Blackout (Sam Archer 3) (34 page)

His face and bandage around his head camouflaged and smeared with mud, Archer had lowered the PSG-1A1 and crept up behind the
man
. He’d grabbed a Glock from the gun-cage and tucked it into his thigh holster earlier, but he didn’t want to use a gun and alert
anyone in the house. But Archer felt a coldness settle over him.  His head throbbing, the front of his fatigues and t-shirt stained with blood, he was still enraged by the torture from earlier and watching Fox get hit. He wasn’t going to read this man his rights. This sniper was about to die.

The soldier had started as Archer started choking him. He tried everything to break his hold, bucking and thrashing. Archer knelt on the man's back and pushed his face down into the mud, his hand on the back of the man's head like a clamp, depriving him of any oxygen, ramming him down with considerable force, his fingers spread over the damp black hair on the back of the guy’s head. The man had fought and gargled as water and mud filled his nose and mouth, but Archer had kept him down, keeping the pressure on like he was trying to close a packed suitcase. Within thirty seconds of thrashing, the sniper had fallen unconscious as oxygen to his brain ran out and Archer continued to hold his face down until he died. Once he released the man’s head and checked that there was no pulse, Archer had pushed the sniper’s rifle into the undergrowth and rolled the dead body out of the way. Moving back and retrieving the PSGA1, he had set up in the exact same position where the sniper had been lying with his own rifle.

He’d looked down the scope and seen the hole in the main room window from where Fox had taken the bullet. Archer had fired this rifle earlier that day and already knew it was zeroed, but he’d had to wait and take long slow deep breaths, willing himself to calm down, the crosshairs of the scope dancing around all over the place as the rifle responded to his adrenaline-spiked heart rate. Killing a man with your bare hands wasn’t the best thing to do before sharp-shooting, but he willed himself to calm down, using the breathing exercises he'd memorised, long and slow, one after the other.

While he was steadying himself, he had watched the entire situation in the living room unfold. He’d seen Porter and Chalky enter, just after the two Panthers. When the soldiers had entered, Archer had been on the verge of firing, the crosshairs still rhythmically thumping off target by his heart-rate, but Porter’s arrival had seen the two men forced to turn and put their weapons on Cobb and his wife to cover themselves and get Porter and Chalky to drop their weapons.

He’d watched helplessly as the third Panther had entered behind Chalky. For a horrible moment, he thought the guy was going to pull the trigger straight away, but they had disarmed Chalky and Porter instead and pushed them across the room to join Cobb and his helpless, defenceless family. Watched them get blindsided and disarmed. He saw the last three Panthers take up staggered positions, facing Porter, Chalky, Cobb and his family, three sub-machine guns in their hands. The crosshairs of the scope were no longer jumping around. Archer’s breathing was smooth. His view down the scope was still.

Aiming at the smallest of the three Panthers, Archer had gently taken his left hand and pushed the pressel on his tac vest, looking down the scope into the room. The radios had a radius of seven miles transmission, so his voice spoke into the earpieces in Porter and Chalky’s earpieces like he was right there in the room with them.

‘I’m right here,’ he’d whispered. ‘The moment I shoot, go for your weapons.’

The way that everyone was positioned couldn't have been better. The three soldiers were stood there like targets on the range. All that practice and time on the range came down to this. He’d taken aim on the smallest soldier, the one to the left and put the crosshairs on the side of his head. He’d emptied all the air from his lungs, just as he saw Wulf lower his weapon slightly and say something to Chalky.

And he squeezed the trigger.

The moment after he fired, he’d already moved onto the man in the middle. He fired again, calm, just like range practice and hit him in the head too.

As he swept the rifle to the third man, Wulf, he’d seen the giant soldier turn front on and look straight at him. His face was smeared black with camo paint, but Archer had seen the surprise in his eyes. He had centred the scope on the bridge of the man’s nose.

And he’d fired.

He'd snatched the second shot slightly. But they were three shots, three headshots.

Three kills.

He reckoned Chalk owed him another twenty quid.

Looking down the scope, he saw Chalky rise and reappear and motioned at him through the windows to come over fast. Climbing up in the muddy earth, Archer scooped up both the PSGA1 and the Panther’s rifle and ran towards the house through the rain.

Behind him, the dead sniper lay there on the sodden earth on his back, looking sightlessly up at the dark sky, raindrops falling onto his face and body.

He and his team-mates had set out to murder ten men today.

They had taken out nine.

But all the Black Panthers were now dead.

And Cobb and his family were safe.

THIRTY ONE

Six weeks later, on a bright and sunny May morning, Archer stepped out from a black taxi outside the Armed Response Unit’s headquarters. Dressed in a simple white-t-shirt and blue jeans, his blond hair hung down over a white rectangular plaster on the upper left of his forehead, the strap of a black holdall bag looped over his shoulder. He paid the fare and thanked the driver, then turned and looked up at the newly refurbished building in front of him as the taxi moved off towards the exit behind him. From where he was standing, it looked like all the repair work was almost complete.

Since that day of chaos, funerals for all ten men who had died that day had taken place on both sides of the Atlantic. The entire Unit had gone to Clark's service at a church not far away, and Cobb had flown to Virginia the next morning to attend the service for Ryan Jackson. Porter went with him and insisted on paying out of his own pocket for the flight. Jackson had died in the line of duty, so there was an anonymous small star now on the wall for him inside the CIA's headquarters. Porter had told the rest of the team of Jackson's revelation as he died, that he was Jason Carver's cousin and of the immense guilt he had felt at what his cousin had done. It explained his behaviour and the look on his face Archer had noticed when Fletcher had told them what happened that night. As he lay dying, apparently he’d told Porter and Fox that he’d spent his whole life trying to make up for what his cousin did that night in Kosovo.

The star on the wall inside the CIA’s headquarters was forever proof that he had.

The medical team who had arrived at Hawkings Hall that night were surprised and somewhat taken aback to find a critically wounded police officer and five dead bodies of anonymous men all covered in strange and foreign tattoos, dotted around the property. Four had been shot in the head, and one had been suffocated outside in the mud. They removed the bodies from the site under Cobb’s orders, without asking too many questions, and the corpses were all disposed of, no record of their existence or any of the events that had happened that night finding its way onto any official report. Fox was rushed to the hospital by helicopter, the medical team already working on him on the way there. Later that night, news came in that he was going to be OK. The bullet had missed his femoral artery by a hair. If it had hit, he would have bled to death right there and then.

Eleanor Cobb's parents had returned to their family home from their holiday in Verona to find the floors freshly cleaned and some new panes of glass in the drawing room windows as well as some new mahogany panels on the walls both down and upstairs. They thanked her for the surprise maintenance, and even though her father sensed something else was afoot he chose not to pry or ask questions. The two boys were also
recovering well from the ordeal. Rather than be traumatised, the youngest was already telling Cobb that he wanted to apply for his father's police
u
nit when he was eighteen.

Kate Adams was coming to terms with everything that she and her boy had endured, including the death of her husband which she hadn’t been aware of until someone broke it to her gently at the ARU’s headquarters. She was a tough woman, made of similar mettle as that of her late husband, but the boy was still young, only six, and it was going to take a long time for him to recover, hopefully without any long-term damage. Nevertheless the two of them were still alive. On a day where countless innocent people had died, that was the most important thing.

Pulling open the front door, Archer walked into the ARU’s headquarters and nodded to the new officer on the front desk, a man he didn't know. He signed the form, showed his ID and passed through the barrier as it buzzed. He walked down the repaired corridor all the way to the locker room on the right. Walking inside and swinging a bag from over his shoulder, Archer opened his locker and took out a couple of spare t-shirts, some spare trousers and some other items, tucking them into the bag. He turned and took a good look at the room. He nodded, then walked out, heading along the corridor and out the door, turning right and heading up to the second floor.

The ARU's headquarters had been the victim of two separate gunfights in that twenty four hour period, and much of the building had been damaged by the rounds. Despite the cost, Cobb had been given the go ahead from the top to revamp the entire building. Maintenance crews had started work the following day, repairing and reinforcing the downstairs of the building, with a separate team coming in and replacing the glass of Cobb's office with fresh, equally bulletproof panes. A paint team had recoated the walls, a floor team re-carpeting the rooms, removing any outward signs that the day of terror had ever happened.

Arriving at the tech team's centre, Archer saw them working away, fingers tapping on keys, Nikki with her back to him taking charge of them all. She’d recovered well from that day, both physically and mentally, and they were all proud of her. It had even seemed to have made her more determined in her work, and they had all noticed she was attacking each day with a renewed vigour. Looking at her, Archer guessed the saying was true.

Whatever doesn’t kill you definitely makes you stronger.

He turned right and headed for the door to Cobb's office. The glass was looking good as new, and through the crystal-clear panes he saw his boss sitting there behind his desk, sipping on a cup of coffee. Archer knocked on the door and Cobb nodded. The young officer entered, closing the door behind him.

'Morning, sir.'

'Morning. How's the face?'

'It'll be OK. I just came from the doctor. He said it'll heal up well. Only a faint scar under my hairline, which my hair should cover anyway.'

'Good.'

Archer grinned. 'He asked me the cause of injury and I told him
torture
. Don’t think he knew if I was joking or not.'

Cobb smiled.

There was a pause.

Archer stood there, his holdall in his hand. Cobb took a drink of coffee and looked at him.

'So this is it then,' he said.

Archer nodded.

'Yes, sir. I guess so.'

'You're sure this is what you want?'

'Yes, sir. I'm sure.'

There was a pause. Cobb saw the look on Archer's face.

'Don't feel bad, son. I understand. Truth be told, I've seen it on your face ever since you got back last summer. You've got itchy feet.'

'It's not this place,' Archer explained. 'I love it here, sir. I love the team, everyone here. Being under your leadership. But I'm half American. I can't deny that. That's my home too. I want to work there whilst I’m still young. I have to. Right now feels like the right time.'

Pause.

Cobb nodded.

'You know that I'll always have a spot for you here, no matter what,' his boss said. 'All you need to do is pick up the phone. I mean it. Any time of day, month or year. You've earned that with everything you've done, everything you did for me and my family and the rest of the men.'

He nodded.

'I knew the moment you walked in for interview during selection that you were special. And you've outdone every expectation I ever had for you. You
've done
some amazing work here, Archer. I've watched you grow up, literally, in front of my eyes these past two years.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Are you sure I can't convince you to stay?'

Archer smiled.

'I'll be back someday. If you'll take me, of course.'

'You know I will. I look forward to it.'

Pause. Archer stood there, his bag in his hand, ready to go.

'So where next?' Cobb asked.

Archer smiled. 'Honestly?'

'As always.'

'I was thinking New
York City. I was thinking the NYPD
.'

'That sounds perfect. I know some people over there. I'll provide my recommendation and see if we can get things moving for you. You’ll have to retrain of course, but that should be a breeze for you.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you.'

There was a pause. Then Cobb rose from his chair and walked round his desk and offered his hand. Archer shook it.