He was a bad liar, Harry thought, glancing down again at the stain. A bad liar indeed.
And then he heard Layla’s voice at his ear, “You saw my husband?”
There was no answer for her. No time to give one as the crackle of small-arms fire came from their rear, bullets whining by the open window of the vehicle.
Harry glanced in his rear-view mirror in time to see a technical swinging around the street corner in pursuit, the muzzle flash of a Kalashnikov sparkling from the passenger window of the truck. That didn’t worry him. What worried him was the pintle-mounted Bren light machine gun swinging around to bear on them, its shape clearly visible in the light of flames from a burning building.
“Everybody down on the floor,” he bellowed, “Hale, take out that gunner!”
It seemed like an eternity before the SAS sergeant opened up through the broken back window, the report of his weapon hammering their ears within the confines of the Range Rover. Burst after burst.
Firing from a moving vehicle was uncertain under the best of conditions and as they careened down the narrow street, ancient shocks groaning as they jounced out of one shell hole and into another, the Range Rover made for a particularly unstable weapons platform.
And then he heard the distant thunder of the Bren gun, three neat, round holes materializing in the windshield before his eyes, vein-thin cracks radiating through the glass, obscuring his vision. The window held, but it looked as if a single blow would shatter it.
He jinked the vehicle right, a glance in the rear-view still showing him the Bren gunner standing in the back of the pursuing truck, the stock of the machine gun held tightly against his shoulder.
Another burst rippled from the barrel of Hale’s rifle and he saw the man’s head snap back, falling back into the bed of the technical like a broken doll.
His attention returned to the front just as a deuce-and-a-half cargo truck pulled out of a side street perhaps a hundred meters in front of them, Hezbollah fighters spilling out of the back—taking up firing positions. Cut off.
The smell of hot rubber assaulted his nostrils as he slammed his jump boot hard against the brakes, metal squealing as the vehicle ground to a stop.
“Hold on,” he called, throwing an arm over the back of the seat as he shifted the Range Rover into reverse, the chatter of Nick’s rifle now adding itself to the cacophony surrounding him as the SAS sergeant opened fire.
He saw men fall, saw fireflies flash in the night.
Bullets slammed into the body of the vehicle as he spun the wheel, aiming it toward a narrow alley between shelled buildings. Narrow enough that the deuce-and-a-half couldn’t follow them.
Harry could see the map of Bint Jbeil in his head, the satellite overlay—but it couldn’t have been easier to become disoriented. The side mirror disintegrated under a hail of fire and he glanced back to see the technical right on their bumper, nearly on the point of ramming them.
“Come on now, mate…stop playing around and get rid of them,” he shouted back to Hale, his words nearly drowned out by gunfire as he jammed his foot against the accelerator. The vehicle shot forward into the alley, jolting over the rubble—sparks flying as one of their tires exploded under the impact of a bullet.
Rounds tore through the thin metal of the Range Rover and Hale’s rifle fell silent. Nothing.
A minute passed—it seemed longer, much longer. And then an explosion rocked the speeding vehicle from side to side, a ball of fire billowing into the night sky behind them. Taken off-guard, Harry’s head jerked around to see the technical lying on its side, engulfed in flames.
Hale just grinned back at him, holding up the pin of a fragmentation grenade.
Frag grenades hadn’t been part of their load-out—or weren’t supposed to have been, he was sure of that. This was a hostage rescue, not an assault—too much risk of grabbing the wrong thing in the dark. Harry shook his head.
Those were questions for the debrief…if they got that far.
He twisted the wheel hard right, guiding the vehicle around a pile of rubble and out of the alley back onto the road, the Lebanese hillside spreading out before them as they reached the edge of town. They would regroup and come after them, of that he was sure—but they’d bought themselves a little time.
It was as black, oily smoke began to billow through the shattered windshield and the engine began to falter, that Harry realized exactly how little.
12:55 A.M.
The USS Iwo Jima
“I am afraid.” Iraida could still remember the moment, burned into her memory as if with a brand—the spring breeze suddenly cold against her skin, toying with the tendrils of smoke from Layla’s Marlboro.
She’d known something was wrong at that last meet, from the very beginning. The quick, furtive way the woman had walked—her overwatch team had warned of a set-up. Recommended scrubbing the meet.
Recommended very strongly, as she recalled. Memories of Buckley were never far from the surface at Beirut Station.
“I am afraid of what he will do if he finds out—if he knows that I have been working for you.” Layla had looked up, meeting her eyes. Forcing a pained smile to that classically beautiful face. “Afraid for myself—for my children most of all. If I did not know that you will come for them if anything happens to me…I don’t think I could go on. Not for another moment.”
And she had forced a smile of her own, knowing it was all a lie. Forcing herself to ignore the guilt, to focus on the only thing that mattered in that moment.
Stabilizing her asset.
“How long till we lose sat coverage?” she asked, glancing at Petras. Knowing that she must focus now, even as her last three years’ work fell apart around her.
“Eleven minutes,” the older woman responded, her voice hard. Unwavering. “And if Nichols has failed to re-establish comms in that time…I’m calling it a wash. Pulling the Black Hawk back in. We can do nothing blind.”
A wash. Iraida nodded, closing her eyes. Fighting against the reality that a woman who had once looked to her as a confidant was about to die. Along with the men dispatched to rescue her.
12:57 A.M.
Bint Jbeil, Lebanon
“I’d say it’s pretty well knackered, mate,” Nick observed, standing beside the Range Rover as Harry reached under the hood.
The worst part was that he was right—the engine block had taken multiple 7.62mm rounds, a ragged, wet hole marking where the coolant had once been. A klick and a half out of Bint Jbeil and the engine had seized up, stopping in the middle of the road.
“As are you, brother,” he replied quietly, shooting his friend a look. “And don’t try to lie to me again.”
A shrug. “I’m good for as long as you need me. You know that.”
And he did. Nick would stay in the fight until it was over or he bled out, whichever came first. If it meant crawling.
Headlights shone on the road behind them, back toward the town, and Harry could make out two trucks in the faint moonlight. He grimaced. They weren’t going to make the secondary extraction point—not on foot, not with Nick’s wound and Layla’s injuries. There was no time. Running out of options.
His gaze flickered to the hill rising above the road to their west. Al Dwair.
Take the high ground. It was a military doctrine as old as Hannibal Barca, and never more applicable.
“Hale,” he said, unslinging his FN-FAL as he moved back along the side of the bullet-riddled Range Rover, “take the kids and move out. Summit of the hill, don’t stop for anything till you’ve reached it. Nick, you help Massoud. Get up there and establish a perimeter.”
“And where are you going, mate?” he heard Nick ask from behind him.
Harry shook his head. “Just go!”
Moving back along the side of the roadway, he dropped to one knee, bringing the rifle to bear—the trucks coming into clear view through the nightscope. Still nearly nine hundred meters off, if he was any judge.
He forced himself t
o calm. Adrenaline was no good to him now, the firing reticle drifting back and forth over its target as his breathing slowed.
Wait. Just wait.
Eight hundred meters. Then seven hundred, faster now, their drivers no doubt accelerating at the sight of the stalled Range Rover.
He could have waited, but his primary objective was to slow them down. Force them to dismount—at a range where their AKs would be at a disadvantage. The reticle centered over the windshield of the lead truck, the night-vision showing him the outline of the man behind the wheel, a green-tinged shape. Not a person, just a shape.
His target.
The FN’s trigger broke cleanly, a supersonic crack echoing across the Lebanese hillside. The big deuce-and-a-half skidded sideways, rocking from side to side as it plunged across the road and down the embankment, fighters jumping from the back as it went. He traversed the big rifle to cover them, bringing down two more with quick, well-aimed shots.
The second truck was already pulling to a stop maybe ten meters back of the first, turning sideways in the road to provide cover as men spilled out of it. The guy riding shotgun made the mistake of pushing his door open, his rifle still slung over his back.
It was the last mistake he would ever make as a .308 round buried itself in his chest, mushrooming through a lung as he collapsed into the dust.
Harry raised his eye from the scope. Four shots, four men down. Better than he could have hoped, but they were recovering quickly, the whiplash crack of bullets breaking the sound barrier well over his head as the Hezbollah fighters returned fire. Time to move.
Ducking low, he sprinted across the road, feet pounding against the hard-packed earth. Reaching the far side he dropped to the ground, rolling onto his stomach long enough to squeeze off two more shots. Suppressive fire.
And then he was off again, zig-zagging back and forth as he clambered up the rocky hillside, ducking between olive trees, his heart pounding as bullets smashed into a boulder five feet from his hand, chips of rock flying through the air.
He glimpsed Nick maybe ten meters ahead of him, supporting Layla as they worked their way up to the crest of the hill. Not far—not nearly far enough.
It was going to fall to him to provide overwatch. Harry dropped behind a boulder, bringing his eye to the FN’s scope.
There was nothing to like about what he saw, a ragged skirmish line moving toward them across the war-ravaged fields below, fighters spread out maybe eight feet apart. Had to be at least forty men there, with yet another truck pulling in just out of rifle shot. Long odds.
He winced, the stock of the battle rifle pressed firmly against his cheek as he slowly squeezed the trigger. Somewhere out there in the night, an Israeli commander was thanking God that the going had gotten easier in his sector.
You’re welcome, pal…
1:04 A.M.
They were going to need to cover the road. That was Harry’s first thought upon reaching the summit of Al Dwair. There was a narrow road winding up the east face of the hill, parts of it shielded from their view by olive trees.
Wide enough to bring a truck right up, if Hezbollah really wanted to make that play.
The two SAS sergeants had taken up defensive positions, with Nick covering back down toward the roadway—Hale facing north. There was no threat from that quadrant…yet.
Layla Massoud was between them, sheltered among the rocks, a dazed look in her eyes as she sat there, holding her children close as they sobbed against her chest. Their world flipped upside down in the last hour. Turned inside out, everything they had known ripped away. Their father dead.
He bent down on one knee beside the woman, brushing back a blood-matted lock of hair from her scarred forehead. “We’re going to get you out of here—everything’s going to be okay.”
She just looked at him, a hollow look in those eyes as she patted across her son’s cheek. “I can’t let them go back…not to that life.” Layla hesitated, glancing at the 1911 on his belt. “Can I have your pistol?”
No. Harry shook his head, not even hesitating. He knew what she meant—what she intended to do, but there was no way he could assume that risk. If not for her condition and the children, they would have zip-cuffed her, made her secure. That was standard operating procedure for a hostage rescue, and one of many rules they had broken this night.
He ran a hand down her arm. “If it comes to the end…I won’t let them take you. I promise you that.”
More promises. Empty as all the rest. And he could tell by the look on her face that she was past believing any of it.
With a sigh, he rose, pulling the cellphone once again from his pocket, holding it up to the sky, its glow shining down on him. No signal.
Just nothing. He felt suddenly weary, the adrenaline abandoning him in that moment. To have come all this way, only to stare into the face of Death.
It had been barely three hours since he had jumped into the night, but it felt like a lifetime.
Their ammunition would only hold out so long, not nearly as long as the bodies now coming up the hill toward them.
“Nichols!” Crawford’s shout seized his attention, banishing the thoughts as he hurried over to the sergeant’s position.
“What do you have?”
Nick just handed him the binoculars, pointing over the rocks and down toward the base of the road. And then he saw it, already well past the wrecked deuce-and-a-half, maybe eight hundred yards away.
It was another technical—this time the one they had seen at the checkpoint on their way into Bint Jbeil, the .50-caliber Browning in the back looking as big as a cannon.
Trump card. As long as it was in play, bringing a helicopter in for extraction would be nothing short of suicidal. And Hezbollah could sit back out of range and use the big gun to lash the hilltop with suppressive fire.
He glassed the rest of the hillside, seeing only a stray jihadi here and there along the rocky slope. The rest had no doubt gone to ground, playing it safe. “What are you looking at with ammunition?” Harry asked, handing the binoculars back.
“Hundred and forty rounds,” the sergeant replied coolly. “Give or take—got the mag I picked up from the hajji at the compound. It’ll hold them for a while.”
A pause. Then, “You weren’t able to get through to the ship, were you?”
Harry shook his head, leaning back against the rocks as he ejected the FN-FAL’s magazine, replacing it with a fresh one from the pouch on his hip. “No signal. I’ll try again in a few minutes.”
Nick cast a long look down the slope. “Give it ten, mate. You’ll be able to use theirs.”
1:08 A.M.
The Black Hawk
All the years at war, and it never got any different. Impatient boredom punctuated by moments of unmitigated terror.
Jorgenson stared out the windscreen of the Black Hawk, wind-driven rain whipping against the glass as the helicopter held a low hover only thirty feet above the whitecaps of the Mediterranean.
And of all the waiting, waiting for the final authorization to go in and pull his brothers out was the worst.
“DARK HORSE, this is EYRIE.” It was the younger woman, and he could hear the strain in her voice through the bursts of static. “We’re ordering the abort of LODESTONE. I repeat, LODESTONE has been scrubbed. Do you copy?”
No. He swore under his breath, feeling the anger rise within him.
“There’s no need, EYRIE. We still have the fuel necessary to make this happen if you send us in now. We’re nowhere near bingo.”
Another voice came on the line, and he recognized it as that of the older CIA officer, Petras. Her tones stone cold. “That’s irrelevant to the situation, DARK HORSE. You will RTB immediately. Copy?”
Return to base.
There was no choice but to acknowledge the order, Jorgenson knew that—she wasn’t giving him any room to operate. He had no coordinates, no positions for the CIA team.
Loyalty. That was all you had out in the field. The knowledge
that at the end of the day, someone was coming for you, would fly through hell to pull you out of the fire. Never leave a man behind—that was the code he had lived by, all those years.
He shook his head…Agency desk types like Petras had no “code.” He had known her type in Afghanistan, knew how they thought.
Playing chess with men’s lives, just moving the pieces across the board. Sacrifice a pawn to advance a rook—no concept of the loyalty it took to survive in this world. Loyalty to your men.
He swallowed hard, choking back the bile. “Copy that, EYRIE. DARK HORSE returning to the boat.”
1:10 A.M.
The USS Iwo Jima
There was something ominous about the number flashing on the comm center’s screen, as if it were the herald of impending death. Losing Signal in 4…3…2… .
Iraida turned away from the screen as it went black, the Keyhole finally moving out of range. Leaving them blind. Deaf and dumb—all the technology in the world no good to them in this moment.
“And what do we do now?” she demanded, looking over at Petras. Staying one step ahead of a disintegrating situation—that was the mark of any good field officer, but she felt helpless now. As if her hands had been tied…by the woman standing across from her.
“Nothing,” Petras replied evenly. “There’s nothing that we can do. You saw the last imagery—the IDF will have Bint Jbeil completely encircled within the hour. No way out—no way to get them out without provoking an international incident. If you need me, I’ll be belowdecks, on the phone to the legal eagles back in D.C. explaining how we managed to screw this one up so royally.”
She glanced around the Iwo’s communication room. “Get everything packed up and ready to move. By the time dawn breaks, I don’t want the slightest trace of Agency presence left on this boat.”
1:12 A.M.
The summit of Al Dwair
Lebanon
Come on in, Harry thought, sweeping the hillside once more with the FN’s nightscope. He’d caught a flash of movement a moment before, but now there was nothing. Just nothing.
The earlier firing had died away, leaving the only sounds to be heard the distant crump of Israeli artillery. But they were still there, he knew that. Could feel it.
LODESTONE: A Shadow Warriors Novella Page 5