Light. The crackling flames of a fire, the sound of a log shifting in the hearth. Tarik’s eyes shone with an unholy fire of their own as he leaned forward over the desk, tracing his finger over the papers laid out before him.
The plan was audacious, that much could not be denied. Almost to the point of madness.
Nearly as ambitious as his own strike against the United States, only months before. A strike which had been years in the planning.
But this…
“Do you honestly believe that this can be done?” he asked, glancing across the desk into Arthur Colville’s eyes. “What you’re envisioning—it would take an army.”
The publisher smiled, a quiet, mocking smile. “Where is your faith in your god, ‘Shaikh’? I promise you this, and only this. If you can raise an army, we can arm it.”
“Insh’allah.” It took everything within him not to respond to the unbeliever’s arrogance, but Tarik merely nodded, looking from Colville back across the study to where the ex-soldier stood, his holstered pistol clearly visible on his hip—cold eyes never leaving Tarik’s face. “And you’re prepared to just stand by and watch this happen.”
It seemed as if a look of sadness crossed Colville’s face. Regret. “I am not a terrorist. The death of the innocent is not something I take pleasure in—unlike you people. But hard choices must be made, and this is necessary…it is a sacrifice which must needs be made. For the greater good. For a better world.”
“A world in which my people have been ‘cleansed’ from your soil,” Tarik spat, his lip curling up in contempt.
“Yes,” Colville returned, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward, knuckles pressed against the hard English walnut of the writing desk only inches away from a snifter of brandy. “In a hundred years, I want a British boy to grow to manhood without ever hearing the name of your child-molesting prophet spoken in the streets of England. That is what I want.”
Blasphemy. “And you expect me to help you in your endeavor?” the Pakistani demanded, stabbing out a finger in Colville’s direction. He saw the soldier flinch, the guard dog responding to a perceived threat to his master—but he didn’t draw his weapon.
“I expect you to recognize the inevitable when you see it in front of you.” The publisher gestured with his hand. “This cataclysm is coming, regardless of anything you and I might try to do. Two months from now, the year after next, a decade hence—this little island will be plunged into chaos. But, ah, what comes out of that chaos…now that is not nearly so inevitable. And that is what I am offering to you—to us—the chance to take that chaos and use it to forge the world we see in our dreams. The world we believe in. So, are you with me?”
A moment passed, and then Tarik nodded. “Yes.”
Colville smiled, picking up the snifter from the desk and raising it, as if it were in a toast.
“Then may the best man win.”
11:53 P.M.
The industrial estate
North of Leeds
A light rain had just started to fall as the Ford Explorer pulled up to what had once been the front gates of the industrial estate. One of the chainlink gates was bent and twisted, leaning drunkenly from one remaining hinge—illuminated in the harsh glare of the headlights.
Stephen Flaharty glanced out of the passenger window, gazing critically up at the abandoned structures looming as they did over the vehicle in the night. Dark. Foreboding.
“Are you sure about this?” His bodyguard asked from the driver’s seat, his jacket gaped open to reveal his holstered FNX-45.
“Aye, Davey,” Flaharty smiled, looking over at his old mate, his greying hair visible beneath the edge of his cap. “Of course I am.”
They’d been friends since boyhood, throwing rocks and curses at British riot police in the streets of Belfast. And then they had grown older and traded in the rocks for pistols and pipe bombs. Pipe bombs…and car bombs, as Flaharty’s talent for explosives had grown with his years.
Davey Malone had always had his back, saved his life more than a few times through the Troubles.
And now he was lying to his friend, Flaharty thought, tapping a message into his phone. Where are you located?
Because he wasn’t sure about this at all.
He pushed open the passenger door of the SUV, stepping out into the loose gravel. Forcing a smile. “Wish me luck.”
“We’ve always made our own luck, Stephen.” Malone reached down, pulling a Remington 870 from beneath his seat and laying the pistol-gripped shotgun across his lap. “Thirty minutes—and then I’m comin’ for you.”
He took another step from the SUV and the phone buzzed in his hand, droplets of rain splashing against the screen as he opened it to reveal the message. The building past the loading dock, the office at the top—come across the enclosed bridge.
A second message, following on the heels of the first. Lose the jacket.
He was early. Harry laid down the phone, raising the binoculars once more to his eyes as his target took off the jacket, throwing it back onto the passenger seat of the Explorer. But that would be Flaharty.
The Irishman also hadn’t come alone, he thought, marking the thermal bloom of a second man in the driver’s seat. Not that he had really expected him to. One didn’t get where Flaharty was in life by following other people’s rules.
Rules. Everyone had them, things they just didn’t do. Boundaries they didn’t cross. And whatever gunrunning the Irish arms dealer had done in Africa—across the Middle East…Harry would have thought that Flaharty would have found arming homegrown Islamists in the UK to be one of those boundaries.
Up until the moment he had found one of Flaharty’s numbers on the phone of the Para he had killed.
Perhaps it was all about the money. Perhaps some people did believe in taking a crap where they ate.
Footsteps on the bridge outside and Harry set the binoculars aside, moving back and to the side of the door, the HK45 out and in his right hand.
There had once been glass windows lining either side of the enclosed bridge—but they’d been smashed by vandals long before, jagged shards of glass protruding from the frame. It felt as if he was walking into a trap, Flaharty thought. He glanced out the window back toward the gate, the headlights of the still-running Explorer clearly visible through the specks of rain that had dotted his glasses.
He had seen the look in Malone’s eyes. They both knew they weren’t as young as they’d once been—knew that if things went pear-shaped, he didn’t have a prayer of getting to Flaharty in time.
If only this deal hadn’t been so important, if only so much hadn’t depended on Booth—he wouldn’t have dreamed of coming.
There was a 9mm Kimber Solo inside his waistband, concealed by the loose sweater he wore. He thought about drawing it as he neared the door, then pushed that aside. Whatever awaited him within, the pistol wouldn’t be of much use.
Darkness met him as he pushed the door open, moving cautiously inside as his eyes adjusted.
He’d taken barely five steps into the office when he heard a noise from behind him and an oh-so-familiar voice announced, “You don’t know just how sorry I am to see you here, Stephen. Keep your hands out where I can see them.”
It wasn’t Booth…
Chapter 8
12:03 A.M., March 27th
The industrial estate
North of Leeds
“Nichols?” the Irishman demanded, standing there in the middle of the office, his hands raised in the darkness. “What are you doing here, boyo?”
Harry snorted, covering Flaharty with the muzzle of the compact H&K as he moved to close the door. Staying well back, out of reach. “I had in mind to ask you the same thing, but I see you didn’t come alone. Thought I made it clear that your invitation didn’t read ‘plus one’, Stephen.”
Flaharty shrugged. “So that was from you. I suppose I can assume that Booth is…”
“Dead,” Harry finished, his face a grim mask. “You should pay clo
ser attention to the news, old son. They found him out on the moor last night. Acute lead poisoning.”
“He was a good lad.”
“So people keep telling me.” He kept the gun up, circling the weapons dealer until he could see Flaharty’s face in the dim ambient light coming through the window of the office. “It doesn’t explain what he was doing working with the jihadis. Or what your number was doing on his phone.”
There was no faking the surprise that washed across the man’s countenance. Whatever was going on here, Flaharty was not fully informed. He started to lower his arms. “I have…no idea what you are talking about.”
“Keep them up,” came the peremptory command as Harry gestured with the H&K. “Unless you want your reunion with Booth expedited.”
Another shrug, but Flaharty raised his hands—keeping them well away from his sides. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want the truth.”
7:09 P.M. Eastern Time
An apartment
Washington, D.C.
He’d crossed the line. That was the reason Nichols had been asked to leave the Agency, Kranemeyer thought, staring out the window of his apartment over the city, the glow from a sea of traffic lighting up the night sky—the towering obelisk of the Washington Monument dimly visible in the distance.
The reason that had been given.
Crossed the line…and yet where was that line drawn, really? Haskel’s face flashed before his eyes and Kranemeyer could see the FBI director there again, laying face-down on the Persian rug in his own house, the room reeking of his own excrement. His eyes pleading for mercy.
Kranemeyer looked down at the shot of bourbon in his hand. Prince Badr would be landing at Dulles within the hour and he was supposed to be preparing for his meeting with the Saudi intelligence chief in the morning. But it was impossible to push this aside.
He had crossed lines of his own, done what was necessary to see justice for his men. Only a fool believed that justice and the law were one and the same.
So where did that leave Nichols?
The man had been a formidable operator, a brilliant team leader—easily the equal of anyone Kranemeyer had served with during his years at Delta. A born warrior. And yet he had seen the signs even before Vegas. The cracks appearing like spider veins.
Had it been Hamid Zakiri’s betrayal in Jerusalem the previous October? The murder of Davood Sarami at Zakiri’s hands?
The revelation that one of their own paramilitary operations officers was in fact an Iranian sleeper had been devastating to all of them, but to none more so than the man who had recruited him: Nichols.
He’d been the target of an internal investigation headed by the CIA’s inspector general in the months that followed.
Internal investigation? “Witch hunt” was more apropos—all the members of the NCS strike team had come under scrutiny, but Nichols in particular. And then in the midst of it all had come the assassination attempt on David Lay—on his daughter—and all that had followed.
Nichols had left bodies in his wake…on American soil. The type of thing that couldn’t have been swept under the rug, no matter how hard they might have tried.
He’d allowed emotion to cloud his judgment, placed innocent lives in jeopardy. An American teenager, dead. Lay’s daughter, also dead—killed by a sniper outside the Bellagio on that dark Christmas Eve in Vegas.
And now he was out there—somewhere. Doing something.
Kranemeyer shook his head, turning away from the window of the apartment. He knew exactly what Nichols was doing—he was doing what the American government couldn’t do. Couldn’t bring itself to do.
Taking out the trash on an ally’s soil. Tarik Abdul Muhammad.
He tossed back the last of his bourbon, releasing a heavy sigh as he placed the shot glass on the granite countertop.
He’d never been a praying man, never believed in anything he couldn’t see—but he found himself praying now.
That Nichols would succeed.
12:11 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time
The industrial estate
North of Leeds, England
“I knew something was wrong—I just didn’t know what. That’s why I had Booth—he’d procured hardware for me before, when I saw him on their crew I knew I had someone I could use. He was my man on the inside. Until you up and shot him in the back.”
“Why should I believe you?” Harry demanded, staring across the old metal desk at Flaharty.
He still hadn’t lowered his weapon—the Irishman’s face clearly visible through the iron sights of the H&K. “Booth said they were nationalist hard-liners or some such bollocks. He was going to have more information for me tomorrow night.” He paused. “What do you think I am, bleedin’ daft? Getting mixed up with the Muslims?”
Harry shook his head, unconvinced. Searching for an opening, an advantage. Anything he could seize. Exploit. “You’ve done it before. Anṣār ad-Dīn comes readily to mind, I’m sure there were others.”
Flaharty favored him with a pained look. “Honestly, Harry? You’re going to go and bring up Mali? Sure an’ it’s not the same thing—not at all. You and your sodding Agency knew I ran guns…if it weren’t for wogs killing other wogs, there’d be no one to run guns to. It’s what keeps men like me in business, so of course I did. Helping them here, that’s another matter entirely.”
“I’ve seen your Security Service file. You went to Libya in the ‘80s—the training camps at Zuwarah. Spent over a year there, near as Five could determine. That’s a good long time.”
“A good long time,” the Irishman repeated, anger playing across his face. Real or feigned, it was hard to tell. “The longest year of my life—not a single drop a’ liquor in the bloody place. Davey and I got back to Belfast after our training was over and hit the pubs so hard…I don’t even remember the following day. Or the day after that.”
David Malone. He’d been on the Agency’s radar for nearly as long as Flaharty, a former PIRA enforcer long suspected in the execution of a pair of British soldiers in Armagh back in the early ‘90s. The two of them had been nearly inseparable.
“Is that who you brought with you?” Harry asked, inclining his head toward the window. Flaharty just looked at him, unanswering—which was answer enough in itself. He wasn’t going to have much time.
Moving on. “You spoke of a delivery—tomorrow night. I want to know the when, the where. I want to be there.”
“No,” the Irishman retorted. “Not a chance. You’ve cost me enough—you’re not costing me this deal.”
Harry shook his head, not giving an inch. “That wasn’t a request. You’re going to get me in there, or—”
Flaharty cut him off, gazing at him keenly. “Or what? You’ll get on the phone back to Langley and tell them one of their old assets is off the reservation? No, because you can’t. Because you’re farther out of bounds than I am, boyo. So what will you do?”
“Contacting the Agency never crossed my mind,” Harry shot back, feeling the emotion rise within him, forcing himself to calm down. He was so close, and yet so far. Had to see this through if he was to stand any chance of success. When he spoke again, his voice was low and even. Calculating. “But what about Malone—the rest of your boys? They know about the work you did for us, back in the day?”
A very real fear spread across the Irishman’s face, his voice trembling ever so slightly as he responded, “You wouldn’t.”
3:31 A.M.
The Masjid-e-Ali
Leeds
“Do you think he’s deserted us?”
Rahman looked up to see Nadeem slouched there in the doorway of his study, his dark face almost masked in the early morning shadows.
He had the feeling that neither one of them had slept. He had spoken with confidence to the boy, but it was another thing to feel such confidence. And he did not. It would not be the first time the cause of God had found itself betrayed from within, and yet the reputation of the Shaikh…
“No,” he responded, summoning up all of his strength. “I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t believe it—or you don’t want to?” the young man demanded brazenly. It entered Rahman’s mind to rebuke him, but he went on without waiting for an answer. “I was there, man. He told me to leave.”
“So you said.”
“It’s the truth, I swear it. He blanked me all the way from London, not so much as a bloody greeting. If he was threatened by the secret police, why didn’t he want me to stay at his side? I could have taken ‘em.”
It might have seemed like a prideful boast, but it was hard not to believe him, Rahman thought, the muscles of the black man’s chest and arms prominently displayed by the undershirt he wore.
Word was he had split his time in prison between the gym and the lectures of the visiting imam. Somehow, judging by his irreverence, Rahman doubted that it had been an even split.
And yet the questions he raised were impossible to answer. “He will be returned to us, insh’allah.”
He turned back to his books, a tacit dismissal—but it was at that moment that the cellphone in his pocket rang. Number Withheld.
“Hold on,” Meg announced, reaching over to grip her sleeping colleague by the shoulder. “Call the safehouse and wake Roth up. Rahman’s getting a call.”
7:07 A.M.
The MI-5 Safehouse
Leeds
“Shortly after 0300 hours this morning, Rahman’s cellphone received a call from a blocked number,” Roth announced, looking around the table at the faces of his team.
Most of them already knew that much, it having marked the time they had been roused from sleep. “GCHQ has their people attempting to run the number, but the phone has likely already been disposed of. It’s immaterial—we got the voice-match. It was Tarik Abdul Muhammad.”
“Do we know what was said?” Norris asked, looking haggard as he glanced up from his notes. Normally a neat dresser, it looked like he had barely had time to shower and throw on a sweater, his brown hair hopelessly mussed.
The American came in at that moment, a half-eaten muffin in his hand, and Darren acknowledged his entrance with a nod. “We were making progress on the translation…Mehreen? Do we have a final transcript?”
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 16
