LODESTONE: A Shadow Warriors Novella

by Stephen England

  “No…but I heard something. A voice, almost sounded like a kid.”

  Their eyes met for a moment. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  It’s this room. Harry didn’t even have time to form the words before there came a shout from the end of the hallway, somewhere just out of sight—a shout of anger, of wrath. A voice yelling in Arabic. They’d been discovered.

  Crawford swore, a string of obscenities escaping his lips. Harry saw a shape move in the darkness and brought his own pistol to bear just as the corridor erupted in fire, bullets cutting through the air, the muzzle flash of a fully-automatic Kalashnikov reflecting off the walls.

  Harry fell back into the room as bullets chewed into the wall beside him, something tugging at his belt as if he had been grazed by a round. He rolled over onto his stomach as he unslung the FN-FAL from his back. Their element of surprise had just gone straight out the window.

  The hail of fire continued for another few seconds, then the hall went silent. Nothing from Nick.

  Absolutely nothing. Harry lay there, prone against the rough wood of the floor—listening.

  Distant footsteps, the low murmur of voices. Reinforcements gathering. He crawled to the door, bringing the big rifle to his shoulder as he leaned around the doorpost.

  Through the FN’s night-vision scope, he could see the shooter standing there over the body of the man Crawford had killed. Two other men, one on either side of him.

  At such close range, the magnification of the scope was almost disorienting, every detail there in stark clarity. His target’s face was pale—he was breathing heavily, the way a man does when he’s scared.

  Good reason. The trigger broke under his finger, recoil pummeling Harry’s shoulder as the thunder of a .308 reverberated through the hallway.

  He saw the man’s head snap back from the impact of the round, but he was already traversing to the next target, shooting the second militant twice in the chest. Iron sights now.

  The third man was reacting now, too late—his rifle coming up even as two more fighters came around the corner of the hallway.

  And then he heard the rattle of Nick’s AK from behind him—saw the man go down, the acrid, heady smell of burning gunpowder filling his nostrils as the kill zone emptied of targets.

  A child screamed, the cry seeming to rise from the earth beneath him. Harry glanced across the hallway, finally catching sight of Crawford, sheltering in the opposing doorway a couple meters back. “Can you hold them?”

  A cool nod as the sergeant leaned back into the wall, his rifle held across his chest. “All night. Now, go!”

  Harry wrapped the rifle’s sling over his shoulder, drawing a small tactical flashlight from his belt as he moved back into the room, the beam sweeping the darkness.

  There was something about the table. The way it was positioned in the room, distinctly off-center. Fresh gunfire resounded from the corridor without, a reminder of the need to hurry.

  The building shook with the explosion of a nearby shell, fresh plaster showering down from the ceiling as he bent down on one knee, examining a faint trail through the dust and debris. More of a scrape, really. As if the table had been moved. To protect something?

  He bent down, laying his Colt to one side as his fingers followed the flashlight’s beam along the floor under the table, searching.

  After a moment, he found it…a handle protruding out of the floor, a type of hatch. Just like she had described.

  He placed the tactical light between his teeth, gripping the Colt in one hand as he lifted the door, gazing down into a small cellar dug beneath the house.

  Into the frightened eyes of two children staring back at him, cowering there on the rough-hewn stone steps. The boy was closest, on the top step just beneath where the door had laid, perched like a bird ready to take flight.

  “Salaam,” he whispered, extending his empty hand toward them as he continued to speak in Arabic. “Please, Ali…Nour—I’m not going to hurt you. Your mother sent me.”

  The little girl seemed to shake her head and he could see she was trembling. They both were. “Mother?”

  God only knew what their father might have told them. Might have been the wrong card to play, but it was the only one he held.

  He swept the light across the cellar again, assuring himself that they were alone before he holstered the Colt, beckoning to them once again.

  “Mother sent you?” It was the boy this time, a tremor in his voice. Uncertainty. Fear.

  “Na’am,” he replied. Yes. “You’re no longer safe here, and she’s worried for you. Told me to tell you she loves you, that she wants you to come with me.”

  The boy looked up at him, still blinking from the initial direct glare of the light. “You’ll take us to her?”

  “Na’am. Of course.” He reached out to help the girl out of the cellar, her small hand smooth and warm against his callused fingers.

  “You makin’ headway, mate?” came Crawford’s shout from the corridor. The girl shrank back at the sound, fear flickering in her dark eyes.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “He’s a friend. You’re gonna be okay now. You’ll be with your mother in just a few minutes, and then everything’s gonna be okay.”

  She nodded and he scooped her up in his arms, placing each small arm around his neck as he reached down for her brother’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  12:36 A.M.

  The USS Iwo Jima

  “EYRIE, this is DARK HORSE. We are on station, I repeat, we are on station. Do you copy?”

  “Loud and clear, DARK HORSE,” Rebecca Petras responded, and Iraida saw her glance once more at the satellite feed.

  Another moment and Jorgenson’s voice came back over the line. “The weather here is deteriorating, EYRIE. Requesting the final go-mission.”

  It wasn’t that the Night Stalkers weren’t trained to fly in all-weather conditions. They were among the best in the world.

  But keeping a helicopter aloft in a storm at sea was on the far side of dicey. And consumed an obscene amount of fuel.

  The women’s eyes met as Petras replied, “Hold where you are, DARK HORSE. Will issue authorization as soon as possible.”

  She glared over at Iraida, swearing loudly enough to draw the attention of a couple passing sailors. “He’s going to blow this op wide open.”

  12:38 A.M.

  Bint Jbeil, Lebanon

  “Time we were going,” Nick observed as Harry re-emerged into the corridor, glancing down its length. Nothing.

  They were alone. “Give me a hand here,” he said, inclining his head toward Ali. If each of them carried one of the children, they would make better time.

  Time. They didn’t have much of it left. He kept an eye down the hall as Nick slung the AK across his back, drawing his pistol with his free hand as he bent down to pick up the little boy.

  The form materialized out of the darkness without warning, the sound of his movements masked by the sound of a nearby explosion. Harry shouted a warning.

  His Colt came free, clearing its holster just as the form of Abdel Hamza Massoud emerged from the darkness of the corridor, a Glock 17 leveled in both hands.

  So close.

  Nick cursed, his own pistol coming up as the boy in his arms screamed.

  “I only got the message two minutes before you arrived,” Massoud announced from behind the gun, a quiet sadness in his voice. “That the compound had been attacked and my men killed, that my Jewish whore of a wife had been freed. I knew she would send someone.”

  It was an impossible stand-off, so close together there in the darkness, barely ten feet separating them. No way for either of them to miss, Harry thought, staring through the sights of his 1911 at Massoud. The man had aged since the photo in his CIA “jacket”, far beyond his years.

  “So who are you?” the Hezbollah commander continued in Arabic, his Glock moving from him to Nick and back again in an attempt to cover them both. “Y
ou are Jews, yes? Sayeret Matkal?”

  It was one of the IDF’s elite special forces units, subordinated to the military intelligence directorate. This would have been their mission.

  “La,” Harry responded, feeling the girl’s feet kick against his waist, her body trembling in his arms. Massoud was stalling for time, and they all knew it. Just like they knew someone would die in the next few moments.

  “Just give me my children. That’s all I ask.”

  And that was a lie, and they all knew that as well. Harry inclined his head toward Nick. “Do as he says…put the boy down.”

  He could feel his partner’s eyes on him, the disbelief. “Just do it,” he snarled before the sergeant could speak.

  Nick took a step toward him, his Sig-Sauer still aimed at Massoud as he bent down to place the sobbing boy on the floor. A glance passed between them, and that was all that was necessary.

  The boy took two halting steps toward his father, tears running down his cheeks. Far enough.

  Harry’s hand was a blur as he dropped the Colt into its holster, his arm flying around the boy’s waist as he swept him off his feet and into his arms. Kicking and screaming as Nick moved in front of them, covering Massoud with the muzzle of his weapon.

  A human shield.

  “Take the kids and get out of here,” came Crawford’s brusque order, thrown back over his shoulder.

  “Don’t move,” Massoud called out, trying to change positions, his field of fire restricted in the narrow confines of the hallway, the sergeant’s form blocking his way.

  It was the right call, Harry knew that. The only call—they had to get the kids clear before the bullets started flying. But leaving a man never came easy.

  “Take care of yourself, Nick,” he said as he turned toward the back of the house, a scream erupting from the girl’s lips, her small fists beating frantically against his chest. “Abu!”

  Father. Daddy.

  “Sod that, mate,” his friend shot back. “I’ll be right on your heels.”

  The thunder of an exploding mortar round pummeled his ears as he made his way through maze of small rooms toward the back door. Close, he thought, plaster cascading down upon him. Very close.

  He put his head down, the screams of the children ringing in his ears as he forged ahead, shoving the back door open with his shoulder. Only too aware of how exposed he was if anyone was waiting for him.

  Defenseless.

  He heard the incoming round, the otherworldly shriek of a falling shell. There was no time to run, to pray, to find shelter—artillery didn’t give you time for that. He could only fall to the ground, the broken rubble tearing at his hands as he shielded the children with his body.

  The explosion followed a split-second later, bits of stone peppering his body as the shell slammed into the building he had just left. From which Nick had yet to exit.

  He pulled his head up, looking back as he scrambled to his feet, scooping up both children in his arms, blood trickling from his hands.

  What he saw left him with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but it looked as if part of the roof had caved in, flames licking out from the wooden rafters into the night.

  Nick. Harry closed his eyes, remembering all that had gone before—the time he had spent in England with Nick and his wife Mehreen.

  A beautiful woman. Beautiful days…but now he had a mission to perform.

  Clambering over the piles of rubble, he reached the far side of the wall—the Range Rover beyond it. “Where’s Nick?” came Hale’s first question as he opened the rear door, shoving Ali into Layla Massoud’s arms, placing Nour on the seat beside her.

  “Keep them quiet,” he warned. “No matter what you have to do.”

  “Did you see my husband?”

  “No,” he lied, looking her in the eye. There was no way he was going to risk her feeling remorse. Not now. “No sign of him.”

  Hale again. “I said, where’s Nick?”

  Harry unslung his FN-FAL from his shoulder, checking the box magazine before replacing it in the weapon. “I’m going back in for him.”

  “No need, mate,” came a voice from behind him and Nick Crawford emerged from the darkness, breathing heavily as if he had just completed a hard run. “Told you I’d bloody well be on your heels, didn’t I?”

  Harry started to speak, but his friend cut him off, lowering his voice as he shoved a small radio into his hand. “Save it. Massoud was using this—no doubt alerted his soldiers to our presence before he walked in.” He cast a look down the street. “They’ll be on us like flies.”

  12:45 A.M.

  The USS Iwo Jima

  “They just broke through,” Petras announced grimly, her eyes never leaving the screen. The satellite footage was blurry, artifacts appearing in the image as the stream buffered, but the story it told was all too clear.

  Hezbollah resistance was collapsing under the sheer weight of the Israeli onslaught, the militants melting back into the darkness—their muzzle flashes being extinguished one by one, leaving behind only a few pockets of resistance, holding their ground.

  Iraida stared down at the secure phone unit in her hand, the “Call Ended” message blinking on the screen. It was her third call in five minutes, each going unanswered. And their window was closing.

  “They will be at the extract point,” she said, trying to inject calm into her voice. “Nichols wouldn’t want the Black Hawk coming in early, before he had a chance to secure the site. I’ve worked with him before.”

  That she had.

  So many times, professionally…and unprofessionally. She could still remember the first time she had seen him, standing there on the “boardwalk” at the Kandahar Airfield, just returned from an op. A steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

  He’d still been wearing his flak jacket, his clothes torn and dusty, a scoped M4 carbine slung over his back—the month-old beard cloaking his face distinguishing him from the mass of soldiers crowding past him.

  He had walked over to stand at her side, joked about the taste of the coffee. Offered to buy her a cup. Introduced himself as “Brad.”

  Two hours later, they’d been standing across a map table from each other in the Agency operations hut. And then she knew who he was.

  It was the first time he’d lied to her. Hadn’t been the last. But he would never have put the lives of his fellow warriors in unnecessary jeopardy. Never.

  A sailor came in, handing a clipboard to Petras. Iraida glimpsed the words FLASH-Traffic on the cover sheet as the older woman took it.

  FLASH-Traffic. A comms classification born of the Cold War, it was to be delivered within ten minutes of message origination, dead minimum handling time.

  Petras scrawled her signature across the cover sheet, ripping it away with an impatience born of the moment. Her eyes scanned down the page beneath, her face growing pale in the light of the screens shining down upon them.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Fort Meade,” came the response. “Hezbollah radio comms traffic in and out of Bint Jbeil has spiked big-time, starting about five minutes ago. The NSA’s analysts are on overload trying to translate it all, but they’re hearing chatter that Abdel Hamza Massoud is dead.”

  Layla’s husband. That hadn’t been part of the plan, Iraida thought, just staring at Petras. Then again, what had? “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that Nichols had better establish communications right away.”

  12:47 A.M.

  Old Town

  Bint Jbeil, Lebanon

  The Range Rover swayed from side to side as its front wheel hit a shell crater in the middle of the street and Harry glanced in the rear-view mirror for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Any sign of them?”

  Hale shook his head from his position in the very back of the vehicle, behind Layla Massoud and her children. He had a hand up to brace himself, the other holding his rifle across his chest. “Negative.”r />
  A pair of deuce-and-a-half military trucks filled with Hezbollah fighters had pulled up outside the Massoud compound just as they had been pulling away—perhaps only a hundred yards separating them in that moment.

  A couple shouts in their direction, but no gunfire coming their way. A stroke of luck that was bound to have run out the moment those fighters located the body of their dead leader. A moment that had already come.

  “What’s the radio telling you?” Crawford grunted from the passenger seat.

  Harry twisted the wheel to send the Range Rover down a side street. “Nothing good—they found his body and now they’re gunning for us.”

  “They identify the Range Rover?”

  A nod. “Yeah, they’ve got a bead on us and it’s all hands on deck.” He jerked the satellite phone from his belt and passed it across to his friend. “Time to bring in the cavalry—make the call.”

  “Aye.” A moment passed and then he heard a low string of curses escape Nick’s lips.

  “What?” Harry demanded, swerving the vehicle around a smoldering pile of wreckage as they headed toward the edge of town.

  Nick did nothing but hold up the satellite phone by way of reply. And there it was, a pair of bullet holes neatly perforating the plastic casing.

  Bullets slamming into the wall near his head. A tugging at his belt.

  He hadn’t known what it was at the time, but he knew now. A two-thousand-dollar piece of electronics being turned into useless scrap.

  “Cellphone?” Nick asked. They bounced in and out of another crater and out of the corner of his eye Harry saw his friend wince. He pulled his phone from his shirt pocket, flipping the screen open, its glow illuminating his bearded face.

  “No signal. And transmitting in the clear is a last resort anyway.”

  Another wince and he looked down to see a dark stain moistening the fabric of Crawford’s fatigues, down low and to the side, maybe two inches below the edge of his Kevlar vest. Blood.

  “You’ve been tagged, brother.”

  A grimace. “You could tell me something I don’t know.”

  “When?”

  The sergeant shook his head as if it was nothing worth speaking of. “Massoud fired as he fell. It’s just a graze.”