[Sam Archer 08.0] Last Breath

by Tom Barber

  The boy nodded.

  ‘But he still walked into that classroom with a gun in his hand,’ Jack said. ‘Something made him snap.’

  ‘People who do this don’t just snap,’ Archer replied. ‘They take their time. They plan. They prepare and source weapons. He knew what he was doing.’

  ‘What about social reasons?’ Ledger asked.

  ‘I told you, he wasn’t bullied,’ Jesse said.

  ‘But you said he wasn’t one of the cool kids.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Could he have done this to gain attention? Perhaps he resented being overlooked.’ He glanced at Angela’s I-Pad, which was currently showing a picture of Jeremy. ‘If he wanted to be famous, he got his wish.’

  ‘He didn’t give two shits about any of that stuff,’ Jesse said, adamant. ‘And he was the most gentle person I ever met. He hated violence.’

  ‘Then this doesn’t make any damn sense,’ Ledger said.

  As silence fell in the van, Archer ran all they knew through his mind.

  Anonymous.

  An online justice group.

  Jeremy Somers, with a gun.

  He pointed at Angela’s I-Pad. ‘Can you pass me that?’

  Taking it, he opened up a new tab with Google and typed in Anonymous, looking at recent news headlines connected with the group.

  Online justice group Anonymous expose Midwest town cover-up of high school football players accused of rape.

  NSA terminates contract with weapons company after Anonymous revelations.

  Anonymous threatens to expose Mexican cartel with police connections.

  Anonymous targets gun-runners operating on US-Mexican border.

  ‘What the hell was he up to?’ he said quietly.

  .

  TWENTY SEVEN

  In his office across town, the man called Marcus and his assistant had been listening intently to the reports coming in from their four guys on the street. They were also patched in to Metro Dispatch and the FBI scanner, all of them painting a frustrating picture. Standing alongside Burnett who was seated at the desk, Marcus leant forward, currently on the radio with his four guys; he was furious and letting them know it.

  ‘The police now have five more bodies to deal with!’ he spat. ‘What the hell are you thinking?’

  ‘We’re keeping the police distracted,’ the group’s leader responded. ‘More bodies means they’ll be focusing on the threat of more than one killer out there. Confusing them gives us more time to find Ledger.’

  ‘Four dead teenagers? Are you insane?’

  ‘Wasn’t planned. They tried to jump my guy. He didn’t have any alternative.’

  ‘Bullshit. You need to control him. Did you forget there’s a plan here?’

  ‘We’re following it. But we’re having to adapt.’

  ‘Every second Harry Ledger has breath in his lungs is another opportunity for him to talk to the cops. Christ only knows what he and Archer have figured out by now. The kid and Archer’s brother-in-law have probably heard more than they should too. And how the hell did that bitch reporter from Boston know where they were? They hadn’t made any calls.’

  ‘She’s probably doing the same thing we are,’ Burnett said, gesturing at the scanners on the desk in front of him.

  ‘All five of them have to go. I want them found and dealt with.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of a full-blown riot, in an area flooded with almost every goddamn Federal agent in the Tri-State area. You should come down here and try finding these guys. It’s not as easy as it might look from where you are.’

  ‘Use your head. Ledger might not have family in the city, but this guy Archer went to see his brother-in-law, the lawyer,’ Marcus persisted. ‘The man has a wife and two kids in the city. Archer’s sister and nieces.’

  He looked at Ledger and Archer’s files side by side on the screen.

  ‘Find them, let Archer and the lawyer know you have them and they’ll appear soon enough. Then you can get a lead on Ledger.’

  ‘You’ve done your thing. That’s why we’re in this shit. Now shut the hell up, and let us do ours.’

  Inside the van, the group sitting quietly in the semi-darkness heard gunshots in the distance, the atmosphere silent and tense. The conversation about Jeremy and the school shooting had died out and the glare of the I-Pad showed a live feed from the GU Hospital where Jeff Cummings had been shot.

  ‘All that effort to set you up,’ Archer said to Ledger, both men looking at the screen. ‘Then they kill the guard with another distance shot when you’re trapped down here.’ He shook his head. ‘Why would they screw up like that?’

  ‘Whatever the case, I’m not the only one they’ll want dead now,’ Ledger said. ‘We’ve all spent time together. Had a chance to talk. They’ll know that. And these guys don’t exactly seem like the forgiving type.’

  ‘So then all we have to do is keep hidden until the cops figure this out, right?’ Jesse said. ‘If you were down here when Cummings was killed, they’ll know they’ve got the wrong guy.’

  ‘We can’t just keep hiding,’ Archer suddenly said. ‘They’ll find a way to flush us out.’

  ‘How? What can they do?’ Jack asked.

  Archer looked at him. After a pause, Jack swore, realising what his brother-in-law was thinking.

  ‘What?’ Jesse asked.

  ‘Using people we care about as leverage,’ Archer replied.

  ‘That won’t work,’ Jesse said. ‘My foster parents are out of town.’

  ‘I don’t have any family here,’ Ledger said.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Angela said.

  ‘We do,’ Archer said quietly, looking at Jack.

  ‘Who?’ Angela asked.

  ‘My two daughters and my wife,’ Jack said, looking at Archer in dawning concern. ‘Sam’s sister and nieces.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Sarah’s working at an office across the city, off Washington Circle. The two girls are at Reagan Junior High getting ready for a school play,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘Which starts in thirty five minutes. Shit.’

  ‘You can’t call your wife,’ Angela told him. ‘They’ll know the office they shot up belongs to your law firm by now. They’ll be onto you in a moment and can then track her down.’

  ‘She’s not at her usual office,’ Jack said. ‘She’s overseeing a confidential merger. No-one apart from me and her boss knows where she is tonight.’

  ‘So she’s safe for the moment, right?’ Jesse said.

  Jack shook his head, looking at his watch and cursing. ‘She was expecting me to have picked her up by now. She’s probably been trying to call me.’

  ‘We need to get to them,’ Ledger replied. ‘They’re all at risk.’

  ‘Hate to break it to you, but right now we can’t even make it across the Anacostia,’ Angela interrupted. ‘Not to mention the NSA team will be onto us the moment we try.’

  ‘Then we need to lure them somewhere,’ Archer said.

  ‘Who; Sarah and the girls?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No. The NSA team.’

  There was a stunned silence.

  ‘You want to take these people on?’ Angela asked in disbelief. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m dead serious.’

  ‘We almost died escaping from them. They’ve lost us, which is a small miracle in itself, believe me; now you want to deliberately put us back in the firing line?’

  She looked pointedly at Jesse, Jack and Ledger. A teenager, a lawyer and an exhausted wounded cop.

  ‘Do they look like they’re ready to fight?’

  ‘Everything we’ve been discussing is guesswork,’ Archer replied. ‘We have to find out for sure who these guys are and why they’re doing this. I know how we can do that.’

  ‘I already told you what Marcia told me. They’re covering something major up. They have to be NSA. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not convinced it’s as simp
le as that. I think you’re wrong.’

  ‘How can you know?’

  ‘If these people want someone out of the way, you’d just disappear,’ he said. ‘Whoever is behind this is leaving bodies in four cities across the East Coast attracting the attention of the world’s media. Not exactly subtle, is it?’

  He pointed at the I-pad.

  ‘These guys are professionals. If they were responsible for killing Cummings, they’d know for a fact the cops and FBI looking for Ledger will have realised there’s no way Harry could have shot him. My sergeant in New York will have seen the news by now, and he’ll come forward with everything that he, Marquez and I suspected. With that information, the FBI are going to start asking questions. This supposed NSA team just added another layer of doubt to whether Ledger’s guilty by shooting the guard. The Agency wouldn’t be that sloppy. There’s another motive here.’

  They all turned their attention to Jack, who’d got up and was heading for the rear door.

  ‘You can’t go out there,’ Angela said.

  ‘According to that thing, there’s no indication I’m a wanted man,’ Jack said, pointing at the radio tuned to the FBI scanner. ‘I have to get to Reagan right now. Whatever you say, I’m not leaving my girls unprotected. These guys already showed they’re not above hurting children.’

  ‘These men attacked your office,’ she replied. ‘They almost certainly know who you are too by now. And they’ll know you’ve been with Ledger for the last hour. Don’t be so sure they won’t be looking for you as well.’

  ‘I’m going to protect my family,’ he said firmly, looking at Archer. ‘At least the girls have cops guarding the school. That was confirmed when I called after the shooting at Wilson High. But Sarah won’t have any protection once she leaves that office, which she may already have done.’

  ‘She probably will if my sergeant tells the FBI who I am,’ Archer said. ‘They’ll be waiting to see if I try to make contact with her. At the moment, I’m Harry’s accomplice.’ He looked at Jesse. ‘Same as you, kid.’

  ‘Whatever the case, I need you to try and get to Sarah as soon as you can, Sam. You got us into this mess. Now you can make sure my wife doesn’t get hurt because of you.’

  Reaching into his pocket in the silence that followed, Jack pulled out his business card holder and took a card out; turning it over, he wrote something then passed it to Archer.

  ‘As I said, she’s working at an office across town. No-one aside from me and her boss know where she is. If we don’t contact her, I don’t see how these men could find her.’

  ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘North-west, off Washington Circle . You just need to get over the river somehow.’

  ‘So do you,’ Ledger said. ‘That might not be so easy.’

  ‘I’m not a suspect,’ Jack said. ‘Not yet, anyway. I saw a two-lane road behind us that leads to the Bridge. I’ll try to hitch a ride out of here.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Jesse said. ‘Aren’t exactly a load of Uber drivers running around tonight.’

  ‘It’s not negotiable. I’m leaving.’

  ‘Take this then,’ Ledger said, leaning forward and offering his handgun to Jack.

  Jack looked down at the weapon. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘Just take it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’ll be security at the school,’ Archer said, seeing his brother-in-law’s discomfort. ‘He’ll never get inside with a handgun.’

  ‘Then one of us needs to go with him for protection,’ Ledger said. He looked at Jack in his cream chinos, blue shirt with the rolled-up sleeves and deck shoes. ‘You walk through these streets wearing clothes like that, how long do you think you’ll last?’

  ‘One of you goes with him, either the NSA team will kill you before you even make the Anacostia or the police will nail you at the roadblocks on the bridge,’ Angela said. ‘His only chance of making it out of here is on his own.’

  ‘I’ll get out,’ Jack said.

  Archer nodded. ‘We can distract the NSA team but you’re going to be on your own for a while.’

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  Easing the handle down, Jack pushed the door back a fraction and cautiously checked the street outside. Down the street, the cop car was still burning.

  But for the moment it was clear.

  ‘Good luck,’ Archer told him.

  Pausing for a moment, Jack nodded; then he glanced back.

  ‘You too.’

  Pushing the door wider, he dropped out onto the street then closed the door behind him.

  A moment later, he was gone.

  ‘What do you mean, distract the NSA team?’ Angela asked, having picked up on Archer’s previous comment. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘They’ve been hunting us for over two hours,’ he replied while rifling through a bag left in the van. ‘They killed an innocent woman, teenager, my partner’s son and now a high school guard.’

  He pulled out what he could find, a lighter, duct tape, electrical cord.

  ‘It’s time we turned the tables.’

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Three streets away, most of the Anacostia gang members had managed to evade the police officers who’d chased them, resuming their search of the neighbourhood for Ledger and the group he was with. However, five of them had just been distracted from their search, having cornered four Metro Civil Disturbance Unit police officers who were doing their best to try and dominate the dangerous situation they’d just found themselves in.

  But they were armed with batons, and the other guys had guns.

  ‘Get down!’ the officers shouted, raising the nightsticks.

  ‘Five-o in deep shit now!’ one of the men laughed as they walked the cops down.

  ‘Get down, now!’

  Instead, the five gang members attacked, so hopped up on meth they didn’t even notice the hits from the batons as they laid into the four police officers. Watching from across the street, their leader checked his cell phone again and swore, seeing he still had no update message from the man who’d offered them this job. These neighbourhoods were large and it was enemy territory; they needed more information on where Ledger could be. He wanted the money but wasn’t prepared to be killed for it.

  As he tucked his phone away, suddenly he heard shouts of abuse coming from somewhere above him; looking up he saw several women leaning over a balcony of one of the housing projects.

  Pulling his pistol, the leader aimed up and started firing.

  Watching all this from the shadows, Archer saw the man blasting rounds up at the project housing, as other members of the gang continued to lay into the cops. He swore quietly; the attackers had the upper hand and were beating the shit out of the officer. They’d kill them if he didn’t intervene.

  Suddenly to his relief, two squad cars pulled into the street, solving his dilemma, and the men took off, leaving the badly injured cops behind them on the ground.

  Remaining in the shadows, Archer quietly withdrew, heading back for the dead-end street where they’d found the black van. The streets weren’t all concrete and brick like New York. There were paths and grass patches, this neighbourhood all peeling paint, chipped brickwork and broken gates, walls covered with overgrown ivy, many of the houses and apartments boarded up.

  He saw the vehicle had gone, moved into another position on his instruction. Breaking off the old lock to an abandoned house across the street from where the van had been parked, he ducked inside; as expected, the house was empty. Moving quickly upstairs, he opened the door to what had once been a bedroom overlooking the street and kicked off the slats covering the windows, letting in some light from a lamppost outside.

  This house, just like the area, seemed to have been forgotten a long time ago. As he looked around, he could hear the seemingly incessant noise of rioting, shouts and the occasional smash of glass. He also heard intermittent gunshots.

  He’d recog
nised that group fighting with the cops as the same gang who’d almost trashed the van fifteen minutes earlier and recalled what he’d heard them say.

  Tip it, one of them had said.

  They’re not gonna be in there, someone else had replied.

  They’re not going to be in there.

  The gang was looking for someone.

  Suddenly, he saw some movement below and cut back into the shadows of the derelict, watching as several figures entered the street, three of them carrying pistols.

  He watched silently as they passed, the men paying no attention to the house.

  Archer turned and moved across the upper level to a gap where a window pane used to be, looking down at the other side of the building. The two-lane street had a couple of cars driving through, but it was pretty quiet.

  They had to get this distraction going immediately.

  He could see the entrance to the Anacostia Metro subway station, about a hundred yards away. No-one was going in or out, but he recalled a news report saying that the subway service had been shut down in Wards 7 and 8 due to the rioting.

  Turning away, he walked back across the room, and took a moment to mentally prepare.

  Angela was right. You didn’t provoke a confrontation with men like this, especially with a kid, a reporter, and a wounded cop as back-up. He and Ledger only had a few rounds left between them and Harry was not only exhausted and dealing with a gunshot wound to his shoulder, but was also clearly going through withdrawal from his lack of Oxy. Archer had noticed him sweating and holding his stomach a couple of times. He just hoped Ledger had enough in him to step up, because Archer sure as hell needed some help right now.

  With a big question mark over Ledger’s operational ability, that left Archer facing odds of at least four-to-one, which could change to six or seven times that if any of those armed gangs showed up again. Turning themselves in was the obvious choice, but he had no idea who was involved in this. Even though he still had his doubts as to whether the NSA was responsible, if it was, they were in seriously deep shit. In trying to take them out, those men had shot up Ledger’s hideout, destroyed Jack’s office and were beating the FBI to the chase every time. If they were that determined, he knew they wouldn’t just stop if he, Ledger and the others were taken into custody. Jeff Cummings had been killed with an army of law-enforcement on site around him.