Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  “Sure thing, bruv,” the nearest man responded, turning toward him. He was in his early thirties, his accent unmistakably that of South London—his face marking him as Asian. Pakistani, possibly? It wasn’t the first time he had seen a Londoner come north for work, though. “Just doing maintenance work on the cable—it’s buried right along the road here.”

  It seemed plausible enough, but still…

  “I’m going to need to see your work orders—do you have them on you?”

  The man smiled, reaching in the pocket of his uniform and unfolding a piece of paper. “Here you go.”

  The silence seemed to drag on forever—too long, Farid thought, sitting in the back of the utility van, one of the Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifles clutched in his weathered hands. The safety off, fire selector advanced to single-fire.

  If they were discovered…

  “Everything seems to be in order,” he heard the British policeman say finally, apparently satisfied by the forged work orders the Shaikh had provided them.

  Another moment passed, and then Abdullah opened the back door of the van. “He’s gone.”

  “Good,” Farid responded, safing the rifle and laying it to one side in the back. “The IED, is it in place?”

  “Almost.”

  4:34 P.M.

  It was impossible to read the former Royal Marine’s face—to discern what might be hidden behind his words. But there was no time for that. No time to sort out the agendas at play. They had to move, and move quickly.

  “Don’t even think it,” Roth warned as Flaharty came to his feet, snarling curses.

  The Irishman ignored him, starting to move forward—but Harry stepped between them, seizing Flaharty by the shoulder. “Enough, both of you. He’s coming with us.”

  “But—”

  Harry swung him around, his eyes blazing—their faces only inches apart. “I have no choice. In just over an hour, I’m going to need every man I can put behind a rifle.”

  “But he’s Security Service—an’ so is she,” Flaharty spat, throwing off his hand, “you can’t trust either of them. They will—”

  He glanced over to see Liam Malone standing there just a few feet away, shock written across the big Irishman’s face. “Five? You brought them here?”

  A light seemed to suddenly dawn in his eyes. Burning with wrath. “My God…Davey was right about you after all, wasn’t he? He told me he suspected you’d turned tout—but I never could ha’ believed it, you an’ him—all of us—were like brothers back in Belfast. But he was right.”

  Flaharty just stood there, looking sadly into the eyes of his old friend. “Our world changed, lad. I did what I felt was—”

  But the big Irishman wasn’t listening, the full implications of what he had said only then seeming to strike home, as he began to advance on Flaharty. “He was right…an’ you killed him for it, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  The situation had spiraled far out of control, far beyond the point of recovery. Harry glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye, up on the hill near the barn. An Irish wolfhound sitting there—and standing beside him, the lanky figure of a teenage boy. Liam’s son.

  He stepped directly in front of the big man, halting his advance—the Sig-Sauer materializing in his hands. Aimed at the man’s head.

  “You have two choices,” he began, his voice barely above a whisper. Cold as ice. “Your first is to stand down. Let us take the plane and fly out of here in peace. Do that, and you’ll never see my face again.”

  “And my second ‘choice’?” Liam asked, looking him in the eye. A gaze burning with defiance.

  “I shoot you where you stand, leave you to bleed out,” Harry said, inclining his head toward the boy, “right here in front of your son. It’s not something I would enjoy doing…but I’ve done it before. Your decision.”

  4:37 P.M.

  Union Square Shopping Centre

  Aberdeen, Scotland

  There is no God but God, Sayyed Hassan murmured, reciting the words of the shahada under his breath as he ascended the escalator in the middle of the shopping centre, his eyes nervously flickering around him. And Muhammad is His Messenger.

  The bold, provocative visage of a woman drinking a cup of coffee stared down at him from an advert hanging from the ceiling—her eyes full of promise. Seduction.

  Full…and yet empty. Like all the promises of the West. He reached the top of the escalator, bringing his duffel bag off his shoulder with a single, rough motion—fumbling with the zipper.

  This was the moment. The moment of his destiny. There is no God but God, he thought once more, repeating the words as a soundless chant as he brought the Kalashnikov assault rifle out of the bag, not even thinking to unfold the stock.

  Hassan pivoted, flicking off the safety with a loud klatch, his gaze focusing in suddenly on a middle-aged woman standing not ten feet away, staring straight at him—her eyes wide, mouth open in a perfect “o.” And Muhammad is His Messenger.

  He raised the rifle, finding her face framed in his sights for only a moment before the trigger broke beneath his finger—his creed finally finding voice in a scream as the rifle shot reverberated through the mall.

  “Allahu akbar!”

  4:39 P.M.

  The farm

  Keighley, West Yorkshire

  “All right,” Liam said finally, his eyes burning with hatred as he stared at Harry, “you win.”

  He raised his hands in surrender, taking a step back. “Go,” Harry advised, gesturing with the muzzle of the Sig-Sauer. “Go, while you still can.”

  Another moment passed, and then the big Irishman turned, walking slowly back across the meadow toward his house.

  “You took a chance, boyo,” Flaharty said, shaking his head as he appeared at Harry’s side. “All those times in Belfast, never saw Liam Malone back down from a fight before.”

  “Perhaps he never knew for certain he would be killed before,” Harry responded coldly, his weapon still leveled. Perhaps it was his family. It was dangerous to care. To love. It changed a man. “You think he’ll report this to the authorities?”

  “And implicate himself in the possession of an unregistered aircraft? Not a chance.”

  If any man would know, it was Flaharty. “All right then,” he said, lowering his weapon as he turned toward Darren Roth, “we’d best be on our way. Local law enforcement in Scotland…does your position with Five give you the authority to commandeer personnel and equipment?”

  The British officer shook his head. “We can liaise with the local constabularies, but that’s the extent of it. We’re not your FBI—we have no jurisdiction over them.”

  Bureaucracy. He heard a small gasp from Mehreen and glanced over to see her looking at her phone. “What is it?”

  “There’s a story just breaking on the ‘net, an attack is already in progress. A shopping centre in Aberdeen. The situation is chaotic, automatic weapons fire coming from the second floor of the centre. Reports of multiple gunmen.”

  They just looked at each other for a long moment, the question all too clear in everyone’s minds. “What if Hale was lying,” Mehreen finally asking it, “what if this is the real attack? What if this was the Shaikh‘s plan all along?”

  Then all of this…everything, had been for naught. “No,” Harry heard himself say, scarce able to determine whether he believed his own words, “it can’t be.”

  “But what if it is?” Roth pressed. “If people are dying, we can’t just walk away. We—”

  “Law enforcement in Aberdeen can handle the shopping centre. This is the Shaikh’s MO,” Harry responded, more confidently this time. “It’s what he did in Vegas, it’s what he’s doing here. Pinning down every available law enforcement asset—crippling their ability to respond—before he launches the main attack.”

  Roth nodded slowly, comprehension spreading across his face. “It’s bloody brilliant.”

  “And it will work again if we don’t stop him,” was Harry’s gr
im response. He returned the Sig-Sauer to its shoulder holster, looking at the intelligence officer.

  “Liaise, commandeer…do whatever you have to do—but reach out to law enforcement in Ballater and make sure they send a pair of officers to meet us at the Aboyne gliding club. With vehicles. And do it now. We need to get in the air.”

  Chapter 32

  5:18 P.M.

  MI-5 Headquarters

  Thames House, London

  “The responding constables believe now they’re contending with only a single gunman—in the upper level of the shopping centre, northwest quadrant,” Alec MacCallum said, standing in the door of the DG’s office. “Firearms units are moving in on him as we speak.”

  “How many casualties are we looking at?” Marsh asked wearily, running a hand across his forehead. Had this been the real attack? Roth’s intelligence flawed, but not without substance in the end.

  “At least eleven dead, a couple dozen more wounded. A security guard responded to the initial bursts of fire and was gunned down. He was armed with only a riot baton.”

  “My God,” the DG whispered, distress written across his face as he rose, rounding his desk. “What was he thinking?”

  “He’d been back from Iraq for five years,” the analyst responded quietly. “Like my father, once a soldier…”

  Always a soldier. “Do we have a claim of responsibility?”

  “Nothing definitive as of yet. The Islamic State’s Twitter accounts began broadcasting shortly after the attack began, praising the valor of ‘mujahideen in the British Isles” and warning that it was only the beginning. It’s unclear whether they possessed foreknowledge or were simply playing the role of opportunists.”

  As they had so many times in the past. Marsh shook his head. “Make sure Aberdeen has whatever resources we can provide. Apprise me when the situation has been resolved.”

  5:22 P.M.

  The Cessna Stationair

  West of Edinburgh

  “Arthur Colville,” Harry mused aloud, the altimeter briefly hitting twenty thousand feet as he pushed the yoke forward once more, the plane leveling out. “So he’s the one behind the attacks—the man funding and supplying the Shaikh?”

  Below them, through the patchwork of low-hanging clouds, he could see the waters of the Forth, the Scottish town of Falkirk visible farther up-river to the west. He found himself listening to the engine, feeling it vibrate at full-power, nearly red-lined. Pushed harder than it had been in a decade, perhaps longer. They had made good time, but with nearly seventy miles yet to go…he nosed down slightly, sacrificing altitude for airspeed. It was going to be close, if they made it at all.

  No harm. Carol’s words, echoing once more through his mind. Again and again. If he had given Five Tarik’s location—could the shopping centre attack, could all of this been prevented?

  Innocent lives. Sacrificed on the altar of his own vengeance. He swallowed hard, the bitter taste of bile in his mouth. Nothing for it now but to press forward. One foot in front of the other—till the bitter end.

  “If the intel you provided to me is correct, yes,” Darren Roth responded from his position beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. “It’s not going to be enough to satisfy the evidential standards for prosecution, though.”

  Prosecution. More red tape, more bureaucracy…stretching on into eternity. A man Colville’s age would die of natural causes long before he ever saw the inside of a prison.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said, his eyes hard, “this is never going to end up in court.”

  “No,” the intelligence officer responded, knowing only too well what he meant. “If this is going to be done, it’s going to be done the right way.”

  Harry glimpsed Roth’s expression out of the corner of his eye, something snapping deep inside him. “You were a soldier long before you became a cop, so for the love of God think like one. We both know how this ends—how all of this ends.”

  5:27 P.M.

  The port of Aberdeen

  Scotland

  “…reports indicate that the gunman has taken a hostage and is holed up somewhere on the second floor of the shopping centre, while—as you can see behind me—police have established a cordon sealing off the area. Now we go back to London, where David Inglesworth is standing by. David?”

  “Thank you, Claire. We are waiting to hear whether the Home Secretary will speak publicly on the shooting in Aberdeen, where…”

  Buy us time, brother, Tarik Abdul Muhammad thought, gazing at the television screens mounted on the warehouse wall at one end of their makeshift command center. Just a little more.

  The attack on Balmoral would be swift and devastating. Over long before reinforcements could be dispatched from Aberdeen, in the wake of the chaos created by Sayyed Hassan’s noble sacrifice.

  “A call for you, Shaikh,” one of his bodyguards announced, coming up to him with a phone in his hand. “It’s Farid.”

  “Salaam alaikum, brother,” Tarik said, his fingers trembling with nervous excitement as he raised the phone to his ear. This was it. The final call to establish communications before the attack.

  For a moment, all he heard was bursts of static, Farid’s voice fading in and out then, “…position. Tonight, jannah welcomes us.”

  The mobile connection was horrible, but Tarik smiled, his eyes shining with tears. “Yes—yes. Tonight in Jannah.”

  5:32 P.M.

  The offices of the UK Daily Standard

  London

  “Earlier this evening, Queen Elizabeth was slain in a cowardly attack carried out by Muslims loyal to the Islamic”—Arthur Colville paused for a moment before crossing out the final word with an abrupt stroke of his pen, beginning again, this time in bold capital letters. “Loyal to the ISLAMIC State and led by a man known to our very own Security Services: Tarik Abdul Muhammad. The Shaikh.”

  The publisher wrote a few more sentences, the article forming in his head as he leaned back in his chair This was really happening, after all the months of preparation. The wary meetings, the moments of terrifying uncertainty.

  The years of fighting against the insipid impotence of Whitehall—politicians consumed with their political correctness, their vision of a “multicultural” society. All of it, leading to this.

  “We have embraced a serpent,” he wrote, picking up his pen once more, “and it has bitten us in the end—leaving us once again mourning a tragedy. But how many more times must we mourn our dead before we are at last roused to action? The Queen is now dead, and the nation grieves the loss of its longest-reigning and most beloved monarch, as well we should. But how many more times will we be forced to grieve before we recognize that this cult of death calling itself ‘Islam’ has no place in this—or any—civilized society?”

  Colville pushed back his chair and rose, retrieving a decanter from the sideboard and pouring himself a tumbler of brandy before moving to the window—the evening sun streaming in upon his face as it descended into the western sky—bathing London in a blood-red hue.

  “Morituri te salutant,” he murmured wistfully, raising the tumbler as if in a toast. A faint smile touching his lips as he substituted his own translation.

  “To those who are about to die…I salute you.”

  5:43 P.M.

  Balmoral Castle

  Ballater, Scotland

  “Hold up, hold up,” Sergeant Gavron said, touching his earpiece as he moved out into the open, before the wrought-iron gates of Balmoral. “We have a delivery van coming across the bridge. Were we anticipating an arrival?”

  He held up a hand for the van to stop, hearing the dim sound of an airplane somewhere off in the distance. Perhaps a commercial flight from Belfast to Aberdeen, although it sounded smaller, somehow.

  “None that I was made aware of,” came the answer over the radio. “Hold the van there at the gate, I’ll apprise Hilliard.”

  “Aye,” Gavron responded, walking toward the now-stopped van and motioning for his partner to approach fro
m the other side, “we’ll await your orders.”

  5:44 P.M.

  The Cessna Stationair

  “Everything looks quiet,” Darren Roth commented as the Cessna banked right, sweeping over the estate of Balmoral from the west, barely a thousand feet above the treetops and descending, flaps extended to slow them down enough to make the pass.

  He glanced over at Harry as the Cessna leveled out, gaining airspeed as it flashed over the trees, heading out toward the Dee. “I think we’ve made it in time.”

  “We’re not on the ground just yet,” Harry observed grimly, glancing out the cabin window at the golf course he had considered as a makeshift landing strip, glimpsing in those few fleeting moments what he hadn’t been able to see on the satellite imagery—tall trees on either side of the course, rolling terrain. No dice. “And there’s no place to set down.”

  “Ballater’s sent out a pair of constables to meet us,” Roth said, tucking his phone into the pocket of his jacket. “They’ll be waiting at the strip in—”

  The unmistakable sound of an explosion suddenly struck Harry’s ears, his head snapping around—back and to the left, a ball of fire and black, oily smoke rising above the trees.

  “What was that?” Mehreen asked, her voice sounding faint. Distant.

  And he knew, a ball of ice forming in the pit of his stomach. It was a car bomb…just like any one of the dozens he had witnessed in the sandbox. It was beginning. Already.

  The jihadists had launched early—for what reason, he knew not. And it didn’t matter.

  He retracted the flaps, shoving the throttle ahead as the Lycoming flat-six roared back to full power—the spire of Crathie Kirk disappearing off his wing as he pulled up, heading for Aboyne and the airstrip.

  Getting on the ground, that was all that mattered.

  5:46 P.M.

  Balmoral Castle

  Colin Hilliard knew what it was almost instantly as he stepped out onto the carriage porch, Bahadar Singh at his side—his head coming up as the explosion rippled through the warm evening air.