Rough Diamonds (A Spider Shepherd Short Story): Spider Shepherd Short Stories, #6

By Stephen Leather

An action-packed short story featuring Dan "Spider" Shepherd during his days as an SAS trooper in war-torn Sierra Leone.

Rough Diamonds is about 12,000 words, about thirty pages, perfect if you have half an hour to spare.

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. In 2011 alone he sold more than 500,000 eBooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. Born in Manchester, he began writing full time in 1992. 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Leather
• Release date: Nov 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311133205

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

Book preview

ROUGH DIAMONDS

By Stephen Leather

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Published by:

Stephen Leather at Smashwords

Copyright (c) 2013 by Stephen Leather

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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.

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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.

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SIERRA LEONE. October1997.

‘Penny for them?’ growled Jock McIntyre. Jock was a hard-bitten Glaswegian whose rough, no-nonsense ways concealed a keen intelligence. Had ‘intellectual’ not been something of an insult where Jock came from, he might even have admitted to the title, for the SAS rumour mill claimed that he could read the Iliad in the original Greek.

Shepherd realised that the question was directed at him. ‘Penny for what?’ he said. He took a long pull on his glass of Jamesons whiskey. It was Jock who had introduced him to the brand and he had developed a taste for it, albeit mixed with soda water and a few ice cubes thrown in for good measure. They were billeted at the Tradewinds Hotel, overlooking Lumley Beach, west of the Sierra Leonean capital. In different circumstances it would have been an idyllic location with palm-fringed, white sand beaches fringing the turquoise sea, but decades of rampant corruption, military coups, insurrection and civil war had left the country destitute, and as violent and lawless as anywhere on earth.

‘You know what,’ said James Jimbo Shortt. ‘You keep drifting off in your own little world.’

‘Probably because you keep boring the pants off him,’ said Jock. ‘He’s missing his wife and kid, that’s what it is.’

Jimbo raised his beer to Shepherd. ‘I know the feeling. I miss my missus and would much rather be back at home than stuck in this mosquito-ridden hell-hole.’

‘At least Sierra Leone is sunny,’ said Geordie Mitchell, the fourth man at the table.

‘Sunny? You call this sunny?’ said Jimbo. ‘It’s hell on earth, that’s what it is.’

‘I’m just saying, give me a hot country over a cold one, every time,’ said Geordie. ‘At least when it’s hot you can drink a cold beverage.’ He nodded at the ice cubes in Shepherd’s glass. ‘Not that I’d be tempted to touch the ice here.’

‘He deserves whatever he gets for adulterating a perfectly good whiskey,’ said Jock.

Shepherd grinned. ‘There’s a machine in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I checked. There’s a filter on it so it’s all good.’

‘You hope,’ said Geordie. ‘I’ll stick with the beer. No one ever got the runs from beer.’

‘You still haven’t answered the question,’ said Jock. ‘What’s on your mind?’

Shepherd grinned. ‘I was just thinking of all the shit I’ve