He paused. “I know the man you work for, his name’s Hale. Formerly of the Regiment. Served with him in the sandbox, good man then. Maybe even yet. Nearly three hundred Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifles—more than a hundred charges of plastique. Who is the shipment intended for?”
“I…don’t know,” the man gasped out, and Harry could read the truth in his eyes. He had no idea, probably didn’t even know what was in the shipment, let alone whom it was for.
He glanced down at the man’s forearm then, briefly revealed in the flickering flames—the tattoo of an upward slashing dagger nearly hidden amidst the wiry hair. A Para. “So you’re doing what…just following the lead of an old comrade, eh? A man you fought side by side with in Iraq? I know the way that goes—the right man, you’d follow straight to hell. Problem is, that’s right where Conor Hale is taking you.”
Movement behind him and Harry wheeled, his weapon coming up until he saw Flaharty’s bloodied form stagger from the darkness—Malone at his side.
“Easy there, old son,” the arms dealer said, putting up a hand, “You’ve done well. What does he know?”
A grim shake of the head. “Not near enough.”
The soldier was slipping in and out of consciousness now, nearly overcome by pain and blood loss. Harry leaned down, his lips only inches away from the dying man’s ear. “You had your weapons…why come after us? Why the hit on Flaharty?”
His eyes flickered open momentarily, his breathing tortured. Yet there was something else besides agony distorting his features. It took him a moment to place it. Hatred.
“…said he’d killed our mates. Time to take the—the justice our government wouldn’t give us.”
A phone buzzed at that moment and Harry reached up, digging a mobile from the man’s jacket pocket. A feeble hand was raised to stop him, but he was far too weak—it fell limply away at his side.
“Has our Irish problem been dealt with?” were the first words Harry heard as he pressed the button to accept call.
Hale’s voice. From off in the distance, he could hear the first discordant wails of emergency sirens coming down the motorway. Time was short.
He straightened without answering, extending the phone in a bloody hand to Flaharty. “It’s for you.”
5:47 A.M.
The MI-5 safehouse
Leeds, England
THRUSH. That was Besimi’s codename, given to him back in the years when she had first recruited him, Mehreen thought—double-clicking on the file folder to open it.
There wasn’t much there—the Service was obsessed with the idea of a security breach compromising the identities of their assets and kept all the important files off-line. A hacker successfully breaching the numerous active firewalls protecting the Thames House intranet was well-nigh a statistical impossibility, but Five had always found itself run by classicists like Marsh, not statisticians.
Man himself was fallible.
THRUSH had been a Five asset for thirteen long years. An unlucky number in a world where luck counted for far more than anyone cared to admit.
Over a decade of turbulence as Britain’s Islamic community swelled with refugees and asylum seekers from the wars in the Middle East. As the Security Services struggled to contain the threat posed by radical preachers like Anjem Choudary.
Such a narrow line between liberty…and death.
And Besimi had remained faithful all through those years—to his congregation there in Leeds, to his faith, to the country he had adopted as his own. One of their most reliable assets.
He’d been directly responsible for Five’s breaking up of a terror cell in Leeds in 2004, the seizure of a massive stockpile of fertilizer that the terrorists had stored for use as a truck bomb aimed at Whitehall. One of the Security Service’s many unsung coups in the years since 9/11.
Had it all been part of a plan? To earn the trust of the Service, to get a man on the “inside.” Sacrifice a pawn.
It was an impossible question. A question which had kept her awake all through the night—along with a hundred others.
And the file before her held no answers. No clues. She would have to ask MacCallum to pull Besimi’s jacket from the Registry upon her return to London. Until then…
She looked up from the computer to see Darren standing there in the doorway. “How long have you been there?”
A weary smile creased his dark face. “Long enough to know that if you didn’t hear me you had to be exhausted, Mehreen. Did you get any sleep?”
A shake of the head. “No.” And yet it seemed as if she was still sleeping…trapped in a dream with no escape.
“Have you seen the news?”
Another “no”, but a growing sense of foreboding gnawed at her heart. What news?
The former Royal Marine walked over to the table, leaning forward on its hard wooden surface until he could look in her the eye. “A Libyan student stormed a gay nightclub in London last night and beheaded the DJ with a machete, killing several bystanders. He’s believed to have had communication with the Shaikh.”
Mehreen just sat there, struggling to process it all. There were just no words. First Besimi…and now this. The inescapable feeling that wheels were already in motion.
The wheels of something they couldn’t stop. “I need you on your game, Mehr,” he said quietly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Or I need to find someone who is. That means that Ismail Besimi will have to wait for another day. Let the quizmasters do their job, and let’s do ours. Understood?”
He was right, that was the worst of it, she thought, her face betraying none of her emotion. And yet it was so hard to turn your back on a friend. Harder still to believe that they had betrayed you. She met his eyes for a moment, then responded, “Understood.”
She had barely stopped speaking when Thomas Parker entered the main room of the safehouse, his brown hair still tousled from sleep, buttoning his shirt.
He looked from Mehreen to Darren as if perceiving that he had interrupted something, then proceeded, “I’m going to need transport to City Station. In the wake of last night’s attack, the powers that be have summoned me back to Grosvenor Square.”
Darren rounded the table to face him. “Your people will remain with us to continue our effort to reacquire the Shaikh?”
The American nodded. “Of course.”
“Very well. I can arrange for your return to the embassy—Norris is leaving for Thames House by car within the hour.”
7:08 A.M.
Colville’s estate
The Midlands
“At least tell me the shipment has been safely dispersed?”
“Yes, sir,” Conor Hale replied, his face impassive as he stood there, hands clasped behind his back. At attention, or so he felt. “They arrived at the predesignated locations an hour ago, and I’ve detailed my men to secure them.”
“Good.” The publisher turned slowly back from the open window, the cold breeze playing with his greying hair. Behind him, dark, wind-driven clouds rolled across the face of the morning sky, nearly shutting out the dawn. “So tell me, sergeant…what went wrong?”
Hale shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t fully yet know, sir. The NCA has the scene locked down—it looks as if they used a VBIED, to be honest with you.”
“English, please.”
“A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. Essentially, a car bomb. Dealt with enough of them in Iraq to know one when I see one.”
“Well, I haven’t had the benefit of your vast military experience,” Colville said dryly, “but I’ve been around long enough to know a cock-up when I see one. Tell me again what he said to you?”
“He said,” Hale began, biting back an angry retort, “that we should have made sure of killing him. Because he would bring us down.”
A snort from the publisher. “And I bloody well agree with him, but it’s an idle threat. We pulled his fangs—didn’t we?”
“We did. From our best intelligence of his operational strength,
he can’t have more than half-a-dozen men now. All that’s left of his organization after last night.”
“Yes, well I trust that ‘intelligence’ is more precise than your estimates of the force required to take out Flaharty,” Colville announced, turning his back on the soldier.
“There’s still the matter of our potential asset…our actions last night may have made recruiting him more difficult, but not impossible—not with the right approach, the evidence we have of Flaharty’s activities with the Americans. He might be willing to give him up.”
“Do it,” Colville responded coldly. “There is no more time for uncertainty, for hesitation. The die is cast.”
He glanced out the window, across the windswept green pastures cast in shadow, faint rays of the morning sun stabbing their way through the dark clouds. “A storm is coming…”
Chapter 11
7:12 A.M.
A safehouse
“Are you sure you haven’t been compromised here?” Harry asked, glancing around the kitchen of the small flat.
It looked as if it had been deserted for years—dropcloths covering most of the furniture, dust lying thick on the countertop.
Flaharty gritted his teeth, painfully shrugging his shoulders out of his torn jacket. “I’m sure.”
Harry moved over to the next door, his Sig-Sauer in his hand as he pulled it open, sweeping the dim interior of a living room. “You were sure last night and they still nearly got us. They had intel. Good intel.”
“You think I don’t know that?” the arms dealer spat back angrily. “You don’t think that’s what’s been runnin’ through my mind every bleedin’ moment since the ambush? Davey and I are the only ones who know about this place…we’re secure.”
“All right.” Harry returned the pistol to its holster inside his waistband. Time to move on to the next problem. “I need to take a look at your side. You’re looking pale.”
“When Malone gets back from ditching the car,” Flaharty warned, grimacing even as he did so. “Not before.”
“Fair enough,” he responded, moving to check the windows. “It’s your blood.”
Blood. It had been hours, but try as he might, he couldn’t get the face of the British soldier out of his mind. Lying there in the road, bleeding to death.
“No,” he could hear his own voice saying, “there’s no point to it. He’ll be dead before they can get here.”
“And if he’s not? It had been Flaharty who asked the question, a dark assurance in his voice. “Do you want to run the risk that he’ll talk—tell Five about the shipment? You’re relying on those trucks to get to their destination, I know you are. Can’t have the wrong people knowing they’re in-country.”
And he had been right. Didn’t make what he had done any easier. Didn’t make it feel any less like murder.
Nor was it. He’d taken the Sig-Sauer and put two rounds into the young man’s temple, killing him instantly.
Or as nearly as ever it was. An act of mercy, in reality—but mercy had had nothing to do with his reasons for doing so.
No, this was all about preventing the mission from being compromised, he thought, moving like a dark shadow from one window to the next—most of them boarded up, the glass without long-ago shattered by vandals.
The mission. He could feel his face harden, anger rising within him. That word—it had been to him what the mantra was to a Buddhist priest. The only thing that mattered—the only truth.
For so many years. And now all that was gone. He’d spent all his adult life fighting for a flag, those blood-red stripes unfurled to the breeze—white stars against a field of blue. A righteous cause.
But now…what was his cause? He closed his eyes once more and this time it wasn’t the young soldier’s face who rose before him—but Carol’s.
Vengeance…
7:05 A.M.
Sky News Studios
Isleworth, West London
“To answer your question—no, I’m not surprised by the nature of the attack,” Daniel Pearson responded, looking gravely across at the Sky News anchor on the opposite couch. “Not surprised at all. I’ve been warning of this for years—when Drummer Rigby was butchered in the streets of Woolwich, I warned that if we did not take active measures to deal with this threat, it was only a matter of time before it happened again.”
The anchor paused, glancing off-camera as if he expected some help from his producer. “By ‘this threat,’ Mr. Pearson…you are referring to the threat posed by…jihadists?”
He could see the jaded skepticism in the anchor’s eyes, mixed there with the confusion. Allowed himself an inner smile. “Of course I am. Under the umbrella of this “conservative” government, we’ve seen a flood tide of immigrants and asylum seekers come rolling into this country—and why, I ask you? The 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees is very explicit—refugees may only legitimately seek refuge in the nearest safe country. I don’t know if you’ve looked at a map recently, but the UK is far from a neighbor of the Middle East and we have no legitimate responsibility in the affair. But what do my fellow members of parliament care about legitimate responsibilities?”
The anchor held up a hand to stop him. “And that’s all well and good, Mr. Pearson…but what exactly does all of this have to do with the stabbing at Heaven? There’s been nothing made public about the identity of the assailant—nothing to connect it with religious extremism of any kind.”
“No?” Pearson asked, reaching inside the pocket of his tailored suit to retrieve a morning copy of the Daily Standard. “Then perhaps, sir, it’s time for your people to get off their posh couches and do some journalism.”
He threw the paper onto the table between them, Arthur Colville’s headline clearly visible above a picture of panicked club-goers streaming out of Heaven: “The Religion of Peace Is Back.”
7:28 A.M.
A bookstore
Mayfair, London
All of the planning, Sayyed Hassan thought—staring up at the TV on the far wall of his store, its screen displaying the news coverage of the attack on London’s den of perversion—all of the work, all of the times he had risked his life for God’s struggle.
And someone else had been chosen in the end. The leader of the London cell dug the burner phone he had been given out of his pocket, looking almost wistfully at the darkened screen. It had been days since Tarik Abdul Muhammad had made contact. Days since he was to have returned from Leeds.
A sharp rap came at the door of the bookstore and he glanced up, startled—moving through the stacks of used and rare editions surrounding the counter until he could see the door, shuttered as it always was in the morning—his Closed sign still hanging in the window beside it.
He thought of ignoring it, but the knock came again. Harder and more insistent this time. “I’m sorry,” he began, opening the door just a crack. “We’re still closed…please come back—”
Nadeem was standing on his doorstep, the young black who had been recruited by the cell while still in prison. “Salaam alaikum, brother.”
Blessings and peace be upon you.
“Wa’ alaikum salaam,” Sayyed stammered out. And unto you peace. Visiting his place of business like this, unannounced…something was wrong. “Please, come in.”
He closed the door behind the two of them, turning to the young man. “What news do you bring me from—”
Nadeem’s big hand flew out without warning, closing around his throat and forcing him back toward the wall—cutting off what he had been about to say. “Quiet,” he whispered, fire flashing from his dark eyes as he placed a finger to his lips.
Shaken, the store owner nodded his assent, massaging his bruised throat as Nadeem released him. What was going on?
He watched as the black man stalked through the shop—his shop—finally moving behind the counter to where Hassan kept a small radio. He turned it on, working with the dials until he found a rap station and turned the volume up.
All the way up, until
vulgar, licentious music poured from the speakers, filling the store.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, finally finding his voice.
“I don’t know, bruv,” was Nadeem’s calm reply, coming back to stand before him, his voice low and nearly drowned out by the throbbing backbeat. “You notice anything different these last few days?”
“No, no—nothing,” Sayyed responded, still baffled by his demeanor. “Why are you asking all this? Who sent you?”
It was a moment before Nadeem responded, his eyes roving across the walls—the shelves of books. As if searching for something. At last he turned back, “The Shaikh. He has reason to believe that Five’s got you under surveillance…”
7:35 A.M.
The M1 Motorway
Near Towchester, England
“We’ve known this was coming for years.”
Thomas half-turned from the passenger seat, glancing across at the British analyst. “What was?”
It was a moment before Norris responded, threading the small Volvo through heavy work traffic on the southbound lanes. “The Islamic threat, the attack on Heaven last night. It’s been building for more than a decade—Tarik Abdul Muhammad is only a convenient catalyst.”
“But he’s at their head,” Thomas observed quietly, watching his counterpart’s face. “With his connections to both AQ and Lashkar—his ability to unite Arabs and Pakistanis under one banner—he’s perhaps the most charismatic leader the jihadis have seen since the death of UBL, certainly after the success of the Christmas Eve attacks.”
“Oh, he’s a leader,” Norris replied, his eyes darting from the road in front of him to his mirrors as he pulled out into the next lane. “I’ll give him that. But this didn’t start with him, and we’d be fools to think the threat would end with him either.”
Another moment, and the analyst’s drawn face relaxed into a smile. “But why am I trying to convince you of something you already know to be true? You joined the Agency because of 9/11, as I recall.”
“Indeed,” Thomas replied, knowing all too well that there was no “recall” about it. “You’ve done your research…well.”
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 21
