by Tom Barber
‘He has a habit of doing that.’
‘What about you?’
‘When I was a kid,’ Archer said. ‘Eight years old.’
She tilted her head, surprised. ‘Not something from when you were a cop?’
‘This was way worse.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was with one of my friends in a park in London, goofing around on a Sunday. His older brother had told him about a trick the night before that we thought was cool. Mix some strips of aluminium foil with bleach, seal a bottle and shake it and you’ve got a home-made cracker bomb.’
He paused.
‘We were going to try it out there in the park. Apparently there was about a ten second gap between shaking the bleach before it reacted with the foil and went off, so we shook it up, left it on the grass and took off for cover to watch.’
He shook his head.
‘But the groundsman saw us do it and ran over. We tried shouting at him to stop but he kept coming closer, walking right up towards the bottle. I stepped out from where we were hiding and started running towards him but it was too late. The bleach blew up right in front of him.’
He paused.
‘I’ll never forget running over and seeing him just lying there, burning chemicals all over his face and arms. My friend ran for help. When an ambulance came they took the man to intensive care. It was touch and go whether he was going to make it, and I stayed there all night with my mother waiting for the man to wake up.’
He exhaled, taken back twenty years.
‘Longest night of my life. Every second, I thought that nurse was going to reappear telling us that he died.’
‘Did he make it?’ she asked.
Archer nodded. ‘He pulled through.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I don’t know.’
He paused, lost in thought.
‘That was the most afraid I’ve ever been. Well, until today I guess.’
‘We’ll find her.’
‘If she’s still alive.’
‘Hey; don’t even think that. Not for a second. She’s a fighter, Arch. She’ll hang in there. And last time you were dealing with it all on your own.’
She motioned to herself then Josh and Shepherd.
‘This time you have us. And we’re not going anywhere until we get her back.’
Another period of silence followed. Then Marquez checked her watch.
‘We’re landing in an hour. I need to fill out the immigration card.’
Beside them, a wicker basket had been left on top of the counter to their right, some sandwiches in packaging and muffins wrapped in plastic resting in the centre. Taking a sandwich, she passed it to him.
‘Eat something. You’re gonna need the fuel.’
‘I had breakfast.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
He smiled as Marquez waited, undeterred. Then he took the food.
‘What would I do without you?’
‘Get trapped in a building with a load of people trying to kill you,’ she said. ‘Probably.’
Squeezing his arm, she walked away back down the aisle to her seat, pulling a pen from her pocket.
Hospitals, he heard her voice echo in his head as he watched her go.
*
They landed right on time at Heathrow, 6:15pm UK time, the English weather outside the window similar to that back in New York, bright and warm with the early evening sun casting a golden glow over the airfield as they touched down. Once they taxied into Terminal Five and the pilot thanked the passengers over the intercom for flying with the airline, the four NYPD detectives unclipped their seatbelts, grabbed their hand luggage and then made their way off the Boeing jet, quickly heading towards Immigration.
Given Archer’s dual nationality, he was through to the other side swiftly and waited for the other three to pass through the Non-UK and EU nationals aisles and join him. They did so before the main queues had really started to form behind them, another benefit of a seat further up the plane, and as the trio joined up with him he saw the focus on each face, matching his own.
Now through Border Control, the group navigated their way towards an automated exit that led into the large glass Arrivals Hall of Heathrow Terminal Five. As they walked through the double doors, they saw a line of eager people behind a long barrier to their left, some family members waiting for loved ones, business people waiting for colleagues and chauffeurs holding up signs for clients.
Then, to his surprise, Archer saw two people he recognised. They were standing in the middle of the hall, both looking up at the flight board, Danny White, aka Chalky, and Ryan Fox, members of the ARU’s First Team and two of Archer’s closest friends.
Chalky was Archer’s age, twenty eight, and although a similar build to his best friend he possessed very different colouring, with brown eyes and dark hair. As it was summer he was tanned, making him look almost Mediterranean and a real contrast to Fox beside him, who was five years older, had sandy blond hair and was whippier, almost a physical representation of his animal name-sake. Both men were naturally light-hearted and always good company, but they were also as tough as nails. Each had taken bullets for the Unit before, and although he’d absorbed a huge amount of punishment in the last several years Archer had never been shot, so in that regard both old friends had something on him which they never failed to remind him.
Archer saw they were both dressed in jeans and a navy blue polo shirt with the ARU logo in white on the left side of the chest, police uniform but not their tactical gear. Each also had his sidearm, a Glock 17 in a holster on his hip, which meant they must have cleared their presence with the Heathrow police before they entered the building. Turning, Chalky suddenly saw the NYPD quartet and hit Fox on the shoulder, who popped a last piece of a chocolate bar into his mouth and swivelled to face the approaching four detectives, stuffing the wrapper into his pocket.
Archer took the lead and the two groups met up beneath an Arrivals board.
‘Look who’s back,’ Chalky said, giving Archer a bear hug. ‘Twelve months on and still so damn ugly.’
Briefly returning the hug, Archer stepped back, waiting for the mocking comment that normally followed.
‘That’s it?’ he said. ‘No more insults?’
‘I’ll let you off today,’ Chalky said.
Once Archer and Fox exchanged a similar greeting, Archer turned to make introductions.
‘Guys, this is Chalky and Fox. You two, this is Josh Blake, Lisa Marquez and Matt Shepherd, our NYPD sergeant.’
They all shook hands and exchanged greetings. Apart from Josh and Chalky, none of them had met each other before and it was a surreal moment for Archer as his past and present suddenly collided.
‘Your analyst called and gave Cobb a full debrief,’ Chalky said to Shepherd after shaking his hand. ‘We’ve just been stood down after a month-long operation so we’re free to help unless a major threat comes in. Cobb’s volunteered our HQ for you to use as your base.’
‘He’s got a number of our team working on this already,’ Fox said. ‘And he sent the two of us over here to pick you up.’
‘We appreciate it,’ Shepherd said, nodding to the two men. ‘Thanks.’
‘Any progress on Stanovich and Payan’s location?’ Marquez asked.
Fox nodded as he turned and headed towards the exit, the group walking with him.
‘The Met took a call forty minutes ago from Stanovich at 5:50pm. It was diverted to us.’
‘What did he say?’ Archer asked.
‘Apparently he has Vargas somewhere in the city. He knows that she’s an NYPD detective too; he wants two million pounds by 8pm or he kills her.’
‘Proof of life?’ Archer asked.
Fox shook his head. ‘Afraid not.’
‘You get a trace?’ Shepherd asked, as they approached the exit to the Terminal.
‘We did. He called from a housing estate in Brixton,’ Chalky said. ‘It’s a neighbourhood in th
e south of the city on the other side of the Thames. Cobb sent the rest of the task force over there to take him down.’
He turned to Archer.
‘Porter’s leading the raid.’
‘So are we heading over there?’ Marquez asked.
Chalky shook his head. ‘Our guys will handle it. Cobb wants us all back at HQ. Now you’re here, we’ll set up a command post and get a real time update.’
The NYPD team all nodded, pleased there’d been a development and moved through the doors quickly, not wanting to waste a second. As he followed Chalky and Fox with the others towards the short-stay parking area, Archer pictured his old friend Porter and the rest of the task force guys preparing to breach Stanovich’s location.
By the time they were done with him, the Slovakian would be begging to hand Vargas back.
EIGHT
Across London at the Brixton council estate, an ARU task force officer nicknamed Shifty was tucked in close to a wall inside an apartment adjacent to the one Stanovich’s ransom call had originated from.
Dressed in street clothes so as not to attract suspicion when he’d arrived with another officer ten minutes before, Shifty had made a tiny incision through the wall with a special drill designed for the purpose and had fed a miniature fibre-optic camera on the other end of the wire through the gap. The apartment behind him was quiet and empty; the two residents had been ushered outside, both now sitting in an unmarked police car and being reassured by two undercover Met firearms officers who’d arrived as back-up.
Alone in the apartment, Shifty was holding a small portable screen in his hand; there was a movable control stick on the box with a wire connected to the side that led into the wall beside him.
Controlling the angle of the feed with the stick and working silently, he studied the screen in his hands.
He saw a man standing with his back to the wall inside the living room. The room around the guy was rudimentary in its furnishings, several chairs and an old couch; there was a landline phone sitting on a table beside him but there was no sign of anyone else in the apartment, no indication that the missing detective was here.
Shifty studied the screen. The man next door was lean and tall, dressed in white Adidas tracksuit trousers and a matching zipped-up top, early evening sun filtering in through the windows behind him, an old pizza box beside his left foot.
He was also about six foot five with a shaved head.
Milo Stanovich.
Got you, you son of a bitch, Shifty thought.
Keeping hold of the screen with his left hand, he slowly slid his hand to a pressel switch by his sternum, hooked up to a Velcro microphone already strapped around his neck and connected to the earpiece tucked into his ear.
‘This is Shifty,’ he whispered. ‘Eyes on the living space.’
‘What do you see?’ Porter’s voice asked, the ARU sergeant and head of the task force.
‘Stanovich is alone, far end of the room, back to the window.’
Shifty paused, studying the screen in his hand.
He gently increased the focus on the suspect, searching for any evidence of handguns or knives.
‘Could be carrying a weapon, but I can’t see one.’
‘Any sign of Detective Vargas?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Spitz, report,’ Porter said.
‘I’m the other side. She’s not in the bedroom or bathroom. Looks like Stanovich is the only person here.’
‘The front door?’
‘It’s clear, Port. No tripwires or traps.’
Down in the car park, Porter heard this and nodded.
They were good to go.
Sitting in the front passenger seat of a 4x4 BMW, he and the two other men in the car with him were dressed in their combat police gear, navy blue fatigues, black boots and bulletproof tac vests carrying stun grenades, pliers, plastic handcuffs and spare ammunition for the weapons they were carrying. Each man had a Glock 17 slotted into a holster clipped around his thigh and the officer in the back seat was cradling a Remington 12 gauge shotgun, Porter and the other man armed with a Heckler and Koch MP5 sub-machine gun.
There was another ARU BMW parked beside them in the apartment block courtyard with three other officers dressed in the same gear sitting inside.
All of them were looking at Porter, waiting for the order to move.
He checked his watch; 6:29pm. Stanovich was demanding the money by 8pm, so they had an hour and a half at their disposal. He and the other guys had all been at the Unit this morning when the call came in from the Counter-Terrorism Bureau in New York informing Cobb that an NYPD detective had been kidnapped and the two perpetrators were thought to be in London. Porter had been in Cobb’s office with him when he received the call and both men had been confused as to why it had been directed to them, a counter-terrorist unit.
Cobb had been about to redirect the man to CID when the American analyst had revealed that the kidnapped NYPD detective they were trying to locate was both a team-mate of Sam Archer and his girlfriend, which is why he’d called them specifically. He’d added that four detectives from the Bureau, including Archer, were already on their way to London on Lieutenant Franklin’s orders.
And the analyst had asked if the ARU could help.
The decision was already made before the man hung up; although the Unit had their usual work to attend to, MI5, the Met and SCO19 could more than cover it at the moment and Cobb was determined to do what he could. To everyone who’d known him from his time there, Archer’s memory lingered large in the Unit but Cobb and Porter particularly held their old colleague in special regard.
He’d saved their lives once and neither man would ever forget it.
When he’d passed all this information on to the rest of the ARU, Cobb had received his team’s unanimous support in doing what they could to assist the NYPD team headed their way. Nine hours later, Porter leaned forward and looked up at the 2nd floor of the apartment block. Seeing as the ARU was a counter-terrorism Unit sex-traffickers weren’t their usual target, but the Slovakian man upstairs in 2F had kidnapped Arch’s girlfriend and threatened to kill her, which was the biggest mistake he’d ever made.
Porter pushed the circular switch on the front of his tac vest, the other officers waiting for his call.
‘Listen up,’ he said. ‘We move fast and clean. She’s probably hidden in there somewhere, so clear every room quickly. Once he’s in cuffs, we’ll find her.’
He turned to the officer in the back seat behind him holding the shotgun, but still held down his pressel switch so the other guys could hear his orders.
‘The door might be reinforced, so Mason, you’ll blow the lock. I’ll take point. Hold your fire unless he makes a move but get him in handcuffs ASAP. We need this guy alive to find out where he’s hidden the girl.’
Mason nodded; Porter paused.
‘Go.’
The car doors immediately opened, the six officers stepping out, closing them quietly then moving to the stairs. They climbed them quickly, the stairwell filled with the sound of boots on concrete, Porter moving behind Mason who was at the front of the line and carrying his shotgun with a breaching round in the chamber.
As the group arrived on the 2nd floor, Spitz and Shifty appeared from the apartments either side of Stanovich’s, each man in plain clothes but wearing a tac vest and also carrying a fully-loaded MP5 with a Glock strapped around their thigh like the others.
Moving smoothly and quietly, the eight-man team came to a halt outside the apartment, several curtains on grille-covered windows elsewhere in the block flickering as residents watched.
Kneeling to one side of the door, Mason didn’t wait a second.
He put the shotgun against the lock immediately and fired.
The blast annihilated the mechanism and the door was smashed back a moment later, the counter-terrorist police team piling in through the door one by one in a well-practised drill, looking down the sights of their weapons and alre
ady familiar with the layout of the place from the schematics they’d studied minutes earlier.
‘Police!’ they all shouted. ‘Get down!’
As three of the officers split, checking the other rooms for Detective Vargas, Payan or any other occupants they might have missed, Porter took the lead, training the sights of his MP5 on the tall frame of Stanovich clearly visible through the open door to the sitting room.
The Slovakian hadn’t moved since they arrived, standing right where Shifty had said he was in the sitting room with his back to the wall. He’d been taken completely by surprise and his eyes were wide with fear as he stared at the police team, nothing around him save a table to his right and an old pizza box on the floor to his left, the room stinking of sweat and greasy food.
‘Get your hands up and get down on the ground!’ Porter bellowed, the sights of his MP5 on the man’s chin, aiming at the brain stem.
Staring at them, Stanovich didn’t move, keeping his hands by his side.
Sweat glistened on his brow and neck, having already stained the collar of the zipped-up tracksuit top.
‘I said get your hands up!’ Porter ordered again, Mason beside him with his shotgun trained on the sex-trafficker, the two men covering the Slovakian.
‘Do it!’ Mason bellowed.
‘I can’t!’ Stanovich whispered in an Eastern European accent, looking at the two men with wide desperate eyes. ‘Help me.’
Looking at the man’s face through the sights of the MP5, Porter suddenly paused.
Stanovich stared back at him, his eyes as wide as dinner plates.
He was standing rigid, just as if he was on a parade ground and had been suddenly called to attention.
Something about this was wrong.
As Mason kept his shotgun on the man and the rest of the team cleared the residence, Porter stared at the Slovakian.
Then he stepped to the side, looking behind the tall suspect. There was nothing back there.
But then something caught Porter’s attention.
Tilting his head, he saw two strands of something reflect the dying sunlight from the window. They glistened like the fine threads of a spider’s web.