Green Light (Sam Archer 7) (38 page)

Or so
he’d thought. But true to his reputation Archer hadn’t let it go,
and despite his suspension, had continued to work the case. Biding
his time, Royston had had him watched, waiting for him to overstep
the mark. He’d hit the jackpot when Archer visited Karen Casey,
giving Royston the perfect opportunity to arrest him.

Using
the charges already against him and Archer’s impending court-date
as leverage, he’d arranged a weekend trip to Rikers for the
suspended cop, over-ruling the night desk sergeant from the East
Village Precinct who’d been uncomfortable with the Lieutenant’s
decision.

Staring
at his phone, Royston continued to sweat, waiting for it to ring.
That son of a bitch should never have made it out of Rikers;
Royston had used his knowledge of the city’s gang hierarchy and
paid good money to some people inside for that to be taken care of.
But somehow Archer had survived the attack and then been sprung by
Jake Hendricks, going on to blow this case wide open with the rest
of the Counter-Terrorism team.

Earlier
this evening, just when he’d been expecting to hear that Archer had
been wasted in Rikers, the call Royston had taken instead was from
Lister ordering him to send the addresses of Josh Blake, Lisa
Marquez, Matt Shepherd, Jake Hendricks, and Sam Archer to an
unknown number. Well aware of what the consequences would be if he
disobeyed, he’d sent them only to find out a short time later that
a Russian gang from Brighton Beach had tried to kill everyone at
two of those addresses.

When
he’d heard what had happened, Royston had a sudden flare of hope
that the crew who’d been blackmailing him had been killed, but that
hope had quickly died once he received another call ordering him to
get over to the Counter-Terrorism Bureau and stall the
investigation. He’d done what he could, and in the process had
learned the identities of the people blackmailing him, Nicolas
Henderson, Sebastian Tully and Nina Lister, although that didn’t
mean shit. So what; he knew their names. They still had all those
photos and videos of him which would ruin his career, not to
mention the graphic threats they’d made to his physical
well-being.

Before
the hooker in the car park had been shot, he’d had no idea
Henderson, Tully and Lister had anything on him. Only when they
needed him did he find out exactly what they’d done, threatening to
release the photos of him with the young escort to the press if he
didn’t do exactly as instructed. When the shooting had happened,
they’d threatened to expose him if he didn’t succeed in stalling
the investigation. Things had gone into overdrive tonight, orders
flowing in constantly, but he knew he was living on borrowed time
and couldn’t get away with this much longer.

After
Vargas had been killed at St Luke’s, he knew it was just a matter
of time before Shepherd and his team realised how these people had
been getting their information and who was responsible. And
whatever happened, Henderson and Tully would always have that dirt
on him.

Sitting
there in his office, his phone and radio resting on the desk but
neither still making a sound, something else suddenly dawned on
Royston. The call he’d received earlier ordering him to pass over
the cops’ addresses had come from a woman. He’d assumed she’d been
one of the blackmailers he knew now to be Nina Lister.

But
she’d been dead by then.

Quietly pulling his side-arm from his desk drawer, he checked
the clip and saw it was fully loaded. Looking up and seeing his
people working away at their desks, none of them watching him, he
leaned forward, focusing on the GPS tracing software, the circle
still pinging on 66
^th
, the safe-house.

Taking
his cell phone, he looked at the number that had called him and
typed it into the system. It was a disposable, so wasn’t registered
to a name, but it was still active.

And it
gave him a result.

Looking
at it, he rose, shut down the computer and moved to his
door.

He could
access the same software from his car, but he’d need to make a
pit-stop at home first.

As
Archer lay on the floor of the safe-house bathroom, he felt hazy
from the fumes of the special sodium hydroxide concoction in the
bathtub beside him.

Images
started flashing through his mind. He remembered being in the ARU
car park three years ago, a Glock in his hand, facing down a
terrorist leader and shooting him in the head just before he cut
another man’s throat. Standing in a New York airfield, having just
avenged his father’s death. Saving Chalky and his other team mates
on a rainy night last year.

And a
few months ago in a tall office building, Chalky saving
his.

He saw
it all, his friends, his family, all that pain and those moments of
triumph, those he’d saved and those he’d lost. He saw Shepherd,
Marquez and Josh. Cobb, Chalky, Fox and Porter.

Vargas.

And
Isabel.

He
pictured her lying on that couch in Shepherd’s office, bereft and
now totally dependent on him, waiting for him to return.

He
pictured her face when she was told he was never coming
back.

And he
felt anger start to build inside him.

As he
lay there tied up on the transparent plastic sheets, the two
mass-murderers laughing next door and about to re-join him, Archer
felt those tight binds behind his back.

And then
he realised Henderson and Tully had made three mistakes.

FORTY SIX

Given
their track record of murdering so many people without the police
having any idea who they were, it was abundantly clear how clinical
Henderson and Tully were in their preparation and execution. They
never slipped up; they didn’t make errors.

However,
unbeknownst to them they’d just made three.

They’d
bound Archer’s wrists with plastic zip-tie cuffs.

They’d
tied them behind his back.

And
they’d left him alone.

To most
people, zip-tie cuffs seem more secure than duct tape. They’re
quickly and easily applied, taking just a second to hook and cinch
versus binding wrists by wrapping tape around them.

However,
zip-ties have a weakness. With a certain technique, they can be
broken with surprising ease, something Archer had seen done in
London at the ARU two months into his time there, a suspect they’d
arrested suddenly breaking out of his cuffs and trying to smash his
way out of an interrogation cell. Although he’d seen it, Archer had
never had tried the technique himself.

Now
seemed as good a time as any.

Rolling
silently to his knees, Archer leaned forward and lifted his bound
hands as high behind his back as his shoulder joints would allow.
He then brought them down hard onto his tailbone, forcing each
wrist as far apart as he could manage in order to increase the
tension on the cuffs.

But the
plastic held.

Archer
repeated the manoeuvre but again, it didn’t work, the only result
of his effort being the ties biting into his wrists, causing them
to bleed.

Having
selected a large cleaver from the drawer in the kitchen, Tully
grinned and turned, heading back towards the bathroom, the handle
of the blade gripped in his gloved hand.

Arriving
in the doorway, he saw the cop was lying where he and Henderson had
left him, his hands behind his back.

‘
I saw your file, Detective,’ Tully said. ‘I know all about
you. The cop who can’t be killed.’

He
stepped forward, kneeling down in front of Archer, and looked him
in the eyes.

‘
But you know the one thing that all heroes have in common? No
matter how good you are, you all have to die someday.’

The
binding on his wrists having finally snapped from the third
desperate attempt to break them, Archer curled his fingers around
the beaker of lye he’d just scooped carefully from the tub and
nodded.

‘
Yeah,’ he replied. ‘But not tonight.’

A
split-second later he whipped the beaker round.

And
rearing backwards, he threw the caustic soda directly into Tully’s
face.

The
moment the liquid hit the man’s eyes it started to burn; dropping
the cleaver, Tully screamed and clutched his face. Jumping to his
feet he staggered blindly around the bathroom, stumbling into
now-empty canisters, setting them rolling around the
floor.

Hearing
the commotion, Henderson raced out of the kitchen into the bathroom
only to be hit with a gunshot of a straight right punch that broke
his nose and turned his legs into two accordions. In a burst of
adrenaline-fuelled anger, Archer dipped down, drove his shoulder
through the killer’s waist as he picked him up and then slammed him
through the door into the space beyond.

Still
stunned and taken completely off-guard, Henderson tried to pull his
pistol, but Archer grabbed his arm and slammed it onto the ground
several times, using his elbow to hit the man in the face. The gun
slid out of Henderson’s grasp but he managed to get his legs back
under him, trying to wrestle Archer back and get on top. However,
Archer immediately locked up a front headlock, tying up the man’s
neck and arm, then rolled to his side, taking Henderson with him in
a crushing anaconda choke, with his arms pulled in like a vice
around the killer’s neck. From what the CSU investigator who found
Santiago had said, Henderson liked to strangle his victims before
they were given their bath; finally, he was getting a taste of his
own medicine.

As Tully
continued to scream and thrash around the bathroom, Archer
increased the pressure on Henderson, the broken zip ties still
around his wrists. The larger man tried to resist but quickly
started to fade, blood running into his mouth from his busted nose.
The adrenaline-soaked pressure Archer created was savage, thoughts
of what this man had done to Vargas flashing through his mind, and
he held the lock with total ruthlessness until Henderson suffocated
and died.

Still
screaming in pain in the bathroom and unable to see, Tully pulled
his pistol and started firing wildly in all directions. Two bullets
hit the wall above the still-bound and gagged April’s head and she
tipped over to her side in a panic, another going through the wall
where her torso had just been.

Letting
go of Henderson, Archer threw himself forward, scooped up the dead
man’s silenced pistol and shot Tully twice in the chest, the two
rounds propelling him back into the tub of lye.

He
landed with a splash, liquid spilling out of the bathtub and
flowing onto the plastic covering the floor. Then just like that,
the room was still, the liquid in the bath sloshing around as
Tully’s head and torso sank under the surface.

A few
moments later, the only sound in the safe-house was a hissing
coming from the tub.

Moving
into the bathroom and scooping up the cleaver Tully had dropped,
Archer re-joined April, pulled off her gag and tilted her forward,
sawing through her zip-cuffs. The moment she was free she flung her
arms around him, crying and shaking in shock as he tossed the blade
to one side.

‘
You OK?’ he asked her.

He felt
her nod quickly as she clutched him, so scared and relieved she was
still alive that she was unable to speak. Archer held her for a few
moments then gently disengaged himself and moved over to
Henderson’s body. He knelt down and went through the man’s pockets,
pulling out a phone.

Dialling
the Bureau quickly, he waited to be connected to Shepherd, keeping
his pistol in his other hand as he stared at the two dead killers,
Henderson in a limp heap and only Tully’s legs visible, the rest of
the man submerged in the lye-filled tub.

‘
Hello?’

‘
Sir, it’s Archer,’ he said, catching his breath.

‘
Arch? Are you OK?’

‘
I’m at the safe-house above Columbus. April’s OK. But we were
set-up.’

‘
What do you mean?’

‘
Henderson and Tully were here waiting for us. They’re both
dead.’

‘
What? How the hell did they know you’d be going
there?’

‘
I think its Royston, sir; I reckon he’s been working with
Henderson, Tully and Lister.

‘
Are you serious?’

‘
Think about it. He’s been stalling this entire investigation
from day one; that’s why Homicide weren’t making any progress. He
was always uncooperative and desperate to keep us away from the
case; he still is. You saw him earlier when he barged in; he
practically gave himself a hernia trying to take charge of it
again. He provoked me into a suspension, he had me put in Rikers
and I reckon he paid off the Mexicans to take me out then gave them
my home address so they could finish the job. And what police
lieutenant would close a case-file with so many questions that
still needed answering?’

‘
But why the hell would he do this?’

‘
I don’t know. But it’s him; it has to be.’

‘
Shit, I think you’re right. He sent four men to arrest me at
Brighton Beach. An ESU team followed soon after. Jake and I both
got wounded.’