Nine Lives (Sam Archer 1)

by Tom Barber

  *

  Across the city, a chorus of leather boots smacked on the marble floor of the lobby as the ARU task force rushed through the entrance to the Heathrow Marriott Hotel.

  Startled bystanders stepped back as they saw the sudden arrival of the group of armed officers. Mac led the team to the front desk as the concierge stood waiting for them. She was a young girl, in her mid-twenties, blonde and pretty; her name-tag said Sally.

  ‘You made the call?’ Mac asked, arriving quickly by the desk.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. She passed him a room key over the counter. ‘Room 418. I haven’t seen him leave. Our security are holding back as requested.’

  Mac grabbed the plastic key-card and turned to his men quickly.

  ‘Deakins, take Team Two. Cover the exits,’ he ordered. The officer nodded and moved off with five of the men.

  Mac turned to Archer, Porter and Chalky.

  ‘You three, we’re going upstairs.’

  Without a moment’s delay, the four men ran together to the stairwell.

  Behind them in the lobby, Rivers and Shapira watched the team move; the two of them hadn’t been included in the police sergeant’s orders.

  Shapira felt her irritation rise but noticed that the American beside her didn’t seem to care. If anything, he looked kind of bored.

  ‘You want to take a look around?’ she asked him.

  He looked at her for a moment.

  Then he shrugged and nodded.

  ‘Beats standing here.’

  Upstairs, a husband and wife were strolling down the corridor of the 4th floor on their way to the lift. They were both dressed up smartly; the man had arranged dinner for them both downstairs, a prelude to their romantic week in Rome starting with their 10am flight from Terminal Five tomorrow morning.

  However, they stopped in their tracks when four police officers suddenly erupted from the stairwell beside them, a sub-machine gun tucked into each man’s shoulder, their faces tense. The woman made to make a sound, but she instinctively covered her mouth as the lead police officer put a finger to his lips, looking at her as the other three moved past the pair.

  The couple watched as the four policemen moved swiftly but cautiously down the corridor.

  They came to a stop outside Room 418. Closest to the door, Mac had a white key-card in his hand as Archer, Chalky and Porter took up a position behind him.

  He eased it slowly and gently into the lock.

  There was a soft click; a light on the metal panel that housed the lock flicked from red to green.

  In that same instant, Mac pushed down hard on the handle and the four officers stormed into the hotel room, tracing with their MP5s.

  It was empty.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ Cobb asked, incredulous, standing in his office with Crawford. ‘You knew where he was and you withheld that information? My team are at the hotel right now, wasting their time!’

  ‘Listen to me!’ Crawford implored, as Cobb paced back and forth before him furiously. ‘Just stop for a moment and listen.’

  Cobb paused. He glared at the DEA agent angrily.

  ‘Right now, the man is on his way to an airfield outside Paris. I have a team waiting there for him. His uncle will be there too.’

  Cobb was losing patience. Crawford raised his voice a hair.

  ‘C’mon man, think for a moment. Heads of cartels do not go face-to-face for drug buys; it’s like a goddamned unicorn. My team are already in place; they’ll witness the transaction then the moment it’s done, we'll move in and apprehend them all. Dominick Farha isn’t going anywhere.’

  He paused.

  ‘And we also agreed on this earlier. I warned you that the boy might get in touch with his uncle. You agreed to hold back.’

  ‘That was then,’ Cobb said. He pointed at the television in his office covering the attack at the Emirates. ‘This is now.’

  Crawford didn’t reply. Cobb rubbed his face, frustrated; then sighing, he moved around his desk and sat down behind it, shaking his head.

  ‘I’ve got terrorists and bombs all over the city on one side; I’ve got the biggest drug dealer in the Middle East on the other. And all in one night. Jesus Christ.’

  Crawford nodded, staying quiet. He could see he’d got through to Cobb, but he could also understand the torment the Unit’s boss was going through. He had his target and knew exactly where he was, but he couldn’t make a move on him yet.

  ‘I’ll need to talk to the Prime Minister and contact my men,’ Cobb continued. ‘They’re wasting their time at the hotel.’

  ‘But at least we know where he is,’ Crawford said, gently.

  Cobb thought for a moment. Then he nodded.

  ‘Yeah. We do.’

  Behind the reception desk to the hotel, there was a door to a room that contained all the security monitors for cameras mounted in the building. The concierge was sitting in a chair in front of them, Fox leaning over her shoulder.

  Despite the array of screens, the pair were watching one of them in particular.

  ‘Stop,’ Fox suddenly said.

  Once she did so, he tapped the screen.

  ‘There. Son of a bitch. There he is.’

  As he spoke, Archer and Chalky appeared in the doorway behind him. Mac had already told the rest of the team that Farha wasn’t in the hotel room, but Deakins and the other men were still blocking off the exits in case he was still inside the building.

  ‘Look at this,’ Fox said, seeing the two men arrive.

  The pair moved over and peered closely at the screen.

  It was a shot of the lobby. The time in the corner of the screen said 7:49 pm, less than an hour ago. As the tape ran, all four pairs of eyes watched a man walking through the reception area towards the exit. He was dressed smartly, in an expensive-looking three piece suit.

  As the guy walked past the camera, he suddenly stopped for a moment, looking at something on the wall.

  ‘The television,’ the concierge said. ‘He’s watching the news.’

  The camera was mounted just above and to the right of the television monitor, so it gave a clear, front-on shot of the guy.

  It was Dominick Farha, no mistake.

  Standing beside Chalky Archer looked closer, examining Farha’s appearance.

  But there was another person walking with him. A young, pregnant dark-haired woman; she couldn’t have been older than twenty.

  ‘Who the hell is she?’ asked Fox, as the concierge hit a button.

  The tape continued. The frame just included the front entrance, so they watched the man and woman walk through the doors.

  They saw Farha hail a taxi then open the door, helping his companion inside. He climbed in after her, pulling the door shut and the vehicle moved away.

  ‘Shit,’ said Fox. ‘So where the hell did they go?’

  Without a word, Archer grabbed a piece of paper and a pen resting on the desk and scribbled down the licence plate of the taxi cab. He left the room, grabbing the mobile phone from its sleeve on his tac vest. The other three were still fixated by the shot on the screen.

  ‘Rewind and run it again,’ requested Fox. ‘There’s got to be something here we can use’.

  The concierge pressed a button, and the tape wound back, everything happening in reverse. The moment Farha and the girl disappeared out of the shot, she hit Play.

  Once again, the pair walked into the shot from the lift.

  They stopped momentarily as Farha turned his attention to the television screen.

  ‘Wait.’

  Fox and Chalky looked down.

  The concierge was frowning.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Chalky.

  She was peering hard at the screen, leaning forward. ‘The way that girl was walking.’

  ‘What about it?’ asked Fox.

  ‘Didn’t seem right. Looked strange.’

  ‘Of course it did,’ Fox replied. ‘She’s pregnant.’

  The receptionist
thought for a moment.

  ‘Actually, no. I don’t think she is.’

  Fox and Chalky stared at her, confused.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Chalky asked.

  The concierge rewound the tape and hit Play again. They watched the shot for the third time; however, on this occasion no one paid any attention to Farha, focusing on the girl.

  ‘Look at that,’ said the concierge, pointing at her as the tape ran. ‘A pregnant woman doesn’t walk like that. See how rigid she is?’

  The men peered closer. She was right. The girl seemed like she was straining, struggling with the weight on her stomach.

  It looked wrong somehow.

  ‘Looks almost…robotic or something,’ said Fox.

  ‘Like she’s weighed down,’ the receptionist added.

  ‘But with what?’ Chalky asked.

  Upstairs, Porter and Mac were rummaging through Farha’s hotel room, searching desperately for any clues or evidence that could give them an idea where the hell he’d gone. So far, they’d found some clippings of wire, a small set of pliers, a needle and spool of thread.

  Porter looked at Mac, then at the items they’d tossed on the bed. He felt uneasy.

  Given the known interests of the man who’d been staying here, all these items were pointing to something pretty damn sinister.

  ‘I don’t like the look of this, boss,’ Porter said.

  Mac shook his head, looking at the pliers and clippings of wire.

  ‘Neither do I.’

  At that moment, the earpiece in each man’s ear crackled. ‘Mac, its Fox. I’m downstairs in the security room, looking at the CCTV. We found Farha. He left in a taxi about an hour ago.’

  ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘Arch is checking on that. There was something else, Sarge. He had a woman with him. Young girl, looked like she was pregnant. Lady down here thinks otherwise. We reckon the bump might be concealing something.’

  Mac and Porter looked at each other, then at the surface of the bed.

  The pliers.

  The needle and thread.

  The wire.

  Just then, Archer’s voice came up over the radio. ‘Cab company said the driver dropped them off at Heathrow forty minutes ago. Terminal Five.’

  Mac and Porter stared at each other for half a second.

  Then the two men ran for the door.

  TWENTY FOUR

  Upstairs in the hotel, Rivers and Shapira were walking the other floors. They knew it was highly unlikely that they were just going to bump into Farha, but it gave them something to do other than just stand and wait in the lobby.

  They were on the top floor. Together, they’d moved all the way down from the far end to the lifts but hadn’t encountered a soul.

  Turning the corner, Rivers suddenly cannoned into someone. Stepping back, he looked at the guy. He was Middle Eastern, but that was where the similarities with Farha finished; this man had a shaved head and glasses.

  ‘Sorry, man,’ apologised Rivers.

  The guy nodded and moved off down the corridor without a word.

  Just then, a radio that Cobb had given Rivers crackled in his hand. It was the sergeant of the task force.

  ‘All teams, lobby, now!’

  Rivers and Shapira looked at each other, then ran for the stairs, bursting through the stairwell door.

  As he raced down each flight, the American found himself thinking about the man he’d just bumped into on the top floor.

  Goddamn, that guy looked familiar.

  Inside Terminal Five, the girl in the green dress was starting to shake with fear.

  Dominick hadn’t returned and her back was in agony from the lethal weight sewn into the front of her dress. But that was nothing compared to the weight on her conscience. What had once seemed like such a romantic and committed gesture was now turning into a fully-fledged nightmare.

  She suddenly felt very alone.

  Everything inside her wanted to walk out of the building and run away.

  Or curl up into a ball and just hope it would all disappear.

  But her feet wouldn’t move.

  He’ll come back, she told herself as she trembled, standing there in the Terminal with people all around her.

  He has to.

  Scared and alone, she looked up at the clock, trying not to cry.

  8:54 pm.

  Six minutes to go.