Their egress from the tower block had taken longer than he could have predicted—going floor by floor, dodging the gang members looking for them. You never wanted to leave behind more bodies than you absolutely had to. Even Nasir al-Kutobi had been unfortunate, if inevitable.
He picked his way past a man lying there by the side of the street—a muddy jacket wrapped around him, his body reeking with the familiar smell of khat.
Aydin was somewhere out here, in the night. Running scared. Or hell-bent on accomplishing his objective.
In his experience, the latter was the more likely of the options. Faith and indoctrination were powerful things. When you could convince someone that death was something to be desired—they could be well-nigh unstoppable.
But doing just that had been his job for years. And he was still alive…and more than a few of them were dead. Powerful though it might be, faith wasn’t something that stopped bullets.
“Clear,” Harry announced, approaching the Audi from the passenger side—his light flickering through each of the windows in turn.
It hadn’t been compromised. Yet.
Mehreen slid into the front seat across from him—the engine humming to life as he turned the key in the ignition. He didn’t even look at her, just checked his mirrors as he pulled out into the street.
“Make the call,” he said abruptly, his tone brooking no opposition. It was past time.
But he could feel her stiffen beside him all the same—her heart and mind locked in a death struggle over the fate of one she loved. “He has a vest, Mehr.”
“I know,” she said quietly, looking out the window of the Audi as it accelerated down the street. “But he’s just a boy.”
“No.” He shook his head. “He’s not—not anymore. That changed the moment he started listening to Hashim Rahman, the moment he put on that bomb vest. You have to accept that he’s already made your choice for you. Call in Special Branch.”
“He’s right,” Ismail Besimi added from the back seat of the car. Harry’s eyes flickered up to the rear-view mirror to meet those of the imam. Glimpsing a face full of sadness…and yet grim resolution.
“And what if he spends the rest of his life in prison because of me? What if…” Mehreen hesitated as if unable to form the words. “What if they have to kill him?”
Then that’s what will happen, he thought—eyes on the road ahead. The cold laws of cause and effect, brutal and unforgiving.
Aydin had chosen his path.
“We can get to him,” she went on after a moment, a raw edge to her voice. “We know where he’s going to be—we can stop him.”
He caught Ismail’s glance once more in the rear-view, saw the sympathy there. But they both knew the truth, as did she.
Math.
That’s what it came down to in the end. One of the hardest lessons any officer ever had to learn in the field. The grim necessity of weighing the one life against the many. Human lives reduced to numbers, nothing more.
Think of it any other way, and it would paralyze you. Like it was paralyzing Mehreen.
“And if we fail?” he asked, finally glancing over at her—her face shadowed in the darkness of the car, eyes staring straight before her.
He had seen the aftermath of a bus bombing once, in the Middle East. Could still remember the pall of dark smoke hanging over the scene. The raw, anguished screams of the injured and dying. The smell of burning human flesh.
The bodies, scattered like broken dolls. Never again.
There was no response to his question, and after a moment he went on without waiting for one. “No matter how hard this is, Mehr, you can’t allow it to become personal. The moment that happens, people start dying.”
“You mean the way they have been,” she began slowly, her voice brittle, “ever since you lost Carol?”
Chapter 21
4:31 A.M.
Thames House
London
“I got in here as quickly as I could after your call—things were light on the Tube. Early yet,” Norris added, looking suddenly to where MacCallum stood at the head of the conference table. “You’ve been here all night?”
The section chief nodded slowly. “Aye. One brushfire after another. And now we have a real problem developing. Seen anything of Marsh?”
“He was on his way in when I came up. Should be here right soon. What’s going on—any further leads on Ismail Besimi?”
“No, North Yorkshire’s scouring Leeds for the Audi after it was picked up on traffic cameras entering the city last night. Nothing thus far.”
“They’re stretched thin.” Norris shook his head. “Radio on the way in was full of the riots…an officer in Birmingham was stabbed to death last night. The British Defence Coalition is organizing a march on the Tower Hamlets for this afternoon.”
MacCallum murmured an obscenity under his breath at the news, glimpsing the form of the DG out in the operations centre. “Oh, that’s exactly what we bloody need.”
“Given that you’ve called us all in here hours before dawn, Alec,” Marsh began icily as he came through the door of the conference room—dropping his overcoat over the back of a chair, “I think we can assume that there is something of grave importance to be addressed?”
“There is,” MacCallum responded, turning with the remote in his hand and aiming it at the TV on the wall as a grainy CCTV image came up on-screen. “This man landed at Heathrow this morning, arriving from Zurich on Swiss Airlines Flight 327. Our systems are giving us an 84% match with a man known as Mirsab Abdul Rashid al-Libi.”
The DG nodded. “‘The Libyan’…and?”
“And last fall,” MacCallum continued with a glance at Norris, “al-Libi was fighting in Syria alongside the Islamic State. He’s a trained marksman—Libyan Army—deserted and joined al-Harakat al-Islamiya when the civil war broke out and Quaddafi was overthrown.”
A light seemed to dawn in Norris’ eyes. “Of course. Is he the one—”
“One and the same,” the section chief replied, using the remote to bring up a second picture of the man alongside the first, this one showing a bearded man dressed in combat fatigues, holding a Russian-made sniper rifle. “Al-Libi became an Internet sensation after his amateur videos of his kills spread across Salafist jihadi sites last November. Hundreds of thousands of views in Europe and the UK alone. He’s known as the “Sword of the Prophet”, which is the literal meaning of his first name.”
“And now he’s here,” Marsh observed grimly, running a hand across his forehead.
“That appears to be the case.” He didn’t need to say anything more. Computer matches were an…inexact science at best, and to the naked eye, the comparison of the clean-shaven man on screen with the heavily-bearded rebel fighter left something to be desired.
In this business, you went with what you had—and could afford to leave nothing to chance.
“Anything to indicate why he’s come to the UK at this time?”
“None. Safe to say it’s not for the Earl Grey.”
6:17 A.M.
Leeds City Bus Station
North Yorkshire
Where was he? Trying to pick a face out of a crowd was ever difficult, no matter how good your training. Harry moved down the concourse, taking in the bus station, the queue of people forming to buy tickets. His eyes scanning each face before passing on, struggling to focus on the mission. Suppress the growing sense of disquiet within him.
The on-line ticket confirmation Mehreen had found on al-Kutobi’s phone had been for National Express—whose coach buses occupied the western side of the station.
More specifically the No. 19 bus, now boarding. With scarce twenty minutes to go. “Mehr, what’s your sitrep?”
“Still no sign of him. Ten people on the bus so far.” He ran a hand over his beard, ducking his head as he moved back toward the ticket counter, Ismail Besimi following behind him as he went.
The decision to take up positions within the station itself had been on
e of dangerous necessity, made even more so by the presence of security cameras.
They simply didn’t have the manpower to cover all the entrances to the single-story brick structure—preferable as that would have been.
That left them with…only the bad options. Harry stopped at the end of the concourse—leaning back against a timetable display as he turned to watch the bus itself, perhaps thirty meters away. The first morning rays of sun streaming into the station through the glass roof above their heads. “You were right, you know,” Besimi said quietly, standing there beside him. “Mehreen’s heart is full of love, but this will not end as she hopes.”
Harry didn’t reply, taking a sip of his coffee as he scanned the concourse. The old man was speaking the truth, of course…but he needed Mehreen—needed her help in a crusade that couldn’t have possibly been more personal. His texts to Flaharty hours earlier had gone unanswered, nothing but dead silence from the Irishman.
She was all he had left.
And what did that make him? He asked himself, glancing around at the faces of the travelers flowing through the station. Gambling with their lives. Their futures. For what?
Justice?
“When I was a young man,” the imam went on after a long pause, “perhaps not much younger than Aydin—my father had a dog that he took with him into the mountains to help herd the sheep. He was one of the ugliest beasts I had ever seen, but a good and faithful animal.”
A man jostled into his arm as he moved past on his way toward the bus, pulling a carry-on—and Harry felt himself react instinctively, his free hand falling toward his waistband, his eyes searching the man’s face for any sign of a threat. Nothing.
“But one night—my father never knew why—that dog attacked the flock. Somehow, somewhere he had grown to a taste for blood. It has been over fifty years since that night, and I can still see the gore dripping from his maw—the mauled body of the sheep lying there dead on the side of the mountain. After that…well, my father was left with no choice.”
The moral of the old man’s story couldn’t have been more clear. Once a dog crossed over that line between protector and predator, he had to be put down. There was no help for it. And the same held true for people, too.
Aydin.
“I remember the sorrow in my father’s eyes,” Besimi went on earnestly, “as he loaded that old Mosin and went out into the night. But he did what had to be done. And so will you.”
Harry nodded, his eyes still searching the crowd of people ahead. “Let’s just pray it doesn’t come to that.”
“Insh’allah.”
6:32 A.M.
The offices of the UK Daily Standard
London
The city lights were going out one by one, replaced by the gathering light of the rising sun streaming over the Thames as Arthur Colville stood on the roof of the office building—looking out over the city that he had called home for so long.
Centuries of English history spread out before his eyes, hidden only by a cloak of fast-fading darkness.
He could remember first visiting the city as a schoolboy—standing there in Trafalgar Square gazing up at Nelson’s Column with eyes full of wonder as his father recounted the story of England’s one-eyed hero.
The four facing reliefs depicting the admiral’s victories, themselves cast from the melted-down bronze of captured French cannon. That was victory.
He shook his head as the burner phone in his hand vibrated with the call he had been expecting. One more time.
“I trust you’ve called to report success?” he asked, unlocking the phone with a flick of his thumb across the screen.
“I have,” replied the voice of his man inside the Security Service. “Marsh is convinced that the Sword landed at Heathrow four hours ago. They’ll have resources tied down for days—chasing a phantom. And you’re now free to proceed.”
Colville smiled to himself. The man had been part of his inner circle almost since the beginning of this, and even he did not know the plan in its entirety. “And our standin?”
“Is staying at a hostel in South London. No one from Five is going to find him there. He’s being paid good money to stay in his room and watch the telly.”
While the world burns around him. It was hard to find fault with the ambivalence of a foreigner—so many of his fellow Englishmen were no better.
“Make sure they don’t. And stay close to Marsh. We underestimate him at our peril.” Marsh. Given the choice, he would have far rather had the old Cold War warrior as an ally than an enemy, but that was not the hand Fate had dealt them.
The publisher ended the call without waiting for a response and strode to the edge of the roof, standing there with his hands resting on the parapet as he stared down at the city below.
He had walked hand-in-hand with his father through the streets—riding high in the open top of a double-decker bus as he heard of how many times through history this city had been destroyed, only to rise once more. The inferno of 1666…the German Blitz.
And each time London had passed through the fire, she had risen from the ashes, a phoenix reborn.
Purified. Her dross purged away.
Colville turned over the burner in his hands and pried open the back, extracting the SIM card and the battery and returning both to his pocket. He hesitated for only a moment before tossing what remained of the phone over the parapet, leaving it to fall fifty stories to the streets below as he turned away, heading back toward the stairwell that led from the roof.
Seven long decades had come and gone since the Blitz. Time once more for this city to be baptized in flame…
6:37 A.M.
Leeds City Bus Station
Leeds, North Yorkshire
“No. 19 now boarding for Victoria Station, departing in three minutes.”
Three minutes. And no sign of Aydin, Harry thought—glancing down once more at the photo of the boy displayed on his phone’s screen. His head coming up once more to scan the crowd. The imam stayed behind him as he moved, just a few paces away. And he could see the same questions in his eyes.
Perhaps they had the wrong bus? Perhaps he had bought a ticket for another line after seeing al-Kutobi gunned down?
Questions without answers…that seemed to be all he had these days. The price one paid for being out in the cold, operating without a network. Without sanction.
Without backup. After fifteen years in the Agency, he knew just how wrong the intel could be when you had all the support structure in the world.
But without it—it felt like crossing a chasm on a thin wire. Just putting one foot in front of the next, ever groping for the next step. Never look down.
And then he saw him—just passing the ticket counter, the hood of his grey jacket pulled forward, but his face clearly visible as he moved. Hands shoved into the jacket’s pockets. A detonator?
He keyed his earpiece, his right hand falling to his waist as he began to make his way through the press of travelers, elbowing one man aside. “Mehreen, I need your twenty.”
Silence. A cold chill ran through his body, his mind refusing to even consider the possibility. His head coming up to once more search the crowd. No. “Mehreen, do you copy?”
Still nothing. It was as though she had dropped off the grid completely. And there was no time to look for her, not until they had secured the suicide vest. Strange, but that was how he thought of it. Not a boy, but a vest. Depersonalize. Prioritize.
He turned to look back toward Aydin, now only feet away from boarding the coach bus—and that was when he saw her, pushing her own way through the crowd on an interception course.
The situation crystallized for him in that moment—her intentions becoming only too clear. “Stand down, Mehreen. I say again, stand down.”
Too late. He saw the flash of recognition in Aydin’s eyes at the sight of his aunt, the fear. Fight or flight, conflicting emotions warring within the boy’s mind.
And he was too far away to intervene, his hand
resting on the butt of the Sig-Sauer within his jacket—but he didn’t have a clear shot. Any shot at all, really.
A small form bumped into his leg and he glanced down reflexively, the wide blue eyes of a little girl staring back into his. An almost surreal innocence reflected in their depths.
If that s-vest was triggered…he didn’t even need to finish the thought. He had seen the bodies of mangled children before—watched helplessly as they died.
His head came up, taking in briefly the sight of the girl’s mother—distracted on her mobile. Oblivious to the danger so close at hand.
As were they all.
He pushed past the two of them, circling to avoid detection—his eyes fixed on the spot where Aydin was still standing, seemingly rooted in place. His weapon free from its holster, trying to get an angle. A shot.
The boy broke just then, running for the back of the station like a frightened deer. Flight.
A shot impossible in that moment. Harry jammed the Sig-Sauer back into its shoulder holster and launched himself after him, hearing curses explode from a bystander as he elbowed the man out of his way, nearly knocking a woman to the floor as he rounded the front of the coach—glimpsing the grey hoodie flying in front of him, perhaps just ten feet ahead.
Let him reach the door, he thought, struggling against the anger surging within him. Mehr had blown everything by not staying on comms—by trying to go it alone. Talk him down.
Now the last thing they needed was to corner him in the crowded station. He heard a woman shouting behind him, thought he recognized Mehreen’s voice—but there was no time to stop, to slow down.
Harry hit the door of the station just a few paces behind Aydin, slamming it open as they raced out into the open, the boy’s form disappearing behind a parked bus. Don’t lose him.
He’d already gotten away from them once. They weren’t going to get a third chance.
6:43 A.M.
The MV Percy Phillips
Grimbsy Harbor, Lincolnshire
“Four hundred and twenty-eight meters,” Paul Gordon observed, feeling Hale’s eyes on him as he noted the distance marked on the terrain map spread out on the table in the bridge of the motor vessel. A heavily wooded slope. A river on the east, curving around to the north.
Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3) Page 43