Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  No one ever gave a man out for a smoke a second glance.

  A child’s red bicycle lay abandoned in one corner of the courtyard, its training wheels still on. He noted its presence with a twinge of sadness—envisioning in that moment a father with his little son, guiding him along the street as his legs found the pedals for the first time.

  A father that would never be coming home.

  Fortunes of war. His face tightened, forcing an unfelt smile to his lips as he lifted his hand to knock.

  Once. Twice. Then again, a hard rap this time—and still nothing.

  He raised his hand, signaling back to Flaharty as he drew a set of lockpicks from the pocket of his jacket, selecting two from the small pouch.

  Come on now, he thought, slipping them into the lock as he knelt down by the door—listening as the tumblers moved under the careful pressure.

  He had done this so many times over the years. Despite what they showed in the movies, many times picking a door was more expedient than kicking it in.

  Speed. Surprise. Violence of action. The balance of those core principles, ever so delicate. Often, as now, the need for surprise outweighed all other considerations.

  There. The lock gave, turning in his hand—and he stood, pocketing the lockpicks as he pushed the door open, motioning for Flaharty to follow him in.

  The small entrance hall was empty—a staircase there before them leading up into the second story of the flat.

  He heard the faint sound of voices in that moment, and Harry gestured for Flaharty to stay at the foot of the stairs as he moved deeper into the house, unzipping his jacket to have access to his pistol.

  There was a living room immediately off the hall to the left—a bay window facing the street. Empty.

  Another room to the right, and Harry prodded the door open with his foot. A washing machine and half-filled laundry basket greeted his gaze. Laundry room.

  The next doorway to the right opened into a kitchen, the voices becoming clearer as he stepped across the threshold.

  A radio. The smooth, polished accents of the BBC announcer coming from across the room.

  He could feel himself relax, his hand easing away from the butt of his Sig-Sauer. False alarm.

  Another step, rounding the edge of the kitchen’s island—and he stopped stock-still, his breath catching in his throat.

  Caitlyn Murray lay at his feet…her body splayed out across the tile of the kitchen floor—long brown hair fanned out around her head in a grotesque caricature of a halo.

  Her snow-white tank top was torn and stained with blood—the hilt of a steak knife protruding from her belly as if it had pinned her to the floor.

  Eyes open and staring vacantly toward the ceiling. Eyes which would never see anything. Ever again.

  4:28 P.M.

  Ashton-under-Lyne

  There was something eerie about watching the assault unfold this way, Mehreen thought, staring at the laptop in the back of the armed response van. The split screen displaying the jerky, streamed video from the helmet cams of each team’s point man.

  There was no sound beyond the shuffle of men in riot gear moving into position—they’d be communicating solely by hand signals at this point, and she knew that.

  Nichols had warned that there would be guards out. Had told her to expect resistance.

  And there was no one. She cursed under her breath, half-fearing that she had been played once more. It couldn’t be. For Aydin’s sake…and her own.

  She glanced over to see the American regarding the screen intently, remembering Darren’s warning about Parker. “He’s ops, not an intel officer. No idea why they sent him.”

  If that was true, no doubt he had seen assaults like this before. Participated in them, even. His advice would have been invaluable.

  But Jimenez had introduced him as an intelligence liaison, and so they were stuck playing out this little charade.

  They were closing in on the central building now, she saw, taking a step back from the laptop as she looked around the parking lot. As if she could glimpse the raid on the warehouse going down, nearly a mile distant.

  There was a mighty crash from the laptop’s speakers as the entry team’s Enforcer battering ram smashed into the side door of the warehouse—taking the door off its hinges. There was a reason Special Branch referred to it as “the big key.”

  The camera shuddered, then came up once more—the point man’s H&K entering the frame as he swept back and forth, reveal the vast open expanse of the warehouse floor.

  The empty expanse of warehouse floor. She could hear the shouts as the teams converged. “Clear…clear. Clear!”

  Another moment passed, dragging on with painful slowness. Then the constable’s face appeared on the screen—the visor of his tactical helmet pushed back. “Ma’am, there’s nothing here.”

  4:32 P.M.

  Hammersmith

  West London

  She’d been dead for…maybe thirty minutes, Harry thought, sliding his gloved hands beneath her in an instinctive check for a improvised explosive device.

  Not even long enough for her body to cool.

  “Any sign of the kid?” he asked as Flaharty came back into the room from his check of the upstairs.

  The Irishman shook his head, leaning heavily against the counter as he gazed down at Caitlyn Murray’s body. “Not a trace. My guess is tha’ he’s still at school.” He winced. “He’s gonna be there a long time.”

  “Someone got to her before us,” Harry observed, slowly rising to his feet. There was nothing they were going to be able to do here, their best lead lying dead at their feet.

  He glanced back toward the hall, his mind racing. The door had borne no marks of forced entry. No damage to the lock. “Someone she knew.”

  “Or had reason to trust,” Flaharty added ominously. “What did you tell your friend at Five?”

  “About this? Not a word.” Harry looked back at the body of the murdered woman, the blood-drenched clothing, the knife still protruding from her stomach. Her assailant would have had to have been looking her in the eye to deliver the blow, he thought—knowing all too well from experience. It was an intensely intimate manner of killing. “Even if I had…the Security Services wouldn’t do something like this.”

  “Oh, sod off, boyo,” Flaharty snapped. “What do you know about this? Any of this?”

  His index finger jabbed out toward Harry, eyes flashing with a dark fury as he continued. “You haven’t seen what I have, so don’t you dare stand there and pretend to lecture me on what that lot is capable of. I knew Mairead Farrell well…” his voice faltered, trembling with emotion. “She was a beautiful woman, one of the finest—the bravest—women I have ever had the honor of knowin’. And the Regiment killed her that day on Gibraltar. Gunned her and the lads down like dogs in the street.”

  “The shoot was justified,” Harry fired back, only too familiar with the story. Operation Flavius had been long before his time, but it was still used at the Farm as a textbook example of what covert units did not do. “She was there to bomb the changing of the guard.”

  The murderous look in Flaharty’s eyes never wavered. “So was I.”

  The next moment—before Harry could respond—his cellphone began to ring.

  4:36 P.M.

  The warehouse

  Ashton-under-Lyne

  There was little mistaking the tone of Nichols’ voice for anything other than genuine surprise, Mehreen thought. But he was an old hand, and she had been wrong about him before.

  It was so hard to escape the fear that he had been one step ahead of her the whole way. “What do you mean they’re not there?”

  “You tell me,” she retorted, an edge of anger in her voice. Reminding herself not to use his name on an open line. “The constables just finished sweeping the warehouse, for the second time. It’s empty—no sign of anything ever having been stored there.”

  There was dead silence from the other end of the line for a long m
oment and she felt the anger boil over. “This nation is in the middle of a crisis today, and I diverted precious assets away to deal with this intel. Intel you assured me was credible. If this is all part of some elaborate ploy of yours—if you’ve been playing me, so help me I’ll—”

  The flat

  Hammersmith

  West London

  “I’m not playing you,” Harry responded honestly, shooting Flaharty a look. And he wasn’t…but he knew where her mind had gone. Knew why.

  He’d said it so many times through the years—you had two choices in life when it came to dealing with people.

  Never lie to them—or never get caught.

  Because once you’d been caught, they would have no reason to ever trust you again.

  With Mehreen, both of those choices were firmly in his rear-view mirror. It was the price you paid for being a spy.

  It was why he had never been able to bring himself to lie to Carol—a desperate attempt to keep those parts of his life separate. To keep some things holy. Until the night they had smashed irrevocably together, leaving everything in ashes.

  Looking down at Caitlyn Murray’s butchered corpse, it all came back.

  Focus, he thought, his hand balling into a fist as he struggled to think clearly. As powerful as the desire for vengeance had become, he couldn’t let it overcome him. Not now.

  “The weapons were there—I saw them being moved with my own eyes.”

  “I want to believe you,” she responded after a moment, “but I have nothing to go on—no reason to. There’s no evidence anything was ever here.”

  He shook his head. He had been prepared for this from the beginning. Would never have risked the weapons being delivered without the safeguard of the trackers.

  And that was all he needed now.

  The warehouse

  Ashton-under-Lyne

  “I don’t ask that you trust me, I only ask that you give me the chance to prove that what I’ve been telling you was true. I can set this right.”

  Words. Mehreen shook her head—glancing back down the alley toward the warehouse. Her foot kicking absently at a rusty tin. It seemed surreal that she was even considering trusting him.

  And yet she was. Another moment, and she sensed movement from behind her. Turned to see the American standing there at the end of the alley, maybe twenty feet away. His eyes searching her face.

  “Look,” she said, lowering her voice, “I can’t talk about this any further right now.”

  “I understand,” he replied, clearly picking up on her tone. “When I have updated intel, I will send it to your phone. Keep it with you and turned on.”

  “It will have to be soon.” She ended the call without saying goodbye, shoving the burner phone back into her pocket as she walked back toward Parker. “Have the constables completed their final sweep?”

  “They have,” Thomas nodded, watching the woman as she moved by him. There was something…his British counterparts had been keeping him in the dark ever since his arrival—that was to be expected. But this was different.

  The phone. He closed his eyes, replaying the scene through his mind. It was different—black, not the grey case he had seen earlier on the flight in.

  He looked up, staring as she moved back toward the warehouse, accosting the lead constable as she neared the trucks. Crawford would bear watching.

  4:41 P.M.

  The flat

  Hammersmith, West London

  No. He ran a hand over his face, standing in the flat’s small bathroom—looking up to see his own reflection in the mirror.

  Dead, lifeless eyes stared back at him, sunken deep into a face he scarce recognized as his own. Perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps that too had been lost along the way.

  He reached down, checking the phone again as if to assure himself that it wasn’t true.

  But it was. And they were gone.

  He had gambled on vengeance and lost the roll of the dice. If you set out for revenge, dig two graves.

  But this…there were going to be far more than two graves. The blood on his hands now far too deep a stain to be erased.

  The disappearance of the weapons, the murder of Caitlyn Murray before they could question her—it was all falling into place.

  Somewhere, somehow…something was going very wrong. It was a sick feeling, like sliding off a cliff.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said to Flaharty, walking back out into the kitchen. They were being set up—he could feel it in his bones.

  “What’s going on, old son?”

  “I’ll explain in the car,” Harry replied, casting one final glance back at the young woman’s body. The blood on the floor. They couldn’t cover her up, couldn’t leave any trace of their presence. Everything just as they had found it.

  He could only pray that her son never had to see her—like this. He shook his head. Lately, answers to prayer…it hadn’t been a good batting average.

  “That was your contact at Five, wasn’t it?” the Irishman demanded as Harry led the way out into the entry hall.

  He didn’t answer, his mind racing—trying to stay one step ahead of an opponent he couldn’t even begin to name. His hand closed around the doorknob, started to pull it open.

  And then he stopped, a sudden premonition washing over him. Something.

  “You stayed on that call too soddin’ long,” Flaharty continued, not waiting for an answer he apparently didn’t need. “They could have traced your position in—”

  “Eighteen seconds,” Harry responded, cutting him off. He motioned for the Irishman to stay where he was, moving carefully into the living room of the small flat, its bay window giving a view of the street. The cars parked without, all of them exactly as they had been when they’d entered the flat. Except one—a dark grey Toyota Camry across the street from them, two men visible inside. “I know what I’m doing—I’ve worked their side, remember?”

  “Sure an’ it’s hard for me to forget,” Flaharty retorted from the hall, an edge of menace in his words.

  Suspicion.

  Distracted, Harry turned back from the window, his eyes locked with the Irishman’s, seeing the look of skepticism written there. Stabilize the asset, he thought—old instincts rising to the fore past the surge of emotion that had overcome him at the sight of Caitlyn Murray’s body. The instincts that had kept him alive for a decade and a half in the field.

  Prioritize. Compartmentalize. If he lost Flaharty…he lost control of this mission. It was that simple.

  “The weapons were gone, Stephen,” he announced with all the calm he could muster. “And the trackers.”

  The surprise in Flaharty’s eyes couldn’t have been more genuine. Surprise, along with a nameless fear. They both knew that the Security Service hadn’t been told about the trackers.

  He glanced back to the window in time to see the driver’s side door of the Camry come open, the driver seeming to glance down at something in his hand before looking up. Directly at the flat.

  “And we’ve got company.”

  4:46 P.M.

  Go in, the text read—confirming his query of a few moments before. He didn’t like this, but they had waited long enough.

  The man paused, glancing once more across the street as his partner pushed open his door of the Camry. As three more men came walking up from just down the street where they had parked the second car.

  “Lewis, Taylor—Collins,” he began, addressing the new arrivals as he pulled a Sig-Sauer P226 from a holster beneath his jacket and screwed a suppressor into the threaded barrel, “you three take the back—go through the alleyway. Rogers and I will take the front.”

  He said nothing more, briefly brass-checking the chamber of his pistol as they began to advance across the street. Nothing more needed to be said—he’d led these men into battle before. And now, as then, they had their orders.

  They weren’t going to have much time, Harry thought as he hit the heavy steel door at the back of the flat—his pist
ol coming up in both hands as he stepped out into the fading afternoon light, eyes sweeping the surrounding rooftops.

  Nothing.

  “Who are they, and how the devil did they find us?” Flaharty demanded, wincing in pain as he hurried out the door behind him.

  Harry ignored him—those would be questions for a later time. If there was a later. Whoever was coming for them…they’d had training. Not in countersurveillance, or their monitoring of the flat would have been significantly less sloppy. But he couldn’t count on them slipping up again.

  “Go,” he hissed, motioning to Flaharty and gesturing down the alley. It was tight, long and narrow, high terrace houses on both sides—a kill box. And neither of them were in shape for a long run.

  He found their drive to the flat replaying itself through his head. There were railroad tracks perhaps a kilometer to the west—he thought.

  It could be their salvation. Or a fatal dead end.

  And then he heard a shout from out on the street and knew their time was up. “Go!” he repeated, giving the Irishman a shove down the alley as he stepped back, taking up his position to one side of the back door. Calm down.

  He leaned back against the wall, his fingers sweaty against the pistol grip. Trying to slow his breathing. To find that place deep within—that cold, dark place every fighter knew. You didn’t know her, the voice admonished. She was just a woman, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Like Carol.

  He shook his head angrily, furious at himself for the weakness—his fingers clenching around the butt of the gun. Get a grip.

  The next moment, a man in dark street clothes came around the edge of the building from the side alley, taking the corner wide. His pistol already raised.

  Harry shot him twice, high in the chest—the cycling slide of the Sig-Sauer making more noise than the report itself.

  And there was no rage—not anymore. No anger. Just nothing. A dangerous calm, like that in the eye of a hurricane.

  His target staggered back, but didn’t go down until Harry put another bullet in him, the 9mm slug ripping through his throat and out the back of his neck.

  He went down in the dirt of the alley, legs kicking—blood pouring from the throat wound as he strove to staunch the flow with his hand.