by Tom Barber
The group stayed low, coughing from the smoke, the laundry room dark and hazy around them.
Upstairs, the 8 floor corridor was filled with smoke, the fire alarm going off and echoing through the building. Bishop had been running down the corridor from the north side when the explosion had happened. It had thrown him back down the hall, hitting him like a giant punch.
Staggering to his feet and blinking, he lurched his way towards the doorway of the apartment and looked at the devastation ahead of him, his ears ringing, smoke and dust stinging his eyes. The explosion had annihilated the interior of the apartment, the air filled with smoke, small parts of it on fire. No one was coming out. He tried to push the pressel switch on his vest but lurched to one side and vomited, dropping his assault rifle and falling to his knees. He felt as if he’d been hit by a freight train.
‘What the hell’s going on up there?’ a voice asked in his earpiece. ‘Report!’
‘They’re gone,’ Bishop said, his voice raspy, coughing and wiping his mouth with his sleeve and sucking in deep breaths as his lungs fought for air. ‘They’re gone.’
‘The targets?’
‘No. The back up.’
‘How many?’
Bishop coughed, trying to clear his head and get his bearings.
‘All of them. Castle’s dead too.’
His radio went silent.
Turning, he staggered down the corridor towards a fire extinguisher on a bracket on the wall, the fire alarm echoing around him, smoke still billowing from inside the destroyed apartment and burning the oxygen in the air.
TWENTY EIGHT
In the old laundry room on 6, the group were still coughing and recovering from the dust and smoke, which had flowed down the chute into the room and only now was withdrawing. It felt as if the explosion had rocked the entire building. The fire alarm in the corridors were still going off but suddenly went quiet, the echoes of the shrill siren reverberating in the air as the sound slowly died away.
Lifting his head and looking through the dusty haze, Archer saw rows of old washing machines and dryers standing against the walls around the room. The diagonal chute from 8A had deposited them on the east side of the building, facing all the cops on the street, the wrong side for the sniper who was firing from the south. He pushed himself to his feet then moved over to the window, risking a quick look. It was still a sea of people, cars and trucks down there, a hub of activity. Foster’s Tahoe and the car the street gunmen had pursued them in still where they’d been dumped several hours ago. Blinking and coughing, he tried to make out Shepherd, Josh and Marquez in the crowd, but couldn’t see them. Giving up, he turned back to the room.
‘Everyone OK?’
He saw a series of nods and heard more coughing as his companions started to get to their feet, Vargas helping Isabel then Helen up. Archer walked over to check on Carson. Helen had thrown herself over him when the blast went off to protect him. He was lying flat on his back, still pretty doped up, but the smile on his face had gone. He looked confused, blinking, silent, the bloodied rags and makeshift bandages still packed onto his stomach. Archer patted him on the shoulder reassuringly; the last thing they all needed right now was for his heroin trip to go bad. Screaming and shouting from hallucinations wouldn’t be ideal.
‘So Barlow was the rat,’ Vargas said, taking deep breaths, leaning against the wall with Isabel beside her. ‘That’s how they knew where we were. He got Foster killed and Carson shot.’
‘He must have told them everything,’ Archer said. ‘They knew all your plans, your movements, everything. You might as well have painted a red target on your chests.’
‘That son of a-’
She stopped herself, remembering Isabel.
‘Bitch?’ the child finished.
Vargas smiled, nodding. ‘Correct.’
‘Are you OK?’ Archer asked the little girl.
She nodded, coughing, and gave a double thumbs up.
On the street, the gathered cops and Feds stared up at the south side of the building. Thick black smoke was billowing out of an apartment on the 8 floor, pouring out of the windows and drifting up the walls of the tenement block. The building’s fire alarm had just been cut off.
Casting his eyes further down and now more than anxious, Shepherd looked over at the entrance. At that moment, an NYPD hostage negotiator securely protected in a bulletproof vest and helmet was approaching the door slowly, keeping to the wall. He’d started making the walk just before the explosion, but after a momentary pause he’d continued on his way. He had a metallic case in his hand, about the size of a slender shoebox, attached to a long cord; it was a phone. They needed to get talking to these people and try to resolve this issue without anyone else being killed.
Everyone on the street watched his progress.
Suddenly, there was a muzzle flash and a burst of automatic gunfire from the lobby windows. The negotiator shouted in pain as he was hit and went down, people ducking for cover. He collapsed onto the concrete then tried to drag himself away, leaving the phone. Another man from his team moved forward, behind a protective shield, as more assault rifle gunfire burst from the window, hammering into the shield and knocking the man behind it back a step. Despite the onslaught, he made it to his buddy and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him back and keeping them both protected behind the riot shield.
Shepherd examined the entrance but couldn’t see anything apart from another flash of gunfire. They were keeping away from the windows, firing from an angle well back inside. He wondered if the response team were working with the men who’d ambushed the Marshals on the street, or if they’d been taken out. Whatever the scenario, whoever had the entrance secured was making it as clear as daylight that they didn’t want to talk. There were twelve dead cops and a dead pilot who were proof of that.
If the NYPD or Marshals were to get inside they’d have to do it by force, not negotiation.
Shepherd turned to Hobbs and Dalton standing beside him. Their earlier differences were long forgotten, a distant memory from when the course of the evening and resolution had seemed far more straightforward. Hobbs was still stunned after losing his entire team. Both men had been watching the negotiator approach and seen him go down; their eyes followed him as he was dragged safely back behind cover and attended to immediately by two medics.
Shepherd caught Dalton’s eye; he motioned to one side with his head and the two men moved away.
‘We’ve got to get in there,’ Shepherd said, lowering his voice. ‘Right now. We gave them the opportunity to talk.’
‘I agree,’ Dalton said. ‘But not from above. We can’t afford to lose another team. I’m not sending any of my Marshals up there into that.’
One of Dalton’s people, a female Marshal, approached. The two men saw her coming and turned.
‘What’s the plan, sir?’ she asked.
Dalton looked at Shepherd. ‘We’re going in.’ He paused. ‘I could use your opinion.’
Shepherd nodded, walking forward with him to join the Marshals’ task force. The group were engaged in conversation concerning their next play, all of them keen to take action but broke off when Shepherd and Dalton approached.
Observing this but feeling frustrated and helpless, Josh turned to Marquez who was watching the smoke pour up the tenement block, like water spilling out of a tipped glass in reverse. He voiced what they were both thinking.
‘You think he’s still alive?’
She didn’t reply, staring up at the building. After a long moment, she responded.
‘On the call, Vargas said one of their Marshals had been killed by this response team. The lead Deputy, Foster. Did she mention how?’
Josh thought for a moment.
‘She said they’d been taken off guard and he’d been hit,’ he said. ‘But two of the enemy went down too. It was a fire fight; you heard the gunshots in there. Why?’
Marquez didn’t reply, turning her attention back to the building. She looked
up at the south-east corner.
Then she shifted her gaze downtown.
‘What is it?’
‘Dalton told me about Foster. He was in the Army for over two decades, finishing as a Major, then was a US Marshal for the last eleven years. He was highly experienced; one of the best men they had.’
‘So?’
‘So, he was armed and ready. Expectant, prepared. They were barricaded inside an apartment, a handful of guns on the entrance, all of them poised to pull the trigger. If someone tried to come in, he’d grease them like baking paper. So how the hell did someone get the drop on him?’
She looked away, her eyes narrowing as she examined the city landscape south of the tenement block. Josh started catching on to her train of thought.
He looked down the street. There were a series of other tall buildings, staggered down through Harlem and the top of the Upper West Side.
‘You think there’s a shooter?’
‘You saw the way this response team arrived. They’re professionals. What do you think?’
Josh looked at the buildings.
‘OK, so they wouldn’t be too far away,’ he said. ‘Not with the city wind and thermals. They’d be close.’
‘Far enough to get a complete look of the building, but near enough to counter the city elements.’
Both sets of eyes settled on what looked like an office building on West 133, about eighty yards away. It was the only place nearby with enough elevation and proximity.
The perfect position for anyone with a rifle.
Marquez nodded.
‘That’s where I’d be,’ she said.
Without another word, the two of them turned away and started walking down the street, heading downtown.
As they left, a car suddenly screeched to a halt by the barriers ten yards away, and a stern-faced, dark haired man with five o’clock shadow climbed out, slamming the door behind him. He pulled his badge and showed it to the cop on the tape without even looking at him, and stepped through a gap in the barriers. His name was Jake Hendricks; he was a Sergeant in the Counter Terrorism Bureau.
Hendricks was close to becoming a legend in the NYPD; he was just as well known to scores of criminals as to the rest of the Department. Built like a club doorman or a line backer, Hendricks didn’t see things in shades of grey; he was fair but totally uncompromising, both judge and jury. If you did wrong or if he even thought you had, you were going down. He’d been a cop for over fifteen years and had worked out of Precincts all over the city. One of the most well-known stories about him was his time working out of the 75 in Brooklyn, regarded as the most dangerous and challenging place for a cop to work in all of New York. Most officers only went there under orders, but Hendricks had put in a transfer requesting to go. His view was that if you were a cop you never backed down, you never took the easy way out and you fought criminality with a sledgehammer, giving no quarter. Some men were born to crunch numbers, or excel at sports, or work blue collar. Hendricks was born to be a cop; there were many criminals currently behind bars who would grudgingly agree with that statement. Some of them still walked with limps.
That particular Sunday, Hendricks had been off duty; he’d just been settling down to supper with his family at his house across the Hudson when they’d flicked on the television and seen the news. The reports were saying a gunfight had broken out in the street on West 89 between a team of Federal Marshals and five other gunmen. Apparently there’d been a car chase uptown and they were now cordoned off in a building on West 135 and Broadway, the gang members successfully holding the doors. A helicopter of reinforcements had arrived, but rumours suggested they weren’t part of the rescue effort. Efforts to take back the building had been resisted and countered; an ESU team had abseiled in, but police reports were saying they’d been all been killed.
When Hendricks had heard that last part, he’d stopped eating. He put down his fork, then without a word, he’d risen from the table, grabbed his piece and shield, jumped in the car and burned it over here as fast as he could. This wasn’t his jurisdiction and he was off duty, but a team of NYPD officers had died tonight. That made it his business.
As he walked through the crowd, he saw a task force of US Marshals fifteen yards away, all of them vested up and carrying assault weapons, crowded together and examining what looked like several I-Pad tablets. Beside them, he suddenly spotted Shepherd. Hendricks paused, both pleased and genuinely surprised. The two men were the closest of friends and colleagues; they both ran their own teams in the Counter Terrorism Bureau and had started out as rookies, training together in the Academy and then working as partners in the same squad car years back. Their families had even been on vacation together, and Shep had been Hendricks’ best man at his wedding.
Shepherd saw him too. Leaving the group of Marshals, he immediately walked forward to meet him.
‘Jake?’
‘Hey Shep,’ he said, shaking his friend’s hand.
‘What are you doing here? Did Franklin give you a call?’
Hendricks shook his head. ‘I saw the news. Apparently an ESU team went down.’
‘The chopper wreckage is in Riverbank State Park,’ Shepherd said, pointing. ‘And one of our guys is inside the building.’
‘What? Who?’
‘Archer.’
‘He’s in there?’
Shepherd nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘How the hell did he get caught up in this?’
Shepherd pointed south. ‘The group of Marshals were ambushed downtown as they were getting into a car with a State witness they’re protecting. Archer was on the street nearby. He saw what was going down and tried to intervene. He ended up having to go with them when they made their escape. There was a car chase which ended here when the Tahoe’s tyres were blown out and it hit the hydrant.’
Hendricks looked over at the two vehicles still dumped in the street outside the building, all the doors open. Both were surrounded by smashed glass with shell casings on the ground beside each vehicle. The Tahoe had taken a hell of a lot of punishment, riddled with bullet holes.
‘They duked it out,’ he said, reading the scene. ‘But the gunmen had superior firepower. Something automatic. The Marshals and Archer took cover in the building.’
‘Correct. They barricaded themselves inside an apartment. One of the Marshals has been shot, another has been killed, and we can’t communicate with them; all phone lines are down.’
Hendricks frowned. ‘Cellular too?’
Shepherd nodded.
‘So what happened to ESU?’ Hendricks asked.
‘About thirty minutes after they went in there, a black, unmarked chopper arrived. We thought it was one of ours, but it wasn’t. We counted ten men abseiling in, some kind of back-up response team. One of the Marshals managed to get to an emergency phone; she said whoever they are, this team are all heavily armed and inside to finish the job. She and Archer managed to kill two of them, but the others sure as hell aren’t giving up. They took out the ESU team and the chopper with Claymores and a LAW. There’ve been sounds of gunfights and explosions from inside. We can’t communicate with them so we have no idea where they are or their current situation.’
‘Jesus.’ Hendricks looked up at the tenement block. ‘You think they’re still alive?’
‘They must be. The response team sure as hell aren’t leaving yet.’
‘So who the hell is this witness?’
‘A seven year old girl.’
‘A child?’
‘Other than that, we don’t know much more.’
‘Nothing at all?’
Shepherd nodded towards Dalton. ‘He won’t give.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Hendricks said, striding over towards the US Marshal. Shepherd joined him.
Jake had a way of getting people to talk.
TWENTY NINE
Once he’d put out the fires in 8A, Bishop had stumbled his way down the north stairwell, leaving the smoky co
rridor behind him. He pulled back the door on the ground floor and moved into the lobby. He was still disorientated, unsteady and nauseous, his face blackened, dust and smoke in his lungs. The others were momentarily taken aback when they saw him.
King was reloading his M4A1, having apparently just fired off some rounds through the window. He turned and looked at him.
‘What the hell happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ Bishop said loudly, shaking his head to clear his hearing. ‘There was an explosion. Castle was in there with most of the mob. They’re gone.’
‘Jesus Christ, I’m sick of this,’ King hissed, as Spades, Diamonds, Knight and Braeten stood there in silence. ‘All I’m hearing tonight is failure. Do you call this shit professional?’
Silence. None of the men responded.
‘All of you, get your game-faces on and step up your shit. It’s a kid, a gunshot Marshal if he’s still alive, a hundred-twenty pound woman and some asshole wannabe street hero who’s in way over his head. If they want a war, let’s give them a war.’
Just then, there was a commotion on the stairs behind them. A handful of the remaining guys from the volunteer mob appeared from the north side doorway, all of them looking spooked. The response team turned to them.
‘Where were you?’ Bishop asked, coughing.
‘We were on 9, getting ahead,’ one of them said, noting Bishop’s appearance. ‘What the hell happened?’
Bishop didn’t reply, stepping to one side and shaking his head to try and get back his hearing. One of the guys from the stairwell walked towards King.
‘We’re leaving.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘You didn’t say anything about us getting blown up. We’re out of here.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Try to stop us, asshole.’