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    Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)
    Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)
    Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)
    Ebook52 pages1 hour

    Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd Short Story)

    By Stephen Leather

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    An action-packed short story featuring SAS trooper Dan "Spider" Shepherd. Spider almost dies in an ill-fated training exercise and then puts his life on the line in war-torn Sierra Leone.

    Shepherd went on to become an undercover cop in London in the series written by bestselling author Stephen Leather.

    Warning Order is just over 14,500 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 dateOct 25, 2013
    ISBN9781311898555
    Warning Order (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

      Warning Order (A Spider Shepherd Short Story) - Stephen Leather

      WARNING ORDER

      By Stephen Leather

      ***

      Published by:

      Stephen Leather at Smashwords

      Copyright (c) 2013 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.

      ****

      September 1997

      Dan Spider Shepherd yawned as he sprawled across a hammock in the cramped interior of a submarine’s forward torpedo bay. It was the last place he’d expected to find himself – SAS troopers jumped out of planes, abseiled down cliffs and blew their way through locked doors, they didn’t generally find themselves in sardine cans breathing recycled air. He wasn’t finding it a pleasant experience. One of the other members of his patrol, Jim ‘Jimbo’ Shortt, was lying on the deck below him in an attempt to stretch out his six foot two inch frame. They were squeezed into the cramped space between the torpedoes - the only free space available. The other two patrol members, Geordie Mitchell and Liam McKay, were sitting on the floor with their backs against a bulkhead. Subs aren’t designed to carry passengers and there were no bunks to spare – even the crew had to work a hot bunk system: two men sharing each bunk, one using it while his shipmate was taking his turn on watch.

      The four SAS men had been together as a patrol since they’d passed Selection and had soon settled into the relentless rhythm of the Sabre Squadrons: Operations - Rest - Retraining - Standby - Operations. Whenever they were on Standby, they were the next cab on the rank for any incident or active service mission that was not already covered by the duty Operations Squadron.

      During their army careers, they’d already trained or seen action in everything from jungle and desert to high mountains and arctic tundra, and could cope with almost anything that was thrown at them, but it was clear they were all out of their comfort zone in the claustrophobic environment of the submarine. The harsh neon lighting gave their faces a grey pallor, the hard surfaces made sounds rattle from one end of the sub to the other and the air they breathed had a metallic tang and a musty whiff of stale sweat and unwashed bodies that the recycling systems were unable to eradicate.

      There was a clunk from beneath him as Jimbo sat up and banged his head on Shepherd’s boot which was dangling over the side of the hammock. He stood up rubbing his head. ‘Why can’t they build these things for normal human beings instead of pygmies?’ he said. ‘That’s the fourth time I’ve cracked my head in this floating tomb. If I’d wanted a life on the ocean wave I’d have joined the bleeding Navy.’

      ‘At least there’s only four of us,’ said Geordie. ‘If you count the hooks for attaching hammocks, you’ll see that there could have been eighteen of us snoring and farting away in here. Just the four if us is bearable, just about.’

      ‘Your farts stink like there’s eighteen of us anyway,’ said Jimbo.

      Liam winked at Shepherd. ‘Those two bicker like an old married couple,’ he said in his Northern Irish brogue. They’d been firm friends since

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