Return Fire (Sam Archer ) (12 page)

TWENTY

Inside the 12
th
floor office across the city, Holloway, or former Staff Sergeant Dashnan Sahar as he was otherwise known, had outlined his new plan, fully acknowledging their unexpected lack of success but providing a solution.

In front of him, the woman had listened in total silence, her face expressionless. Having said his piece, a silence fell as Dash waited for her verdict.

She looked at him coldly. ‘You think that will work?’

‘Yes. And we’ll finish what you hired us to do.’

She thought for a long moment, assessing this new plan.

‘Very well. Both of you go. But before you do, send Finchley and Portland down here immediately and escort them in.’

Holloway nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘And don’t fail me again.’

Turning, the two men walked out of the room, relieved to be out of her presence. Walking across the empty office building floor and approaching the lifts, Dash pulled his phone and called a saved number as Piccadilly walked beside him.

‘Yeah?’
Finchley said.

‘Both of you, get down here now,’ Dash said. ‘She wants to see you.’

Ending the call before the Australian could answer, Dash came to a halt in front of the lifts and waited, Piccadilly beside him, the pair watching the illuminated floor indicators above their heads. A few moments later, one of the two lifts started rising, heading up from the lower floors after being called from above. As he and Piccadilly waited, Dash dialled another number, hearing the lift move past their floor and stop on 16.

‘Yeah?’
one of his other men, Notting, said.

‘Where are you?’

‘Outside the CCU at the Royal Marsden with Regent. The ARU task force officers were brought in earlier. Want us get in there and finish the job?’

‘No. I’ve got new orders.’

‘What are they?’

‘Get over to Beckett’s place. Call Grange, and tell him and Stockwell to join you. The analyst from Kensington somehow survived the blast; a handful of the cops are still alive too and someone’s definitely going to be checking out where she lives.’

‘What about Finch and Portland?’

‘They’re back here. Just take care of it.’

‘Roger.’

Dash ended the call just as the lift arrived, the doors parting.

Portland and Finchley were standing there, the two Australian men who’d broken into Beckett’s apartment, taken her kids and strapped the vest onto her. Both were Caucasian, dark haired, unshaven and tanned; they were dressed the same as Dash and Piccadilly, khakis and shirts which covered the pistol each man had in a holster on his hip. Finchley had a sour look on his face, a scar running across the left side of his mouth from some altercation long ago; beside him, Portland was expressionless.

‘What does she want?’ Finchley asked.

‘There’s been a change of plan,’ Dash said, motioning for the two men to step out and follow him.

As they walked forward, Piccadilly quietly fell into step behind them, making sure they couldn’t double back.

The two newcomers followed Dash towards the office. As he opened the door and the men walked inside, Finchley and Portland saw their female employer standing in front of a desk, looking straight at them, her hands behind her back. Piccadilly closed the door behind them quietly and stepped to one side.

‘What’s going on?’ Finchley asked.

‘Which one of you delivered the woman to the police station?’

They looked at each other.

‘Me,’ Finchley said, jerking his head at Portland. ‘He was taking care of the kids.’

Before either man could move, the woman whipped her arm around from behind her back.

She was holding a nail gun and she fired twice, the weapon giving off two fast
cracks
as she put a nail through each of Finchley’s feet. The Australian screamed in pain and fell to the floor, clutching his feet and the twin nails embedded in them. As Portland jerked back, she turned the nail gun on him and held it steady, stepping forward.

‘Don’t move,’ she screamed at him.

As Finchley writhed on the floor in agony, Dash knelt down and punched him in the face twice, stunning him. After taking his pistol and tossing it across the room he and Piccadilly quickly bound the man’s feet and wrists, blood leaking out from the injured man’s feet, his shouts turning into muffled moans as the duct tape was pulled tight across his mouth.

Piccadilly hit him once again for good measure, then he and Dash
dragged the bound man out of the room and into another office next door. Behind them, Portland stayed exactly where he was, looking at the nail gun aimed at his face, his hand frozen mid-way to the pistol tucked into the holster on his hip.

‘You failed me,’ the woman said at him, her finger poised on the trigger. ‘They were all meant to die.’

‘I’ll make it right,
’
Portland said quickly. ‘Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.’

‘No-one at the ARU building died,
’
she screamed, the nail gun shaking in her hand. ‘No-one.’

‘That was his fault,
’
Portland shouted back in desperation. ‘They must have got the vest off her somehow before it detonated.’

‘Do you care what happens to him?’ she screamed.

‘No!’

Shaking with anger, she kept the gun
on him for a few more moments. Then she lowered it, just as Dash and Piccadilly returned from the office next door.

‘He’s ready for you,’ Dash said.

‘Good. Now get out of my sight and finish this.’

Nodding, the two men immediately moved to the door. Portland didn’t dare move, frozen to the spot.

‘Go with them,’ she said quietly.

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded and walked rapidly out of the room.

Now alone again, the woman
waited for the men to leave.

Once they were gone, she walked out of the main office into the open space of the 12
th
floor and turned left, moving into another office whilst still carrying the nail gun.

This second smaller office was still in the process of being refurbished, planks of wood ready to be planed leaning against the wall and some carpentry tools left in the corner of the room ready for Monday morning. The workmen had stacked their equipment neatly in the far corner; there were some saws and bags of nails sitting beside a rubbish bin full of discarded food wrappers and drinks cartons. This was where she’d found the nail-gun
earlier, a pleasant surprise.

The Australian ex-soldier who’d failed with the bomb vest was lying in the middle of the floor, tied up, his eyes bulging with terror when he saw the woman enter. Plastic sheets were hanging down around the room to protect the paintwork against the dust from the carpentry, but as it was the weekend none of the workers had been here today, leaving the floor completely unoccupied, much like the rest of the building.

She shot him twice more in the legs; as he writhed in agony and moaned under the duct tape, the woman carefully laid down the nail-gun and pulled on a set of carpenter’s overalls. When that was done, she put on a white mask to cover her face, almost as if she was preparing for an operation.

Which in a way, she was.

Then she closed the blinds, leaving her alone with the bound and wounded man, the room darker but with just enough light to see. She turned to face him, and her eyes narrowed over the top of the mask.

‘As you may have heard, I don’t deal well wit
h failure. Unluckily for you, I’m extremely disappointed. And you’re going to pay for that.’

He watched as she picked up a power saw.

‘I have a particular method with these things. I like to start on the feet and work my way up an inch at a time,’ she said.

Staring at her in terror, he saw the skin around her eyes crinkle as she smiled.

‘One man made it halfway up his thigh. He was a Russian though; a tough bastard. They always are. Let’s see if you can beat his record. I have a feeling you won’t.’

Finchley watched in horror as the woman
turned on the saw, his muffled screams instantly lost under the shrieking whine of the serrated blades.

TWENTY ONE

Across London, Archer was already on his way to Bernhardt’s address in Tottenham, making good time in Cobb’s expensive silver Mercedes.
Fox and Josh had headed off a minute or so before, both armed with Glocks and Fox with an MP5, the two men taking the last remaining ARU BMW left in the car park. The other had been badly damaged in the explosion, a piece of wall falling through its roof, and the other two vehicles the task force had used to get to Brixton hadn’t been returned yet.

Archer had needed a vehicle and Cobb’s Mercedes had immediately caught his eye. Telling himself his old boss would understand, Archer had taken the keys from the ARU Director’s desk drawer upstairs, finding them where he knew Cobb kept them and smiling when he saw the set resting on some papers beside an unopened bottle of quality Scotch. Having already armed up in the gun-cage, he’d sprinted back out to the car park and climbed inside the Mercedes, firing the engine and taking off.

Now shifting down the street he swerved, just avoiding another car that pulled out in front of him without warning and feeling a sudden jolt of high-voltage nerves. He knew that if he even put a scratch on this thing it wouldn’t matter if anyone else was trying to take him out, Cobb would do it for them.

As he drove on, he kept his right hand on the wheel and adjusted the ear piece hooked around his ear with his left. Whilst in the locker room by the gun-cage, Archer had pulled on a black ARU tactical vest over his black t-shirt. The bulletproof garment provided him with various tools, plastic cuffs, smoke and stun grenades and a headset consisting of an earpiece and Velcro microphone which was already strapped around his neck; the equipment was now connected to his Nokia, which was tucked inside the left breast slot of the vest, and would give him quick hands-free communication with Nikki back at HQ.

Beside him on the passenger seat was a fully loaded Heckler and Koch MP5. Given the totally unexpected events of the day, Archer already felt more reassured to have it sitting beside him, like a workman reunited with his tools. The MP5 was his favourite sub-machine gun and although he hadn’t used one recently, he’d spent countless hours on the range with the weapon in the past. Light, portable and accurate, it could fire eight hundred rounds a minute with quick magazine changes and was the sub-machine gun of choice for most of the counter-terrorist police and paramilitary teams around the world. With a fully loaded Glock pistol also tucked into a holster clipped around his thigh and spare magazines on his tac vest, Archer was good to go and feeling ready to handle anything that came his way.

As he paused at a red light, he checked his rear view mirror, looking for anything suspicious, either people or cars, anyone who looked as if they might be following him. Satisfied he was alone, he glanced at the clock on the dashboard;
7:51pm
, fast moving on towards nineteen hours since Alice had been kidnapped.

By a team of men who for some reason had just tried to kill every member of her search party.

Willing the light to turn green, Archer thought back to something that had been said when he and the other NYPD detectives had arrived at Heathrow. Chalky had mentioned that Stanovich had made a ransom call demanding two million in cash, but that the Slovakian had also claimed Vargas was in the city. Given what they now knew Stanovich had clearly been under duress when he made the call, but Archer was clinging onto the possibility that what he’d been instructed to say was true, a slip up by the real kidnappers, meaning Vargas really was somewhere in London.

Taking his phone from the chest pocket of the vest, Archer scrolled for Nikki’s number and called her. He slotted the phone back into its home as the lights turned green, pushing his foot down on the accelerator as the call rang twice and was then answered.

‘How are you doing, Arch?’
she said, down his earpiece, the connection perfect.

‘I’m almost there, Nik’ he said. ‘Give me the lowdown on this guy.’

‘Former 2 Para Sergeant Michael Bernhardt. Thirty six years old, left the army six years ago. He saw action predominantly in the Middle East, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. No record since he left, but if he showed up in Kabul covered in burns last year then I suspect he was probably out there working as a contractor of some sort. A lot of ex-army guys are.’

‘Anything since?’

‘Nothing of importance. And remember, we don’t know much about this man. His allegiances are unclear.’

‘How are Foxy and Josh doing?’

‘They’re almost at Beckett’s. But be careful, Arch; as I said, this man has some kind of history with Dash. You might not get a warm welcome. In fact, it could be just the opposite.’

‘Will do.’

Archer ended the call and focused on the traffic ahead, now just six or seven minutes from his destination.

Across the city, Fox and Josh had just arrived outside Beckett’s apartment building, pulling into an empty space down a side street right beside the large gate blocking the courtyard off from the road.

Now the sun was going down, the light was matching their mood, growing darker by the minute as shadows slowly started to descend over the city. There were a couple of people on the street around them, but the place was generally quiet, the focus of activity on the High Street at the end of the road. Nevertheless, the two policemen were alert and not taking any chances, scanning everything around them as they drew to a halt.

In a situation like this, they couldn’t be too cautious.

As Josh examined the street then peered up at the apartment building beyond the gate, Fox called Nikki using the tabl
et inside the car that had synced to his phone.

‘How’s it going?’
Nikki asked, her voice filling the car.

‘We’re here,’ he said. ‘About to head up.’

‘I contacted the Met and explained the situation. Back-up has been dispatched just in case. Two firearms teams are on their way; they’ll be there shortly.’

Fox glanced at Josh, who was quietly checking the chamber of his Glock.

‘We’re not hanging around. They can follow us up when they get here.’

‘OK. Be careful.’

Fox ended the call, then reached behind him and grabbed his MP5 from the back seat.

‘Let’s move.’

Stepping out of the car, Fox slammed the door and locked it; then the two men moved through the pedestrian entrance connected to the main gate securing the courtyard, heading towards the front doors of the building. There was no one else around and they moved fast, Fox scoping out some residents’ cars parked neatly in bays to their right as Josh checked over his shoulder, making sure they weren’t being followed.

A dark haired man was leaving the building as they approached and Fox managed to catch the door just before it shut behind him. The guy didn’t even notice them, his head down as he read something on his smartphone, which was just as well considering Fox and Josh were both carrying weapons. Th
e two policemen examined the man as they passed but he was obviously unarmed and didn’t look suspicious, just a resident heading out and totally absorbed in what he was doing.

Turning their attention to the lobby, they saw there were two lifts to their left and a stairwell fifteen feet away to their far right. It was a smart place in a wealthy area; clearly Beckett’s family money had come in handy. There were worse places to live.

As Josh pushed the button for the lift, Fox checked around them, his hands tight on his MP5.

By all logical reasoning, Beckett should have been dead by now, unable to tell anyone who had locked the vest onto her and why. It was summer and a Saturday, so Fox figured Jen might have been out with her sons today, but these men would have needed to confront her somewhere they knew she’d be alone, somewhere they could easily grab her sons and strap the TNT onto her without fear of being seen or heard.

He watched the floor indicator tick down; a moment later, one of the lifts arrived with a
ding
.

Fox was a professional, and knew how he would get that sort of thing done.

Whoever strapped the vest onto Beckett would have done it upstairs.

Outside in the courtyard, the dark-haired man who’d been studying his phone slowed as he approached the gate.

He was thirty four years old and American.

And his call-sign was Notting.

Stopping in his tracks, he turned and pushed
Redial
on the phone, looking back at the building.

‘Yeah?’
Regent said.

‘Two of them just walked in; black guy and a white guy. One has an MP5, the other a pistol. You in position?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll follow them up and cut them off. Grange and Stockwell will be here any second too. No mistakes this time.’

‘Got it.’

Hanging up, Notting walked back across the courtyard towards the building, slowing as he approached the doors. He saw as he’d expected that the two cops who’d just passed him were no longer in the lobby.

Already on their way upstairs.

Pulling out the analyst’s key, he opened the door then locked it behind him, rattling the handle to make sure it was sealed then breaking off the key in the lock to stop anyone else coming in or leaving.

Turning, he checked the ticking red number display above one of the two elevators.

2.

3.

4.

He quickly moved over to the maintenance closet across the lobby, opening the door and withdrawing two items he’d placed in there earlier when he’d seen the two cops arrive. When that was done, he stepped into the other empty lift and pushed the button for 4, feeling his heart rate increase, pumping him up for what was about to happen.

Little did the two cops upstairs know they had less than thirty seconds to live.