Nine Lives
Copyright: Tom Barber
First published: 9
th
May 2012
Second edition published: 6
th
Jan 2014
Third edition published: 22
nd
Sept 2014
The right of Tom Barber to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by he in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The Sam Archer thriller series
by
Tom Barber
NINE LIVES
26 year old Sam Archer has just been selected to join a new counter-terrorist squad, the Armed Response Unit. And they have their first case. A team of suicide bombers are planning to attack London on New Year’s Eve. The problem?
No one knows where any of them are.
THE GETAWAY
Archer is in New York City for a funeral. After the service, an old familiar face approaches him with a proposition. A team of bank robbers are tearing the city apart, robbing it for millions.
The FBI agent needs Archer to go undercover and try to stop them.
BLACKOUT
Three men have been killed in the UK and USA in one morning. The deaths take place thousands of miles apart, yet are connected by an event fifteen years ago. Before long, Archer and the ARU are drawn into the violent fray. And there’s a problem.
One of their own men is on the extermination list.
SILENT NIGHT
A dead body is found in Central Park, a man who was killed by a deadly virus. Someone out there has more of the substance and is planning to use it. Archer must find where this virus came from and secure it before any more is released.
But he is already too late.
ONE WAY
On his way home, Archer saves a team of US Marshals and a child they are protecting from a violent ambush in the middle of the Upper West Side. The group are forced to take cover in a tenement block in Harlem, their ambushers locking them in and sealing off the only way in or out of the building.
And there are more killers on the way to finish the job.
RETURN FIRE
Four months after they first encountered one another, Sam Archer and Alice Vargas are both working in the NYPD Counter-Terrorism Bureau and also living together. But a week after Vargas leaves for a trip to Europe, Archer gets a knock on his front door.
Apparently Vargas has completely disappeared.
And it appears she’s been abducted.
GREEN LIGHT
A nineteen year old woman is gunned down in a Queens car park, the latest victim in a brutal gang turf war that goes back almost a century. Suspended from duty, his badge and gun confiscated, Archer is nevertheless drawn into the fray as he seeks justice for the girl. People are going missing, all over New York.
And soon, so does he.
Also:
CONDITION BLACK (A novella)
In the year 2113, a US 101
st
Airborne soldier wakes up after crash landing on a moon somewhere in space. All but two of his squad are dead. He has no idea where he is, or who shot him down.
But he quickly learns that some nightmares don’t stop when you wake up.
The hotel room was as dark as a cave.
Curtains drawn, the lights turned off, everything was as still and silent as a tomb. In the darkness, three red numbers and two red letters glowed like the end of a lit cigarette.
7:00 am.
The man in the bed hadn’t set an alarm; he didn’t need to. He’d already been awake for hours. Today was the biggest day of his life, the culmination of a year of planning and preparation. It had been close; the whole thing had almost fallen apart at the last minute. But he’d recovered and dealt with the problem; figured out a Plan B.
And if everything proceeded as planned, over a thousand people waking up this morning would be dead by the end of the day. Probably more.
Hopefully more
.
But if it doesn’t work?
The man felt his stomach tighten, like an anaconda squeezing the life out of its prey. He didn’t want to consider that outcome even for a moment. Lying motionless under the sheets, staring at the ceiling, he did his best to banish the doubts starting to whisper at the back of his mind
.
There’s nothing to worry about. Everything is in place. He’ll be happy and proud. You’ll get a hero’s welcome when you return.
And the past will be forgotten.
Pushing aside the top sheet and rolling from the bed, the man moved to the curtains and opened them a fraction, peering outside.
It was a dark and cold 31
st
December morning in London. Three hundred yards away, the giant airfield of Heathrow Airport lay protected by a tall mesh fence, topped with swirling cylinders of razor-wire. On the airfield itself, planes were scattered intermittently around the tarmac, as small as toys from this distance, coloured amber from the lamp-posts that stood over them.
The man watched a plane glide along a runway and move smoothly into the sky. As the vessel left the tarmac, the wheels under the Boeing 757 retracted, pulled back inside and closed off in a compartment as the wings took over and did their job. The airplane moved with a grace that belied its immense weight and passenger load as it soared into the London sky.
Lost in thought, the man in the hotel room watched it go.
Sitting back on the bed, he picked up a holdall from the floor beside him and lifted it, resting the bag on his bare thighs. Opening the zip, he checked inside and saw everything was still there. He knew it would be, but he couldn’t help double-checking; the act felt reassuring, which had been an elusive commodity these past few days.
Reaching inside, he pulled something out of the bag and turned the object, examining it. It was a faded yellow brick, about the length of a television remote but as thick as a good book. A letter and a number were printed on the side, in bold black lettering; beside it was typed a further description, in smaller font.
C4. Composition C. Plastic Explosive
.
In his hand, the weapon was harmless enough. But if used properly, this one brick of plastic explosive could easily kill a hell of a lot of people. With the fourteen others in the bag, the resulting charge could demolish a skyscraper, wiping out everyone inside.
Holding the brick in his hand, the man looked up through the gap in the curtains as another plane swept off the runway and drifted into the sky.
Beside him, the red figures on the electronic clock ticked forward.
7:01 am.
Fifty eight minutes later it was still before 8 in the morning, but Director Tim Cobb, head of the Armed Response Unit, had a feeling that today was going to be the worst day of his life.
At thirty-nine years old, Cobb had pretty much seen it all. He’d joined the government fresh out of Cambridge seventeen years ago; a family friend had known he was about to graduate, and after pulling some strings had set Cobb up with a desk job at MI5. Since then, it had been more or less a linear path up the ranks and towards the top as he’d gained more and more responsibility. Along the way, Cobb had discovered that he possessed a knack for orchestration and leadership that set him apart from his peers; he was never destined to be the guy on the ground, but would be the figure in the ivory tower. If it was World War Two all over again, he’d be a General, marshalling troops and directing operations, not the Private in the fox-hole firing his weapon. Some men had a gift and Cobb’s was to lead. Two months shy of his fortieth birthday, he had to admit that his life was pretty damn good. He had a doting wife and two fast-growing boys; he was healthy, experienced and at the peak of his career. He had everything a man could ask for.
Not to mention his own counter-terrorist unit.
Its creation had come about just a few months earlier. In the last few years, the London Metropolitan Police Service had been under considerable pressure; with stabbings and shootings becoming an almost daily occurrence in the city, the police had found themselves at a severe disadvantage when trying to maintain law and order on the streets.
However, the riots in the summer of 2011 had been the final straw. The whole world had watched for days as criminals and thugs ran amok, vandalising, stealing and burning cities all over the United Kingdom, causing chaos and widespread panic.
After the mobs had finally been quelled, the Prime Minister decided he’d had enough; something needed to be done. He was aware that there were specialist response teams already in place serving as armed back-up for the Met Police, namely Armed Response Vehicles and the C019 task force, but the PM had wanted a new squad to reinforce them. He’d looked at the American SWAT-team model and ordered the immediate formation of a new detail.
The Armed Response Unit.
The squad comprised an analyst and intelligence team and a task force, all of whom worked under the watchful eye of a Director of Operations. The PM wanted finesse and firepower, a professional team ready to be called into action at a moment’s notice and to act decisively, ruthlessly and without hesitation. When word had spread about the formation of the detail towards the end of last year, Cobb had put his name in the hat to lead the outfit. He needn’t have bothered; he was already at the top of the list.
After he’d been selected, Cobb was given the pick of the litter from MI5, MI6 and the Met to fill the rest of the spots on the new Unit. He’d gladly obliged, and had made some controversial choices. He’d assembled a five-man intelligence team that ran as smoothly and efficiently as a Formula One racing team in the pit; in their previous roles in the Met, most of these people had been spending their time pushing paper at stations around the city, becoming increasingly bored and frustrated, their talents not being fully utilised. But Cobb had an instinctive eye for potential; he’d plucked the five individuals from various stations with the PM’s authorisation and given them a new home in his detail. So far, each one had more than justified his faith in them. He’d chosen well.
He’d also ruffled more than a few feathers by picking two guys in their mid-twenties for spots on the ten-man task force.
Doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been a cop if you can’t run up a flight of stairs
he’d said, as many older and more experienced officers were passed over in the selection process. Every man on the team was lean, fit and strong as well as intelligent, and they all possessed that indefinable extra quality that made them stand out. Cobb had the highest of standards for his Unit and he demanded that every person he chose meet them too.
The ARU had been together for close to a year but post-riots, it had been surprisingly smooth-sailing so far, almost as an irony. Apart from the odd weapon retrieval or tipped-off drug raid, the year had been generally uneventful.
From the seat behind his desk in his office at the Unit’s North London headquarters, Cobb cursed inwardly.
I jinxed it
, he thought.
The previous night, five days after Christmas with the kids in bed and his wife under his arm as they watched television, Cobb had sipped on a glass of Scottish single-malt and realised that all things considered, his life was the best it had ever been. He’d felt almost complacent as he went to bed.
Then his phone had rung at seven-thirty this morning.
Nothing had been revealed in the call, but that wasn't necessary. The man on the phone had said only four words.
Conference call. Eight o’clock
. But Cobb knew from the tone of the guy’s voice that something was seriously wrong. He’d been out of his front door in ten minutes, fired up the engine to his car and headed into the city as quickly as he could. His recent increase in salary meant he’d been able to move his family to an upmarket home on the outskirts of Surrey. From his front door to the Unit’s headquarters in North London normally took him thirty two minutes depending on traffic, but this morning he’d made it in twenty seven.
Sitting at his desk, he checked his watch.
7:59am
. The Unit’s HQ was the envy of other departments, but then again Cobb knew that was the way with every new government location. The building would stay high up on the pedestal until a new place cropped up, knocking it a rung down the ladder. It was a solid building, consisting of two floors. The lower level housed the holding and interrogation cells as well as the locker and kit rooms for the task force, where they changed their clothes and stowed their weapons. Upstairs, the floor was split into two sides. To the right was where the tech team operated, a clustered nucleus of computer screens and large monitors, all under the observant eye of Cobb from his office. The left side led to a rectangular Briefing Room, which the field team used as their base of operations and also as a place to wait when they were on call.
Despite the trepidation he was currently feeling, Cobb felt a brief moment of calm. He knew he was surrounded by professional and quality operatives, people proud of their job and determined to do it well. As a unit, the intelligence team was thorough and forensic, and the task force was efficient and dependable.
Cobb’s smiled faded.
He had a gut feeling that today, they were going to need to be.
Without any cue, a large television screen in front of his desk suddenly came to life. One of the advantages of modern technology meant the days of conference meetings with everyone in the room were now an option, not a necessity. The monitor was attached to the wall across his office, the screen split into two sides. To the left was a man with short, buzz-cut grey hair and tired bloodshot eyes.
John Simmons
. Although he knew his name, Cobb wasn’t overly familiar with the guy, but he knew he was one of the bosses at GCHQ, the government’s communications headquarters. Based across the country in Cheltenham, GCHQ monitored every phone-call and email made to or from the nation, scanning for any unlawful or terrorist activity. To Simmons’ right in a separate shot were two other men. One of them was Pete Rogers, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. He was a good man, short and solid who bore a strong resemblance to Michael J Fox. Cobb had known him for over ten years, and they had been friends for just as long.
And beside Pete was the Prime Minister himself. Before the formation of the ARU, Cobb had only met him once when he was still at MI5, but his new position meant they now interacted on an almost weekly basis. Cobb liked him; he was a good man with good intentions, but like most heads of government, he was paying for the mistakes of the guy who’d held the post before him. He was three and a half years into his tenure, with elections coming up, and Cobb knew it was unlikely he’d be around for the next four.
Rogers opened the exchange, which brought Cobb’s attention back to the room.
‘Morning, Tim,’ he said, his voice slightly tinny over the television.
Cobb nodded.
‘Good morning, gentlemen.’
‘This is Deputy Director Simmons, joining us from GCHQ,’ said Rogers.
Cobb flicked his eyes to Simmons, on the left portion of the screen.
‘Good morning.’
Simmons didn’t return the courtesy, jumping straight into his report instead.
Probably can’t wait to share the burden
, Cobb thought.
‘I'll get straight to the point, Director,’
he said, clearing his throat
.
‘For the past eight months, I‘ve led an operation to take down a major terrorist cell operating here in the UK. Around twelve weeks ago, I was successful in getting one of my men into the group, undercover. Working with him, we gathered a slew of information and evidence, enough to lock up each member of the cell for five to ten years at least.’
He paused.
'However, I ordered my team to hold back.'
‘Why?’ Cobb asked. He didn’t like where this was going already.
'Because there was a potential case here to put each member of the cell away for twenty years,' Simmons replied, speaking quickly. ‘I don’t need to tell you that chances like that don’t come around often.’
The ARU Director nodded, taking a sip from a mug of coffee on his desk that he’d poured earlier. It needed sugar.
‘Go on.’
‘The most recent reports from my man were concerning to say the least. He told me that the cell was planning a series of attacks. Across London. This weekend.'
'So let's move in right now and take them,' Cobb said, putting down his coffee. 'Why wait?'