Nine Lives (Sam Archer 1)

by Tom Barber

FORTY FIVE

  At Stamford Bridge, the minute’s silence had ended with the cheep of a whistle and a long round of applause from the crowd that built in volume until it seemed the earth shook. Down below, Mia was finishing arming the VX gas. Above, the crowd had started chanting.

  It was making the lower level rumble as the noise swelled.

  Suddenly, a guard rushed around the corner to her left. He was searching around, hastily, looking for something or someone. Me, she thought.

  He paused as he saw her, then the contents of the vending machine and the dead body of the guard with the broken neck.

  He froze for just a split second as his brain registered the situation.

  ‘Hey!’

  Mia already had the silenced pistol in her right hand and she shot him in the face. His head rocked back as he took the round and he collapsed to the floor in a heap. She moved forward, grabbing his ankles and pulled him out of the main corridor.

  Blood and brains from the gunshot had been spattered all over the white corridor behind him, but it didn’t matter.

  She was ready to leave.

  For a split-second, a million questions ran through Archer’s mind, like access codes on a high-tech computer.

  It can’t be him?

  It’s him!

  Why is he here?

  What’s that in his hand?

  Special Agent Crawford was now just thirty feet away and Dominick Farha was closing down on him from behind. He was gaining fast on the DEA agent, who had no idea he was being approached.

  Archer saw what the terrorist leader was holding.

  It was a knife.

  Chalky and Rivers were searching for Shapira together. They’d given up looking around the stadium floor and had gone down to the first sub-level. Chalky had his MP5 up tight in the aim, Rivers his pistol.

  They pulled open a door and moved down the corridor, silently and swiftly. Chalky ducked his head into a changing room as Rivers pressed on. He saw something against the wall, and on the floor ahead of him.

  He moved forward, looking closer.

  It was blood.

  And suddenly, someone rounded the corner, colliding with him.

  Shapira.

  She had a pistol in her hand. Rivers reacted instantly. He tried to wrestle the gun from her hand as he pulled his own weapon from its holster on his hip. She snapped her head forward, head-butting him hard, breaking his nose with the crown of her head. His eyes filled with water and he was momentarily stunned and blinded from the blow.

  She shot him in the stomach, and he fell to the ground, hunched over and out of the game.

  However, Chalky had gained some ground on her. He’d raised his MP5 to get a shot, but Rivers had been in the way so he’d moved closer. Too close. She knocked the gun out of the way. It wasn’t strapped to his shoulder, and it clattered to the floor, out of reach.

  She raised her own pistol, but he threw himself at her with a cry, knocking her own gun from her hand. They wrestled on the floor; Shapira was thrashing and fighting like a hellcat, trying to bite his face and gouge his eyes.

  Beside them, Rivers writhed in agony as he bled out on the floor down the corridor.

  He watched helplessly as the two of them fought on the ground, blood pumping from the wound to his gut.

  Archer reacted fast.

  Remembering that he didn’t have his MP5, his hand flashed to his right thigh and he pulled his Glock 17.

  ‘HEY!’ he screamed at Farha, raising the weapon.

  In front of him, Crawford’s eyes widened with confusion, but Farha reacted in a flash.

  He lunged forward, behind Crawford, blocking Archer’s line of sight and grabbed the DEA Special Agent by the collar, wrapping his arm around his neck like a vice. He pushed the knife to the helpless man’s throat, nestling the blade beside his jugular.

  The movement knocked off his sunglasses, and Archer saw his eyes for the first time.

  They were red-rimmed, dark and filled with hate and fury.

  ‘BACK UP!’ he screamed at Archer, from behind Crawford’s head. ‘BACK UP!’

  The officer didn’t move, but he didn’t have a shot, as Farha was hidden behind Crawford.

  Adrenaline pumped through Archer’s veins, and he stood on his injured foot to steady his aim.

  He didn’t even remember it was broken.

  In the lower level of the stadium, Chalky had the upper hand. Shapira was fighting like a wild-cat, biting and scratching, but he was physically stronger than she was and had wrestled his way on top.

  But suddenly, she grabbed his arm and threw her legs up and around his neck, pulling them tight into a jiu-jitsu triangle choke.

  Chalky tried to fight it, but she had the hold locked in tight.

  He gasped, feeling the pressure around his neck tighten.

  His face turned red. He was suffocating. He knew he was seconds from passing out. And Shapira knew it too.

  As he desperately tried to free himself, she snarled at him from the floor.

  ‘Drop the gun or he dies!’ Farha screamed.

  Archer was trying to get his cross-hairs on the guy, but he was clever. He’d pulled himself around Crawford, protecting himself, leaving only two inches of his head in Archer’s sight. One of his eyes glared at the young policeman from beside the DEA agent’s neck.

  Behind them, Archer saw Cobb, Nikki and Frost running over from the entrance to the building. They must have seen or heard the commotion from inside. Farha sensed them coming, and twisted to look at them, keeping his head tight behind Agent Crawford’s and out of Archer’s firing line.

  ‘Back off! Back off or I kill him!’ he screamed.

  Cobb, Nikki and the older detective stopped in their tracks, their hands up. Archer saw them all realise who he was, shocked.

  Under the guy’s arm, Crawford's eyes were wide with terror.

  Farha turned his attention back to Archer, who still had his Glock aimed.

  The terrorist pushed the razor-sharp blade harder, so a trickle of blood slid down Crawford’s neck.

  ‘Another ounce of pressure, he dies because of you,’ he screamed. ‘Drop the gun!’

  Chalky was seconds from unconsciousness.

  He gathered all his strength in one last attempt and scooped the woman up off the floor. Her legs were wrapped around his neck and she rose in the air as he lifted her high, her face burning with hate.

  And he slammed her down, as hard as he could.

  It worked. She yelled in pain as her back smashed into the floor, her legs loosened, which released the choke hold. Gasping for breath, Chalky fell back. He saw his pistol on the floor by the wall in the corridor; clutching his throat and coughing, he dived for it. Behind him, Shapira had recovered fast. Chalky heard what sounded like a phone book slamming onto a table then felt a thud and a searing pain in his back.

  Suddenly, his legs wouldn’t work. He collapsed, reaching forward desperately for his weapon.

  It was just out of reach from his fingertips.

  ‘Last chance!’ Farha screamed.

  Archer hadn’t moved, but his damaged ankle was starting to send shooting pain through his entire body as he stood on it. It was affecting his aim. The sight on the Glock in his hands was moving from Farha to Crawford to the car park then back to Farha.

  More people had rushed outside from the Unit HQ, stopping dead when they saw the stand-off.

  Crawford was staring at Archer, his eyes wide, silently pleading for help.

  Blood was trickling down his neck staining the blue collar of his shirt from the puncture wound.

  Farha had the knife jammed by his artery.

  An extra ounce of pressure, it would be cut and Crawford would bleed to death on the spot.

  But Archer didn’t look at Crawford.

  He was staring into Farha’s one furious eye, through the top-sight of his pistol.

  In agony from the bullet wound, Chalky tried to crawl towards his weapon. There was
another thump as another phonebook hit a desk and white plaster exploded from the wall as she fired deliberately close to his head. The white chalk mixed with the blood on the floor from the bullet wound in Chalky’s back.

  She had him and he knew it.

  He turned, rolling onto his wounded back.

  She was holding a silenced pistol in one hand.

  In the other was a switch.

  He could see behind her the two large canisters of nerve gas.

  And now she had the weapon aimed at his head.

  As Archer and Farha stared at each other, an image suddenly came into the police officer’s mind.

  Big brown eyes, the colour of hazelnut. They were beautiful. But scared.

  And filled with tears.

  The eyes he was staring at now were narrow, filled with hate and fury. Not a drop of compassion.

  And he was the man who had left that girl to die.

  ‘OK, you piece of shit. The American dies!’ he screamed.

  ‘You never came back for her,’ Archer said quietly.

  Suddenly, five gunshots thundered in the corridor.

  Shapira was thrown back, five nine-millimetre bullets tearing into her torso, pieces of her chest and blood spraying in the air. Her pistol and detonator fell to floor as she skidded back down the corridor. She was dead before her body came to a halt.

  Clutching the wound on his back, Chalky looked the other way.

  Rivers was lying on the ground in a pool of blood, his weapon aimed where Shapira had been standing.

  He lowered the gun, clutching his stomach with his other hand, grimacing and gasping in agony.

  Chalky tried to call to him, but he found he couldn’t speak. The room was starting to swim. He felt sleepy. He suddenly felt warm.

  With no more pain.

  As his eyes started closing, he saw the door down the left end of the corridor open. Mac, Deakins and Fox were running towards him, shouting something.

  Upstairs, he could hear the roar of the crowd. He felt his eyes close, and a peaceful feeling swept over him. It felt good.

  His back didn’t hurt anymore.

  And he drifted off to sleep.

  Number Nine hesitated.

  Archer didn’t.

  He shot him through the eye.

  The policeman had maybe two inches to work with, but it was perfect. The bullet skimmed Crawford’s neck. Farha wasn’t expecting it, and the bullet thumped into his eye socket, throwing him back like the whiplash from a sudden car accident as it tore through his brain and exited the back of his head in a bloody spray.

  The knife twirled from his hands like a baton from a juggler’s grip and he fell back onto the hard concrete with a thud, his legs and arms splayed.

  Crawford stood motionless, like a statue, afraid if he moved the man might still be there. Archer stayed just as still, his pistol aimed where Farha’s head had been, the pair of them like two statues.

  And suddenly, the adrenaline started to wear off.

  The pain screamed through his body as if his ankle was on fire. He felt as if he was going to throw up. He staggered, and fell back onto the ground. Cobb, Nikki and Frost ran over to help him as he sat on the tarmac, his pistol spilling from his hands.

  He looked over at the dead terrorist, who was laid out across the car park thirty feet away.

  ‘Found you,’ he muttered.