Hostile Territory: A Spider Shepherd short story (Dan Shepherd series) by Stephen Leather (Epub)

Description

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

Hostile Territory is about 14,000 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. You can find out more from his website www.stephenleather.com and you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenleather

User’s Reviews

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Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ It is October, a month after his misadventure in the waters off the Norwegian Coast. “Spider” Shepherd and his SAS patrol are stranded on the beach in Sierra Leone waiting for a lift out. Jimbo, Geordie and the new member, Jock McIntyre are sitting around the campfire eating the last of their quarter rations. Spider cannot wait any longer and decides to call the operations commander and plead for a lift out. He demanded an immediate lift-out “or you better order up four body bags” explaining that they were short of ammo, and rations and could be over run at any time.His request was answered and they marched through the jungle to the landing zone. They expected to see a PUMA or a CHINOOK ,but instead the helicopter was and old Russian “HOPLITE”, piloted by a Czech named “Jerzy”. They were flown into Sierra Leone headquarters where the were able to replenish their rations and ammo. The base commander gave the an old Land Rover and sent them off to The Tradewinds Hotel, the only one still standing.As the men sat in the Hotel bar, two strangers walked over and introduced themselves. The man called Parker offered to buy them a round of drinks. He appeared to be an English business man the other, heavyset, man was an Arab. Shepherd observed that Parker was probably an Intelligence office from MI6.Parker and Farid explained that while Sierra Leone was rich in minerals, the real source of it’s treasure was diamonds. Much of the diamonds were being smuggled to Liberia which was currently involved in a civil war, Over 80,000 refugees had crossed over into Sierra Leone and burdened the government who was already engaged in a horrendous fight with Rebels. The rebels we’re wiping out the civilian population. Many of the rebels were entering the diamond mines at night and pilfering the rough diamonds and smuggling them to Liberia.The smuggling was rapidly depleting the resources of the Government. Parker needed the help of Shepherd’s Patrol to take out the Rebels ammo dump. Shepherd agreed if Parker would arrange assistance for Medicaid International to help the civilians who had been tortured by the Rebels. He visited with the leader, a French women, who had one of her “boy soldiers” tell his history before escaping the Rebels and finding his way to Medicaid. The Rebels raided his village and made him kill his mother, father, and baby brother. Then they burnt his house down. Later they began to give him drugs every night until he could stay awake for days without sleep. He was given a rifle and taught how to shoot. He became a leader of other “boy soldiers” who raided other villages and killed everyone in them until one night he went crazy and killed his friends . He escaped the Rebel camp and found the Medic camp and was was given treatment until he regained his health. The boy’s story was sad to hear but even more disturbing to know that it was a common occurrence.Preparations began to make ready for the raid on the Rebel ammo dump. They would have to call in Jerzy and his Hoplite helicopter to get to the area of operations. Getting out would be more difficult .But I will stop here to avoid spoiling the exciting details of the mission and the ending. You will want to down load HOSTILE TERRITORY to finish another mission with “Spider” Shepherd.Leather s series continues with ROUGH DIAMONDS.

⭐ As an avid Stephen Leather fan I found this short story confusing to say the least, I read it twice the first I totally forgot about, the second time when asked for review as I could not recall any of the story. It is like Stephen had a few hours to spare on a plane and decided to write something. The non story starts off with some good plots but they do not go anywhere and no follow up to various pieces of the plot, What about the Diamonds? what about the mercenaries, what about MI6 involvement.What was the point of James? What was the point of preparing for an ongoing mission if the story ended where it didIf his intention was to highlight the recruitment and use of child soldiers he certainly did this in his conversation with AbiolaAs a big Leather fan found this story easy to understand bit no comprehension as to what it was about unless as I said it was to highlight the recruitment and use of Child soldiers

⭐ A bit different to his longer books as there is insufficient time to involve his normal intricate twists….still I enjoyed it immensely

⭐ I was really into this short story. Great read. Loved it.

⭐ Good read and entertaining. Liked the special ops theme.

⭐ very good

⭐ A follow on short story to ‘Warning Order’ full of action and dilemmas for Dan (Spider)Shepherd. A great easy read and good price. I thoroughly recommend it.

⭐ Yet another great read, although the action appears a little watered down. I didn’t know until a few years ago about Stephen Leather’s books, and whilst I am not interested in the subject of his other main character, Jack Nightingale of the Paranormal series, I love all the other books I have read. I am catching up on all the older books and have about five left to read. This short story from the Kindle ‘selection’ is just as good as the longer stories on Dan Shepherd. I find it difficult to put the book down once I have begun reading it, or in the case of the kindle variety, I don’t want to stop reading until I have finished. I guess that is one of the good things about these short stories, you can easily read them in one go. The strong characters in any of his books are what stands out for me, along with the level of detail and knowledge of the subject he portrays with all the characters and the relationships between them. It ‘feels right,’ what he writes. It feels like you are there too. Top marks and a gold star…

⭐ This story covers more of Spider’s backstory, taking up where Warning Order left off, with ‘Spider’ Shepherd’s patrol marooned on a beach after having successfully secured it for a landing in Sierra Leone, October 1997.The story follows the same four characters: Jock McIntyre, Dan Shepherd, Jimbo Shortt and Geordie Mitchell. While awaiting transportation out of their location, they encounter an opportunity to put their training to use as various interests vie for control of the country and its resources.A great action story, short on references to the family back home, but long on adventure.In the character’s chronology, this story is preceded by Warning Order and succeeded by Rough Diamonds. I would recommend reading them in the right order.A great diverting action-packed adventure up to the usual standard.

⭐ A follow on to “Warning Order” which did end a tad abruptly.Here, Spider and his SAS team take on a simple black op in Sierra Leone. I say simple, but this is not really about Spider or an SAS shoot-em-up mission. Author Stephen Leather rather enjoys giving us the unexpected and here Spider is just a focal point in which it is the backdrop of war torn Sierra Leone from 15 years or so ago that comes alive. This was a brutal time and place and the key characters here are those upon whom the horror has descended, from culled villages to drugged up boy soldiers. The main view from Spider’s perspective is one of helplessness and frustration at not being able to make a difference. For a short story it delivers a powerful message that will not disappoint Spider fans, but will also make them think.

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