Spider's Web: A Collection of All-Action Short Stories Read online

  The fact that the man hadn’t pulled a trigger suggested again that he was a cop.

  The decision that Tchorek needed to make – and quickly – was whether or not to pull his own trigger.

  If he did, the bodyguard would die. There was no question of that.

  But as he died his finger would probably tighten enough to pull the trigger and Tchorek would also die.

  And even if the bodyguard didn’t fire there would be other armed officers, Tchorek was sure of that. They would fire because he had killed one of their own.

  Either way, Tchorek would die.

  If he didn’t pull the trigger he would be arrested. But on the plus side he hadn’t killed anyone and the bomb hadn’t been designed to hurt or maim.

  With no shots fired he was guilty only of carrying a loaded firearm. If he pleaded guilty and apologised and promised not to do it again, the absolute maximum penalty would be ten years and he would almost certainly only serve five. And five years in a British prison was no hardship, on a par with a three-star hotel in Moscow. With a choice of TV channels in his cell, a varied menu and regular sessions in the gym, he could do five years standing on his head.

  He smiled and slowly raised the gun above his head, then tossed it behind him. He clasped his hands behind his neck and slowly knelt down as the bodyguard got to his feet, keeping the gun aimed at Tchorek’s face. ‘I surrender,’ said Tchorek. ‘It is, as you English like to say, a fair cop.’

  Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd ran a hand through his hair as he watched two uniformed officers bundle Tchorek into the back of a van, taking care not to bang his head on the door, which seemed very good of them considering what had just happened. ‘I really thought he was going to shoot me,’ said Shepherd. A fire engine had arrived and was dealing with the aftermath of the explosion. Uniformed police officers had cleared the pavements and sealed off the street.

  Shepherd’s boss, Charlotte Button, turned up the collar of her raincoat and flashed him a sympathetic smile. ‘You’re wearing your vest, aren’t you?’

  ‘In the head, Charlie. He was going to shoot me in the head.’ Ilyushin was sitting in the back of his armoured Rolls-Royce, ashen faced and trembling. Shepherd nodded over at the car. ‘Ilyushin isn’t happy.’

  ‘He’s lucky that we found out about the contract,’ said Button. ‘If we hadn’t put you on his security team, he’d be dead.’

  ‘He very nearly was,’ said Shepherd. ‘And so was I.’

  ‘Once he knew the operation was blown, there’d be no point in him pulling the trigger,’ said Button. ̵ gyutton. 6;He’s a professional.’

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘I could see it in his eyes. He was thinking about it. His finger tightened on the trigger and he was close. Then he had a change of heart.’

  ‘He probably assumed that as he hadn’t actually pulled the trigger and no one was hurt in the explosion the most he’d get was five or ten years with half off for good behaviour.’

  Shepherd smiled. ‘Well, he got that wrong, didn’t he? He doesn’t know that we already have enough for conspiracy to commit murder in this case and enough evidence for the Americans to put him away for life times three for contracts carried out in the States.’

  Button wagged her finger at him. ‘Just be grateful he didn’t know,’ she said. ‘Because then he might just have pulled the trigger.’

  Coming soon from

  STEPHEN LEATHER

  The tenth SPIDER SHEPHERD all-action thriller

  TRUE COLOURS

  The Russian oligarchs are the world’s new elite. They treat the world as their plaything, travelling without borders and living lives of unimaginable luxury without fear or restraint.

  But when an assassin starts killing off some of the world’s richest men, an oligarch with friends in high places seeks the protection of MI5. And Spider Shepherd is placed in the firing line.

  But while Shepherd has to save the life of a man he neither likes nor respects, he has to deal with a face from his past. The Taliban sniper who put a bullet in his shoulder turns up alive and well and living in London.

  And Shepherd is in no mood to forgive or forget.

  Out 18 July 2013

  Rea

  d on for a gripping extract.

  www.hodder.co.uk

  AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN BORDER, 2002

  The Chinook cleared a low ridge, dropped to the floor of a plateau and then rose again, following the steep slopes of a round-topped hill. The helicopter came to a hover and landed as the groundwash of the twin rotors stirred up a storm of dust and debris.

  Jock McIntyre, Geordie Mitchell, Jimbo Shortt and Lex Harper jumped down and went into positions of all-round defence while Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd and Captain Harry Todd unloaded six mopeds that had been lashed to the tailgate of the Chinook. They remained crouched and watchful as the Chinook took off, then took a few more minutes to watch and listen, allowing their hearing to become attuned to the quietness of the night after the din of the helicopter. They scanned the surrounding countryside for any movement or sign that might suggest they had been spotted. All was dark and quiet, and eventually McIntyre signalled to them to move out. He led the column of mopeds down the hill before looping around to make their way to the target.

  McIntyre and Shepherd rode at the head of the column, with Harper, Todd and Shortt behind them and Mitchell as ‘Tail-end Charlie’ at the rear of the line. They rode without lights, their Passive Night Goggles allowing them enough vision to avoid pothoheiles and obstacles in the path.

  The night was icy, the wind stinging their faces as they cleared the top of a ridge. McIntyre checked his GPS, signalled to the rest of the team, silenced his engine and freewheeled down the slope, towards the dark, indistinct shape of a tall building set into a fold of the hills.

  They hid the mopeds in a clump of trees a hundred yards from the target and moved forward on foot, carrying the sections of ladder and the prepared charges, and leaving a faint trail of their boot-prints on the frost-covered ground. Shepherd caught a whiff of woodsmoke on the breeze as they approached from downwind, and a moment later, the tall shape of the target building loomed out of the surrounding darkness, the wall facing them glowing an eerie yellow through the goggles as it caught and reflected the moonlight filtering through the clouds.

  There was a straggle of huts and outbuildings surrounding it and a pile of rubble that might once have been another house. While the others kept watch on the main building, Shortt and Mitchell made sure that all the outbuildings were deserted.

  They dug in and watched the main building. In the early hours of the night, two small groups of men arrived and left again. Another hour passed and then a solitary figure, shrouded by a black cloak, emerged from the door and disappeared into the darkness. After that, there was no more traffic, and the faint glow of a lantern inside the building was extinguished well before midnight.

  Eventually the area was in darkness, the cloud cover masked the starlight. They waited another full hour before assembling the ladder. Shepherd and Todd crept silently towards the building while the others set up a cordon and covered them. Even if any of the Taliban managed to escape before the charges were detonated, they would not avoid the deadly crossfire from the waiting soldiers.

  Shepherd and the captain placed the ladder against the wall and, after listening for any sound from within the building, Shepherd climbed up and began to place shaped charges against the wall on each floor. He allowed the cables of the initiators to trail over his shoulder as he moved up. When he’d finished, he slid back down the ladder without using the rungs, slowing his descent by using his hands and feet on the outside of the uprights as brakes. He glanced at Todd and mimed protecting his ears.

  Todd slipped round the corner and Shepherd followed him, pressing his fingers into his ears to protect them from the shock wave as he triggered the charges. The blasts of the three shaped charges came so close together that they could have been a single explosion.

  With
in seconds of the detonation, Shepherd was on the move, rushing up the ladder with Todd hard on his heels. The two men stormed through the gaping hole that had been blown in the top-floor wall. A thick fog of dust and debris still hung in the air as they swung their Kalashnikovs around. Four Taliban lay on the floor, killed as they lay sleeping, their internal organs pulverised by the devastating concussive force of the blast wave. They moved slowly through the building, clearing the rooms one at a time.

  The top two floors were sleeping areas, littered with Taliban dead, but the ground floor was where the cash was stored and disbursed. As they blew in the walls, the shaped charges had created a blizzard of hundred-dollar bills. The cash was all in US dollars, traded for drugs in Pakistan, extorted from businesses in the areas they controlled, or plundered from the avalanches of cash that the Americans had been pouring into the country in their attempts to buy the loyalty of warlords and tribal elders. Stacked on the floor were crates of ammunition, a few rocket-propelled grenades and a rack of AK-47s. Cck s a

  Shepherd looked over at the captain. ‘No point in leaving what’s left of the cash and weapons and ammo for any Taliban who turn up later,’ he said. ‘Flip your goggles up or turn your back while I get a nice fire going for them. The flare in your goggles will blind you for ten minutes if you don’t.’

  He dragged a few bits of bedding, rags and broken chairs and tables together into the centre of the room, kicked the embers of the fire across the floor and then stacked boxes of the Taliban’s ammunition next to the pile. He surveyed his handiwork for a moment, then scooped up a stray $100 bill and set fire to it. He dropped it on to the pile of debris and waited until it was well alight before murmuring into his throat mic, ‘Coming out.’

  Todd climbed out through the hole in the wall first. As Shepherd moved to follow him, he heard the whiplash crack of an assault rifle and saw Todd fall backwards. There was a second crack as the captain dropped to the ground, gouts of blood pumping from his throat. Shepherd had seen no muzzle flash but heard answering fire from the SAS cordon and swung up his own weapon, loosing off a burst, firing blind just to keep the muj heads down before he slid down the ladder and ran over to Todd and crouched next to him.

  Todd lay sprawled in the dirt, blood still spouting from his throat. The first round had struck his head, close to the left ear, gouging out a chunk of skull. The second had torn out Todd’s larynx. Either wound might have been fatal, the two together guaranteed it. Shepherd cursed under his breath, took a syrette of morphine and injected him, squeezing the body of the syrette to push out the drug like toothpaste from a tube. He began fixing a trauma dressing over the wounds, even though he knew he was merely going through the motions, because nothing could save the captain now. Death was seconds away, a minute or so at the most.

  Once the dressings were in place he cradled Todd’s head against his chest, listening to the wet, sucking sound of the air bubbling through his shattered larynx as blood soaked his shirt.

  The captain grabbed at his arm as his body began to shudder. There were more bursts of fire off to Shepherd’s left. Todd was staring at Shepherd, his eyes fearful. ‘You did good, Captain,’ Shepherd said. ‘You did good.’

  A fresh spasm shook Todd, his eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped sideways to the ground.

  As Shepherd looked up, he saw a movement in the shadows by a pile of rubble at the edge of the compound. A dark shape resolved itself into a crouching figure and Shepherd saw a milky-white eye staring at him, though, seen through his goggles, it glowed an eerie yellow. Shepherd grabbed his weapon and swung it up, but in the same instant he saw a double muzzle flash. The first round tugged at his sleeve, but the next smashed into his shoulder, a sledgehammer blow knocking him flat on his back, leaving the burst of fire from his own weapon arcing harmlessly into the sky.

  A further burst of fire chewed the ground around him, and his face was needled by cuts from rock splinters, though they were no more than gnat bites compared with the searing pain in his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Shepherd saw McIntyre swivelling to face the danger and loosing off a controlled burst of double taps, but Ahmad Khan had already ducked into cover behind the rubble.

  Shepherd looked down at his shoulder. There was a spreading pool of blood on his jacket, glistening like wet tar in the flickering light of the muzzle flashes as his team kept up a barrage of suppressing fire.

  Shortt ran over, pulling a fiel Culllikd dressing from his jacket. ‘Stay down,’ he shouted, and slapped the dressing over the bullet wound. Shepherd took slow, deep breaths and fought to stay calm. ‘Geordie, get over here!’ shouted Shortt. ‘Spider’s hit!’

  Geordie sprinted over, bent double. He looked at Todd but could see without checking that the captain was already dead. He hurried over to Shepherd. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  Shepherd shook his head. He was far from OK. He opened his mouth to speak but the words were lost as he coughed. Helpless, he saw the dark shape of the Taliban killer move away, inching around the rubble heap and then disappearing into the darkness beyond. He tried to point but all the strength had drained from his arms.

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Shortt, standing up and firing a burst in the direction of the escaping gunman.

  Spider tried to sit up but Mitchell’s big, powerful hand pressed him flat again. ‘Keep still and let me work on you,’ he growled. Mitchell clamped the trauma pad over the wound, compressed it and bound it as tight as he could. ‘Oboe! Oboe! All stations minimise,’ said Mitchell into his mic, SAS-speak ordering all unnecessary traffic off the radios. Mitchell looked down at Shepherd and slapped him gently across the face. ‘Stay with me, Spider. Just stay with me.’

  STEPHEN LEATHER

  The ninth SPIDER SHEPHERD all-action thriller

  FALSE FRIENDS

  The most wanted man in the world is dead.

  Now those loyal to him seek revenge.

  When Navy Seals track down and kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, it’s obvious there was a traitor on the inside. After the false friends are revealed to be two British students, Malik and Chaudhry – former Islamic fundamentalists recruited by MI5 – they become targets themselves.

  Dan ’Spider’ Shepherd must teach the pair how to survive undercover with al-Qaeda closing in. But Spider is not used to playing the handler. And with the line between mentor and friend beginning to blur, and a terrorist plot putting thousands of lives at stake, can he protect everyone before it’s too late?

  Out now in paperback and ebook

  www.hodder.co.uk

  If you like the Spider Shepherd series, we think you’ll enjoy Stephen Leather’s Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller series.

  STEPHEN LEATHER

  The first Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller

  NIGHTFALL

  ‘You’re going to hell, Jack Nightingale’: They are words that ended his career as a police negotiator. Now Jack’s a struggling private detective – and the chilling words come back to haunt him.

  Nightingale’s life is turned upside down the day that he inherits a mansion with a priceless library; it comes from a man who claims to be his father, and it comes with a warning. That Nightingale’s soul was sold at birth and a devil will come to claim it on his thirty-third birthday – just three weeks away.

  Jack doesn’t believe in Hell, probably doesn’t believe in Heaven either. But when people close to him start to die horribly, he is led to the inescapable conclusion that real evil may be at work. And that if he doesn’t find a way out he’ll be damned in hell for eternity.

  Out now in paperback and ebook

  www.hodder.co.uk

  STEPHEN LEATHER

  The second Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller

  MIDNIGHT

  Jack Nightingale found it hard enough to save lives when he was a cop. Now he needs to save a soul – his sister’s. But to save her he has to find her and they’ve been separated since birth.

  When everyone Jack talks to about his
sister dies horribly, he realises that someone, or something, is determined to keep them apart.

  If he’s going to save his sister, he’s going to have to do what he does best - negotiate. But any negotiation with the forces of darkness comes at a terrible price. And first Jack must ask himself the question: is every soul worth saving?

  Out now in paperback and ebook

  www.hodder.co.uk

  STEPHEN LEATHER

  The third Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller

  NIGHTMARE

  What goes around, comes around. Jack Nightingale learned that as a cop and discovered that it was just as true in the world of the supernatural. His life changed forever on the day he failed to stop a young girl throwing herself to her death. Ever since, he’s been haunted by thoughts that he could have done more to save her.

  Now her cries for help are louder than ever. Is she trapped in eternal torment? Can Nightingale put things right? Or are the forces of darkness torturing and deceiving him in order to gain the ultimate prize – his soul? Nightingale will have to face down the powers of the police, south London gangs and Hell itself to find out. And evil is closer than he thinks …

  Out now in paperback and ebook

  www.hodder.co.uk