LODESTONE_A Shadow Warriors Novella by Stephen England

Author:Stephen England [England, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

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.”

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.”

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

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