by Tom Barber
‘How bad, Harry?’ Archer asked.
‘Through and through,’ he said through gritted teeth.
Archer swore suddenly as he turned a corner and spotted a mob trashing stores at the end of the street ahead, forcing him to cut down a side road, no idea where he was going. They weren’t the first rioters he’d caught sight of, but so far he’d been lucky, seeing them in time to make a detour, knowing if they found Ledger it would be game over.
Seeing a black shape in the sky, he peered up through the windscreen and saw a helicopter hovering high over to their left above the area they’d just left, Buena Vista. It didn’t seem to be focused on them, but it was almost impossible to tell. Ironically, the only thing working in their favour right now was that the number of genuine protestors seemed to have been swelled by opportunistic looters, which was helping to clog up the streets, making it more difficult for them to be spotted.
‘Christ man, are any of you cops actually straight?’ the teenager suddenly asked, finally finding his voice.
‘Those guys weren’t cops,’ Archer said, checking the rear-view mirror again.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’ve been one for a decade. Trust me; I know.’ Checking around them before pulling onto another road, Archer looked at the teenager again. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jesse. Jesse Mayer.’
‘How the hell did you find Harry before the FBI?’
‘I live round here. I was heading home, saw a guy running down the street and then break into that house. Recognised him straight away from the news.’
‘Why didn’t you call the cops?’
‘Had my reasons.’
Archer frowned, glancing at him. ‘And you just happened to have a gun?’
‘This is Southeast D.C, man. Everyone has a gun.’ He looked at Archer. ‘You told that guy back there you’re NYPD, right? Where’s your back-up?’
Archer turned a quick right as a cop car pulled out onto the street ahead and headed straight towards them, sirens wailing. He tensed, ready to react, but the Metro squad car kept going and continued down the street, disappearing out of sight.
‘I haven’t got any back-up,’ he said, looking at the teenager. ‘Right now, we’re on our own.’
*
Although the search for the sniper had been the FBI’s case for the past three days, Archer’s involvement in it had started just over twenty four hours ago.
When he saw the body.
He’d been on duty in New York and had just been heading home after a successful operation to pack for a well-earned week’s break. As he’d told Jack in the car, Archer was part of a five-man investigation team, Shepherd the sergeant in command, and they’d been working almost non-stop for over a year, all of them having their scheduled vacation interrupted at some point.
As a consequence, the Bureau’s boss Jim Franklin had decreed that they all needed some time off. Mandatory vacation, seven days, no arguments or interruptions this time.
The other three detectives on his team, Vargas, her partner Lisa Marquez and Archer’s partner Josh Blake had been only too happy to follow that particular order. Vargas had booked a vacation for herself, her daughter and Archer to St Lucia, but he’d been working with Vice on a case concerning a gang smuggling drugs in through the West Side docks, much of the money raised funding terrorist activity. He’d had dealings with this particular gang before while working in London at the ARU, which was the reason Vice wanted him involved.
Despite Franklin’s earlier order, a late development meant he couldn’t leave when planned, needing to stay on for an extra two days. Vargas had offered to remain in New York and wait for him, but he’d told her to go and enjoy her break with Isabel and that he’d meet them out there. They’d left as planned, Archer staying on to finish up the joint operation, culminating in an afternoon bust, seven successful arrests and a large consignment of heroin off the street.
The raid complete, the criminal operation shut down, Archer had been returning to Queens to type up the report and pack when his cell phone rang. It was Shepherd, ordering Archer to get to the 48th Street area of the East River bikeway immediately. He hadn’t provided any further details over the phone.
But Archer knew his sergeant well enough to sense there was something very wrong.
Driving across Manhattan, Archer had emerged from 48th to find a crime scene on a concrete bikeway ten yards from the River, NYPD officers from the local Precinct already present. Pulling off the road, Archer stepped out of the car; he saw a white blanket had been draped over what was clearly a body sprawled on the ground.
A bicycle was lying ten feet ahead of the white sheet, its front wheel slowly rotating in the breeze.
A couple of Homicide detectives were standing by the sheet, one looking towards the highway and the other towards the East River, the water lapping at the concrete walls twenty yards away, the sound blending with the noise of traffic from the highway behind them. As Archer approached the crime-scene, the man looking at the River sensed his arrival and turned.
‘Counter-Terrorism,’ Archer said, giving his name and showing his badge, the logo on the navy blue polo shirt he was wearing helping ID him.
The detective nodded. ‘Youngs, Homicide. That’s my partner, Walsh. We were told you were coming.’
Surprised, Archer exchanged a nod of greeting with the other detective, then looked past him at the sheet. ‘Who’s underneath?’
Youngs held out a wallet, which Archer took and opened.
He froze.
Time stood still as he looked at the photo on the library card; a very familiar face.
Turning, keeping hold of the wallet, Archer looked at the sheet.
Praying there’d been some mistake.
After a few moments hesitation, he walked over to it.
Crouching down, he lifted it and saw his prayers hadn’t been answered.
It was him.
‘Boy was riding the bike when he took a single gunshot to the chest,’ Walsh said quietly, seeing the look on Archer’s face. ‘Killed him instantly.’
He paused.
‘Did you know him?’
Archer stared at Nathan Blake’s body.
‘He’s my partner’s eldest son,’ he replied.
Youngs and Walsh glanced at each other, then took a step back, giving Archer some space. He didn’t notice, the noise of the highway receding, the cars rolling by silently as he continued to stare at Nate’s body.
After a long moment, he flicked his eyes up to the FDR Drive behind them, a highway that ran all the way up the East Side of Manhattan. Traffic was flowing smoothly, no jams yet, but Archer could see drivers slowing down as they and their passengers peered curiously in their direction as they passed. He glanced back down at the sheet, and realised he was holding the boy’s hand. Nate was only fourteen. He and Archer had got on very well; they’d all had lunch together at Josh’s house just two days ago. Nate had invited his first girlfriend and so nervous he’d spilled a jug of sauce all over the poor girl’s lap, Archer and Josh ribbing him about it when she left the room.
His hand was ice cold.
‘Witnesses?’ Archer asked quietly, his mouth dry.
‘None so far.’
‘This many cars passing, someone must have seen the shooter if he’d been on the path,’ Archer said. ‘Or the shot…came from a vehicle.’
‘You’re looking the wrong way, man,’ Walsh said. ‘It came from the other side.’
Archer looked at him for a moment, then shifted his gaze to the buildings of Queens and Brooklyn on the other side of the River. Releasing Nate’s hand and placing the blanket back carefully to shield the boy, Archer rose and looked at the two detectives beside him. ‘From a boat?’
Youngs shook his head. ‘From Queens.’
Archer looked at the buildings in the distance. ‘Are you serious?’
‘First rooftops over there are a thousand yards, easy,’ Walsh continued. ‘Shooter mu
st have used a high-powered rifle judging by…the damage.’
Archer turned back to look at the white blanket, seeing the bicycle ten feet ahead of it. ‘They hit him when he was on the bike?’
The two detectives nodded. Shielding his eyes from the sun with his forearm, Archer looked over the River. There’d been strong gusty winds all week and this close to the water it was blowing hard. Archer could taste the salt in the air, his senses heightened, feeling ice cold despite the heat.
A hit of over a thousand yards, with a strong wind and at a moving target on a bicycle.
Despite the shock he was feeling, two thoughts crystallised in Archer’s mind.
Who the hell could make a shot like that?
And why?
Fifty yards away, two black FBI Crown Victorias with antennas on the back suddenly roared into view and pulled up behind Archer’s parked car, an NY ONE news truck close behind.
‘Shit, here comes the cavalry,’ Youngs said, turning to look at the FBI agents getting out of the cars. Ignoring them, Archer felt his cell phone buzz in his pocket. He answered, not taking his eyes off the water.
‘Hello?’
‘Arch, it’s Rach,’ an analyst from the Counter-Terrorism Bureau said, their base just the other side of the water too.
Archer paused. ‘Does he know?’
‘He knows. He’s at home with Michelle and the girls. Marquez is over there with them.’
Archer didn’t reply for a moment. All he was aware of was the lapping waves and hum of traffic.
‘Some Federal agents just arrived,’ he finally said. ‘We need them to back off. I want to take this. We need to take this.’
‘We can’t. It’s already their investigation. A pair of agents from Boston just showed up here. Apparently two other people on the East Coast have been shot in the past forty eight hours with a high-powered rifle.’
‘Why didn’t we hear about this?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where were the hits?’
‘One in Portland on Monday, and the other in Boston yesterday. Same MO, same level of expertise needed to pull it off. The pair from Boston want access to our files.’
Archer looked down at Nate’s wallet in his hands, the boy smiling up at him from his library card photo. ‘Why do they want our files? Nate didn’t have one.’
‘An ex-cop bus driver going over the Queensborough called in forty minutes ago saying he thinks he saw a muzzle flash on the roof of a building on Vernon Boulevard. We checked it out and found a shell casing right where he said he’d seen the flash, twelve hundred yards from where Nate got hit. Working with the FBI, CSU lifted a print and got a result. He’s known to us.’
‘Someone we’ve arrested before?’
‘Not exactly. He’s a cop.’
TEN
Archer couldn’t remember his journey back to the Counter-Terrorism Bureau’s headquarters. The image of the lifeless, damaged body under that sheet completely swamped his thoughts, replacing the memory of the smiling, slightly self-conscious boy he’d last seen just forty eight hours earlier.
Halfway through the drive back, he registered the radio was on, a brief news bulletin reporting on the shooting coming over the 5pm headlines.
FBI were keeping it quiet to try and avoid panic, he thought, the realisation a brief moment of respite in his mind from the image of Nate’s body.
He recalled the interested faces of people in cars driving past on the FDR, staring at the sheet-covered body and the bicycle beyond it.
At any moment it was going to be well and truly out there.
He arrived at the Bureau to find the two Boston FBI agents Rach had mentioned inside an upper floor Conference Room with senior members of the CT Bureau, Shepherd being one of them. They were watching a live feed of a raid being conducted by the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. Arriving unnoticed, Archer moved into the room quietly and joined Shepherd, whose arms were folded, trapping a file against his chest, his face dark. He and Josh went back a long way, having been based at Midtown South together for several years before transferring here to Counter-Terrorism; Shepherd also had experience in losing a child.
The two men stood silently side-by-side, watching the images of the raid, the feed from four HRT team members’ helmet-cams displayed on the screen in tiles. Archer had arrived just before show-time.
‘Breaching the door,’ a voice whispered. ‘Stand by.’
A moment later the door was smashed open and they heard shouts of police as the apartment was breached by the task force.
The place was immaculately tidy, a bench press with a barbell and weights in the sitting room neatly stacked together, nothing out of place. As two members of the team entered the bedroom, both their attention and those watching was immediately drawn to one particular item.
A huge rifle, the weapon almost seven feet long, a suppressor the size of a Pringles can attached to the end.
‘We’ve got a rifle, latex gloves on the bedroom floor. Christ, there’s vomit on the bed too.’ One of the officers opened the bedside cabinet. ‘Load of empty pill capsules in here.’
‘Any sign of him?’ one of the Boston FBI agents said into her mic, a blonde with a Massachusetts accent.
‘He’s not here.’
‘We’ll get a lab team over there immediately. Don’t touch anything.’
‘Too right. Copy that.’
The second FBI agent, a dark-haired man, turned to address all the NYPD personnel in the room as he simultaneously dialled a number on his cell phone. ‘We need roadblocks and all exit points out of the city policed. That’s three dead in three days in three different cities. If he escapes, we’re looking at another victim in another city tomorrow.’
‘He left the rifle behind,’ a NYPD sergeant said.
‘Doesn’t mean he only has one,’ the man replied, lifting his phone to his ear.
Staying silent at the back of the room, Archer looked at Shepherd, his initial shock now starting to turn into white-hot rage.
Nate’s murderer was a cop.
As the assembled sergeants and detectives started heading for the door, Shepherd turned to Archer.
‘Come with me,’ he said quietly.
Moments later, the two men were alone in the Conference Room next door with the door closed. Both remained on their feet, Shepherd with that file under his arm.
‘Who did this, sir?’ Archer asked.
‘He’s a Brooklyn South officer,’ Shepherd said, opening the file. ‘Former US Army Staff Sergeant. Born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, thirty one years ago. Joined the United States army when he was twenty one, did eight years. Showed extreme aptitude for rifle shooting and tactics as an infantryman, so was recommended for sniper school at Fort Benning when he got back after his first deployment. Did well, and carried out two further tours in a sniper team.’
His arms folded, the image of Nate’s body still in his mind, Archer suddenly looked at his sergeant intently.
That background was very familiar.
‘Left the army when he was twenty nine after developing post-traumatic stress from a three day battle in Kandahar. An operation went wrong, contact was lost and rescue support couldn’t get through. When a path was finally cleared they went in to pick up nine guys and he was the only survivor. Once he healed up, he was honourably discharged on medical grounds then spent ten months working with the Veterans Affairs in D.C in recovery for his PTS. Applied for the NYPD and qualified from the Academy in Georgia two summers ago; he’d been sent down there for extra evaluation by ESU. He ended up qualifying but is currently a beat officer in Brooklyn South.’
He dropped the open file on the table, not saying the man’s name. He didn’t need to; Archer already knew who he was talking about.
‘Almost two years ago, I was told I’d have a new addition to my investigation team,’ Shepherd continued. ‘Some Brit who’d been fast-tracked because his boss called in a favour. I was pissed off having him forced on me like that so I
decided to monitor him from the moment he started training. I even went down to Georgia myself for a day to watch him. If I didn’t like what I saw, I was going to refuse to take him and screw the order for him to be in my squad.’
He looked at Archer.
‘But he didn’t make a mistake. He ended up being one of the best I’ve ever worked with. And I recall seeing him working well together with a fellow candidate, an ex-soldier, his room-mate.’
‘Harry Ledger,’ Archer finished quietly, staring at Ledger’s NYPD photo in the open file. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘You knew him, Arch. You lived together for six weeks. And he just killed Josh’s son.’
‘But why?’
‘You tell me. Any bad blood between you?’
‘Are you kidding? I met up with him for a drink just a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t harbour any hostility towards you? You two were pretty competitive in camp.’
‘That was just normal rivalry. Nothing anyone would get killed over.’
‘CSU ran the shell casing found on the roof through ballistics and Ledger’s fingerprints were all over it,’ Shepherd said. ‘He handled that casing.’
‘But why on earth would he want to kill Nate?’
‘The only reason I could think of is that he wanted to get at you by taking out Josh’s son.’
‘If he wanted to come after me, why not target Isabel? And why kill two other innocent people? And why try to hurt me in the first place? He’s my friend.’
‘I’m thinking it has to be a resurgence of post-traumatic stress.’ Moving forward, Shepherd turned the page on Ledger’s file to his military overview. ‘Like I said, he spent a considerable stretch at the Veteran’s Centre in D.C being treated for it. According to this, his assessors were sure he’d fully recovered, same as the team in Glynco, but maybe he wasn’t. Look at all those sleeping pill capsules HRT just found in the drawer beside his bed.’
Holding the file, Archer stared at the reports, his head spinning.
Officer Harry Ledger.
Former Staff Sergeant Harry Ledger.