Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  “And if he refuses?”

  A shrug. “Then you and your men can, well, ‘dispose’ of him and we shall find ourselves another. Perhaps not as well-known, not as charismatic, but we’ll find someone.” He chuckled. “That is our root problem, is it not? Too many bloody Muslims.”

  Hale didn’t laugh. “We have another problem.”

  “And that would be?” the publisher asked, glancing up.

  “The man who took Booth out…I recognized his voice when he used Booth’s earpiece to communicate with me.”

  “Who was it?”

  The former SAS sergeant shook his head. “I can’t place him—don’t remember anything beyond his voice. An American, by the inflection. It has to be someone I worked with in the old days. Someone very dangerous…most of the people I knew then were.”

  It was a long moment before Colville spoke again, and when he did, it was to ask the same question Hale had been asking himself for hours.

  “Then why is he here?”

  6:23 A.M.

  A small flat

  Leeds

  There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet, he repeated quietly, raising his forehead from the mat. God is great.

  And truly He was, the boy thought. Great and faithful to those who followed Him—who obeyed His call. Aydin rose to his knees, folding the musallah with reverent hands, his fingers tracing over the carefully embroidered mosque lamp at the head of prayer mat.

  It was a symbolic reference to the Verse of Light in the Holy Qur’an, the words given to the Prophet. God doth guide whom He will to His light…

  He laid the mat folded in a corner apart from the rest of his personal belongings, glancing back at the now-darkened screen of his computer. The Internet, his one source of solace from the world around him.

  His father had threatened to take it away from him when he’d first begun talking of Syria—when he’d stopped partaking of the glass of wine the family shared at the dinner table. Haram.

  But the disapproval of his family was nothing compared to what he faced at school—the private school that they paid for him to attend, as his father reminded him every evening. The heckling cries of “Paki” following him wherever he went. The abundant ignorance that was so characteristic of the kaffir.

  Democracy. His teacher had called his father in for a meeting a few months before after he’d spoke out passionately in class against the corruption of the political system.

  “What is democracy?” He’d demanded, his eyes flashing as he glanced around at his classmates. “What is it but a system of government for those who believe they know better than that which is revealed unto us by God? For those who wish to shake their fist in the face of the Almighty?”

  He’d been shouted down at that moment as the classroom erupted—one of the footballers shoving him back into his desk, his head striking against the metal.

  The teacher had come to pull him out of the scuffle, but he’d been bleeding by then, a gash to his temple which had to be sewn up at the local clinic.

  And his father had told him it was all his fault, he remembered bitterly. That it served him right for causing trouble.

  Trouble.

  He glanced at his mobile before placing it in his schoolbags, checking the time. After school, the imam had promised—after school he was going to introduce him to a man. A very great man, one who had dedicated his life to the cause of Allah.

  To His struggle…

  7:45 A.M.

  The MI-5 safehouse

  Leeds

  “His name was Evan Booth,” Norris announced, setting the folder down on the scarred wood of the table. A dead man’s face smiled back at them, close-cropped hair capped by a maroon beret. “Formerly Lance Corporal Evan Booth, of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, Special Forces Support Group. He was twenty-nine.”

  “The Sporting First,” Darren mused, a tight smile creasing his face as he referenced the battalion’s nickname. “Ran a lot of ops with those lads in the old days. Good mates, all of them. So what has our Para been up to since leaving Her Majesty’s service?”

  The analyst shook his head. “Hard to say. There are a lot of gaps in his employment records—doesn’t seem to have been able to hold down a job for long.”

  From across the table, Mehreen could see the former Royal Marine wince. The old, familiar story. So many soldiers, coming home from a war to find that their world had moved on without them.

  Lost.

  It was half the reason Nick had stayed in, she knew that. Knew deep down that he was more afraid of life out of the military than he was of facing the guns once more.

  Until finally it had killed him.

  “Any indication of whether he’s connected to any of this with Tarik?”

  Norris shook his head. “Nothing definitive other than the timing and the fact that Booth’s bank account has been…healthier of late. Local Special Branch isn’t going to give us further access to the investigation without our being able to claim a valid national security threat at stake. And we don’t have it.”

  “Any family?”

  “Has a girl in Croydon—she works nights as a waitress. Been together for six years, have a little boy.”

  There was a long silence before Darren spoke again. “I’ll have Thames House send someone over to interview her, see what she knows. Norris, I need you to focus on our stranger at the station—see if there’s any camera angles we missed. And be sure to keep all of this from our American cousins.”

  “Parker’s going to know something is going on,” Norris observed. “And he’s not going to like it.”

  Darren shot him a look. “He doesn’t have to like it. No matter what some gentlemen at Whitehall seem to think…we are not America’s bloody 51st state.”

  The analyst smiled, touching fingers to his brow in a mock salute. “Aye, aye.”

  Mehreen started to rise as Norris left the room, but Darren motioned for her to remain seated.

  “We got a message last night—left for us in a dead drop. It was Ismail Besimi. He wants to set up a meet.”

  Ismail Besimi. The name brought back so many memories. He’d been her imam in the days before she had met Nick, before she had moved from Leeds to London to work for the Security Service.

  He’d also been one of the first assets she had recruited after 9/11, as the priorities of Five shifted away from the Irish problem to more immediate threats. Corrupting those you knew from a past life was a peculiarly intimate affair. Trust.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asked, looking him in the eye. “I handed off control of Besimi years ago when I got my desk at Thames House. He isn’t my responsibility.”

  Darren nodded. “I know. But this time…he asked for you. Personally.”

  “He used my name?” She still had family in Leeds, a brother, his wife, and son—a boy in his late teens. She couldn’t believe he would have put them in danger.

  “No. He was very discreet—and very clear that he would meet only with you. No one else.”

  “Then there’s no other choice,” she responded, rising to her feet. “I’ll set up the meet. What are the current communication protocols with Besimi?”

  He withdrew a small magnetic case from within his jacket, handing it over. “The deaddrop is in Woodhouse Moor,” he said, referencing a small park near the city centre, “the second bench past the old Wellington statue where Moorland Road meets Clarendon. The message is already encoded on the paper within, you’ll simply leave it on the underside of the bench. A white horizontal chalk line on the side of the monument itself will signal Besimi that the deaddrop is active.”

  She took the case from him. Already encoded. “You knew I’d agree to this, didn’t you?”

  Darren shrugged. “Like you said, there’s no other choice.”

  8:01 A.M.

  The hostel

  Leeds

  It was at moments like this that he realized the magnitude of what he had undertaken. Harry counted
out the pound notes distractedly, shoving them across the counter at the hostel’s manager as he listened to the voices in his earpiece.

  If this had been a sanctioned Agency op, he would have had ears on Mehreen’s phone ‘round the clock, everything analyzed and passed back to him.

  Granted, things rarely went that smoothly in the field. Theory, always so much better than practice. But the support network was there.

  Now…well, he didn’t have the capacity to record more than a few minutes of audio at any one time—he was restricted to listening to it live, taking what he could get in the moment.

  Which meant that he had no idea what had preceded Mehreen’s orders to visit the dead drop in Woodhouse Moor Park, he thought, tucking his wallet back into the pocket of his jacket as he limped toward the door of the hostel, favoring his weak ankle.

  He just knew that he was going to need to meet her there.

  9:37 A.M.

  Thames House

  London

  “What are you telling me, Darren?” Julian Marsh asked, glancing back toward his desk. The secure phone unit was on speaker, the glass walls of his office soundproofed against any possible listeners.

  “I’m telling you that I think you were right, sir,” the field officer’s voice came back, clearly audible. “I think the Americans are running an op on our soil.”

  There was a pause, punctuated by a snort of disgust. “They may even have gotten to him at the station—perhaps the man we picked up on our cameras was part of a grab team. A NOC.”

  Non-official cover. An “illegal,” in the community parlance. The director-general ran a hand over his forehead. This all was shades of the Cold War, a reminder of the years when he’d first come to Five.

  A junior officer fresh out of Cambridge, one of the prime recruiting fields for the Security Service.

  The CIA had developed their own network of assets in the UK back in those days—one of those things that everyone knew and everyone denied.

  It was their insurance, agents who would “stay behind” in the event of the Soviet overrun of Europe that everyone had expected to come. But like all good things, it had turned to other designs over the years. Other purposes.

  “You think they already have him?” Marsh demanded, gazing out over the Centre. They were stretched so thin…but had that been the intention?

  “I don’t know, sir. All I can state with any certainty is that we don’t. Almost twenty-four hours now. I’m firewalling off Parker’s team from this end of the operation.”

  That was necessary, but it wasn’t going to be good enough. “Are you making any progress on the man at the station?”

  It was an impossible question, Marsh knew that. He’d seen the images—the man had done an incredible job of keeping his face off the cameras. The type of job that marked him a professional more clearly than anything else he could have done.

  “Negative, sir. We’ve been looking for more camera angles ever since it went down, something that would give us a face—show us who he is. There’s nothing.”

  10:13 A.M.

  An Internet cafe

  Leeds

  He’d resisted the urge to go anywhere near the mosque, Tarik thought, glancing around the small café. He’d thought of finding a hotel—getting the sleep that his body craved.

  But he couldn’t have slept if he’d tried. He felt as if he had been taken up into the top of a high mountain, the world spread before him.

  His fingers seemed to fly over the grimy, stained keyboard before him, his eyes burning with intensity.

  Arthur Colville was no friend, that much he knew. If the bitter hatred glittering in the Englishman’s eyes hadn’t been sufficient warning, the pages upon pages of blasphemy that came up with a quick Internet search of the publisher’s name would have served as proof.

  And yet…was this the path God was showing him? The path for which he had prayed? Fate.

  Was this the will of Allah? That the pride of the unbelievers be used against them as a weapon. To bring them down to the dust. Was not this so often His way?

  A peace washed over him, the assurance which had been his stay throughout his years in Cuba and it seemed as if the path had been laid open before him. The future, naked and bare.

  “Mashallah,” he breathed, ignoring a suspicious glance from the overweight, balding man at the computer beside him. God has willed it.

  And who is truer to his covenant than Allah?

  10:59 A.M.

  Woodhouse Moor Park

  Leeds

  She was alone on this one, Mehreen thought, her feet pounding down the tarmac surface of the park path. Just like she had been so many times in Belfast, running agents for Box. They were overcommitted in their efforts to re-establish surveillance on Tarik, leaving her to take care of this on her own.

  She’d changed into sweatpants and a light jacket at the safehouse, her dark hair pulled back from her face into a ponytail, snapping back and forth as she jogged. She knew what she looked like—a middle-aged suburban housewife desperately trying to stay in shape.

  Just another one of a hundred women on any given morning in Leeds. She crossed the road, moving under the shadow of the trees.

  There were mornings when she wished she was just another woman. But that wasn’t where her life had led her—the decisions she had made, those years ago, now all coming to harvest. Choices.

  She made the dead drop without incident, the magnetic strip securing the case against the metal framework of the bench.

  The statue of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was just across the road—the bronze long ago turned green by the weather, the duke staring out across the park, one hand on his hip.

  The Victorian-era statue was defaced now, paint smeared across the pedestal, crudely drawn graffiti.

  It struck her that a single chalk line would be hard to make out before she realized that that was exactly the point. Hiding in plain sight.

  Just a single line. A brush of the hand across the pedestal and she was already moving past it, picking up her pace.

  She felt something—a presence. Brought her head up, sucking in a hard breath as she saw Nichols standing there, a few feet in front of her. In her path.

  “You. How did you—”

  That old familiar sad smile creased his face, a wordless acknowledgment of her anger.

  “Walk with me, Mehr,” he said quietly, turning to walk beside her. He was limping, she noticed, distracted by the sight.

  “What happened to you?” The words were out of her mouth before she could recall them, finding herself suddenly unsure whether she wanted the answer to that question.

  “I killed a man last night,” was the response, confirming her fears. There was not a flicker of emotion in his voice.

  Not a trace of regret. It was more a weather report than a confession. “North of here. Out on the moor.”

  No. She stopped short, turning to look up into his face. “That man was a British soldier.”

  A nod. “I know. Remembered him from the old days. Basra. But he wasn’t a soldier any longer.”

  She didn’t know what to make of that statement. Didn’t care in that moment. “You were there at the station, weren’t you?”

  The truth was there, written in his eyes. She went on without waiting for an answer. “You used me, Harry—used me to destroy a joint op with the Agency. An op I was running. And now a former Para is dead because of it. For God’s sake, Harry…he had a family.”

  “They all have families,” he responded, seemingly unmoved. “And you have a mole.”

  The air around her suddenly seemed to grow colder, a chill prickling at her spine. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I didn’t destroy Five’s operation, Mehr. Someone grabbed Tarik right out from under your nose—someone with access. I watched as they guided him right out past your watchers, past all the cameras. Tell me, how did they do that?”

  She had no answer for that, nothing but the fear that it
was all misdirection. Another attempt to manipulate her. He was so good at that. Always had been.

  “I can’t trust you,” Mehreen responded, starting to move past him. “Not after this.”

  He reached out, gripping her arm just above the elbow. His eyes boring into hers—only inches away. “You never should have, Mehr. I never asked it of you. But none of that matters now, not in the face of all that’s at stake. Not with other players taking a hand.”

  She met his gaze with her own. “Who? Give me a name, something, Harry. Some reason that I should believe you. Because I don’t.”

  “A name?” Harry shook his head. “I don’t have a name—I just know that Tarik was taken to meet with someone out on that moor. Someone with access to your people. Someone who would count a former Para among his bodyguards.”

  He could tell from the look on her face that she wasn’t buying it. “I need something to go on. Something solid.”

  The Para’s cellphone was still in his pocket, but he rejected the thought of giving it to her. Not yet. “You have it. You have the body.”

  “The body of a man you killed!”

  “He’s the key to all of this,” he responded, not letting go of her arm. “I’m sure of it. And there’s something else. The license number of the car that picked up Tarik outside City Station.”

  “You got it?”

  “I followed it. It was a black Ford Fiesta, license number: Alpha. Echo. Zero. Five. Romeo. Yankee. Whiskey.”

  Harry turned before she could respond, walking away along the path, his tall form disappearing among the trees. He was maybe thirty meters away when he heard a curse escape her lips—then his headset exploded in static, the sudden noise hammering his eardrum.

  Too bad, he thought, leaning heavily on his left leg as he gazed back toward the Wellington monument.

  Mehreen had destroyed her phone…

  8:09 A.M. Eastern Time

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Ron Carter was already in the elevator when Kranemeyer entered, head down, dark thumbs moving over the keyboard of his phone. He looked the way Carter always looked—like he hadn’t slept. More so lately.

  Neither man said a word until the doors closed, the elevator shuddering slightly as it begin its ascent.