He glanced over to see Hale standing there a few feet away, his face ghostly pale in the glow of the harbor lights. Defeat etched in his countenance.
And then he felt the young men step back from around them, giving way as if parted by some invisible force.
Raising his bloodied face to see a young, muscled black man maybe five feet in front of him—carrying a rifle. Another figure emerging from the semi-darkness to his right.
Ice-blue eyes sweeping over him.
Eyes he had seen many times before—in the club in Vegas, seemingly an eternity ago. Another lifetime. On the train out of London. In a hundred vengeful dreams.
Tarik Abdul Muhammad.
To be this close to him—it was all he could do not to lunge for the man. Wrap his bare hands around the Shaikh’s throat and strangle the life from him. Tarik seemed to glance from Harry over to Conor Hale, then around at his men. “What’s going on here?”
“You’ve been betrayed,” Hale responded desperately. “The attack was a failure. This man—this American, he got to one of my soldiers—turned him. Used him to penetrate our operation.”
Truth. It always made for the best of lies.
“Did he?” Tarik demanded, a Browning materializing in his right hand as he raised the pistol. Aiming it straight at the former SAS man’s head. “Or was this Colville’s plan all along? To use us and betray us in the end? Sell us out to the Security Services.”
Harry could see the tension—the anger—written in the Shaikh’s face, his finger tightening around the Browning’s trigger. A man on the brink, made desperate by failure. Another moment, and—
“He’s telling you the truth,” he interjected, raising his voice above Tarik’s.
One of the young men moved to hit him again, but the Shaikh waved him to one side—stepping closer to Harry, pistol in hand. “And who are you, really? CIA…Special Forces? Who sent you?”
The CIA. Harry closed his eyes, remembering that day—standing in Kranemeyer’s office there at Langley. “Just let me take the team to Britain. Let me be there. For God’s sake…you owe me this, Barney.”
The sadness in Kranemeyer’s eyes as he’d responded, “Parker will go to Britain to liaise with Five. As for you…I need your resignation by the end of the week. Clean out your desk—turn over your access cards. And then leave. Put all of this behind you.”
A weapon was owed nothing. Particularly not a broken weapon. He lifted his face to meet Tarik’s gaze, shaking his head. “No one sent me.”
“Then why…”
“That night, back in Vegas—you were responsible for the death of a woman.”
The Shaikh looked around at his men, laughing in disbelief. “I was responsible for the deaths of many kuffar that night. What makes this woman so special?”
“She was the woman I loved,” Harry responded, his voice flat, emotionless. Betraying nothing of the rage surging within him.
“Ah…I see.” Tarik smiled, taking a step closer to him. “I begin to understand it now. And you came here—intending to do what, exactly?”
The moment of truth. This wasn’t the way he had foreseen it over the months of planning, but perhaps it was better this way. An end to all things. Harry raised his face to the dark heavens above, nerving himself for all that was to come. The fire. The pain. Into Thy hands, I commend my spirit.
“I came here,” he began, his eyes locking with those of the Shaikh, “to kill you. Embrace the fire…”
8:55 P.M.
No. Mehreen heard Harry’s words, heard him give the signal—her whole body shuddering as she stared at the phone in her hand. A voice somewhere deep inside her screaming at her to do it—to just enter the number and press SEND. Trigger the vest.
It was his plan. And yet, all she could see before her when she closed her eyes was that morning back in the country. Nick’s face as he’d kissed her goodbye for the last time. Walked out the door to the car.
And moments later a ball of fire expanding outward, the windows of the house shattering, covering the kitchen in shards of glass. Cutting deep into her bare feet as she made it to the door.
Knowing that it was already too late, hoping against hope that everything her mind told her was wrong.
That he could have survived.
Her free hand balled into a tight fist, struggling to master herself as she entered the first three digits of the number—the screen blurring as something akin to panic seemed to overwhelm her.
Hating Nichols in that moment for asking this of her, yet finding herself unable to do it. To hit SEND, to detonate Hale’s vest. To do to Harry what had been done to Nick…to reenact that morning through her own actions.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, hot tears streaking their way down her face as she stared out the window of the Vauxhall into the darkness of the port. Knowing that he was going to die one way or the other, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. Nothing…
8:57 P.M.
“I’m sorry.” The words hit Harry with the force of a hammer as he stared unblinking into Tarik’s eyes, the sound of Mehreen’s voice seeming to paralyze him for a moment. A sick, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach—bile rising in his throat.
Something dying deep within him. His own words from hours before, a haunting echo in his brain. “Mehreen doesn’t have it in her to pull that trigger.”
True enough at the last…and yet that there had been no one else. No one he could trust.
He screamed, a scream full of bitterness. Defeat. A raw, feral sound, anger and pain echoing across the loading yard as he pushed himself to his feet. Heedless of the guards. Of the rifles leveled at him.
Launching himself at Tarik, his bound hands outstretched, reaching out for the man’s throat.
He’d made it four steps when a rifle butt slammed into his side—catching him off-balance and sending him sprawling into the dirt and broken asphalt. A booted foot catching him in the ribs as he tried to rise.
Pain. Blows raining down on him as he lay helpless, unable to rise. To fight.
Darkness closing in around him. Death had come for him so many times over the years, with so many faces. A welcome visitor, at the last.
But not yet.
He heard voices in the darkness, distant and faraway. Voices calling out, one finally stronger than the rest. The Shaikh’s.
“Enough!” Harry felt the men recede from around him as he lay there on his back on the broken asphalt, his eyes flickering open to see Tarik standing a few feet away. Out of reach. “There’s no time for this. We have to be leaving. Now—before the Security Services can arrive.”
“Then what do you want done with these two?” another voice asked and Harry raised his head painfully—seeing the young black man enter his field of vision. “Just go ahead and kill them now?”
Tarik seemed to consider the idea for a long moment, his gaze sweeping over Harry. “No,” he said finally. “This one—I need to find out who he’s been working for, and how much they know.”
“But he said—”
“He’s lying,” the Shaikh responded, shaking his head as his eyes locked with Harry’s. “There’s no way one man, acting alone, has accomplished so much. As for the other…it may be that Allah has willed he serve as our means of escape. We take them both with us. Go, get the rest loaded. Yalla, yalla!”
9:00 P.M.
Ten minutes, Flaharty thought, shifting his position to check his wristwatch—shielding its luminous dial in the darkness. His Kalashnikov aimed over the heaping pile of rusting anchor chain he was lying upon, maintaining overwatch two hundred meters down the docks toward the warehouse entrance where Nichols and Hale had disappeared.
Ten minutes, and nothing. No gunfire. No explosions, he winced, knowing all too well what Harry had planned.
But nothing. The shrill blast of a tug’s horn out to sea the only sound reaching his ears. He shifted restlessly, his eyes searching the darkness—the cold fog beginning to roll in off the North Se
a. Impatient. Cursing his inability to communicate, to hear what was going on.
There just hadn’t been enough headsets to go around, and without comms—he was flying blind.
Like he had so many times before. The streets of Belfast, seeming so very far away in this moment. Ducking the RUC, throwing petrol bombs at the British soldiers. Him…and Davey Malone.
Flaharty swore, his face darkening at the memories. Of how they had all been betrayed at the end.
Perhaps by himself, most of all.
He shook his head, pushing himself off the chains and picking up his rifle as he rose to a crouch, his eyes sweeping the quay. There would be time for that later, time to get royally drunk and think about the past. On another day, if he lived that long.
For now, he had to get in closer, find out what he could.
9:02 P.M.
Fate is what a man makes of it, Harry thought—feeling the cold muzzle of the black man’s rifle in his back, prodding him forward toward the open door of the Land Rover, its engine already running—headlights piercing the night.
That’s what he had told Hamid Zakiri, standing over the broken body of his former friend in darkness of the masjid beneath the Temple Mount. Perhaps he had even believed it—then.
His bloodied face twisted into a grimace, blood trickling into the stubble of his beard, dirty with grime. Was it true—or was choice itself little more than an illusion? A tantalizing mirage produced by hindsight…when you looked back on the past and saw everything else you could have done.
“We walk on the edge of a knife out there.” Kranemeyer’s words, playing themselves again and again through his mind. “A razor-thin line between light and darkness. And you’ve crossed that line. You’ve been out in the field too long.”
It was always the choices you didn’t even know you had made that killed you in the end. That killed the ones you loved.
He stumbled, and the young man swore at him, jabbing him again in the back with the muzzle of the rifle.
There was no question that he could have taken it from him, disarmed the jihadist before he knew what was happening—even with his hands bound—but he would never have made it ten steps before being cut down. Let alone found Tarik.
There had to be another way. But he was passing the exits one by one—and running out of highway.
He reached the vehicle, lifting himself slowly, painfully into the seat. Catching sight of Hale through the open door—standing there on the other side of the Land Rover—hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. Under guard, but not restrained, one of Tarik’s men standing a few feet away.
Their eyes met for a brief moment, and then Hale looked away quickly. The Shaikh materializing out of the mist at his side. “It’s time we were leaving,” he said, putting a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder. “Everyone, load up.”
The former SAS man started to move toward the Land Rover, toward Harry, but Tarik’s voice arrested him. Calm—in control once more, a smile crossing the Shaikh’s face. “No, Mr. Hale…you’re riding with me.”
His eyes locked with Hale’s for just a brief moment in time, sensing the fear, the uncertainty there. Foreboding.
9:05 P.M.
There had to be a way to get to him in time, she thought, hurrying along the docks. To pull him out. To save him yet. Even if she didn’t know how.
“…riding with me.” Mehreen heard the words, stopping in her tracks as she glanced over the waters of the harbor toward the neighboring quay. The harbor lights haloed by mist as they shone down upon her, the HK45 held beneath her coat. Only then realizing their import.
She froze for a half-second, glancing back down along the docks toward where she had left the Vauxhall, swallowed up in the night and fog.
And then she began to run…
9:08 P.M.
“Let’s move, bruv,” Harry heard the black man say from beside him—reaching up to clap their driver on the shoulder. He saw Tarik’s Land Rover pull out in front of them, headlights sweeping across the loading yard—their own vehicle lurching into motion as it swung into a following position.
Maybe twenty meters behind, if that, he thought—measuring the distance at a glance. Danger close.
It would have to be enough.
He shifted his position carefully, every movement sending sharp pain through his bruised ribcage. Looking over into the eyes of the man on his left—man? More of a boy, really. Barely out of college, if that. A rifle in his hand, a Glock just visible beneath his jacket—jammed carelessly into his waistband.
Eyes burning with hatred as they stared back into his. Like those of so many young men he had seen through the years. Minds corrupted by indoctrination. By hate.
But there was no time to think of any of that. Not now. Harry looked away, forcing himself to focus. So close. Eyeing the lead Land Rover as it drove between the warehouse gates, rolling out onto the road leading inland off the quay.
Now or never.
“Mehreen,” he began, his voice low and urgent, “for the love of God, do it—do it now!”
He saw the young man’s eyes open wide at his words, saw the rifle shift in his hands…time itself seeming to slow down as its muzzle came up.
And then the night exploded in fire—the lead Land Rover suddenly engulfed in flames, a shockwave expanding outward from the center of the explosion. A pillar of fire rising into the darkness of the sky.
Lives extinguished in the blink of an eye. A funeral pyre.
Their own vehicle swerving to avoid the burning wreck—spider veins spreading across the glass of the windshield as it was struck by flying debris.
Ignoring the pain wracking his body, Harry threw his weight into the guard—slamming him against the door and knocking the rifle away as he reached forward, grabbing the Glock 19 from the young man’s waistband and bringing it out in his bound hands.
Out and all the way around. He caught a brief glimpse of panic on the black man’s face as he saw the pistol now suddenly aimed at his head, as he started to react—the trigger breaking beneath Harry’s finger in that moment.
Lights out. Blood and brains spraying across the window of the Land Rover as the bullet smashed through the jihadist’s skull and out through the glass beyond—the roar of the gunshot reverberating through the enclosed vehicle.
Harry swung the barrel of the Glock to the left, putting a pair of 9mm rounds through their driver’s shoulder—the vehicle fishtailing as he lost control. His scream of agony nearly swallowed up by the report of the weapon.
The raw, sulphurous smell of gunpowder filling the Land Rover. Two of the jihadists guarding him dead—only seconds having passed since the explosion, since the first gunshot.
He turned back toward the young man on his left even as the Land Rover slammed into a stack of shipping containers and came to a stop, throwing him into the seat in front of him—steam hissing angrily from beneath the vehicle’s destroyed hood, the airbags deploying to fill the front seat.
He nearly dropped the Glock in the force of the impact, struggling to bring the weapon to bear. Seeing the look in the young man’s eyes as he clawed for his rifle—hatred replaced by naked fear at the sight of Harry’s face. Bloodied, pitiless.
A boy once more in that moment, young—scared out of his mind. But going for his gun.
The choices we make. Life and death…no or about it.
The Glock spat twice—point-blank range, the bullets tearing through the young man’s jacket and into his belly.
A look of shock and surprise spreading across his face as he stared down at the blood soaking his shirt—his empty hand groping blindly for the handle of the door. Finding it and pushing it open even as Harry shot him again in the forehead, his head snapping back.
No mercy. No time for anything of the sort, not now—hearing the squeal of tires as he pushed himself up, catching a glimpse of the third SUV through the Land Rover’s back window. Pulling in behind them.
He unzipped the young man’s jacket an
d began rifling through his pockets, finding a small knife clipped to his belt—dropping the pistol to the seat. His hands working awkwardly to open the knife, pressing the blade against the hard plastic of the ties binding him. Sawing back and forth, knowing he had only seconds left. Time to move.
There. He pressed his hands outward, the ties digging into his flesh until they snapped with an audible pop, his hands free at last even as shouts began to fill the night. Out of time. There was a spare mag for the Glock in the front pocket of the kid’s jeans and he took it, pushing past the corpse as he heard a door slam shut—throwing himself from the vehicle. The impact nearly taking him to his knees as he hit the concrete, pain shooting like fire through every muscle.
He glanced just up the road toward the burning hulk of the lead Land Rover, thinking for a moment he could hear screams of anguish and pain coming from the wreckage. Realizing only then that he was silhouetted against its hellish glare. A perfect target.
There was nowhere to run—easily fifty meters of open ground between him and the water. The nearest cover easily twenty meters off as the doors of the rear vehicle came open. Nowhere to hide.
Last stand. He brought the Glock up in his hands, thrusting it forward—getting off a shot as the first of the jihadists exited the vehicle. The bullet going wild, burying itself in the frame of the door.
He could see the rifle in the man’s hand, its muzzle sweeping toward him as he fired twice more, the bullets catching his target high in the chest. Double-tap.
The man went down against the concrete, legs kicking in the spasms of death—the muzzle of Harry’s Glock already traversing to the next target as another man came around the front of the vehicle, rifle already up.
And then another. Muzzle flashes lighting up the night, flickering like strobes in the fog. The supersonic crack of rifle bullets snapping through the air past his head as he moved back toward the shipping containers. Firing as he went, again and again and again.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 72
