SIX
Inside the briefing room at the ARU's headquarters, Archer turned back from the drinks stand, watching as the rest of the team around the room kept themselves busy. For some reason he felt restless today, but knew he had to remain where he was. Next door the intelligence team were working away as hard as ever, but part of being a response team often meant a lot of time was spent sitting around, waiting for a call, and in the meantime finding stuff to keep them occupied but which could be dropped immediately if a call came through. Usually some of the guys went downstairs and oiled and cleaned the weapons, plus the shooting range was pretty close by, so often members of the task force would go down there and fire off some rounds, ready to abandon at a moment’s notice if they got a ‘shout’. It was a fun way to stay sharp on the trigger and kill some time. In the field however, the weapons were rarely used. It wasn’t like the James Bond films, where 007 went around shooting everything in sight. That made for a good movie, but in reality the legal ramifications and paperwork involved whenever there was a shooting meant each officer had to be accountable for every single bullet he fired. The wrong trigger pull could cost any one of them their jobs. Behind every bullet was a mountain of potential paperwork and an inquisition.
Archer scooped up his cup of tea and walked over to the window. Glancing left, he saw someone had brought in some biscuits and some left-over cake that their wife or girlfriend had probably baked, but he passed. He never felt hungry in the morning and the tea was just about the only thing he could handle before lunch. He put the foam cup down on the windowsill and looked out at London through the glass, the sun shining down, reflecting off the glass windows of the buildings around him. The clock on the wall to his left had just ticked to 10:10 am, and the city was wide awake now, going about its business, the cogs and pistons of the great machine working hard. His mind started to wander and inevitably, as it had done so often in the past eight months, his thoughts turned to Mina Katic, the FBI agent an ocean away.
He missed her. A lot. He had met her last summer when a turn of events had taken him on an unexpected week-long trip to New York City. Third-generation Serbian but born and bred in Chicago, she had dark brown eyes with long brown hair that had a hint of crimson in the sunlight. Feminine and beautiful, she was also just as tough as any man in the Bureau she worked with.
Although just turned thirty, she was already a widow. Her husband had died of cancer a couple of years previously, leaving her with a young daughter to look after. She and Archer had worked together on a case when he was out there and they had become close. And ever since he got back he couldn't get her out of his mind.
But they lived different lives. She was now head of the FBI's Bank Robbery Task Force in New York and he was an integral part of the ARU counter-terrorist team here. Two people, the possibility of a life together separated by an ocean and two careers both had worked extremely hard to forge. Archer was half-American through his father, so he had a US passport and the option to live there whenever he pleased. No one else knew it, but since he had got back from New York last summer he had toyed with the idea of moving there and applying to join the NYPD, just like his father before him, a fresh start in a place that had always fascinated him. Although his dad had been born and bred in New York, Archer had only gone on brief trips there as a child, growing up predominately in the UK, so hadn’t experienced any real exposure to the city as an adult. But that trip last summer had planted a seed inside him and it had been growing ever since. He loved the UK, but he was also half American, and in a way half a New Yorker too.
And though he'd never admit it, ever since he'd got back last September he'd felt like a pair of thick shackles had been firmly attached to his feet.
He glanced over his shoulder at his team-mates. For now, London and the Armed Response Unit was where he needed to be. He had a good thing going here, a career he had worked hard at, a good spot in a great police unit, solid colleagues and friends for life on the force around him.
Any woman in his personal life would have to wait.
And sadly, that included Agent Katic.
He took a pull from his tea and looked out of the window at the city again. He'd lied to Chalky earlier on the range when he'd said Katic had found someone else. That was bullshit. He'd only said it so Chalk wouldn't bring it up again. Her feelings for Archer hadn't changed. She'd called him at home just two days ago and told him she was thinking about him every day, hoping that somehow he could make the move and be with her in New York sometime soon.
But Archer was stuck. To be with her, he would have to leave the Armed Response Unit.
And right now that wasn't something he was prepared to do.
Returning his attention to the room, Archer shifted from the window and walked over to take a seat in an empty chair. Leaning back, he glanced to his right and saw Chalky buried in the sports pages of a newspaper, his eyes scanning the articles. Although his job often depended on even a minimal knowledge of current affairs, Chalk never read the front pages, only interested in the football and sports bulletins printed on the back. Archer looked over and read the front bold-print headlines of the paper facing him in Chalky's hands. He didn't see Charlie Adams' name anywhere. The newspaper must have gone out before the journalists had got news of the politician’s suicide, but Archer knew for sure it would be all over them tomorrow.
‘You know what’s really annoying?’ Chalky said, not looking up from the paper.
‘What’s that?’
‘When you’re reading a newspaper and someone else reads the back of it.’
Archer grinned at him. But before he could respond, he saw Nikki approaching the room with Cobb and Porter, moving fast through the operations room.
They looked like they meant business.
'Look out,' Archer said. 'Here's trouble.'
The moment the trio entered, every man in the room stopped what he was doing and sat up, paying immediate attention. Whenever these three entered the room at the same time, it meant something was brewing.
The room was silent and the relaxed atmosphere changed instantly from flat to charged.
‘We’ve got a call, lads,’ Porter said.
‘A package was just delivered to the US Embassy containing some kind of white powder,’ Nikki said. ‘They think it could be anthrax.’
‘HAZMAT are already down there, but they need back-up. This could be the start of something else’ Cobb said. ‘Everyone outside in two minutes. Get your kit and gas masks.’
As one, the ten-man team all rose and everyone moved to the doors without a word, dropping their papers, abandoning half-filled cups of coffee and tea all over the room.
Sitting around drinking coffee was nice, but this was what they were paid to do.
Inside his office across town, the CIA Operations Officer had been about to take a first sip from his cup of coffee when a wailing siren sounded around the building, jolting him, causing him to spill some of the piping hot liquid on his trousers and to jerk back on his chair. Shit. As he quickly patted his legs off with some tissues, wincing from the hot coffee on his legs, he heard a voice over the building intercom telling everyone to evacuate the building immediately.
Cursing, the man rose and pulling open the door to his office, walked outside. In the corridor, workers were rushing quickly past his office, heading towards the exits. It didn't look like a fire drill. These people were really hurrying out of the building.
He stepped out and grabbed a passing analyst.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked him.
'There's been an anthrax threat.'
His eyes widened. ‘Real?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He let the analyst go, and the kid rushed off. Closing the door to his office, the man went to make his way down the corridor with the others. But as he went to leave, he saw Lynn fighting her way towards him through the throng. As people continued to flow past them, he noticed that she still had that list of names he had given her in her hand.
She looked concerned.
‘Sir?’ she called, raising her voice to be heard over the alarm.
‘Let’s go, Lynn,' he said, turning. 'We need to leave the building. Walk with me.’
They started moving down the corridor, side-by-side, the alarm above them still wailing.
‘Sir, I have some news,' she shouted in his ear. 'I checked the names you gave me. I have to ask - are these men friends of yours?’
He looked down at her. ‘No. Why?’
‘Well I’m very sorry sir, but one of them was found dead not an hour ago.’
The agent paused, right there in the corridor, people continuing to rush past, some of them bumping into him in their hurry to leave the building. Jean stopped too, looking at his face for some answers, people streaming past them on either side.
‘What?’ he asked her. ‘How?’
‘He was strangled in his car with a wire in a DC suburb parking lot. A Metro night patrolman found him.'
He looked down at her. 'The others?'
'Nothing yet, sir. I'll keep trying.'
Without a word, the man turned and moved through the door, headed for the exit.
He suddenly felt very cold and extremely worried.
Two of the men down in the same morning.
An anthrax threat in the building.
This wasn't a coincidence.
He glanced out of the front of the building at the mass of people being cordoned off by police, HAZMAT vehicles already arrived, their team climbing into white bio-suits. As he moved through the front door, letting Lynn out ahead of him, he stopped and scanned the crowd nervously, searching for anyone who was looking back at him. The cave echo of Charlie Adams’ name in his mind was gone, replaced by four other words instead.
They've come for us.
Outside the ARU headquarters, in a black car parked outside the lot on the other side of the street, two men watched in silence as the doors to the police unit suddenly burst open.
The pair in the car were dressed in black military fatigues, boots on their feet, gloves on their hands. Stowed beside them were two AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles, balaclavas resting on the butt of each weapon. They had duct-taped a second magazine to the underside of the one currently slapped into each weapon for ease of reloading, and each man also had three more stowed in pouches in their fatigues, close to Beretta 92F pistols that were tucked into holsters on their hips as backup firepower.
They watched in silence, side-by-side in the car, as the police officers ran to three black 4x4 Fords, all of them dressed in navy blue combat overalls, each man zipping up tactical vests and carrying MP5 sub-machine guns and black gas masks. The officers started pulling open the doors, climbing into the vehicles, and all three engines fired up. They watched in silence as the cars began to reverse out and then move forward to the parking lot exit. As the Fords started pulling out and speeding off, one of the two men in black pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and dialled a number.
The call connected to the man back at the command post.
‘It worked, sir. They’re leaving,’ he said, an Eastern European accent.
Pause.
‘Wait till they are gone. Then kill the man called Cobb. Like I told you, shoot him in the head. Give him the whole magazine.’
‘Yes sir.’
The man in the car ended the call as the last of the three Fords turned out of the lot.
And the two men watched as the entire counter-terrorist task force left the police station unprotected.