Vegas.
“I gave you an order, soldier,” the second man continued, his eyes locked on the face of the man he had called “Davies.” “This is the end of this—lay down your gun.”
But his own weapon was still clutched in his right hand—not raised, not pointed—but still there. Still a threat.
What was his game?
Movement—something off to the far right distracted Harry, the figure of Flaharty in the darkness on the edge of the clearing.
“Oh, sod off,” came back Davies’ reply, angry and bitter. “You’re not in the army anymore, mate.”
Circling, moving in for the kill. Flaharty was running his own play—improvising in a game where improvisation got people killed more often than not. A roll of the dice.
Snake eyes.
A fallen branch gave under the Irishman’s foot a moment later, snapping with a loud crack—shattering the nervous tension, the stillness that had fallen over the clearing.
The world seemed to blur around him, leaving the target revealed in startling clarity as Harry struggled to regain his sight picture—seeing the man’s finger tighten around the trigger.
No shot, no shot. Not even close.
The thunder of a single pistol shot echoed through the night and the figure of Ismail Besimi pitched forward, crumpling to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.
Mehreen’s scream pierced the darkness, a high-pitched, keening wail he had heard so many times before. Afghanistan. Pakistan.
Harry stood there, seemingly frozen in time, finger still curled around the trigger of the Sig-Sauer as he watched Davies topple, as if slow-motion, the side of his head blown half-away.
His head jerked right, taking in the sight of the other British soldier standing there—tears running down his shadowed cheeks, the Glock still extended in his outstretched hand.
“I’m sorry, mate,” he whispered bitterly, looking down at the body of the man he had slain. “So bloody sorry.”
1:49 A.M.
An Internet café
Leeds
The café was nearly empty when Tarik Abdul Muhammad entered, ordering a cup of coffee black, with no sugar, before taking his seat in a far corner and firing up the laptop he had dug from a messenger bag.
He still hadn’t slept, the dark circles forming under his eyes and the dress shirt giving him the look of an overworked office functionary.
To kill the Queen. It wasn’t an impossible feat, at least not from what the British soldier had showed him of her security.
No. He shook his head, running a weary hand over his face as the laptop’s browser opened. Nothing was impossible with Allah.
It was a faith that had carried him from the mountains of Afghanistan—through his humiliation at the hands of the Americans at Camp X-Ray. Perhaps even that humiliation—that humbling—had been of God, to prepare him for the coming struggle.
For had not the Prophet himself, peace be upon him, indeed known humiliation at the hands of the idolaters of Mecca?
A map expanded in the browser and he used the mouse to zoom in on the location, eyeing the topography carefully as the satellite overlay refreshed.
They had the men. Not just the zealous, untrained college students that had rallied around him at the warehouse earlier in the week, but hardened mujahideen—British citizens who had answered the call of jihad and traveled to Syria to fight against the apostate regime of Bashar al-Assad.
And more would rise, as the rights of the faithful across the UK continued to be trampled upon—as the government cracked down. Of that he was sure.
The men…God had supplied. Insh’allah, he thought, a shadow passing over his face at the memory of the British soldier’s words. “Be careful who you trust, Shaikh. What you tell your men. Better to give them a form of the plan, if necessary, rather than the plan itself.”
Sound advice, even coming from a proud and wicked man. Tarik fished the mobile from his shirt pocket, glancing once more at the last text he had received from Hashim Rahman.
Who to trust?
2:12 A.M.
The forest
Hertfordshire
Money. Ideology. Compromise. Ego. Cold War intelligence officers had coined the acronym “MICE” to summarize the four most common reasons a man decided to betray his country. His cause.
Harry stared through the windshield of the van, letting the silence do its work. Which was it this time?
He suppressed the urge to glance at his watch. Mehreen and Flaharty would either be safely away by now, or they wouldn’t—and there was nothing he could do to aid them in either case.
And the imam…Harry grimaced. The old man hadn’t been so much as touched by the bullet that had ended his captor’s life, but the strain of what he had gone through had been another matter entirely. He’d had to help Mehreen carry him back to the Audi.
“The bombing at Madina,” the former soldier began again, his voice trembling with emotion, “wasn’t meant to kill anyone. Or at least that’s what I was told. It was only supposed to destroy the building. Send a message.”
Send a message. He shook his head. Mission accomplished.
“But when I saw that building explode,” the man’s body shuddered at the memory, “I knew it wasn’t an accident. Perhaps I’d known all along, perhaps I was just blinded by what had happened to Alice.”
Revenge. You gaze into the maw of a gaping chasm, and it gazes back into you. A man becomes that which he has beheld. He knew something about that.
Harry put his hand on the edge of the lowered driver’s side window, feeling something wet and sticky between his fingers. Blood. From the driver he had shot an hour earlier, the man’s body lying scarce five meters from where they now sat.
“I’ve been prepared to die for my country,” the man continued, staring off into the night. “For a long time. And I’ve had to kill for my country—more than once, there in Iraq. But the bombing of the mosque, the killing of civilians. That’s what they did. I can’t be a part of it, and I can’t bloody well stand by and watch it happen.”
Assessing the credibility of a potential asset…it was one of the most difficult tasks of any intel officer, and the one you never stopped doing.
Not if you were doing your job.
“So,” he began, glancing over at the man who sat in the passenger seat, his hands bound in his lap with a zip-tie, “if I call Barnet and ask for an Alice Gordon, what will they tell me?”
A shake of the head. “Alice Thompson—she was married—sodding chav left her after six months, but she still carries his name.”
Made sense. It was either the truth, or a detailed lie. The best always were. “If I’m going to let you go back in there—run you as an agent against the nationalists, I need to know that I can trust you.”
There was no such thing as trust, never would be—no matter what happened. But there was often an advantage in allowing people to think otherwise.
He paused, measuring his words carefully. “Conor Hale…what’s his endgame?”
Gordon flashed him a sharp look, surprise spreading across his face. “I didn’t—”
2:15 A.M.
Hertfordshire
“Drive.” That’s what Mehreen Crawford had told him, her eyes betraying the truth. She’d as soon have put a bullet in the back of his head and driven the car herself.
Flaharty grimaced at the thought, glancing up at the rear-view mirror to catch a glimpse of her in the back seat. Speaking gently in a foreign language of some sort as she held a bottle of water up to the imam’s parched lips.
“How’s he doin’?” the Irishman asked finally, a gruff edge to his voice.
“Why?” She demanded, looking up from Besimi’s recumbent form, anger playing across her features. No truce. “What concern is it of yours?”
“Because I was bloody well nearly shot rescuing him, that’s why,” Flaharty retorted in exasperation. But the words rang hollow even in his own ears. Why?
&nb
sp; He could feel the bulge of the small Kimber pressing against the waistband of his trousers, knew that if he wanted to save his own life, he should have killed the intelligence officer the moment she entered the car.
Didn’t know why he hadn’t. “You turned tout.” Davey’s words, ringing in his ears, a reminder of all he had betrayed.
No. And he could feel himself standing there over his old friend’s body—the checkered grip of the pistol biting into his palm. A wave of nausea threatening to overcome him as he realized what he must do. “Davey, Davey, Davey…what has become of us?”
What, indeed? Years of betrayal and lies, culminating in a single pistol shot. The execution of a friend.
A part of himself dying there on the floor of that flat with Malone. In the moments that followed, he had nearly turned the pistol on himself.
Ended it all. Right then, right there.
He met the intelligence officer’s eyes in his rear-view mirror, saw the grief, the loss written in their depths. Knew that this road ended only in death…his or hers. Sooner or later.
But that was something that would have to be decided at a later date. He cleared his throat, weighing his words carefully. “You have a bolthole handy?”
2:21 A.M.
The forest
“You didn’t give me his name,” Harry cut him off. “You didn’t have to. I served with Hale a time or two in the sandbox. He was Regiment—not a man to be taken lightly, as I remember him.”
Gordon nodded, a distant look entering his eyes. “That hasn’t changed. We were in 1 Para together—he made it through Selection. I didn’t.”
Old comrades, Harry thought, watching the man out of the corner of his eye. As if this wasn’t dicey enough already. “Is that going to be a problem?”
There was a long pause, as the soldier seemed to consider the question. Then, “No. Hale has to be stopped. The people I helped him kill at Madina, the constables that were executed out on the highway tonight—they’re only the beginning.”
“And the endgame?”
“A race war in this country…how he intends to achieve it, I don’t know. But I can find out.”
Promises. He had heard it all before. Langley would never have approved an op like this—would have judged the danger far too high. The risk of blowback.
But when you found yourself staring down the muzzle of fate, sometimes risk was all that was left to you.
Harry pulled the Sig-Sauer from within his jacket, briefly brass-checking the chamber in the darkness of the vehicle. “If you’re going to sell the story of your escape to Conor Hale,” he said, noting the look of alarm in Gordon’s eyes, “you’re going to need to have something to show for it.”
A few moments later, the muffled cough of a suppressed gunshot came from within the van.
3:09 A.M.
Thames House
London
“How did it happen?” the DG asked, dropping his overcoat across the back of the conference room chair before taking his seat—tenting his fingers before him as he gazed down the table at his people.
He’d known far too many of these nights throughout the years. Asked that question more times than he cared to remember, found it answerless more often than not. How did it happen?
“The prisoner transport was ambushed on the M-1 in Hertfordshire just south of Luton,” Alec MacCallum said wearily, looking up from his notes. Like Marsh, he had been in bed when the attack happened.
“They stopped the transport using an overturned artic to block the motorway…we’re still looking into how they acquired—”
“No,” Norris interjected, cutting his section chief off as he entered the conference room late, dropping a stack of folders onto the table. “We found the owner of the lorry—a shipping company out of Sheffield. I just got off the call with them. The artic was stolen two days ago, we’ve confirmed their report with South Yorkshire.”
“But?” Marsh pressed, sensing hesitation in the analyst’s voice. Or perhaps it was just weariness.
“But, South Yorkshire has no suspects. The way things have been blowing up with the riots, they’re stretched thin—haven’t even begun to look.”
“And we’ve lost Ismail Besimi,” the DG mused. There was something about the way this had played out, the precision with which the transport had been targeted. The timing of it all. “Get ahold of Mehreen Crawford, if she’s not already on her way in.”
Norris and MacCallum exchanged an awkward glance, the silence seeming to swell and fill the room.
The section chief spoke first. “Mehreen has dropped off the grid. No one’s seen or heard from her since she left here last night—her phone’s been either destroyed…or deactivated.”
3:09 A.M.
The harbor of Grimsby
Lincolnshire
He had always felt most at home on the water, Hale thought, feeling the spray-slick deck of the ship move beneath him as it rode at anchor within the breakwater. Ever since he was a lad in Liverpool, growing up on the docks.
In retrospect, it might have seemed strange that he hadn’t found his home in the Royal Navy—but fate had had other plans. And it wasn’t as though the Regiment had exactly been opposed to infiltrating their target from the sea, wherever possible.
From the sea. He smiled. It was the best way to get anywhere unnoticed and without warning, as the Vikings who had first come to the marshes of Grimsby in the 9th Century had known all too well.
And now they were about to implement the same strategy. He paused, his hands resting easily in his pockets as he stared up at the superstructure of the ship he had pressured Colville to buy, its containers looming large against the harbor lights, the stark silhouette of Grimsby’s Dock Tower visible in the distance beyond them.
Built and launched from Barrow-in-Furness by the now-defunct Vickers Shipbuilding & Engineering, Ltd. in 1972, the MV Percy Phillips had started life as a cargo vessel, the type of small container ship known as a “feeder.”
Now…well, now the Percy Phillips was their transport, command center, and storage facility rolled into one. Inconspicuous, and above all, mobile.
And soon to set sail.
He gazed back across the water, toward the wharfs filled with offloaded cargo and fish—lights shining in the darkness, heavy equipment at work even at this hour. Toward the sleeping town beyond All of England encapsulated in that scene…all that he loved.
All that he was about to lose—forever.
He had no illusions about what was to come, the devastation their actions would unleash. Perhaps Colville did…
War. Only those who had seen it could understand it. Could grasp the enormity, the evil of it. The parts that never made it into the history books, the movies.
He had.
But the war, was already here—whether they wanted it or not. The war he and his mates had waged in the desert, following them home.
Inevitable as the tide. He started to turn, to go belowdecks, but the vibration of his mobile against his hip arrested him.
Gordon. “Yes?” Hale began, flipping the burner open. “Have you taken care of the package?
The voice on the other end was weak, strained. Almost unrecognizable. But it was Gordon. “Negative,” he managed, “the mission was a failure, a bloody cock-up. I’m wounded—on foot. The lads, they’re dead.”
Dead. The words struck Hale with the force of a physical blow, staggering him. How?
“All right,” he said, struggling to pull himself back together. There was no time for grief—there never was, in the middle of a war. All of it locked away, until you got home. Except this time, there was no going home. “Give me your location, mate. I’m comin’ for you.”
3:17 A.M.
Hertfordshire
“Right you are,” Gordon breathed as his old friend acknowledged the directions, the words escaping through gritted teeth as he leaned back against the utility pole by the roadside—his hand pressed firmly against the wound in his thigh, his torn
undershirt forming a compress. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
He closed the phone, nausea nearly overwhelming him as he looked down at his bloody hand in the darkness, the wound beneath.
It was a straight in and out—through the meat of his thigh, missing the bone but leaving a nasty hole.
The American knew his business. Something to show for it.
He looked down the long road—not a house or a car as far as the eye could see. He had already come two miles. Perhaps he could move, get to a better vantage point. Perhaps.
His head swam as he tried to rise once more to his feet, finding himself weakened from the blood loss.
He had to stay lucid—had to keep it together. Had to. It was the only way to pull this off, to successfully regain Hale’s trust. To betray a friend.
Davies’ face loomed large before his eyes as he slipped in and out of consciousness. A look of shock, betrayal—frozen in time as his broken body toppled to the ground.
And this…was only the beginning.
6:49 A.M.
The bus station
Sheffield
Mingle with the crowd. Just keep moving forward. Don’t draw attention to yourself.
Anymore, most people avoided eye contact, so you did as well. Observe without being observed.
Remain faceless.
Harry pushed his way to the back of the Leeds-bound bus, taking his seat across from a kid who looked fresh out of college, dressed in business attire, his eyes focused on the screen of the mobile phone in his hand.
The mood was nervous, he noted, reading the body language of those boarding behind him. As well it should be—with cars overturned and set on fire only hours before following clashes between police and rioters who seemed to have mostly been drawn from Sheffield’s Somali community.
He’d ditched the van an hour before, more than a few kilometers to the south, its upholstery still spattered with blood and brain matter. DNA evidence all over—none of it his.
He had no illusions. They would find it soon enough. That was a given. In this game, you rarely got to stay more than one step ahead of your opponent.
And you had to pray that one step would be enough.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 37
