Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  Knowing he was running low on ammunition, knowing that he could only last so long.

  John Patrick Flynn’s words echoing through his mind, as true now as when he’d first heard him utter them in early October of 2001, the two of them sitting astride horses atop a ridge in northern Afghanistan. Gazing through binoculars at Taliban positions in the valley below as Northern Alliance fighters unslung their weapons all around them, preparing for a charge. “Some days, son—doesn’t make any difference how good you are…there are just too many Indians.”

  Too many Indians. That about summed it up. Death coming for him once more. The face of a friend.

  He fired again, seeing a man go down in the mist. Hearing the death rattle of a rifle on full-automatic as bullets tore through the metal of the container, inches away from his head.

  And then the Glock’s slide locked back on an empty magazine.

  9:09 P.M.

  Thames House

  Millbank, London

  “Sir,” a voice called out as MacCallum passed through the Centre, “you need to see this.”

  The section chief glanced down at the phone in his hand, closing it before moving over to join his analyst at his workstation. “What are we looking at?”

  “Reports are coming in of an explosion in the port of Aberdeen—an explosion followed by sustained gunfire.”

  Tarik Abdul Muhammad, MacCallum thought, knowing what he had to do. “Where are the nearest response units?”

  “Fifteen minutes away, but they’re nothing more than constabulary. Aberdeen’s scattered—still dealing with the scene at the shopping centre, assisting 22 SAS as they escort the Queen to Holyrood. Nearest Firearms Unit is nearly forty minutes out.”

  It was a bad situation all the way around. No good solution to it, no way to avoid sending good men to their deaths.

  “Liaise with Police Scotland,” the section chief said finally, “have them dispatch all available units to the harbor, but they are not, I repeat are not, to move in until the Firearms Unit arrives on scene. Establish a cordon a mile out and hold fast. I’ll notify the DG.”

  9:11 P.M.

  The port of Aberdeen

  Scotland

  Sooner or later, your hourglass ran out of sand. It was as simple as that. Death, the end of every man. Long overdue.

  Didn’t mean you couldn’t go down fighting. Harry thumbed the Glock’s mag release, hearing the magazine clatter to the concrete even as bullets whined through the air past his ear, tugging at his jacket.

  Fishing the spare out of his pants pocket, knowing even as he did so that it was too late—that he would be dead before he could release the slide. Dead as he had lived.

  By the sword.

  And then he heard the distinctive crackle of a Kalashnikov off to his right, shots ringing out over the water as bursts of fire tore through the night.

  He saw one of the jihadists go down, the weapon dropping from his dying hands—saw another crumple in a bloodied heap as the third man turned to confront the new threat.

  His thumb hit the release, the Glock’s slide running forward as he raised it once again—acquiring a sight picture for only a brief second before he fired, the pistol recoiling into his hand.

  The bullet smashing into the base of the jihadist’s neck, severing the brain stem. He dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut, sprawling across the concrete.

  Silence falling across the port once more. Harry rose slowly from his crouch, weapon still leveled—searching for threats. He glimpsed movement off to his right toward the water, pivoting to meet the threat as Flaharty came walking in out of the fog—his AKM raised in one hand.

  “Easy there, boyo,” the Irishman cautioned, taking in the sight of Harry’s pistol. “Is that all of them?”

  A silent nod as he lowered the weapon, glancing around at the corpses strewn around them, the scene lit in the glare of the burning wreckage.

  Running a hand across his bloodied face. Scarce able to believe he was still alive…scarce wanting to.

  Knowing that he owed his life to the Irishman, but finding himself unable to thank him. Knowing all that was to come—the deal he had made.

  A devil’s bargain.

  He turned away without a word, the Glock still in his hand as he limped across the road toward the burning Land Rover.

  The vehicle well-nigh gutted by fire, flames licking at the windows. Seeing the driver’s side door pushed open as he rounded the rear of the SUV—the driver’s body slumped halfway out of the vehicle, flames licking at his charred legs. As if he’d tried to drag himself to safety. Tried and failed.

  He stepped closer, the heat of the flames searing his face as he peered into the wreckage—his foot catching on something. He looked down to see a severed human hand and part of a forearm lying there in the road, bloodied but curiously intact.

  A dark shadow passing over Harry’s face as he recognized the watch encircling the wrist. Conor Hale. Or all that was left of him. Perhaps it was better this way—that he be remembered for all that he had done before. Not for this.

  He turned away, seeing another body lying farther away from the vehicle, mangled and torn—its right leg missing, the left skewed away from the torso at an obscene angle.

  Tarik Abdul Muhammad, Harry thought, his fingers tightening around the butt of the Glock as he stood over him—gazing down into what remained of the terrorist’s face, near half-blown away. Marred almost beyond recognition.

  But it was him. Lying dead at his feet, at long last. Retribution. For all those who had lost their lives this night. For the hundreds who had died in Vegas. For Carol, most of all.

  Justice. Too long delayed.

  It was strange, but he felt no triumph—no satisfaction—in this moment. There was just…nothing. Nothing but a gnawing emptiness, somewhere deep within. Like a black hole, threatening to swallow him up.

  “Those who seek to take that which belongs to the Lord of worlds…do so at their peril.”

  Ismail Bessimi’s warning, ringing again and again in his ears. Truth. But the wolf was dead.

  And perhaps that would have to be enough.

  Flaharty was kneeling by the bodies of two of the fallen terrorists when Harry returned to the vehicles—searching them for ID, for weapons. His back turned at Harry’s approach.

  “Well?” he asked, still not looking back. “Are they both dead?”

  “They are,” Harry replied flatly. Emotions warring within him as he brought the Glock up in one hand, aiming it at the back of Flaharty’s head. He couldn’t do this. But he had to do it. For Mehreen. For Nick. There was no other way. “Turn around, Stephen.”

  He saw the Irishman stiffen, leaving his rifle where it lay as he rose slowly to his feet. Turning to face him, his face pale in the dying light of the flames.

  It was a long moment before either of them spoke, the haunting wail of distant sirens overshadowing the scene. Then, “What are you playing at, old son?”

  “I think you know,” Harry responded, an overwhelming sadness in his voice. Knowing that Mehreen could hear him over his earpiece. Was already on her way, like as not. “I think we both knew it would end this way.”

  “Aye,” came the simple reply. Flaharty’s face drawn and tight, his jaw set. “That we did.”

  “And yet you came anyway. Why?”

  “Why did I walk right in, you mean—like a sodding lamb to the slaughter?” The Irishman shook his head, staring into the muzzle of the Glock. “Don’t know as I could explain it—perhaps not even to myself. Was it a chance at redemption? Maybe so. We’ve both done things we regret. Horrible things—blood staining our hands the like of which no sacrament will ever be able to wash away. ‘Bless me, Father for I have sinned…’”

  Flaharty turned his head aside and spat at the words of the confession, bitterness written in the lines of his face. Faith lost.

  He straightened, seeming to draw himself up. Looking Harry in the eye. “Do what you’re going to do, lad.
I’ve never begged a man for mercy in my life, and I’ll be buggered if I start with you.”

  Enough. Harry’s face twisted into a grimace, his fingers clutching the Glock in a death grip.

  Struggling with what he must do…and finding himself unable to do it. Looking into the eyes of the older man and seeing decades of sorrow, decades of war looking back. A damned soul, seeking rest and finding none.

  He reached up suddenly, removing his earpiece and dropping it to the pavement. His booted foot closing over it with a sickening crunch.

  “Go,” Harry said simply, his body shuddering with emotion as he lowered the pistol. Inclining his head back toward the city behind him. Enough blood had been shed this day.

  “Go now.”

  9:17 P.M.

  Thames House

  Millbank, London

  “…still fifteen minutes out. 22 SAS is diverting a team to Aberdeen to assist.”

  “Whose idea was that?” Julian Marsh asked sharply, glancing up from his notes.

  MacCallum and Norris traded glances, and then the section chief spoke. “It was the MoD’s, sir. Straight from General Lidington.”

  The DG shook his head. “And Police Scotland?”

  “Have expressed a desire for the SAS to lead the assault on the quay once we begin to move in.”

  Marsh swore under his breath. It wasn’t what he had wanted, but he understood the reasoning behind it. They were short on trained men. “Do we have any way currently of establishing what we’re up against?”

  A shake of the head from Norris. “Police Scotland is hoping to have a drone in the air within forty minutes, but we’re going to need to launch before then.”

  “Satellite coverage?”

  “I’ve spoken with the cousins. Nothing onstation for over an hour.”

  So be it, Marsh thought, placing both hands on the conference table as he rose to his feet. They were going in blind, come what may.

  He buttoned his suit jacket, pausing as he glanced over at his section chief. “Make sure the SAS is properly briefed before they go in—if at all possible, we need Tarik Abdul Muhammad taken alive.”

  9:21 P.M.

  The port of Aberdeen

  Scotland

  He never knew what hit him, Harry thought, looking into the dead, vacant eyes of the young black man lying slumped there in the back seat of the Land Rover—the dying light of the flames reflected in their lifeless depths.

  Taken off-guard, unprepared. He’d never had a chance.

  He shook his head, pulling open the dead man’s jacket and retrieving his confiscated Sig-Sauer from within. One of these days, it was going to be him. Sooner or later.

  A man couldn’t cheat Death forever and he’d been on borrowed time for far too long already.

  He replaced the pistol in the empty shoulder holster beneath his jacket, wincing in pain from his damaged ribs as he did so.

  Headlights washing over the vehicle in that moment, a car pulling to a stop not far away.

  Harry left the Glock where it was on the seat, recognizing the familiar shape of the Vauxhall as he walked out into the glare of the headlights.

  Bracing himself for what was to come.

  The sound of a car door opening and closing serving as harbinger, the figure of a woman emerging into the light. A pistol visible in her right hand.

  “Mehreen,” he said, his voice stopping her in her tracks. She looked at him and he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. Searching for words, the both of them.

  “The Shaikh?” she asked at long last.

  “Dead,” he replied flatly, nodding toward the smoldering wreckage of the Land Rover. “Along with the rest of his men. It was a close-run thing.”

  Closer than it had needed to be, he thought, but didn’t say. All it would have taken was the press of a button…and she could have ended it all. In a blinding flash of light.

  The end of all sorrow. An escape.

  She opened her mouth to speak again, hesitant—her dark eyes searching his face. “Harry…where is he?”

  He didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. He knew, far too well—the look in her eyes stabbing him deep to the heart. The decision he had made resting heavy on his shoulders. Crushing him beneath its weight.

  “He’s gone, Mehr,” he said finally, knowing there was no good way to answer her. No way to explain what he had done. The faith he had betrayed. He wasn’t fully capable of understanding it himself.

  “What do you mean?” She shook her head, taking a step toward him. Her voice brittle as ice. “He was here. You were with him—I heard both of you, over your earpiece. I heard you speaking to him, I—”

  “He was,” he admitted, struggling within himself. How to explain what had happened—how it felt to look into the eyes of a man and see yourself looking back. Unable to pull the trigger in that moment. “And I…let him go.”

  Such a simple statement, yet so devastating. No. Mehreen felt herself recoil as if he had struck her, her right hand clenching and unclenching around the HK’s grip as she struggled to regain control of herself, the textured polymer digging into her fingers. Desperation washing over her like a flood tide. It wasn’t possible. He was lying. He had to be lying.

  And yet when she looked into Harry’s eyes, all she could see in their weary, gunmetal blue depths was truth. For once.

  “But…why?” she heard herself demand, her voice trembling with anger. Raw sorrow mixing with an all-consuming rage. The pistol coming up in her outstretched hand—a rough, instinctive motion, devoid of conscious thought. Its barrel wavering as she looked down the sights into his eyes. Hammer back on a loaded chamber. “We had a deal.”

  An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. The oldest law known to man—both of them seeking vengeance in this night. And he’d found it.

  She shook her head, tears of pain and fury shining in her eyes—something snapping within her in that moment. Her finger curling around the HK’s trigger. Taking up slack.

  Enough. Enough with the lies, the deception.

  The sound of the shot shattered the night, reverberating out over the harbor—startling her as the compact pistol recoiled hard into her unsupported hand, its muzzle blossoming with fire…

  Pain. Sudden and unexpected, searing heat—like being stabbed in the side with a hot iron.

  Harry staggered back from the impact of the round, his mind struggling to process what had just happened—looking into Mehreen’s eyes as she fired again, a second .45-caliber slug tearing its way through his body. He stood there for a long moment suspended in time, swaying slightly—and then his legs went out from under him.

  Seeing the look on her face change from fury to shock, then horror as he went down, falling to his knees on the pavement.

  The impact shuddering painfully through him as he tried and failed to stay aright, toppling sideways—his body sprawling in the road.

  So this is how it all ends, he thought, lying there staring up into the night sky above. The harbor lights haloed by fog, shining down upon him.

  Struggling to rise, to push himself up—his body refusing to accept what his mind already had. That Death was coming for him once again. No longer to be denied.

  All of the sorrow, all of the pain. The years of war. Ended now…at the hand of a friend.

  Irony of ironies.

  He heard footsteps approaching and looked up into Mehreen’s face, finding nothing but sorrow written there.

  Tears running down her cheeks as she stooped beside him, the weapon long since discarded. Cradling his head against her arm as she pulled him backward, propping him up against the wheel of the wrecked Land Rover. Her free hand pushing his jacket to the side to examine his wounds.

  Her fingers came away sticky with blood, the look on her face telling him what he already knew. It was bad. Very bad.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her body seeming to convulse in a silent sob. A tear falling from her eyes to splash against his face. “I never meant�
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  “Don’t be,” he said, reaching up to touch her wet cheek with the tips of his rough, callused fingers. “You were right, and I was…so very wrong. But it’s too late for any of that, now.”

  “No, it’s not.” She reached up angrily, brushing away the tears and leaving her cheek smeared with his blood. “There has to be a way, something—I can get you to a hospital. I can—”

  The shrill, discordant wail of police sirens sounded once more in the distance, seeming closer now. “You need to go, Mehr,” he responded, his voice little more than a whisper. “Go now. While you still can.”

  Before the Security Services arrived. Before everything came crashing down, for the both of them. “Don’t sacrifice yourself for me.”

  “No.” He could see the angry denial in her eyes, hear the desperation in her voice. “I can’t just leave you here to die, all alone.”

  Harry shook his head, a sad smile crossing his lips. Feeling weak in that moment, painfully weak.

  “Everyone dies alone, Mehr,” he said, a cough seizing hold of him—pain wracking his body. “Every last one of us, in the end. Now go.”

  She nodded finally, seeming to choke back a sob as she rose wordlessly to her feet—making her way toward the car. Pausing with her hand on the door, looking back to where he lay.

  “Go,” he mouthed, well aware his voice couldn’t reach her. Willing her to leave. To save herself.

  The car door closing finally, the Vauxhall’s headlights sweeping out over the road as it swung toward the far side of the quay, turning back toward the city.

  He sat there for a long moment, leaning back into the wheel of the Land Rover, his chest rising and falling with deep, labored breaths. Summoning up whatever remained of his strength.

  He put a hand back against the vehicle, rolling over onto his hands and knees as he struggling to push himself aright—fighting against the pain and nausea threatening to overwhelm him.

  Biting deep into his lip to keep from crying out as he staggered to his feet, feeling unsteady, light-headed. Looking down at the wounds in his side and abdomen, the lower half of his shirt soaked with blood.

  Knowing from hard-earned experience just how gravely he was wounded, knowing he only had so long before he would go into shock. Make the most of it.