Before Talon

BEFORE TALON: MOGADISHU, 1993

A Ryder "Talon" Stone Prequel

Before Leviathan Investigative Agency, before the investigations, and before anyone called him Talon, Ryder Stone was a twenty-three-year-old Army Ranger fighting to survive the Battle of Mogadishu.

Mogadishu, Somalia. October 3, 1993.

Sergeant Ryder Stone serves with the 3rd Ranger Battalion during Operation Gothic Serpent. Newly promoted, he is learning that wearing a sergeant's stripes and carrying responsibility for other soldiers are two very different things.

The mission should take an hour. American troops will enter Mogadishu, complete their assignment, and return before nightfall.

Nobody expects to spend the night fighting for their lives.

When American Black Hawk helicopters are shot down, the Somali capital becomes a battlefield of shattered buildings, blocked streets, gunfire, and desperate attempts to reach isolated soldiers. Communications fail. Casualties mount. Rescue forces struggle to reach the trapped Americans.

Somewhere in the chaos, Ryder encounters a gravely wounded young soldier from another unit. He does not know the man's name, hometown, or whether anyone is waiting for him back home.

He knows only that the boy is badly wounded and cannot be abandoned.

Ryder grips a nylon strap attached to the soldier's equipment.

And refuses to let go.

Hours pass. The strap cuts into his palm. His forearm burns. His fingers begin to seize. Ryder talks to the wounded soldier about home, Army food, cold mornings, and ordinary memories from a world that seems impossibly far away.

He cannot promise the boy will survive.

He cannot promise the rescue will arrive.

He can promise only that he will keep holding on.

When rescuers finally reach them, Ryder's fingers are locked so tightly around the strap that another soldier must pry them loose one at a time.

An exhausted staff sergeant looks at his hand.

"What've you got, Stone? Talons?"

A nickname is born.

But Ryder never learns the wounded soldier's identity. He searches casualty records, asks questions, and tries to reconstruct the evacuation. He never discovers whether the young man survived.

Nokomis, Florida. October 2026.

Thirty-three years later, Ryder opens an old cardboard box containing a field notebook, photographs, a stopped watch, and two olive-drab gloves. One has been cut open across the palm.

The objects return him to a night he has never fully explained.

He has raised a family, retired from the Army, and established Leviathan Investigative Agency alongside Katherine Grace. He has spent years investigating disappearances, examining evidence, and searching for answers.

Yet one missing person remains beyond his reach.

A soldier whose name he never knew.

A face he struggles to remember.

A question that has followed him home from Somalia.

BEFORE TALON: MOGADISHU, 1993 is a historical military fiction prequel exploring battlefield courage, brotherhood, survivor's guilt, and the emotional consequences of combat.

Set against the historical Battle of Mogadishu, this fictional story examines what official reports cannot capture: the fear, the friendships, the moments of unexpected humor, and the memories soldiers carry long after the fighting ends.

This is not the story of a fearless soldier.

It is the story of a frightened young man who discovers that courage sometimes means refusing to let go.

Before the legend, there was a young sergeant, an unidentified wounded soldier, and one terrible night in Mogadishu.

Before anyone called him Talon, Ryder Stone held on.

And thirty-three years later, he still hasn't entirely let go.