Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel

by Ted Bell

  He emerged into the hard light, dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks, and raced toward the safety of Sheik al-Rashad’s compound. Just four days ago, he and Khalid had decamped for the mountains above Tangin, supremely confident and sure of success.

  As he galloped down and through the narrow valley, he took stock of his situation. He had always thought of himself, when he thought of himself, as a kind of magician. Or, better still, a composer. Yes, exactly that. A conductor orchestrating his own composition, a complex design he had been weaving since childhood, its dark threads, its potent symbols; all those myriad strands of his existence that required the dexterity of a true virtuoso in order to keep flowing.

  This mistake, this frayed strand threatened everything; all of his meticulous plans now needed to be accelerated before they unraveled completely. He needed to step back and take a serious look at the fabric of his life. Hit the reset button. Make certain no more missteps were made in these few remaining weeks culminating in his ultimate objective. He could ill afford the one mistake he’d just made.

  Still, perhaps the one, but no more.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  LONDON

  HAWKE AND SAHIRA, DELAYED BY TRAFFIC, arrived at the nurses’ station a little after seven in the evening. Visitors’ Hours ended at eight, so they would still have more than enough time for a visit.

  “Lord Malmsey, please,” Hawke said.

  “Just one moment,” the starchy nurse said, peering up at him over the tops of her silver-framed glasses. He must have passed muster because she was calling up the approved visitor register on her computer screen. “Your names?”

  They gave them.

  Just prior to the hospital visit, the two had enjoyed an early dinner at Tamarind in Mayfair, Hawke’s favorite Indian restaurant. Sahira was dressed in black, a silk suit with white pearls at her neck, having attended three funerals that afternoon. In the soft light, he’d watched the burden of grief lift from her shoulders as the first scotch smoothed the rough edges off the day.

  There had been no shortage of things to talk about. Sahira told Hawke the details of the river-based attack on MI5 and Hawke had given her a blow-by-blow account of storming an IRA safe house in Northern Ireland called the Barking Dog. He kept his tale brief. He was more interested in an eyewitness account of the brazen attack on MI5 in central London. The message the terrorists had delivered that day was plain enough: all bets are off.

  “Thank God you weren’t hurt, Sahira,” Hawke said when she finished, reaching across the table to cover her hand with his. An expression of genuine concern flickered across his face. And in that brief moment, despite all else, she knew that, at the very least, this man cared.

  She looked at the big hand covering hers, smiled at his simple gesture of protection, and said, “Alex, what still rankles is how brazen it was. As if these damn people woke up, looked at each other, and said, ‘Nothing on today, mates, let’s sail up the river and blow up MI5.’ Terrorism works, Alex. The people of London are terrified. That something like this could occur in broad daylight, on a bastion of British—”

  “Very few alive remember the Blitz,” Hawke said mildly.

  “I suppose not.”

  “It’s going to get much worse,” Hawke said, “based on what your intelligence analysts decrypted in the computers we found at the IRA safe house.”

  “Yes, much worse.” She thought for a moment and added, “It’s amazing more of us weren’t killed. There are two thousand people working at Thames House. We suffered seven deaths and thirty-two wounded. You know, it’s so odd the way things work sometimes. Just ten minutes before the attack, Lord Malmsey asked that I come up to his office.”

  “Yes?”

  “He’s never done that before. I’m always summoned from on high by some anonymous secretary to some anonymous conference room. At any rate, he asked for an update on our latest IRA investigations and I gave him what I had, which, prior to your amazing discoveries in Ireland, was hardly substantial. He stood at the window with his back to me, gazing down at the river. I made some silly small talk and took the lift back down to my floor. Had I remained in his office another five minutes it could be me in that hospital room tonight, not him.”

  “Or both of you.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. He’s lucky to be alive, you know. A razor-sharp shard of flying glass from his window sliced open the side of his neck, ear to chin. Nicked an artery. Were it not for Five’s own first responders, he’d have bled out right there on his own office carpet.”

  “LORD MALMSEY IS JUST DOWN that long corridor on your left,” the senior nurse said. “Near the end. You’ll see two detectives outside his door. They know you’re coming.”

  “How’s his lordship faring?” Sahira asked.

  “As well as can be expected. There are many others here, also wounded in the attack, who are not doing nearly so well. And those poor others who—”

  “Thank you,” Hawke said to the nurse, taking Sahira’s arm and steering her down the hallway.

  When they entered Lord Malmsey’s room, they found Montague Thorne standing at the man’s bedside, the two men engrossed in a quiet conversation in the dim light of a bedside lamp. Catching a glimpse of Hawke and Sahira, Thorne turned to greet them.

  “Good evening,” Thorne said with his warm smile. “I was just saying good-bye to our hero here. On my way out, actually.”

  Hawke shook his hand and said, “Monty. Please stay if you can. We’re here to give Lord Malmsey an update on what we found in those laptops at the safe house.”

  “When did you return, Alex?” Thorne asked.

  “About twelve hours ago. I wanted to be present when the army intel group interrogated some of the Arab terrorists as well as the IRA chaps who survived our assault on the safe house.”

  The smile on Thorne’s face froze. “Did you say Arab terrorists? In Northern Ireland?”

  “Yes.”

  “But, my God, that simply does not make any sense.”

  “Actually, the way these terror groups are forming unlikely international alliances against us, I was surprised not to find a few North Koreans or Venezuelans scattered among their number.”

  “Yes. At any rate, splendid job up there. No sign of our mysterious Mr. Smith, I don’t suppose?”

  “Apparently we just missed him.”

  “Rotten luck.”

  Sahira had gone to the foot of Malmsey’s bed.

  “Lord Malmsey, how are you feeling? You must be terribly tired. Shall we come back tomorrow morning?”

  Lord Malmsey, whose entire neck was swathed in thick bandages, snorted, “After what Alex just told Monty? I should say not. Everyone please pull up a chair and gather round. Alex, would you mind telling the two distinguished gentlemen outside my room to close that door and let no one enter, no one at all, including doctors or nurses, for the next twenty minutes?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hawke said and stepped briefly out into the hallway to confer with the two detectives.

  “Al Qaeda? In Northern Ireland?” Malmsey said. “The mind boggles.”

  “Extraordinary,” Thorne said as Hawke returned and pulled up the last of the bedside chairs. “This is beginning to assume obscene proportions. In the decrypted analysis, Alex, any mention of this bastard Smith? The one who seems to be behind the threat to my old friend Charles and the two boys?”

  “Yes, Monty. I’d hoped to find him inside. We found him all right, but inside the computers we took.”

  “We’ve got to stop this man, Alex. I’ll do anything in my power to help you do so.”

  “Thank you, Monty, we can use all the help we can get at this point.”

  “Alex,” Malmsey said, “my last report was you’d the house under surveillance. Trucks were coming and going, making deliveries, presumably weapons. Then what?”

  Hawke told him, leaving out no pertinent details, except the run-in with Major Masterman and his subsequent mysterious disappearance. When he finished,
Malmsey said, “The weapons cache. Were you able to determine the source?”

  “Yes, by pawing through what remained after the explosion. The preponderance of weapons were out of Syria and Iran, sir. We also found old Stinger missiles, given by the Americans to the Taliban in the Soviet era.”

  Malmsey said, “Good Lord. And these Islamic terrorists you captured? What in hell are they doing in Ireland, for God’s sake?”

  “They slip in by way of Belfast Harbor, sir. Smuggled aboard merchant ships, tramp steamers, and the like. All young, all fresh and fervent, out of terror camps in northern Pakistan. Come to the aid of England’s enemies in the struggle for justice.”

  “Al Qaeda? Taliban? Which?” Thorne asked.

  “Both.”

  “Fighting side by side with IRA soldiers? It’s incomprehensible.”

  “Indeed. One of the most astounding things we learned from the captured laptops was that, for want of a better phrase, some kind of super worldwide terror alliance has formed around their common enemy. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Chavez or the Castro brothers, any enemy of the West, sending fighters to join their growing number. They see us as weak, tired of war, and they believe the time to strike has come. Look at America’s southern border. It’s not just Mexicans entering illegally. Every month hundreds of Iranians, Syrians, Yemeni, and North Koreans are caught by the Border Patrol.”

  “They have a name?”

  “Sword of Allah. You’ll recall we first heard that name from the group that claimed credit for the Terminal Four bombing. After years of infighting, the warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan have united under one leader, identity currently unknown. But it is quite possible he has usurped the now impotent Osama bin Laden, now believed to be hiding in Tehran.”

  “To what end? Could you extract that level of intelligence from the enemy computers?” Montague asked, staring at Hawke.

  “Yes, Monty, all exchanges have been successfully decrypted by the team at Five. These people are bent on ummah, a worldwide caliphate. The global domination of Islam. And they are ramping up for major attacks both here and in the United States. We’re already seeing them here, of course, with the attacks on Heathrow, and now MI5. In the States, they’ve claimed credit for the hospital attack in Miami, and, more recently, the death of forty innocent schoolchildren in Pennsylvania at the hands of a suicide bomber.”

  “Despicable,” Montague Thorne said.

  “We found a video, sir, which has not yet been released. MI5 is currently trying to determine when it was made and where.”

  “What does it contain?”

  “A hooded terrorist. Four more standing behind him with AK-47s. He’s got a sword at the neck of one of the two female British tourists who mistakenly entered Iran some time ago. Innocent schoolteachers from Dorset who were tried and convicted as spies.”

  “What does he say?”

  “Nothing, in the beginning. He simply decapitates the poor woman. The corpse is dragged away and replaced by the second woman, who is obviously hysterical and made to kneel. He places the knife at her throat and makes a brief speech in Urdu, which we’ve just translated. He says, and I’ll paraphrase, that this is the fate suffered by all nonbelievers at the hands of Sword of Allah. The killing will continue until every last member of Western military personnel has left every last acre of sacred Arab soil. Then he looks into the camera as he raises his sword above the woman’s head and says, ‘We’re waiting. But our patience is not infinite.’”

  “And then he kills her,” Sahira said.

  “Bloody barbarians,” Montague Throne said, shaking his head.

  “There’s more, sir,” Sahira added. “We’ve identified those responsible for the attack on Thames House.”

  “Good work. How’d you manage that so quickly?”

  “The terrorists themselves aided in our investigation. The mortars and the explosive device aboard the barge were delivered downriver by a hired truck. Whoever was driving the truck returned it to the agency to pick up his security deposit. On the off chance that he might just be stupid enough to do exactly that, the Metropolitan Police were waiting for him when he showed up.”

  “IRA, I suppose?”

  “No, sir. Sword of Allah. All homegrown. Pakistani. And every one of them had a prison record. Petty theft, housebreaking. But they were converted to radical Islam while in prison, sir. It is absolutely epidemic. Both here and in America.”

  “One more thing and then we’ll leave you in peace, sir,” Hawke said. “There were two names that kept popping up in the preponderance of the Internet communications. You’ll recognize the first from our meeting at Highgrove.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Smith, as I mentioned earlier.”

  Thorne exploded. “Smith? Good God. The man whom Congreve suspects of murdering Mountbatten.”

  “The same.”

  “And threatening the Prince of Wales,” Thorne added.

  Hawke said, “Yes. The ‘Pawn’ as he styles himself. I hoped to find him inside that safe house. And I did, in a manner of speaking. Encrypted in those salvaged laptops. Whoever he is, he is playing this game at the very highest levels. There was even an extremely angry exchange between this Smith and an IRA lieutenant over his failure in the attempt to murder Chief Inspector Congreve and me en route to Highgrove.”

  “You must be joking,” Thorne said, incredulous.

  “Astounding,” Malmsey said.

  “To say the very least,” Hawke replied. “But let me assure you, sir, that I will run this fellow to ground and I will kill him before any harm befalls the Royal Family, or he kills me.”

  The room fell silent.

  “And the second name, Alex? Scimitar?”

  “Scimitar code name, obviously. We’ve no idea who he is at this point, but we will find out. That I can promise you, sir.”

  “Thank you all for coming,” Malmsey said, his voice weary. “I’d say, despite the enormity of the challenges facing us, we’re making good progress.”

  “But time is of the essence,” Thorne said. “I’d like to put myself and all my resources at MI6 at your disposal, Lord Malmsey. Working together, in full cooperation, we just might crack this thing sooner rather than later.”

  “Your offer is both appreciated and accepted, Monty. Thank you.”

  “Good night, sir. Get well soon,” Hawke said, getting to his feet.

  Thorne and Sahira followed Hawke out into the corridor, leaving the director general of MI5 alone with his troubled thoughts. He’d always been on the hot seat. Somehow, he needed to find a way to get off.

  Lord Malmsey’s carefully ordered world seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Spinning out of control and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do about it. He reached over to his night table and buzzed the nurses’ station. He told the duty nurse he wanted to see his doctor first on the morning rounds. He needed out of here, and he needed out now.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  INTERNATIONAL WATERS

  STOKELY JONES TOLD HARRY BROCK HE needed a damn break right this minute. Harry silently nodded yes, and the two of them went up on deck to talk things over. The little guy down in the owner’s stateroom wasn’t going anywhere. He was tied to the chair, his wrists tightly bound behind him with, ouch, dental floss, a trick Stoke had learned with VC captives back in the shit.

  Right about now, little Yoda down there was praying for a one-way ticket to paradise. But Stoke had no intention of letting this murderous child-killing bastard keep his hot date with seventy-two virgins.

  “Martyr, my ass,” Stoke had told Yoda right off. “This is America, asshole. Unlike you, we don’t kill noncombatants. You’re going to spend what’s left of your sorry life in a prison that makes Abu Ghraib and Gitmo look like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”

  Cool salt air smelling faintly of iodine stung Stoke’s eyes when he stepped out on deck. After the stink of sweat and cigarette smoke in the small, airless cabin below, it felt good just to b
reathe again. How long had they been at it, he wondered, looking at his watch. Three damn hours.

  He’d grown weary of interrogating an arrogant man who’d blown up a hospital full of doctors, nurses, and sick people; more recently he had caused the deaths of nearly two hundred innocent schoolchildren in a series of school bus bombings—and showed not a trace of remorse for any of it. A man whose only regret was that he’d been stopped before he could kill more kids. A man who’d prefer to die rather than betray his religion of death.

  These effing people were certifiable, no doubt about it. They were making babies faster than anybody else on the whole planet, then teaching them how to hate. And kill anybody who disagreed with them.

  Great, huh?

  Future’s so bright, I got to wear shades.

  “Good cop, bad cop thing? Just ain’t working, Harry,” Stoke finally said, hands on the varnished teak railing. He willed himself to relax, eyes gazing out over the deeply rolling swells of the blue Atlantic, ruffled whitecaps marching away to the horizon. The boat they were on, Maiden Voyage, a weather-beaten and barnacle-encrusted sixty-foot Viking sport-fishing boat, was a blind CIA charter out of Cracker Boy Marine over at Grove Key marina.

  Stoke had four lines out, two from the outriggers and two off the stern. They were slowly moving south at idle speed, the helm on autopilot. Fishermen. Nobody would bother them.

  Earlier, Stoke had taken Maiden Voyage through Government Cut into the Atlantic and out to a preset GPS waypoint beyond U.S. territorial waters. He’d deliberately established his destination four miles outside the United States’ twelve-nautical-mile limit, just to be on the safe side. He was now in international waters, a good place to have unpleasant conversations like the one they were having with the imam from the Glades prison.

  The terror kingpin’s real name was Azir al-Wazar. Probably Arabic for Wizard of Oz, Stoke thought, and started calling the guy “Ozzie” just to piss him off.