Green Light (Sam Archer 7) (20 page)

The
red-headed prostitute inside the Covenant Housing had just risen to
go introduce herself to the others when the door to her room was
suddenly pushed open, startling her.

A
shaved-headed man stood in the doorway and stepped forward, staring
directly at her, withdrawing a pistol from under his
jacket.

As they
made eye contact she took a step back, whimpering in
fright.

Right
outside the Hendricks’ front door, Nemkov froze, having registered
the sound that had just come from the other side of the
wood.

It was a
pump-action shotgun.

And it
was being loaded.

TWENTY THREE

A
split-second later he was pounded backwards as if he’d been kicked
in the chest by a horse, punching him down the steps in a bloody
spray, the centre of the wooden door exploding into thousands of
splinters and screws as the door and the man both took the shotgun
shell.

Before
the other two armed men had time to react, Melissa Hendricks racked
the pump and fired at the armed figure on the right, through where
the front door had been. The edge of the porch took most of the
blast, the woodwork exploding as it ate the shell, but the man
received the follow-through and was blown off his feet, hit in the
chest, another one down.

The
shotgun was a CZ USA Model 612 Home Defence weapon, her gun, not
her husband’s, twelve gauge with six shell capacity and designed to
prevent home invasions. She’d seen three armed men get out of a car
and approach her house as she’d glanced out of the window. She
didn’t waste a second wondering who they were or why they were
here. No calls to Jake, no dialling for help. It wasn’t the first
time people had come looking for trouble.

But for
these sons of bitches however, it was going to be the
last.

As the
second man she’d shot fell back to the ground, she crunched another
shell into the chamber as the shocked kids huddled down on the
floor in the sitting room, Beth scrambling through to them from the
kitchen. Stepping forward just as what was left of the door fell
off its hinges, Melissa saw the other man throw himself behind the
porch and she fired again, just missing him, the wooden post
half-obliterated by the shell.

Racking
the pump again, she took aim, intending to blast him through the
woodwork when he suddenly reappeared, holding his sub-machine gun
to her son’s head, the boy’s eyes wide with fear. He was still
dressed in his soccer gear and dropped his bag as the gunman pushed
him forward, jamming the suppressor of his sub-machine gun behind
Jack’s ear.

‘
Drop the weapon, bitch!’
the gunman
screamed at her in a strong foreign accent
. ‘Drop it or I kill your boy!’

The
stock of the shotgun buried in her shoulder, her face
expressionless Melissa didn’t move, Jack staring at her with wide
fearful eyes, the stranger’s gun to his head.

‘
Drop it!’
the gunman screamed
again.

Suddenly
there was the screech of tyres on tarmac from the street behind the
man. He instinctively snapped his head towards the noise as a blue
and white squad car appeared, lights flashing, closely followed by
another, the NYPD arriving at the scene.

Keeping
his eyes on his mother, Jack Hendricks suddenly dropped like a
stone, right out of the gunman’s grip.

Shepherd
and Hendricks had just been beaten to it by two NYPD squad cars
responding to Marquez’ emergency call to Department dispatch. As
the Ford carrying Hendricks and Shepherd screeched around the
corner, they saw Melissa fire, blasting a man off his feet as he
took a shell to the chest, Jack Hendricks hitting the ground just
in front of him as the gunman fell.

Before
they could slam to a halt, Hendricks pushed open his door and
jumped out while the car was still moving, running towards his
wife.

Suddenly
however, a door to a 4x4 twenty feet away was thrown back and a man
holding a silenced sub-machine gun in one hand staggered out, his
other hand clutching his right shoulder with blood over his hand
and wrist.

‘
Jake!’
Shepherd shouted in warning,
reaching for his Sig.

However,
before he could fire Melissa swung and blasted the gunman from the
front step, knocking him back into the vehicle. As that last shot
echoed in the night, two of the officers ran forward and kicked the
man’s weapon away before flipping him over and handcuffing him as
he bled out, still alive but probably not for much
longer.

Up
ahead, Beth Shepherd peered round the damaged doorframe then ran
forward as she saw her husband. Hendricks had just arrived by his
wife and taking the shotgun from her hands, held her and
Jack.

‘
You both OK?’ he asked them.

They
nodded, staring at the dead men littering their front
lawn.

‘
Who the hell are they, Jake?’ Melissa asked her husband
quietly, trembling from reaction now the situation was
over.

Hendricks looked at the three dead gunmen then glanced over
at the fourth man who’d been cuffed and was slumped against the
4x4.

‘
I have no idea.’

On the 1
^st
floor of the Covenant Housing project in Midtown,
the female employee from the front desk walked up to the bedroom
door and pushed it open, holding the rolled up bag of food she’d
just bought from the Times Square McDonalds down the
street.

‘
Here we are-’ she started with a smile.

Then she
paused.

The room
was empty.

Confused, she looked around then down the corridor. The
slender frightened man was nowhere to be seen.

‘
Michael?’

A floor
above, his eyes full of frustrated anger, the man stared at the
red-headed woman for a long moment then turned and walked off
without a word, leaving the bedroom door to swing shut behind
him.

Alone
again, the girl stepped back then sat down hard on the bed as her
legs gave out, shaking with fear from the sudden encounter with the
armed stranger.

Once
again, she heard laughter echo down the hallway but it didn’t have
the same effect as before.

Forget
introducing herself.

She was
staying put.

TWENTY FOUR

Pushing down the bar to the fire exit, the slender man walked
out onto 41
^st
Street and headed towards his partner waiting in
the van. Crossing the road, he pulled open the door, tossed his
jacket into the back of the vehicle, then climbed in and tucked his
silenced pistol into his belt.

‘
She wasn’t there,’ he said as he closed his door.

‘
You’re sure?’

‘
Positive. Thought I’d found her in the last room but it wasn’t
her. Just some other bitch with red hair.’

The
bigger man swore as he checked his watch. ‘We’ve got to make the
most of this window. The cop heat isn’t going to be off us for much
longer and we’ve got a lot of shit left to do.’

As the
smaller man stayed quiet, cupping his hands and blowing warm air
into them, the big guy thought for a moment. He had an open file in
his hand, one of the pile he’d instructed Goya and Santiago to keep
on all the girls. It had April Evans’ details inside, her vitals,
address and clients.

‘
You think she saw you and Nina at her place
earlier?’

‘
I don’t know. Maybe Nina. She was downstairs and watched her
enter the building.’

‘
Well she split so she knows someone’s after her. It’s cold at
night, so she’ll be needing to be indoors or she’ll freeze her ass
off.’

‘
Subway?’

‘
Maybe. But which station? We don’t exactly have time to check
each one.’

‘
She could have gone to the cops.’

‘
Doubt it. They wouldn’t give a shit. And until they find a
body, who’s going to believe her?’

‘
What about her clients?’ the smaller man asked, looking at the
page. ‘Did she have regulars?’

‘
No-one she’d run to or who would listen. Only possible is a
judge.’ The big guy tapped a man’s name with his finger. ‘He’s been
good for almost a hundred k since we started working him. I doubt
he’d want to help her.’

‘
Where’d she meet him?’

The
larger man nodded. ‘Upper East Side. And other clients. In a bar up
there, according to this.’

‘
Which one?’

‘
West 82
^nd
and Park.’

‘
Screw it, it’s worth a shot,’ the smaller man said. ‘We got
nothing else.’

The big
man nodded, starting the engine just as his cell phone buzzed in
his pocket from an incoming message.

Standing on Josh’s porch on West 78
^th
, Archer watched as the street
was closed off and the scene of the shootout investigated by
detectives from the local Precinct. The ambulance with Michelle
inside had just left, Josh going with her, officers who’d recently
arrived cordoning off the street in preparation for a Forensics
team who’d be here any minute.

Rather
than go to the hospital with their parents, Josh’s kids and Isabel
had been taken back to the Counter-Terrorism Bureau. Not knowing
who these men were and why they were being targeted, Archer wanted
to get the youngsters somewhere where their safety was guaranteed.
Officers in an NYPD squad car had also been ordered to act as
security for Josh and Michelle at the hospital for as long as they
were needed. She was going straight into surgery and Josh was
understandably focused solely on her, needing someone to watch his
back in case this wasn’t the last attack on him or his family
tonight.

Isabel
had been reluctant to leave, not wanting to be parted from Archer,
but he’d promised he’d join her soon; because he was suspended,
technically he wasn’t allowed back into the Bureau but after what
had just happened as well as his little sojourn in Rikers, he
didn’t think that would be an issue. He’d be happy to debate it
with anyone who objected.

He
watched officers taking statements from frightened neighbours as he
thought about what had just happened. When he’d seen the addresses
on the phone Marquez had given him, he’d tried to call Shepherd to
warn both him and Hendricks but Shepherd’s cell had been engaged.
When he’d finally got through, it turned out Marquez had beaten him
to it, the two sergeants speeding to Hendricks’ house where their
families were apparently having dinner together.

The cold
wind coming from the Hudson River slightly numbed his face and neck
as he frowned. The reason for the addresses on the wounded gunman’s
phone was confusing; gangs and criminals with half a brain avoided
targeting police officers. They knew the heat that would provoke,
yet the injured man and his colleagues had been deliberately going
after the Counter-Terrorism Bureau detectives.

But
why?

Were the
gunmen involved in Leann Casey’s death?

He
dismissed that thought almost as soon as it crossed his mind. He’d
stake his life on the fact that the men they’d just encountered
weren’t in any way connected with Goya or Santiago. They just
didn’t fit together, neither racially nor in terms of how they
operated. Archer was familiar with the habits of the higher-level
gang activity in the city and knew the one thing organised crime
did was keep to themselves, not wanting to attract any police
attention; they were pretty intelligent in that regard and had
learnt hard lessons from the past.

Whatever
the reason, for the moment it didn’t matter that they had his
address; right now he, Vargas and Isabel were safe where they were.
Alice was downtown at a hospital with two cops watching her room,
Isabel was with the police and he was standing here on the
street.

As he
tried to make sense of it, his phone started ringing, the display
telling him it was the Bureau.

‘
Archer,’ he said.

‘
Arch, it’s Ethan. I need to talk to you. I tried Shepherd and
Hendricks but no one’s picking up.’

‘
There’s a situation right now. What’s going on?’

‘
Shepherd told me earlier to ring round all the girls listed
as associates on Leann Casey’s case file but none of them are
answering. I requested some blue and whites check out a couple of
the residences, but they said no-one was home.’

‘
OK.’

‘
Leann’s closest contact in the group seemed to be a woman
called April Evans. Apparently she picked Leann up in a taxi from
the rehab clinic out on Long Island the day she died. Shepherd just
sent me her number from Leann’s phone, so I’ve been trying to trace
it and therefore her.’

‘
Any luck?’

‘
Afraid not; it’s switched off. But using the Bureau’s clout I
got a warrant with Verizon, who allowed me access to Leann’s cell
records. She had a voice message on there from April; nothing
important, but I took a voice print and ran it over their network,
in case she calls someone.’