Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  The meeting was as off-the-books as it got. Equal parts indignant denial and veiled threat. Accidents happen. Don’t want to lose your people? Keep them on the reservation.

  Something on the television attracted his attention, and he looked over to see the face of the man who had signed off on the assassination of Prince Yusuf ibn Talib al-Harbi.

  The President of the United States.

  The man wiped his hands on a napkin, reaching down to turn his wheelchair around until he faced the screen, phantom pain twitching through his right leg—a leg that wasn’t there any more, the stump above the knee resting on the wheelchair’s edge.

  He’d left it in Fallujah years before, an Iraqi IED killing one of his team members and leaving his leg mangled below the knee, shrapnel peppering his thighs.

  It had marked the end of one career…the beginning of another.

  “…promised transparency during my campaign for this office, and it is a promise I intend to keep.”

  The man reached for the remote, turning the volume all the way up as President Richard Norton continued to speak.

  “The bureaucracy of the federal government has grown bloated, unresponsive, and increasingly opaque. And I intend to do what I was elected to do—turn on the lights, from the West Wing, to Capitol Hill. To the bastions of the intelligence community in Fort Meade, Maryland, and Langley, Virginia. It is long past time for the American people to know what is being done in their name. No more secrets. Long past time for those things which have been said in darkness to be heard in the light.”

  On-screen, the President continued, but the man in the wheelchair was no longer listening.

  Much of what Norton had said was…true, so far as it went—but other forces were in motion behind the scenes.

  Forces he didn’t think the newly sworn-in President had even begun to come to terms with—or understand.

  He pulled a phone from his pocket, glancing at the screen for a long moment as the President’s address continued, punching in a number from memory.

  Two rings and a voice answered.

  He hesitated before speaking, just silence on the line. Remembering the last time he had called this number, the darkness that had unfolded from that call. What had been necessary.

  “This is Kranemeyer. We need a face-to-face. As soon as you can make it happen.”

  12:49 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time

  London

  “He’s been there a long time, hasn’t he?” Thomas asked, raising his camera and snapping a couple pictures of a young black man lounging near the corner of the rundown hotel.

  “Three cigarettes,” Roth responded quietly, proof that he had been watching very closely indeed.

  Further proof of his competence, Thomas thought. A valuable quality in an ally, but given the nature of the alliance…

  They would cross that bridge when they came to it. Movement from the front steps of the hotel caught the corner of his eye and he looked over to see Tarik Abdul Muhammad emerging from the door.

  “All teams,” he said, touching his ear. “All teams, we have eyes on CERBERUS. I repeat, eyes on the subject—subject is on the move.”

  The Pakistani had taken maybe fifteen steps down the sidewalk toward them when the black man threw down his cigarette and started to walk back toward the hotel’s door.

  Lookout. He traded looks with Roth, saw the same question reflected in his counterpart’s eyes.

  “Victor One, Victor Two, take up following positions on CERBERUS,” the British officer ordered, keying his mike. “Sierra elements, hang back and maintain surveillance on the brothel. I want pictures of every bleedin’ punter that exits between now and daybreak.”

  Thomas glanced over at him. “Think we’re looking at a meet?”

  Roth grinned, the first genuine smile Thomas had seen from the man since meeting him earlier in the day. “He was in there for nearly two hours…what do you think?”

  A chuckle as Thomas cycled back through the pictures, picking out a full frontal shot of the lookout, his face barely shadowed by a nearby streetlight. “I think we need to get a name for this guy.”

  5:30 A.M.

  The flat

  Ealing, London

  Mehreen could hear the faint hum of voices when she woke, wrapping a housecoat about herself as she moved to the door of her bedroom.

  Voices growing louder as she moved down the hall toward the main living area of her flat. Sleep had not come easy the night before, a fitful rest filled with memories.

  Of times gone by. Of better days.

  It was the telly, she realized, the glow of its screen illuminating the kitchen—a man’s voice speaking.

  “…my opponents say that I am a radical, but I ask you, what is radical about the desire of a man to preserve his home? To ensure its future for his children? These…people—if you wish to dignify them in such a way—which we have welcomed into our country, they care nothing for what it means to be British, for the centuries of storied history and traditions which have made us what we are today. They despise our institutions, sneer at our culture, and revile our fallen heroes as though they were dung. What have we done? I’ll tell you what we’ve done…we have taken a serpent into the bosom. And as I stand before you today, I tell you this. If we do not stand together as Englishmen now, to end this so-called ‘multicultural’ experiment—it will end us, and all we hold dear.”

  The voice faded away as she entered the kitchen, replaced by that of a Sky News reporter, “…MP Daniel Pearson in a speech given yesterday in Manchester at a rally for the British Defence Coalition. Pearson insists that the goals of the …”

  Nichols was sitting there, his eyes fixed intently on the TV screen, a steaming mug of coffee warming his hands.

  “How long do you suppose we have, Mehr?” he asked, without looking up. How he’d known she was standing there, she had no idea. He’d always had that ability.

  “That’s hard to say,” she responded, tying the sash of her housecoat as she moved to the refrigerator. “The country is on the brink.”

  He snorted. “The whole world’s on the brink.”

  True enough. “And it’s being pushed closer to the edge every day,” she said, looking back at him as he sat there in the semi-darkness, his unshaven face lit only by the glow of the now-muted television. “The clerics on the one side, the British far right on the other—each chanting for their own personal take on Armageddon. Drowning out everyone caught in the middle.”

  “And Pearson?”

  She thought for a moment. “A decent enough man, I suppose. A patriot, certainly. But his alliances…the legitimacy he lends to the fascist thugs of the BDC. They’d split this country apart if they were given half a chance—all in the name of saving it.”

  “There’s always someone,” he replied, taking a long sip of his coffee. “I need you to do something for me, Mehr. Something no one else can.”

  She could feel her body tense at the words. “And what would that be?”

  “The UK dead-ground map. London—all the rest of the major cities in Britain.”

  “You don’t need me for that.” She shook her head. “There are websites, blogs—any number of them official—giving a list of the positions of surveillance cameras in the city. You can work out the dead ground from there yourself.”

  He set the empty mug in front of him, his eyes never leaving her face. “There are lists, of course. And you and I both know they’re incomplete. Project OSIRIS has never been disclosed to the public.”

  “OSIRIS?” The surprise showed in her face and she cursed herself for it. He had taken her off-guard, once again—and he could tell.

  “Come on now, Mehr,” he replied, and there was almost a sadness in his dark eyes. Pain. “We’ve known each other too long for these games. We both know that after 7/7, your government began exploring the potential of installing a network of facial-recognition cameras around London. It was codenamed Project OSIRIS, an allusion to the all-seeing eye of E
gyptian mythology—and completed in 2012. I haven’t been in-country since, don’t know where any of them are located. It’s a risk I can’t afford to take. Not now.”

  “Why?” she asked quietly.

  He spread out his hands on the tabletop, appearing to weigh his words carefully. “To be honest…I’m not in the UK legally, Mehr.”

  “I know that,” she replied, working to regain her composure. Control the situation. “I ran your name through the Customs database at Thames House yesterday—came back negative. Leads me to think that you’re here on an Agency legend, working as a NOC. That you’ve been lying to me all along.”

  She’d been prepared to let this slide, to let him move on, in the hopes that this was nothing. That she was wrong.

  Until this…

  NOC stood for “non-official cover.” An illegal CIA asset. She knew all too well the seriousness of the charge she was leveling, expected to see him flinch in the face of it.

  Betray some tell.

  “I wish.” He shook his head, seeming strangely earnest in that moment. Genuine. Or was it an illusion? “I told you the truth, so far as it goes. I left the CIA two months ago.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  He considered her question for a long moment, finding himself hesitant to speak. Reconsidering his decision to bring her into this. To recruit her.

  But it was time. The moment when the time came to lay all your cards out on the table. Or, perhaps more precisely, to make the other person believe that you had done so.

  Not an easy line to walk with someone of Mehreen’s training.

  “There’s a man in the UK,” Harry began, “Your government and mine know that he’s here. And they won’t take him down.”

  That the man of which he spoke was a terrorist went without saying. She knew the words to this song.

  “Why?”

  “They’re afraid. Afraid of what might happen if they move, afraid of what might happen if they don’t. Bureaucrats quivering in their armchairs on both sides the Atlantic, hoping that phone doesn’t ring in the middle of the night.”

  “And who is this man?”

  “His name is Tarik Abdul Muhammad.” He expected to see recognition in her eyes, and there was. “The man they call ‘The Shaikh.’”

  “The man you suspect of engineering the Christmas Eve attacks on your country.”

  There was something in her tone, a skepticism. “Mehr, I ‘suspect’ nothing. I know. I was there that night,” he whispered, his voice trembling with emotion. “I stormed that theater, saw the bodies of those he killed. Men, women—innocents who had just been enjoying a night in Vegas. And now he’s here.”

  “I know that MacCallum has been running an op in coordination with Langley,” she said thoughtfully, looking at him in the darkness of the kitchen. “A high-profile target, I can tell that much by the way it’s being handled…but I’ve not been read in.”

  “That’s him. And it’s a surveillance op, nothing more.”

  “And how would you know that?” The sharpness of her question surprised him, a reminder not to underestimate her. Not to let his guard down, even for a moment.

  “It was supposed to be my op.” That was only half a lie, he thought, watching for her reaction. It should have been his…

  “So why isn’t it?” She moved a hand to brush dark hair back from her eyes. “Why are you in the UK as an illegal, instead of working out of Grosvenor Square? Liaising with Five?”

  Harry shrugged. “The Agency moves in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform. One of my team members was tapped to lead the op instead.”

  She wasn’t buying it. “If you’re going to ask me to help, Harry, you’re going to tell me the truth.”

  “The truth?” Most people thought of truth as something simple, something painless, but it wasn’t. Not in their world. “The truth is that we’re all expendable, in the end. Just weapons, not a one of us more important than the mission we’re chosen to execute. And just like weapons…a gun breaks on you, you throw it away. That’s what happened to me.”

  “You ‘broke’?” Was it sympathy he saw in her eyes? It was hard to tell. “What does that even mean?”

  “I told you I was there, but that wasn’t all of it. I got bad intel on Vegas, intel I believed to be credible,” he answered slowly, his hand clenching into a fist.

  He had to remain calm, shove aside the other memories of that night. Fight one battle at a time. “And Americans died because of my intel. Three hundred and eighteen of them.”

  Three hundred and eighteen Americans dead, a number seared into his very soul. Scores more injured. The worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

  It was a long time before she responded, silence falling over the darkened room. He had committed himself—there was no way back now.

  It seemed like an eternity before she looked up, her eyes meeting his face once again. “I’m assuming you have a plan?”

  7:31 A.M.

  Barnet Hospital

  North London

  Internal hemorrhaging. Brain damage. Coma.

  Words, that’s all they were to Paul Gordon…or all they had once been. It wasn’t real. Not yet. Not even after two days.

  A tear fell from his eye as he looked down at the driver’s license in his hand, her picture staring back at him. Alice.

  She’d been smiling that day when he took her, nervous about the theory test, but smiling all the same at the idea of having her own license.

  His kid sister, beautiful from the moment he’d first seen her. So perfect.

  “Mr. Gordon,” a voice announced flatly, and he looked up into the eyes of a policeman. Eyes that had seen too much of life, too much suffering. Broken beyond caring. “I need you to come with me for a moment.”

  “Of course,” he responded, squeezing her hand once more as he rose from beside the hospital bed. There was no response, her hand falling back limply to her side, her once-beautiful face swathed in bandages, mercifully covering from view where the acid had burned into her flesh.

  Her sight was gone forever, that was the prognosis of the doctors, themselves worn out and harried by more patients than they could begin to deal with. He swore under his breath, following the officer out of the hospital room and into the hallway.

  The smell of urine filled his nostrils, but he barely noticed. He’d been a soldier, once upon a time. Spent years of life in Iraq—seen all the brutality life had on offer.

  Or so he’d thought.

  “Have you found them?” he asked, looking the policeman in the eye. “Have you found the men who…did this to my sister?”

  He found himself unable to voice the words. That his sister had been raped, again and again. Used up and thrown out on the street, like a piece of garbage.

  The officer shook his head. “We’ve not been able to positively identify any suspects as of yet. I’m sorry, sir. Bystanders identified your sister’s assailants outside the club as a gang of Asian youths, one of whom threw acid into her face before shoving her into the back of their car.”

  And the bystanders had just watched, he thought, finding a helpless rage rise within him. Sheep. “Asians?” he asked skeptically, looking over at the officer. “You mean Pakis, don’t you?”

  Muslims. The officer just looked at him, that same emotionless expression plastered to his face like a mask. “I’m afraid I can’t speculate, sir. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry. There was nothing in the voice, just nothing—the man might as well have been announcing the time of day. He felt his fists clench, longing to reach out, to strike.

  And he really wasn’t sure why he didn’t, in the end. Just stood there feeling helpless as the London bobby mouthed a few more words, finally disappearing down the crowded hospital corridor.

  Leaving Paul to curse his retreating form. Helpless…

  10:47 A.M.

  Thames House

  London, England

  “There’s a man in the UK. Your government a
nd mine know that he’s here…and they won’t take him down.”

  Could it be possible that he was telling the truth? That bureaucratic indecision was leading them along the brink of disaster? It wasn’t hard to believe.

  The blind leading the blind, Nick had always said of politicians with a bitter laugh. Till they all topple arse-over-teakettle into the ditch.

  No, Mehr thought, the words replaying themselves through her head as she gazed at her computer screen. There was no way they were going to let that happen. Not on their watch.

  The truth was more complicated than that, of course. Truth always was.

  She could remember sitting in this very chair as chaos unfolded on that dark day in 2005, four bombs ripping London apart across the space of the hour. 7/7.

  Taking fifty-two lives. Very nearly including her own.

  She’d been running late that morning, train schedules hopelessly mucked up in the weeks preceding the attacks.

  If she’d been ten minutes earlier…

  They’d come so close to fingering Mohammed Siddique Khan during DOWNTEMPO. So very close, and yet the connections had eluded their best efforts.

  Connections that seemed so obvious now…proving that hindsight truly was 20/20, even if that meant gazing back through a mist of blood and smoke.

  Never again, she’d sworn that day. Never.

  She lifted her head, the eyes of Tarik Abdul Muhammad staring back at her from the dossier photo displayed on her screen. A single question filling her mind.

  What was it going to take to keep that vow?

  6:03 A.M. Eastern Time

  Foxstone Park

  Vienna, Virginia

  Running. It had saved his life, Bernard Kranemeyer thought, his head ducked down, the muscles of his good leg pumping as he pounded down the wooded trail at a punishing jog. The forest just beginning to wake around him, the first rays of sunshine not yet breaking over the horizon.

  The desire to run again had been the only thing that had pulled him out of that hospital bed at Walter Reed, forcing him through the months of therapy until the prosthesis began to work as a part of his body.

  The desire to run. The desire to get back to his men, back out in the field.