Blackout (Sam Archer 3) (30 page)

Back in the car speeding through London, the thought of the far away prison made him shudder and Wulf brought his attention back to the present, looking out of the window at the road and the area around them. He and three of his men were on their way in two stolen 4x4s to the airport to pick up Flea, who would have just landed from Dulles, Washington DC. Once they had him, they would make a stop at the hospice on the way back, kill Fletcher, then head to the safe-house and see what Worm had got out of the prisoners before executing them both.

Spider was behind the wheel beside Wulf in the lead car, driving fast, just
as
he had out on the plains all those years ago. They pulled around a roundabout and moved up the ramp towards the Arrivals lane of Heathrow Terminal Five, golden streetlights breaking up the shadows either side of the road. As they pulled around the corner at the top of the ramp, Wulf saw Flea standing there outside the Arrivals hall, waiting, a token bag over his shoulder. Spider drove forward and the vehicle pulled to a momentary halt. Flea walked over and pulled open the door, climbing into the back. The moment he shut the door, Spider put his foot down and the vehicle sped off back into the night.

TWENTY SIX

Back at the ARU’s base, the tech team were working away frantically, running through the security cameras. They had found the stolen white van on the monitors and were now tracing its path sequentially across the city. Behind them Chalky, Fox and Porter were standing, all three of them anxious, watching the minutes tick away and desperate to get some clues. Downstairs Second Team were still recovering and doing their best to re-establish some form of protection on the doors, but the entire team was still shaken, bullet-holes and bloodstains covering the lower level of the headquarters, a recently-arrived medical team taking Jackson’s body and zipping him up in a body bag.

'C'mon,' Chalky said, looking at the screens. 'We don't have time. Give us something!'

They continued, tapping away frantically, speeding up the tapes.

Suddenly, the guy on the far right made a breakthrough, a blond man called Rhys.

'There!' he said, tapping his screen. 'See.'

Chalky and his team-mates rushed over, looking closer at the screen. Rhys was right. The van had stopped outside a ten-storey office building.

'Zoom in,' he said, and Rhys turned, pulling up a white rectangle and pulling it over the van, then tapping a few buttons. The shot enhanced. Up close, they saw the soldiers pull open the back of the van and pull out two limp bodies.

Archer and Nikki.

And they watched as they dragged them into the building and out of sight.

‘Bingo,’ Fox said.

'Are they dead?' one of the tech team asked.

'No. Not yet,' Chalky said. He ran his finger along the screen, at the GPS co-ordinates. 'Where is that?'

'It's down as a new office building, finished recently. It’s fifteen minutes north from here.'

'Send us the directions,' Chalky said, turning and running for the stairs, Fox and Porter close behind. Moments later they were already outside, climbing into Jackson's old car, and firing the engine, they pulled out of the lot with a screech and zoomed off down the street into the night.

At the command post in the building ten miles away, Worm stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door, smiling to himself, tossing his knife onto the desk. He grabbed a mobile phone from his pocket and pressed
Redial
, walking out into the dark centre of the safe-house.

The call connected.

'Sir, it's me. I'm at the command post,' he said, in Albanian.

'Did they talk?'

'Yes, sir. The woman did. Cobb and his family are at a big mansion south of the city, in Surrey. It's called
The Hawkings
. She said it's a big place
- you can locate it on the map. Can't miss it.'

'Good. Very good. Did she play tough?'

'At first. Then she opened up like an opera singer. Did you find Fletcher, sir?'

'We're on our way there now. Once he's gone, we'll go straight to this house and kill Cobb.'
Pause.
'Are they all still alive?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Wire up the safe-house, then come meet us at this house. The explosives will take care of them.'

'Yes, sir.'

The call ended. Worm walked across the room, flicking a switch on a wad of plastic explosives that had been set up on one of the desks. He thought for a moment, then set the timer to 2:00. That would give him enough time to kill the pretty boy then get out of here before the safe-house went up. It would vaporise the bodies and any evidence that the Panthers were ever here. He pushed the button, and the timer started counting down.

1:59.

1:58.

Walking quickly across the room, he put his knife back in its sheath, then grabbed a 9mm Beretta from the desk by two flickering televisions, pulling back the top-slide and checking the chamber. The cop had spat at him. Worm would shoot him in both testicles, then the chest, then the head.

He smiled and twisted the door handle, pushing the door open, stepping into the room, raising the pistol.

But he frowned and froze.

The blond man wasn't in the chair.

He was gone.

At that same moment, Archer slammed the door from the other side into the man, smashing him into the door frame. The pain and anger from the wound to his head and the man's threats had unleashed a terrible rage and Archer yelled with anger as he slammed his shoulder into the back of the doorframe again and again, smashing the soldier in the gap, his chest and head pounded and thumping against the frame.

Archer had never been so angry. He roared with rage and hit the torturer with the door again and again, slam after slam, as hard as he could, in a violent frenzy, the pain from his head fuelling the fire. He must have hit the man about twenty times. He only stopped when he finally ran out of breath.

He stepped back, wheezing from the exertion, and heard a slide and a thump as the soldier collapsed to the ground behind the door to his left.

Archer's hands and feet were no longer bound. The chair he’d been tied to had been damaged at some point and a screw was jutting out of the back where the seat met the chair. Archer had sawn frantically through the tape binding his wrists. Once he’d freed his hands, he'd unwrapped his ankles and wiped his face off with his shirt, holding it there to try to stem the flow. It was useless. Blood was pouring from the wound. He felt light-headed and dizzy. There was no other way out of the room than the door, so he had waited the other side for it to open then attacked like his life depended on it.

Which it did.

He moved around the doorway, looking down at the torturer. The guy's pistol had spilled from his hands. Scooping it up in his hands, he checked it was loaded then dropped down to his knees and checked the man's pulse.

He was dead. Archer had killed him.

He saw that the man's head and body were severely damaged from the metal doorway, his face bruised and smashed and bloody, his ribs and neck surely broken. Archer's rage had given him unprecedented strength. He'd beaten the man to death with the door.

But he didn't give the body a second glance.

Stepping over the dead man, he ran through next door. He barged
it
open and heard a stifled scream.

Flicking on the light, he saw Nikki there alone in a white bathroom, her face a picture of terror, duct-taped to the metal chair. She then realised it was him, but her eyes remained just as wide. His face and white t-shirt were covered with blood, and with the gun in his hand he must have looked like something out of a nightmare. He saw that she was unharmed though. He rushed forward, dropping the gun, then pulled the tape off Nikki's mouth, blood running down into his eyes and down the side of his face.

'Are you OK?' he asked quietly.

She nodded frantically, looking at his face.

'What happened to you?'

'I'm fine,' he said. 'It's just a cut. Looks worse than it is.’

'Where is he?' she asked, scared.

'He's dead. We need to get out of here. They'll be back any minute.'

As he undid her ankles, she shook her head. 'No. They won't.'

He paused and looked up at her.

'Why?'

'Because I told him where Director Cobb and his family are.'

Archer looked at her as her chin quivered. Tears brimmed in her eyes and fell down her cheeks.

'I'm sorry, Arch. He told me he'd kill you if I didn't tell him where they were. Then he put the knife to my stomach. Said he was going to cut out my ovaries and show them to me.'

'It's OK. He's gone. C'mon.'

He helped her up, wiping blood from his eyes.

'Wait,' she said, grabbing a towel from a hook beside her with her free hand. She pushed it to Archer's cut, and he held it there, trying to staunch the flow of blood. Gun in hand, he took the lead and moved out into the safe-house, keeping her behind him protectively.

The place had been abandoned.

The team were gone. He could see two televisions set up on a desk, silently playing the news, the one to the right showing a fresh report of the second gunfight at the ARU’s headquarters.

But he saw something else in the distance in the dark.

A series of red numbers.

Counting down.

And they were at
1:01.

1:00.

00:59.

'Oh shit,' Archer said. He turned to Nikki. ‘Stairs! Go!’

She ran forward towards the door to the stairwell. Archer went to follow her, but suddenly stopped. Nikki burst open the door to the stairwell, and turned back.

‘Arch, we have to go!’ she shouted.

‘Wait!’ he shouted.

In the silence, the room was still, the only activity the two muted televisions and the red numbers ticked down. But Archer heard something else, faint but unmistakeable.

Whimpering.

There was another door beside the bathroom, a store cupboard of some sort. He ran forward, wiping blood from his eyes and pulled it open.

A woman and a boy were in there,
both
bound
and
gagged
with duct tape
.

They
stared
at him in terror.

TWENTY SEVEN

The garden of the north London hospice covered about three acres, centred around the duck pond that provided some quiet space for the patients and their visitors. The outer fence was there both to provide privacy and a sense of security to the residents at the hospice, but also as a soft deterrent to anyone who was tempted to access the park from the outside.

The whereabouts of the English soldier had been a puzzle for the Panthers squad. They’d kept his dog tags from the night they kidnapped him, so they knew his name, but the fat CIA analyst who had pulled the information on the others hadn’t been able to come up with anything on the guy. In the car on the way here, Wulf told Flea that once they’d arrived in England, the group had scoured everything they could think of. Phonebooks, internet, everything they could access. But nothing. No one had any idea where he was. They had reluctantly come to the conclusion that, like the American soldier Webster, Fletcher had died in the years since. There was no way he’d still be a soldier, not without seven of his toes. However, when Worm had tailed the two cars leaving the police station earlier, they had led him here. And after he moved around into this garden, just before the police shut the curtains in one of the rooms, he had seen a familiar face lying in the bed.

Corporal Fletcher.

Flea scaled the outer fence of the hospice garden with ease and had crept forward, the dark shrubbery and trees providing perfect cover. He was lying prone on his front, the Dragunov Tigr hunting rifle set up towards the building, his shoulder in the stock. The Dragunov was a Russian weapon, semi-automatic and gas-operated, and despite being bought illegally on the street was in pretty good condition. The end of the barrel was fitted with a flash suppressor, which made it a good choice for covert shooting. The rifle was effective at over 1000 metres, but Flea was less than 100 from his target. He had made shots like these thousands of times, and could almost do it with his eyes closed. Being a perfectionist like most snipers, he would have liked to have had some practice with the rifle, zeroing the sights and getting used to the feel of the weapon, but right then he didn't have a choice. On the way here in the car, he had loaded four spare NATO 7.62 bullets into the magazine of the weapon as extra insurance should he do the unthinkable and miss.

He had his cheek resting against the stock, his right eye looking down the scope. It was a PSO-1 Optical Sight, a modern scope which had features such as bullet-drop compensation, a rangefinder grid and also a reticule that allowed target acquisition in conditions without sufficient light. His position gave him direct sight into the room, and
the crosshairs on the scope were at that moment resting on Fletcher’s face. The curtains had been half shut but there was slight gap and it gave Flea ample view of his target. Through the scope, he looked at the man up close and recognised him instantly, despite how sick he looked. He remembered helping take seven of his toes.