“Take the back,” he ordered crisply, flicking on the tactical light in his left hand as he moved up to the side of the van.
Sightless eyes stared back at him from within the van—a look of shock frozen on the face of the Special Branch officer who had been riding shotgun.
An obscenely tidy round hole in his forehead marking the cause of his death. Execution. He’d never even had time to reach for his Glock, still securely fastened in its holster at his side.
The driver had been shot multiple times—center-of-mass, his blood staining the shattered glass. Now he just lay there, his crumpled body supported only by the seatbelt.
“Besimi’s gone,” Mehreen’s voice announced from behind him, grim and resigned. “They’ve taken him.”
He shifted the Sig-Sauer to his left hand and reached up, pressing his fingers against the dead officer’s throat. Still warm.
Hadn’t been dead long.
And that was when he spotted the dash-cam.
12:49 A.M.
It wasn’t supposed to have been this way. Gordon shook his head angrily—glaring across the back of the van at one of his men as their driver turned off the motorway onto an access road, the vehicle shifting from side to side as it hit the gravel.
He had known from the beginning that it could happen, but somehow had still thought he could avert tragedy.
“You were supposed to hold them there,” he snapped, looking away—down at the hooded and bound form of the imam lying there on the floor of the van between them. “They were serving their country just like you and me…killing them was a last resort. Those were my orders.”
“And you’re not the one giving the orders,” the former soldier, a man named Davies, retorted. “Hale’s orders were clear—the mission was not to be compromised, at all costs.”
Hale, the ex-Para thought, burying his face in his hands. It always came back to him. All the darkness.
He’d always been the stronger of the two of them, the better soldier. But something had changed.
They were doing this for their country—for a better England, but what were they going to be at the end of it all? Murderers?
He closed his eyes and could see the footage from Madina, the figure of a small boy being pulled lifeless from the rubble.
Perhaps that’s what they were already. He felt the van lurch as the going became rougher, knew they were approaching their destination.
The end of the road for the man who lay at his feet.
12:51 A.M.
Hertfordshire
Too late. That was what kept running through Harry’s mind, an endless, haunting refrain. The dash-cam images of a hooded Ismail Besimi being dragged away from the vehicle and toward a waiting panel van.
They hadn’t executed him on the spot, that was something. More importantly, it was all they had.
He knelt down at the entrance to the access road along the motorway, hearing the wail of emergency sirens growing louder in the distance. There.
A vehicle had passed this way within the last few minutes, the gravel still splashed with spray from a puddle left by the morning’s rain. The panel van?
Harry straightened, looking off into the English countryside, fields stretching almost as far as the eye could see on both sides of the road, the dark shadow of trees in the distance.
“What are we looking at?” he asked, sliding back into the driver’s seat of the Audi and looking back at Mehreen. They had ditched her car back at the scene.
She shook her head, flashlight playing over the paper map spread out before her. Low-tech, old school, the ways that actually worked when you found yourself out in the cold.
Cut off.
“There’s nothing for miles. A few farms, nothing major.”
“So…a dumping ground.” He saw her flinch, but they all knew the reality of this. Of what was likely to happen.
He reached down, darkness settling around them as he killed the Audi’s lights.
“No point in making a target of ourselves,” he said, pulling the pair of NODs from within his jacket and handing them to Flaharty. “I’m going to need you to be my eyes.”
The Irishman shook his head, his eyes opening wide as he grasped the plan. “You’re bleedin’ crazy.”
“You’ve said that before.”
1:02 A.M.
Surveillance van
Leeds
“And lights out.” Roth turned at the American woman’s words, glancing across the street at the Rahman’s flat. Sure enough.
“Looks like all the family is tucked in for the night,” Parker observed, leaning back in his seat. “Snug and cozy.”
They hadn’t expected the imam to return home—not after having given them the slip once. Perhaps he feared that they would take his family into custody, perhaps…
Well, there was nothing to be gained from speculation.
His mobile buzzed in that moment and he flipped it open. “Yes?”
“Darren.” It was Norris, from Thames House. “We’ve got a situation…just got a red-flash from the Hertfordshire Constabulary. A prisoner transport was found abandoned near the wreck of an artic on the M-1. Both guards were shot, no sign of their prisoner. West Yorkshire has confirmed, it’s theirs. It was Ismail Besimi.”
Mehreen. He could feel the blood drain from his face, the news striking him like a blow. There was no way that she…
1:12 A.M.
Hertfordshire
I seek refuge in God from the outcast Satan. Ismail felt the vehicle lurch beneath him as it came to a stop, the voices around him growing in volume.
What was happening? He struggled against his bonds as rough hands hauled him to his feet—swaying drunkenly, the hood disorienting him, robbing him of sight and balance.
Was this extraordinary rendition? He knew the stories—
darkened airplanes flying out of the UK under the cover of night, off the radar—no flight plans.
Ferrying suspected terrorists to black sites in the Middle East, where they could be tortured for information under the auspices of regimes for whom “human rights” was little more than a cruel joke.
He knew the stories…and had dismissed most of them as the stuff of Islamist propaganda during his time with Five. But now.
Nothing was certain.
“Move,” a rough voice hissed in his ear, nearly shoving him from the back of the vehicle, his legs wobbly as they hit the ground—stumbling and nearly going down.
The imam felt the barrel of a pistol jab into his back, prodding him forward, and suddenly he knew.
He was walking to his death.
1:15 A.M.
“Hard right in thirty,” Flaharty intoned, holding the night-vision goggles pressed tight against his face. The tension palpable in his voice as the darkened Audi shot down the narrow country road, sending gravel flying from beneath its wheels.
Seconds, not meters.
Three…two…one. Harry put the wheel over, sliding into the turn.
“Sodding chancer,” the Irishman exploded as the car corrected, fishtailing in the gravel. “You nearly put us into the ditch. Straight-away for forty, curve left.”
Perhaps he was crazy, Harry thought, feeling the turbo-charged V6 rev beneath his foot as the car accelerated, the fields surrounding them only barely visible in the faint moonlight. It took a certain madness to drive with night-vision…let alone night-vision attached to someone else’s eyes.
But wearing it himself wasn’t an option, the headstraps of the old AN/PVS-5 long since broken.
You played the cards you were dealt.
Five…four… “Hold up,” Flaharty ordered abruptly, throwing up his hand. “We’ve got the van.”
1:17 A.M.
The surveillance van
Leeds, West Yorkshire
“This mobile user is no longer in service.” Roth lowered the phone, staring at the screen in the semi-darkness of the van.
“Is there something wrong?” Parker asked, glancing at him f
rom the other end of the vehicle.
Mehreen’s mobile was dead. More like it no longer existed. And her former asset was in the wind—the pair of constables guarding him murdered in cold blood. Only hours after he had given her everything that she would have needed to intercept the transport.
“Thank you. That’s…all I needed.” There had been a curious finality to her voice as she had spoken the words—almost as if she was saying goodbye.
“No,” he lied, tucking the phone back into his pocket as he straightened, turning his attention back to the screens before them. “Everything is fine.”
Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
1:17 A.M.
Wet, icy leaves crunched under Gordon’s combat boots as he led the way into the woods, the bare trees providing no shelter from the chill of the breeze. The loaded Glock heavy in his hand, a round in the chamber. Only awaiting his finger on the trigger to send it on its deadly way.
Don’t do this. It seemed as if it was his sister speaking, her voice echoing in the dark shadows of his mind. Trying to pull him back.
But there was no way out of this one, he thought, glancing around at the faces of his men, visible in the light of the torch one of them carried. There were only four of them now—three with him, the other back at the van.
On Hale’s orders they’d split up following the ambush, with most of his team heading back to London for…something.
And now he was left to finish this.
He paused in a small clearing, glancing up at the heavens above, the stars shining down out of the black. How many lines did you cross? How far did you go?
He turned, motioning for his men to stop—stepping in front of the imam and undoing the hood, jerking it off the man’s head in one swift motion.
The eyes of an elderly man stared back into his own, dazed and bewildered. Dear God.
It was a look so familiar, memories of a granda’ with Alzheimer’s flickering through Gordon’s mind. The same look of utter disorientation, brought on this time by the sensory deprivation.
“On your knees,” the former Para said, struggling to even utter the words. Besimi didn’t seem to understand him, and one of his men placed his hands on the imam’s shoulders, roughly shoving him to the ground.
The old man fell to his hands and knees, looking up into Gordon’s eyes. “Don’t do this, my son,” he whispered, hoarse words from a parched throat.
Don’t do this. Alice’s face appearing before his eyes.
He shook his head, bringing the pistol up—finger taking up the slack of the Glock’s trigger as the sights centered on Besimi’s forehead.
And then he heard it. A small sound from the direction of the van, faint—indistinct. Nothing more than a shallow cough in the night, the tinkling of glass.
But he knew it for what it was. Death.
He ducked to one side, bringing his weapon up as he moved, hissing at the man with the flashlight, “Kill that torch!”
1:21 A.M.
And the light was gone, as quickly as he had glimpsed it. Extinguished in the space of a moment. Harry stopped dead in his tracks, holding up his hand for a halt.
He glanced back to see Mehreen and Flaharty fanned out behind him, the Irishman’s Kalashnikov held at the ready.
The first man had gone down without a fight—a single round to the temple killing him instantly, sitting there in the driver’s seat of the van.
But now…just silence filled the woods, not a sound—not even the birds.
Another moment, and he began moving toward the spot where the light had last been seen, stepping over the log of a fallen tree—motioning for Mehreen to go left and Flaharty to go right.
He could already be dead. It was all too real a possibility, Harry knew that. They wouldn’t have brought him out here for any other purpose. Wouldn’t have wasted any time.
He certainly wouldn’t have.
The NODs were stuffed in the pocket of his jacket, but he left them where they were as he stalked forward—his eyes already adjusted to the darkness.
There. It was a faint noise, a rustle among the leaves. He turned, bringing the pistol up as the shape of a man appeared beside the trunk of a tree, a shadow in the night.
Besimi? He hesitated for only a moment, long enough to see the long silhouette of the rifle barrel in the man’s hands.
A pair of rounds spat from the Sig-Sauer’s barrel, the two shots coming almost as one, the pistol recoiling into the palm of his hand—the bullets finding their mark high in the target’s chest.
And then all hell broke loose.
No matter your training, it was hard to ever be prepared for that moment of first contact. That split-second of sheer panic as the rounds started coming in.
Gordon saw Turner stagger back as though hit, but the man didn’t go down—the sharp supersonic crack of his rifle splitting the night as he returned fire.
Targets. He needed targets. His Glock came up, muzzle sweeping the woods around him, but there were none—nothing but the darkness of the night.
He saw Davies’ face, white and drawn, his own pistol out—his free hand entwined in Besimi’s collar as he stood over the imam.
Then Turner crumpled into the wet leaves and the firing stopped as quickly as it had begun, silence falling once more over the woods.
No more than fifteen seconds passing from first shot to last.
The former Para heard a noise to his right and turned, his weapon up—just in time to see the figure of a man emerge from the darkness, the pistol in his hand aimed at Gordon’s head.
“Lay down your weapons and hand over Ismail Besimi,” he said coolly, the accent ever so faintly American. Reminiscent of his days in Iraq, working alongside Coalition forces. “No one else needs to die tonight.”
Gordon heard the familiar rough klatch of an AK’s safety being flipped off from behind him and glanced back to see another, older, man standing there leaning against the trunk of an oak, Kalashnikov leveled.
He had started to lower the Glock when suddenly Davies moved off to his right, jerking the form of Ismail Besimi up against him—the soldier’s dark eyes shining with a murderous intensity, the muzzle of his pistol pressed against the imam’s temple. “Not another step…or I kill him first.”
Chapter 19
1:24 A.M.
The forest
Hertfordshire
In combat, advantages were won and lost in the space of a heartbeat. A touch of the trigger—a life forever gone in the time a cardiac cycle took to complete.
“Not another step,” the gunman repeated, his face pale as he gazed back at Harry through the night. “Drop your pistol and kick it over here, or I kill him now.”
He could see the fear in the imam’s eyes as he struggled against his captor’s arm across his throat. The knowledge that death was only seconds away.
“Don’t do it, Harry.” He could hear Mehreen behind him, her voice trembling with resolve. “He’ll only kill him anyway.”
He shook his head, never lowering his weapon, arms forming a perfect v in front of him as he stared through the Sig’s iron sights into the face of the gunman before him in the clearing.
He had no intention of doing anything of the sort. It might have been what everyone did in the movies, but this wasn’t Hollywood. Putting down your weapon did nothing more than ensure your death and the death of the person you were trying to save.
Times like this, you went with your training.
“You don’t want to do this,” he warned, centering his sights between the man’s eyes—just visible over Besimi’s shoulder. “Just let him go, and you can go home tonight.”
“Let him go…why?” The man demanded, almost spitting out the words. “So he can go back to preaching his hate—plotting to kill my comrades, destroy my country?”
“This man has been doing nothing of the sort, soldier,” Harry said, picking up on his use of the word comrades. “You’ve been lied to.”
“Wha
t bloody difference does it make?” the man demanded, a curse punctuating his words. “These Moslems are all the same—followers of their murdering prophet.”
“Nothing could be farther from the truth,” Harry shook his head, talking to keep his attention as he shifted from one foot to the other, moving to the left to get a clearer sight picture. “The woman who came with me tonight is a Muslim, and an officer with the Security Services. She’s given more for this country than you could begin to imagine. The man you’re threatening to kill is her asset.”
“Five? A bloody civil servant?” The man laughed. “Our government—they’re the ones what’s done this to us. Sheltering these murderers. Putting them back out on the street.”
“And if you take the life of this innocent man…what does that make you?”
Like the lives of the innocents at Madina, Gordon thought—standing there with the Glock held loosely in his hand, looking from Davies to the American as the man continued, the guilt stabbing into him sharp as the thrusts of a knife. Had Hale lied about this imam, the way he’d lied about the bombing of the mosque?
And in that moment, he could see the faces of the murdered constables staring back at him from the inside of that transport. The faces of men just like him—men who had laid down their lives to defend their country.
Men dead, all because of what he had done. Because of the man who now stood beside him in the clearing. No more.
“Enough, Davies,” he said, taking a step forward. “Put up your weapon.”
“No—can’t you see what he’s doing?” the soldier hissed, his eyes wild and desperate, the muzzle of his pistol pressing hard against Besimi’s temple as Harry edged toward him, the Sig still leveled at his head. “One more sodding step and I kill him…I know what you’re playing at.”
Take the shot, a voice from within him warned—the man was losing control of the situation and he knew it. Cornered. On the brink.
He could do it—he’d done it before, he told himself, a chill sweat growing on his palms. Harder shots than this.
But he found his hands trembling with the thought, the face of the old man looming large in his sight picture. The terror. There was no margin of error in this. No room for mistakes.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 36