For the purposes of this story, Harry was born in '75 and Ziva in '78.
1996, Israel
Four khaki-painted Bowler Tomcat four-by-fours roared to a halt outside the main building in the moderately large compound of buildings on the edge of the Negev Desert. The cars had come originally with four-litre TVR V8s producing two-hundred and forty horsepower. A higher performance variant made two-hundred and seventy-five. However, they'd got hold of four BMW S62 five-litre V8s, fitted them with twin superchargers for six-hundred horsepower.
Very potent, and exactly what Section Five needed.
A number of people piled out of the buildings as the four cars roared into the compound and halted. They were wearing khaki trousers and shirts with epaulettes, and yet with no insignia. Then the four-by-fours disgorged their occupants. Wearing scruffy jeans, cargo trousers and t-shirts, they looked like any group of civilians.
"Shalom Benny." nodded the leader of the group of arrivals as one of the occupants of the compound approached him. A short, stocky man, tanned and bald as an egg grinned as he shook the hand of the other man, six-foot tall, with a messy mop of black hair, slightly pale.
Though he looked like an ordinary civilian, the leader of the arrivals was a twenty-one year-old captain of the Parachute Regiment, on permanent attachment to the Special Air Service. The second man was the commanding officer of Sayeret Matkal, a Lieutenant Colonel who had fought for his country for decades, and had experienced some of Israel's bloodiest conflicts, surviving where so many others hadn't.
"Harry, it is good to see you again." replied the Israeli, a beaming smile on his face; "Your men?"
"Section Five. Myself, Jock, Bill, Jack and Nick." the Englishman replied, gesturing to each of the men. They were fairly similar, not massively tall or bulky, but still muscular enough and tall enough, a couple of them unshaven, one completely bald and one obviously of Pacific extraction.
"Na'im me'od." the Israeli said to the SAS Section Five operatives, the Hebrew equivalent to 'pleased to meet you'. "Now come, I must show you around."
"And we spend usually an hour a day on the range, perfecting our shooting, often in bad weather, rain, hail. You do get such weather even out here." said Benny as he showed the group of SAS operatives around. Around half-a-dozen people were shooting on the outdoor range, including two young women who couldn't have been even twenty.
"I'll admit I'm surprised that you have women in the unit, that's not something most special forces allow." Harry noted with a slightly raised eyebrow.
"I prefer to judge people on their abilities and potential, not their gender." Benny replied after a searching look; "I hope that won't be a problem?"
"Don't worry, I'm in agreement with you." Harry chuckled.
"Tell you what, I'll bet she can shoot as straight as any of you." offered Benny, gesturing to the young woman who was firing short bursts from an M4.
"Deal." agreed Harry; "Hundred yards, see who can put the most bullets on target with the most accuracy."
Benny rattled off a sentence in Hebrew, causing the young woman to look up and give Harry a challenging stare. He simply raised an eyebrow. Stare down true evil a couple of times before you're even fifteen and a look from a woman five years his junior wasn't exactly scary.
"Ziva agrees." said Benny, nearly bouncing over, rubbing his hands together in glee. "What shall we play for?"
"Eternal smugness?" Harry offered, having his hand wrung immediately.
Lighting a cigar, Harry watched with a certain respect as Ziva reloaded her M4 carbine and opened fire, slight hesitations between shots to correct her aim. Soon the thirty-round box magazine had been poured down-range with a fairly small spread. He raised an eyebrow before glancing to Jock who was carrying a large black bag on his back.
"The Sterling please Jock." he requested.
The bag made a fairly loud noise as he dumped it on the table, unsurprising given the fact that there were five long rifles packed inside it. The SAS trooper removed a strange-looking rifle with a cylindrical stock, a thirty-round magazine from a 7.62mm Bren gun and a Browning M2-like sleeve to about halfway up the barrel from the magazine. One of the prototype Sterling battle rifles, a basic but effective weapon.
Harry took it, flicked up the iron-sights which were held on by bands around the barrel, charged the rifle and opened fire. Taking just a moment between each shot to adjust his aim, he put thirty rounds downrange, obliterating the black circle in the centre of the target but leaving the rest unscathed.
"I'd say that's on target." he commented, dropping the magazine and taking a puff on his cigar; "I'll admit though precision shooting isn't my strong point."
"Then, I would like a rematch or two." the young woman said in heavily-accented English with a challenging grin.
The SAS troopers earned a death-glare from their commander as they whistled appreciatively.
"It would be interesting." Harry replied with a non-answer.
The air was tense in the helicopter. The SAS men looked completely at ease, Harry had used a carabina to hook himself to an internal strut in the Blackhawk and was leaning out of the open door behind the Israeli door-gunner. They were flying in formation with another Sikorsky UH-60 'Yanshuf' Blackhawk over the rich, green land in the north of Israel near the border with Lebanon.
Early that afternoon, the Sayeret Matkal base had received orders to deploy. A column of insurgents had been spotted crossing the border and The Unit had been ordered to take them out. When they'd found out there was a good fight stirring, the SAS men hadn't taken no for an answer and now were in one of the two helicopters, the changes quite noticeable.
They usually wore scruffy jeans, cargo trousers, t-shirts and other civilian clothing. Now, each and every one of them was clad in the most modern multicam clothes, wearing a flak jacket and a set of Level IV rated body armour. Harry had a pair of ginunting short-swords sheathed by his side, a MEUSOC Colt M1911 'borrowed' off a USMC Gunnery Sergeant on his thigh, sharing its holster with a Gerber , the pouches on his armour filled with magazines for his Imbel M964A1 PARA-FAL. In the back of his belt was a second Colt M1911, a Coonan .357 model, along with a karambit claw knife.
Bill, a burly corporal, was sat in one of the canvas seats next to Harry, flicking through a classic car magazine, his custom M14 draped across his lap and a Saiga-12K automatic shotgun slung at his side. Nick Zacarias, their stealth specialist had an MP5SD6 suppressed sub-machine gun and a long Kami combat wakizashi on his lap, while he was plugged into a discman playing Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E-minor. Finally, there was Jock McCabe, Harry's right-hand man and their sniper, who had an Accuracy International L115A3 Arctic Warfare Super Magnum leaning on his left elbow as he calmly completed a page of crosswords and sudoku puzzles in a book he carried with him.
"Bored." announced Harry, leaning out of the door.
"You would be." Bill muttered.
Harry suddenly raised his his FAL to his shoulder, eye glued to the scope.
"Huh, ruined building, looks like some kind of castle."
"That's Montfort Castle." Ziva stated.
"Might walk up there whenever I've got some time." Harry commented, making a mental note to do so.
"How the hell are you so damned calm?!" she demanded as Jock triumphantly raised a fist as he finished a sudoku puzzle.
"Practise, experience, a sense of obligation to my fellow soldiers, family and country." he shrugged; "Don't you have family you'd kill and die for?"
"My fellow soldiers are, for the most-part, my family." Ziva replied in slightly halting English; "My sister, my mother."
"Not your father?" asked Jock who'd been listening in.
"He's distant." said Ziva sharply.
"Huh, I can believe that of Eli David, Jock, don't you remember that snide bastard who was leading the Mossad hit team in Iraq during '91." Jack added; "If I recall you broke his nose."
"I wasn't aware that my family was up for discussion." Ziva said coldly.
"She's right you two, shut it." Harry ordered, racking the charging handle on his FAL; "Besides, we're only a couple of minutes from the drop zone."
She nodded thankfully to him, charging her SR-25 Designated Marksman's Rifle. With the assault force in two ten-passenger helicopters, they were split into four teams of five to go after the incoming insurgents. To make up the numbers, she'd been attached to the SAS team, which wasn't bad as Harry had been the one teaching her to speak English and was a 'friend' as far as could be in a line of work such as their's.
The commandos encircled the clearing they had landed in, across the Lebanese border. Checking the perimeter, the two aircraft lifted off, one dipping its nose and moving forward when suddenly, a rocket came up out of the trees and struck the tail of the second Blackhawk which was just turning in the air to follow.
The sirens in the cockpit could be heard from the ground as the aircraft spun repeatedly, descending. It plunged into the forest, rolled over on its side, thrashing itself to bits before exploding. One of the rotor blades hurlted out of the wreckage and drove right into the second helicopter, sending it plummeting out of the air. Harry and Jock dashed towards the nearest of the helicopters which had simply rolled on its side after crashing, not exploding.
Jack pulled Ziva to behind a rocky outcrop while Nick covered them. They kept their guns trained towards the crashed helicopter as the two soldiers dashed over to it.
"Axe!" Harry barked, seeing one of the pilots moving.
Jock pulled out his tactical tomahawk, throwing it to Harry who drove the back-spike into the windscreen, which, already cracked, shattered. Jock hauled the pilot, who was jabbering away in Hebrew, from the cockpit and slung him over his shoulder as Harry broke the other windscreen. The co-pilot's neck was at an odd angle and he could already tell he was dead. One of the door gunners was crawling towards the commandos, legs broken having been thrown clear while the other had been crushed under the aircraft.
"We need to blow up the aircraft and get out of here." grunted the Sayeret commander who had dashed over to the SAS men, bringing his own four men with him to make up ten of them a and the wounded pilot who had been knocked out by morphine.
"I've got a load of Semtex if it helps." Jack volunteered; "But I'd prefer to get the bodies free, it could mess up the demolition."
Harry gave him a long look, knowing he was talking bullshit, but neither of them wanted to blow up the Israeli helicopter crews in the process of destroying the helicopter.
"Nick, think you can handle that." Harry asked.
"Mhmm." the Filipino nodded just as a stream of tracer screamed over their heads from behind.
The ten men broke around the back of the outcrop to shelter from the bursts of automatic gunfire. Too slow for one of them, the radio operator who took multiple bursts of automatic gunfire and collapsed on the sandy ground.
"GO!" Harry barked, picking off an insurgent with a single round.
He grabbed one of the grenades from his belt and sent it flying in a long arc to the far side of the clearing where the insurgents who had them pinned down were. The weapon detonated, sending a deadly wave of shrapnel out, allowing Nick and Jack to make a dash for the helicopter. Ziva popped her head around the rock, rifle barking twice as two suicide bombers ran across the clearing. Her shots were perfectly placed, taking them both down with shots to the head.
"I thought we could do with all the extra explosives we can get." she explained, sitting back against the rock next to Harry as he mentally counted down for a few seconds, allowing some further insurgents to leave cover.
He stuck his head and rifle around the rock, allowing Ziva to shift up and give him room to fire. The FAL picked off one insurgent at the treeline when a second ran towards Harry. He fired straight at the man's chest, only to hear the distinctive noise of bullet on body-armour. The dilated pupils of the attacker's eyes became apparent when he lunged at Harry. The bayonet on the end of Harry's FAL parried away an AK bayonet and lodged itself in the attacker's throat followed by a second bullet.
The Israelis were in a vicious, bloody stalemate. They had nowhere to withdraw to, but plenty of guts and guns to defend their position with. However, there was a distant rumble that caused the SAS men to freeze.
"Asaf!" Harry yelled at the Israeli commander; "Split up, get out of here. They're bringing up armour. We'll provide a rear guard, get out!"
Jack was already unpacking an M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon when a BMP-1 barged through the trees. The gun was traversing towards their cover when he popped his head around the rock and put a rocket straight into the fuel tank. The wave of heat was immense as the blast ripped the vehicle apart. But still there was the rumbling of further armoured vehicles approaching. How the bloody hell the insurgents had got hold of these, none of them had any idea.
"Get them out of here!" Harry repeated; "Get us backup."
The SAS men allowed further terrorists come into the open before laying down accurate bursts of fire. The Israelis broke for the treeline behind them and melted away, leaving behind belts of ammunition and the feeds they'd hacked off the crashed 'hawks, thousands of rounds. Harry grinned, lots of ammunition, just them and the enemy... and Ziva.
"I thought-" he began.
"Yes, well I couldn't give a shit what you thought." she stated, adjusting the scope on her rifle; "If you think I'm letting you lot get killed alone then you're far more stupid than I gave you credit for. What have we got?"
"Four M72s unexpended, half a dozen L9 bar mines, our rifles, pistols and knives. And a lot of ammunition." Jock replied.
"Cover me!" yelled Nick, opening fire as he broke for the treeline.
Harry grinned as the Filipino melted into the foliage and flitted around. The exchanges of fire became sporadic as the bodies began to pile up, then the armour came up. Nick dropped back into the hollow they'd dug out behind the rock, smirking.
"You put down some of those mines?" he asked.
A series of huge explosions was the answer.
"Less talk, more kill." Ziva ordered.
"Yes ma'am." Harry mockingly saluted, pitching a grenade at the trees where burst of gunfire were originating from.
Sayeret Matkal teams circled the bloodbath clearing. They were hungering for revenge, several of their number and their aviation support teams were dead, while several of their SAS colleagues and friends were missing with one of their own number. The bodies were strewn around the area, with three scorched, burnt-out armoured vehicles to balance the two wrecked choppers.
Cartridge casings were piled high as Sergeant Nicolas Zacarias and Corporal William de Mornay had reported, but of the remaining SAS men, Staff Sergeant Andrew McCabe, Corporal John Knight and Captain Hadrian Potter and their own soldier, there was no sign.
"Give me some news." snapped the anonymous-looking man in the suit who had demanded to come along with the mission.
"Sir?" asked the soldier, looking to his commander.
"This is Officer David, head of the Middle East Special Operations desk at Mossad and Segen Mishne David's father. Answer him." was the order.
"A wheeled vehicle, a truck, was in the vicinity. Tracks indicated two people being dragged into it. Several tracks escaped, we don't know where to." reported the soldier.
"I know what they'll be doing." drawled Bill, smoking a cigarette and looking utterly calm despite a deep desire to kill someone.
"What!" demanded David.
"They'll be pulling some hare-brained scheme which will have zero chance of working and then make it work." Bill replied, flicking his cigarette into the sand and screwing his boot heel on it; "Don't ask anything more than that because I have no idea what that scheme will be, they generally make them up as they go along."
"Damn you." the Mossad officer cursed.
His phone rang suddenly, interrupting the relative quiet of the examination of the site of the battle.
"David." he barked.
"Officer David, you asked for any reported sightings of McCabe and Knight. We have seen them." came a calm voice over the phone, speaking English and easily heard.
"You are?" David demanded.
"Flying Officer Andy Maximillian, Royal Air Force on exchange to 105 Squadron at Tel Nof airbase." came the reply.
"Report!"
"They've just been seen at the base stealing one of our Phantoms. Thought you'd like to know. At the speed they left, they shouldn't be too far away." was the smug comment before the phone line died.
"They stole a fucking Phantom?" Nick asked incredulously.
"Jock and Harry both like flying the Phantom and Jack likes blowing shit up with it."
"They still stole a fucking Phantom."
Harry leaned back against the wall of the cell he'd been thrown in with Ziva, his eyes half-closed. He had a look of complete relaxation to him that unnerved the guards even more than the shark-like smile he'd given them as he was bundled with her out of the truck into the building with the cells.
"Well, where's the big plan?" demanded Ziva, staring incredulously at her cellmate.
"On its way." Harry said, idly poking one of the soles of his boot.
"Really?" she asked sarcastically; "If you can't see we're both locked in a cell built from pre-cast concrete. The door is fully metal with locks only accessible from the outside."
Harry ignored her, cocking his head to one side as there was a distant rumble of thunder. He stood up and walked over to the high, barred window to look outside. The time was late evening, and the sky was completely clear. The thunder was not of any natural kind, it was actually a sound he recognised well.
"Right, time to bust out of here." he announced.
"Really?" Ziva repeated sarcastically, not bothering to even stand up.
"Or I could leave you behind." Harry replied, lifting his leg up against the wall and poking the sole of his boot again.
"If you've got a way out." she said, raising an eyebrow and looking pointedly at the metal door.
"It isn't exactly subtle." Harry admitted.
"Really?"
Harry glared at her for a moment before striding over to the door and began pounding at it, bellowing in a 'Regimental Sergeant Major on the parade ground' voice.
"YOU HORRIBLE LOT! GET MOVING! OVER HERE, NOW! ONE-TWO-ONE-TWO! FASTER!"
He then stepped back and waited.
Suddenly the door slammed open and two guards barged in, levelling AK-47 assault rifles at him. Harry's move was mindbogglingly fast. In a moment, he'd twisted one of the AKs from the grip of its owner, wrapping the strap around his throat and opened fire straight into the other guard. Finishing off the first with a vicious twist, snapping his neck, Harry kicked the other AK to Ziva, who, despite her misgivings being voiced by the siren blaring, snatched it up and followed Harry out.
Moving smoothly out into the corridor into a kneeling position, a cluster of bullets cracked past his head as Harry once again fired his newly-acquired AK. The insurgents at the end of the corridor collapsed, and were quickly downgraded in his mind from 'annoyance' to 'supply of ammunition'.
A couple of magazines of ammunition were looted and Ziva stopped to grab an SVD from a rack and slung it around her back as they burst through the door from the cell-block to the courtyard of the compound. They quickly spotted gunmen piling out of another building's door, but in their rush, they were tripping and barging into each-other. As Harry and Ziva broke for the truck that had brought them in, they fired again and again until their guns were empty.
Harry grinned as he found that the vehicle still had their looted gear in the cab. But, half asleep, tumbling out of the cab were two guards. The gun was empty so he decided to go in with his bare hands. The first strike was a brutal blow to the chest, followed by an elbow strike to the temple. The first guard hit the ground, hard. Harry followed up with a neck-snapping stomp before disposing of the second guard through the simple expedient of grabbing his chin and shoulder, propelling them in opposite direction.
He was immensely glad that their kit was still inside the weapons carrier. The last he'd heard was bursts of rapidly-spoken Arabic arguing over what to do with it and someone deciding that nobody would have it until they had made a decision. Saved by bureaucracy. The keys were lying on the dashboard, so moments later, the big Ural truck was racing out of the compound, even as Ziva was climbing in and slamming her door.
"They'll hunt us." she stated.
"Undoubtedly. I've got a couple of trump cards though." Harry stated, suddenly turning north; "We vanish for a couple of days in the wilderness."
"And the other?" Ziva asked, giving him a look of new-found respect.
"That." Harry said, pointing out of the window as an F-4 Phantom let loose a barrage of gunfire over their heads at pursuing forces; "I believe a couple of my colleagues may have borrowed one of your air force's Phantoms."
In the shelter of the back of the old Ural, Harry's right eye flickered open as he heard a snap outside. Ziva was curled into his side, fast asleep. The warmth of the Lebanese days was, at night, replaced by bitter cold and, sparsely equipped as they were, sleeping together had been simple common sense. Then as the shock caught her with the end of what was her combat debut, the emotional intimacy had been a stabilising factor, and the sleeping together had become 'sleeping' together.
Not that he minded, nor Ziva. It was all he could do to make her first few experiences as pleasurable as possible. However, such thoughts were pushed aside as he slipped out of the canvas structure on the back of the Ural truck, not out of the back, but through a loose part on the side. Ziva woke up as he moved, freezing for a moment as he gestured to the outside, while reaching under the seat cushion they used as a pillow for his pistol.
A minute later, Harry was crouched in the brush as a figures approached with rifles carrying flashlights. He silently eased back the hammer on his MEUSOC Kimber M45 1911, when suddenly a flashlight was turned on him. Reflexively, Harry fired three shots, all of which missed as the target threw himself out of the way.
"Check fire!" roared Jock's recognisable stentorian voice.
Harry slowly lowered his pistol as lights began to survey the area. Jack was frozen with Ziva holding a pistol to his head, while Bill was on the ground, aiming at Harry who had just shot at him. Jock and Nick were lowering their weapons from aiming at the two.
"Oh buggery." Bill muttered loudly.
"No time for arguments, we need to get going. The remainder of those insurgents are tracking you." Jock barked; "I brought up a couple of armed Humvees."
"Right, Ziva, let Jack go." Harry ordered; "Nick, get our kit from the Ural and set the thing on fire."
"Yes boss." came the reply.
"How far are the cars?" demanded Harry.
"Half a mile." Jock replied.
"Right, let's get moving."
As the pair of armed Humvees roared onto the road south towards the border, they saw a flight of AH-1 Cobras heading in the opposite direction to cover their escape.
Ziva sighed as she sat on the couch of Harry's apartment in the resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea. She wondered how much of his insistence to remain here during the debriefing period after the debacle was out of spite for her father, to whom Harry had taken an instant dislike when she'd briefly described her childhood.
"Hey sweetie." Harry said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she relaxed into his side, grabbing a half-drunk bottle of cold beer from the table.
"Hey Harry." Ziva yawned.
Since the debacle, during the debriefing period, her father had promised Harry a favour if he did what he could to teach Ziva. The pair had immediately realised that this was part of Eli's agenda to recruit his daughters to Mossad. Ziva had agreed with Harry to go ahead with the teaching, because if she was to get caught up in her father's plots, then she wanted the best chance of survival.
Her exhaustion was mostly to blame on relentless hours with Captain Hadrian Potter, the cold, clinical and vicious fighter that Harry could become in an instant. Bruised and battered from fighting with him for hours, though he was increasingly taking hits, he'd help her out, massaging and healing what he could, partly so that she could keep going every day.
"It's so... different... to what I'm used to, here." Harry commented, staring out of the great window over the port; "Arid sand to our east and west, water to our south. I'm used to working in European countries, greenery, jagged mountains. Don't get me wrong, I like it here, it's just not what I'm used to."
"What's your home like?" Ziva asked.
"Home... I dunno if it's entirely a home, I'm always moving from place to place, but when I'm off duty I have a small estate in south-east England. Lots of fields, bit of forest, the drive's long enough for me to fly a small airliner off. I like it, quite a lot of wildlife, with wild deer, various birds. Even a small river, ever seen an otter?" Harry replied.
"No, I can't say I have." said Ziva.
"I like it there, it's practical for my work life, and I can get away from work there when I want to. Or at least I can escape from there to somewhere far away." Harry laughed, nicking his bottle back from Ziva.
"You know this can't last." she said sadly.
"Yeah." he replied, taking a gulp of beer before passing the bottle back to her; "I figured we'd make the best of the time we have, you've got a while left of your IDF time before you go on to whatever you choose to do next. I've heard rumours around SAS HQ that I've got another posting coming up."
"Maybe if we're both alive by the time the world has chewed us up and spat us out, we can look each-other up." Ziva shrugged, before stiffening slightly; "I have a sister, I fear for her safety. She has no interest in Mossad, she wants to study art, music and all sorts of things not involving knives and international espionage..."
"I won't force her to leave Israel." Harry warned; "Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security."
"I know." she sighed; "I will talk to her. But if she agrees, I will need your help."
"Ziva. If you ever need my help..." Harry trailed off, allowing her to understand; "Even just get in here, you know the codes. This has a straight-through telephone to my home in England, and if I'm not there and it's an emergency, someone will probably be able to get hold of me."
"Thanks." Ziva murmured, burrowing into his shoulder.
In an uncertain and ever-changing world of shadows, it was friends, and more, in the case of Harry, who you could rely on to fight at your side in any situation that were so valuable. And sometimes just having friends made life so much easier.