“Nick was a good mate,” he said finally. “An’ a bloody good soldier.”
It was strange to hear praise for her husband from such a man. Under such circumstances.
“As were you once,” Mehreen said, trying to regain her composure. “Until you threw it all away, for this. And when we find the Shaikh, all this is going to be over.”
“Threw it away?” He gave her a wry smile. “But that’s where you’re wrong. Everything I’ve done has been in the service of my country. Including this—perhaps most of all, this. And I didn’t do any of it in hopes of being remembered as a sodding hero. I did it because it was right.”
He paused, as if her words had only then sunk home. “What do you mean, when you ‘find’ the Shaikh…you mean Nichols didn’t give you his location?”
The words struck her with the force of a rifle bullet. No. He couldn’t have. But she knew all too well that he could. Nichols, ever the spy. Playing his own agenda out to the end. No matter the cost.
She just looked at him, struck dumb, her face clearly betraying her reaction.
“He didn’t…did he?” Hale asked, starting to laugh. “That’s good. That’s too good.”
It was almost impossible to believe, the realization of how skillfully she had been played. So many lives put at risk.
Mehreen reached out, slapping the former SAS sergeant full across the face—jamming the muzzle of the HK45 into his temple as he reeled.
“Tell me,” she hissed, “where is Tarik Abdul Muhammad? Give me his location, or God help me, I will—”
The breath was suddenly driven from her body as Hale’s bound hands came up, slamming into her stomach. Grappling for the gun.
She staggered back, caught off-balance as he hit her a second time—and this time she went down, hard. Crashing into one of the seats before falling, gasping for breath, to her hands and knees on the floor of the cabin.
Hale’s cold eyes staring down at her as she looked up, the compact pistol looming large in his hands. His finger curled around the trigger.
For a painfully long moment—her breath still coming in shallow, rapid gasps—she thought he would fire.
End it all there and then. All of the pain.
“No,” he said finally, seeming to think better of it. Shaking his head as he stepped over her on his way to the door of the plane—leaving her struggling to lift herself up.
And then she heard the shots.
7:34 P.M.
The CIA off-site facility
City of London
It was a strange feeling, being on an ally’s soil even as they came under attack, David Lay thought—his eyes fixed on the BBC newscast across the room.
He had flown out of Madrid the day before the train bombings years before. On his way back to the States from the Middle East.
Found himself back at Langley, looking at the television in horror at the devastation which had consumed the city he had so recently left.
And yet compared to this, an assault on a royal residence, an attempt to take and behead the Queen of England. He shook his head.
Even in failure, the reverberations were going to be daunting.
“Right, I understand,” Lay heard Jimenez say from a few feet away—the CIA station chief replacing the phone in its cradle as he turned to face him.
“That was Thames House,” he said, gesturing up toward the screen, where the images of Balmoral were being displayed for the hundredth time—fire billowing from the castle. “They’re saying Nichols was involved.”
For a moment, it felt as if his heart would stop. No. Lay just stared at the man, searching for words. It was simply unimaginable. “In the attack?”
Jimenez shook his head. “In stopping the attack.”
7:36 P.M.
The gliding club
Aboyne, Scotland
Gunshots. Crashing out one after another in the night, again and again and again. A bitter death knell.
Mehreen staggered to the door of the Cessna just in time to see the red-haired constable go down, his body sprawling broken on the runway. Dying before her eyes.
Conor Hale standing a few feet away from the plane, his figure silhouetted in the runway lights—pistol clasped in his bound hands.
A murderer. Now, if never before.
She heard a scream of fury escape her lips as she hurled herself from the plane’s door, pain shuddering through her as her feet hit the tarmac.
She saw him start to turn, start to bring the pistol to bear—but then she was on him—crashing into his back, struggling to wrap her arm around his neck as he pivoted.
The HK45 fell from his hands, clattering across the macadam—the point of his elbow slamming into her ribs, delivering a bruising blow.
She cried out in pain—holding on with a strength born of desperation as the former SAS sergeant hit her again, pinning her back against the Stationair’s fuselage. His face only inches away from hers in the darkness, fingers closing around her throat as she tried to fight back.
Nick. Brotherhood. None of that mattered any more, perhaps it never had to him. Words, more of them, meaningless as all the rest.
There was no mercy to be found in his eyes as he shrugged off her blows. Only a stolid, implacable determination. He wasn’t trying to force her to surrender, she thought, struggling to breathe as his grip tightened—the realization striking home like a pinpoint of light through the darkness closing in all around her.
He was going to kill her.
She could feel her strength ebbing, his breath hot against her face. The runway lights themselves fading away. Struggling to summon up whatever remained for a final blow. A decade in the field, ferreting out terrorists, running assets in Northern Ireland. Nothing in all her training with Five had prepared her for this.
Her fist connected with his side and Mehreen heard him groan, his grip on her throat loosening—her lungs burning from lack of oxygen as she hit him again, blood spurting around her fingers, her fist pummeling into his bandaged wound.
A raw scream filling the night as his pain found its voice. She felt Hale recoil, letting go of her. His face twisted in agony as her fist found its mark once more—sending him reeling back into the tail of the plane.
Mehreen staggered, nearly going down herself—gasping for air, each breath feeling like fire passing through her raw throat. But there was no time.
Gun, she thought, stumbling away from the plane—her eyes searching through the darkness. She had to find the gun.
7:38 P.M.
The A93
East of Dinnet, Scotland
So close. Harry tapped the brakes as a police vehicle came roaring around the curve ahead—sirens wailing and lights flashing as it flew past them in the night. Disappearing down the road toward the castle, every asset Scotland had at its disposal now being deployed to protect its Queen.
So close, and yet with so much resting on the course of the next hour. Everything.
“You’re going to get yourself killed, boyo,” Flaharty said finally, as the sirens receded in the distance—the darkness closing around them once more. The first words he had spoken since Harry had finished outlining his plan minutes earlier.
He was right, Harry thought—gazing forward into the darkness, out beyond the Vauxhall’s headlights. That was the truth of it.
And it didn’t matter. He’d spent fifteen years of his life out there, beyond the wire. Fifteen years of fighting. Of staying alive, when other—better—men had been cut down. No longer.
“I know,” he heard himself say, his voice curiously devoid of emotion.
The Irishman just shook his head. “And me with you, like as not.”
Probably so. The odds of either of them making it out, dangerously slim. “You can still walk away, you know that, don’t you? This isn’t your fight, it’s mine.”
Walk away, Harry thought, finding himself willing the man to do it. Now. Before this was over, before they all went hurtling past the point of no return. Befo
re he handed Flaharty over to Mehreen, only too aware of the bargain he had made. Handed him over to be killed.
A life for a life. The life of one terrorist for another, he reminded himself. There were no innocents in this.
“Maybe so, lad,” the former IRA bombmaker said quietly. “Maybe so. Then again, maybe somewhere along this line, it became my fight. We’re not so very different, you and I.”
No. “We couldn’t possibly be more different,” he spat, doing his best to sound more convinced than he was. So many innocent lives, thrown away. Sacrificed.
“Sure, keep telling yourself that. A man’s love of his country…well, it’s a terrible thing, boyo. And you and I, we’ve spent the best years of our lives doing terrible things in the defense of all that we love.”
Playing out their patriot game, he thought, the Scottish Highlands flashing past in the darkness outside the Vauxhall’s window. To the bitter end. “But this isn’t your country.”
“No, it’s not,” Flaharty said, shaking his head as he looked away. “And I never in all my years thought I’d take any hand in saving the life of its sodding Queen. But this Shaikh of yours, what if he wins—what then? He an’ his, you think they’ll stop this side of the water? Not a chance—the six counties will be washed once more in blood, an’ they’ll make the Paras look like angels of light. So I’m with you, lad. Right to the finish.”
Right up until the point Mehreen puts a bullet in the back of your head, Harry realized, struggling once more with the reality of the vow he had made. What he had promised. But what was done was done.
He took a hand off the steering wheel, pointing toward lights growing brighter in the distance. “The airfield is just ahead.”
7:41 P.M.
The gliding club
Aboyne, Scotland
It had to be here, Mehreen thought, heart beating fast as she searched for the weapon in the darkness. Somewhere.
Run. Leave it and run, her mind screamed, hearing Hale’s voice as he limped toward her.
The same dogged determination that had carried him through Selection so many years before driving his bloodied body onward this night.
“You should have stayed in the plane, Mehreen,” he said regretfully, pain filling his voice as he closed in. “You had the choice. I gave you that.”
“And then you killed him,” she spat, fear in her eyes as she backed away. Those gunshots still ringing out, again and again through her mind.
“Couldn’t be helped,” he said, still advancing on her. Shaking his head as he glanced over at the body of the constable lying face-down just across the way. “I gave him the same choice.”
She started to turn, to run—a sudden metallic clatter striking her ears as her foot caught the HK45, kicking it a few feet away.
There. She caught sight of it, its barrel glinting in the runway lights. But there was no time to reach it, no time to react before Hale’s bound fists slammed into the small of her back, a hammer blow smashing into her kidneys.
She went down hard, sobbing in blinding, excruciating pain, falling to her knees on the tarmac as he moved in—his arms encircling her head, the plastic of the zip-tie scraping against her bruised throat.
Cutting off her air.
Struggling to push his wrists away, she kicked out blindly behind her—desperate to break the hold. Nothing.
And then her foot found the side of his ankle, catching him off-balance, unprepared. She heard a curse break from his lips as he swayed. Unable to stabilize himself—taking her back with him as he fell, sprawling across the runway.
She pushed herself away from him before he could recover, crawling across the rough asphalt. Her fingers closing around the butt of the pistol, bringing it up in one hand as she staggered to her feet—rubbing her throat with the other.
“Another move,” she whispered, scarce able to speak. Glaring down the HK’s sights at Hale as he attempted to rise. “Another move, and I will kill you.”
She was only dimly aware of the engine sound of an approaching vehicle, headlights suddenly washing over her as she stood there on the runway—spotlighting her in their harsh glare.
Harry shoved open his door almost before the car had even stopped moving, the Sig-Sauer already out in his hand as he advanced, the Vauxhall’s headlights illuminating the grim tableau laid out before him.
Mehreen. Hale. The body of the constable laying a few meters away from them.
He shook his head at the futility of it all. Two men who had put on their uniforms, left their homes—their families—in the morning. Just doing their job. And now they were dead, the both of them.
Good men die. But no matter what had happened, he needed Hale alive. For just a while longer.
“I’m here now, Mehr,” he said, stopping a few feet away from her. “We’ve got this. You can stand down.”
He saw her hesitate for but a moment, anger flashing in her dark eyes as she turned—weapon aimed straight at his chest.
“Don’t you dare…”
7:43 P.M.
Thames House
Millbank, London
“…an airstrip less than thirty minutes east of the castle. Here,” Simon Norris said, using the stub of a pencil as a pointer as he gestured toward his screen.
“And that’s where Roth believes Nichols to be headed?” Alec MacCallum asked, coming round the corner of the workstation.
“He, and possibly Flaharty as well. If they can reach there and get in the air, well, given refueling there at the strip,” Norris said, drawing a large compass circle on the screen, “they could make it to Norway, Denmark…Iceland, even. In the space of a few hours.”
“It’s a gliding club,” the section chief observed, his eyes narrowing as he focused in on the open windows. “I doubt they have fuel storage on-site.”
“Right you are. So what are we looking at then, Northern Ireland?”
“Probably,” MacCallum nodded. “Flaharty’s home—he’s gone to ground many times there before. Could easily do so again. What about the RAF? Can they be positioned to intercept?”
A shake of the head as Norris drew his pointer in a line toward the east. “With the kind of training this sod has, he can likely fly well-nigh nap-of-the-earth through the Grampian Mountains. Stay below our screens until he’s well out over the sea. If then.”
“So we’re looking at needing to take them into custody before they get off the ground,” MacCallum said, raising his eyes to the virtual display on the far wall, looking for all the world like an RAF operations room from the Battle of Britain, icons marking the positions of Police Scotland units sprinkled across its face—along with those moving up from the south. Most of them now concentrating on the protection of the Queen. “What do we have available to us?”
“Very little.”
7:45 P.M.
The gliding club
Aboyne, Scotland
“And if Thames House had been given the location of the Shaikh,” Harry said, advancing toward her, heedless of the weapon, “if your mole had found out—what then, Mehr? What then? Would Police Scotland have had the available assets to mount simultaneous operations to protect the Queen and take down Tarik—before he could get away? I did what had to be done.”
It made sense, but of course it would. Mehreen shook her head, the anger within her boiling over. “No, this is about you, Harry. About what you needed to do to achieve your objectives—and it has been ever since you first arrived at my door.”
He took another step closer to her, the muzzle of the HK45 nearly touching his chest. Backlit by the car’s headlights, his face shrouded in shadow.
“And what if it is?” he asked, his voice low and hard. “I gave my life to the defense of my country—is it so very strange that I would want something for myself at the end? I had the only thing I wanted, Mehr—and he took her from me. And now all I want in this life is him. Dead.”
A desire she knew all too well, she thought, catching a glimpse of Stephen Flaharty—st
anding back there by the car. A rifle visible in his hands. Her own words to him, no older than the day before. “When all this is over, when the Shaikh is dead—I want Stephen Flaharty.”
His voice, answering in reply. “We have a deal.”
She closed her eyes, wrestling with the emotions at war within her.
“But every second we waste here,” Harry hissed, not waiting for her reply as he took another step, straight into the cold metal of her pistol’s muzzle, “is another in which Tarik could do a runner. So either get out of my way…or shoot me now.”
8:09 P.M.
Thames House
London
“Welcome back, sir,” MacCallum said as Julian Marsh came back through the doors of Thames House, passing his coat off to an aide as the doors closed on the sight of uniformed CO-19 officers standing in the barrel-vaulted entrance without—their Heckler & Koch MP-5s unslung. “We just received an update from the MoD—22 SAS is only thirty minutes away from making the jump. Roth has turned over operational command of the remaining forces at Balmoral to Inspector Connarty and Police Scotland is reporting that their Firearms Units have secured the castle proper.”
Marsh nodded. “Good. What about the Shaikh?”
“Still no sign of him among the dead. Police Scotland is flooding the area with manpower, trying to get a cordon established.”
If he had ever been there to begin with, as they both knew. And if he hadn’t…he could be anywhere. “Our missing American,” Marsh went on after a moment, “have you been able to garner anything from Roth’s lead at the airfield?”
“Ballater sent out a couple constables,” the section chief nodded grimly, handing over a photograph. “They found the place deserted. This man, lying dead on the runway—shot three times in the chest, blood not even dry. Constable Graeme Banks, one of theirs. One of two officers that had been dispatched earlier in response to Roth’s call.”
The director-general swore, anger visible in his eyes. This was getting out of hand. “And the plane?”
“Still on the tarmac. Wherever Nichols and Flaharty are, they’re not in the air.”
“Find them,” Marsh spat, still staring at the photo of the dead constable. He handed it back, turning away from his section chief. “Find them and bring them in, preferably before they kill anyone else. And make sure Downing Street is apprised the moment 22 SAS is on the ground—the PM is waiting for confirmation that they have secured the Queen before he issues any public statement on the outcome of these attacks.”
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 70
