Return Fire (Sam Archer )

by Tom Barber

  The man guarding her had taken a phone call moments ago; she couldn’t hear what the other person had said but she saw from the satisfied look on his face and his body language that this was it. Just like that ordeal four months ago in Harlem, she was trapped in another building, but this time, she was alone, Archer not here to help her.

  And if she was going to survive, she had to do something right now.

  She’d already come up with a plan, which she’d been working on for hours. As a result, she’d changed the angle at which she was lying about an hour ago, moving slowly and subtly enough that the guy in the chair hadn’t noticed.

  Right now, the man grinned as he leant back in his seat, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a closed flip-knife.

  ‘Bad news, bitch,’ he said. ‘I’ve been told to cut your throat.’

  She saw his gaze move to her legs and slide upwards again, his eyes lusting over her body.

  ‘But there’s no rush; I’m thinking we should do some other activities first.’

  Snapping her legs up to her chest, Vargas suddenly kicked out as hard as she could into the chair leg closest to her.

  The force smashed the chair out from under the man, taking him completely by surprise, and he hit the floor hard. The heavy fall knocked the wind out of him; in a flash, Vargas immediately hooked her bound feet around his neck and locked her bare calves tight, squeezing as hard as she could, gritting her teeth under the strip of duct tape as she strangled him.

  Ironically, the tape around her ankles helped, acting as a brace and she used it to exert as much pressure as she could, adrenaline, fear and anger giving her extra strength. Starting to suffocate, the man fought back, twisting hard and grabbing at her legs, trying to prise them apart, but the tape they’d used to bind her kept them tight.

  She twisted over so she was lying face down and tightened her legs even more, using all her pent-up anger and fear as she choked him to death, her face taut with effort as she strained and used every ounce of muscle strength in her lower body. The man continued to tear at her legs but she felt no pain, his resistance growing weaker as his oxygen ran out.

  Vargas maintained the pressure despite her muscles screaming out in protest. This was her one and only chance.

  If he got out of this, she was dead.

  He went limp as he passed out but she kept squeezing until her legs felt as if they were on fire, not daring to ease off the pressure. When she was as sure as she could be that he was dead and not feigning it, she turned back on her side and slowly released the pressure, unhooking her legs from around his head, waiting for the lactic acid to go but not taking her eyes off him, ready to whip her legs back into place if he so much as twitched.

  Sucking in oxygen through her nose, she pulled her knees in tight, trying to bring her bound hands back under her feet so they were in front of her body again. However, she couldn’t manage it with her ankles strapped together. Shuffling over to the dead man’s body, she reached behind her until her fingers made contact with the man’s closed flip-knife, which had fallen out of his hand onto the floor by his leg. Lying on her side and flicking open the blade, she reached back then slowly and carefully began to saw through the tape around her ankles, taking long breaths through her nose and trying to regulate her breathing.

  She sawed for almost twenty seconds, feeling blood wet her hands as the knife cut into her skin, but then the tape suddenly gave way.

  Ripping her feet apart, she dropped the knife and tried to bring her hands under her feet again.

  This time it worked and she could pull her legs through one at a time.

  With her bound hands now in front of her, she ripped off the strip of tape across her mouth, taking deep breaths for the first time in twenty four hours. Turning and picking up the knife again, she held the hilt tightly between her teeth, then brought up her hands and carefully used the blade to start sawing through the tape around her wrists.

  Working the blade through the duct tape, gripping the blade hard between her teeth, she looked over at the closed door to the dark office, desperately trying to cut through the binds before anyone else came in. Kicking the man off the chair had made a loud noise.

  And she didn’t know how many more of his friends were in the building.

  FORTY SEVEN

  Working her hands as fast as she could, blood running over the tape and down her fingers, she finally made it through the binds. Pulling her wrists apart, she tore the duct tape away and climbed to her feet, taking a moment to let the circulation flow through her arms and legs again, flexing her wrists and ankles, getting the blood pumping into every capillary of every muscle and clearing the lactic acid.

  Turning, she saw the dead man wasn’t carrying a pistol, but he had his cell phone tucked in the pocket of his trousers. Moving forward quietly, her feet silent on the bare floor, she knelt down warily and checked his pulse just to make sure, but there was nothing. She pulled out the phone. It was a Nokia, T-Mobile the provider, no password enabled to prevent her from making a call. Looking down, she saw she there were three bars of service.

  Keeping her eyes on the door to her left, she backed over to the window and glanced outside, trying to figure out where the hell she was. Although it was dark, she immediately saw Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament illuminated on the other side of the River.

  Holy shit.

  I’m in London.

  Turning away from the window, she quickly dialled Archer’s number, watching the door and keeping the knife in her other hand as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  Across the city in the ARU gun-cage, the sounds of the gunfight between Marquez and the five men in the car park continued to echo down the corridor as Archer grabbed all the gear he would need to assault the office building.

  He slotted two fresh flash-bang grenades into his tac vest then grabbed the MP5 he’d used earlier in the day from the rack. Beside the guns was the ammunition, thirty two rounds magazines. Laying two MP5 clips back to back, he taped them high and low then slotted the double-clip into the weapon, tucking two more into the pouches on his vest and needing as much ammo as he could carry. He figured this office building where the call had originated would be the mercenaries’ safe-house, and he didn’t know how many of them would be waiting for him inside.

  As he reloaded his Glock, tucking it into the holster on his thigh, his phone suddenly rang. Pulling it from his vest, he looked at the screen.

  It wasn’t a number he recognised.

  ‘Hello?’ he said, grabbing his MP5 and heading for the door.

  ‘Arch, it’s me!’ Vargas said.

  Archer froze in his tracks. ‘Alice! Where are you?!’

  ‘I’m in London in some office building. There was a man guarding me. I just killed him, but I’m trapped. I don’t know how many more of them are here but I need help. Are you in New York?’

  ‘No, I’m in London! We all came to find you. I think I know where you are; what floor are you on?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d guess somewhere in the teens. Quite high up, looking at Big Ben.’

  South Bank, Archer thought.

  She’s definitely inside.

  Pause.

  ‘Hang on, I hear someone.’

  He waited, not moving a muscle.

  ‘Alice? Vargas?’

  She didn’t reply.

  And the call went dead.

  Turning, Archer put the phone back into its slot on his vest, knowing she was still alive giving him even greater urgency as he took four more magazines from the rack.

  Then he ducked out of the room and sprinted down the corridor towards the stairs. Vargas was still alive, but she was trapped and would be totally outnumbered.

  Taking the flight two at a time, he ran back down the blackened charred corridor into the Operations area. Marquez was still in the Briefing Room, still managing to pin the gunmen down, firing her MP5 one round at a time to save ammunition.

  Running into the room, he jo
ined her.

  ‘Here!’ he shouted, laying the four magazines he’d brought from downstairs in front of her.

  She grabbed one immediately and reloaded fast, hitting the cocking handle forward as more return fire ripped into the wrecked room. Ducking as bullets tore into the ceiling, the two looked at each other for a brief moment, knowing it could well be the last time they saw each other.

  Then Marquez nodded.

  ‘Go get her,’ she said quietly, Archer hearing her through a break in the gunfire.

  Squeezing her shoulder, he turned and was about to run down the corridor when he saw Nikki was beckoning him over weakly with her good hand. Pausing, Archer moved over towards her as Marquez resumed her cover fire on the men below.

  ‘Just hang on, Nik,’ Archer told her, kneeling down. ‘Back-up’s going to be here any minute!’

  ‘I…know who she is,’ she whispered.

  Archer paused. ‘What?’

  ‘I know who the woman is. The woman…who’s doing this.’

  She paused.

  ‘I ran her voice…recording through all our systems. And there…was a match. An Interpol...file…It’s…recent.’

  She paused again, gunfire filling the gap.

  ‘She’s a former mujh…mujahedeen fighter. She…has two sons…One of them…is called Dashnan.’

  ‘Our Dashnan?’

  She nodded. ‘He must…have changed his surname…when he joined…the army.’

  Archer didn’t reply, staring at her, waiting for more.

  ‘The woman’s husband…and Dash’s father…died…a few years ago.’

  She took a breath, gunfire continuing from behind.

  ‘His name was Khalid Farha.’

  Archer suddenly froze, staring at her.

  His blood turned to ice.

  ‘Her full name’s Talia Farha,’ Nikki finished. ‘She’s Dominick Farha’s mother.’

  FORTY EIGHT

  Standing by the windows overlooking the River Thames on the 12th floor of the South Bank office building, Talia Farha looked out at the city beyond, waiting for the return of the mercenaries under her command who would be bringing Sam Archer to her.

  The man who’d killed her son.

  Talia had been a fighter her entire adult life. Although she was Saudi by birth, she’d left the country on her twentieth birthday in 1978 and had never been back. An Afghan mujahedeen leader had visited her father in their house in Riyadh to discuss business, bringing two of his men with him as security. One of them was a man called Khalid Farha; seeing him in the house, Talia had immediately fallen for the soldier. He’d been good-looking but it wasn’t that that had attracted her; he’d seemed tough, exotic and dangerous, his attraction not surprising for a young woman living a very restricted life in Riyadh.

  Fortunately for her she was the daughter of a wealthy man and therefore quite a prize. He also came from a fairly prominent family in Afghanistan and with Talia’s father’s blessing, it hadn’t been long before they had married. The pair had soon left for Afghanistan and a short time later, Talia fell pregnant with their first child.

  Her son Dominick had been born nine months later and as soon as she’d set eyes on him, he’d become the centre of her world. The family had lived in Kabul for the next five years, but then Khalid had gone out into the desert to fight the occupying forces of the Soviet Union. Unwilling to be separated from her husband, Talia had gone with him, taking Dominick with her.

  The conflict back then had been concentrated in the deserts and the inhospitable wilderness of Afghanistan, mujahedeen turf. The Soviet forces were on foreign soil and were in way over their heads. After just killing them became monotonous, the mujahedeen had started kidnapping the soldiers for sport, handing them over to their wives like Talia who had then tortured the prisoners, roasting them over fires, maiming them, killing them slowly, a piece at a time. She’d always possessed a cruel and sadistic streak and out there she discovered she could give it full rein.

  Talia became very proficient at what she did, the captured soldiers’ screams echoing across the plains and terrifying their comrades who heard them which was the intention. But then she’d fallen pregnant again and in 1984 had given birth to her second son Dashnan. Unlike Dominick, he’d been unplanned and to a certain degree unwanted, and his presence in the camp had been an inconvenience, a screaming baby’s cries not exactly conducive to covert operations. Consequently, Dash had kept his mother out of the action for almost two years while she was forced to stay in the camp to look after him, the enforced inactivity only adding to her resentment. Dominick had never given her such trouble and had been a much quieter and easier baby.

  Although, over time, she grew to care about Dash, in her eyes Dominick was always the favoured child. After those initial two years, Talia began to hand the toddler over to another woman to look after at night, going back out with the men. She enjoyed being on the frontline again where the action was, resuming her old activities with enthusiasm. Occasionally their victims were brought back to camp, and although Dominick, Dash and the other children had been led away before the torture started, they still heard every scream and smelt the stench of burning flesh.

  Talia was adamant that the boys both get used to such things; she wanted her sons to grow up to be strong men she could be proud of, not cowards. In the early years, Dominick had covered his ears when the Soviet soldiers started to scream, but by the time he reached his ninth birthday, his hands no longer came up to block out the sound. Being four years younger Dash never managed it, and to Talia, his tears at the screams only highlighted his deficiencies in comparison to his brother.

  In 1989 when Dominick was ten and Dash was five, the Soviet Union withdrew its forces and Khalid had wanted to take his family to live in civilisation again, his sons getting an education. Money had never been an issue for them as her family had been extremely wealthy and she’d not only come with an enormous dowry but had also inherited another significant sum with her brother when her parents were killed in 1991.

  But then a few years later, 9/11 had happened.

  And everything changed.

  By 2001, Talia and her husband had been drifting apart after twenty years of marriage, and when she’d demanded to join him to aid the Taliban against the US forces he’d refused, their ensuing argument resulting in him giving her a severe beating. That night, she’d lain there running through various ways of killing him without attracting suspicion but then fate had intervened. Khalid had gone to visit her younger brother in Riyadh, and had never returned. Like herself, her brother wasn’t someone to cross, being the head of a drug cartel.

  The timing was more than coincidental.

  And it was a problem solved.

  With Khalid gone, Talia had been free to do as she pleased and had chosen to go back out into the desert, joining the people she used to fight alongside and putting her old skills to good use. Her sons were old enough to fend for themselves by that point but even so, she saw them as often as she could, especially Dominick. Twenty two years old at the time, he’d left for Riyadh soon after his father’s disappearance and began working for the cartel. Dash had still been in school and she’d left him to his own devices under the care of his paternal grandmother. Talia had fought with the Taliban for over a decade, but in April of last year after a long stint trapped out in the caves, her world had fallen apart.

  She discovered that Dominick had been killed sixteen months earlier.

  Whilst out in the wild terrain of Afghanistan, many of the Taliban fighters didn’t have easy access to news or information on current events. However, word of an incident reached Talia involving Dash, who’d reportedly been caught in a US bomb strike but had somehow survived and been transported to a hospital in Kabul.

  The pair hadn’t spoken in a long time. She knew that he’d become a soldier, joining the Afghan National Army for a spell then fighting as a mercenary, but to her disgust, had allowed himself to be hired by the enemy. He’d changed his
surname to Sahar, apparently ashamed of his family identity because his parents had fought for the Taliban, so Talia had washed her hands of him.

  She hadn’t reacted initially when he’d got a message to her last April saying he wanted to see her, but after a few days had changed her mind and made the journey to the capital, more out of a sense of duty than anything else. Seeing him in the hospital bed covered in bandages hadn’t stirred much of a response; they were fighting for two different sides and her feelings towards him had always been lukewarm at the best of times. However, that had changed when he’d told her his loyalties had shifted; maybe she could make something out of him after all.

  Deciding to take over his remaining care, she’d organised his discharge from the hospital that night then set him up in their old home.

  Standing there in the London office over a year later, Talia sighed.

  She would never forget the moment when he said how sad it was about Dominick.

  She’d thought he was delirious at first. What are you talking about, she’d asked him. Then he realised she didn’t know, and informed her.

  Dominick had been killed the year before, during some terrorist attacks on London over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

  The news had hit her like a savage punch to the gut.

  In the following months, Dash had recovered well, hideously scarred but still alive, and after regaining his strength he’d stayed true to his word about changing loyalties. Dash had set up his own contracting team with Michael Bernhardt, recruiting men whom no one else would touch, and they started working on specialised contracts, everything from assassinations to trafficking drugs. Talia had gone back out into the desert to re-join the Taliban but the grief she felt at what had happened to Dominick haunted her.

  She’d always been a violent and sadistic woman but the loss of her favourite son had totally unhinged her. She couldn’t move on; no matter how much pleasure she took in taking it out on the enemy, she was always left with a feeling of dissatisfaction.