The Getaway (Sam Archer 2) (35 page)

There was a pause.

‘So what’s your name?’ the guy asked.

Shit.

Archer
didn’t answer, his mind racing.

He tried to remember the name on the tag.

‘
Griffin
,’ he said, eventually, trying to sound casual.

‘I’m Willard. Good to meet you, man. You want me to drop you on your beat?’

‘That would be great. I’m up around 90
th
.’

Willard nodded and pulled a right after they crossed the bridge, headed uptown. They moved up
1
st
Avenue
, through the
Upper East Side
.

‘I get off in thirty minutes. Can’t wait. Cold beer and put my feet up. Let you boys take over and look for the gruesome twosome.’

Archer nodded. ‘Hope we can find them. Right here’s good.’

Willard frowned, looking at
the street beside them.

‘You sure? We’re only on 81
st
?’

‘Yeah. I’ll stretch my legs.’

Willard shrugged and nodded then pulled to a halt. Archer grabbed the handle and pushing the door open, stepping out and closing it behind him.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

He walked around the car to the sidewalk and started walking off, feeling Willard’s eyes on his back.

‘Hey.’

Archer stopped, the
n turned.

From behind the wheel, Willard smiled and raised a hand.

‘Nice to meet you man. Have a good one.’

Archer raised his own hand, and the squad car moved off up the street. At the lights, Willard turned left and headed left down 81
st
towards
2
nd
Avenue
, and th
e car disappeared out of sight.

The moment he was gone, Archer sagged and sat on a bench, shaking his head, taking off the hat. He’d thought he had problems before, but now he was on a whole new level.

He’d be at
Flushing
airport at 7:30 pm.

He’d ha
ve to be, to save the hostages.

On o
ne side there would be Siletti.

And O’Hara.

Farrell.

Ortiz.

Regan.

And Tate.

O
n the other, there was one man.

Archer.

Him, all alone.

He leaned back on the bench, sunlight shining down on him, the street around him quiet, and looked stra
ight ahead, assessing his odds.

Six on one.

And knew it was going to take a damn miracle to stop them.

*

A hundred and twenty eight miles south from where Archer was sitting, the
Atlantic City
hotel room Tate was booked into under a fake name was plush and expensive. Tate always liked to skim a little off the top when he came down here. One night in the best suite normally cost close to five hundred bucks, but that was a drop in the ocean considering the amount of cash that was soon to be coming their way. It made the whole trip just like that little more enjoyable, like a mini vacation. It was an executive suite for a business executive. Tate was down here on business, so technically he qualified.

He’d been here for thirty-six hours. He’d been in the casinos till three am last night and had cleaned the last of the stolen Chase cash, and had just taken an hour long bath. He’d drunk two beers and watched a Pay-Per-View replay of the welterweight title fight from the Garden last night. He walked out of the bathroom, having towelled off and pulled on a white bathrobe, and strode barefoot
across the padded white carpet.

Across the room, four zipped up bags sat in a line, neatly organised. Although this wasn’t
New York City
, he still had to be careful when he came down here. He had a rule not to take more than
$
100k into any one casino at any one time. The FBI would take a great interest in what he’d been up to down here in the last year, and he didn’t want to leave a paper trail.

But he’d traded all the cash. The notes were clean, loaded up in the bags, a million and a half. He checked the time on the digital clock on the bed-side table. 11:54 am. Just before midday. He was planning on getting some
thing to eat
, then packing up the car downstairs and heading back to NYC for the extraction later tonight. He grabbed a phone and dialled room service and asked for a steak, medium-rare, and a chocolate sundae. Once he’d eaten, he’d pack up all his shit
,
get out of here and head back to help
out the rest of the team.

Walking over the thick carpet to the bed, he examined the outfit he’d be wearing later tonight. He’d laid it across the bed, making sure the stitching was tight, no loose fibres or chinks in the armour. He tapped it with his knuckle and it gave a dull
clunk
. There was enough Aramid and steel-plating under the cloth to stop pistols, machine guns, shotguns, even semi-automatic rifles from a reasonable distance. Tate wouldn’t be directly in the firing line, but he figured they’d be taking some heat before they got up in the air and it never hurt to be prepared. They’d come a hell of a long way as a team. He didn’t fancy getting popped just as they were making their final getaway.

Suddenly,
there was a knock on the door.

Room service. His food. Tate smiled. He reached for his pistol resting on a side cabinet, then thought better of it and tucked it under the sheet. He turned and walked forward towards the door, looking forward to his meal. Out of habit more than anything else, he stopp
ed and peered into the spy-hole.

A man was standing there.

But there was some weird bla
ck shape obscuring Tate’s view.

He looked closer.

And saw knuckles.

Wrapped around something metal and black, held up beside the spy
-
hole.

Tate froze.

And the guy in the corridor pulled the trigger to the pistol.

The weapon was silenced, so the report was dulled, but there was a
thud
as the pistol fired a round. The bullet chewed through the wooden door in milliseconds with ease and entered Tate’s forehead, the hollow-point separating and shredding into his brain. There was a spray of blood and brains from the back of his head as it blew apart, and he fell back, dead, the back of his head b
lown all over the white carpet.

The man in the corridor eased the key-card he’d taken from the dead hotel worker into the slot and shoved the door open. He stepped over the dead man in the bath robe and walked over towards four bags. He unzipped the first one and smiled with satisfaction. He checked
the others. They were the same.

He moved rapidly over to the bed and grabbing the helmet, balaclava, jacket and trousers, stuffed them quickly into a bag he pulled out from his jacket. He walked back over to the door, stepping over Tate's body and pulled the door behind him. Within ten minutes he was back. He went over to the four bags, looping the straps of two over each shoulder and grunted as he lifted the remaining two in his hands. He walked over to the door and stepped past Tate, blood and brains sp
rayed behind him on the carpet.

He moved out into the empty corridor, and using a gloved hand, pulled the door shut behind him, and headed downstairs for the car park.

TWENTY-ONE

As the sun slowly slid across the sky in its journey from dawn to dusk, Sunday lunchtime became Sunday afternoon, and the t
ime crawled on to four o’clock.

Archer was
sitting
in
Central Park
. The same bench in fact that he’d sat on a week ago in his suit, fresh from the funeral and his first meeting with Gerry. As it was then, the late summer weather was still beautiful, coming to the end of the season, fall fast approaching. Somewhere in the distance he could hear a saxophone, a jazz busker somewhere nearby, the only other noise was the breeze
blowing through the trees, the
birds
chirping
and the sounds of people
walking or
cycling past. Amongst the wind and the birds, the perfect and fluid melody of the saxophone floating in t
he air, Archer closed his eyes.

So much beauty amongst so much pain.

They’d killed his father. They’d killed Gerry. They’d killed Parker, and Lock. They’d tried to kill him. They’d taken Katic, her daughter and Sanderson hostage, and they wo
uld try and kill him again too.

Siletti wanted to meet at
Flushing
Airport
, which meant he and O’Hara were in on Farrell’s plans. Archer didn’t know how. Maybe they had reconciled their differences, or struck up a deal. Maybe Siletti had promised Farrell Archer would be there later tonight so he could exact revenge. Maybe they’d all get in the helicopter with the cash and leave the city forever as a team. He had no doubt that Siletti would try to kill him at the trade. The guy had all but promised it on the phone call earlier. Archer knew how it would play out. They’d have guns on Sanderson, Katic and her daughter and demand the cash or they pull the triggers. Archer would throw it over, along with any weapon. Then they would open up on him. Maybe a shotgun to the back of the head, same as his father. They’d order him to turn around and he’d hear the footsteps approaching. Feel the cold barrel of the weapon nestle in the back of his head. His life ended the exact same way as his father by the same people who’d killed him less than two weeks ago. Then they’d waste the three hostages.

He opened his eyes and looked at all the greenery around him, the sun lighting up the place. Siletti and O’Hara knew that they didn’t just have the winning hand, but the entire deck, and there was only one man standing in their way. Once they took care of him, they’d get on that helicopter and fly away forever.

The perfect getaway.

Archer looked up and saw the sunlight filter through th
e brown trees and green leaves.

And he started to form
ulate
a plan.

He sat there for another hour, working everything out in his mind, every possible scenario or outcome. He was still dressed as a cop, the hat over his head, so no one passing by in the Park would recognise him. At one point, he pulled the cell phone from his pocket and deliberated whether to call Cobb or not. He decided against it. Even if he could help, Archer only had three hours. Cobb was across the
Atlantic Ocean
. He couldn’t do anything or get here in that time. And Archer had dragged Sanderson
into this mess and it had got
him taped up with a gun to his head. He was going to handle the rest of this himself. This was his problem and he was going to fix it.

He rose and started walking through the Park, headed north to the
Upper East Side
. The walk took him about twenty minutes. He exited the Park and crossed
1
st
Avenue
and went straight to the parked police car on 92
nd
, pulling the keys from his pocket, unlocking it and climbed inside. In the front seat, he pulled off the police hat and started unbuttoning his shirt, and changed back into his clothes quickly, getting out of the cop uniform. He pulled on his jeans, t-shirt,
trainers
and grabbed the navy blue overcoat. He checked the chamber on the Sig, then clicked on the safety catch and tucked it into his coat. He went to climb out to get the money from the back, but something made him stop.

There was something stow
ed between the two front seats.

A gun.

He reached over and pulled it from its home and held it in his hands.

It was an
Ithaca
37, pump-action 12 gauge shotgun, the same weapon that Farrell and his team liked to use. In a compartment under the radio, Archer found ammunition for the weapon, twenty shells inside a small cardboard box.

And he had an idea.

Across the city in an FBI safe-house, Siletti check
ed the watch on his left wrist.

5:51 pm.

Not long to go.

He looked across the dark room at his three hostages. He’d duct taped and gagged all three of them and left them lying on the floor. O’Hara had blindfolded the kid, but neither Sanderson or Katic were wearing one and the two of them glared up at Siletti, a mixture of rage and fear in their eyes. Katic’s hair had fallen over her face, hanging in strands over the grey-strip of duct-tape pulled across her mouth, and she was looking at him like she wanted to kill him. Sanderson had been a pain in the ass earlier, trying to fight them when they marched him downstairs to the Marriott parking lot, so Siletti had punched him three times in the face, breaking his nose.
Join the club
, he thought as he saw the FBI Assistant Director sat against the wall, his eyes blazing with fury, blood staining the skin under his nose and the strip of grey duct-tape across his own
mouth.