Just like old times.
“Plans have changed,” Hale responded, ignoring the pain coming from his side as he hoisted himself up into the door of the Agusta. A hastily thrown-on jacket covering his wound and his bloodstained shirt. “Gordon and I have some…business to take care of here yet. You’ll set down at Banchory—then proceed to link up with Delaney at the rally point. Hold there for my orders.”
“Aye, mate,” the soldier responded, reaching out and clasping Hale’s hand in his. “Solid copy.”
The Shaikh was going to have to manage this one on his own, Hale thought—lowering himself back to the ground and hurrying away from the helicopter, its rotor wash flattening the grass of the meadow around him, the roar rising to a deafening crescendo as the Agusta rose into the sky.
He reached for the phone in his pocket, its screen coming to life as he began to compose a message. Time to put a face to the voice. Meet the man who had turned his old comrade against him.
Chapter 29
12:32 P.M.
The safe house
Leeds, West Yorkshire
The intelligence business was slow, painstaking work. Punctuated by moments when the truth struck home with a sudden, startling clarity.
Those moments were the ones you didn’t want to believe. Much as you knew you had to.
“‘Just met with Hale,’” Harry said, glancing around the kitchen at Mehreen and Flaharty as he read the words off the screen of the burner phone in his hand. “‘Plans have changed. We need to meet, as soon as possible.’ He gives a time—1400 hours. And an address, looks like it’s north of the city.”
Guilt. He’d once thought it would get easier with time, but it never did. “‘Plans have changed,’” he heard Flaharty repeat, shaking his head from across the room. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means Paul Gordon is dead,” Harry responded flatly, his voice stripped of emotion. There was none left. “And we’re flying blind.”
A curse exploded from Flaharty’s mouth, shock filling Mehreen’s eyes as she demanded, “What do you mean—how do you know that?”
Losing an asset. The knowledge that you’d sent a man to his death. A crushing load, weighing you down. “The two messages don’t match up, the way the one was sent before it was finished. Now this one—the use of Hale’s name. I had warned Gordon that if he needed to use text messages to maintain comms, to only refer to Hale as ‘our friend from Lebanon.’”
Mehreen shook her head. “But that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve seen his service file. He was deployed to Iraq, then Afghanistan. Lebanon?”
“He was there too,” Harry replied firmly. “Along with Nick and me. Part of a CIA black op to pull out one of our assets out in the middle of the Israeli invasion in ‘06. Nick came home with a bullet in him.”
He could see the light dawning in her eyes, as if a long-asked question had just been answered. That was the reality of this world—men coming home with wounds they could never explain to their wives, their families. Pieces of themselves, scattered in places they’d never been.
Officially.
“Less than a dozen people knew we had support from the Brits to pull that off—even fewer knew their names. I didn’t explain it to Paul Gordon, just told him to be sure to use it. He might not have been experienced in this line of work,” Harry said, a grim edge to his voice, “but there’s no way he would screw that up.”
“So you’re saying what? This is…Hale?”
He nodded slowly. “I’m sure it is. Somehow he knows, but he doesn’t know much. He’s probing, trying to figure out who was running his man.”
“Oh, sod this for a bloody mess,” Flaharty exclaimed, shaking his head. “He’s setting a trap. Tell me, old son—do you have a plan?”
“I do,” Harry responded, meeting the Irishman’s eyes. “Walk straight into it.”
1:23 P.M.
The CIA off-site facility
City of London
“Bird coming on-line in ninety seconds,” one of the CIA analysts announced from the other side of the floor. “Beginning thermal sweep.”
Thomas Parker stood there beside the computers, hand resting on his hip as the spy satellite moved into position in low earth orbit three hundred miles above the English countryside—its live stream updating on the big monitors in the center of the room. Along with feeds being transmitted in real-time from the helmet cams of West Yorkshire firearms officers converging on the industrial estate.
Moving in tight formation from cover to cover, clearing as they went. Maintaining utter silence, only brief flashes of hand signals visible on the grainy feed.
“What’s their loadout?” he asked, turning to Norris. “Less-lethal?”
The Thames House analyst shook his head, sending a chill rippling down Thomas’ spine. “We’re not placing our people in that kind of jeopardy. They will, of course, do their utmost to take him into custody without violence—that’s what all our police are trained to do—but if he resists…”
And they had no leverage to do anything about it, Thomas realized, glancing over at David Lay to meet the director’s impassive gaze.
My God, he thought, his mouth suddenly dry. All those years, fighting alongside Nichols—he’d never dreamed it could one day come to this. Becoming responsible for his death.
If he’d ever needed a drink, it was now.
1:26 P.M.
The offices of the UK Daily Standard
Central London
To have come this close, Arthur Colville thought, listening to Conor Hale’s voice over the phone as he gazed out the window of his office five stories down into the streets of London. This close, and now risk losing it all.
Having Hale there with his sniper rifle had always been the plan. Insurance against the Queen surviving the attack.
Mirsab Abdul Rashid al-Libi. The real “Sword of the Prophet” was still in Syria, as far as they knew. His double camped out in a London hotel room, no doubt gorging himself on fast food and watching porn.
All part of the plan…deliberately false intel regarding the arrival of a jihadist sniper fed to the Security Services in order to cement the fiction, prepare the intelligence “battlespace” for the deployment of their own trained marksman.
And all now for naught. Hale, out of play. His men—well, this plan, like that of any successful conspiracy, had been kept close. The soldiers he had recruited were resting in the belief that the Security Services would be alerted in time. That the Queen, although placed in grave danger, would be kept safe.
The part they were to play had been to come after, descending in righteous fury upon the port of Aberdeen. Ensuring that the Shaikh would never live long enough to be brought to book before the quizmasters at Paddington Green. They couldn’t be relied upon to execute the primary mission itself.
Which meant that the fate of everything they had worked for was going to be left in the hands of the Shaikh himself.
“Enough, Conor,” Colville said finally, bringing the call to a close as he returned to his desk, lowering himself heavily into the chair. “What’s done is done. Do what you must…make sure none of this can be traced back to us.”
1:31 P.M.
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
“This is where we part ways,” Harry announced, tapping the brakes of the Vauxhall as the car rolled to a stop at the side of the road.
“The man was trained as a sniper,” Flaharty observed from the passenger’s seat, looking out over the rolling Yorkshire hillsides. “You told me yourself. He could pick you off on the way in, easy as fallin’ out of bed.”
“He could,” Harry conceded, tucking in a loose wire as he zipped up his leather jacket over the suicide vest he had taken from Aydin Shinwari, “but he won’t. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and getting me to talk is his only way of finding out.”
The Irishman snorted, clearly unconvinced. “Sure you’re willing to wager your life on that, boyo?”
There w
as no answer to that, Harry thought, staring out through the Vauxhall’s windshield. He’d wagered his life on far less over the years, gambling on the word of Langley’s analysts, a cadre whose unofficial motto was rumored to be “We bet your life.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he responded quietly after a long moment. “Capturing and interrogating Conor Hale, it’s the only way we get to the bottom of what’s going on here. We don’t have another option. If it means putting myself in the cross-hairs…then that’s what it means.”
He withdrew the pair of tactical headsets from the ruck Flaharty had brought with him, working the earpiece into his ear until the flesh-colored plastic was almost completely concealed. “You ever use these things before?”
The Irishman shook his head, reaching for his. “After my time, lad. I tried to get out, as you’ll be remembering.”
“I have both sets tuned to the frequency we’ll be using,” Harry said, ignoring Flaharty’s retort. “We’ll stay in contact through the earpieces—the radios have a range of nearly twenty miles. More than enough for our purposes.”
He reached into the pocket of his jacket, withdrawing a small prepaid mobile and handing it over. “There’s one number listed on this, and only one, the one that triggers this vest. If I give the word, you press SEND. No hesitation, no question.”
Flaharty took the phone from him, turning it over in his hand idly, as if considering something. “You know,” he said finally, looking up, “I could just wait until the moment you and Conor Hale are in the same room, and do just that. Blow the both of you straight to hell together—kill two birds with one stone, as it were. Save myself a lot of grief. I assume that thought’s occurred to you?”
“It has,” Harry replied, his eyes locking with the Irishman’s in a cold, hard gaze. “But you won’t do it.”
A harsh laugh. “You sure of that, lad?”
“I am. If you had even the slightest thought of seriously following through on it, you wouldn’t have breathed a word of it to me.”
“Fair enough,” Flaharty said, still chuckling. “But you have to admit, it’s a risk. So I have to ask…why did you ask me to come along? Why not the widow Crawford?”
It was a moment before Harry replied, looking off into the distance. Over the English countryside, blanketed in the verdant green of spring. Peace. An illusion so soon to be shattered.
“Because when it comes down to it,” he responded at last, glancing over at the former terrorist, “Mehreen doesn’t have it in her to pull that trigger. I’m counting on you to have no similar misgivings.”
1:39 P.M.
The farmhouse
Conor Hale wrapped the torn strips of his undershirt around his mid-section, wincing at his reflection in the mirror as he pulled them tight, forming a rude bandage.
He’d gotten lucky.
Gordon’s bullet hadn’t much more than grazed him, cutting a deep furrow across his side, but missing the ribs. Along with everything else vital. He’d had worse wounds in the sandbox and still picked up his rifle and ruck—headed out with his men.
He shrugged on his shirt, moving back toward the front of the house, its windows offering a clear view of anyone approaching up the drive.
The message he’d received in response from Gordon’s handler had been short and to the point. Impossible to read anything into. Solid copy. 1400 hours it is.
Which was now less than twenty minutes off.
Hale picked up the L42A1 from where it lay beside the chair, working the bolt to bring a single long 7.62mm cartridge into the chamber as he moved toward the back door—stepping out into the afternoon sun.
Time to get into position.
1:47 P.M.
The safehouse
Leeds, West Yorkshire
Scarcely ten minutes, Mehreen thought, glancing at her watch yet again. There hadn’t been so much as a whisper from either Harry or Flaharty since they had departed, leaving her alone in the old safehouse.
Waiting.
That was always the hardest part of intelligence work, the long, interminable waits. Hands tied with the certainty that there was nothing—nothing—you could do to alter the outcome. One way or the other.
Her mobile phone rang on the table and she grabbed it up, expecting to see the number of Nichols’ burner. Roth.
“Mehreen,” his voice came through, strained and urgent. “I just heard from my contact at GCHQ—we have an ID on the man behind Conor Hale. Put me on speaker, I need Nichols to hear this.”
“He’s,” she began, hesitating for a moment, “not with me right now.”
“What do you mean by that? Where has he gone?”
How to explain. Something she didn’t fully understand yet herself.
Going to confront Hale, that much she knew. But Harry’s face as he’d departed—it had been like staring into the face of Death itself.
“We received a message from his source—something’s wrong. The man may have been compromised. He and Stephen Flaharty headed out to deal with it.”
There was a moment of incredulous silence, then Roth swore loudly. “The two of them? Together? My God, Mehr…what were you thinking?”
“If the source has been burned, that affects everything,” she retorted, running a hand across her forehead. “We didn’t have another alternative.”
“You’re talking about a terrorist, and a rogue foreign intelligence officer, Mehr,” Roth shot back, raising his voice. “There is no ‘we’ about this—or have you somehow forgotten that?”
She shook her head angrily. “I haven’t forgotten anything. They were to meet with the asset—or with whoever reached out to make contact—at 1400 hours. I should be hearing from them soon.”
“And if you don’t?” her fellow officer challenged. “If they both decide to up and do a runner now that you’re not minding them? What happens then?”
He went on without waiting for her answer. “I’ll tell you what happens then—our careers, we’re done. Finished. The both of us.”
“I know,” she said quietly. Perhaps she had known ever since the night Nichols had shown up at her flat. That this was how it could end. “Just give me the name, Darren.”
“The numbers Nichols gave me belonged to a set of burner phones purchased at a mini-mart in Long Eaton. The man identified on CCTV as purchasing the phones…was Arthur Colville.”
2:01 P.M.
The farm
Harrogate
It was a quiet place, Harry thought, shifting the Vauxhall into park. The kind of place a man could go to reflect.
Or to die.
The rough gravel crunched beneath his feet as he made his way toward the ancient farmhouse—favoring his bad leg. A sprained ankle should have healed by now, he knew that.
But then he hadn’t exactly been giving it the kind of rest a doctor would have ordered.
He’d considered making a circuit of the property before he headed in, conducting the kind of reconnaissance protocol—and caution—dictated.
He shook his head, feeling the bulk of the suicide vest under his jacket as he raised his hand to knock. Protocol had no place in this. Not anymore.
2:03 P.M.
The CIA off-site facility
City of London
“Clear,” came the refrain again over the comms network, the feed from the helmet cams jerky and erratic as David Lay watched the Firearms Unit officers clear their way through the industrial estate, moving carefully and methodically. Like beaters searching the bush for a wounded lion. “Clear. Clear. All clear.”
The gruff voice of the sergeant in at their head, “Element moving on.”
“We lose coverage in another five minutes,” one of the Jimenez’s people announced, materializing at Lay’s side. “The bird’s moving out of range.”
He acknowledged her words with a nod, not trusting himself to speak. Frustration threatening to overwhelm him.
Thermal had given them nothing—just a real-time image of the British officers movin
g in. A single unaccounted-for heat signature early on—in the northwest quadrant of the estate—but that had proven to be nothing more than a homeless man passed out drunk, still clutching the nearly-empty wine bottle.
Nichols…nowhere to be found.
Lay swore softly, running a hand across his mouth as the cameras shifted, showing one of the teams moving down stairs leading to a part of the facility that was below ground. This had to be brought to an end, and soon. Otherwise they were going to find themselves in the middle of the biggest international incident the Agency had seen since Gary Powers had been brought down over Russia during the Cold War.
“We’ve got a door—it’s jammed,” he heard one of the officers announce, cameras shifting as the team moved into position. “Preparing to breach.”
A moment passed, and then the microphones crackled from the onslaught of a thunderous crash, a battering ram in the hands of five men smashing the door inward. “Clear. Clear. All—what is that sodding smell?”
There was a moment’s pause, then a flurry of curses. “Hold up, hold up. We’ve got a body.”
2:11 P.M.
The farmhouse
Harrogate, West Yorkshire
Silence reigned in the old house, the rhythmic tick of the grandfather clock in the hall without the only sound breaking the stillness.
Harry leaned back into the chair in the parlor, his eyes closed as if in sleep. Willing himself to have patience. To wait. Sooner or later, Hale was going to come to him.
And then—
A faint sound struck his ears in that moment, as if from a door being opened and closed softly. A footfall against the wooden timbers that made up the floor of this house.
Wait…
Conor Hale withdrew the Walther P99 from its holster on his hip as he entered the house. Raising it both hands as he moved, clearing each room as he went.
The man was alone, far as he’d been able to tell from his perch in the treeline, his rifle trained on the Vauxhall as it pulled up. He had never even looked his way, denying him a clear look at his face as he walked straight up to the front door.
Clearly suspecting nothing.
Hale shook his head. He’d expected more caution from a man who had been capable enough to have penetrated the group he had so carefully recruited.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 60
