Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  “I’m going to take a shower, then go to bed,” she announced, her voice brittle. On the verge of breaking.

  Mehreen didn’t look at him, nor did he say anything to stop her as she left the kitchen, moving down the flat’s narrow hallway toward her bedroom.

  Her hand reached out, closing the door behind her. She didn’t lock it, didn’t need to. Nichols would respect that. Always had.

  Always had. Her face tightened with emotion, refusing to give way to tears. Her legs slowly giving out from under her as she sagged to the floor. Remembering. Whatever his faults—and she had no doubt they were many…he had been there for her when there’d been no one else.

  She and Nick had tried for years to have a child. Years. He had wanted nothing more in the world than a son, but he would have been happy with whatever she had born, she knew that.

  Fertility treatments were rare in the UK, the wait times long. Running out of time, her clock ticking down. But they had tried that as well, and succeeded at long last.

  They’d named him Adrian, after Nick’s father. Set up one room of that flat in Bromley as a nursery, painting it pale blue—the color of a robin’s egg. She could still remember standing in the room, watching him paint. Painting had never been his strong suit, and his clothes had been speckled with blue.

  She’d laughed at him and he had reached over, his hand darting out to dot her nose with paint, his eyes dancing with delight—the baby kicking within her. The three of them becoming one in that moment.

  Then Nick had been called back to the war—without warning—the duty of the soldier taking precedence over that of the husband. As ever. And she was left alone, barely six months along.

  The end of the fourth week since Nick’s departure came around, and with it a knock on the door. Telling her that his patrol had been ambushed in the Iraqi desert outside Basra, leaving two SAS soldiers dead and Nick…missing in action.

  She’d thought she was strong—seen everything during her years at Five. But nothing had prepared her for that moment.

  And she’d gone into labor. Far too soon, alone in the city. She’d been estranged from her family years before. Moving to the UK had been one thing for all of them. Marrying a British soldier was another.

  Harry had called her the day before from the American Embassy, checking in on his godson. Passing through the UK on his way back to the States.

  When she called him from the back of the ambulance, he was still there, just getting ready to catch a flight.

  He’d dropped everything to come to her side, to join her at the hospital. It was the brotherhood—Nick had been his mate, and you looked out for the wife and kid of your mate. No matter what it took.

  He was there through the long hours, holding her hand as the birth pangs convulsed her body, as she cried out in pain. There at the end when Adrian was finally delivered…stillborn.

  And he had stayed with her through the days of grief that followed, a pillar of strength—a shoulder to cry on. Taking care of all the arrangements for Adrian. Until the word came that they’d found Nick. That her husband was on his way home.

  They had stood together on the tarmac at RAF Brize Norton, watching as the big C-130 Hercules taxied to a stop in front of them. As Nick came limping down the ramp.

  So many years ago, and yet there were wounds that time didn’t heal. They’d never tried again, hadn’t had the heart for it. And then Nick had been taken from her as well.

  Sorrow compounding sorrow, daggers stabbing at her heart. She brushed angrily at the tears now streaming down her cheeks, as if that could somehow check their flow.

  The dictates of protocol. Of duty. And yet she owed him a debt.

  The kitchen was ghostly quiet after her departure, leaving Harry sitting there, picking idly at his food. His own appetite had deserted him long before, but he was only too aware of how much he needed to eat.

  Using people. You could rationalize it any way you pleased, but that’s what it came down to in the end, the dirtiest part of this business. The most necessary part of the trade.

  He knew what Mehreen would decide, had known before he had even lifted a hand to knock on her door the previous night. She wouldn’t betray him…the only question remaining was what she would be willing to betray for him.

  With a sigh, he reached for his bottle of spring water, draining what remained in a single swallow. Might as well start trying to get some sleep himself. Had a feeling it was going to come hard this night.

  10:49 P.M.

  London

  Sleep. Whatever that actually was, he wasn’t getting enough of it, Thomas thought, bringing the camera up to his eye and snapping off three shots. Click-click-click.

  Almost as quick as a video camera, capturing Tarik Abdul Muhammad crossing the street less than a hundred meters east of their position.

  “Any thoughts on where he might be going?” Darren asked from the driver’s seat beside him.

  Thomas shook his head. “A lot of his movement has seemed random—my best bet is that he’s been running SDRs on us.”

  Surveillance detection routes. Standard protocol in the intelligence business, their best proof thus far that the Pakistani’s business in the country was anything but on the level.

  Click-click-click. “Two phone calls earlier today. Nothing actionable.”

  “You ran them?”

  “Your man MacCallum did. Tarik placed a call to one Andy Gaveda in Dartford, asking about a used car in the classifieds.”

  “Legitimate?”

  “Seems to be,” Thomas replied, momentarily distracted by the chatter over his earpiece. “My latest report was that Special Branch was going to have a look in the morning.”

  “And the other?”

  “He received a phone call from Hashim Rahman, the director of the Children of Al Quds Foundation in Leeds. They discussed meeting in person three days from now.”

  “Where?” the British officer asked, easing the car forward carefully. They were back-up, there to move into place if Tarik suddenly found transport. Till then, their foot teams would handle the job of shadowing the Pakistani, alternating places with dizzying precision.

  “They were vague—deliberately so, in my opinion. Near as we can tell, the meeting place is the Masjid-e-Ali there in the city, the registered address of Rahman’s foundation.” Thomas laid the camera aside, sweeping the street with his binoculars. He picked up three of the MI-5 officers, but only because he knew them by sight.

  Two men and one woman, their appearance was completely nondescript, utterly essential for an operation like this. Nothing to draw attention, just businesspeople headed home at the end of a long day.

  A vagrant standing in the shadow of the building took a final drag of his cigarette before turning to follow Tarik. “Echo 2, I have CERBERUS.”

  A smile touched his lips. The “vagrant” was a fourth officer. Well played.

  “Leeds,” Darren mused. “Maybe that’s why he’s buying a car.”

  Likely. Thomas turned to face his companion in the darkness of the car. “Think we can get eyes and ears inside the mosque?”

  The former Royal Marine pursed his lips. “You’re talking a bureaucratic nightmare.”

  “Aren’t they all?” Thomas asked with a laugh.

  Caught off-guard, Darren hesitated for a moment, then started laughing. “Too right, mate. Too right…I’ll see what I can do. No promises, you understand?”

  “Of course.” Radio chatter from the chase teams filled his ear and Thomas lifted the binoculars to his eyes once again, focusing on the figure of Tarik Abdul Muhammad standing on the steps of a rundown building.

  Chatting amiably with a young woman who was, well…underdressed for the weather.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Thomas nodded, chuckling. “He’s a terrorist—not a eunuch.”

  10:54 P.M.

  The inside of the building was dark, Tarik thought—darker than even he had expected—only a sin
gle flickering bulb illuminating the corridor as the prostitute led him along by the arm, a bored, disinterested look on her face.

  No matter. She looked to be in her late twenties—almost his age, as nearly as he could tell. Older than he liked his women, but that wasn’t the priority. Not tonight.

  He could hear grunts and moans coming from the rooms surrounding them as they passed—and once, a woman’s scream—as if in pain. The paint of the doors was faded and chipped, bearing an occasional room number, half-scratched off. Perhaps this had been a hotel once, in a by-gone age.

  She led him past an elevator which didn’t work anymore and up the stairs, ascending the steps ahead of him.

  He found himself distracted by the sight, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Focus. Everything depended on the next few moments.

  The whore stopped outside a door at the top of the stairs, lifting a small hand to rap on the wood.

  A moment passed, and he could hear footsteps from within, the bulge of the Browning Hi-Power feeling cold against his ribs.

  She leaned against the door, speaking a few words in broken English—and it swung open to reveal a young negro standing behind it, a knife on his belt, a pistol shoved into the waistband of his jeans beneath a swinging gold chain, his eyes narrowing as they settled on Tarik.

  The kufi nestling on top of his head was the only distinguishing sign of his faith. “And what is to be done of the Hell of which you were warned?”

  Tarik smiled, recognizing the source of the codephrase. Surah Ya-sin. Knowing the reply which was expected of him. “Embrace the fire…”

  The man’s face finally relaxed into something that might pass for a smile and he stepped back, allowing Tarik to enter. He’d expected the woman to leave, but she entered the room behind him, his eyes adjusting to the semi-darkness within, picking out one man standing by the shuttered window.

  “Salaam alaikum,” a voice greeted him from the bed, and he glanced over to see another man sitting there, half-dressed, a woman in his lap—one hand absently stroking her long hair, the curve of her back.

  Clearly no one had any intention of getting rid of the women. He wondered if they had taken even the barest minimum of precaution.

  “You are Sayyed Hassan?” he asked, not bothering to return the salutation. The manager of a used bookstore in Mayfair, the man had been entrusted with the leadership of a jihadist cell in London.

  A nod.

  Tarik turned back on the prostitute who had accompanied him up, favoring her with an indulgent smile.

  “Take your knife,” he began in Arabic, addressing the black man. “And slit her throat.”

  10:57 P.M.

  “Any chance of getting eyes on the inside?” Thomas asked, glassing the building with a small pair of binoculars. He had a bad feeling, gnawing at him—the feeling that something was going wrong, even as they sat there. Perhaps it was just nerves, the knowledge of what this man had once done.

  Not again. Not if he could stop it.

  In the driver’s seat beside him, Darren grimaced. “I can place a few calls…but, the authorization isn’t going to be easy to obtain. Prostitution rings are the jurisdiction of the NCA, not Five.”

  The National Crime Agency, hailed in the UK media as “Britain’s FBI.”

  “Then what’s your plan?”

  “We watch,” the British officer responded coolly, pulling a mobile from his pocket. “And we wait.”

  10:58 P.M.

  Nothing. He watched the faces of both the prostitutes as he spoke the words—there was no reaction to be seen in their eyes. They hadn’t understood his words.

  “Put up your weapon,” he said calmly, motioning toward the black man, who was staring at him with a confused expression on his face, his knife half-drawn from its sheath. “We can talk freely now.”

  Sayyed Hassan laughed, slapping his woman lightly on the buttocks, motioning for her to slide down off his lap. “The brothers warned us you could be unpredictable, shaikh.”

  Tarik nodded, watching as the woman walked across the room toward the cheap wooden chest of drawers, pausing in front of the mirror. “It is why I am still alive, despite the best efforts of the khafir.”

  “Insh’allah,” came the overly-pious rejoinder. As God wills.

  “Do not tempt God,” he replied, shooting Hassan a stern look, “by asking that He protect you against the consequences of your own stupidity.”

  He continued on before the man could muster the presence of mind to respond, taking command of the room. “Tell me you at least posted a lookout.”

  If Tarik had doubted the answer to his demand, he received undeniable confirmation in the confused look on Hassan’s face. They hadn’t.

  “Go,” he ordered, wheeling on the black man. “Go outside and keep a close watch. And remove your kufi first.”

  For a moment, the man hesitated, as though looking to his cell leader for confirmation of the order. Tarik’s gaze brooking no disobedience.

  A moment, and then he wilted under the stare, taking off the small Islamic skullcap as he ducked out the door, closing it behind him. Fools.

  “Now tell me,” he began, turning back to the leader of the London cell, “have you been able to obtain the weapons we spoke of?”

  Hassan swallowed hard, seeming suddenly overawed, the confident self-assurance with which he had handled the whore now leaving him. “W-we are working on it, shaikh.”

  Chapter 3

  12:03 A.M., March 24th

  The flat

  Ealing, London

  Warm and wet. The sound of a bullet smashing into flesh, sickeningly familiar.

  And she was swaying before him, her head striking his chest as she collapsed into his arms. A dull, lifeless thud.

  A raw, inhuman cry escaping his lips as his hands came away from her back, sticky with her blood. “Carol!”

  The shot of the sniper ringing in his ears, a haunting echo. Again and again.

  Again and again and again.

  Harry’s eyes flickered open at the sound of the gunshot, his breathing fast and shallow, a sheen of perspiration covering his bare chest—his hand reaching under the pillow cushion for the holstered Walther.

  His fingers closed around the butt of the small semiautomatic, flicking the safety off as he brought it out in one practiced motion, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.

  Nothing. There was nothing there, absolutely nothing. Just the darkness of the flat, dim street noise from outside the window.

  He sat there on the couch, pistol in hand, surveying the twisted mass of blankets at his feet, willing his breathing to return to normal. Wiping the sweat from his chest with a still-trembling hand. A dream. It had all been a dream.

  Well…not all a dream, he thought, safing the Walther with an almost palpable reluctance. Carol was dead, that was real enough. All too real.

  He let himself fall back against the cushions, struggling to shut the images from his mind. It wasn’t the first time he’d had such dreams, not the first time he had awoke reliving that Vegas night. The night she had died, bleeding to death in his arms, a sniper’s bullet in her back.

  That was then, he thought. This was now—and he couldn’t risk losing his focus. He reached into the pocket of his jeans, bringing out his prepaid cellphone and opening it till the glow of the screen illuminated his face in the darkness, playing across the rough stubble of his beard, the sunken hollows of his eyes.

  There were two text messages in the inbox, both of them already opened, but he was only interested in the most recent one. The meet is arranged, it read, giving him an address. It was a bad part of the city, he remembered—but that was to be expected considering the man he was to meet.

  “You get out there in the real world,” he thought, smiling ever so slightly as the voice came back to him. The voice of his mentor when he had first joined the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, in those years before 9/11. “You get out in the real world and you realize that the saints wo
n’t be able to give you what you need. And if you’re going to accomplish your objectives, you’re going to have to get down there in that mud and fight shoulder to shoulder with the devil’s own—people every bit as dirty, every bit as vile as the men you’re trying to stop. Because that objective is the only thing that matters. And that is truth.”

  John Patrick Flynn. He’d been gone for years now, but Harry could still remember meeting him for the first time there at Camp Peary, in his first days of training. A soft-spoken veteran of the CIA’s first go-round in Afghanistan, arming the mujahideen against the Soviets, Flynn had brought the hard edge of reality to the training.

  Life and death. No “or” about it.

  He read the message again, a calloused thumb rolling down the screen. Noting the time of the meet: 1530 hours. It wasn’t a meeting he looked forward to, but it was necessary.

  Because the objective was the only thing that mattered…

  7:34 P.M. Eastern Time

  An apartment

  Washington, D.C.

  It was an early evening for him, or would have been, the man thought, picking at his food, the low hum of a television in the background of the apartment.

  He’d been up since the previous midnight, putting out fires. Figuratively speaking, of course—and none of them unexpected.

  It came with the territory, the little sign on his desk that read “Director of the National Clandestine Service.”

  All of the current crises part of the fallout from the successful hit on TALISMAN.

  His men had done their job and done it well, but the intelligence world placed heavy reliance on the time-honored question of “Cui bono?”, which translated roughly from the Latin as “To whom the good?”

  And the list of suspects who would benefit from the death of a Saudi prince was not…overpopulated.

  Which is why the Saudi intelligence chief would be flying into D.C. for a meeting before the week was out.

  Prince Badr bin Abdul Aziz had been the head of the Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-‘Āmah for most of the last year, tapped for the intelligence position as the aged King Salman shuffled more of his chess pieces around the board, solidifying power.