Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

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Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 24

by Stephen England


  That what Besimi had said might even be true.

  Another moment, and her hand rapped against the metal. Once, then twice.

  It was on the third knock that she heard the sound of a chain being unfastened—a bolt slid back. A woman appearing in the opening, silhouetted against the light coming from the hall—her face framed by the familiar shape of the hijab. “I’m sorry, we—”

  The woman stopped suddenly, recognition filling her eyes. “Mehreen,” she began hesitantly, backing away from the doorway as it swung open. “It’s been so long…”

  Chapter 12

  8:06 P.M.

  A mosque

  London, England

  The street was dark—and good reason for it, the man thought, kneeling by the back entrance of the mosque.

  He’d shot out the light only moments before with a scoped pellet rifle, the shot only a whisper in the night.

  Conor Hale removed the second lockpick from between his teeth, a smile crossing his face as the tumblers moved beneath the steady pressure. There.

  A glance back toward the darkened sedan assured him that Gordon was still in place. Keeping watch.

  Trust. Hale grimaced, going to work on the deadbolt. It was such an uncertain gamble.

  He’d told Colville that he would trust any of the Paras with his life—more importantly that he had. Once upon a time, in a godforsaken place called Iraq.

  But Gordon’s questions at the warehouse…it begged the question whether any of them truly had the stomach for what was coming. What was necessary.

  Another click and then the bolt gave, the door opening as he pushed in—revealing only darkness within. No flashing lights, no alarms. Their intel had been good.

  He straightened, waving a hand to signal his partner to come on in. It was time to get to work.

  8:17 P.M.

  The house

  Leeds

  “And your work in the city goes well?” Mehreen smiled, glancing up at her sister-in-law’s question. Her family, they believed that she was a low-level functionary at a government agency in London. A clerk, nothing more.

  “It does, Nimra.” She took a sip of the steaming tea as the younger woman bustled around the kitchen, seeming nervously busy, only now having removed the hijab from around her face.

  Two women alone, in the sanctity of the home. “And your family? How is Aydin?”

  It was a long moment before Nimra replied, and when she did, she didn’t meet her eyes. “He is well, thank you. So big now, we are very proud of him.”

  “I’m sure you are.” Mehreen waited until her sister-in-law had finally taken her seat across from her. “This late, I had almost thought I might see him. Is he out with friends?”

  “Yes, he is with friends.” Once again, she looked away, her reply almost mechanical. It was so unlike the woman her brother had married, the sprite of a girl whose laughter had captured the hearts of her parents in the years before they had passed.

  A replacement for the daughter they had…lost.

  Her lips pressed together into a tight line at the memory. They had never forgiven her.

  “Friends from the school?” she asked brightly, trying not to push too fast, struggling with the thought of using her training here, with her own family. Something within her rebelling at the very idea.

  “Yes,” her sister-in-law replied after yet another moment of hesitation, a shadow passing across her face. “He’s a good boy. . but so serious.”

  Mehreen forced a smile, lifting the cup of tea to her lips. “Serious? It’s hard for me to think of him like that—he was such a child when I saw him last. Do you think I will see him tonight?”

  “Probably not. And I don’t know what he would think if you did.”

  “What do you mean?” It was hard to maintain this expression of innocence, this naivete—in the face of what Besimi had told her. If it was true. Was anything true?

  The younger woman paused, stirring her tea with a spoon. “Aydin, he—he does not believe that his father and I—that we are good Muslims, that we take our faith as seriously as we should. If he were to see you…”

  Her gaze swept over Mehreen in an almost embarrassed manner—taking in the jeans, the stylish blouse beneath the unbuttoned jacket. The message clearly and painfully written in her eyes. “Please, I don’t like talking about it. He is good at heart, just…too passionate. It will pass.”

  It was a statement made utterly without conviction, a mother trying to convince herself of something she knew wasn’t true. Of something they both knew wasn’t true. “I-I warned him to be careful this evening, after the riots in Birmingham earlier—they were all over the telly. My cousin knew one of the women who was beaten, it was just horrible.”

  “The tensions are only building,” Mehreen responded, sincerely enough. Feeling her way along. “It is a difficult time to be one of the faithful in this country, with all that surrounds us.”

  Nimra’s eyes widened and she leaned forward, as if sharing some great secret. “Did you hear—the police took Imam Besimi last night?”

  “No,” she breathed, closing her eyes against the lie. She could still see the shock written on his face, the bewilderment as the stun grenade exploded almost on top of them, nearly blinding them with the blast. “I had no idea. What are they charging him with?”

  “No one knows—no one has heard from the imam since they took him away. Not a single word.”

  “That’s just…wrong,” she said, replacing the lies with the utmost of conviction. “He was a good man.”

  And she believed it. She looked up to find Nimra looking finally into her eyes, something of despair in her gaze—and looked away, lest her own eyes betray something of what she knew. “May I use your loo?”

  A nod, a few directions. At the top of the stairs, the first room on the right.

  Mehreen turned on the light over the sink—glancing at her own reflection briefly in the mirror as she turned both faucets on full, closing the door behind her as she stepped back into the darkness of the upstairs hallway. Three rooms, she noted, trying the handle of the first door.

  It gave under her hand, opening into darkness. She flipped out her mobile, the glow of the screen revealed a room cluttered with odds and ends—a broken ironing board propped in one corner, a deserted exercise bicycle in another, a bag of clothes strewn on the floor. The detritus of a normal life.

  She closed the door as gently as she had opened it, hearing Nimra moving about in the kitchen downstairs. It felt as if she were invading their privacy.

  Betraying something…sacred.

  8:25 P.M.

  The mosque

  East London

  It seemed strange to be doing this, after all those years in Iraq—after all the mates they had lost to roadside bombs, to the ever-present IEDs. As if a bomb was a weapon of evil…but he knew better. Evil was what they were fighting, just as they once had overseas.

  Just different weapons, that was all.

  “This will bring down the whole bloody building, won’t it?” Paul Gordon asked, watching as Hale finished wiring the detonator. It was a timed device, set to go off hours before the mosque opened for morning prayers.

  The former SAS man grimaced, glancing up at the steel beams above them supporting the ground floor of the structure. “That’s the idea—we’ll see how they like arriving to a hole in the ground in the morning.”

  Another moment passed, and both men heard a faint beep as the device armed itself. Hale rose, his smile faintly visible in the darkness. “It’s time for us to be leavin’, mate. Go home, get some sleep. Visit your sister in the morning. Might be your last chance for a while.”

  Footsteps faded away across the floor of the basement, lights flickering out into darkness.

  And within the mechanism of the bomb, an internal clock began ticking down to the moment of detonation. 15:59:05…15:59:04…15:59:03…

  The hour of the noonday prayer.

  8:26 P.M.

  The
house

  Leeds

  There was data. A lot of it. Mehreen ran a hand over her face, staring at the glowing screen of the laptop in the darkness of Aydin’s bedroom. Watching as the program mirrored everything on his hard drive off onto the thumb drive she had slipped into the side of the machine.

  Internet search history, blog posts, saved files…the little she had seen of it so far was painting a far different picture of her nephew than Nimra had portrayed. Withdrawn, sullen—passionate? Angry would have been a more apt descriptor.

  Eighty-five percent complete. Someone was going to need to sift through all of this—and it would have to be her. There was no one she could trust at Thames House with a matter of this delicacy. Not and be assured that it would stay out of official channels…for now.

  Looking at the screen, at the sites her nephew had visited—at the messages he had sent—she had to admit that there might come no other choice. But not yet.

  “Mehreen!” Her heart nearly stopped, the sound of her sister-in-law’s voice coming from downstairs. Eighty-nine percent.

  Come on…

  The hallway was dark when Nimra mounted the stairs, the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. No response. It had always been a challenge for her to understand her husband’s sister. The woman was just so…different.

  Her way of life so alien from theirs, even as Western as Ahmed tried to be in his dress, in his business.

  “Mehreen,” she began, pausing at the door of the bathroom. “Is everything all right?”

  A moment passed and then the door opened, revealing her sister-in-law standing there. “Yes,” Mehreen smiled, wiping damp hands on the legs of her jeans. “It is.”

  Mehreen’s smile faded as Nimra turned to lead the way back downstairs, her heart still pounding against her chest. She had come so close…so close to jeopardizing everything that she held dear.

  She slipped a hand into the pocket of her jeans, feeling the data-filled thumb drive against her fingers. Knowing the secrets it could hold.

  Knowing that day might yet come.

  10:03 P.M.

  The warehouse

  Ashton-under-Lyne

  Surveillance. It was the most boring and simultaneously most common job in the business—the one no movie director worth his salt would dream of showing his audience.

  The plan, if you wanted to call it that, was to monitor Hale’s people—to wait for the security change and follow one of the guards home. Get an address, get a name.

  Slow work, but it was the best they had. They needed more intel, needed it badly.

  Unless Malone got lucky and found something by tailing the sedan.

  Harry shifted in the driver’s seat of the car, wincing as pain shot through his ankle. His legs were cramped from sitting for so long, the used water bottle lying on the floor between him and a sleeping Flaharty now nearly a quarter full with urine.

  As with the other, you used what you had.

  He’d known many such nights over the years—most of his adult life had been spent just like this, endless hours cramped up in tight spaces. Watching dangerous people.

  The life he had once thought he could leave behind. What was it he had told Samuel Han, standing there in that cabin in the mountains of West Virginia?

  Don’t kid yourself, Sammy. No one’s ever out of the game.

  Oh, he had known…but he’d lied. To himself. To her. It had seemed the thing to do at the time.

  And now this. There had to be something, some connection they were missing. It felt as if they were wandering in a maze, the darkness closing around them.

  “That’s why I had Booth…he was my man on the inside. Until you up and shot him in the back.”

  Flaharty’s voice, coming back through his memories—conjuring up the image of the young Para lying dead on the hard ground beneath AlmsCliffe Crag.

  It was just possible…he tapped a finger absently against the steering wheel, lost in thought. “What did he know?” he asked softly, staring out at the night.

  “Who?” Flaharty demanded and he glanced over to see the Irishman staring at him. No longer asleep.

  “Booth. We’re missing something here. Could he have known who was bankrolling the shipment?”

  “I’ve no idea what he knew.” Flaharty snorted. “Never will, either, thanks to you.”

  “It’s not Hale,” Harry continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “ex-SF NCOs don’t have that kind of money.”

  He could see Mehreen’s face before him the last time they had spoken, the look of reproach in her eyes as she spoke of the soldier. What had she said? “He had a family.”

  “Booth was a family man?” he asked aloud, returning his attention to Flaharty.

  “Had a woman,” was the short reply. “Down near Surrey somewhere. Doubt she would know anything.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” Harry said, running a hand over his beard. Not if there were financial records. Intel still stored on the dead man’s hard drive. “Still worth our while to pay her a visit. Can you get an address?”

  A slow nod, Flaharty’s eyes suddenly fixed across the road. “As soon as we’re done here.”

  Harry looked over to see movement from the warehouse, lights flashing across the yard, and he reached down, shifting into Drive. “Showtime.”

  11:19 P.M.

  Abbey Road, London

  He’d had two wives—well, three…if you counted his first, a marriage which had only lasted a few months.

  And now he was old and the terraced house was empty, his footsteps hollow on the stairs as he threw his coat across the bannister—shrugging off his suit jacket.

  Telling them had always been the hard part, Julian Marsh thought, grimacing as he walked into the kitchen, turning on the lights as he went.

  Telling them that the man they had grown to love, was a spy. He’d had more than several back out on him at that point, some angry at the deception, the rest simply realizing that his life was not to be theirs.

  The others had forged ahead, swearing their loyalty. Their “undying” love. Yes, well that had been a lie—like so much else in his line of work.

  Regnum Defende. Defend the realm.

  It was late, but Marsh pulled down a glass from the cupboard over his head anyway. The rum should help him sleep—it was about the only thing that did these days.

  Perhaps enough sleep to prepare him for the meeting Napier had asked him to arrange with Arthur Colville in the morning. Perhaps.

  The phone rang before he could pour it, a discordant sound in the empty house. “Marsh, here.”

  It was MacCallum—his tones urgent. Clipped. “We just got a face off CCTV in South London…one of the OSIRIS cameras. It’s Muzhir bin Abdullah. And he’s not alone.”

  11:28 P.M.

  A nightclub

  Southeast London

  “She’s not going to miss you at home—last night and all?” The man had to raise his voice to be heard over the beat pulsating through the club, but Corporal Dunne heard him.

  “We don’t do goodbyes, Michael,” he replied—glancing over at his mate. “She’s had enough of those.”

  “Fifth time, right?”

  He nodded, draining the last of his beer—wiping away a few droplets of the warm liquid away from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. He’d be in uniform by morning, huddled in the back of an RAF Hercules.

  On his way to Afghanistan for his fifth deployment. And the last one, or so the politicians said. They’d said it before. All he knew was that he’d had enough of it. And so had Sally—they’d been together through the last three.

  “I wish I was going back with you,” his companion said regretfully, looking out over the swaying crowd.

  “Don’t, Michael,” Dunne responded, with more heat than he had intended. “Just bloody don’t. They don’t have a clue what we’re doing over there, mate. Never did.”

  “Politicians…they never do.” The man smiled, tapping his right leg with his emp
ty glass—the action producing a curiously dull sound. “Of course, I couldn’t even if they’d let me. No room in the army for a gimp.”

  They both laughed at that, though there was little humor in it. “You sure you’re not drinkin’ too much, mate?”

  Dunne arched an eyebrow. “I’m not the poor sod that has to be flying that plane in the morning. But you have a point. Let me find Billy and Todd and we’ll be going.”

  The night wasn’t cold, at least not by London standards—but the temperature didn’t matter so much when you were wet, Muzhir thought—grimacing as rain dripped from his black hair to sluice down the back of his neck.

  Impatience threatened to overcome him as he shifted his weight from one foot to another, glancing at his companions—the three who had come with him this night. True brothers. They couldn’t afford to wait much longer.

  “Do not fear death,” he began, repeating the words of Inspire as he moved from one man to the next in an effort to strengthen them for this moment, “whoever does not die by the sword will die by other means. Various are the means, but death, it is one. Provided that there is no escape from death, it is of weakness that you die in a cowardly manner.”

  He was the only one in the group with a gun, the only firearm they had been able to obtain. An old Smith & Wesson revolver…an American gun. Irony.

  And then he saw the doors of the nightclub open, light and music spilling out—saw their targets emerge into the street—a group of men laughing and singing. A group of soldiers.

  11:35 P.M.

  Thames House

  “The threat is imminent,” MacCallum repeated, swearing under his breath. “Do whatever you have to do.”

  He replaced the phone in its cradle, looking up to see Simon Norris standing there. “Do you have anything on the identity of Muzhir’s companions?”

  The analyst shook his head. “Nothing yet, facial recognition isn’t coming up with anything on the men with him. They’re not in our systems.”

  “Then expand your search parameters and find them.” It wasn’t as simple as that and both men knew it, but it was their only option.

 

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