Green Light (Sam Archer 7) (19 page)

Taking
his hand away from the gunshot wound, he swore crudely in his
native tongue as he pulled the empty magazine from his UMP and
reloaded awkwardly with a spare from his pocket. Loading a round,
he looked out of the window and saw the other three guys reappear,
moving out of the apartment building, glancing quickly around them
as they climbed back into the car, their weapons concealed under
their jackets.

‘
You check it out?’ he asked.

Nemkov
nodded. ‘Looks like a woman and kid live there. The bitch wasn’t
home. And there’s something else.’

‘
What?’

‘
Photos in the sitting room of her in NYPD uniform. I think
she’s a cop too. Or someone who lives there is.’

Marat
stared at him for a moment and thought back to the photos of the
man inside the house they’d just left. The police had shown up
unusually fast.

‘
Is this a set up?’ Sivic asked from the back seat.

Ignoring
him, Marat thought back to the addresses he’d memorised; if they
were all cops that could be a serious issue. Valentin was a
reliable man, so maybe cops had been the ones responsible for their
guys disappearing. It wouldn’t be the first time.

‘
We skip #3 and go straight to #4,’ he said. ‘If a cop lives
there too, we head back to the Beach and figure this
out.’

‘
Where the hell is Valentin?’

‘
Call him and tell him to meet us there.’

‘
Why can’t you?’

‘
I look like I can use my hands at the moment?’ he retorted,
clutching the wound to his shoulder with his right and holding his
gun in the left.

‘
You gonna bleed to death?’ Nemkov asked.

‘
No, but you will if you don’t start the car.’

A beat
later, Nemkov switched on the engine and checked for any movement
behind them as he pulled out onto the street.

‘
Who lives at this next place?’ Ilya asked.

Gritting
his teeth from the pain and with his anger increasing, Marat forced
his mind to focus.

‘
Some asshole called Hendricks.’

The
Midtown Covenant Housing centre had three floors, eight rooms on
each. Six of them had bunk beds, the other two rooms were for
single occupants, those who for psychological or post-traumatic
stress reasons couldn’t sleep in a room unless they were
alone.

As most
of the occupants were women, putting the man in the single room was
the only option and fortunately tonight there was one spare. Having
signed him in and taken what details they could get out of him, the
female employee led him to the room.

‘
Here we are,’ she said, opening up.

The man
walked inside slowly, looking around and then turned to face the
woman, crossing his arms in a defensive gesture which she was used
to. These people had spent their entire lives trying to protect
themselves and ward off abuse; you didn’t just drop the
habit.

‘
Can I get you anything?’ she asked.

The man
didn’t reply. She smiled.

‘
I bet you’re hungry.’

‘
I guess.’

‘
I’ll go out and get you some food. What would you
like?’

Pause.

‘
McDonalds would be good.’

‘
OK. There’s one just down the street. You wait here and I’ll
be right back.’

Smiling
at him, she closed the door and headed off down the
corridor.

The
moment she shut the door, the man’s expression changed.

Moving
fast, he pulled his cell phone and called his partner, who was on
the street in their black van. He answered before the second
ring.

‘
I’m inside,’ he told him. ‘The one booking me in just left to
get me food. Fat bitch, grey hair, grey dress.’

‘
OK. I’ll let you know when she’s coming back. Start
searching.’

Hanging
up, the slight man tucked the phone into his pocket then drew his
silenced FN.45 pistol from the back of his belt, loading a round
into the chamber. Pulling off his jacket and draping it over his
arm to cover the handgun, he moved to the door and eased it open,
checking to make sure the woman had left.

She
had.

He
stalked down the corridor, moving to the first bedroom he came to
and pushed it open, his fingers curled around the grip of the
pistol hidden under his jacket.

A black
girl was in there alone and turned to look as the door was opened.
The man glanced at her then after quickly scanning the rest of the
room, pulled the door shut behind him before the woman had a chance
to speak, moving on to the next.

April
Evans was alone, abandoned and scared with very little money and no
friends left to call. This was the only major housing centre for
prostitutes in Manhattan, the one place they could come to for
shelter.

There
was more than a high chance that she was in here
somewhere.

Inside
the Ford speeding uptown from the Upper West Side into Spanish
Harlem, the sound of a ringing phone filled the car, Marquez
willing Shepherd to answer. Right now his cell was engaged, which
she prayed was Archer warning him and getting there ahead of
her.

Moments
later she tried again and this time she got through.

‘
Lisa?’
Shepherd said, still down on
Rivington Street.
‘Where the hell did you
all go? I need you here.’

‘
Sir, you need to get to your house right now!’

‘
What’s going on?’

‘
There are people targeting us. They shot Josh’s
wife.’

‘
What?’

‘
We made it just in time; looks as if they were intending to
kill her and the kids. One of them dropped his cell. All of our
addresses were on it!’

Before
she’d finished talking, Marquez could already hear the sound of
Shepherd calling for Hendricks, followed by the sound of a car door
being opened and slammed shut.

‘
Who the hell are they?’
he asked, the
engine in the background firing.

‘
I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘But we were all on that list. You
were number 3, then Sergeant Hendricks, then Archer.’

‘
My family’s at Jake’s having dinner. Where are
you?’

‘
Pulling up outside my place!’ she said, screeching to a
halt.

‘
Marquez, wait for back-up! That’s an order!’

Ignoring
him and jamming on the handbrake, she pushed open the Ford’s door
and ran towards the building, opening the entrance and sprinting up
the stairs with her pistol drawn. On nights she had to work late
like tonight, she called her sister and asked her to look after her
daughter until she got home.

She just
prayed to God that tonight was one of the nights she’d taken her
back to her own place.

TWENTY TWO

The
Shepherd and Hendricks families went back a long way. Matt and Jake
had ridden a squad car together as rookies when they’d first joined
the NYPD and had been the closest of friends ever since, Shepherd’s
cool and calm manner a perfect foil for Hendricks’ more explosive
personality, two different approaches to life and police-work that
complemented each other perfectly.

Their
wives were also good friends and that night had just arrived back
at the Hendricks’ house just across the Hudson River in Hoboken
from a school play that both the Hendricks girls had performed in.
They were all having dinner together before the Shepherd family
headed back to their place twenty minutes away.

In the
kitchen, Melissa Hendricks was putting some final preparations to
dinner, Beth Shepherd behind her straining some vegetables over the
sink as she glanced at the news headlines on the television mounted
on the wall beside her, the kids next door watching TV. The two
women had been friends for over fifteen years and like their
husbands, their temperaments were very different, Beth calm and
placid while Melissa was more like a Spartan mother, as strong,
determined and resilient as her husband but also as kind as anyone
you could ever hope to meet unless you crossed her.

Finishing mixing the sauce, Melissa felt for her cell phone
then realised it was next door in the hall, tucked inside her
jacket pocket. She wanted to call her husband and see what time he
was finishing work, hoping they weren’t going to be delayed so he
and Matt could eat with their families. Although it was his day
off, Jake had headed out earlier saying he wouldn’t be long, and
she hadn’t heard from him since; no doubt he’d been caught up in
something yet again. It was a pattern she’d become very familiar
with over the years.

Moving
the saucepan off the heat then wiping her hands on a towel, she
walked through to the hall and picked up the house
phone.

Dialling
her husband’s number, she glanced idly out of the window as she
lifted the receiver to her ear, hoping to see him or Matt show up
even as she made the call.

On the third floor of the
Covenant
Housing
building in Midtown, a red-headed
prostitute was sitting on the bed trying to work up the courage to
leave the bedroom and go down the corridor to talk to the other
residents. She could hear some quiet laughter filtering down the
hallway, a sound she hadn’t heard in a long time.

It
almost made her smile.

She
looked down at her hands and saw they were shaking. She’d come here
tonight after fleeing her patch; she knew her pimp and his friends
would be out there looking for her. If he found her he’d break her
arm again; he liked to beat the shit out of the girls in front of
the others as a deterrent. She’d seen him half-kill
several.

She took
a shaky breath, tears brimming in her eyes. The people downstairs
had told her she was safe here for at least a month which is when
she had to leave. It had taken all her courage to run and now she
knew she had to dig even deeper to come up with some sort of
plan.

Along
with the laughter coming from down the corridor, she could hear the
sounds of the city through the window, the echoes of horns, the hum
of activity that hid so many secrets.

She took
another steadying breath, reminding herself of the positives of her
current situation.

In here
she was safe.

Twenty
seven more days that he couldn’t get to her.

The
house phone to her ear, Melissa sighed. Jake’s cell was
engaged.

However,
a moment later the ring tone of her own cell phone suddenly echoed
from her jacket on a hook across the hall. She smiled, knowing it
would be him.

Hanging
up the main line, she glanced out of the window as she started to
walk across the hall.

What she
saw caused her to stop dead in her tracks.

On the 3
^rd
and final corridor of the
Covenant Housing
, the man with the
silenced pistol had cleared floors 1 and 2, looking into all the
bedrooms and scanning the occupants. There was no sign of the
missing red-haired bitch, just a load of other whores and some
rent-boys, the usual type, down-trodden and desperate.

As he
checked another room, the occupants turning to look at him, his
cell phone rang. Seeing she wasn’t inside, he shut the door and
walked on to the next room, taking the call, his face cold and
emotionless.

‘
Yeah?’

‘
Found her?’

‘
Not yet.’

‘
The fat bitch is coming back. Finish up and get out. I’m on
41
^st
.’

Hanging
up, he approached the last two rooms, one of which was a communal,
the other a single.

As
they’d parked on the street outside the Hendricks house, Marat and
the other three men had already seen movement inside. Unlike the
Blake and Marquez residences, this place wasn’t empty and there
were no cops around.

They
were in business.

Without
another word, Ilya, Nemkov and Sivic had stepped out of their
vehicle, quickly concealing their reloaded suppressed sub-machine
guns under their jackets, leaving Marat alone in the car watching
as he continued to try and staunch the bleeding from his shoulder.
The three armed men had made their way up to the front of the
Hendricks house, hearing noise inside, kids talking and a
television.

Now
kneeling by the porch, Nemkov turned to the other two men and
nodded, all of them withdrawing their UMPs from under their
jackets. Silently stepping up to the front door, Nemkov aimed his
fully loaded weapon at the lock and half-depressed the
trigger.

But then
two things happened almost simultaneously. A teenage boy appeared
from around the side of the house carrying a sports bag, stopping
dead in his tracks the moment he saw the three armed
men.

And a
split-second later they all heard a familiar sound from the other
side of the front door.