Green Light (Sam Archer 7) (41 page)

She’d
been patiently gathering information for five weeks until something
totally unexpected had happened. She’d arrived home one afternoon
to find three people in white overalls waiting for her.

Gas
masks over their faces and silenced pistols in their
hands.

Outside
the Columbus Circle building, four Latino enforcers were sitting in
a car, all of them pissed off and confused about what had gone down
tonight.

Four of
their guys had been killed in Queens and two more had been hit on
the Queensborough. They’d lost the cop car as it left the Bridge
but they’d been sent the address of the safe-house where the cop
was heading. The passenger in the front seat looked up at the
building, hearing sirens in the distance.

‘
Shit,’ the guy behind the wheel said. ‘We’re running out of
time. Do we check it out?’

As he
spoke a black 4x4 suddenly screeched out of the underground parking
lot immediately ahead of them, smashing through the barrier and
swinging right.

Two of
its windows were already smashed out, the vehicle riddled with
bullet-holes. It was their target.

‘
Go!’
the guy in the passenger seat
shouted, loading his gun.

Arriving
at the East Side docks, Karen pulled in through the front gate. The
place was huge and as she drove in she saw Henderson and Tully’s
spare van forty feet to her left, the giant piping warehouse they
used as a base another fifty feet beyond it.

She
couldn’t remember exactly what had happened after she’d been
confronted at her place in the East Village, but she realised later
she been chloroformed and had woken up to find herself restrained
with zip-ties, a strip of duct-tape over her mouth, the three
figures pouring a chemical liquid into a tub which she’d quickly
realised was meant for her.

As she’d
lain there terrified, desperately trying to figure a way out of
this, she’d noticed the smaller of the three had been staring at
her. After a few moments the figure had turned to speak to the
other two who stopped what they were doing. The ensuing argument
getting heated, the figure had removed the mask, revealing an
attractive woman with a blackened vein down the side of her
neck.

Searching back through her memory, Karen had suddenly
recognised her, and then by association, the two men although
they’d both changed dramatically since she’d last seen
them.

When she’d killed the head of the
Suki
just over ten years ago, his two
sons had also been wasted by the
Prizraki
that same night but his
grandchildren had been spared, not out of compassion but because
they could be sold. Good money had been offered in California for
the teenage captives, Mikhail, Seva and Ninochka, the grandchildren
of a
Suki
boss.
Vladimir had concluded the deal and been preparing to ship them
west to San Diego.

Karen
had arrived just as the three kids were being moved; fortunately
for her now, the three of them had been blindfolded and hadn’t seen
Karen. They had no idea who she was.

The woman was looking at her
Suki
tattoos instead.

She’d
pulled up Karen’s shirt, seeing the rest of the inking on her back.
A rapid conversation had followed, the strip of tape across Karen’s
mouth removed, aware that if she said the wrong thing now then this
would all be over and she’d be going into the tub.

Lying through her teeth, Karen said that her husband had been
killed by the Pittsburgh
Prizraki
and that she was here to exact revenge on the crew
who were responsible in Little Odessa. To her relief, the trio had
fallen for it, starting to ask her questions, wanting
details.

After a
tense few moments the girl with the pronounced vein, Ninochka, had
removed Karen’s binds. Once again, she’d somehow managed to escape
what had seemed to be certain death.

And the
enemy of her enemy had just become her friend.

FORTY NINE

Driving fast up 8
^th
Avenue, Shepherd only had one hand on the steering
wheel, the other resting on his lap; the injury to his arm was
painful but he and Hendricks had patched themselves up as best they
could. Right now they couldn’t afford the time to go the hospital
so both were running on painkillers and adrenaline. Beside him,
Hendricks was wrapping a bandage round his leg, swearing each time
Shepherd took a corner.

A squad car suddenly screeched into view from their right,
speeding alongside them and just missing a white van coming the
other way. Frowning, Shepherd glanced at the car then looked left
to see what they were chasing and saw a Counter-Terrorism Bureau
Ford burning down 9
^th
.

‘
That’s Archer!’ Hendricks said.

Shepherd wrenched the wheel over, causing Hendricks to let fly
with another stream of expletives as they raced towards
9
^th
Avenue after Archer.

Henderson, Tully and Lister may have untied Karen but she
wasn’t out of danger yet; they tested her, wanting to hear a lot
more about her time in Pittsburgh. Fortunately for her, Karen had a
good memory as well as a silver tongue and it didn’t take long
before she’d loosened them up enough to discover why they’d been
intending to kill her. It wasn’t because of what she and Vladimir
had done to them; she was very lucky they had no idea she’d been
involved in that.

The
Suki
brothers and sister been shipped to San Diego for a total of
thirty five grand; then they’d been split up and sent to three
different clients. However, a problem for pimps when hustling boys
was puberty. Nic had been a scrawny and lanky teenager but two
years into his captivity he’d filled out rapidly, growing to over
six feet, his weight soon reaching over two hundred
pounds.

His pimp
was five eight and maybe a buck sixty by comparison.

Twenty
four months after his abduction, Henderson had killed the man,
making his escape. He’d managed to track Tully down, helped him
escape too and the pair began to look for Lister. It turned out
that she’d killed a john and was doing a two year sentence for
manslaughter.

Waiting for her to get out, the two young men had needed cash
and had ended up working for a Mesa drug cartel involved in a
bloody war with another organisation from Culiacan. Used as
enforcers, the pair had worked with the cartel’s muscle charged
with fighting off the Mexicans and was where they’d learnt the lye
recipe to dispose of bodies. The other men had figured they were
just Russian thugs, no idea they were actually
Suki
Mafia royalty.

There
were two reasons for that. The first was their names; knowing they
were vulnerable as children and wanting to protect them from rival
gangs, the three kids had always been called by their Western first
names, each given a different legalised surname too to add another
layer of protection.

The second reason was they’d been too young when they’d been
abducted to have
Suki
tattoos. However, having reached manhood Henderson and Tully
changed that, getting their stars as well as other ink they’d
earned after serving a joint sentence at Lompoc for weapons
charges, one month after Henderson’s twenty first birthday. Lister
had still been in jail at that point and had never had any ink-work
done.

Once
she’d been released, her two brothers had ditched the cartel work
and the brothers and sister had focused on one thing.

Finding the men responsible for both destroying the
Pittsburgh
Suki
and for trafficking them out to the West Coast.

They’d
left San Diego and started working their way across the country,
heading for Pittsburgh. Realising they were going to need
significant funds if they were going to succeed, they quickly
identified a lucrative way of making money; sourcing a high-level
escort service in a city, removing whoever controlled it then
taking over the operation. Consequently, when their pursuit of the
people who’d trafficked them out to California brought them to New
York, they’d looked around for a high-end service they could
acquire.

Karen
Casey’s lucrative operation had caught their eye.

Once they found out they had the same goal, they quickly
realised they could increase their chances of getting to Bashev and
the rest of the
Prizraki
if they worked together. Soon establishing a
working relationship, they focused all their energies on achieving
the outcome they all wanted, the destruction of the New York
Prizraki
. Karen had
discovered how scarily efficient the trio were in disposing of
their victims and the fate she’d narrowly escaped.

However,
because of all the hard work and planning involved in killing her
husband’s new team and disrupting his operation, Karen had been
distracted and it’d cost her. She’d taken her eye off her
step-daughter, who’d been arrested in February on a police bust and
served three months inside. She’d only been out for eight weeks or
so when she suddenly checked herself into rehab in August without
any warning.

Karen
had been furious. The day Leann had been released, Karen went to
the facility to pick her up, making sure she got her straight back
to work, but found the girl had already left. She’d called her
immediately and it was then Leann had told her she was leaving and
threatened to expose Karen and the real reason she was here in the
city if she didn’t let her go without a fuss.

The
moment she made that threat, she’d signed her own death
warrant.

When
Leann had hung up on her, Karen had still been on her way back from
the rehab clinic in Long Island and so couldn’t deal with the issue
herself. With Henderson, Tully and Lister fully occupied in Little
Odessa, she’d contacted Goya and Santiago, telling them to handle
the problem. However, the imbeciles had managed to shoot two cops
when they killed Leann, both of whom worked for one of the most
powerful divisions in the city. That stupidity had suddenly brought
a very unwelcome spotlight of attention onto Goya and Santiago,
their girls and potentially, Karen and Henderson, Tully and
Lister.

The problem was, at that point they’d still had seven
Prizraki
left to take
care of, including her husband, and there was absolutely no way
Karen was leaving until he’d paid the ultimate price for what he’d
done to her. She’d looked at their escort service client base and
the men they had footage of, trying to find anything or anyone she
could use to help rescue this situation long enough to finish off
the
Prizraki
.

Then,
like manna from heaven, she’d found the tape of an NYPD lieutenant
with one of the girls, Kelly Greer.

Across town, the Counter-Terrorism Ford roared down
9
^th
Avenue, shooting red lights, swerving past traffic with just
inches to spare.

However,
it suddenly took a burst from a sub-machine gun from the car behind
which blew out a rear tyre. The Ford slammed into a lamp-post,
knocking the post back slightly on its heavy base; the front fender
of the vehicle crumpled and smoking, the horn blaring and the glass
in the windshield and doors shattered.

Pulling
to a halt behind it, the four Latinos were already out of their
vehicles, loading their weapons as they approached the crashed car,
the sound of police sirens getting closer.

Stalking
forward, the lead passenger focused on the driver’s side, his
Ingram Mac-10 held sideways and in the aim.

Arriving
by the door, he looked through the blown out driver’s window and
paused, holding his weapon up with the sights on the driver’s
head.

‘
Son of a bitch!’

Now just over four weeks after Leann’s death and Lieutenant
Royston’s reluctant but valuable assistance, the New York
Prizraki
had all been
disposed of.

Sam
Archer was a done deal too. Like the Russians’ moves on the
detective team’s homes, Vargas’ death had successfully distracted
her boyfriend and kept him off their backs for a while, but Karen
had known that wouldn’t be enough and that he needed to die. She’d
previously ordered Royston to pull the files on the Counter
Terrorism team and had seen Archer’s exemplary record. She’d
instantly realised he’d be a major threat, but not anymore,
finally. Henderson and Tully had seen to that.

Apart
from her involvement as Leann’s supposed mother, she’d managed to
keep attention off herself, despite the visits from the police
detectives. Before any of them had come knocking she’d found
several framed photos amongst Leann’s things she’d brought from
Pittsburgh and put them in the sitting area, giving the impression
of a happy mother-daughter relationship. Playing each encounter
with the police moment by moment, she was either hostile or turned
on the tears, and it had worked like a charm. With Goya and
Santiago gone, no-one could ever have guessed that she’d been the
person who ordered Leann’s death.