising pains in both hands as the blood began to flow back into them. He made a meal of it, however, bending double cursing and crying out at the pain he felt, while rubbing his hands and fingers together, trying to get feeling and movement back into them.
    He kept cursing and rubbing his hands together until one of them stepped forward and gave him a punch to the head that made his ears ring. He straightened up. The four of them were watching him, tensed and ready for any move he might make. Only the leader had drawn his weapon. It was a fairly crude, old-fashioned Soviet Makarov pistol, possibly supplied by Gaddafi - not a weapon that an SAS man or a British Army soldier would carry. Shepherd could also see that the safety catch was still on. He was finally sure that the men were Provos and his life expectancy would be measured in hours or even minutes if he did not escape.
    ‘I can show you where the RV is,’ Shepherd said, eyes downcast, voice barely above a whisper, the picture of a broken man. ‘There’s a silk map around my waist, next to my skin.’
    The leader rounded on one of the others.  ‘I told you to search him, you fekking eejit,’