LODESTONE: A Shadow Warriors Novella

by Stephen England

  And then he heard it, the sickeningly dull sound of a bullet smashing into flesh. A woman’s scream, moments after, rending the night. Piercing his soul.

  His head came up, time itself seeming to slow down as he caught sight of Layla Massoud. In the open. Exposed to the incoming fire.

  Bent over the form of her son.

  A voice sounded in his earpiece, but he barely heard it, throwing himself on her, knocking her back into shelter as he turned back toward the boy.

  And he knew…knew from the moment he saw the wide open, staring eyes. The small chest heaving as his breath came in short, painful gasps.

  It couldn’t have been worse.

  1:34 A.M.

  The Black Hawk

  “EAGLE SIX, this is DARK HORSE. Come in, EAGLE SIX.” Jorgenson grimaced—nothing but dead silence greeting his transmission as the Black Hawk swept inland, flying nap-of-the-earth over the hills of Nabatieh.

  Scant feet above the ground, his night-vision goggles gave the terrain a surreal, otherworldly aspect. Low enough to avoid Israeli radars, if they were lucky. “I repeat, EAGLE SIX, do you copy?”

  Nothing.

  1:35 A.M.

  Al Dwair

  You never wanted to move a gunshot victim. Not unless you had to. And with rounds continuing to carom off the rocks all around them, he’d had to.

  He heard the rattle of Nick’s Kalashnikov—of Hale returning fire down the western face of Al Dwair. They were encircled, the fighters pressing them hard now.

  The boy had been shot in the stomach, the bullet tearing its way through his small body and out the other side. And he was losing blood, fast. Going into shock.

  “Stay with me, buddy,” Harry whispered, pressing his undershirt against the wound with his left hand, trying to maintain pressure as he reached up, gently slapping at the boy’s face. His eyes fluttered open again, but only for a moment.

  They were losing him. His headset crackled once more. “EAGLE SIX, this is DARK HORSE. Please acknowledge.”

  Thank God. “I read you, DARK HORSE. What’s your twenty?”

  “Three mikes out, EAGLE SIX. It’s good to hear your voice. Need you to give me your sitrep.”

  “We’ve taken two casualties, DARK HORSE,” Harry responded, glancing over toward Nick’s position, the muzzle flash of his AK clearly visible in the night. He felt the boy stir under his fingers and looked down into a pale face dripping with sweat. “Have a CAT-Alpha on our hands. A kid, GSW to the stomach.”

  He could hear the moment’s silence on the radio, knew what the Night Stalker pilot was thinking. Casualty designations didn’t get any worse than CAT-Alpha. They were running out of time.

  A moment, and then Jorgenson’s voice returned calmly. “We’re coming in from the north, EAGLE SIX. Mark your position.”

  “Roger that.” Harry reached up, digging into one of the pockets of his vest for an IR strobe. Flicking it on, an infrared light pulsing from the beacon as he laid it on the ground. “You’re gonna need to come in hot, DARK HORSE—we’re taking rounds from all sides. Need suppressive fire.”

  “How close do you want it brought in?”

  The question went unanswered for a moment as Harry jerked his 1911 from its holster, a Hezbollah militant appearing in the darkness, running up the road toward them. Maybe eleven meters away. He fired the big pistol off-hand—one, two, three shots, his target going down, legs kicking in the dust.

  “Danger close, DARK HORSE. Danger close.”

  1:37 A.M.

  The Black Hawk

  Danger close. As close as they could walk in the machine-gun fire without killing their own people. It meant the field team was in danger of being overrun.

  Chaos.

  “Two minutes to extract. Gunners stand to,” Jorgenson announced grimly over the comms, glancing back at his crew chiefs, catching sight of the miniguns being swung out of the MH-60K’s windows behind him—starboard and port. He reached down, flicking a toggle switch on the Black Hawk’s console. “Switches are hot, guns are hot. Be advised, we are weapons-free, cleared to engage.”

  Ready to deal death. This was going to be cutting it close. So very close.

  “Look alive, people.”

  1:37 A.M.

  Al Dwair

  Ali’s ghost-white face stared back at him in the night, the incessant chatter of automatic weapons fire pummeling his ears as he held the rude bandage tight against the boy’s abdomen. It wasn’t going to be enough…

  He glanced down the hill, saw the fighters moving in. Fire and maneuver—laying down suppressive fire as they came. Another few moments and they were going to be overrun.

  “Give me your hands,” he said, looking back at Layla, tears running down her cheeks in the darkness. She reached forward, and he took her fingers in his own, pressing them against the boy’s bandage. Holding them there.

  “He’s going to be okay,” he lied, reaching over for his rifle. “Just keep that bandage pressed tight to the wound.”

  He rolled to his knees, the stock of the FN pressed against his shoulder as a man emerged from the darkness. Target.

  Two shots, center-of-mass. And he was on his feet as his target went down, firing another two shots into a group of militants further down the hillside.

  A third shot and the rifle’s bolt locked back on an empty magazine. Out.

  He dove for cover, small rocks cutting into the palm of his hand as he landed, rolling over as he pulled his final magazine from the pouch on his belt, slamming it into the empty mag well. And then he was up again, pulling back the charging bolt of the FN-FAL as bullets cut through the air around him. Returning fire at the muzzle flashes before sprinting to the next cover.

  “Shooters on your left, mate! Thirty meters!” He heard Nick’s shout just in time to turn, dropping to one knee as fighters emerged from the copse of trees near the road. He was exposed—outnumbered, their weapons already leveled.

  And then he heard it…the rhythmic beat of a helicopter’s rotors, and then a sound as if the sky had been seized in the hands of a giant and rent asunder.

  Dust billowed up around the fighters’ feet as if they had suddenly been caught in the midst of a tornado, blood mixing with the dust as bodies disintegrated under the force of the storm. Men shredded where they stood.

  There were no tracers—or rather none that he could see. He knew from past experience: the 160th used low-light tracers visible only by infrared to walk their rounds in on the target.

  But he knew a minigun when he saw its destructive wake—reaching down from the heavens like the finger of God. Smiting the hilltop.

  He saw rocks disappear beneath its fury as the hail of fire swept down the slope, churning through the Hezbollah skirmish line.

  The Black Hawk thundered in just feet over his head, the very muzzle blast of its miniguns turning night into day in the sky above him. Fury.

  “Crawford, Hale—hold fast on the perimeter,” he barked over his headset radio, hearing the order acknowledged as he watched the helicopter pull into a hover over the hilltop, its wheels barely a foot off the ground. It didn’t land, wasn’t going to, an anti-mine tactic that dated back as far as ‘Nam.

  Letting the FN-FAL hang across his chest from its sling, he came around the side of the Black Hawk, the downwash of the main rotor whipping at his clothing, his face.

  It felt like he was getting sand-blasted.

  “EAGLE SIX?” a young man in the uniform of an Air Force PJ demanded, yelling to make himself heard over the noise of the rotors. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty-five, Harry thought, an M4 carbine in his hands, held at the ready as he ran forward. “I’m Carson. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

  Harry just nodded by way of reply, grabbing him by the arm and pointing him toward where Layla was huddled, still bent over her dying son. The pleasantries could wait for later, if ever. You learned to get by without thanks in this business.

  The PJ held up two fingers, looking Harry briefly
in the eye. “We got two minutes on the ground. Call your people in.”

  1:40 A.M.

  The USS Iwo Jima

  “You did what?” The look on Petras’ face was somewhere between surprise and anger, her features shadowed by the glow of the comm room’s electronics.

  “After receiving the call, I sent Jorgenson in to extract the field team,” Iraida replied, not giving an inch—her eyes locking with the older woman’s. “It’s my team, and it was my call to make, in your absence from the TOC.”

  The Tactical Operations Center. The CIA station chief shook her head. “After I scrubbed the mission. You sent an Army helo flying into the middle of a war—on exactly whose authority?”

  Iraida took the jacket containing the only printed copy of their orders and spun it around on the table until it was facing Petras, the Presidential seal clearly visible on the cover sheet.

  “The highest,” she retorted, staring directly into her superior’s eyes. “Our cross-border authorization remains in effect. Or perhaps you would have preferred to have been explaining American and British bodies on al-Jazeera come morning?”

  Petras swore. “Compared to five more American bodies and a US Army helicopter downed in Lebanon? Of course I would have. That’s the math—what it all comes down to in the end. The cold, hard realities. If you joined the Agency thinking we were going to go riding in on our white horse to save the world…you need to find a different line of work. And do it now, before your idealism gets anyone else killed.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “Enough.” The older woman cut her off before she could say another word. “What’s done is done. What was the last sitrep from DARK HORSE?”

  “They were two minutes from landing at Al Dwair—had made contact with the field team.”

  Petras looked up at the now-darkened screens that had displayed the satellite feed and shook her head. “And we’re blind.”

  1:40 A.M.

  Al Dwair, Lebanon

  Two minutes. It was an eternity in the wrong place. At the wrong time. And they were coming, he knew that—despite the hurricane of fire that had been thrown their way. Coming back.

  And all it would take was one RPG, like the one in the hands of the teenager he had killed. As long as it was on the ground, the Black Hawk was a sitting duck.

  Harry stumbled in the darkness and felt the stretcher lurch with him, the boy’s mouth opening in what was undoubtedly a cry, drowned out by the helicopter’s rotors. Pain.

  He heard the faint crack of small-arms fire from down the slope, saw Nick move to counter the threat, fire flickering from the muzzle of his Kalashnikov as he and Hale fell back on the chopper. A fighting retreat.

  A nod from the PJ and they both lifted, sliding the stretcher into the Black Hawk’s open door. Sliding it home.

  Harry turned, reaching out to take Nour from her mother’s arms, the little girl’s tears wet against his grimy cheek as he handed her up to the crew chief standing in the open doorway.

  One minute left. A burst of fire came out of the night, rounds piercing the frame of the Black Hawk inches above Harry’s head. A shape in the darkness about twenty meters back of the helicopter’s tail rotor. He thrust Layla out of the way, reaching for his own weapon. Saw Carson’s M4 come up, movement born of instinct.

  A burst of fire rippled from the carbine before Harry could even bring his rifle to bear. The fighter crumpled, his weapon going off as he fell. Target down.

  “Let’s move,” the PJ ordered, his eyes flashing as he safed the carbine, letting it fall to hang from its lanyard as he hoisted himself up into the door of the hovering Black Hawk.

  Harry swept Layla Massoud up in his arms, lifting her until she could rest on the floor of the helicopter beside her son.

  He turned, rifle in hand, keying his mike. “C’mon, Nick—stop arsing about and get in here. All elements, fall back on the LZ.”

  Time was running out, every second costing them dearly. Decreasing their odds. He put a foot up on the wheel, feeling the vibrations pulse through his jump boot as he lifted himself up into the helicopter, kneeling by the door.

  The PJ was already on his knees beside Ali, performing the “blood sweep”, his hands running over the boy’s body to check for further wounds. He’d seen it done a thousand times before—choppers just like this one, washed in blood. Looking like a charnel house.

  Hale appeared in that moment. “Where’s Nick?” Harry demanded.

  “On his way in,” the sergeant gestured off to the right, his legs dangling from the open door of the helicopter as he ejected an empty magazine from his AK. Slamming a fresh mag home.

  “Major says we need to be airborne. Now,” Carson announced, looking up from the boy. “We’re out of time.”

  No. The face of Nick’s wife flashed before his eyes, the way Mehreen had looked standing there on the tarmac at RAF Brize Norton. Waiting for her husband to come home from the war.

  Like she would be waiting for his casket.

  He raised the rifle to his shoulder, glassing the terrain with the nightscope. Searching for his friend. That wasn’t going to happen. Not while he had the watch.

  And then he saw him, stumbling in toward the Black Hawk under the cover of the miniguns. Looking like a runner in the final steps of a marathon. A punch-drunk prizefighter. He threw up a hand as he reached the chopper and Harry seized it in an iron grasp, pulling him up.

  “It’s past your bedtime, mate,” Crawford yelled in his ear, wincing in pain as he put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Wasn’t it time you were leavin’?”

  “Not without you aboard. Not a chance.” Harry saw the PJ waving the signal up to the cockpit, felt the airframe tremble beneath him as the Black Hawk dipped forward, the ground flying by beneath their feet.

  Airborne. He heard the starboard minigun open up in that moment, hot brass flying over the interior of the helicopter.

  “We’re losing him!” Carson screamed, throwing up a hand. “IV! I need a line!”

  Harry felt a bullet crease the air past his head, warm blood spraying over his face and neck. For a second, he thought he’d been hit—until he looked up, realizing that the round had gone wild, striking one of the blood bags the PJ had hung up for ready access. Life-giving fluid draining away in the space of a heartbeat.

  He safed his weapon, started to move to Ali’s side. And then he realized Nick was still gripping his shoulder. Holding on tight now—a grasp born of desperation.

  Their eyes locked for a moment in the darkness, rotors meshing and whining over their heads, Nick’s pale face hellishly illuminated in the faint glow of the instruments from the cockpit.

  Just a moment, a single moment stretching into an eternity as the truth sank home. And then the sergeant collapsed.

  1:43 A.M.

  The Black Hawk

  Behind him the guns had fallen silent, Jorgenson thought, monitoring his instruments closely as the dark ground flashed past beneath him, the Black Hawk screaming over Lebanese wheat fields at a hundred and thirty knots, rotor wash flattening the grain.

  Barely five feet off the deck.

  “Got tanks off the nose, five hundred meters” his co-pilot informed him calmly. “And infantry, platoon-strength. One o’clock, eight hundred meters.”

  The IDF. “Guns safe,” he announced over his comm headset as the helo banked, turning north toward the village of Et Taireh. They couldn’t risk a blue-on-blue. Friendly fire. “Gunners, stand down.”

  A few seconds, then the co-pilot announced, “Map says we have wires coming up—eleven klicks out on our current heading.”

  Wires. The stuff of every helicopter pilot’s worst nightmares. Eleven kilometers…they’d be there in a heartbeat. Jorgenson nodded. “Keep an eye out for the pylons.”

  1:44 A.M.

  “Come on, Nick,” Harry hissed, cutting away his friend’s tactical vest, the blood-soaked fabric of the shirt, revealing the wound beneath. He’d lied. It was more than a graze
—and he’d been bleeding for over an hour.

  Staying in the fight.

  “I am not going to lug your fool carcass home in a bag. Not gonna have to stand there and tell Mehr I couldn’t save you. You’re not doing that to me. Do you hear me?” he shouted, the cabin filled with the roar of the rotors above their heads.

  No answer. He reached up, slapping his friend across the face. Not gentle like he had done with the boy, but a full, back-handed, teeth-rattling slap. Nick’s eyes came open, his face twisted into a grimace. “Stay with me here, okay?”

  The boy. Harry glanced over to see Carson working on him, his gloved hands soaked in blood. He could see the PJ’s face in the dim light, saw the desperation. Knew it wasn’t good.

  Knew that he’d lied to Layla back there on that hilltop. It wasn’t going to be okay. Nothing was. Ever again.

  The bullet had struck in the meat of Nick’s side, scant inches below the ribs, dark congealing blood still oozing from the entry wound as he gently peeled away scraps of fabric from around it, dusting the area with sulfa before applying a dressing.

  Moving him carefully, he turned him onto his side, examining the exit wound. Thank you, Jesus.

  It had been a straight through-and-through, the exit wound no bigger than the entry. No expansion, a full metal jacket round, no doubt—odds-on old Russian surplus. Unreliable, but cheap and plentiful all over the Middle East. “You’re going to make it out of this, mate,” he said, bending over his friend’s body as he dressed the wound. “Gonna make it home in time to take Mehr to the next United game, right?”

  He saw his friend grit his teeth, smiling through the pain. Soccer. He’d never understand the appeal of the game, but none of that mattered right now.

  Nick needed a blood transfusion, needed one fast if they were going to bring him back. And Carson was using their remaining blood bags to stabilize the boy. Or trying to.

  Grabbing a length of IV tubing and a bag of saline solution, he used the saline to flush the tube of air as he knelt there in the darkness of the cabin, tapping it with a finger to make sure it remained full of the solution—no air pockets.