Code Name_War 0f Stones

by Natasza Waters

  The man staring at him wasn’t his father anymore. The fierce glare in the admiral’s eyes was like facing death with a one-way ticket. Vacant. Certain. Deadly. This was the last look hundreds of tangos saw before their lives ended.

  Adam’s throat closed with fear staring down the man he respected more than any other in his life, but he didn’t reach for the door handle.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Damon’s heart pounded. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. He wanted to hold Sloane again, not visit her in a damn cemetery. Frustration and the fear of failure tightened the noose around his options.

  The other men called out, trying to convince their partners to give up the word each had been given to end the exercise. All of them had the same plea, whether it was sheer respect for the woman they had been partnered with or something deeper, they said it all without reservation.

  They watched as each woman received the injection, all of them refusing to give up the word they possessed that would set them free.

  “How long?” Damon asked, his voice wavering.

  The General turned slowly to stare over the crevasse and then back at them. “Ten minutes, maybe less.”

  He saw Gibbons backing up. “No,” he shouted. “You can’t make it.”

  “I have to try.” Three of the guys stopped him before he hit the edge on a jump that would end in suicide.

  “No, there has to be another way.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” the General asked, raising the box of syringes.

  They all scrambled and snatched the syringe given to each of them from one of the General’s guards.

  “This better be the antidote,” Damon thundered at Northcott.

  “It is.”

  The men came together in a tight group. “There’s only one way, and it’s near impossible,” Randeen said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Cirque de Soleil,” Randeen offered. “Only one of us is going to make it. One man gets all the syringes and we toss him to the other side.”

  “It’s too far. He’ll plummet to his death,” Winston said.

  “You got a plan?” Randeen said.

  “Jesus, no,” Winston ground out.

  The sound of grinding sand and rock against a wooden base drew their attention.

  Damon threw out his hands in a gesture for her to stop. “No, Sloane.”

  She rocked back and forth on the pole, turning it to loosen the ground at the base. She strained, crouched, and then heaved upward. A horrible cry escaped her, the wood tearing against the wounds on her back.

  “No,” Damon yelled again.

  She strained, and this time the pole lifted from the ground. She staggered, barely able to hold it steady. Bracing her feet, she stilled, balancing the weight against her back.

  Was it long enough? Inches, only inches would make the difference. “Don’t do it.”

  “Only me,” she shouted, hearing the other women trying to do the same as her.

  Sloane staggered toward the ravine. She’d have to pin the bottom of the pole near enough to the edge for the log to fall across the crevasse. She took a step, tottered and took another step.

  He slammed his eyes closed, then forced them open. Cold sweat drizzled down his back, soaking his shirt.

  “She’s insane,” Winston said under his breath.

  “It’s the only way,” he choked out. Another two steps and there was no going back. If she lost control, the pole would pull her straight over the edge. “Sloane, easy. When I tell you, lower the base to the ground.” God, could he even say it? “And then fall straight forward.”

  She nodded and took another weighted step.

  The dust in his dry throat cut like razor blades. One more step.

  “Now, Sloane.”

  The base of the pole struck the ground not more than a foot from the edge and Damon’s entire body froze as she closed her eyes and fell forward. The pole came straight for them. The men stretched out their hands, catching the end before it hit the ground, and lowered it with only six fucking inches to spare.

  “One at a time,” Damon ordered.

  Clutching the syringe in his mouth, he carefully stepped across the round, smooth log. The wind wooshed upward from the ravine, threatening to push him from the narrow bridge of hope Sloane had given them.

  When he reached her, Damon pulled the cap and emptied the syringe into her arm. She’d hooked her legs around the pole as it had fallen and was face down, staring into the deep cut in the earth.

  Damon backed up onto the ledge. “Roll the pole,” he ordered.

  He and the men rolled the log until Sloane lay on top. He shimmied her legs onto the ledge, ignoring her whimpers of pain, then reached for her wrists to untie the rope. With one heave, he yanked her into his arms.

  “She’s clear,” he shouted.

  The men thundered across one at a time, syringes in their teeth, arms out for balance, and shot toward their partners when they reached the other side.

  “Oh God, Sloane, you’re crazy.” Sitting on the ground, he held her so tight she probably couldn’t breathe.

  “We won,” she said, looking into his eyes, but hers were filled with pain.

  “Hell yes, and I’m going to give you the spanking of your life for pulling such a stupid stunt.” He kissed her long and hard.

  The rest of the couples joined them, and he helped Sloane to her feet. They gathered in a tight clutch, their partners by their sides.

  Damon stepped ahead of the group. “If there’s a will, there’s a way, General. Who’s to say it isn’t a woman who will be the heroine at the end of the day, make the last stand or bring the enemy down. Whether it’s one of my fellow SEALs or this woman, I would give my all to protect both country and warrior.”

  General Northcott motioned to two soldiers who sent the pole careening into the crevasse. “I know you and I do not agree on this issue, Lieutenant, but I have a mission that cannot fail. You may well be right that a woman could save the day, but I still believe they cause nothing but distraction in battle. You have proved my point. Now the question is, what we do next.”

  “Here it comes,” Winston said under his breath.

  “Yeah, I know,” Damon answered, but he didn’t give a shit what they had to sign or agree to. Sloane was safe, and they were going to make it out alive.

  Katy cried out, “Sloane, what’s wrong?”

  He twisted to see Sloane lowered to the ground, Katy and Eliza on their knees beside her. “You son of a bitch,” he roared.

  “Quick,” Eliza yelled. “Gather the syringes. We may not have used it all.” One of the other women ran to collect the injections from the ground.

  The General’s hand appeared from behind his back. “Must have gotten it confused,” he said with a fake drawl of sympathy, shaking another syringe. “Shall I throw it to you?”

  “No,” Damon shouted, putting his attention back on his partner, but she was more than that to him. Far more.

  One of the women shook her head. With two fingers pressed Sloane’s arterial pulse, she said, “It’s weakening.”

  “There’s less than a quarter left in this one.” The woman who’d collected the syringes kneeled and injected Sloane’s arm.

  “I need your complicity for the good of this nation, Lieutenant.” The General’s request wasn’t a plea, but a statement of validation. “All of you will agree and sign a document of what occurred during this exercise, and then you will get the antidote.”

  Damon closed his eyes. If they didn’t do it, Sloane would die. They might all die, but he doubted the General would allow them all to succumb. He knelt and drew Sloane into his arms. Her beautiful features sedate as if sleeping.

  “She still has a pulse.” Katy stared at him with worry then craned her neck to look up at the rest of the group hovering above them.

  The remaining antidote left in the syringes wasn’t enough, he knew that. They were just stalling the inevitable. He tucked Sloane
tightly to his chest and felt his own life slipping away as her pulse slowed. A quick intake of air didn’t help the heaviness in his heart or the tears from spilling down his face.

  “We’ll sign it,” Winston said from behind him, and a hand squeezed Damon’s shoulder.

  “Like hell you will,” he growled.

  “Lieutenant.” Katy gripped his arm. “We’re alive because she risked herself to get you all across. It doesn’t mean defeat.” She rose and squared a look on her partner, Winston. In a loud, clear voice, she said, “Truth.”

  Eliza rose beside her and gazed at Randeen, “Trust.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  These were the words the women had been given. He listened as he clutched Sloane and rocked her in his arms.

  “Freedom.”

  “Hope.”

  “Bravery.”

  “Liberty.”

  The last woman turned to her partner, the Marine named Benson. She nodded, her gaze rising to meet his. “Strength.”

  Damon stared down at the woman who held her word captive in silence. Grief inflated his heart to bursting. Sloane didn’t have to speak. She’d told him already. He knew the word that would have released her from this terrible end, and he uttered it quietly, his finger resting against her pulse, feeling one beat in the time there should have been three.

  “Faith,” he whispered, and his body constricted with loss. “I have faith in you,” she’d said to him.

  A black SUV came skidding to a stop on loose gravel, drawing their attention. Admiral Paulson dressed in blue camo stepped out, took one look around and shouted. “Cease and desist. This exercise is over.”

  Two more vehicles arrived and caused a bloom of dust. Out of the rising plume, two men emerged.

  Admiral Austen and Sloane’s brother, Adam, walked from the swirling beige storm. None of the soldiers attempted to intervene when the Admiral aimed for General Northcott like a cyclone from hell. He didn’t pause, fisting his hand and landing one in the General’s face, dropping him like a rock.

  The syringe rolled out of Northcott’s hand and toward the ledge. Everyone yelled at the same time.

  The woman in Navy dress who had helped Sloane earlier, ran and snatched the injection a second before it slipped over the edge into the ravine. “I’ve got it!” she yelled raising it in the air.

  More SUV’s arrived and uniformed men rallied at the edge of the ravine. Others, Damon recognized as Men-at-Arms surrounded the soldiers. Then two more vehicles came to a skidding halt, the doors cracked open and Special Warfare operators from Teams one, three and five from Coronado, stood staring at them.

  “We need a helicopter and that syringe, now!” Winston yelled out.

  The General staggered back to his feet. When he did, the Admiral hauled off and hit him again. Northcott’s head ricocheted and his body slumped to the ground, out cold. Sloane’s Uncle Mace gripped the Admiral to stop him from laying a beating on the unconscious man.

  The woman gripped the syringe in one hand and gestured with the other at Admiral Paulson. Sloane’s pulse fluttered under Damon’s finger like moth wings, too light to almost feel. She wasn’t going to make it.

  Cocks and his partner, who had escaped the camp earlier, must have managed to get help, but time was up.

  Damon didn’t make a sound. He rocked Sloane in his arms, releasing her wrist, not feeling the pulse of life any longer. And then the pain in his chest found a voice. He buried his face in her hair and wept like a child.

  Through his biting agony a roar from the Admiral entwined with the wind. The call of a frightened father.

  “My daughter. Give me my daughter.”

  * * * *

  Tears blurred the landscape, but not the loss. He couldn’t give the Admiral his daughter back. Lifeless, she lay in Damon’s arms.

  Winston ripped Sloane from his grasp. “Hurry.” Damon heard from the depth of his grief.

  A chopper hovered over the headland, stirring sand into the air. Winston ran for the chopper with Sloane’s body draped in his arms. The nurse from the base hospital knelt at the open door, her face contorted with concern. Damon scrambled to his feet and followed Winston and Katy.

  “Another helo is on the way,” the nurse yelled. “We’re going to the hospital.”

  The door slid closed on the rest of the couples and Sloane’s father, who stood beside his son at the edge of the ravine. The rest of Alpha Squad took a position beside them. As the chopper lifted into the air, the line of SEALs shrunk from view.

  The nurse searched for a heartbeat as the chopper swung around. She injected Sloane with the syringe then began CPR, stopping to check for a pulse and continuing with compressions.

  Damon sat on the floor next to Sloane, the vibration of the helo the only familiar sensation he recognized. Nothing else penetrated the cold that encased him like a tomb. He watched her face, praying for a sign that her heart beat on its own. He’d stared into the still features of teammates who’d lost their lives on a mission before, but this was different. His heart shriveled to dust when hers stopped beating.

  They arrived at the hospital in San Diego within a short time. A trauma team waited near the landing pad. Sloane was loaded onto a stretcher. He, Winston and Katy stopped as the stretcher carried on with two doctors and a couple nurses joining the entourage through a set of doors.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I can,” the RN said, giving his arm a quick squeeze, and the medical staff disappeared behind large swinging doors that separated him from Sloane.

  Twenty minutes later, a large man and a woman with dark brunette hair, came bulleting through the shadow of the entrance into the hospital waiting room. The Admiral and Mrs. Austen’s expressions twisted with worry. Seconds later, her Uncle Greg and the rest of the old Alpha Squad stormed the hospital.

  Damon rose and approached them. “Admiral Austen, Mrs. Austen.”

  “Lieutenant, where’s my daughter?” The man the teams called Ghost spoke tightly.

  Sloane had her mother’s eyes. They were so alike he had to look away.

  The Admiral’s eyes fired with anger and concern nearly gutted Damon. “What the hell happened? Why was my Sloane out there?”

  The rest of her SEAL family surrounded him, all eyes burned with accusation waiting for his answer.

  Guilt wrapped around him and nearly strangled him to death. “Because I chose her, sir,” he admitted, looking straight into the Admiral’s harsh blue gaze. They were both the same height and weight. Though the Admiral might be in his sixties, he was still formidable.

  “Thane, stand down,” Mrs. Austen ordered gently. “I’ll go find out if Admissions knows anything.” She turned to gaze at the rest of the family. “Everyone, just sit down.” Then she looked up at him. “Thank you for protecting our daughter.” Her hand shook as she squeezed his.

  The Admiral took a seat across from him in the waiting room while the rest of the men found others close by. Damon introduced Winston and Katy, and the Admiral surveyed both of them.

  “Were you drafted into this as well?” he asked solemnly.

  “Yes, sir,” Katy answered.

  The Admiral scanned the welts and scratches covering her face. He folded his arms, but his hands fisted tightly, cutting off the circulation. His thumb fiddled with his wedding ring, turning it round and round.

  Finally, he stopped searching the walls and the ceiling and his gaze centered on Damon. “Was Sloane alive when you got here?” He asked as if each word burned his throat.

  Damon leaned his forearms on his thighs and glared at the beige carpeting. Tears welled. “They gave her CPR all the way here. The nurse administered the antidote, but the drug had already been in her system for ten minutes.”

  “Why was she given the drug?” the Admiral demanded, trying to regain his composure.

  “We all were, sir,” Katy answered. “The General wanted to prove he was right, and manipulated the exercise to his end. Sloane never gave in. We all followed her lead. We
couldn’t give up.”

  “And why was that, young lady?”

  Katy straightened her shoulders and looked bravely at the Admiral. “I’ve never been in combat, but I believe in war, you only lose when you admit defeat. Sloane refused to lay down her sword, and although Lieutenant Stone begged her to give in, she wouldn’t do it. She knew that even if she died, one of us would remain standing. That’s all that mattered to her. One of us would pick up the sword and keep fighting.”

  The Admiral’s jaw clamped tight. His gaze soared upward, tears filling his eyes to overflowing. “Just like her mother. Defiant and stubborn as all hell.”

  Mrs. Austen sat down quietly beside her husband. Their hands wove together and she shook her head when the Admiral set his gaze on her.

  Katy smiled at both of them. “Actually, Sloane said she was her father’s daughter. She cried out for you when Northcott had her tied to the pole and whipped. The thought of you gave her the strength to not give in.”

  With those words, the Admiral buried his face in his hands. He shook his head as if he could eradicate the pain that surely had him in its tight grip.

  “Admiral?” Damon waited until the man composed himself once again. “Sloane is the most beautiful, strong-willed, amazing woman I’ve ever known. I don’t believe God would take her away from us. I won’t believe it.”

  A doctor appeared in the waiting room and addressed them. “Are you here for Sloane Austen?” Everyone stood up. Her mother nodded and her father remained rigid, preparing for the worst.

  “My name is Doctor Addler. Sloane’s your daughter?” He looked at her mother.

  Mrs. Austen nodded solemnly. The woman didn’t show an ounce of breaking down. Damon didn’t understand. Most mothers would be a sobbing mess, but Kayla Austen was the rock in the room.

  “You can see her for a short while, but she’s barely conscious. It will take another few hours for the second course of antidote to pull her through. Once she recovers, she’ll need fluids and a lot of rest, then she should be on her feet again within a week. Pretty tenacious young lady,” the doctor added.

  A smile drew across all of their faces.