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    Friendly Fire (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)
    Friendly Fire (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)
    Friendly Fire (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)
    Ebook52 pages58 minutes

    Friendly Fire (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)

    By Stephen Leather

    ()

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    About this ebook

    An action-packed short story featuring Dan “Spider” Shepherd during his days as an SAS trooper in Afghanistan. It’s November 2001 and Shepherd is sent on a dangerous mission to a Taliban stronghold on the trail of the most wanted man in the world – Osama Bin Laden.

    Friendly Fire is just under 14,000 words long, about thirty pages, perfect if you have half an hour to spare.

    Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers. He was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. Two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were made into movies.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStephen Leather
    Release dateDec 16, 2012
    ISBN9781301647224
    Friendly Fire (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)
    Author

    Stephen Leather

    Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful eBook authors and his eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. He has sold more than a million eBooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV. You can find out more from his website www.stephenleather.com

    Read more from Stephen Leather

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      Book preview

      Friendly Fire (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) - Stephen Leather

      FRIENDLY FIRE

      By Stephen Leather

      ****

      Published by:

      Stephen Leather at Smashwords

      Copyright (c) 2012 by Stephen Leather

      ****

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

      Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      ****

      NOVEMBER 2001. THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES.

      For eight hours Spider Shepherd had been lying up in a sand dune overlooking the six-lane highway that slashed through the desert like a knife. It was a moonless night, the blackness dotted with so many stars that looking up made his head spin. He lay motionless, peering through his sniper scope, watching and waiting for any movement in the shadows. To his right, far off in the distance, were the lights of a city and beyond it, close to the sea, the diffused yellow glow of the oil terminals that gave the Gulf state its immeasurable wealth.

      To his left, about a hundred yards away, was a clump of small concrete buildings and rusting pick-up trucks. Several of the buildings seemed to have been abandoned but, in some, oil lamps flickered behind wooden shutters. From time to time, Shepherd heard the reedy cry of a sick baby.

      ‘Target mobile,’ said a voice in his ear. There was a faint double-click in his earpiece as he acknowledged, still peering through his scope towards a jumble of concrete and mud-brick houses flanking a narrow, high-walled passage. The houses were half a mile away, on the other side of the highway, but that wasn’t a worry. The rifle he was using was accurate at well over double that distance.

      At first he saw nothing, but then a black-clad figure slipped from the passage, crossed the street and disappeared again into an alley at the far side. Shepherd continued to track the man and focused on his face. ‘Target acquired. Positive ID,’ he murmured into his throat-mic. Shepherd’s memory was photographic and one quick look at the surveillance photograph in his top pocket had been enough.

      ‘Wait out.’

      He saw the shadowy figure disappear and then reappear where the mud brick walls and buildings gave way to the empty scrub and desert beyond the city. There he paused and made a final scan of his surroundings before moving across the open ground towards the road that led from the airport into the city. Tomorrow was the ruler’s birthday and other heads of state, including a representative of the Queen, would be traveling along this road from the airport to the palace. MI6 had come across intel that one of al-Qaeda’s top bomb-makers had arrived in the Gulf state on a mission to attack one of the VIP convoys. The ruler was a close friend of the British Prime Minister and had agreed to allow the SAS to operate in his country, provided the mission remained totally covert.

      As he checked out the target through his scope, Shepherd saw he was carrying a mobile phone. It would be the trigger for the massive bomb that two days earlier had been buried

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