Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  A distraction. That was all he needed. This couldn’t end—not here. Not now.

  He could have cursed himself for not taking the shot earlier, when he had Tarik in his sights on the train. Could have ended it right there. All of it.

  And he pushed the button, raising the phone to his ear as the call began to go out…

  6:48 P.M.

  A Security Service safehouse

  Leeds, England

  It was their third time over the tapes, ever since they had secured them from City Station. Three times, no answers.

  “He pulls out the mobile phone right—here,” Darren said, pausing the feed as he indicated the spot on the screen with his index finger. “Doesn’t answer it, but you can see the mobile’s screen is lit up. And right here, as he exits the coach…he’s typing.”

  He glanced over at Mehreen. “Can you get a request to your contact over at GCHQ—have him pull instant messaging data from around the area of the station at these timestamps?”

  “Already done,” she replied, nodding. “It’s going to be in the thousands.”

  6:52 P.M.

  “Negative,” Hale whispered, the scope’s reticle dancing over the face of the crag as he swiveled the rifle’s position on the sandbag. “I’ve lost him.”

  “So have I,” the response came back, punctuated by a string of curses. He could hear the nerves in the man’s voice, feel the fear.

  Their target was armed, and still mobile. It had been a long time since Iraq for all of them—security contracting only did so much to help you keep your edge.

  “Well, he didn’t just bloody well evaporate, Booth,” the former SAS sergeant exclaimed in frustration. “Keep looking.”

  So much rode on this. On the spin of the wheel.

  6:55 P.M.

  Harry leaned back against the rocks, his eyes closed as he strained to pick up the slightest noise. The voices.

  They weren’t Arabs, not that he could tell. The accents sounded British, although that could have meant most anything, these days. And their radio discipline could have been better.

  He’d panicked the North Yorkshire dispatcher—or maybe the reverberation of gunshots punctuating the call had accomplished that.

  But the cavalry had yet to arrive. What was the old saying talk show hosts back in the States liked to repeat? When you only have seconds…the police are only minutes away.

  Yeah, that was it. He shifted his weight, moving farther back into the shadows, wincing at the pain from his ankle.

  It reminded him of the last week of Jump School, so many years before. He’d sprained an ankle then, a parachute landing fall that had been less than perfectly executed.

  He’d gutted it out, kept moving—kept pushing. Right up to the end of the week—the plane back to Virginia.

  He’d also been younger then, he reminded himself, ejecting the half-empty magazine from the Sig-Sauer. A lot younger.

  And then he heard it, the wail of sirens from back off toward North Rigton—blue and white lights flashing through the darkness as a pair of white police cars came hurtling up the road.

  He slipped the full mag from his pocket and rammed it into the butt of the gun, briefly brass-checking the Sig’s chamber. Loaded.

  It was time.

  Hale lifted his eyes off the scope the moment he heard the sirens, a curse exploding from his lips. “You need to stop arsing about and get out of there, mate. Now.”

  “Roger that.” He saw the police cars as they pulled up abreast of the crag, the yellow-and-blue checkered paint scheme looking odd in the lens of his night-vision scope. They were between him and Booth.

  The ex-sergeant brought the L42A1 up off the sandbag, reaching over for the weapons bag stretched out on the ground beside him. He could hear voices from the roadway, the shouts back and forth as constables piled out of their cars.

  Perhaps they were armed, perhaps they weren’t. No matter—he wasn’t going to lift a hand against them. Not tonight.

  He had just finished zipping up the soft case when he heard it. Two more pistol shots, crashing across the moor. Followed by a third.

  “Booth?” he demanded, keying his headset. “Have you gotten clear?”

  Silence…

  7:01 P.M.

  Harry just stood there, looking at the back of the man’s head as he swayed, his knees giving way beneath him. Collapsing to the ground, face-down on the rocky ground.

  He’d been facing away, Harry thought, the Sig-Sauer still drawn in his hand as he limped forward. And he had put three shots into the man’s back—the first two between the shoulderblades, the final one into the base of the neck.

  Mozambique Drill.

  It hadn’t been a fair fight, but he hadn’t intended it to be. Honor was something for another era, a nobler time.

  There was a Bluetooth headset in the man’s ear, Harry noted, casting a glance down the slope toward the police vehicles. The gunshots would make the constables cautious, slow them down. But he still had only moments.

  He reached down, gripped the dying man by the shoulder—rolling him over until he was looking up into the night sky.

  Wide eyes gaping up into his.

  Eyes he remembered. It felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach, the look on the young man’s face transporting him back across the years.

  To Iraq. To Basra. The years of the insurgency.

  A squad of British Paras they’d worked with, a young, camouflage-painted face staring back at him across the troop compartment of a Blackhawk.

  The same face he saw now, blood gurgling from between his lips—his body convulsing in the final throes of death.

  No. His face tightened, hardening as he forced himself to focus—his hand moving up to the man’s ear to remove the Bluetooth, removing the phone from the pouch on his belt.

  There was no wallet in the dead man’s pocket, no form of identification. Nothing. A pistol lay a few inches from the man’s hand, a compact HK45, the type of sidearm favored by a lot of security types. He scooped it up, along with a holster and magazines from the man’s belt.

  Favoring his right leg, he staggered to his feet—adjusting the headset to his own ear.

  Keying the mike.

  Something had happened to Booth, Hale thought, the noise of the shots still echoing in his ears.

  He paused, there on the moor—gazing back toward the looming face of Almscliffe Crag. You didn’t leave a mate behind.

  There was a brief crackle of static as if something was being rubbed across a live microphone and then a voice came over his headset. Cold, emotionless. A voice so familiar, and yet so hard to place. A voice from somewhere in his past.

  “Your partner was a good man, but he’s dead now. Be careful who you climb into bed with…soldier.”

  And then he was gone.

  5:38 P.M. Eastern Time

  Cypress, Virginia

  There were no tire tracks in the slushy snow of the driveway, Kranemeyer observed, pulling his black Suburban over by the side of the country road.

  Nothing in or out.

  He let the engine idle as he stared down the lane, back toward the old antebellum plantation house known among the locals as Grove Manor.

  The place Nichols had once called home, the property left to him by his parents at their death. A once beautiful place that now—as he looked back through the denuded branches of the towering oaks surrounding the house—looked desolate.

  He hesitated a moment before reaching forward to switch off the ignition key, replacing it in the pocket of his trench coat. Pushing open the door of the Suburban, stepping out into the snow.

  He knew what he’d find…had known ever since Carter had walked into his office with the report on the Korsakov account activity. Even before?

  Perhaps he had seen it in Nichols’ eyes that mid-January day he had asked for his resignation, standing there in the DCIA’s office on the seventh floor. Known that he wouldn’t give up.

  And now…Kranemeyer let
out a heavy sigh, stalking down the lane toward the house—a lone figure against the fields, the Virginian Piedmont stretching as far as the eye could see. Now the issue was how to handle it.

  How to deal with the situation that he feared Nichols was creating. Before it blew up in all their faces.

  There weren’t any footprints around the house either—no light glowing from the windows in the gathering dusk of the evening. The entire place held the look of desertion, almost haunting in its emptiness.

  He knocked anyway, the great brass knocker cold even through his gloves. Once, twice.

  Nothing.

  He turned, his booted prosthesis striking against something there, nearly buried in the snow on the portico.

  It was a bag, he realized, grimacing as he stooped to pick it up. Just an opaque plastic bag, the type that zipped shut at the top.

  There was paper inside—and he brushed his gloves against the fabric of his trench coat before reaching in. Church bulletins.

  A smile touched his lips. Nichols had been devout, one of those rare men that lived his faith. Without apology. Without hypocrisy.

  There was a note inside the top bulletin, from the pastor. Just a friendly note of concern. Of inquiry. And then his eyes scanned across to the date imprinted at the top of the facing page.

  February 8th.

  He raised his gaze from the bulletin, staring back down the lane toward the darkened SUV.

  Nichols had been gone for a long time.

  11:07 P.M. Greenwich Mean Time

  A Security Service safehouse

  Leeds, England

  Mehreen knew something was wrong from the moment she reentered the safehouse, kicking the door shut behind her—a tray full of cups of coffee filling her hands.

  The mood of frustration that had characterized the team when she’d left on the coffee run had been supplanted…by one far darker. More somber.

  “What’s going on?”

  Darren looked up from the head of the old wooden table, its surface pocked and scarred, discolored from cigarette burns that had to have dated back to the ‘70s.

  He leaned forward, tenting his fingers as he looked across at Norris. “Four hours ago, North Yorkshire constables responded to a 999 call out in the countryside west of the village of North Rigton. Shots fired.”

  She swore, setting down the tray on the table. “Tarik Abdul Muhammad?”

  “We don’t know,” Norris responded, seeming agitated. “The caller didn’t identify himself—his voice was largely obscured by the gunshots. The dispatcher, a disabled Gulf War veteran, reported that it sounded like a quote, ‘sodding firefight,’ unquote. The responding constables found a bunch of empty brass and one John Doe, dead on arrival.”

  Darren shoved a glossy photo down the table toward her. “This man. He was shot three times in the back—9mm hollowpoints. Never had a chance. No identification on him, no weapon, though GSR was found on his hands.”

  Gunshot residue.

  The photo had been taken in a morgue, that much was clear, the man’s body lying on a cold white table—his eyes closed in death. His hair was cropped short, his face clean-shaven, his body lean and muscled. Naked under the harsh lights. “Any leads on his identity?”

  “Just this,” the former Marine replied, handing over another photo—this one taken close-in, of lettering tattooed on the man’s bicep.

  It took her a moment to make out the words—a half-second more to remember why she knew them. “Utrinque Paratus,” she breathed, “Ready for anything.”

  Darren nodded. “The motto of the Parachute Regiment.”

  “I know,” she replied impatiently, staring down at the lettering. At the body of fallen soldier. “Nick had a tattoo just like it.”

  Roth’s gaze seemed to soften, and he reached for the photo. “We’ve forwarded everything to Thames House—have them run it against their databases. Speaking of which…”

  He gestured toward Norris. “Simon found something on the station footage.”

  “Something else?” she asked, glancing between the two men. “We’d been over those tapes again and again.”

  Darren nodded. “It was on the sixth run-through. Throw it up on the screens, Simon.”

  The analyst typed a command into his laptop and a series of frame grabs came up on the screen on the far wall. “Look at this,” he said. “Here. Here. Here…and here.”

  “What am I looking at?” she asked. She was tired, they all were—the fatigue getting to her.

  “Right here, this man—almost on the edge of the screen in each grab,” Norris said, indicating the area with his finger. “He’s always just there. As if he was shadowing us while we shadowed Tarik.”

  Nichols. She found herself fighting to control her expression, all weariness gone in that moment. Hoping they hadn’t seen the first flash of reaction. “Are you sure?”

  The analyst nodded. “He’s in too many frames for it to be a coincidence—and he seems to have training. Never once looks into a camera, that I could tell. As if he knew exactly where they were.”

  He had, Mehreen thought, her mind flickering back to the look on Harry’s face in the park. The dead-ground map she had given him.

  He’d played her—played them all. She picked up the photo once again, looking into the sightless eyes of the man lying there in the morgue. A growing fear gnawing at her heart.

  That her information had been responsible for the death of a British soldier.

  Chapter 7

  12:01 A.M., March 26th

  A hostel

  Leeds, England

  Sleep. It didn’t come easy on nights like this. All of the years, all of the loss. All of the killing.

  One would think that eventually it would all become easier. But it never did, Harry realized, rolling over on his back.

  Not with the face of the young Para staring back at him every time he closed his eyes.

  He couldn’t remember the kid’s name—had likely never known it. All he knew was that their paths had crossed during a mission in Iraq…and a vicious Fate had brought them back together on that moor nearly a decade later.

  He knew what it was that had led him there—but what about the former paratrooper? It was an impossible question to answer, and equally haunting. It had been a justified kill, he knew that, but it was hard to process that reality when the nights grew dark.

  He was still dressed, only his boots removed—an ice pack wrapping his swollen ankle. His Sig-Sauer was in the jacket under his head, the stolen HK45C tucked securely beneath his shirt. He’d already been over the dead soldier’s phone twice, for all the good it had done him. It was a burner. Cheap, disposable. Only two numbers in the call history—one of them the number belonging to the sniper, no doubt itself a burner.

  The second one…he recognized. And perhaps that was what kept him awake.

  A hostel made up for in anonymity what it lacked in privacy—he’d known that for years, experience garnered from the times he’d run ops for the Agency in Europe.

  And it lacked everything in privacy, he thought, glancing over to see bodies moving in the bed just across from him. A woman’s soft moans coming from beneath the sheets.

  Okay…that wasn’t going to make sleep any easier.

  5:34 A.M.

  Colville’s country estate

  The Eastern Midlands

  It was the type of place that had once been associated with the landed nobility, Hale thought, slipping off his boots in the mudroom.

  The type of place that England’s old blood could no longer afford to maintain, the global recession wiping out fortunes—destroying in the space of hours the accumulated wealth of the centuries.

  Many of England’s old estates had gone to the auction block of Lloyd’s, most falling prey to developers, a few being scooped up by England’s “new money.”

  Men like Colville.

  The man who served as butler ushered him silently up the curving staircase and into a second-floor study—
the last flickering embers of the previous night’s fire casting a faint glow across the floor.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” the publisher asked, not even glancing up as Hale entered. He sat facing away from the door in an armchair, a housecoat still wrapped around his body. Reading glasses on the stand inches from his hand.

  He looked small sitting there, the ex-sergeant thought. Small and uncertain, projecting none of his customary assurance.

  “He is,” Hale replied simply. Booth had been a good man, one of many that had tried to leave the Army after Iraq—only to find that the skillsets prized by the military were almost useless in civilian life, all the entry-level jobs taken by immigrants. By the same bloody Muslims they’d just been fighting.

  You couldn’t support a family that way, and Booth had had a kid, a little boy. And a wife—common-law, that is.

  Hale swore under his breath. He had no idea how he was going to tell her…that had always been the padre’s job.

  How she was going to tell their kid.

  “Where’s our Pakistani?” he asked, suddenly realizing that he hadn’t seen Tarik since the previous night—since Murphy had hustled the two of them away from the crag.

  “Take a seat, Conor.” Colville gestured with his hand. “He demanded to be taken back to Leeds.”

  “And you bloody let him?” Hale exploded, walking across the study until he could face the publisher. He didn’t sit down.

  “We couldn’t very well keep him against his will,” Colville replied quietly, seeming to recover himself. “The way this works—the only way it works—is if Tarik Abdul Muhammad is fully invested in the success of the operation. We need him to rally his people, to incite them into a fury—to throw petrol upon the fire we’re stoking. He won’t do that with a gun to his head.”

  “My God,” Hale breathed, gazing into the fireplace. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

  The publisher smiled. “This is history, Conor. History like man hasn’t seen it made in decades—no, centuries. The world is being heated in the fire, and soon the time will come to place it upon the anvil. To forge a better world. If not for us, then for our children and the generations to come. Generations of Englishmen.”