Read Rough Diamonds (A Spider Shepherd short story) for Free Online

being hit but Jerzy managed it. As the helicopter jerked around, Shepherd heard grunts and curses from Jock who was being thrown around the cab. Rounds clipped and rattled against the fuselage, striking sparks like fireflies, and one round smashed through the Perspex windscreen only inches from Shepherd’s head, punching a second hole as it exited through the roof.
    As the gunship flew on, soaring upwards for a few seconds before the next gut-churning plunge down, Shepherd got the first 23-4 in the crosshairs of his onboard cannon and took it out with an explosive roar. 
    On the helicopter’s next lift above the ground, emerging from the shadows of the spoil heaps, he took on the second 23-4 and put that out of action as well, using the cannon pods on the helicopter’s stub wings. The 23-4’s ammunition detonated in the blast and Shepherd could see tracer flying in all direction. Two of the mercenaries were blown away like rag dolls caught in a hurricane. 
    With the two anti-aircraft weapons out of the fight, the attack became less stressful. Shepherd calmly cannoned and rocketed the combat reconnaissance vehicles which erupted into flame, spewing out palls of oily black smoke, Jimbo and Geordie targeted the BTR-60 troop carriers with their AT-5 anti-tank missiles. Each time they fired, Shepherd could see the jet of flame lancing out behind the weapon as the missile was fired and the white hot streak it carved through the darkness. Each missile drilled through the armour plating of its target and detonated inside the vehicle.
    The battle was short and sweet, lasting no more than a few minutes. But in that time they had reduced every one of the mercenaries’ vehicles to piles of flaming junk and burning rubber,  belching out clouds of black smoke into the night sky. Jerzy kept the Hind circling over the battlefield as Shepherd and Jock targeted any remaining sources of ground fire. When all firing from the ground had ceased, they still kept the helicopter in a hover, ready to offer covering fire to  Jimbo and Geordie as they moved forward, mopping up the last resistance, and methodically checking the wrecked vehicles and buildings for survivors. 
    One group of three or four mercenaries had remained hidden and as Jimbo and Geordie approached they put up renewed resistance, firing from a sandbagged  placement on the roof of the main compound building.
    Geordie marked the site with a couple of phosphorous rounds that emitted puffs of white smoke as they struck home. Sighting on them, Shepherd then took out the target with another strike from the wing rocket pods. There was no more firing from the mercenaries after that.
    Once Geordie and Jimbo had completed their sweep of the compound and given the all clear, Jerzy landed the Hind gunship close to where several of the bodies of the mercenaries were lying. He cut the engines,  Shepherd could hear the metal pinging in the cold night air as the engines cooled down.  It was only then that he noticed how battered the old craft was.  He had been so caught up in the combat that he had hardly been aware of the Hind being hit , but he now saw the scars, dents and patches of newly-exposed bright metal where the barrage of rounds had struck it. 
     As the adrenaline-fuelled rush of combat began to fade, Shepherd felt completely deflated and demotivated. He knew that it would soon pass and while he was getting his head in shape to plan his next move, Jock jumped down from the helicopter and ran to join Jimbo and Geordie.
    They has an animated conversation and Shepherd saw Jimbo gesturing towards one of the wrecked mercenaries’ vehicles. They disappeared inside the still smoking wreckage and a couple of minutes later the re-emerged. Jock was the last to appear and as he did so, he held up a scorched leather bag in his hand, with a look of triumph on his face.
    The three men ran over to Shepherd.  ‘We found this in the merc’s command vehicle,’ Jock said when he got back