Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  He’d only noticed the surveillance earlier in the day, making his way to the masjid for the first of his lectures—a dark-haired man in the driver’s seat of a sedan across the street, taking pictures.

  A man standing behind him on the bus coming home, close enough for them to have touched.

  Another man at the corner market where he’d picked up groceries—just the necessities, as ever. He had always been a man of simple tastes, as a true follower of the Prophet should be—values he had made sure his family embraced. The decadence of the West was ever about them, but it did not have to permeate their own lives. Insh’allah.

  The imam shifted the bag of groceries to his other arm, finally finding the key to the flat on his chain—his fingers trembling as he inserted it into the lock.

  He pushed the door closed behind him, shutting out the street noise…and the watchers? Given the technology of the imperialists, it was impossible to say.

  He walked across the small flat without turning on the lights, emptying the bag of groceries into the small refrigerator in one corner of the kitchen, struggling to push the paranoia aside. Perhaps he had been imagining—

  “Salaam alaikum,” a familiar voice pronounced from the darkness, Rahman’s heart nearly stopping in that moment.

  His hand flew out, flipping on the lights to reveal the tall form of Tarik Abdul Muhammad leaning back in his armchair on the other side of the living room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Peace, my brother.” The Shaikh smiled, the picture of calm as he rose from his seat to cross the room to the window, peering cautiously down at the street below as if looking for watchers. “Tonight…is the beginning.”

  9:39 P.M.

  A nightclub

  London

  Lights. Pounding music, a sensuous rhythm washing over him—strobes swirling through the darkness as he pushed his way through the crowd of swaying men.

  He had showed the bouncer at the door his student ID, Javeed thought, running a hand over his now smooth-shaven face.

  That had itself been enough to get him in for free, a lustful look in the bouncer’s eyes as he ushered him in.

  Blue light hit him in the face, blinding him for a moment as he felt someone grab at his buttocks.

  Heaven. That’s what they called this place, but it was more a vision of hell—his mind bringing back to memory the words of the Prophet. If you find anyone doing as Lut’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.

  Kill. He jerked himself away from the groping hand, unable to tell to whom it belonged, the darkness punctuated only by blinding flashes of light.

  It was time. He shoved his way past a pair of men kissing up against the wall, their hands roving over each other’s bodies. The stage was just before him, a heavily tattooed DJ calling out to the crowd, the turntables spinning beneath his fingers.

  “Allahu akbar!” Javeed called out, his heart pounding against his ribs as he heaved himself up on stage. God is great.

  There was nothing—none of the fear he had expected, no terror, no reaction at all—his words swept away by the beat of the music. He began walking toward the DJ, unzipping the front of his hoodie as he moved—screaming the battle cry at the top of his lungs.

  The DJ saw him then, a puzzled look crossing his face at the young man’s approach. Bewilderment turning suddenly into shock as the jacket fell open, as Javeed brought the machete out.

  God is great…

  9:49 P.M.

  A pasture

  Off the M6, Near Claughton

  “Don’t make me regret this,” Flaharty announced, breaking the silence between them.

  Harry leaned back into the rear seat of the SUV, glancing out the window at the darkness—at the pickets Flaharty had thrown out to await the arrival of his buyers. “I never make promises. It’s bad business.”

  Never again. He could hear Carol’s voice, a whisper from the dark corners of his mind. “Promise me that you won’t hurt him. Swear it.”

  His own voice in reply: “Before God.”

  And it had been a broken promise in the end, a bitter echo of the inevitable. Perhaps he had known that from the beginning, he didn’t know. All he knew is that he would have promised her anything: that’s what she had meant to him. And now she was gone as well.

  Flaharty shook his head. “Oh, sod this for a game of soldiers, Harry. You know I’m not doing this because you aimed a gun at me.”

  “I do.”

  And he did. Stephen Flaharty had lived his entire adult life in the cross-hairs of Her Majesty’s government. One more gun pointed in his direction wouldn’t have swayed him for an instant.

  The Irishman paused, adjusting his glasses. “I wouldn’t mind seeing a few bombs blowing up in old London town—Mother Mary knows I spent years trying to do just that. But these jihadists…”

  A pause, as his voice trailed off. It was ironic, Harry thought, one terrorist passing judgment upon the actions of another. But those were the ironies of this world, and the quicker you learned to reconcile yourself to them, the better.

  No one was virginal in this business.

  “If they win,” Flaharty began again, a curious intensity creeping into his voice as he glanced at his watch, “it will mean the end of the world as we know it. That’s not what I fought for—I fought for a free Ireland.”

  “And your bombs killed women and children,” Harry replied quietly. “All for your free Ireland.”

  “Aye, that they did,” the arms dealer replied. He didn’t look at Harry, just stared out the window into the night. “And what…you’d ask me to regret it? To repent of my sins?”

  Harry didn’t reply, and Flaharty went on without waiting for one. “The world has been sold a fiction, boyo…that wars can be waged without the deaths of the innocent. A sterile affair. Everything kept neat, tidy—all so people can sleep at night, secure in their belief that their cause is just. Ours is the only era that’s believed it. Our fathers and grandfathers knew different, when they flew Lancasters over Dresden, when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And you know different, too.”

  And perhaps he did. But there had to be some right in this world, some place where you drew the line and said, “This far and no farther.”

  Even if he hadn’t found it yet.

  Headlights filled the empty pasture before he could reply and Flaharty smiled. “Time to get cracking, so.”

  10:07 P.M.

  Thames House

  London

  “…shockingly graphic footage tonight from a mass stabbing which has taken place at Heaven, one of London’s most prominent gay nightclubs. Police are reporting five fatalities…”

  Julian Marsh pressed the “mute” button before the Sky News reporter could continue, suppressing a bitter oath.

  It was a truism in the intelligence committee—no matter how good your sources were, no matter how hard you tried, there was going to come a day when you found out about a threat from watching the news. Those were the days that had always haunted him, but it was worse now.

  Back in the Cold War, when he had come up through the ranks of the Security Service, there had been no 24-hour news cycle. A blessed thing of memory.

  This time, though, it was worse than the reporters had yet discovered. What they were calling a “stabbing” had, in fact, been a beheading—with the head of the DJ, an East Londoner named James Brent, nearly hacked from his torso with a machete before his attacker had turned on the crowd. Shouting, “Allahu akbar!” as he did so.

  That was another tidbit that hadn’t yet made its way onto the news. There was no doubt that if the Security Services had the information, the press had it as well, but in a world where competition to “break” stories was fierce, no reporter wanted to be the first to suggest that there was a religious motivation behind the atrocity. More specifically…Islam.

  And so they waited, in anxious indecision. Timid. Uncertain.

  Marsh flippe
d the folder open on his desk, staring down at the University of London student photo of Javeed Mousa.

  A two-year-old photo of a young man looking into the camera, a faint glimpse of uneven white teeth against his swarthy face. A smile, easy—confident even, betraying no hint of the darkness beneath. Of what he would become.

  No resemblance to the man taken out by CO-19 as they descended upon Heaven in response to the dozens of panicked 999 calls.

  A man who had been activated by Tarik Abdul Muhammad. Just like the man whose folder that lay beneath, one Muzhir bin Abdullah. A Moroccan, and a college student just like Mousa. They hadn’t found him yet, not even a trace.

  The DG’s face hardened as he rose from behind his desk, buttoning his suit jacket.

  A visit to the Home Secretary was in order, the first thing on the morrow. The time had come to remove the Pakistani from the equation.

  Cull the herd…

  10:12 P.M.

  The pasture

  Off the M6, Near Claughton

  Flaharty was good, Harry thought—moving abreast of the arms dealer as they walked out into the open pasture to meet his buyer. Malone was just back of them, shotgun at the ready, the only one of the three of them displaying a weapon.

  The rest of the men were fanned out back by the trucks, deployed against trouble. Not close enough to be their salvation if things went sideways.

  Yeah, Flaharty was an old hand…but no matter how many times you had done this, it could still go so wrong. In so many ways.

  He moved closer to the headlights, staying about three meters to the right of Flaharty, the cool night breeze rustling the tall pasture grass around them. Felt eyes on the back of his head and turned to meet Malone’s baleful gaze, only a few paces away.

  So very many ways.

  “Thought there for a moment you lads weren’t going to show.” The words were cheerful enough, but there was no mirth in Flaharty’s voice, Hale thought, coming around the front of the SUV, a heavy leather briefcase in his left hand. The Irishman wasn’t any happier to be here than he was.

  Had he joined the Regiment twenty years earlier—or even ten—it might have been his duty to track down men like Flaharty. Track them down and kill them, for that had once been the Regiment’s job. Back when England had possessed the courage to call her enemies by their rightful name.

  By the time he’d come through Selection, however, old enemies had been changed for new. An enemy the politicians, safely ensconced in their comfortable offices in Whitehall, didn’t even dare whisper.

  The path that had led him to this night.

  “And miss this?” Hale responded, smiling tightly as he moved forward. He was armed, but it wouldn’t be enough to save him. Moments like this, you had to rely on your mates. Having Paul Gordon in the darkness behind him with a rifle aimed at Flaharty’s chest was insurance enough. Together, Paras once more.

  Utrinque Paratus. Ready for anything.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. This is the ‘liquidity’ you asked for. The rest of the payment has been transferred to your account.”

  The voice. It was so familiar, echoes of a time long past. Hard to place. Harry edged to one side, trying to get a better look at the buyer, his form backlit against the glare of the headlights.

  It was destroying his night vision, making it hard to get a look at the man’s face without drawing attention to himself—without moving out of the shadows and directly into their beams.

  The man reached out, standing there just a few feet away from him as he handed the briefcase over to Flaharty and Harry heard his voice once more.

  It all came back, washing over him. Memories of that night in Lebanon. Operation LODESTONE. It was the sounds that were the most prominent in the dreams. Always the sounds.

  The gunfire—the thunder of a minigun sawing through the darkness, the screams of the dying. Nick Crawford lying there in the cabin of the Blackhawk as the helicopter lifted off from that rocky Lebanese hilltop, his eyes glassy, an IV stabbed into his arm.

  The second SAS sergeant. He could still hear that voice in the night. “Chalk it up, mate. Two more dead hajjis.”

  Hajjis. A term of honor in the Islamic world for those who had completed a pilgrimage to Mecca, it had become a slur among soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. A term of derisive contempt for people who had tried to kill them times beyond count.

  Impossible to forget. But what had been his name? Heller? Hall?

  Names hadn’t been so important on that night, he thought, his eyes scanning the darkness around them, a chill prickling at his spine. They were so exposed.

  He glanced back to see the buyer staring directly at him, a strange look on his face. “One of your men, Flaharty?”

  10:20 P.M.

  KillingBeck Police Station

  Leeds

  “No.” Mehreen swore, tearing the hijab from her head and stuffing into the pocket of her jacket with a quick, angry motion. Memories of a former self. “I’m not listening to this, Darren.”

  She turned on him, her dark eyes flashing. “I have known Besimi since I was a child. There is no way he’s in with the jihadists.”

  “It’s true whether you want to believe it or not,” the former Royal Marine retorted. Roth didn’t flinch, just stood there, looking at her sadly. “We have the proof of his communication with Tarik Abdul Muhammad. He sold you out, Mehr.”

  No. Her hand balled into a fist, knuckles whitening against dark skin. First Aydin, now this, the last vestiges of her old life seeming to crumble about her. Her life before…Nick.

  “I need to see him.”

  Roth shook his head. “That’s not happening.”

  “I know him better than anyone in the Service,” she protested. If Roth wouldn’t listen to her, no one would. “He was my agent. If anyone can get to the truth, it would be me.”

  A sigh. “And that’s why I asked you to go under this evening—to meet with him. And it didn’t work out. I’m not putting you in the same room with him again, not taking that risk.”

  She started to speak, but he cut her off. “It’s out of my hands, Mehr. He’s in the custody of Special Branch now—not my jurisdiction any longer.”

  10:21 P.M.

  The pasture

  Off the M6, Near Claughton

  “Yes,” Harry heard Flaharty reply from a few feet away. He didn’t look over at him, his eyes still locked with those of the buyer.

  There was nothing to be gained by looking away—and everything to be lost. “He’s a PMC, been with me for years.”

  Private military contractor.

  There was cool appraisal in the former SAS sergeant’s gaze, along with something else—something far more dangerous. The nagging tendrils of recognition there, just below the surface.

  All of the years, the darkness of the night—then and now—that was all that was holding him back. Uncertainty.

  “Then why haven’t I seen him before?” the man challenged, turning away from Harry to focus his attention back on the arms dealer.

  Hale. The name struck Harry suddenly, burning itself into his memory. That was it—that had been the sergeant’s name. Conor Hale.

  “We’re here to make sure you don’t get buggered, mate.” Nick’s voice, once again, as it all came back.

  But Flaharty was speaking now, a curiously righteous indignation in the Irishman’s voice as he responded. “An’ that’s because he was in Latvia up until three days ago, on a sodding job. For me.”

  It was a performance that could have earned an Oscar, Harry thought—watching as Flaharty drew himself up to his full height, glaring at the soldier. “Now, boyo, if you’ve vetted my personnel to your satisfaction…shall we proceed to business?”

  Acting and directing. A command performance.

  Hale paused, glancing back into Harry’s eyes for a long moment. Then, “Very well. Let’s do this.”

  Chapter 10

  12:17 A.M., March 28th

  The M6 Motorway
<
br />   Silence. Fifteen minutes of it, ever since Flaharty had reentered the vehicle.

  The arms dealer’s convoy had split up upon leaving the pasture, fanning out in all directions and now they were alone. Alone, speeding north on the motorway.

  There wasn’t much traffic at this hour in the morning, Harry thought, glancing out the tinted windows of the SUV. Not much at all.

  “You bloody well knew him.”

  It wasn’t a question—more of an accusation, by the sound of it. “I did,” Harry responded, turning to look Flaharty in the face. “His name’s Conor Hale—former Regiment. We served together once, long time ago. A black op in Lebanon. A dark and bloody night.”

  “Did he know you?”

  “Hard to say.” There was movement, catching his eye in the night back of them along the motorway. Just a moment, and then it was gone.

  The Irishman swore loudly, hammering his fist against the door. “You knew he would be there.”

  Another accusation.

  Harry shook his head, keeping his voice level as he responded. “No. I knew the risks I ran—the chance of crossing paths with someone I knew from the bad old days. Nothing more. I judged it an acceptable risk.”

  “Acceptable,” Flaharty spat, another curse escaping his lips. “Not your sodding decision to make, Harry. Not yours—mine. This was my deal. My rules. And you broke them.”

  Another flash of movement and Harry looked back through the rear window of the vehicle to see another SUV behind them. Moving up fast. Then again, a lot of people drove fast at this hour of night.

  Not with their lights off. “Yeah, well…” he replied, reaching inside his jacket, “it looks like they’re about to get broken—again. Malone!”

  The big man jerked his head around, his eyes falling upon the drawn Sig-Sauer in Harry’s hand. “What the—”

  “We have company.”

  The words had barely left his mouth before the SUV was alongside, coming up hard on the left, as if to force them off the road and into the guardrails of the median. Harry saw the muzzle flash of a rifle on full-automatic, felt and heard the first bullets strike the armored side of the Ford Explorer.