Read Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd short story) for Free Online Page B

there.  Treat them with the usual courtesies, won’t you?’ 
    Everyone’s heart sank; the last thing any of them wanted was to do anything involving MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as the SIS. The history of botched operations and screw-ups involving Six was the stuff of Regimental nightmares, dating back as far as operations in Aden and other parts of the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s and continuing right up to and including the Falklands Campaign in the 1980s.
    The last person to speak, as ever, was the Major from the Army Legal Services, delivering the usual arse-covering warning to stick rigidly to their orders, coupled with dire warnings about the consequences if they did not. Everyone knew it was bullshit. There has never been an operation in the history of the SAS that had gone entirely as it was briefed, because the enemy was never obliging enough to stick to the script. 
    The patrol exchanged cynical looks. ‘Why don’t you come with us to make sure we do it right?’ Jock muttered under his breath. ‘You might finally be able to get the creases out of your cammos.  Now fuck off and leave us alone’.
    Once outside the briefing room, Gannon added his own final words.  ‘Bollocks to all that in there.  Just get the job done and get back here safely’.
    They knew the real work started now and made their way back to the isolation billets clutching their planning packs, already thinking about the permutations and changes they wanted to make to the Head Shed’s plan. They all realised that their op was just a sideshow to the Squadron’s main operation in Sierra Leone, but they prepared just as meticulously over the next few hectic days. Day and night they practised ambush drills, anti-ambush drills, and RV procedures, attended detailed comms briefings, and had a long discussion before settling on the weapon of choice for the op: the AR-15 Commando assault rifle with retractable butt. It was a robust, tried and tested weapon that could fire single shots, burst or semi-automatic, and had a mounting to launch rifle grenades. They decided against carrying any heavy weaponry, taking just the basic rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, since they were not anticipating a lot of trouble in Sierra Leone. They also took some less typical kit, including a few tubs of plasticine, bought by one of their support team from a toy store in Hereford.
    Finally ready to go, they were transported to Lyneham, loaded on to a Special Forces Hercules and flown down to Gibraltar. The air crew had filed a flight plan which would take them from Gibraltar to the Cape Verde islands and then on to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, the cover story being that they were recceing a new route to the Falklands as an alternative to the normal route through Ascension Island.
    The Special Forces crew did their best to make Shepherd and his mates comfortable on the nine-hour flight from Gibraltar to Sierra Leone, They had put makeshift bunks in the back of the plane so they could at least try to sleep, and fed them as often as they wanted to be fed, fully aware that once on the ground they were likely to be short of rations.
    They began their final approach to the target area in the dead of night. They dropped the inflatable boat, and after swinging onto the reciprocal heading they jumped on the signal. As Shepherd used the risers of his chute to steer himself towards the boat, he looked down and swore.  In all the practice jumps into Studland Bay in Dorset, surrounded by safety boats, everything had worked perfectly. Now on the operational jump, he could see in the phosphorescence of the night Atlantic that the boat was not inflating as it should. He could not believe his eyes; he looked incredulously at the others, then back to the water.   For a second he wondered if they had somehow been sold down the river and deliberately sabotaged, but he told himself he was just being paranoid and snapped back into focus on