Ted Bell - Warlord

"This is the detonator for the one-kiloton device. I have just depressed the button. It's now armed. If you care to shoot me, which I'm sure you do, my finger will obviously release the trigger. I will accept my martyrdom with joy. You, and everyone remaining alive inside this mountain, will die instantly. Why, my God, it will be spectacular. We'll blow the whole top of Wazizabad to the skies. Glorious."

"And if I don't shoot?"

"Your life will go on. You will bear witness. We stand here at the threshold of a new world order, Lord Hawke. A caliphate. A world where Sharia law is the rule of all nations. The new Golden Age of Islam. Do you believe in God, Lord Hawke?"

"I believe this moment in time is no accident."

"I honor you in this belief."

"Stoke?" Hawke said, looking his old friend in the eye. "What do you think?"

"Tough call, boss."

"Yeah."

"I think we do our duty and that's the end of it. We've always known we'd have to go sometime. At least this way, we go out in a blaze of glory, knowing we did what we had to do."

"You remember Admiral Lord Nelson's last words, as he lay dying on Victory's deck in supreme triumph, having defeated the French at Trafalgar?"

"Tell me, boss."

"Thank God I have done my duty."

"Yeah. That's what it's all about."

"Ever since I was a child I've always thought that is how I would like to go out. A fine way to die, doing your duty."

Hawke raised the pistol, aiming it at the man's head.

"Don't take this the wrong way, boss. One last thing. I love you like a brother. Always have. Always will."

"I return it tenfold, Stoke."

Hawke said a brief silent prayer and squeezed the trigger.

Abu al-Rashad, who'd never once believed this man Hawke would willingly commit suicide, died with that thought still firing in his perforated brain.

Alex Hawke, who, a split second earlier, was prepared to lay down his life for his country, was staggered to find himself still alive. Al-Rashad's brains were spattered on the wall behind him. The little black controller fell from his hand and clattered harmlessly across the marble floor.

Hawke, dumbstruck, heard a voice behind him.

"All right then, you two lovebirds. Abdul and I found that dirty nuke," Sahira said from the doorway.

"You found it?" Hawke said. It seemed like he'd sent her off to look for it a lifetime ago.

"At the end of that tunnel back where Ugg lit up. We disabled it about five minutes ago."

"Only five minutes?" Stoke said, incredulous.

"Is that a problem for you?"

"Could have been a little bit, yeah."

Hawke and Stoke stared at Sahira in utter disbelief at how precisely they'd cheated death. And then the two men started smiling, grinning at her, lunging toward each other and embracing, pounding on each other's backs, convulsed with joyous laughter.

As Churchill once said, it wasn't the beginning of the end, but at least it was the end of the beginning.

A LONE MAN WALKED THROUGH THE DEEP and dusky Scottish wood. The forest floor was mossy and springy under his feet. It was early evening and he walked slowly beneath towering dark giants with massive limbs; he walked with a thoughtful gait, not stealthy, but somewhat self-consciously, almost as if he were being watched. He was, of course, but he was a recognizable figure on the property and so posed no threat. He wore his wool stocking cap low on his brow, hiding his predatory smile and his dark, shining eyes.

There were countless tiny security cameras nesting like small black birds in the trees above; and everywhere there were, too, unseen heat, sound, and movement sensors scattered throughout the property. His heart was pounding against his rib cage hard enough to splinter bones, but he was quite sure even the most sophisticated sensors couldn't pick up a heartbeat.

He was singing softly to his unseen audience as he walked, singing the words of Scotland's favorite son, Robbie Burns.

Gin a body meet a body

Comin' thro' the rye

Gin a body kiss a body

Need a body cry?

Yet a' the lads they smile at me

When comin' thro' the rye!

In the gloaming, a purple stillness fell over the trackless forests, the moors, and the placid rivers of the Balmoral estates. He walked on among the black trunks of magnificent specimen trees, many of them centuries old, some of them even planted by Prince Albert himself. He savored every step of this journey.

He had waited a lifetime for this night and this moment in time. As a small boy, he had foreseen this. All of his life, no matter what the dim and distant future held, a final reckoning was coming.

His heart quickened as he saw faint light ahead, deep in the woods. He slowed his pace now. He was approaching a small two-story lodge from whence came the light in the forest. It was built of rough-hewn logs, beneath a lichen-covered slate roof; smoke was curling from stone chimneys at either end. It looked like any one of dozens of such cabins and lodges, built over the centuries on the estate.

But this particular structure was quite unlike all those others. This unlikely spot was the nerve center of Balmoral Security Operations, home of Balmoral's state-of-the-art PIDS: the Perimeter Intrusion Detection System. It was run by SO15, now officially called the Counter Terrorism Command. This was a recently merged version of the old Special Branch, established in 1883, and the much newer Anti-Terrorist Branch, both divisions of Scotland Yard.

Working closely with agents of Lord Malmsey, the director general of MI5, the detectives stationed here on the property were responsible for the safety and protection of Her Majesty the Queen and all members of the Royal Family in residence at Balmoral Castle for summer holiday.

And here in this cottage a four-man team worked round the clock. They manned a formidable surveillance operation that ensured that there were no breaches of the security perimeter protecting the Queen and her family. It was a full-time job and, to their credit, no one had ever penetrated their fail-safe systems.

Smith well knew Balmoral was the Queen's favorite place on earth. As had it been her mother's and grandmother's before her. It held a special place in Her Majesty's heart because here alone did she feel completely secure. At a safe remove from the world, she could jounce along the miles of rutted roads at the wheel of her battered Range Rover, left in peace to do as she wished, surrounded by her horses, her beloved Corgis, and of course her family. They had weathered many storms in the decade prior, but now at last it seemed tranquillity had settled in for good.

And Smith had long ago decided that it would be this haven, this paradise bequeathed to her by her ancestor Queen Victoria, where he would pay the Windsor family one final and terrible visit.

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1842, Queen Victoria, and her new husband, Prince Albert, paid their first visit to Scotland. They were so struck with the majestic beauty of the Highlands, they resolved to return again and again. For years, Victoria and Albert always depended on the kindness of friends who would graciously open their castles and estates to the enormously popular Royal couple.

Meanwhile, the Queen's physician, Sir James Clark, had recently been the guest of Sir Robert Gordon at his small castle, Balmoral, which lay to the east of the Grampian Mountains just beside the river Dee. Queen Victoria received many glowing reports from Sir James, not only about the magnificent scenery, but about the air, which he described as having "an unusual dryness and purity."

By 1848, Sir Robert Gordon had died, and the lease was for sale. Queen Victoria snapped it up, and so it was that in the autumn of that year, she and Prince Albert arrived to take possession of a property that they had never seen. They were not disappointed. In her diary that first evening, when the house was still all around her, the Queen described a "pretty little castle in the old Scottish style, surrounded by beautiful wooded hills."