Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  Her counterpart’s mobile rang suddenly, the noise unexpected and startling in the stillness of the van. She glanced over to see him checking the phone for a message. “It’s Dennis,” he said, reaching over to unlock the van’s side door from the inside. “He’s back.”

  The door slid to the side as Jan leaned back in her seat, stretching to keep her legs from falling asleep. The coffee would certainly help.

  Her first indication that something was wrong was the metallic sound of something striking, then rolling across, the floor of the van. Accompanied by an ominous hiss. Gas.

  It was a surreal feeling, the realization of being under attack. Something strangely disembodied about it all.

  She could hear her voice screaming a warning, her eyes already watering as the CS gas began to tear at her throat, a cloud of it filling the van. Fight or flight.

  They had no means for the former—she turned, unable to find the British officer amidst the smoke—desperately hoping to reach the open door. To escape.

  Eyes burning, she staggered across the van just as the door slid shut, her fingers unable to find a purchase in the metal. Weakening.

  It occurred to her far too late that their only hope was to reach the other van, her comms headset still on the ledge by her chair. Abandoned.

  She turned back to get it only to find that she lacked the strength, her body convulsing into wracking coughs. Collapsing to the floor, nearly unable to breathe.

  Unable to speak.

  Harry could hear the bodies of the British officers fall to the floor of the vehicle—waiting another moment until he wrenched the door of the surveillance van back open with a gloved hand. His eyes beginning to water through the black balaclava as he plunged unprotected into the cloud of gas.

  The memories flooding back. Training at The Farm at Camp Peary, Virginia. A CS grenade being tossed into a room full of recruits, the booming, distorted voice of a masked instructor counting slowly from amidst the haze.

  Thirty seconds, a minute…a minute and a half. Then, and only then—eyes burning and nearly choking from the gas—were they permitted to begin putting on their own masks.

  He had ninety seconds.

  Removing a riot baton from within his jacket, he stepped over the incapacitated woman lying on the floor—smashing the computer screen with the tip of the baton. Ripping out the wires of the van’s comms system.

  He spotted a cellphone by the computer and brought the butt of the baton smashing down into its screen, the time frozen beneath the shattered glass. 11:13.

  His eyes flickered up to the screens, the surveillance imagery showing the interior of the imam’s flat—and inserted a thumb drive into the USB port of the terminal, uploading a worm into the system.

  Sixty seconds.

  11:16 P.M.

  The Rahman residence

  The boy had failed them, Hashim Rahman thought, running a hand over his beard as he stared at the screen of his computer. The martyrdom video pulled up in a window.

  There was no way to avoid that truth…not now, not in the light of the hours that had passed since he was supposed to have martyred himself.

  A curse upon him, Rahman breathed, his face darkening. And all those who fled in the day of battle. One third of them shall flee, and Allah shall never forgive them.

  Truly had the Prophet spoken.

  He felt his wife’s presence in the doorway and quickly minimized the video. “Are you coming to bed?”

  “Soon,” he replied, not looking at her. “I have been talking on-line with a student from the university. A very perceptive young man. He has many questions about Islam, about how it would be possible for him to revert.”

  “Mash’allah,” she exclaimed, coming up behind him and resting her hands on his shoulders—her eyes visible in the reflection of his screen, her hair unbound in the privacy of their home, now framing her face. So beautiful.

  A gift from God, in reward for his faithfulness. He took her fingers in his, pressing his lips against the back of her hand. “Is Huma asleep?”

  “She is,” his wife smiled. “Long ago. And you?”

  A sound struck his ears before he could respond, faint and indistinct—coming from somewhere toward the front of the flat. He froze, his body suddenly rigid and tensed. “What was that?”

  “I heard nothing.”

  “Stay here,” he warned, pushing her to one side as he moved toward the hall. Could it be Special Branch?

  No. The British special police would have come in loudly—battering rams and bullhorns. Striking terror into the hearts of all around. Intimidation.

  This was something different. He made it to the end of the darkened hall, almost to the kitchen—his hand groping out for the light switch.

  There.

  The blow came without warning out of the darkness, an elbow catching him on the point of the chin and snapping his head back.

  Stars exploded in his brain from the force of the impact, a thousand points of dizzying light as the floor rushed up to meet him. He heard a man’s voice roaring out, “Where is the Shaikh? Tell me the location of Tarik Abdul Muhammad!”

  And then his wife began to scream.

  Speed. Surprise. Violence of action.

  “On the floor. Now!” Harry bellowed, aiming the suppressed Sig-Sauer at the woman cowering ten feet away. The anger, the rage he had suppressed for so long, now flooding out of him—his gun hand trembling.

  Aydin’s face rising before him, along with that of Ismail Besimi. Victims of this man, both of them. No more.

  “What do you want from us?” she screamed, falling to her knees, her hands raised—tears streaming down her cheeks, unable to take her eyes off the prostrate form of her husband. “Ya Allah, what do you want?”

  “Ask your husband.” He kicked Rahman in the ribs with a booted foot as the man attempted to rise, the blow connecting with a sickening crunch—sending him back against the wall, doubled up in pain.

  Cowering like the dog he was, as if fearing another kick. He dropped to one knee, the Sig-Sauer in his right hand as he quickly frisked the imam—running his free hand over his body. No weapons.

  As he had expected. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw the woman start to rise, to flee—turned to stare at her through the black mask. “If you so much as stir from that spot,” he warned, his voice as cold as ice, “I kill your husband where he lies.”

  11:19 P.M.

  The surveillance van

  God. The pain…the burning. She tried to open her eyes, but it felt as though they were on fire—her throat raw and inflamed.

  Rolling onto her stomach, Jan groped blindly for the edge of the open door—finding it and using it to pull herself forward. She fell out of the van to the curb, the fall knocking the breath from her body.

  Fresh air. She lay on her back, staring up at the night through her burning, tear-drenched eyes. Drinking in the fresh air in massive gulps, desperate for the pure oxygen.

  They had been attacked. But why? Who? The intelligence officer rolled to her knees, still struggling to breathe—feeling the rough pavement cut into her skin.

  Had to get to the other van. Had to get help.

  11:20 P.M.

  Rahman’s residence

  “I don’t…know the man,” Hashim Rahman whispered, his face contorted in pain.

  The man was a bad liar, Harry thought—and he had known many good ones. The imam’s eyes never met his own, darting all over the place like a caged animal seeking any route of escape. He knew far more than he was saying.

  But he was running out of time. The MI-5 surveillance teams would recover soon enough, and then there would be hell to pay.

  He forced himself not to glance at his watch, to give Rahman any idea of the constraints he was under. Maintain control.

  Use every ounce of leverage.

  “Look at me,” he began, lowering his voice so that only the two of them could hear, “you can tell me what I need to know and I’ll leave. But if you
refuse, you are going to sit here and watch while your wife’s brains decorate that wall. And then I will go upstairs and kill your daughter while she sleeps.”

  He watched impassively as Rahman recoiled at the words, his face growing pale with fear—his wife’s sobs filling the silence between them. And then it passed as quickly as it had come, a dark acceptance in the imam’s eyes as he glared at Harry. “I—I will see them once more in Jannah.”

  Paradise.

  Bluff called. Harry reached out, his free hand entwining in Rahman’s collar as he stood, pulling the man with him. He jammed the suppressor of the Sig-Sauer into his damaged ribs, his face expressionless as the imam grimaced in pain.

  “Skin for skin,” he spat, his face only inches away from Rahman’s, “yea, all that a man has will he give for his life. You’re coming with me.”

  Chapter 23

  1:07 A.M., April 2nd

  Outside Rahman’s Flat

  “It’s a N225 CS grenade, standard police issue,” the North Yorkshire constable announced, holding up the evidence bag to the glow of the lights now set up around the perimeter of what was now a crime scene. “No prints on the casing.”

  “Sod it,” Darren Roth murmured, taking a step away. None of this made sense. Nothing.

  He walked over to where the American woman was sitting in the back of an ambulance, a cup of water in her hand. She was drinking it down desperately, as though she couldn’t get enough. Parker standing beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder.

  There was something about the man, the ease with which he carried himself with women.

  But that wasn’t relevant. “We have a Security Service helicopter inbound on our location,” he said, walking up to the two of them. “About twenty minutes out. Ms. Traeg, I’m going to need to ask you to go with the officers back to Thames House for a full debrief on what happened here.”

  Parker shook his head, a challenge in his eyes. “That’s not the way this is going down, Roth. My officer, my rules. And Jimenez has already ordered us both to return to Grosvenor Square just as soon as medical clears Jan for travel.”

  Roth glanced back toward the terrace house to see Mrs. Rahman being escorted out by a pair of female constables. “You can’t be serious, mate—the Shaikh is in the wind, our second-best lead was just dragged from his house by parties unknown—and you want to start a sodding turf war with me?”

  “Those are the breaks,” Parker retorted, not giving an inch. “Maybe next time we tell you someone needs to be taken out of play, your people will pay it some heed. I’ll make sure Thames House receives a full summary of Ms. Traeg’s report.”

  Americans. Roth swore under his breath, shaking his head in barely suppressed fury. So bloody helpful.

  The worst part was that Parker was right. His personnel, his playbook. Not much he could do about it. The uncomfortable feeling of being held hostage on his own ground.

  Roth turned away after a moment, retrieving his mobile from its pouch on his belt. Time to get on the horn to Thames House—he needed more manpower.

  6:05 A.M.

  The industrial estate

  North of Leeds

  Torture. It wasn’t as unreliable as the media made out, Harry thought, glancing across the room at the unconscious form of his prisoner, hanging by his wrists from the steel support beams of the ground floor. That was a polite fiction designed to preserve the veneer of civilization. Keep everyone sleeping peacefully at night.

  In truth, everyone had a breaking point. It was just a matter of finding it.

  He should know—he’d once been on the other side. Held a prisoner by the Taliban back in 2008, tortured on an almost daily basis. They hadn’t broken him…but they’d come close. So very close. Closer than he’d ever admitted to anyone at Langley.

  You didn’t talk about things like that, not any more than you had to. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person—someone might get the idea that you were a liability to the team.

  Which is what had happened, in the end. He leaned back in the rusty metal chair, taking a sip from the bottle of spring water in his hand as he gazed at his prisoner. It was curious how little emotion he felt about that now—his firing from the Agency.

  Perhaps he had known it was coming, sooner or later. Some things were unforgivable.

  Like this. He screwed the cap back onto the bottle and set it aside, eyeing Hashim Rahman critically—his form starkly visible in the glare of the utility light Harry had placed on the floor a few feet away. He had passed out from the pain of his broken ribs nearly an hour before, his screams and curses fading away as he slipped from consciousness.

  Harry closed his eyes, feeling the anger build within him once again at the memory of Aydin’s face. Lying there in the mud, the panic frozen in his eyes at the moment of death.

  Rahman’s young wolves.

  Time for their master to pay the price for his sins. He rose from his seat and moved toward the small table at one end of the room, the duffel bag sitting atop it.

  Never use the same place twice. That was the conventional wisdom in his business. You never wanted to establish patterns, anything that could be used against you.

  But returning to the abandoned industrial estate where he had confronted Flaharty six days earlier had been a matter of necessity.

  Taking out the Security Service surveillance team was going to bring down more heat than he fancied dealing with, rendering a long drive with Rahman stuffed in the boot of the Vauxhall inadvisable, at best.

  And frankly, he was running short of boltholes. Which was all the more reason to bring this to an end.

  Harry unzipped the duffel bag, lifting Aydin’s suicide vest out and laying it to one side, harmless and inert for the time being—its remote detonator disabled.

  Another moment, and he found what he was looking for, a length of rubber hose about the length of a man’s forearm, from elbow to fingertip. His face hardening at the sight of it. The memories.

  He seized it in his right hand, moving back to stand before the suspended Hashim Rahman. Reaching up to pass his hand over the man’s face. Slapping him across the face when he did not immediately wake, first gently—then a second time, harder.

  Rahman’s eyes flickered open, wide and staring.

  “Time to wake up, Hashim,” Harry began, his face a death mask as he stared into the imam’s eyes. He drew his arm to the side, the hose describing a brutal arc as it came crashing back into Rahman’s broken ribs.

  The scream resounded off the walls of the small room, an anguished, terrorized sound. Harry seized Rahman’s chin in one hand, holding it in a vise grip as his entire body trembled, sobbing uncontrollably through the pain. Forcing the man to look at him. “You can make all this stop any time you want…just give me the location of the Shaikh.”

  And then the hose came slicing through the air once again…

  10:46 A.M.

  Leeds Central Police Station

  Park Street, Leeds

  This had been a bad idea. Which didn’t even begin to cover highly irregular.

  Darren shook his head. It had taken a special dispensation from Umar Hussein, the Chief Superintendent of the North Yorkshire Police, for him to be even permitted to question a detainee, despite the fact that her detainment had been orchestrated by the Security Services. He closed the folder, glancing across the table at the prostitute as he mentally prepared his plan of attack. Struggling against the exhaustion, the frustration of watching leads slip away over the last twenty-four hours. Mehreen.

  He had tried to get some sleep, but it had eluded him despite his best efforts. Lying there awake, staring up at the ceiling through the darkness. Questions without answers, haunting him.

  Sarah Russell might have been beautiful, even charming—when she wanted to be. When her business required her to be, he thought—staring into the woman’s eyes.

  But none of that was on display now, sitting across from him in the small room. He cleared his throat. “Do you know wh
y you’re here, Miss Russell?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, the same dead look in her blue eyes. Knowing everything, admitting nothing.

  “Same as the other times, I expect,” she said finally, meeting his gaze with a look that tried to rise to the level of defiance, but failed miserably.

  He shook his head. “While it’s true that you’ve not been always the most…discreet in your business affairs, that’s not why you’re here this morning.”

  Her eyes narrowed, registering surprise and suspicion. Distrust. He opened the folder again, extracting a single picture of Tarik Abdul Muhammad and passing it to her across the metal tabletop.

  “I don’t care about how you make your money, and the constables won’t either, not once I give them the word. I’m only interested in this man—your john from the other night at The Queens. What can you tell me about him?”

  11:34 A.M.

  Woodhouse Moor Park

  She didn’t know why she had come back, Mehreen thought, gazing up at the weather-worn statue of Arthur Wellesley, bronze-greened eyes staring impassively ahead as a light rain fell from the heavens, dripping from the feathers of the Duke of Wellington’s doffed bicorn.

  Her finger tracing the nearly washed away line of chalk which had signaled the deaddrop.

  It felt like returning to the scene of the crime. The place where her life had intersected once more with that of Ismail Besimi, only a week before.

  More like an eternity.

  Would he have asked for the meeting, had he known it would end in his death? One domino crashing into another, and another, and another. Until they all fell down.

  Ismail. Aydin. Nick. You were never prepared for the death of the ones you loved, no matter how much you attempted to steel yourself for its inevitability.

  And you couldn’t save them from themselves, in the end. Couldn’t even save them from…you.

  12:05 P.M.

  Thames House

  London

  “…fresh clashes have erupted between police and rioters as marchers carrying signs reading ‘Stop Moslem Immigration’ and ‘End Multiculturalism Before It Ends Us’ attempted to march upon the House of Commons this morning. In Birmingham, the investigation continues into the savage beating death of Sally Hines, the young mother dragged from her car in the middle of the riots. We go live…”