LODESTONE: A Shadow Warriors Novella

by Stephen England

  LODESTONE:

  A Shadow Warriors Novella

  Stephen England

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Stephen England

  Cover design by Louis Vaney

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Views expressed by the characters in this novel are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author.

  LODESTONE

  10:23 P.M. Local Time, July 23 rd, 2006

  The sky over Lebanon

  Deceleration. The MT1-XX parachute billowed open in the night sky above him, snapping his shoulders back against the harness and pulling him out of freefall.

  Over six years at this game…and he still didn’t like the idea of jumping out of a fully-functional aircraft. He glanced down at the earth, nearly twenty-five thousand feet below him, remembering the words of his first jumpmaster at Benning.

  “Earth’s a big place…so don’t worry, son. You’re not gonna miss.”

  Right. He glanced up and to his left, catching a brief glimpse of the two members of his team, their chutes deployed against the night.

  He’d led the stick off the ramp of the C-130 only moments before, but already the roar of the plane’s massive Allison turboprops had faded away, leaving only the sound of the air streaming past his helmet.

  An FN-FAL battle rifle was strapped to his leg with paracord, its weight reminding him of their purpose. The reason for this jump.

  Forty minutes till landing. Another twenty, maybe twenty-five till they were on the target.

  Might as well enjoy the ride.

  10:37 P.M.

  USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7)

  The Mediterranean

  Wind tousled Iraida Harmon’s short black hair as she emerged from the passageway onto the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship, meeting the stares of sailors standing nearby.

  It wasn’t so much her gender—she knew that. In the modern Navy, she was far from the only young woman aboard a ship like the Iwo Jima. It was her status as a civilian that had attracted their curiosity.

  Couldn’t be helped. This op had been laid on in a hurry, barely giving the CIA the time to scrape together personnel and equipment, let alone establish proper legends.

  A light rain spattered against the deck as she walked forward, glancing up toward the Iwo Jima’s bridge to see the motto emblazoned there in naked metal just beneath the windows. “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

  She remembered the quote from her childhood, a plaque on the wall behind her father’s desk. The words of Admiral Nimitz, saluting those who had fallen in the taking of that desolate volcanic island in the Pacific.

  Iwo.

  Her father had been a Navy man himself, an Annapolis grad from back in the dark days of the Cold War. Served out his twenty years in the fleet, the CO of a Spruance-class destroyer. Haze gray and under way.

  As his only child, she’d been expected to follow in his footsteps. Carry on a family tradition that stretched back to the Second World War. But she—and Langley, had had other plans.

  Ahead of her, a helicopter had settled onto the flight deck, its rotors beating the wind and rain into a tempest. She could barely make out the form of the yellow-shirted flight deck officer guiding it in.

  It was configured like a Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk, the Navy’s version of the Black Hawk—but this was a civilian bird. Unmarked, painted black. Proof that either someone at the Agency had some sense of irony…or none at all. Knowing Langley, it was most likely the latter.

  And its presence served as visual confirmation that, despite the haste with which LODESTONE had been pulled together, Hayden had still found time to send in his own “minder.”

  Harmon pulled up well short of the flight crew, hands shoved into the pockets of her jeans as the Sikorsky’s door opened, the tall figure of a woman stepping out into the drizzle, her navy-blue pantsuit seeming strangely incongruous on the Iwo Jima’s deck.

  Rebecca Petras.

  Rain pelted down from the slate-gray heavens above as the woman marched across the flight deck toward Harmon, her flats covering the distance in measured strides.

  “What’s the status on the recovery of our asset?” A government prosecutor before she’d joined the Agency, Petras had never lost the bedside manner. Her question came with no preamble, no pleasantries. All the suddenness of a pistol shot.

  Our asset. A part of Harmon rebelled at the choice of words. All the years she had spent working as a case officer in the Middle East—she had recruited Layla Massoud, developed her into one of the Agency’s most reliable assets in Lebanon. Personally.

  There was something peculiarly intimate about persuading someone to betray those around them. Their country, their people—their very family. Convincing them that it was right.

  Massoud was her asset, and deskbound bureaucrats like Petras had played no part in it. There was no ours in this.

  “Nichols and his team will establish radio contact when they reach the drop zone,” Harmon responded, turning to lead the way off the flight deck. “If everything goes according to plan, we should hear from them shortly after 2300 hours.”

  “If everything goes according to plan,” Petras repeated, bringing them up sharp as she stopped in the middle of the deck—her dark eyes searching the younger woman’s face. “And if nothing goes according to plan…we’ve just airdropped our people into an international firestorm. Good money after bad.”

  10:49 P.M.

  Lebanon

  He could see the flashes of gunfire twinkling in the night below him, flashes punctuated by the occasional explosion as he drifted downward, inhaling oxygen from the bottle on his back. Deadly fireflies.

  Artillery¸ Harry Nichols thought, a grimace passing across his face. He hated it—the capricious, impersonal nature of a bombardment. The whistle of incoming mortar rounds striking a firebase.

  Knowing that the artillery below him, encircling the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, was technically “friendly” was of no comfort.

  A falling artillery shell had no friends. And the Israelis didn’t know they were coming.

  No one did—except for the Brits. Harry glanced back over his shoulder and up to see the canopy of Sergeant Nicholas Crawford’s parachute there in the darkness above. A third parachute almost invisible behind him, belonged to another sergeant he knew only as Hale.

  A smile passed across his lips, remembering their meeting on the tarmac at Incirlik only hours before. Old comrades joining together for another trip down-range. “Nice of the Queen to provide fire support for this one,” he’d said, extending his hand. It wasn’t that simple, of course. Nothing ever was, in this world.

  What sort of quid pro quo Langley had been forced to agree to in order to secure the cooperation of No. 10 Downing Street, he didn’t know—suspected he never would. Decisions high above his paygrade…and Crawford’s.

  He’d read it all in the war-weary smile on the SAS sergeant’s face as he’d taken his hand, responding, “We’re just along to make sure you don’t get buggered, mate.”

  That was Nick, Harry thought, glancing down at his GPS as the trio of parachutes glided across the valley. No one better to have at your back in a fight.

  An
d as the CIA officer gazed down at muzzle flashes flickering through the night ahead of them, one thing had become clear.

  A fight was exactly what they were heading into.

  11:04 P.M.

  The USS Iwo Jima

  The Mediterranean

  “…the Israelis have forces positioned here, here, and here,” Harmon announced, moving the broken-off pencil she was using as a pointer across the map spread out across a table in the Iwo’s communications room, “enfilading Bint Jbeil from three sides. Up until this point in the battle, they’ve left the north side open—dropping leaflets on the town to urge civilians to leave.”

  “And?” Rebecca Petras asked, her eyes still focused on the map.

  “Hezbollah has used the opportunity to bring munitions and fresh fighters in through the gap. And the IDF has run out of patience. As of this morning, our intel indicates that General Hirsh has ordered the Golani Brigade’s 12th Battalion to close the gap. They’ll be moving into position throughout the night, sealing Bint Jbeil off from the north by dawn. Which is why we have to get Massoud out now.”

  The older woman shook her head, murmuring an obscenity. “I can see why the President was reluctant to sign off on cross-border authority for this op.”

  Harmon’s head came up, her eyes flashing anger. “Layla Massoud has saved American lives—provided us with some of the most reliable intelligence we’ve had on Hezbollah in the last three years. And now her cover has been blown. We owe it to her to get her out.”

  “And if we can’t?” Petras countered, turning to face her, arms folded across her chest.

  Before Iraida could even respond, a young radioman approached her, handing over a secure telephone unit. It was time. A chill seemed to pervade her body as she lifted the phone to her ear. “Go for EYRIE.”

  “EYRIE, this is EAGLE SIX,” came a man’s voice. Quiet, confident. That was Nichols—only two years her senior, the man had been running Agency spec-ops since before 9/11, the old days of the Directorate of Operations. The consummate professional. “All quiet, moving to secure transportation.”

  All quiet. It was the all-clear code, indicating the team was not under duress. On the ground safely. “Copy that, EAGLE SIX. Emergency communications protocols are in place from this point in, rendezvous with DARK HORSE at the primary extract point at zero two hundred hours.”

  “Zero two hundred, aye. We’ll be there with bells on. EAGLE SIX out.”

  Iraida handed the phone unit back to the sailor, glancing back across at Petras. “The team is on the ground at the drop zone northeast of the hill of Al Dwair.” She picked up a satellite photo and handed it over. “Our latest satellite overpass showed vehicles at the buildings here and here, on the other side of the road. The plan is to obtain one of them and use it for transportation into Bint Jbeil. No way of knowing in what shape Layla will be when they find her.”

  Petras shook her head. “You still haven’t answered my question. What if we can’t extract your asset?”

  Iraida hesitated for a long moment. It was a possibility that she didn’t even want to consider. She could remember her last face-to-face with Layla Massoud, a brief meeting in an open-air café in Beirut.

  “My husband…something has come between us. I can feel it when he touches me, when we lie together. I think he suspects something.”

  Her own voice, soothing. Reassuring. “Stay with us, Layla. War is coming, war with Israel. We need you now more than ever. If you ever need out, we will come for you. I promise. But I wouldn’t worry about your husband…you know how it is. Men.”

  The woman’s weak smile, as if her heart had wanted to believe it and yet her mind couldn’t so easily be calmed. Tucking back a jet-black strand of hair beneath her hijab as she picked at her falafel.

  But he had known…and Iraida’s own words had convinced her to stay at the side of a terrorist. Guilt.

  “Then,” she began, raising her face to look Petras in the eye, “I’ll know that at least we tried.”

  11:06 P.M.

  Northeast of Bint Jbeil

  Lebanon

  The rocky terrain glowed green through the lens of Harry’s nightscope as he swept the open ground with the muzzle of his FN-FAL.

  Scanning for threats, every fiber of his body alert. He tucked the checkered keffiyeh around his throat, a faint smile creasing his lips as he reached up, briefly touching the yellow Hezbollah headband encircling his forehead, the flowing blood-red script bearing the words “Labayk ya Husayn.”

  At your service, O Husayn. A pledge of devotion to one of Shi’a Islam’s first imams, the martyred Husayn ibn Ali, slain by the Umayyads at the Battle of Karbala…in AD 680.

  The Middle East, he mused—where a thousand years has ever been as one day.

  He could still hear the muffled crump of artillery fire from the south, the faint rattle of small-arms. And somewhere, the bleating of a goat.

  “You don’t suppose you could hurry it up there, could you, Nick?” he demanded in a cheerful whisper, glancing back over his shoulder to where Sergeant Nick Crawford lay half-concealed under the steering column of an old Range Rover. The vehicle didn’t look like it had seen a body shop since the ‘80s—if ever—rust eating away at the frame of the door. But looks didn’t matter…so long as it ran.

  It was less than three klicks to their target—they had debated for and against making their way in on foot, ultimately deciding that having the transportation available at the outset was worth the additional risk. No telling what shape the asset would be in.

  He couldn’t quite make out the expression on Crawford’s blackened face, but his tone conveyed a mild annoyance. “Told you I was good at pinching cars durin’ my wild youth in Newcastle, mate. Didn’t say I was fast.”

  “I hear you,” Harry responded, glancing over to where the second SAS sergeant knelt across from him, maybe five meters off. A silent figure covering his section of the perimeter. Like the good soldier he was.

  Harry cleared his throat. “Pinching cars and pulling birds, as I believe you told me once.”

  The banter of men who knew the next few hours could bear witness to their deaths. A short, low laugh escaped his friend’s lips. “Right you are.”

  “You two go back?” Hale asked, taking his eye off his sights for a moment to look at them over his shoulder.

  “Long way,” he replied, his mind flickering back over the years. Back to the beginning of the war on terror—and before, for this war had begun long before anyone thought.

  “Too ruddy long,” came Crawford’s grunt. “…and here we go.”

  He could hear the spark of wires being struck together and then the cough of the engine sputtering into life.

  “Let’s go, let’s go.”

  Harry nodded, hefting the battle rifle in one hand as he slid into the Range Rover. “Your Arabic gotten any better, Nick?”

  “Just a bit,” Crawford retorted, his facepaint giving the smile a macabre aspect. A death’s head grin. “Insh’allah, Nichols effendi.”

  “You Geordies,” Harry shook his head, laughing. “It’s not enough to murder your own language, is it—you have to start in on someone else’s. Move over…I’m driving. And talkin’.”

  11:12 P.M.

  The USS Iwo Jima

  The Mediterranean

  “How long before we have satellite support?” Petras asked, staring at the screens set up in the Iwo’s comm center. One of the sailors had brought her a towel—which was currently draped around her shoulders, nestling against her still-wet hair.

  “The KH-11 will be on-line in twenty,” came the reply from Iraida, referencing one of the spy sats controlled by the National Reconnaissance Office from their headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia. Half a world away. There was an edge of anxiety in her voice. “We needed its eyes the moment they landed.”

  Petras raised a single eyebrow. “You’re lucky to have gotten it tasked away from CENTCOM at all. From what I heard from Station Baghdad as I was flying
out of Cairo, Abizaid was none too pleased. After the bombing in Kufa this past Tuesday, he’s nearly got a full-blown civil war on his hands.”

  “I saw the news…the death toll was nearly sixty, wasn’t it?”

  The older woman’s lips pressed together into a thin, bitter line. A rare display of emotion for Petras. “Fifty-nine. Shi’ite day laborers…just wanted a job, some way to feed their families. Guy drives up in a van, rolls down the window, waits till they’re all gathered around. And then he presses the detonator.”

  She shook her head. “God, I hate this part of the world.”

  11:16 P.M.

  Bint Jbeil, Lebanon

  The first Hezbollah checkpoint was nearly a kilometer out of town—a battered technical light truck parked underneath the shadow of a gnarled olive tree, the .50-caliber Browning mounted in its bed aimed toward the road.

  Right at their windshield.

  That…was definitely a surprise. According to Langley’s intel reports, all such vehicles had been bombed off the roads by the IDF days before.

  Then again, when had those reports ever been right?

  Harry watched as one of the terrorists came walking up the driver’s side of the Range Rover, his Kalashnikov held loosely in his hands. He could have shot the man easily, quickly, with the suppressed Colt under his jacket…but then that Ma Deuce on the back of the technical would have raked them with enfilading fire.

  “Shou ya akhi?” he greeted instead as the man came abreast of his window. What’s up, brother?

  Rather than replying, the man favored him with a suspicious look for a long moment—his eyes roving over the two of them—sweeping the length of the vehicle.

  He had no doubt their presence on the roads had been radioed in by one or more of the many watchers Hezbollah employed in south Lebanon. With luck, it was the vehicle which had been reported…and not their landing.

  Luck was a dicey thing to trust in. He could feel Crawford tense beside him, thought he heard the faint metallic snick of a pistol safety being thumbed off.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” The man asked finally.

  The whistle of an artillery shell punctuated the question and their interrogator flinched, glancing over his shoulder as an explosion resounded from the hill two hundred meters to their right.