Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  MacCallum released a heavy sigh, taking the print-out and dropping his coat over the back of a nearby chair. So much for the night being over.

  12:53 A.M.

  Thirteenth flat from the stairwell, the west side of the building. Harry could feel his heart pounding against his chest as he led the way down the hall, the Sig-Sauer extended before him, a small flashlight cupped under the barrel in his left hand. Everything now depended upon speed.

  Surprise.

  It probably only took them thirty seconds to traverse the length of the hall, but it felt like an eternity before they stood before the door of the flat—the rusted numbers indicating the address they had been given.

  This was going to be dangerously far from textbook…but in the absence of any good plans, you rolled with the best bad one.

  He paused, eyeing the lock—then motioned for Mehreen to step to one side. Time to do this.

  Footsteps. The sound of movement in the hall without. He had been hearing noises from the neighboring flats all night—the paper-thin walls blocked out nothing—but this was different, somehow.

  And then they seemed to stop. Just outside the door.

  Aydin sat bolt upright, feeling within the pocket of his jacket for the small Czech semiautomatic Rahman had given him only a few days before.

  His fingers had just closed around the cold metal of the grip when the door came crashing inward.

  The door splintered around the lock, flying back on its hinges and Harry followed it into the room, stumbling forward, weapon up—a dull throb pulsing through his injured ankle from the force of the kick.

  Left. He swept the room to his left with the muzzle of the Sig, the flashlight’s beam traversing the same arc. A television mounted against the far wall, a small, empty couch—a blanket lying discarded over one arm. As if its occupant had been there only moments before. He could feel Mehreen entering the room behind him, but he pressed forward.

  He was alone in this.

  He could only hope that she would hold her fire as he had instructed—in the confusion and darkness, someone with her lack of weapons training was as likely to shoot him as anyone else in the flat.

  The long dark barrel of the pistol tracked right, the light revealing a small kitchenette, a refrigerator and stove—dirty dishes piled high in the sink. A door leading toward…the bedroom?

  He inclined his head toward it, nodding silently for Mehreen to cover the door.

  Left. Nothing—no sign of Aydin, or Nasir al-Kutobi, for that matter. The abandoned couch the only tell that anyone within had reacted to the intrusion.

  But there was something. Weapon extended before him, he moved closer to the couch, his eyes narrowing as the light flicked across the cushions.

  It was a nearly fatal distraction. He heard the click of the door opening behind him, heard Mehreen scream a warning.

  And he was turning, but not nearly fast enough. He glimpsed a figure in the doorway of the bedroom out of the corner of his eye, the glint of metal—just as the muzzle blast of Mehreen’s pistol lit up the darkness of the room.

  Once, twice. Three shots. The sharp reports battering his eardrums, reverberating through the tower block.

  He saw her target stagger, but the man didn’t go down—the pistol in his hands still coming up. A slow, painfully inevitable arc.

  The flashlight beam hit the young man’s face, framing it between the posts of Harry’s iron sights. Three dots, forming a perfect triangle. Sight picture.

  A pair of bullets spat from the suppressed muzzle of the Sig—the first catching the target in the upper chest, the second going higher—tearing into his throat.

  The college student went down, hard—crashing into the bedroom door, the pistol falling from weakened fingers.

  Harry kicked the weapon away from him, looking remorselessly down into the young man’s face as he lay there, blood gurgling from his throat. Dying.

  No more fight left in him.

  He glanced over to see Mehreen standing a few feet away, her eyes wide and staring, the HK still leveled in her hands. The shock of seeing a man killed right before your eyes—of having had a hand in his death.

  Keep moving. That was the imperative now—the sound of shouts coming from somewhere deep in the building. They weren’t going to have much time.

  He stepped over the dying man and into the small bedroom, the light playing before him as he swept each corner in turn. Kicking open the door of the small bathroom. Nothing.

  “He’s not here,” he announced grimly, feeling Mehreen enter the room behind him. He turned, seeing the devastation, the loss written in her eyes.

  Faulty intel was the reality of their work, more often than not. Perhaps deep down she had known this was a fool’s errand from the very beginning.

  Like he had.

  “Aydin!” He grimaced she began to call her nephew’s name, her voice ringing desperately through the flat. “Aydin!”

  He turned away, ejecting the magazine from the butt of the Sig-Sauer and replacing it with a full mag from within his jacket. Out in the field, you learned that reloading was just like sleeping.

  You did it every chance you got, because you never knew when you might get another one.

  “Where is my nephew?” He looked back to see her kneeling over the body of the fallen college student, her hands wet with his blood—her face distorted in rage. “Tell me—what did you do to him? Tell me!”

  The shadow of a death’s-head smile passed across the young man’s face as he attempted and failed to respond—his vocal chords shredded by the hollowpoint round. The contempt, the hatred in his eyes only too visible.

  “Leave it, Mehr,” he cautioned, shifting the Sig to his left hand as he placed his right on her shoulder. Knowing that look all too well. Even if he could have spoken, they would get nothing from him.

  She shook her head, glaring up at him through the tears shining in her eyes. “Is that what you would say? If it was your family?”

  “That’s been far too long ago,” he replied simply. No going back there, not for him. He swept the light around the bedroom, its beam picking out a laptop.

  That was going with them.

  And then it happened—movement out of the corner of his eye, from behind them in the main living area of the flat. The crash as a lamp fell to the floor, a figure stumbling toward the broken door.

  He turned, bringing his weapon up in an instinctive movement. Hearing Mehreen cry out, rising to her feet as if she would have taken the pistol from him. “No!”

  Aydin.

  And the figure was gone, a shout from Ismail Besimi in the corridor without heralding his departure. Harry shook her off and moved quickly into the corridor, finding only the imam leaning there against the wall—his eyes wide with fear. The door leading to the stairwell was swinging open, as if someone had passed in a hurry.

  “Aydin?” Harry demanded, the Sig-Sauer still drawn in his hand.

  The old man nodded a mute “yes” and Harry was moving on, his steps quickening as he reached the stairwell. It was then that he heard Ismail’s voice calling after him, arresting him where he stood. “He—he is wearing a vest.”

  1:04 A.M.

  Ya Allah. Oh, God. He could feel his heart pounding against the wall of his chest as if it threatened to break through, tears streaming down his cheeks as he flew down the stairs—feet slamming into the hard concrete. Oh, God.

  Nasir was dead. They had killed him, and they were coming for him.

  He took the steps two at a time, the panic nearly overwhelming him as he struggled to zip up his jacket over the hastily thrown-on vest.

  His aunt’s voice echoing in his mind, calling his name. The look on her face when she had shot Nasir. She was one of them.

  There were moments when fresh intel changed the very nature of a mission—irrevocably. Learning of Aydin’s suicide vest was one of those moments.

  They had come to rescue him—to save him from those who had turned him against
his family, his community, but now…Aydin’s life was no longer the priority.

  Stopping the bombing had become their primary objective—whatever that took. Even if it meant killing the boy he had come to save.

  Harry slowed as he reached the landing, his face a cold, expressionless mask—the Sig-Sauer extended before him as he pivoted, slicing the pie as he turned to face the next flight of stairs down.

  Once, Aydin’s age would have given him pause, but that was far in the past. You didn’t work long in the Middle East without learning a fundamental truth: Age counted for nothing—a sixteen-year-old was every bit as capable of detonating an s-vest or pulling a trigger as an adult fighter.

  All that mattered was the innocent lives which could be lost.

  He hurried down the stairs, favoring his ankle awkwardly as he moved. From below him, he could hear the sound of the boy’s running footsteps—growing more distant by the moment. He was losing ground. Come on, move.

  Harry rounded the next landing and stopped short, hearing the sound of voices below—the unmistakably rough, guttural sound of Pashto transporting him instantly back to the mountains of the Hindu Kush.

  It was too low for him to make out what was being said, but he knew that harsh, barking tone. Knew what it meant. An order was an order in any language.

  And they were fresh out of time.

  He hesitated for only a moment, the long black suppressor of the Sig still pointing the way down the next flight—then turned, heading back upstairs.

  They were going to have to find some other way to stop Aydin. For now, it was past time to be leaving.

  Lack of sleep amplified everything. Stress. Injury. He hadn’t truly slept since…he couldn’t remember.

  He saw Mehreen as he exited the stairwell into the corridor—the question written so clearly in her eyes. “No,” he said simply, shaking his head. “Toss the flat—take everything you can. Anything that could yield us actionable intel.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He cast a glance backward toward the stairs. “I’m saying we have a minute and a half to clear this floor.”

  1:12 A.M.

  Once again. The rock swung awkwardly in a downward arc, the impact shuddering through Aydin’s arms. But the lock held, holding the bike in place.

  Ya Allah. He nearly swore, throwing the rock away in frustration. If he’d had even a knife, he might have sawed through the cable lock—but as it was, there was nothing.

  He straightened, breathing heavily—his cheeks still stained with tears. It couldn’t be more than few miles to the bus station. Still more than five hours remaining until his bus departed for London.

  He could make it.

  1:23 A.M.

  The tower block itself might have been stoutly built of reinforced concrete, but inside the walls were thin.

  That had worked against them earlier, but now—he pressed himself up against the wall just inside the corridor door, hearing the footsteps pounding up the stairs without.

  The rough sound of Pashto fading away as the men moved up the stairs to the level above. He pushed the door open slowly—the muzzle of his pistol tracking to cover the flight of steps below them. Clear.

  Six stories down, four to go. He glanced back at Mehreen and Ismail, motioning them out the door with his left hand. Go, go, go.

  It wasn’t going to be long before the searchers figured out they were no longer in the upper half of the tower block. And once that happened…

  “Have any luck getting into that phone?” he asked quietly, throwing the question back over his shoulder as he led the way once more down the steps.

  “Just now,” she nodded, looking up from the screen of the Samsung Galaxy she had found beneath Nasir al-Kutobi’s pillow. “Not seeing anything actionable yet. More than a fair bit of rather…kinky porn, but nothing we can use.”

  That figured. For all their presumed piety, most jihadis were only true believers up to a point. Sex tended to be that point—he had seen more stashes of porn scattered across the Middle East in his years with the Agency than he ever had in college.

  They rounded the landing and were headed down the next flight of stairs when he heard Mehreen murmur, almost as if to herself, “Wait. Just a minute.”

  He started to turn back to face her, to ask her what she meant, but at that very moment the door below them opened, a young Pakistani appearing in the opening.

  There was no time to take cover, to go back up the stairs. The young man’s eyes widened as he saw the long black barrel of the Sig-Sauer in Harry’s hand—his mouth opening, but not a single sound coming out.

  And then Harry saw the glitter of steel in his left hand, the gleam of a switchblade extending from his fist. “No,” he breathed, his eyes locking with those of the young man’s across the railing of the stairs. Don’t even think it.

  Law enforcement were trained to the Tueller drill—a knife-armed attacker within twenty-one feet presented a lethal threat to an officer. One and a half seconds to engage.

  He’d seen things go south far faster than that, and he wasn’t law enforcement.

  No rules. Except survival.

  The hesitation was ever so clearly written in the young man’s eyes—the uncertainty. Don’t try to be a hero, son, Harry thought—his eyes never leaving the young man’s face as he shifted his weight, bringing the pistol ever so slightly forward. Don’t make me do this.

  As many men as he had killed—as many times as it had been necessary—it never got any easier. Any less haunting.

  And then he heard Mehreen’s voice from behind him, the Pashto sounding strangely foreign, unpracticed on her tongue, despite it being her native language. Speaking words of caution, reassurance. Warning.

  A long moment passed, and then the young man turned, retreating back into the corridor. The door closing behind him.

  It was only then that Harry realized he had been holding his breath ever since the appearance of the Pakistani.

  But they weren’t out of the woods just yet.

  “Go back, go back,” he gestured—pushing both of them back toward the floor above. If the young man got on the horn to the gangs, they needed to be elsewhere, or he was going to regret not putting a bullet in his head when he had the chance.

  Mehreen paused on the landing, her eyes still focused on the phone in her hand. “What is it?”

  She turned it so he could see the screen, the fear written so clearly across her face. “Al-Kutobi purchased a ticket for the morning bus from Leeds to London. One-way.”

  He took it from her, noting the departure and arrival times. “Then we know the target. And you know what you have to do.”

  1:27 A.M.

  The MV Percy Phillips

  Grimsby, Lincolnshire

  The night was strikingly clear—the stars above shining down, pinpricks of light against the dark sky.

  Paul Gordon leaned heavily on his good leg, feeling the waters of the North Sea gently lap against the vessel’s hull as he moved to the rail. Gazing out toward the town.

  What in God’s name had he gotten himself into? He had been to war—had allowed himself to be convinced that this was just a continuation of the same fight.

  It wasn’t.

  “I thought I heard you come out.” Hale’s voice behind him, freezing him where he stood. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  It was impossible to know the intent behind that question, he thought—the tone giving away nothing. Even during their days together in the Parachute Regiment, Hale had always been a hard one to read.

  And they had a man inside the Security Service…if Hale knew, then he was dead. Simple as that. The phone seemed to burn a hole in his pocket, reminding him of his danger.

  Nothing to do but play this through. Gordon nodded, turning slowly to face his old comrade. “Yeah. Can’t stop thinking about the lads. I knew Grimes—he and I went through training together, so many years ago. How many more do we have to lose, Conor?”

  “It’s war
,” the former NCO responded, walking out of the shadows to join him at the rail. “You and I both know that. We’ve been there before.”

  “We have. And we buried a lot of good mates—for what? We didn’t win. There was no ‘victory.’ The politicians said it was over and brought us home. I won’t—I can’t do that again.” Gordon’s voice shook with emotion, wavering there on the brink between what he knew was right…and the cause the former SAS man had laid out before him.

  He believed in this.

  “You’re not going to have to, mate,” Hale said after a long moment. “That’s why we’re doing this. And there are no sodding politicians going to hold us back this time. We see this through to the bitter end, whether that end lies in victory—or every last one of us dead in the grave.”

  He smiled, an odd, bitter smile as he continued, clapping a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. “We’re Paras, remember? Utrinque Paratus.”

  And Gordon felt himself begin to smile in return at the memory of their old unit motto. Ready for anything.

  “If I remember from Iraq,” Hale went on, his tone changing abruptly. “You were every bit as good on a long gun as you were kicking in doors. Do you think you still are?”

  Taken by surprise, Gordon nodded. “It’s been a long time, but I did it for so many years…I’m certain I could again. Why?”

  A shadow seemed to pass across the sergeant’s face, as if even he was yet coming to terms with what they had set out to do. “Get some sleep, mate. There’s work to be done come morning.”

  The figure standing in the shadow of the Grimsby Dock Tower stood there for a long time after the two soldiers had disappeared belowdecks.

  Sod you, Harry. Stephen Flaharty lowered the binoculars to let them hang about his neck, using a small rag to wipe the gathering mist from his glasses. There’s your bleedin’ mole. At Conor Hale’s right hand.

  1:35 A.M.

  Seacroft council estates

  Almost there. Harry glanced back along the streets of Seacroft as Ismail and Mehreen hurried behind him, the stark outline of the tower block overshadowing the terraced rows of newer council flats like a grim omen in the night.