Embrace the Fire Quotes

“He’d been facing away, Harry thought, the Sig-Sauer still drawn in his hand as he limped forward. And he had put three shots into the man’s back—the first two between the shoulderblades, the final one into the base of the neck.
Mozambique Drill.
It hadn’t been a fair fight, but he hadn’t intended it to be. Honor was something for another era, a nobler time”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Oh, well that can’t have been me,” Harry smiled grimly, clapping a hand on Malone’s shoulder as he moved past the big man. “You’re still alive. . .”     7:03”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“the grungy carpet where he had been”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“. .yes, I understand, brother,” the jihadist said, hearing Farid’s voice in his earpiece as he toggled the radio’s microphone, turning away from the Suburban. “I haven’t been able to raise them in the last five minutes. I—”
The words died in his throat, a sound like the explosion of a rotten melon assaulting his ears—something warm and wet spraying over his face.
He had just enough time to turn, mouth open in shock at the sight of his partner slumping to the ground, the back of the man’s head blown away, blood and brains trickling down the side of the vehicle.
The next moment, a 7.62x39mm round smashed through his own skull, and everything went dark”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“The CIA officer came over to the parapet to stand beside him, his eyes hidden by the polarized Wayfarers. “I. . .spent some time in Afghanistan, few years back. Rotated out to Kabul Station. Lost more than a few good men to sniper fire. You get a feel for where they’re hiding.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“He straightened, seeming to draw himself up. Looking Harry in the eye. “Do what you're going to do, lad. I've never begged a man for mercy in my life, and I'll be buggered if I start with you.”
Enough. Harry’s face twisted into a grimace, his fingers clutching the Glock in a death grip.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Trigger the vest? You’re probably right,” Harry responded with a shrug. “Which is why I took the precaution of leaving the detonator in the hands of a ‘friend.’ And unluckily for you, about the only person he hates more than you—is me. He’s not going to think twice.”
He reached up to adjust his earpiece, his eyes never leaving Hale’s. “You there, Flaharty?”
The man took a step back at the mention of the name, the Walther’s barrel wavering for the first time.
“On my mark, Stephen,” Harry continued, his voice calm, almost conversational, “I’m going to count down from ten. When I reach one, you trigger the vest. If I’m cut off at any point. . .you trigger the vest. Ten. . .”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“This is the day,” Tarik Abdul Muhammad announced softly, looking down the line of vehicles—five blacked-out SUVs bracketed by a utility van in the fore and a white delivery van at the rear. Carrying the faithful into battle. “The day we illustrate once and for all the impotence of the crusader war machine—bring the war home to their soil. Show them that nowhere are they safe from the justice of God, whose precepts they have defied for so long.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Twenty-seven years, Colin Hilliard thought, buttoning his suit as he strode out from under the cover of Balmoral’s carriage porch—the early afternoon sun shining down on the Commander’s snow-white hair.
That was how long he’d been with the Met’s Protection Command, guarding first the palace at Buck House—as it was colloquially known—then the Royal Family itself. Nearly half his life. He’d been on Her Majesty’s personal detail for twelve years, its ranking officer for the last five.
The Glock 17 dug uncomfortably into his side as he moved, a reminder of the realities of his work as he glanced back toward the castle—its main keep looming large behind him, the walls thick and solid, constructed of Invergelder granite.
Relic of an England gone by”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“You were able to get what I’d requested?” Harry asked, turning to lead the way into the kitchen.
Flaharty nodded, setting his own bag down on the table with a dull thud and unzipping it to withdraw an AK-103 assault rifle, its polymer stock folded against the receiver. “Nearly. Four rifles, though I was only able to acquire two of these like you’d asked.”
“And the other two?”
“Wooden-stocked AKMs,” the former PIRA man replied, gesturing toward the bag Harry was holding.
“Good enough,” he said, opening the bag and pulling out one of the rifles. The AKM was a far older design, but they’d still be able to share ammunition and magazines.
Russians were nothing if not efficient”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Australia. Canada. New Zealand. The United Kingdom. The United States. The five countries whose intelligence-sharing had coordinated efforts against the Warsaw Pact throughout the darkest days of the Cold War. And these days, against the threat of international jihad. No partnership more vital”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“War teaches a man that he has only his brothers.” And sometimes not even them, Harry thought—feeling anger swell within him at the memory of brotherhood betrayed. Hamid Zakiri. “That they are all that matters—because at the end of the day, they’re the only ones comin’ for you. And it’s that brotherhood that Conor Hale is leveraging to achieve his objectives. The sacred trusts of men who have been through the fire together.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“We both went to war,” he continued after a moment, “look around you. Do you recognize the country you came back to? I never did—and the longer I spent at war, the less of a bond I felt with those I had left behind.”
Between the protector and the protected. . .a great gulf fixed. A chasm washed in blood.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“To ride the chaos, remake the world in their own image. It takes a special kind of hubris to throw the world into the fires and believe you can pull it back out without being consumed yourself.”
“So that’s what this is all about?” Roth asked, the irony clear in his voice. “A ‘better’ world?”
“Isn’t it always?” Harry allowed himself a grim smile. A nameless wag had once observed that the reason history repeated itself was that no one had been listening the first time around. Not that they ever did. “They believe they can accomplish with this what none of the wars they bled and died in ever have—eliminate the Islamist threat to the UK, once and for all. A ‘final solution’, you might call it.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“The twenty-eighth floor of the office building was available for lease, but he had let himself in. He wondered absently if the small circular hole he had cut in the glass with a handheld saw—the aperture just wide enough to admit the L42A1’s muzzle—would impact the property values”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“I expect you to recognize the inevitable when you see it in front of you.” The publisher gestured with his hand. “This cataclysm is coming, regardless of anything you and I might try to do. Two months from now, the year after next, a decade hence—this little island will be plunged into chaos. But, ah, what comes out of that chaos. . .now that is not nearly so inevitable. And that is what I am offering to you—to us—the chance to take that chaos and use it to forge the world we see in our dreams. The world we believe in. So, are you with me?”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“I am not a terrorist. The death of the innocent is not something I take pleasure in—unlike you people. But hard choices must be made, and this is necessary. . .it is a sacrifice which must needs be made. For the greater good. For a better world.”
“A world in which my people have been ‘cleansed’ from your soil,” Tarik spat, his lip curling up in contempt.
“Yes,” Colville returned, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward, knuckles pressed against the hard English walnut of the writing desk only inches away from a snifter of brandy. “In a hundred years, I want a British boy to grow to manhood without ever hearing the name of your child-molesting prophet spoken in the streets of England. That is what I want.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Riflemen, roadside IEDs—I don’t suppose I bloody well need to tell you how to set up this type of thing. You sods did more than enough of that in Iraq. Provided you have men with the experience.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Tarik seemed to ignore it, focusing instead on the map spread out before them on Colville’s desk. “I have the men. Men who fought in the jihad against the Americans in Iraq, against the apostate in Syria.”
“Brave men all, I’m sure,” Conor observed, the sarcasm fairly dripping from his words.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“He saw the hardness turn to fear, saw the plea begin to form on the man’s lips.
And he shook his head.
When death came, it was with a suppressed cough.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Lewis, Taylor—Collins,” he began, addressing the new arrivals as he pulled a Sig-Sauer P226 from a holster beneath his jacket and screwed a suppressor into the threaded barrel, “you three take the back—go through the alleyway. Rogers and I will take the front.”
He said nothing more, briefly brass-checking the chamber of his pistol as they began to advance across the street. Nothing more needed to be said—he’d led these men into battle before. And now, as then, they had their orders”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“England has gone soft,” Colville said, gazing out through the darkness toward the few, flickering lights of North Rigton. The last faint rays of the sun were slipping beyond the horizon—the stars emerging in the sky above them. “We were a proud people once. The sun never set on the Union Jack and an Englishman bowed his knee only to his Queen and his God. Now?”
He shook his head. “The leaders of this country take their marching orders from Brussels, bow down before every sodding immigrant that washes ashore. Grovel in the dirt for fear of offending them or their precious beliefs, styling themselves ‘multiculturalist’ in so doing. They need to be shocked from their comforts—awakened to the danger of what they have embraced”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“It would be so simple, Harry thought, his mind flickering back across the years to another op. In Europe. A train station just like this one.
So simple to just raise his hand, the suppressed pistol concealed within his coat. Fire a single shot, walk on without stopping, without even pausing to give the cameras something to work with. Leave your target to bleed out. He’d done it before”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“He’d known they would bring her in, sooner or later. People with a command of the languages in that part of the world were a rare find, and the Western intelligence communities were still playing catch-up ball.
Finding her in the field was unexpected, though—he hadn’t anticipated that. Mehreen had been a case officer back in the day, cut her operational teeth running assets for “Box” as MI-5 had been known in Northern Ireland in the late ‘90s”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“His own first clue that Flaharty was involved had come when he’d found himself staring down the sights of his Barrett REC-7 at the Irishman, oily smoke billowing up into the Malian sky, small-arms fire crackling through the early morning dawn.
Harry’s team had been in-country in covert support of the Touré government, tasked with destroying a convoy of weapons on their way to Anṣār ad-Dīn.
Flaharty’s weapons, as it turned out. Unfortunate”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“It was part of the bleedin’ deal,” Flaharty announced sharply, throwing back the lid of the gun case to reveal an Accuracy International L115A3, the thick barrel of the sniper rifle gleaming in the light. “I turned tout, and you sods stayed out of my business affairs.”
Tout. An informant, in the British parlance. And that’s exactly what Flaharty had been, in his last few years with the Provos—and since. An Agency asset”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Flaharty sent you?” he asked, watching the man’s eyes—his hand not far from the butt of the Walther.
“Aye, that he did,” a second voice announced, Harry’s head swiveling to see another man emerge from back near the confessional, a compact CZ 75 leveled in his right hand.
He looked back to see the “worshipper” standing before him, his Beretta drawn, only inches away from Harry’s face.
Close enough to take.
He could have seized it, killed them both before they had time to react. Being held at gunpoint with a pistol wasn’t the game-ender that Hollywood portrayed. Not if you had the training to deal with it.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“Which was why he hadn’t voted since the early ‘90s. Why anyone who placed faith in their elected representatives to “save the country” was deluding themselves.”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“head of him was the access road, a blacked-out Suburban parked behind his car, blocking his exit.
The figure of a man standing there in front of the vehicle, the glow of the cigar in his mouth visible in the early morning twilight.
Kranemeyer slowed instinctively, his hand slipping into his jacket, toward the butt of the Heckler & Koch USP .45 holstered on his hip in a cross-draw position”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire

“She set the empty mug in front of him, his eyes never leaving her face. “There are lists, of course. And you and I both know they’re incomplete. Project OSIRIS has never been disclosed to the public.”
“OSIRIS?” The surprise showed in her face and she cursed herself for it. He had taken her off-guard, once again—and he could tell.
“Come on now, Mehr,” he replied, and there was almost a sadness in his dark eyes. Pain. “We’ve known each other too long for these games. We both know that after 7/7, your government began exploring the potential of installing a network of facial-recognition cameras around London. It was code-named Project OSIRIS, an allusion to the all-seeing eye of Egyptian mythology—and completed in 2012. I haven’t been in-country since, don’t know where any of them are located. It’s a risk I can’t afford to take. Not now.”
“Why?” she asked quietly”
― Stephen England, Embrace the Fire