Darren nodded, his eyes still smoldering.
“Good,” the DG continued, ignoring the glance. “Now I want CCTV coverage on every train station, every bus terminal out of London. If possible without spooking him, I want an officer with Tarik on his journey north. Let’s make this happen, people.”
2:00 A.M. Eastern Time
Vienna, Virginia
Somewhere in the old house, the clock struck the hour. Once, then twice, before quiet descended once again. Almost an unnatural quiet—the type of early morning stillness that comes with not having slept.
Roy Coftey leaned back against the headboard of the bed, staring up at the bedroom ceiling as he listened to the breathing of the young woman lying there beside him. Slow and measured.
He looked down at her sleeping form, bringing up a hand to caress her bare shoulder. She stirred but didn’t awaken, her lips parting as if to speak.
Melody.
They’d been together for six months, longer than he typically kept any one woman around. Stay in D.C. for long enough and you picked up a reputation whether you liked it or not—and Coftey didn’t mind being known as a womanizer. It helped him forget.
He’d only been in Congress for nine years when his wife passed from Lou Gehrig’s, a long illness that had slowly stolen away the woman he had loved so much.
Moment by moment.
They had never had children—and he’d never fallen in love again. Until now.
Now. He smiled in the darkness, a war-weary smile. Now, when everything he had built was so close to collapse, with Cahill gunning for him.
Ian Cahill. It seemed ironic—given how closely the two of them had worked together over the decades. Friends? No, because neither of them had believed in such a thing, but firm allies.
An utterly ruthless strategist with all the morality of a street fighter, Cahill had risen to power in the Hancock administration, becoming the President’s chief of staff. Roger Hancock’s closest advisor.
He’d known from that moment at Camp David that Cahill would never forgive him his role in bringing down the administration. Never. And it didn’t matter that the former President was dead now—Hancock stabbed to death by a woman in a California hotel room, a lover’s quarrel gone wrong.
None of that mattered. For Cahill, it was war.
Coftey smiled, reaching over in the darkness for his reading glasses on the nightstand. He’d been in D.C. for as long as Cahill, maybe a bit longer. What was that old saying from the opening of the American Revolution?
If they wish to have a war…let it begin here.
10:27 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time
King’s Cross Station
He was chosen. That much Tarik knew, glancing around at the Victorian architecture of the train station, looking for Nadeem. The young man had volunteered to accompany him to Leeds, offered to be his bodyguard.
That much he had known for many years. His faith had wavered in those early months in Cuba, staring out from behind the wire of Camp X-Ray, the blue water of Guantanamo Bay beckoning to him. Taunting him with its promise of freedom.
Wavered? No, his faith had done far more than waver. He had given up, on the cause, on the promises of Allah. Turned his back on his faith. He could still remember lying there, curled up into a ball on the concrete floor of his cell. Refusing to eat.
Day after day, a resistance born of despair. He’d wanted to die more than anything else, prayed that the darkness would swallow him up.
He looked over his shoulder again as he moved toward the machines to take his railway pass. Once or twice in recent days, he had thought that he was being followed, but it remained a feeling. Nothing more.
But his death had not been so ordained, there in that cell. And as he lay there, starving, his mind swirling in delirium, he had seen a vision—a supernatural light shining down upon him from above, a voice in the midst of the darkness.
The voice of an angel speaking to him, words of hope. Of purpose. Of truth.
And from that moment, he had known. There was a mission for him to perform, a purpose from on high. A part to be played in Allah’s struggle.
An Englishwoman bumped into him as he moved to the turnstile, and felt her turn toward him, as if expecting an apology.
He turned but for a moment, his blue eyes drifting over her. Transfixing her with a gaze as serene as it was penetrating before he turned back, pushing through the turnstile on his way toward the train pulling into the station, an electric locomotive painted in the silver livery of the East Coast line.
The young man came hurrying up at the last moment, following him through the turnstile. Tarik ignored his apology, choosing to overlook the failure. For now.
So many years, and all through the darkness God had guided his steps in his jihad against the West. Surely He would not fail them now, in this hour of testing.
“Now boarding…”
10:31 A.M.
“He’s here,” Mehreen announced into her earpiece, moving out onto the platform toward the Mk 4 passenger carriage, about ten feet back from their target. “He’s entering the third coach back from the engine. I say again, I have eyes on Tarik Abdul Muhammad. And he’s not alone.”
She didn’t recognize his companion, a black man perhaps ten years younger than Tarik himself.
“That’s a known associate. Nadeem Abdul al-Qawi, no doubt along as muscle. We have the three of you on CCTV. Get on the same coach with them, but stay back.” It was MacCallum’s voice, calm and measured. The voice of an old hand.
Mehreen resisted the urge to nod, keeping her focus. “I’ve done this once or twice, Alec.”
“As have we all. A reminder never goes amiss.”
“Of course.” It was standard procedure, she knew that. Nothing unusual.
She stepped through the doors, glancing up the rows of upholstered seats, grey alternating with blue. There. A window seat, eight rows from the end of the coach—his face turned, looking out on the platform. It looked as if his companion was trying to start a conversation, that Tarik was having none of it.
There was an empty seat four back from him and she began working her way toward it. “What’s our status in Leeds?”
“You’ll turn over direct surveillance to our teams at the station. Darren is already in place, will be there to pick you up. Normal contact protocols apply.”
Of course. The decision to place her in the field again for this op had been a tactical one. They’d had teams in place on Tarik for two weeks, but this was the closest they had ever shadowed him. Didn’t want him recognizing a familiar face. All the same…
She cleared her throat. “There are any number of stops on this line. What if he gets off the train before Leeds?”
MacCallum was unruffled by the question, anticipating it, even. Which he probably had been. “Then we’ll re-direct assets as rapidly as possible and bring in local Special Branch if necessary.” His voice softened as he continued, “Take care of yourself, Mehr.”
Behind her, the doors closed, gaskets sealing shut as the train jerked into motion.
No going back.
10:57 A.M.
Hadley Wood
London Borough of Enfield
Third coach from the engine. Harry resisted the urge to look at his watch again, glancing instead down the railroad tracks into the distance. The train would be here soon enough.
The Hadley Wood station seemed disproportionately large when compared to the town that played host to it—long platforms on either side of the rails.
Three security cameras that he had plotted on the dead ground map twenty minutes before, with a fourth inside the station itself.
“I have eyes on Tarik Abdul Muhammad.”
Hacking the Bluetooth network of Mehreen’s phone had been an afterthought, a precaution. Insurance.
He’d known they would bring her in, sooner or later. People with a command of the languages in that part of the world were a rare find, and the Western intelligence communitie
s were still playing catch-up ball.
Finding her in the field was unexpected, though—he hadn’t anticipated that. Mehreen had been a case officer back in the day, cut her operational teeth running assets for “Box” as MI-5 had been known in Northern Ireland in the late ‘90s.
But she had given all that up years ago. Or so he’d been led to believe.
Harry pulled his cap down lower over his eyes, glancing around at his fellow commuters. A college student talking loudly on her cellphone, a businessman staring absently down the train tracks into the distance—a middle-aged woman who looked as if she would have rather been anywhere else.
Lost in their own worlds, consumed by their own problems, their own dreams—unable to see how everything was changing around them. Crumbling into ashes.
And it was all for them. For them that his brothers had given their lives, fighting a war in the shadows, keeping the wolf from the door. So far from the door that most people preferred to believe there wasn’t a wolf.
He tried to recall the first time he had felt this way and found himself unable to remember. Had it been his first time back Stateside from Iraq—feeling the tension of a country divided over something they didn’t even begin to understand? Or had it been much earlier, before 9/11 even? The first time he had killed a man in the service of his flag, coming back into the country…the feeling of blood on his hands as he walked through the concourse at Dulles. Looking around at the people—at his countrymen, realizing that for them, nothing had changed. Not a thing.
It still hadn’t. The Christmas Eve attacks on Vegas would soon be brushed into the past, forgotten just as 9/11 had been before them. Not for him.
The airhorn of the train resounded down the line and Harry glanced down the platform to see the locomotive a few hundred meters away, the long train moving out of the tunnel.
And it was time.
12:34 P.M.
Near the Masjid-e-Ali
Leeds, England
“What’s our status?” Thomas asked, climbing back up in the surveillance van. He reached over to Norris, handing the analyst a covered cup of chai tea.
Darren glanced up from the surveillance screens lining the side of the van, popping off his headphones. “Hashim Rahman walked inside about twenty minutes ago, along with two others we’ve not been able to ID yet. Tarik Abdul Muhammad and his friend are still an hour out—the train’s on schedule.”
“Thank God for small miracles,” Norris observed, running a hand across his forehead.
They were all weary, working on what sleep they had been able to grab in between briefing the DG and their return by helicopter to Leeds.
Thomas settled into a seat, popping the top off his cappuccino. “Did we find anything on the man I ran into on the street yesterday? How is he tied into affairs at the masjid?”
“We did.” Darren reached down into a messenger bag for a thin folder, passing it over. “Ismail Besimi. Sixty-nine years of age, Albanian-born, he was the original imam at the Masjid-e-Ali. A pillar of the Islamic community here in Leeds for many years, according to what my contact at Special Branch told me.”
“Was?”
“Got pushed out—perhaps sidelined would be a better word—when Rahman came to town. He couldn’t match Rahman’s charisma, his appeal to Muslim youth. The allure of the ‘war hero.’” There was a sneer in the former Royal Marine’s voice as he spoke the words.
Nothing heroic about any of this.
“A potential asset?” Thomas asked, flipping open the folder to reveal Besimi’s passport photo staring back at him. There was no emotion in his voice, just the clinical detachment of someone who had been down this road before. You were always looking for something—for someone you could use. An edge.
Roth and the analyst just looked at each other.
“Thank you…we’ll handle that end of things,” Darren said finally, clearing his throat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen—I need to leave for City Station. It’s time to get our teams in place.”
12:51 P.M.
East Coast Main Line
Doncaster, England
We’re nearing the branch off, Mehreen tapped into her phone’s keypad—glancing out the window as she pressed SEND.
East Coast’s London trains came to a parting of the ways at Doncaster. North to Scotland by way of Newcastle—northwest to Leeds.
It was one of the biggest passenger interchanges in the UK, handling nearly four million travelers every year. More than enough traffic to lose a man, which was why she had advised strongly in favor of placing officers on the Doncaster platform, in case their target tried to give them the slip.
Tarik.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the memories of what Nichols had said. Disassociate.
As an analyst, you couldn’t allow yourself to become personally involved in an op—allow emotion to enter the equation. Disrupt your analysis.
It was the same out in the field, as she had learned so many years ago. Except that people died if you got something wrong. Not just in theory.
In fact.
Harry could see her face from where he sat, a window seat across the aisle and three back. Just far enough back to be out of her direct line of sight when she rose—just close enough to where he could himself watch Tarik Abdul Muhammad. And the black man sitting on the outside, ostensibly to protect his principal.
To be this close.
The last time he had seen the Pakistani had been the night of the meeting with Andropov there in that Vegas strip club.
Just days before the attacks. Just days before his dreams had come crashing down.
He could feel the bulge of the Sig-Sauer under his jacket, riding against his hip, looked down to make sure it wasn’t printing against the fabric. Carrying a weapon might have presented a problem in the tight security of London’s Tube, but not here.
The doors opened as the northbound train came to a stop, passengers flooding in on off the Doncaster platform. His eyes narrowed as he tried to keep tabs on Tarik’s position in the press of traffic.
It would be so simple, Harry thought, his mind flickering back across the years to another op. In Europe. A train station just like this one.
So simple to just raise his hand, the suppressed pistol concealed within his coat. Fire a single shot, walk on without stopping, without even pausing to give the cameras something to work with. Leave your target to bleed out. He’d done it before.
His bodyguard would be useless, he plainly hadn’t been to this dance before. The crowd wouldn’t help him—not in time. The first few people to see him fall wouldn’t want to be distracted. The first person to see blood would be afraid to get involved.
People were like that.
And yet something held him back.
1:09 P.M.
The Masjid-e-Ali
Leeds, England
The Shaikh. They had only talked on the phone twice, Hashim Rahman thought—gazing down at the copy of the Qur’an on his desk, the flowing script beneath his finger. Twice, and for only a few moments each time…yet he had felt moved by the very experience of speaking with the man.
It was a power few men possessed, the power to lead men—to unify them under a single banner. Long had the house of Islam looked for such a man.
The imam’s eyes fell upon the clock on the far wall, marking the time as he had been doing ever since he’d entered the mosque. Not long now.
8:24 A.M. Eastern Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
So beautiful. She’d had the eyes of her mother, David Lay thought, glancing at the picture which sat on his desk, a thin layer of dust cloaking the frame.
Untouched since the funeral.
The CIA director pushed back his chair, buttoning his suit jacket as he rose.
Tailored once, it hung on him now in folds of excess fabric, swathing a man who was but a shadow of his former self. The skin of his face loose, cheekbones prominently visible. He
was in his early sixties, but he felt old.
Grief did that to a man. The grief of losing a daughter—a daughter one had known for such a short space of time.
Lay reached for the photo frame, a thumb brushing at the dust—azure-blue eyes staring back at him, a face framed by blonde hair. Carol.
He had known what it was to have a family once, a wife and daughter. In a different age, almost past memory.
The closing years of the Cold War, a time of tumultuous uncertainty. He’d been a field officer in those days, spending months away from his family at a time.
He’d given his life to his country, he thought, gazing sadly down at the picture. And in return, they’d taken away his family. Or had he done that to himself?
His wife had left first, weary of the long days—the nights laying there alone in bed. Just up and left, taking his daughter with him—taking back her maiden name for the both of them. Chambers.
He hadn’t fought, although many times through the years that followed he’d wished that he had.
And when his daughter had showed up on the Agency’s doorstep two years before, a twenty-eight-year-old analyst with a degree from MIT…well, he’d thought it was a chance to begin anew.
Two years. So short a time, filled with the missteps and awkwardness that inevitably came with long estrangement.
But they’d found each other, and in the end, that was all that mattered.
In the end. And the end had come, despite all his precautions, like a ghost in the night. The whiplash crack of the sniper’s bullet that had ended her life.
He could still remember the phone call, hear the flat, almost robotic tone of the FBI agent. The voice of someone who had made too many death calls in one night—his daughter just another one of the many who had died in the terrorist attacks on Vegas.
Just another one.
A teardrop fell from his eye, splattering against the glass of the frame and he brushed it angrily away, leaving a smear of dust across its face.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 10