Embrace the Fire (Shadow Warriors Book 3)

by Stephen England

  3:42 P.M.

  MI-5 Regional Office

  Leeds, West Yorkshire

  “He’s playing you.” Roth shook his head as he made his way across the office carpark toward his BMW, the Sig-Sauer holstered beneath his jacket, the DG’s words running on endless loop through his head.

  Marsh was right, so far as it went.

  Like himself, Nichols was a career intelligence officer—had, in fact, been at it far longer—and that made anything he said suspect. He knew all that, but there was the inescapable feel of reality to this attack on the Queen. And all he had to stop it was the pistol on his hip. A couple spare mags.

  And no way to get there in time.

  Like it or not, the American was the only option left to them. If he didn’t have a plan…

  The alternative wasn’t something he wanted to consider.

  Roth’s phone buzzed with an incoming text as he opened the driver’s door of the BMW, sliding inside.

  A message from Mehreen displayed on its screen. Short, to the point. Plans have changed. Meet me.

  He tapped the address given on-screen into his car’s GPS, watching as it calculated the route.

  Not far.

  4:01 P.M.

  A farm

  Keighley, West Yorkshire

  “Let me handle the talking,” Flaharty cautioned as Harry pushed open the door of the Vauxhall, stepping out onto the gravel of the farm lane as his gaze flickered around them.

  A small stone farmhouse set just off the lane, a battered truck that looked like it dated back to the late eighties parked in front, its keys still in the ignition.

  A few hundred meters farther back stood an old bank barn, a handful of more modern outbuildings clustered about it.

  And beyond, to the north, the moor itself, wild and desolate. He’d always found himself struck by the majesty of desolate places. The yearning, perhaps, of a damned soul seeking its home. Cain.

  He heard the sharp, frenzied barking of a dog from somewhere off amongst the buildings and his hand stole toward his holstered pistol, arrested only by Flaharty’s voice.

  “Easy there, lad,” the Irishman said, shooting him a sharp look. “Liam’s a sheep farmer…has a wolfhound, Fionchán, he calls him. Fine dog. I want to get through this without violence if there’s any way we can.”

  As do I, Harry thought, taking his hand back out of his jacket as he gazed off toward the western sky. There was bound to be too much of it before day’s end, as it was.

  “Oh, it’s you,” the woman said as she opened the door barely a crack, catching sight of Flaharty’s face. “Come in, come in. Liam!”

  Harry followed the Irishman into the narrow hall, Flaharty’s words running through his mind. “Liam was just a wee’un when Davey and I were runnin’ the streets of Belfast, trading shots with the RUC and lobbing petrol bombs at army patrols. But never ha’ I seen two brothers closer. Davey always looked out for him. Even in—”

  “Stephen!” a man’s voice bellowed out, and Harry looked up to see a big man in his late forties emerge from the end of the hallway. His arms outstretched. “It’s been too long.”

  “It has,” the former terrorist responded, Harry standing in the shadows of the hall behind him as the two men embraced. “Far too long.”

  “You heard about Davey?”

  “Aye, that I did.” It was impossible to read Flaharty’s expression, his arm encircling his boyhood friend’s back as he hugged him close. “He was a good man. Finest man I ever knew.”

  “And those sods killed him,” Liam said, pulling back—his face stricken with grief. “He was executed, Stephen, like some kind of animal. A single bullet to the head—never stood a bloody chance.”

  “That’s what I heard,” Flaharty responded, his eyes betraying no sign that he had been the man who fired that shot. Taken his friend’s life. “I would have given anything to ha’ been here for his wake, but it just wasn’t possible. The men that killed him, they’ve been after me, as well. That’s why we’re here this evening.”

  There was a perverse truth in that, Harry thought. Somewhere. Conor Hale had turned Davey Malone, using Flaharty’s involvement with the Agency as leverage.

  Lies within lies. Until they all came crashing down at the last. Be sure your sins will find you out.

  “You know who killed him?” the big Irishman asked, anger shining through his tears. “They’ll pay for it, or so help me—”

  “We’re here about the plane,” Harry interrupted coldly, clearing his throat.

  Liam looked up, as if seeing him for the first time. His anger seeming to have found a target.

  “And who’s this?” he demanded, turning to Flaharty in search of an answer.

  “A friend.”

  Chapter 31

  4:12 P.M.

  The farm

  Keighley, West Yorkshire

  “And here she is,” Liam announced, dust billowing around them as he pulled away the tarpaulins, the familiar shape of an old Cessna 206 materializing in the dim light of the barn.

  “Ah, yes,” Harry said, reaching a hand up to rest against the engine cowling. “The Lycoming flat-six. A good engine.”

  “Aye,” the big man replied, favoring him with a keen, searching glance. “You’ve flown this plane?”

  “A time or three,” he nodded, all the memories flooding back. No time. He shoved them away with an effort, forcing himself to focus on the present. “You have fuel?”

  Liam inclined his head toward a row of jerry cans lined up against the wall of the barn. “All the petrol I’ve got is right there. Is it going to be enough?”

  It would have to be, Harry thought, eyeing the cans. Couldn’t be much more than forty gallons, less than half the StationAir’s fuel capacity. He met Flaharty’s eyes and nodded. Enough.

  “Let’s get her rolled out into the open.”

  And there it was, Mehreen thought, glancing out the side window of her car as she tapped the brakes, rolling to a stop in front of the farmhouse.

  The tall meadow grass waving in the warm spring wind as two men pushed a white highwing Cessna out into the field. Three, she corrected herself as she exited the car, spotting Nichols’ tall form on the other side of the plane’s cabin.

  He was coming around the tail of the plane as she came across the field, looking up at her approach.

  “Did you get clear?” he asked, a weary look in his eyes as he glanced at her. Worn, haggard—the pallor of his face contrasting with the dark stubble of his unshaven beard.

  The image of a bloodied prizefighter, clawing his way drunkenly back to his feet just before time was called.

  “I did—Darren called to warn me right after he got off the phone with the DG.”

  “Kind of him,” he murmured, looking at the plane, the irony only too clear in his tone.

  “He said only what had to be said to get Marsh on side. Legitimize the intel he was passing along.”

  “And it didn’t work that way, did it?” was the curt response, Harry shaking his head as if in recognition of the futility of the conversation. “Come on, let’s get the gear loaded.”

  4:19 P.M.

  The CIA off-site facility

  City of London

  “We’ve got a locked door,” the Special Branch officer announced, the image from his helmet cam shaking as he nodded to another member of his team, “preparing to breach.”

  Final room, Thomas Parker thought, finding himself holding his breath as the officers stacked up, one of them moving forward with a breaching hammer in his hand.

  The CIA hadn’t been given the opportunity to independently review the intel that had led Five to this flat, but so far…it had turned out to be a bust.

  If Harry was there or had ever been there, there was no sign of it. Sterile, Thomas realized, glancing over at Simon Norris, the British analyst’s brow furrowed in frustration as he gazed at the screen.

  Exactly the way Harry would have left it.

  A year before
, he would have walked through hell to pull his old friend out of the fire, Thomas thought, watching as the breacher brought the hammer back into an arcing swing. A brotherhood washed in blood.

  And now he was powerless to do anything to stop what was about to take place. If Harry was inside—

  His thought was cut short by the crash of the hammer, the door flying inward. The second man on the team moving into the opening, the dark outline of the officer’s MP-5 visible as he cleared the fatal funnel in a trice, sweeping his quadrant. Nothing.

  “Clear,” Thomas heard an officer announce, a moment passing before the Special Branch constable appeared in front of the camera.

  “Sir,” he began, “there’s no one here.”

  4:24 P.M.

  The farm

  Keighley, West Yorkshire

  “Think it will be enough to hold him?” Flaharty asked, struggling to catch his breath as he straightened, looking down at the unconscious form of Conor Hale they had just lain across the Cessna’s rearmost seat. “Lord, but he’s a heavy one.”

  Harry nodded, turning to make his way toward the door of the plane. “I only gave him a light dose, but it should be enough to keep him out until we’re on the ground again.”

  Flaharty gave him a skeptical look. “And where do you plan on doing that, exactly?”

  “The lawn of Balmoral Castle itself, if it comes to that,” he replied, lowering himself from the plane and walking over to where Mehreen stood, her laptop propped up on the hood of her car. The wireless stick plugged into its USB port. “Were you able to get the maps pulled up?”

  She nodded. “We don’t have a good connection out here—we’re having to piggyback off the mobile coverage, and that’s always poor. But it’s going to have to do.”

  Harry turned the laptop’s screen toward him, brushing a callused finger over the trackpad as he zoomed in on the satellite imagery. “There’s a golf course here, southeast of the castle. It’s bound not to be perfectly flat, but it gives us over three hundred meters in length, in terms of a straight shot. Coming in over the trees.”

  Flaharty’s eyes widened. “That’s not enough.”

  “It is if we have no intention of ever taking off again,” he responded, lowering his voice as Liam came into sight around the nose of the plane. “This is a one-way trip. I think we all know that.”

  Easy, Harry thought, holding the ignition key in place as he gently advanced the throttle, listening to the engine sputter and cough. There.

  The Cessna’s 300-horsepower engine roared suddenly to life and he released the key as the propeller began to spin, its wash whipping at the grass of the Yorkshire meadow.

  And then almost as quickly as it had come alive, the engine began to choke as if it were starving for fuel. A deathly sound. If they couldn’t get this in the air…

  He reached down, quickly switching the auxiliary fuel pump to “HI” for a fraction of a moment, clearing vapor from the lines.

  The engine continued to sputter for a moment, then came back to full power, straining against the parking brake.

  Harry eased the throttle back, letting it idle as he rose from the pilot’s seat, ducking his head as he exited the aircraft. He looked up to see Liam standing there a few feet away—flashed the big Irishman a tight smile. “I believe we’re in business.”

  “Harry,” Mehreen called, gesturing for him to come over to the car, “I think I’ve found something.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a gliding club in Aboyne, just twenty minutes east of the castle on the A93. They have two runways, over five hundred meters in length. It’s more than enough room to land a plane like this.”

  He shook his head. “But then we’re on the ground, without transportation. I—”

  “An’ what’s this?” Liam exclaimed from beside him, cutting him off, his eyes focused across the meadow toward the drive. “What’s this?”

  He heard Flaharty swear under his breath, looked up to see a dark BMW parked in the drive. A figure striding across the field toward them.

  4:28 P.M.

  Balmoral Castle

  Ballater, Scotland

  “Of course, sir,” Colin Hilliard responded gravely, holding his mobile phone close to his ear as he descended the grand staircase into the gallery just off the entrance hall. Reception was bad, as usual in the region—but the message from his superiors at Special Protection Command back in London couldn’t have been more clear.

  There had been a threat made against the Queen’s life—credibility, indeterminate.

  “You can tell the Superintendent we’ll continue to exercise the utmost vigilance, as ever. Of course. Please ensure that I’m apprised of any new intelligence bearing upon these reports.”

  He tucked the phone inside the pocket of his suit as the call ended, his brow furrowing as he considered what he had just been told.

  Threats against the Queen, nothing was more common. He’d reviewed hundreds of them in his time on Her Majesty’s detail. Cranks, most of them—empowered, given a soapbox by the Internet.

  Dark rantings never meant to be brought to fruition.

  But this…this felt different, somehow. Perhaps it was nothing more than the knowledge that the Queen had come to Scotland—months ahead of her normal visit—for the express purposes of getting away from the civil unrest gripping the south of the United Kingdom. Seeking peace. Quiet.

  But what if it had followed her here?

  He saw the head of Prince William’s detail, a Sikh inspector named Bahadar Singh, coming in off the carriage porch—his traditional turban wrapped around his head, the ceremonial kirpan buckled at his waist, its hilt visible just beneath his suit jacket. “The Queen, Bahadar—she’s still on the terrace?”

  “With Prince William and the Princess Charlotte.” The man nodded, his eyes narrowing as if he sensed instinctively from Hilliard’s words that something was wrong. As well he might—they’d guarded the Queen together for over five years before he’d been assigned to William and Kate. “His Royal Highness Prince Philip has retired to his chamber, he was feeling unwell. What’s going on, Colin?”

  “Fresh intel from London,” Hilliard replied, glancing down the hall toward the gallery, “there’s been a threat made against the Queen’s life. I don’t know that it’s anything more than rumor, but we have to take it seriously.”

  “Of course, of course,” Singh responded, a troubled look on his bearded face. “Catherine and George are down by the banks of the Dee—the young prince wanted to wade in the shallows and gather smooth stones. Should I send someone after them?”

  “There’s no one there with them?”

  A shake of the head. “Catherine was insistent that they have some privacy.”

  The uneasy balance, as ever, of protecting people who wanted nothing more than a normal life and would ever be denied it.

  Hilliard hesitated for a moment before replying, “No, not yet. Check in with the front gate, see if they’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

  4:29 P.M.

  “Darren Roth…how did he get here?” Harry breathed, wheeling suddenly on Mehreen as the answer dawned on him. “What do you know about this?”

  “I gave him the address,” she responded, her eyes flashing as she turned to face him. Not giving an inch. Moments like this, he knew exactly why Nick had married her. “He wanted to help, and he has the kind of training and skills we’re going to need if we’re going to make this work—your bum ankle, my lack of weapons training…and this sodding terrorist. It’s not going to be enough.”

  Flaharty swore, anger bubbling just beneath the surface. “I—”

  “Not now,” Harry said, cutting him off just as Roth came up to the car. This had to be handled, and handled delicately. They were treading on very dangerous ground. The look in Liam’s eyes betraying suspicion and bewilderment.

  “I got here as quickly as I could,” the British officer said, looking directly at Mehreen. “Glad to see I was
in time.”

  “In time to sell us out again, you mean?” Flaharty spat, taking a threatening step in the man’s direction. Ignoring the warning look Harry shot him.

  Roth gazed at him coolly for a long moment, his gaze flickering from Flaharty to Harry and back again. “Well that’s something you’d know quite a bit about, eh?”

  Flaharty’s face purpled with fury, his hand slipping inside his jacket. “Why, you sodding—”

  Harry saw him move forward, saw the weapon come out, but too late to stop him—a hoarse cry of warning exploding from his lips.

  He saw the barrel of the Kimber flash in the sun, saw Roth move in—grappling for the weapon, his elbow slamming into the older man’s chest.

  Flaharty went down, hard—sprawling on his back in the meadow as the former Marine took a step back, the Irishman’s Kimber now in his own hand.

  “This is your operation,” he said, looking at Harry, “and your decision. I’m in, if you’ll have me.”

  4:31 P.M.

  Balmoral Castle

  Ballater, Scotland

  “Nothing that I’ve seen, sir,” Sergeant Brian Gavron responded, hearing Inspector Singh’s voice in his earpiece. “A few disappointed tourists earlier, but no one since 1400 hours. All’s quiet here.”

  That wasn’t usually the case, the SO-14 officer had been made to understand—but with Her Majesty’s early trip north, bus tours had been canceled and tourists turned away. Security was paramount.

  He glanced out toward the bridge spanning the Dee, perhaps fifty meters from his position, catching sight of a vehicle parked by the side of the road on the other side of the river, near the carpark. “Looks like we’ve got a utility van parked out on the main road out toward the kirk. Perhaps from the power company?”

  “Look into it.”

  It was a power van, painted in the familiar green and blue livery of Scottish & Southern Energy—or SSE, as it was now called—Sergeant Gavron realized as he neared the western bank of the Dee, the river rushing beneath him.

  Two men visible—the one near the road, the other just off the road, nearly obscured by trees.

  “Everything all right, lads?” the sergeant asked as he approached, eyeing the men carefully. He’d had five years with the Met before being assigned to SO-14…there was something about the way the men wore their work uniforms. Something awkward, almost.