First Strike

Book 21: The Spider Shepherd Thrillers

by Stephen Leather

Genres: Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

'Enthralling' Financial Times
'Explosive' The Sun
'Grabs the reader by the throat' Daily Mail

Spider Shepherd must face his most dangerous mission yet in the unforgettable new thriller from Stephen Leather.

'From the geopolitical concerns of African conflicts all the way to the sociological study of prisons in UK, there's so much in this book to entice your curiosity and your enthusiasm for knowledge in addition to offering the excitement of reading a fast-paced thriller. You can't afford to sit this one out. Brilliance personified' Best Thriller Books

Release date: July 18, 2024

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

CHAPTER 1

 

The speedboat was cutting through the waves, leaving a white trail behind it that made it easy enough to spot from the air, even with the naked eye. It was heading north-west, towards the British coast. There were eight passengers, all wearing bright orange life jackets. Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd was sitting in the cabin of an AgustaWestland AW109S Grand twin-engine, eight-seat multi-purpose helicopter. It was in civilian livery and had been chartered from a British company that often did work for MI5. The 109S had a top speed of close to two hundred miles an hour and it had no problems keeping the speedboat in sight as it left the Belgian coast.

The pilot was a former US Navy pilot, Steve Lepper, grey haired with a close cropped beard, who was looking over to his left as he kept the helicopter at two thousand feet, half a mile off the starboard side of the speedboat. ‘How’s this, Dan?’ asked Lepper. He had lived in the UK for more than ten years but still had his Nebraskan accent. He was totally relaxed at the controls as if keeping the two ton helicopter in the air was no big thing. Shepherd knew enough about helicopters to appreciate just how much skill was involved just to make them fly straight and level. ‘Perfect,’ said Shepherd.

Sitting next to Shepherd was Jimmy ‘Razor’ Sharpe, a former Glaswegian cop who now worked for the National Crime Agency. Sharpe was peering at the boat through a pair of high powered binoculars. ‘How fast are they going?’ he growled. They were both wearing pale green noise cancelling headsets and spoke over the radio.

‘Thirty knots, give or take,’ said Shepherd.

‘What’s a knot?’

‘It’s that thing that stops your tie falling off your neck,’ said Shepherd.

Sharpe took the binoculars away from his eyes. ‘I’ve missed your sense of humour.’

‘I do my best,’ said Shepherd. ‘So a knot is a unit of speed equal to one nautical mile per hour, which is pretty much 1.15 miles per hour.’

‘So in real money, our guys are travelling at about thirty-three miles per hour?’

‘Give or take. They should reach the UK in about an hour, depending on where they’re aiming for.’

‘Probably Broadstairs, right?’

‘That’s what Tuk says. But he’s not sure. Which is why we’re up here and not waiting for them in the UK.’

Sitting opposite them was Petrit Ajazi, an officer with Albania’s State Intelligence Service, the equivalent of MI5. It went by the acronym SHISH, from the Albanian Shërbimi Informativ I Shtetit . Sharpe took great delight in referring to Ajazi and his colleagues as kebabs, and when Ajazi had asked what he meant, he had taken even more delight in explaining what a shish kebab was. Luckily Ajazi had seen the joke. It was Ajazi’s man who was on the boat below, a police officer and former soldier by the name of Tuk Marku who had spent the last two years undercover penetrating the Italian arm of a gang that now controlled the drugs market in the south of England. Ajazi was short and stocky, his head shaved to reveal a rope-like scar above his left ear that was now hidden behind his noise-cancelling earphones. He was wearing a distressed leather bomber jacket and tight jeans.

‘Are you okay?’ Shepherd asked Ajazi. The Albanian forced a smile and gave Shepherd a thumbs up. He had made it clear he wasn’t a fan of helicopters, but it was the only way of keeping the speedboat under surveillance.

The boat had left a small Belgian coastal town called Blankenberge, which had a promenade facing a long sandy beach and a busy marina. The eight passengers had boarded on the Belgium Pier which stretched 350 metres out into the North Sea. The skipper was Albanian and he had made the trip to the UK more than a hundred times, getting passengers illegally into the country for ten thousand Euros a trip. He charged slightly more for the return journey, and there were plenty of people willing to pay to get out of the country without being clocked by Border Force.

The hundreds of illegal immigrants who cross the Channel every day in inflatable boats wanted to be intercepted by a Border Force vessel or an RNLI lifeboat, because it meant they would be safely taken to a UK port where they would be given a hot meal, a mobile phone and a four

star hotel room. It was the culmination of a journey that would hopefully end with them being given a British passport. The passengers on the speedboat below didn’t care for free phones, they simply needed to get into the country without anybody knowing. Usually the boat was filled with a mixture of nationalities, wealthy Pakistanis, Libyans, Syrians and Iranians happy to pay for the VIP service, but this trip was Albanian-only. All eight passengers belonged to the gang that Tuk Marku had infiltrated, the gang that operated the speedboat service. They had gathered at a hotel in Bruges early that morning and breakfasted together. The man in charge of the group had removed their mobile phones and used a portable metal detector to check for keys and wallets before the passengers were loaded into a windowless van and driven to Blankengberge. Only the man in charge knew where the speedboat would depart from, but only the skipper knew where it would arrive in the UK. The secrecy was the reason that the speedboat had never been intercepted, that and the fact that it could outrun all the Border Force vessels. Border Force operated a fleet of coastal patrol vessels - they had a range of just under three hundred miles when travelling at twenty knots with a crew of six, but their maximum speed was thirty two knots. Even fully loaded, the speedboat the Albanians used could hit forty-five knots.

The eight passengers were on their way to join the Albanian Hellbanianz gang, who had emerged from the council estates of East London to control the drugs market across South East England. Anyone buying heroin, cocaine or cannabis from Maidstone to Southampton was almost certainly buying from the gang. The gang was controlled by Fisnik Haziri, a forty-something giant of a man who went by the nickname ‘Qofte’, which meant meatball in Albanian. Haziri was six feet six inches tall and weighed close to three hundred pounds and had shoulder length jet black curly hair and a straggly beard. Despite his striking appearance, the NCA had never come close to arresting Haziri and his present whereabouts were unknown. He only ever dealt with other Albanians, preferably those that he was related to, and rarely slept in the same place twice. The plan was for Marku to infiltrate Haziri’s gang and to ultimately betray him.

Over the last decade, drug traffickers had turned Albania into a narcotics transit hub, bringing

heroin into the country hidden in clothing and shoe imports brought in from Turkey and concealing cocaine from Colombia in shipments of bananas and palm oil. Gangs then loaded the drugs onto high-speed zodiac inflatable boats and took them to the Italian coast. And every day a dozen or so small planes flew drugs over the Adriatic to Italy, landing on small runways hidden in mountain valleys. Once in Italy, the Albanian Mafia could move their drugs around the EU with impunity, and it was a simple matter to get it across the Channel and into the United Kingdom. Under Haziri’s leadership, the Hellbanianz gang now controlled almost half of the United Kingdom’s £5 billion cocaine market. Putting him behind bars would be a major coup for MI5 and the NCA, though Shepherd was enough of a realist to know that within hours of Haziri being arrested, his place would be taken by someone else. The so-called war against drugs was a war that could never be won, no matter how many battles were fought.

The speedboat had kept in a straight line pretty much, and its heading would take it to Broadstairs, but Shepherd had a gut feeling that the vessel would at some point make a turn to starboard and head for Southend-on-Sea or one of the small ports nearby on the Essex coast. It was a much longer journey but there were far fewer checks and most of the Border Force vessels were concentrated around the Strait Of Dover.

‘Something’s happening,’ said Sharpe.

Shepherd picked up his binoculars and tried to focus on the speedboat. A man in a dark blue windbreaker had stood up and was facing the stern. ‘Is that a gun?’ asked Shepherd. The man was holding something in his right hand.

‘I think so,’ said Sharpe.

‘Steve, can you get the camera on it?’ asked Shepherd. The helicopter had two nose-mounted cameras, one with a powerful zoom lens, the other equipped for thermal imaging.

‘Roger that,’ said Lepper.

One of the passengers

 was standing up now. Shepherd couldn’t see the man’s face. ‘Is that Tuk?’ asked Shepherd. ‘Petrit, are you seeing this?’

Ajazi had his binoculars to his eyes but was having trouble focussing on the boat. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he grunted.

As Shepherd watched, the passenger removed his life jacket and dropped it onto the floor. Then the gun jerked in the man’s hand and the passenger fell over the railing and into the sea.

‘What the fuck?’ shouted Sharpe. ‘Did you see that? He just shot him.’

‘Was it Tuk?’ said Ajazi.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Sharpe. I think so. The guy with the gun made him take off his life jacket and then I’m not sure if the guy shot him and he fell, or if he jumped and the guy shot him as he jumped. It all happened so fast.’

‘He’s in the water,’ said Lepper over the radio. ‘I can see him.’

‘We need to go down,’ said Shepherd.

‘We don’t have a winch capability,’ said the pilot. ‘We’re not equipped for a rescue.’

‘Just get down there, Steve,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let me worry about that. Jimmy, keep eyes on him.’

‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Ajazi. ‘What’s happening?’

‘He’s shot and in the water,’ said Shepherd.

The helicopter tilted to the left and Shepherd’s stomach lurched as it went into a steep descent. The manoeuvre caught Ajazi by surprise and he yelped and threw his hands in the air.

‘I’ve got him,’ said Sharpe.

‘Is he alive?’

‘I can’t see, but he’s there.’

The helicopter was in a steep dive now, but the turbines had throttled back. Shepherd saw the waves rushing towards them and he gritted his teeth. The pilot knew what he was doing, he was just taking the quickest route down, but it was still an unsettling experience. The dive continued until they were about a hundred feet above the waves at which point Lepper pulled up the nose and increased power to the turbines. Shepherd’s stomach lurched again.

The Albanian grabbed a sick bag and threw up into it, the cabin was filled with the stench of vomit.

The helicopter steadied in a hover about ten feet above the waves. Shepherd grabbed the handle of the door and pulled it back. The downdraft from the rotor tugged at his hair and the salt water stung his eyes. He narrowed his eyes as he peered out and saw the man in the water, rising and falling with the waves. The swell was moving the body but Shepherd couldn’t see if the man was alive or not.

He looked over at Ajazi but the Albanian had already ripped off his headset and unbuckled his seat belt. Shepherd opened his mouth to shout a warning but before he could say anything, the Albanian had launched himself through the doorway. Shepherd stared in amazement as Ajazi disappeared under the water and then reappeared a second later, arms flailing.

Shepherd looked over at Sharpe and held out his hand but Sharpe shook his head. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I can’t swim.’

‘Your life vest is under your seat, give it to me.’

Sharpe bent down and pulled out a yellow pouch. Shepherd unbuckled his seat belt, pulled out the life vest from under his seat, then took off his headset. He stripped off his jacket and kicked off his boots.

‘You have got to be joking!’ shouted Sharpe but Shepherd couldn’t hear him over the noise of the turbines.

Shepherd grabbed the pouch from Sharpe, pulled out the vest and hooked his arm through it. He did the same with his own life vest, then he took a deep breath and jumped out.

He hit the water feet first and immediately started kicking. The water was ice cold and he gasped, but he immediately clamped his mouth shut and squeezed his nostrils together as he he went under. He kicked harder and his head burst through the surface. He gasped for air, and kicked again to keep his head up. He saw Ajazi and swam towards him. The downdraft from the helicopter was flattening the water around him and the roar of the turbines was deafening.

His wet clothes were dragging him down and he had to kick hard to stay up. He flailed his arms, dragging his way through the waves until he reached Ajazi. Ajazi had grabbed the injured man but was having trouble staying afloat and waves were breaking over his bald head.

Shepherd grabbed the collar of Ajazi’s jacket and pulled him around so that he could see the Albanian’s face, then he pulled off one of the lifejackets and showed it to him. Ajazi nodded as he gasped for breath and he reached for it. Shepherd grabbed the other man and pulled his left arm through the second life jacket, then did the same with the right arm. He clipped the nylon strap across the man’s chest and then he pulled the red cord to inflate the jacket. The man bobbed in the water. His eyes were closed but his lips were moving.

A wave washed over Shepherd’s head and he gasped. His legs were burning now but he carried on kicking, it was the only thing that was stopping him from going under.

Ajazi was struggling with his life jacket so Shepherd helped him get it on before pulling the cord. The life jacket inflated and Ajazi bobbed up in the water.

Shepherd held Ajazi’s lifejacket with his left hand and gripped the other man’s vest 

with his right. He looked up, gasping for breath, and shook his wet hair from his eyes. The helicopter was about ten feet above his head, but it might as well have been a mile away, there was no way of reaching it. He roared in frustration.

A head appeared in the doorway. Jimmy Sharpe was shouting something but there was no way of hearing him above the roar of the turbines. Sharpe disappeared then the helicopter started to descend. Shepherd shook his head, trying to clear his eyes. The helicopter was moving slowly but it was definitely getting closer. The problem was there was nothing to grab onto except the wheels and they were a couple of feet below the hatch which is where Shepherd needed to be.

Ajazi was reaching up but he was wasting his energy. Even if he managed to grab a wheel he wouldn’t be able to hold on to it.

The helicopter was just a few feet above the waves now. Ajazi kicked his legs and rose up out of the water. His fingers touched the wheel but then he fell back, screaming in frustration. Shepherd looked up, gasping for breath. He was exhausted and had lost the feeling in his legs. His chest was heaving and every breath was an effort. He looked over at Ajazi and he saw the look of helplessness in the Albanian’s eyes. He was close to giving up.

Shepherd looked up again, blinking the saltwater from his eyes. Sharpe’s head appeared again. He had taken off his headset. Sharpe held out something. Shepherd realised it was Sharpe’s nylon holdall, the black nylon bag that had contained his clothes, washbag and a bottle of Glenfiddich Scotch whisky. The bag was empty now and Sharpe had extended the carrying strap so that it was fully out. Shepherd grinned. ‘Nice one, Razor,’ he thought, but he was too tired to say it out loud. He looked over at Ajazi and pointed at the helicopter. The Albanian looked up and saw the bag. He snarled and reached for it, kicking with legs and stretching his fingers out. He caught the bag and grabbed it with both hands. The helicopter dipped another couple of feet and Sharpe began pulling. Ajazi pulled himself out of the water, still kicking his legs. The helicopter dropped another foot, its wheels almost touching the water, and Sharpe pulled harder. Ajazi managed to get a foot

up onto one of the wheels and he pushed himself up. Sharpe grabbed his life jacket and hauled him in. Shepherd saw Ajazi’s boots disappear through the hatch as the helicopter rose up into the air again.

Shepherd had both hands on the injured man’s lifejacket now. The man’s eyes were still closed and Shepherd couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not.

Sharpe appeared again, holding out the bag. The helicopter descended and the turbines roared. The bag dropped lower and Shepherd reached up with his right hand to grab it. Sharpe leaned further out of the helicopter. Presumably Ajazi was holding on to his legs. A team effort.

Shepherd managed to get the bag over the injured man’s head and he pulled the straps under his arms. Sharpe heaved on the strap, then Ajazi appeared next to him and together they pulled the man up. As Shepherd released his grip on the man, he realised he was now on his own with no lifejacket and reaching the end of his energy reserves. He was exhausted and every breath was an effort. He watched as the man was hauled in and the helicopter rose into the air again.

He had lost all feeling in his legs now and he was shivering from the cold. His brain was telling him that he was still kicking but there was no sensation, just numbness. He was using his arms to keep his head out of the water but waves kept washing over his head. Hie eyes and nose were burning from the saltwater and he was coughing and spluttering. It would be the easiest thing just to close his eyes and sink beneath the waves, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep moving, even though he had almost no energy left.

The helicopter was about thirty feet above him now and he wondered if they were going to leave him, but then it started to descend again and the downwash flattened the waves around him. Sharpe’s head appeared, then Ajazi joined him, and together they lowered the bag towards him. The helicopter seemed to be moving in slow motion, It was taking forever and the bag was still out of reach. Then the helicopter turbines increased in pitch roared louder and the helicopter dropped so close that one of the wheels almost clipped his head. Then the bag was in front of him and he grabbed it with both hands. A massive wave washed over him and he choked as

the saltwater filled his mouth. He was still coughing and retching as Sharpe and Ajazi pulled together, dragging him out of the freezing water and into the cabin of the helicopter.

As soon as Shepherd’s feet were inside, Sharpe pulled the door shut and the helicopter began to climb into the air.

The injured man was lying on the floor, face down, and watery blood was pooling around his chest. Ajazi was sitting next to him, exhausted.

Shepherd climbed onto one of the seats, gasping for breath. Sharpe patted him on the shoulder and grinned. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

Shepherd couldn’t help but laugh.

Sharpe looked down at Ajazi and nodded at the injured man. ‘We need to roll him over,’ he said.

Ajazi nodded and got up on to his knees. Sharpe leaned forward and together they rolled the injured man on to his back. There was a bullet wound in the man’s left shoulder.

Shepherd stood up to get a better look. ‘There’s no exit wound so the round is still in there,’ he said. ‘We need to put something over the wound and apply pressure.’

The contents of Sharpe’s holdall were strewn across one of the seats. Shepherd picked up a pair of boxer shorts and held them up. ‘Are they clean?’

‘Of course they’re clean? What do you think I am?’

‘They’ll be fine.’ 

Shepherd gave the shorts to Ajazi. Ajazi was still gasping for breath as he stared at the man on the floor of the helicopter, his chest rising and falling. ‘That’s…not…Tuk,’ he said.

 

  CHAPTER 2

 

Steve Lepper flew the helicopter to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent. The hospital had close to six hundred beds and a 24-hour Accident and Emergency Department, and it had the added advantage of a helicopter landing pad.

Ajazi kept the boxers pressed against the wound of the injured man, who still breathing, but shallowly and his eyes remained closed. He was in his late twenties, with a thick moustache and eyebrows that almost met above a hooked nose. Ajazi had no idea who the man was, but he knew it wasn’t Tuk Marku.

Lepper had radioed ahead and as they touched down on the landing pad, two paramedics ran forward with a trolley. ‘Gunshot wound, left shoulder, no exit wound,’ said Shepherd. ‘He was in the sea for fifteen minutes.’

‘What’s his name?’ asked one of the paramedics as they pulled him out of the helicopter.

‘Sorry, we don’t know,’ said Shepherd.

The paramedics laid him on the trolley and rushed him away.

They had trollies for Shepherd and Ajazi, but they both insisted on walking into the Accident and Emergency Department. Sharpe carried the bags. His own holdall was soaking wet so he’d put his clothes, washbag and whisky into Shepherd’s bag.

A nurse took blood pressure and pulse readings from Shepherd and Ajazi, but other than the fact they were still shivering from the exposure to the freezing water she pronounced them fit and well. She found towels for them and pointed them towards the bathroom where they stripped off their wet clothes, showered, then dried themselves off and changed into clean clothes.

Sharpe was waiting for them when they came out of the bathroom. ‘The guy’s out of danger, they took out the bullet and stitched him up. He’d lost a lot of blood so they’ve given him plasma or whatever they give them, and he’s as well as can be expected.’

‘No ID, obviously?’ said Shepherd.

‘No, and he hasn’t given then a name. Claims he can’t speak English. I explained that we have an Albanian speaker and they’re happy enough for us to go in and speak to him. The pilot wants to know what we want to do with the chopper.’

‘He’s on the clock and we have him for the rest of the day,’ said Shepherd. ‘Let’s see what the story is with his guy before we decide what to do.’

Sharpe took them up to the third floor and along to a single room. ‘I explained this is an NCA case and he’s a suspect in a major crime, so we’ve got him in a room on his own.’

He opened the door. The man was lying in bed, connected to a machine measuring his heart rate and blood pressure. A line from a plasma bag wound its way to the man’s right arm. The man’s left wrist was handcuffed to the bed frame. ‘They weren’t happy about the handcuffs, but I insisted,’ said Sharpe.

‘Probably best,’ said Shepherd. ‘He’ll probably run the first chance he gets.’

The man opened his eyes. He frowned when he saw the three of them standing by the door.

Ajazi spoke to the man in Albanian and the man replied. ‘I was just telling him not to worry, that we’re the ones who saved him,’ Ajazi said to Shepherd. ‘Let me have a chat with him, see where we stand.’

‘Sure. Do you want us to wait outside?’

‘It might make him feel less under pressure,’ said Ajazi. ‘I don’t think we’ll need to play Good Cop, Bad Cop with him, not after what happened.’

‘There’s a food court on the ground floor, we’ll wait for you there,’ said Sharpe.

Shepherd and Sharpe took the lift down to the ground floor and walked to a table. Sharpe was carrying the bags. Shepherd’s body temperature was back to normal but he was still dog tired. He dropped down at a table while Sharpe put the bags on a chair and went to get their food. He

returned after a few minutes with two mugs of coffee, two bacon rolls and two plates of chips. Shepherd grinned. ‘I see you went for the healthy option.’

‘After what you did out there in the Channel, I don’t think you need to worry about your cholesterol levels,’ laughed Sharpe as he sat down. He unzipped Shepherd’s bag, looked around and then took out the bottle of Glenfiddich. He unscrewed the top and poured a slug of whisky into his coffee mug, then he held the bottle over Shepherd’s mug. ‘It’s medicinal,’ he said.

Shepherd chuckled. ‘What the hell, I’ve earned it.’

Sharpe poured whisky into Shepherd’s mug, then screwed the top back on the bottle and put it into the holdall

Shepherd sipped his fortified coffee and felt the warmth of the alcohol spread across his chest.

‘So what do we do about Tuk?’ asked Sharpe, picking up his bacon roll.

‘There’s nothing we can do, other than to wait for him to contact Petrit. The plan was to see where the passengers went, but that’s obviously dead in the water - no pun intended. They took all means of communication off the passengers before they boarded and the metal detector meant we couldn’t use any sort of tracking device, so the ball is now in Tuk’s court.’

They were just finishing their chips when Ajazi appeared. He hurried over to their table and sat down. ‘His name is Redjon Plauku, he’s worked for the Hellbanianz gang in Italy but they wanted to move him to London. He has a criminal record in Italy so he can’t pass through a UK airport, so they got him a seat on the boat. But then they accused him of being a police informer.’

‘Had they seen the helicopter?’ asked Shepherd.

‘No, it was nothing to do with the helicopter,’ said Ajazi. ‘A consignment entering Italy was intercepted last night, and for some reason they blamed him.’

‘Why?’

‘Very few people knew about the plane that was bringing the drugs in. The Hellbanianz gang work in small cells, information isn’t widely shared.’ Ajazi lowered his voice as if he feared being overheard. ‘Tuk also knew of the consignment, he told me about it a few days ago, the last time I spoke to him. I owed a contact in the Central Directorate for Anti-Drug Services a favour so I passed the intel to him.’ He grimaced. ‘So this is my fault, I’m sorry.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ said Shepherd. ‘But if anything it works in our favour. They think that Plauku is the informer which hopefully means that the pressure is now off Tuk. The fact that we pulled him from the sea will convince them that we were rescuing our man. And if Plauku has any sense, he’ll turn informer now.’

‘I’ve told him that, and if we can guarantee the safety of his family, he’ll cooperate. He wants to know if he and his family can move to England.’

‘I can ask,’ said Shepherd. ‘A lot will depend on how helpful he can be and how much hard evidence he can provide. I can definitely talk to my bosses. But in terms of putting Haziri behind bars, Tuk is still our best bet. When do you expect to hear from him again?’

Ajazi took out his mobile phone. ‘He’ll call me on this, but it’s not working after it went in the sea.’

‘I’ll get you a new one. The SIM card should be okay. Is he supposed to check in every day?’

‘Only when it’s safe,’ said Ajazi. ‘His safety is paramount.’

‘So what are your plans until then?’

‘I’ll check into a hotel close to the hospital. I’ll stay here as long as they’ll let me. In view of the fact that Plauku says he’ll cooperate, can you arrange security?’

‘Jimmy can do that through the NCA.’

He looked over at Sharpe and Sharpe nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ll get right on it. And I’ll stay here for the duration. What about you?’

‘I’ll head back to London with the heli. Not much else I can do until Tuk makes contact.’ He looked at Ajazi. ‘Were they trying to kill him on the boat or did they just want him in the water?’

‘He says they were going to shoot him but he jumped. If he’d stayed on the boat he’d have been dead for sure.’ Ajazi held out his hand. ‘Thank you for this. For everything.’

Shepherd smiled and shook his hand. ‘We just want to put Hazri where he belongs, and shut down as much of the Hellbanianz gang as we can.’

‘You saved my life, Dan. I jumped into the water without thinking. If you hadn’t come in after me, I would have drowned.’

‘No, you were thinking you had to save a man’s life, that’s why you jumped in. Admittedly you thought you were trying to save Tuk, but that’s not the point. Not many men would have done what you did.’

Ajazi grinned. ‘Right back at you.’ He stood up and motioned for Shepherd to do the same.

Shepherd got to his feet, unsure of what was happening.

Ajazi walked around the table, pulled Shepherd close to him, and hugged him tight. Then he released his grip and patted him on the back, hard. ‘We are brothers now.’

‘I guess we are,’ said Shepherd.

 

 

CHAPTER 3

 

David White woke to the sound of air raid sirens. He opened his eyes and frowned as he struggled to get his bearings. There was blue nylon above his head, rippling in a breeze, and not the bedroom ceiling that he had been expecting. He looked at his watch, blinking to get it into focus. It was just before six-thirty. He smiled as he remembered where he was. Camping. With his daughters in the next tent. White wasn’t a fan of camping but Hannah and Ella had nagged him to take them to the open air music festival, begged, pleaded and cajoled until he’d agreed. Their mother hadn’t been so easy to persuade and she had stayed behind in Tel Aviv with her parents.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and looked at his watch again. Was it a drill? He’d heard the air raid sirens go off twice while he’d been in Tel Aviv, and both times they had been drills. He stood up. He was wearing a blue Cambridge University sweatshirt and baggy grey jogging pants. He padded barefoot to the tent opening and peered out. He saw azure blue sky and wisps of white cloud. And dozens of young people standing around, most of them holding their phones. He walked the four steps to his daughters’ tent and patted on it. ‘Hannah? Ella? Are you awake?’

‘Of course we’re awake,’ said Hannah from inside. ‘Can’t you hear those sirens?’

‘Get dressed, just in case it isn’t a drill.’

‘Where are we going to go, dad? We’re in the middle of the desert.’

White smiled. She had a point. By law, all homes, residential buildings and industrial buildings had to have bomb shelters. But they were at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering and bomb shelters hadn’t been on the list of facilities available. The music festival had been thrown together at short notice. It had originally been planned for a venue in the south of Israel but had been switched to the grounds of the Re-im kibbutz, just three miles from the Gaza Strip, the narrow strip of land between Israel and Egypt that was home to more than two million Palestinians. It was basically a rave, packed with bands that White had never heard of, but Hannah and Ella had known most of them and it became a matter of life and death for them to go. White was still at the stage of wanting to build memories with his daughters so had agreed to take them. They had arrived the previous day and pitched their tents in the camp ground, a hundred yards from a line of portable toilets that stretched across a field. There were three stages for the bands to perform on, and a food and beverage area with a large bar. There were almost four thousand people there, most of them aged between twenty and thirty, though there were a lot of teenagers around. The police

 were there in force, along with a large contingent of security guards, but everyone White had met had been good humoured and friendly.

The bands weren’t anything that White would listen to by choice, so he had spent much of the time in the bar, sipping beer and sharing parenting stories with other fathers on memory-building duty.

‘Just get out here while we work out what we’re going to do,’ said White.

A group of teenagers began shouting excitedly and began pointing their phones up at the sky. White shielded his eyes and looked up. High above something metallic was streaking through the sky leaving a white trail in its wake. A missile. White was never good at judging distances but it looked to be several thousand feet in the air. It looked as if it had been fired from the Gaza Strip, which was just three miles to the west. So far as White could tell, it was heading north, towards Tel Aviv. White scanned across the sky. He saw another white trail. And another. As he slowly turned he realised that there were dozens of missiles, all heading north. Tel Aviv was just a hundred kilometres away and the Israeli capital, Jerusalem, was even closer.

Missile attacks were an ever present risk in Israel, a country that was surrounded by enemies. Protection came in the form of the Iron Dome, a network of anti-missile batteries that used radar to detect incoming rockets and intercept them. Manufactured by the US Raytheon company, the systems were able to detect if an incoming rocket was going to attack a populated area. If it wasn’t, if it was headed towards the open sea or an open area, then it would be allowed on its way. If there was the possibility of casualties then the system fired a missile to intercept and destroy the rocket. Iron Dome was supported by the David’s Sling system, also manufactured by Raytheon, which was designed to intercept and destroy enemy planes, drones, tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles but with three times the range of Iron Dome. The systems were so effective that fewer than five per cent of Hamas missiles fired at Israel ever reached their target. That didn’t stop the terror  group from trying, ...