“All right, then,” he said, looking around the room at the handful of men—all that remained of his command. “This is where we fight, and if needs be…this is where we die. For England.”
6:41 P.M.
“Come on, come on,” Harry breathed, kneeling at McTaggart’s side behind the rear wheel of the Suburban, his hand pressed tightly against the wound in the man’s neck, trying to stem the flow of blood as he unbuckled his plate carrier—searching for the second wound. “Stay with me.”
The older man was dying, he knew that. Knew it even before he found where the second bullet had entered—smashing through his ribcage and on into his right lung. No exit wound. He could see it in his eyes—a look he had seen so many times before.
Acceptance. A man resigned to his fate.
No. “Don’t give up on me now,” he hissed, arterial blood trickling out between his tightly-clamped fingers, dark and crimson, the deafening rattle of Roth and Flaharty’s rifles sounding so very far away. Hot brass struck him in the cheek and he blinked, heedless of the pain. “Don’t you dare—I’m going to get you through this, mate. Just hold on.”
Lies, more of them. All that was left to him now.
McTaggart grimaced, his eyes flickering open. Coughing up blood as he tried to speak. “It—it’s…no good, lad.”
And he was right. That was the worst of it—the light fading in his eyes as he gazed up into Harry’s face through the gathering darkness, muzzle flashes illuminating the gathering twilight.
“Tell…tell the old woman I love her. Promise me,” he said, his fingers coming up grasp Harry’s wrist. “Promise…”
“I promise,” Harry responded, gripping McTaggart’s hand fiercely, a tear streaking its way down his powder-grimed cheek. Knowing even as he said the words just how very meaningless they were. Another promise, like so many others, fated to be broken from the moment it was made. No harm.
Harry felt the older man’s grasp loosen, his fingers falling weakly away as he slumped back against the Suburban’s tire. Eyes slowly glazing over in death.
He reached down to pick up his rifle, hearing bullets impact the opposite side of the SUV as Roth took a knee only a few feet away—reloading his Kalashnikov. The question only too visible in his eyes as he glanced over.
Harry shook his head. Good men die.
6:43 P.M.
Thames House
London
“The cousins have a satellite coming on-line above Scotland in five minutes,” Simon Norris announced, dropping his coat over the back of his office chair as he entered the operations centre, glancing over at MacCallum. “They’ve agreed to give us remote access to the live feeds here.”
“Good work,” the section chief responded, his eyes focused on the screens on the far wall. The news was already hitting the major networks, speculation and misinformation spreading across the Internet. It was only a matter of time before rumors of the Queen’s death began swirling, assuming they weren’t already. And that they weren’t true. “The RAF should be able to provide eyeball shortly. What’s our window on the sat?”
“Forty minutes.”
With firearms units from Aberdeen still twenty minutes away, MacCallum thought. No way to tell whether any of it would be soon enough.
6:44 P.M.
Balmoral Castle
Scotland
Target down. Harry saw the jihadist crumple, framed in the sights of his AK for a brief moment before he ducked down behind the Suburban’s engine block—bullets shattering the glass of the vehicle above his head.
Can’t stay here. They were bleeding Tarik’s men, that much was true—but every moment they were pinned down here was another moment in which the Queen’s life was in jeopardy.
Had to break the deadlock. He adjusted the straps on the damaged plate carrier he had taken from McTaggart’s body and raised himself up, putting a hand on Roth’s shoulder, raising his voice above the insistent chatter of Flaharty’s weapon. “On my signal, I want both of you to lay down covering fire. I’m going to make a break for the building—draw fire. Try to flank them.”
The former Royal Marine shook his head, the look in his eyes clearly showing his opinion of the plan. “You’ll be cut down before you get ten meters.”
He was right. The ballistic plates in his vest, even damaged, were better than no armor at all—but they hadn’t saved the Scotsman and they wouldn’t save him if those rifles opened up.
So be it. The deadness inside reaching out, threatening to consume him. His hands still wet with McTaggart’s blood, fury boiling just beneath the surface. “We’re running short of options. I—”
And then he heard it—a low rumble growing in pitch and volume with every passing second—a sound he remembered from Afghanistan. The sound of a fast-mover coming in for an attack run.
There was no time to react, no time to speak as a pair of fighter jets came into view in the semi-darkness above, screaming in over the castle. Barely five hundred feet off the deck.
RAF Typhoons, Harry thought, recognizing the familiar, delta winged shape. Grasping the situation in a trice. The Queen’s security team had gotten off a distress call, somehow.
But with the terrorists already inside Balmoral…
6:45 P.M.
The rally point
Outside Banchory
“They’re saying she’s dead, mate,” Delaney heard the ex-infantryman say, the man’s voice trembling with fear as he watched the TV broadcast on the screen of his phone. With rage. “They’re saying they killed her—all the Royal Family. They—”
“Shut up, just sodding shut up,” the former sapper exploded, turning away from the group of soldiers, the mobile pressed tight to his ear.
Something had gone horribly wrong, if even half the news reports out of Balmoral were to be believed. He had to reach Hale—had to get to the bottom of this, find out what was going on.
“The mobile number you have reached is out of service,” a computer-generated voice informed him, a cold chill seeming to crawl down his spine at the words. He tapped Hale’s number into his phone once more, his big fingers moving clumsily across the screen—raising it to his ear just in time to hear the same message repeated again.
A dark premonition sweeping over him in that moment, remembering his final conversation with Hale, days before. “I’ll be right there at your side, mate,” he had said, standing on the deck of the MV Percy Phillips beside his old comrade. Looking out over the harbor of Grimsby. “Right to the finish.”
The long, weighty pause before Hale had replied, “I’m sorry, but you won’t. I have something else I need you to do.”
Take care of the Shaikh. That’s what it had amounted to, in the end. Eliminating he and his remaining men—and with them, the evidence of what they had done.
Or had that been it at all? Delaney lowered the phone, a sudden fear gripping his heart as he stared at its blank screen. Glancing out over the open farm fields toward the north.
“Tell me again,” he demanded, turning back to the infantryman—one of the men who had parted with Hale at the Yorkshire farmhouse. “There at last, what did Hale say to you?”
“Said to meet you here,” the soldier replied, his brow furrowing. “Await further orders.”
And now Hale himself had vanished—like a ghost in the night. Leaving them twisting in the wind, facing the success of the attack they had been supposed to prevent.
“We need to get out of here at once,” he said suddenly, tossing a set of keys for one of the spare vehicles across to another of the gathered soldiers. “Spread out, go to ground…stay there until all this is over. And remember, not a word of this to anyone. Anyone.”
6:45 P.M.
Balmoral Castle
“Now!” Harry screamed, pushing himself away from the vehicle and rising to his feet, his weapon coming up as he caught sight of the jihadists in the open. Five targets.
Caught off-guard by the jets, still looking up into the sky.
Controlled bursts of fire ripped from the AK-103’s muzzle as he moved around the Suburban, heedless of his own safety. Advancing on the castle. Target down. Target down.
The rifle recoiling into his shoulder as he turned, engaging the third terrorist. Putting three rounds into the man’s chest.
He heard the rattle of gunfire behind him as Roth and Flaharty followed him out, saw another target collapse.
And then another, the three of them moving across the lawn of Balmoral toward the castle—the muzzle of Harry’s rifle sweeping from side to side as he pushed forward, reaching the castle door just as the fighters came back over for another low pass.
The roar of their jet engines drowning out all else, vibrating the very ground.
A shape materialized in the semi-darkness of the front corridor, a young man in jeans and a dark hoodie. Carrying a rifle.
Fear visible in his eyes, his weapon coming up even as Harry reflexively squeezed the trigger—the magazine emptying as he sent a pair of 7.62mm rounds crashing through the man’s skull, his head snapping back from the impact, legs going out from under him as he went down.
He kept the rifle leveled down the corridor as he plucked a fresh mag from his rig. Last one.
The hall stank of gunpowder and death, the sound of gunfire coming from somewhere above him—the upper floor, back toward the tower. Roth and Flaharty entering behind him.
He stepped over the young man’s corpse, pulling back the AK’s charging handle to chamber a round. “Clear.”
6:47 P.M.
Cabinet Office Briefing Room A(COBRA)
No. 10 Downing Street
“…this is Tyrant One Zero. We have no targets, I say again, no targets. Acquired visual on armed hostiles approx. fifty meters south of the castle on the first pass. Danger close.”
“He means that the militants were too close to the castle itself to safely drop ordnance without endangering the Queen,” Julian Marsh heard General Lidington inform the PM in a low voice. That should have been obvious, but upon reflection. . that never was safe to assume with a politician.
But the young RAF pilot wasn’t done. “Visual was lost when they disappeared into the building.”
Into the building. Marsh looked up from his briefing notes, meeting General Lidington’s eyes—seeing the horror written there. The soldier shook his head. “Merciful God…”
They had all known that dispatching the fighter jets was a desperate gambit. Without anyone on the ground able to serve as forward air controller—able to designate targets for the Typhoon’s laser-guided bombs—perhaps it had been doomed to failure from the very start.
But to have its futility confirmed in such a stark manner…
“What does that mean?” Marsh heard the PM ask, but Lidington paid him no heed, looking instead across the briefing table at him. “The Firearms Units from Aberdeen, they’re how far out?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
It wasn’t going to be soon enough.
6:50 P.M.
Balmoral Castle
Scotland
Hold up. Harry raised his hand in a fist, silently signaling for Roth to stop short behind him. Flaharty a few feet farther back, the three of them maintaining a loose formation as they advanced, clearing room to room.
Movement catching his eye in the darkness toward the end of the corridor toward the stairs. Picking out the barrel of a rifle, a figure of a man coming through the doorway. Target.
Careful. Bahadar Singh eased himself forward through the open doorway and into the corridor beyond—briefly taking his support hand off the foregrip of his rifle to keep Catherine back, hearing her gasp at the sight of a staff member’s body only a few feet away. The woman lying where she had been shot, carpet stained dark with her blood. “Stay behind me,” he whispered, hearing more gunfire from the upper floors. The threat was far from over.
Bringing her back here had been a risk, but she hadn’t been willing to hear of anything else. Unwilling to leave as long as her husband, the rest of her family were in danger.
And in truth, there weren’t that many places to go. Not without a vehicle—without some assurance that the crossings over the Dee were safe. Balmoral had always been prized by the Royals for its remoteness, but that was a double-edged sword. Aimed at their own necks this night.
Those planes above were proof that Hilliard had gotten through to London—but there was no salvation to be found there.
Movement from not far down the corridor, the figure of a armed man emerging from the shadows. His hand coming back up—steadying the rifle. Only too aware that they were caught in the open. Exposed.
Take the shot. Now before it was too late.
“Military intelligence!” A voice called suddenly, a black man appearing at the side of the first, his own rifle leveled. “Identify yourself.”
“Inspector Bahadar Singh,” he replied, his weapon still raised, motioning once more for Catherine to stay out of the line of fire. “Metropolitan Police Service, Special Protection Command. And you?”
“Darren Roth,” the second man responded, lowering his rifle and taking a step toward him. “Thames House.”
Another burst of gunfire sounded from upstairs after a brief cessation, bringing their danger back to the forefront. The Sikh shook his head, thinking of his dead officers—butchered at their post. Not good enough.
“If you’re from Five, prove it. What’s the SO-14 codename for Prince William?”
“PEREGRINE,” came the response, a great weight seeming to roll from his shoulders at the man’s words. Help had arrived. “I couldn’t imagine London was going to be able to get here in time.”
“You had that right,” Harry responded, watching as Singh lowered his weapon—his dark eyes searching their faces. Still sheltering Catherine behind him, the child in her arms just visible over his shoulder. Fear written in her eyes. “We’re all there is…and London didn’t send us. We’re on our own.”
Surprise registered in the man’s eyes, and he started to respond, but an explosion from somewhere above cut him off—plaster falling from the ceiling around them. An explosion, followed by a hail of automatic weapons fire.
Their hourglass was running out of sand.
“Get her to the safest place you can find,” Harry admonished curtly, looking the Sikh officer in the eye. “And keep her there until the threat is past.”
He shouldered his rifle and began to move toward the stairs, glancing back at Flaharty, who was pulling rear security—covering the corridor behind them. “Let’s roll.”
6:52 P.M.
Hilliard pushed himself to his feet, ears still ringing from the concussive force of the blast—smoke and dust filling the confines of the tower.
A fragmentation grenade, falling just short—their barricade of heavy furniture absorbing the impact.
Or most of it, he thought, catching sight of Price leaning against the wall—the man’s face twisted in pain, hands closed around the long oaken splinter protruding from his stomach. Another of his officers slumped dead by the barricade. Two officers down.
The acrid taste of gunpowder on the SO-14 commander’s tongue as he raised his weapon, stumbling forward through the smoke. A burst of fire rippling from the H&K’s barrel as he spotted a young man charging toward the barricade.
Had to stay in the fight.
“Abdullah?” Farid asked, toggling his radio’s microphone as he stared down at the broken body of the college student lying only a few feet away—bleeding out on the soft carpet of the hall. Their last grenade, and it had done nothing in terms of breaking the deadlock. “Hazim…Muhammad?”
No answer.
The Syria veteran cursed, fingers tightening around the pistol in his hand as he leaned back against the wall, taking cover as yet another burst of fire came from the room where the British officers had taken refuge. His men were being cut down one by one—the seven of them in the hall all that remained, or at least all that he could raise. The fate of their o
peration now hanging in the balance for the first time.
No, he thought, rebuking himself for his doubt. It was in the hands of Allah that their success rested. As it had ever been.
“Give me your vest,” he said, beckoning with his hand to the young man closest to him. “Take it off and give it here.”
The man nodded, beginning to undo the straps of his bomb vest as Farid turned toward a pair of brothers standing a few feet away, “The two of you, back—cover the stairs. Go. Yalla, yalla!”
6:53 P.M.
The gliding club
Aboyne, Scotland
Waiting. It seemed as if she had spent her entire lifetime waiting, Mehreen thought, glancing at her phone to check the time. The screen still displaying, No signal.
Waiting for information from her assets in Northern Ireland. Waiting for Nick to come home from the war. Ever the lot of the intelligence officer…the wife.
“Anything?” she asked, looking up as the constable came walking back toward the plane. He’d been monitoring the Police Scotland radio network, trying to learn whatever he could.
“Nothing. No one has been able to raise Balmoral Castle since the attack began.”
An hour of silence.
“Perhaps they have and just aren’t willing to acknowledge it over open comms.”
He gave her a skeptical glance, shaking his head. “Aye. Well you’re the spook, ma’am, not me. But I know fear when I hear it in men’s voices.”
And nothing to do for it but wait. Cut off from any ability to help. She heard a low moan from the back of the plane and grimaced. Conor Hale. The drugs had to be wearing off.
6:54 P.M.
Balmoral Castle
They couldn’t hold much longer. That was the bitter truth of it, Hilliard realized, crouched on one knee as he laid the G36 aside, checking the magazine of his pistol. Ten rounds.
Another twenty in the rifle—Price and Winterson weren’t much better supplied, both of them fighting on despite their wounds. The rest of them dead or dying, nearly his entire command wiped out in the scant hour since the attack began. It felt like an eternity.
Another rush would be the finish of them.
He glanced over to where Prince William knelt beside one of his dying men, tightening a rude tourniquet around the man’s leg.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 68
