“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing that means anything. He’ll ask her how her day was and she’ll give him some generality. It was a slow day or she met some new people or they had to work hard because something new popped up. That’s it. No specifics of any kind. How did he know she’d given him the information he was there for? I don’t understand it.”
“Right now. I don’t either.”
They moved. The Colonel paced back and forth across his office. The woman, Mrs. Rose Hanson, sat on his desk. He asked, “Do you still have some contacts at the NSA?”
“Yes. I can ask them for any information they have on Sandra, although I can’t see that she’s done anything wrong.”
“I can’t either. I’m glad. I like Sandra.”
Rose stood up and paced back and forth across the office. The Colonel sat on the desk. Rose said, “What’s the second problem?”
“It’s much more serious. A terrorist group called the Sons of Vengeance has import a nuclear device to the United States. It came in pieces, and they have to assemble it. They’ll need the manual. We can monitor their chatter on the net, but it doesn’t help. They only publish their boasts and threats. Never anything we can use. Until yesterday, they were talking about the operation in the future tense. They were planning on blowing something up. This morning it changed to the present. They’re blowing it up, not ‘they’re going to blow it up’. It became definite. We can’t figure out how they’re passing the information on. It isn’t something you can put in a Tweet or a posting to a bulletin board. I’ve seen our manual and it takes up over a hundred pages. There was a post this morning that talked about delivering the information to the man who’s going to assemble it today or tomorrow. That’s about as big an operation as we’ve ever had to deal with.”
“Do you have any other information?”
“Only that their mechanic is in Las Vegas.”
“I’ll get with Stewart at the NSA and see if I can find anything?” She started for the door.
The Colonel said, “Wait a minute.” Rose turned around and walked back towards him. She pressed herself against him and they held each other. Their kiss ran on and on. When it ended, the Colonel said, “I love you completely and absolutely.”
Rose said, “I know. I love you too.”
“I know that too.”
Later that day, the Colonel stuck his head inside Stone’s office. “I have a little assignment for you. It’s errand boy work and there’s no one else to do it. Come in my office. I’ll introduce you to your partner for the mission.”
Stone stood with effort and followed the Colonel. When he walked into the other man’s office. He stopped and stared. The woman in front of him did the same thing.
The Colonel hadn’t seen them react to each other. He said, “Stone, this is Delia Stackhouse. She’s going to go with you. It’s a simple assignment. We have a number of records that must go to the office in Las Vegas. We can’t send them over the internet. They’re originals of personnel records. They come from both offices. That’s why Delia’s here. You’re to get signed receipts on delivery.” He looked up and saw them looking at each other. “Anything wrong?”
Stone answered first, “No sir. Nothing.”
Delia said, “Nothing at all.”
“Good.” He lifted a box with at least fifty thick folders onto his desk. “You should be back tomorrow.”
Chapter 8
Flawed, Impossible, Uncomfortable
Stone hefted the records under his arm, and they walked out, but not together. Stone waited while Delia walked in front of him. They didn’t talk in the corridor. They didn’t say a word in the elevator, even though they were alone. They didn’t say anything while Stone signed the release for the car. They didn’t say anything for the first half hour of the trip.
Delia broke the silence. “Was there anything else you didn’t tell me?”
“You mean anything that might disqualify me even more from being worthy of your interest?”
“That’s not fair.”
“I know. Right now, I don’t feel fair. Yes, there is. I have PTSD.”
“Of course. You would have to have PTSD.”
Stone sighed. “That about does it. Any relationship we might have had is dead.
If it’s not too private, tell my what turns you off on tattoos, scars and people who’ve made a career out of killing other people.”
Delia stared straight through the windshield. “I come from a military family. My father served in Viet Nam. He has PTSD. My brother lost an arm in Iraq. It’s hard, looking at injuries reminds me of his struggle. I want out of that way of life.”
“I understand.”
Three silent, prickly hours later, a bullet punched through the back window of their car and went out the windshield. Stone pushed the right hand pedal all the way to the floor and began weaving back and forth.
They were on an empty road. No cars, no trucks, no hitchhikers by the side of the road with signs that read, “Anywhere”.
Delia looked out the back window. “Single pickup truck. One man in the bed of the pickup with a rifle, an AK47.”
The shots came one a second. Delia and Stone heard them whiz by. One knocked off the rear view mirror.
Stone said, “This POS (Slang for “Piece of Shit”) couldn’t outrun a turtle. Lets get off the road and set up a defensive position.” He found a dirt road leading away from the highway and down into a little valley with a thick grove of pine trees and a stream. He pulled in parallel to the stream.
When Stone jumped out and set up behind the car, his clumsiness disappeared. He picked up a big bag from the back seat. He glanced at Delia to see if she was alright. “Take this.” She slung the bag over her shoulder. Stone picked up the folders and said, “Follow me.”
“Right.” Delia watched his huge body run away from the car into the pine trees at the water’s edge. She thought, “His limp is gone.” And a second later, “Damn, he runs gracefully. When he’s in combat and ready to kill people, he looks magnificent.”
The best defensive position lay across the wide, but shallow stream and behind some thick pine trees.
Stone dropped to the ground just as the pickup truck plunged down the steep road. The man in the back of the pickup saw Delia as she fell beside Stone. He fired at her, hitting the tree three times.
Stone handed her a 9mm pistol. “Can you shoot?”
“Yes. But I’ve never shot at a human being before.”
“Don’t think that you’re killing someone. Think that you’ve got to keep him from killing you or somebody else. It’s easier if you’re protecting yourself.”
Stone had a short M4 carbine. Three bullets kicked up dirt directly in front of Delia. She held the pistol as steady as she could and fired back three times.
Stone got off ten shots in the same time. The shooter fell back in the bed of the truck. The driver slumped in his seat. The truck rolled down the rest of the hill, gaining speed every second and hit the side of their car hard enough to push it completely into the creek.
Delia thumped the box of records with her knuckles. “We don’t have to risk our lives for these things. They wouldn’t have sent us if they meant anything.” She regretted saying the words as soon as she said them.
“You mean they wouldn’t have sent me. You’re right. But the mission was to deliver the records, and that’s what we’ll do.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No harm, no foul.”
Her face hardened. “Stone, don’t misinterpret my apology. I said something I shouldn’t have. I’m correcting myself, nothing more.”
Unfazed he calmly replied, “I know.”
Fahad watched a computer screen with three blips on it. Two blips stopped moving. The third closed in on the first two. He said, “Soon, we will have our information.
Another car stormed down the dirt road and skidded to a stop. Six men boiled out of the car and examined the tw
o dead men. Delia and Stone hugged the ground behind the tree.
The men jabbered at each other in a language that wasn’t English.
Delia said, “They’re angry that we killed their comrades.”
“And they’d very much like to kill us. And they want the records. I don’t understand why. They’re just personnel records.”
Delia’s eyes widened. “You speak Farsi?”
“I learned in my first tour. Very handy in Afghanistan.”
They listened for a few minutes more. Stone said, “They just mentioned another thing in our car.”
“Not exactly. It sounded like something hidden in our car.”
“I think that’s better. They just talked about a surprise they could use if everything failed. That’s odd.”
“And vaguely unpleasant.” They watched and listened for a few more seconds. Stone continued, “So we’ve got two things they want. The records and something that’s hidden.”
Delia nodded, “Let’s wait for a few minutes to see if our friends find it. If they do, we’ll take it back from their cold dead fingers.”
Stone looked at her with appreciation. “You’re learning.” She kept her face stern and unavailable.
The six men went through the car with savagery. They ripped up the upholstery and yanked out the seats. They pried off the dashboard and all four side panels of the doors. They went back to their vehicle and leaned on it.
Stone said, “We can assume, it’s not inside the passenger compartment. I’m going to look in a very special place. We used it in Afghanistan.” He crawled upstream. A few minutes later, Delia saw Stone swimming mostly underwater down the stream. He stayed close to the far bank.
Stone shivered. His hip started to freeze up. He dragged himself along by pulling on the rocks jutting up from the bottom of the stream. The bottom of their car was submerged. He took a deep breath and worked his way along the bottom of the stream to the underside of the car.
He thought, “Bad place to get stuck. Dead if I can’t breathe. Dead if I have to surface, and they see me.”
He had a superstition he’d lived by all his life. He never described the worst possible outcome of a situation in words or inside his head. His stomach tightened. He’d just broken the superstition. As soon as he heard the words in his mind, he felt something. The differential on the rear axle caught on his shirt and the rocks on the bottom of the stream cut into his belly and hooked into his belt. He couldn’t go forward or back.
Delia watched his legs thrash under the water. She could tell something was wrong. She grabbed the M4 carbine and fired at the men standing around the car.
They’d relaxed. Obviously unaware they were still close by, the shooting made the men jump and scatter. Five of them scrambled up the little hill by the road. One ran off to the left, upstream.
Stone tried to work his hand under his shirt and undo his belt. It was too tight. He was running out of air.
Delia expected the men who ran up the bank to go all the way across the road before they stopped to figure out what happened. She kept her eyes toward the direction of the sixth man.
Stone began the reflexive gasping that comes before drowning.
The sixth man hid behind a rock. He fired at Delia from fifty yards away. Delia put the carbine to her shoulder and fired back.
Stone ran out of air. The world started to go black.
Assault rifles shouldn’t be purchased by civilians. Not because they’re too dangerous, but because they don’t provide the buyer with what their generally looking for. Assault rifles fire a bullet that’s much less lethal than the civilian bullets deer hunters use to bring down their prey. Wounding is better than killing for the military.
Assault rifles used by both the civilians and the military don’t fire in a fully automatic mode.
Finally, in order for an assault rifle to hit the broadside of a barn, the shooter has to be inside it. Assault rifles are meant to be rugged and take a lot of abuse. They’re meant to survive a dunking in water, mud, sand and anything else a soldier can find to drop them in. The tolerances; the spaces between the various mechanical parts of the assault rifle, are larger than normal. If a grain of sand gets between the bolt and the side of the receiver, the rifle will still fire. This general looseness makes for a loss of accuracy that’s unacceptable for most civilians. Most assault rifles can’t hit a man sized target at a hundred yards. They’re a waste of money for the average civilian.
Delia emptied her magazine at the sixth man then threw her gun on the bank of the stream and streaked as fast as she could go toward Stone. Bullets flew past her head and made small geysers in the stream.
She grabbed both of Stone’s ankles and pulled hard. He didn’t budge. She pulled harder again, and he came loose. She frantically turned him over and pounded on his chest. Mouth to mouth would have been a better choice, but she didn’t have time.
Stone coughed and sat up. Delia yelled, “We’ve got to get behind a tree. Now!” Stone stumbled across the stream as more bullets hit the water around them. He fell as he climbed on the bank.
Delia saw a bullet tear into his shirt and his flesh along his back, turning the shirt into a broad sheet of blood within seconds. She lunged and pulled him back to his feet. They made it to cover behind a pine tree.
Stone worked hard to cough up the water in this lungs. Between spasms of racking breaths, he dug into the bag and found another pistol. He handed it to Delia then turned away and vomited water.
Delia watched him. When he could, he pointed his finger toward the sixth man and made a pretend pistol with his fingers. He moved his thumb up and down.
Delia got the message. She edged around the tree and fired at the spot she’d last seen the sixth man five times.
Stone was functioning when she looked back. He sat on the forest floor and breathed hard. He whispered, “Thanks” when he could.
He looked around their position and frowned. Their view was cut off by short bushes on every side. He shook his head and reached for the gun. Delia gave it to him. Stone dug out two more magazines from the bag. He coughed as he tried to speak. He gasped, “Follow me” and crawled along the ground upstream.
Chapter 9
Repairing Stone
Abdul Al Sharif joined Al Queda a month earlier after witnessing an America drone kill his entire family. His life had no purpose other than revenge.
He made his way on his hands and knees down the grove of trees. He’d been surprised by the temperature of the water he had to crawl through. Water at a temperature just above freezing was virtually unknown in his tiny village.
He knew where the two Americans were. He could see them occasionally through the trees, but he couldn’t get an unobstructed shot. They crawled towards him along the ground. He smiled. They were moving in a straight line, directly toward him. He thought, “Two Americans for my two sisters.”
Stone’s back hurt and, for some reason, his shirt wasn’t drying as quickly as it should. He fell flat on his stomach and looked ahead of him. His target knelt down on the forest dirt with his AK47 pointed directly at him. He whispered to Delia, “Down” and tried to burrow his entire body into the pine needles and ground up trees underneath him.
The American military spends a year training combat soldiers how to shoot. Guerilla’s might get a three hour course on the use of their particular weapon and nothing else.
Abdul didn’t know about stacking his arms on his knees in a stable manner. He didn’t know that the picture he saw as he looked through the sights should appear like a post surrounded by a half-circle. He didn’t know to hold his breath for a few seconds when he pulled the trigger.
His shot flew past Delia and Stone three feet off the ground and two feet to the side.
Most untrained soldiers lose patience. Abdul was no different. He fired five more times with even less accuracy and flipped the switch on the side of the weapon. He sprayed the remaining twenty four bullets in the general area of Delia and Ston
e, missing every shot. He didn’t have another magazine with him. He threw the rifle on the ground. His leader had given him one grenade. He pulled the pin and lobbed it in the direction of Delia and Stone.
Stone shouted, “Grenade!” and lunged toward Delia.
The grenade sailed, with exceptional accuracy, straight at Stone’s broad back. Abdul had done his job well, accidentally well, but well none the less.
The grenade hit the ground and bounced straight toward Delia and Stone.
Stone hurtled himself closer to Delia and positioned himself between the deadly grenade and her upper body. The grenade exploded when it hit the ground a second time.
ROMANCE: Badass Boss (Billionaire Alpha Bad Boy Romance) (Western Mail Order Bride Calendar Contemporary) Page 26