Return Fire (Sam Archer )

Return Fire

By

Tom Barber

*****

Return Fire

Copyright: Tom Barber

Published: 18
th
December 2013

The right of Tom Barber to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by he in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The Sam Archer thriller series

by

Tom Barber

NINE LIVES

26 year old Sam Archer has just been selected to join a new counter-terrorist squad, the Armed Response Unit. And they have their first case. A team of suicide bombers are planning to attack London on New Year’s Eve. The problem?

No one knows where any of them are.

THE GETAWAY

Archer is in New York City for a funeral. After the service, an old familiar face approaches him with a proposition. A team of bank robbers are tearing the city apart, robbing it for millions.

The FBI agent needs Archer to go undercover and try to stop them.

BLACKOUT

Three men have been killed in the UK and USA in one morning. The deaths take place thousands of miles apart, yet are connected by an event fifteen years ago. Before long, Archer and the ARU are drawn into the violent fray. And there’s a problem.

One of their own men is on the extermination list.

SILENT NIGHT

A dead body is found in Central Park, a man who was killed by a deadly virus. Someone out there has more of the substance and is planning to use it. Archer must find where this virus came from and secure it before any more is released.

But he is already too late.

ONE WAY

On his way home, Archer saves a team of US Marshals from a violent ambush in the middle of the Upper West Side. The group are forced to take cover in a tenement block in Harlem. But there are more killers on the way to finish the job.

And Archer feels there’s something about the group of Marshals that isn’t quite right.

RETURN FIRE

Four months after they first encountered one another, Sam Archer and Alice Vargas are both working in the NYPD Counter-Terrorism Bureau and also living together. But a week after Vargas leaves for a trip to Europe, Archer gets a knock on his front door.

Apparently
Vargas has completely disappeared.

And i
t appears she’s been abducted.

Also:

CONDITION BLACK (A novella)

In the year 2113, a US 101
st
Airborne soldier wakes up after crash landing on a moon somewhere in space. All but two of his squad are dead. He has no idea where he is, or who shot him down.

But he quickly learns that some nightmares don’t stop when you wake up.

For Nicola, Helen, Jodi, Claire, Clare and Mel at the Tewkesbury Book Club.

ONE

Lying alone in the large bed, the dark-haired woman’s eyes suddenly flared open.

She was on her left side, facing the balcony and as her sleepy brain recalibrated, she found herself staring out at the night sky through the open French windows. The thin curtains were fluttering gently, having been pulled back to allow what faint breeze there was to whisper into the room, the night hot and close, the street below quiet.

The bedroom was on the 2
nd
floor of the villa, facing a coastal road, and although there was the occasional noise from outside that wasn’t what had woken her. Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself upright and ran her fingers through her hair, doing her best to rid herself of yet another nightmare.

Twenty eight years old, tanned and lithe, she had long black hair, hazel eyes and skin the colour of dark caramel, a perfect blend of her Brazilian and American heritage, her natural tan enhanced and made richer by her exposure to the Mediterranean sun over the last few days.

As the mists of sleep started to clear, she bowed her head and closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths.

She was a tough woman, mentally strong, and until the last few months had never really had any trouble sleeping, at least not that she could remember. However, during the past four months and especially over the last seven days, her nights had been as fragmented as the aftermath of a glass vase dropped onto a hard floor.

There were two reasons for that.

The first was she was still having regular
flashbacks from a job she’d worked on four months ago; employed by the United States Marshals service to protect a witness, she’d been trapped inside an apartment building in New York, the group she was hiding with being hunted by a team of determined and ruthless killers.

The second reason was a person.

And he wasn’t here tonight.

She’d met him that day back in March after he’d been trapped in the Harlem building with her and he’d ended up saving her life. Since then, the bond that had developed between them during those intense few hours had deepened, and now they were both living and working together. She’d fallen for him hard and had been delighted when she’d found her feelings were reciprocated.

But right now things between them weren’t good at all. They’d had a massive argument just before she’d left New York a week ago, which had started out as something pretty innocuous then developed into a full-on shouting match. She’d said some things in the heat of the moment that she now deeply regretted, and had spent all week wishing she could take them back. She’d been constantly checking her phone and email for missed calls or messages, but there hadn’t been anything from him, not one word.

Opening her eyes, she glanced over at the empty space beside her.

In ten hours, she’d see him again.

And she genuinely didn’t know if things were going to work out.

With those same thoughts squirrelling around in her head, just as they’d done all week, she slid out from under the covers, grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table and padded across the wooden floor to the door, quietly pulling it open.

The villa beyond was dark and quiet, the only other person in the house fast asleep. The young woman was dressed in a grey crop top and a pair of small grey shorts, light sleep-wear given the night time heat, and as she stood there she felt a welcome whisper of wind across her bare skin, fanning her for the briefest of moments.

She walked out of her room and moved down the twisting stairs slowly and silently. Arriving on the ground floor, she padded across the cool tiles and double-checked the front door was locked, which it was. Although there was no reason why it shouldn’t have been, nevertheless she felt a quick moment of relief; the ordeal inside the Harlem housing block had left her with a variety of scars both mental and physical, and one of the former was an increased anxiety concerning security.

Standing there alone in the darkness, she saw the hands of a clock on the wall indicate it was 2:19am. Her flight home was at 10:30am, so she figured she could afford four or five hours more sleep before she’d have to rise, shower, grab a quick breakfast then take a cab to the airport.

Satisfied the house was secure, she quickly checked her phone again for messages or missed calls.

Nothing.

Tucking the phone into the pocket in the back of her shorts, she headed into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water from the tap, her mouth dry from the night-time heat. After taking a few sips, she tipped the rest away and retraced her steps, heading up the stairs quietly, moving back into the guest bedroom and closing the door behind her with a soft
click
.

Walking over to the bed, she slid between the thin covers, pulling the top sheet back over her body and looking out through the open French windows to her left again, at the moon and stars up in the night sky. His image reappeared in her mind and she started thinking about what she would say when she saw him at JFK, wondering which one of them would be the first to extend the olive branch. She so hoped she hadn’t blown it.

Despite the heat, she shivered; as so often happened at night, all of her fears began to magnify, intensified by the quiet.

Maybe he doesn’t want to reconcile
, she thought.

Maybe we’re done?

Shit; are we done?

Settling deeper into the pillow, she closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind.

The three men waited, giving her time to fall back to sleep.

Then a few minutes later, the door to the small bathroom behind her slowly opened.

The trio
, all dressed in dark clothing, moved noiselessly into the bedroom. Standing together by the right side of the bed, they stared down at the woman lying between the sheets with her back to them, completely unaware that they were there.

T
he man on the left was holding a roll of duct tape, the man on the far right a case containing some equipment.

The guy in the middle was the leader. His hands were free.

As the other two looked at him, waiting for the order, the leader studied the woman in the bed, noting the delicious smoothness of her tanned skin and her complete vulnerability as she lay there with her back to them.

Then he turned and nodded to
each of his companions.

Time to begin.

TWO

Five hours later and over three thousand six hundred miles away in New York City, NYPD 3
rd
Grade Detective Sam Archer suddenly jerked awake with a gasp.

Snapping upright in bed, he sat still for a moment, sweat gathered on his brow as he steadied his breathing.
With his heart still thumping and his brain starting to clear, he instinctively reached to his left side protectively but his hand met nothing but empty sheets.

Then as his senses returned, he looked at the vacant space beside him.

And remembered she wasn’t there.

Feeling the unpleasant effects of the nightmare start to fade, Archer realised he’d been shouting in the dream and wondered if he’d done the same in reality as he slept. Drawing the top sheet away, he pushed himself to his feet and walked across the room, opening his bedroom door quietly and stepping out into the hallway beyond. He was dressed in a pair of white boxer shorts, his body lean and tanned with a fresh scar on the left side of his lower torso. It was a warm summer night but he had the air conditioning working, keeping the apartment cool.

Further down the hall was another bedroom, the door to it slightly ajar. Walking forward silently, Archer looked inside and saw a small girl fast asleep in the bed against the far wall, furry toys surrounding her, a backpack dumped on the floor amongst some sheets of paper and colouring pencils.

He smiled as he watched her, his frame casting a shadow across the room that was reassuring, not threatening. Although she wasn’t his biological child, the two were kindred spirits in several ways, one of them being that the girl had been suffering some nightmares herself lately. Thankfully, he saw that she was fast asleep tonight and didn’t seem to be dreaming. She was a good kid, kind and thoughtful.

And how she’d ended up living with Archer was a story for which he was still trying to figure out the ending.

Taking a last look at the sleeping girl, Archer walked on down the hallway, grabbing a navy-blue plaid shirt from a hook by the front door on the way and pulling it on. Rolling up the sleeves but not bothering to do up the buttons, he walked into the kitchen, pulled open the refrigerator and took a litre bottle of water from the shelf, letting the door fall back and shut by itself. He then moved into the small sitting room to his right and opened the sliding panel to the apartment’s balcony, stepping outside and drawing the frame shut behind him. It was the middle of the night but he wasn’t ready to go back to sleep yet; not if all that awaited him were bad dreams and an empty bed.

Standing there alone on the 2
nd
floor balcony, he looked out into the distance. The apartment was in Queens, facing the west side of Manhattan, and lights in tall skyscrapers all over the city across the East River ahead were still shining brightly, the city that never slept staying true to its reputation. Observing the distant buildings, the busiest and most intense island in the world, Archer smiled for a brief moment. He’d never tire of that view.

Turning, he took a seat in a wicker chair and shifted his attention to the street below. Every now and then a vehicle drove by, moving past the occasional lone figure of a pedestrian on the sidewalk making their way home, either a late Friday night or early Saturday morning depending on how you looked at it. It was a safe neighbourhood with affordable rent and you could walk around at any time of the night without any problems, totally contradicting New York’s old reputation as a dangerous place to live.

However, concerns of that nature weren’t something that Archer needed to worry about. Being an NYPD Detective, he carried his fully-loaded Sig Sauer P226 pistol and two spare magazines with him everywhere he went, both on duty and off. He’d learned the importance of that not too long ago when he’d been caught unarmed on the street in Manhattan; he’d been coming home from a gym workout and had almost been killed when he’d been swept up in a brutal ambush carried out against a team of US Marshals. Ever since then the handgun went with him everywhere, and that meant everywhere; when he did his laundry, went out to dinner, even when he went to the local dentist for a check-up on his day off. It was pretty unlikely that he’d get jumped as he was having his scale and polish, but Archer wasn’t exactly a walking four leaf clover in terms of luck.

Opening the bottle of Poland Spring he took a cold sip, enjoying the light night breeze and the distant subdued sounds of the city. He’d lived in New York for over a year, having arrived from London in May last year after making full use of the dual nationality his English mother and American father had given him, both of whom had now passed away. Prior to the move, he’d spent two years as an integral member of the Armed Response Unit, one of the two premier counter-terrorist teams in London. Constructed of two halves, a five person analyst team and a ten-man task force, Archer had been one of the four members of the Unit’s First Team, the quartet charged with some of the most dangerous and high-risk situations in the city. The sheer nature of its work meant the ARU was never far from trouble, and although he’d only been with the team for two years, he’d seen a hell of a lot of action.

However, he’d always been curious as to what it would be like to be a cop in the Big Apple and had decided to grab the opportunity in May of last year, following in his father’s footsteps who’d been an NYPD sergeant back in the day. After a helping hand from his old boss and the head of the NYPD’s newly-formed Counter-Terrorism Bureau, Archer had ended up in a five-man detective team here in New York City. He was following in his old man’s footsteps residentially too; he’d rented a place down the street a few years back and after his son had spent a week or so in the area two years ago, he figured it was as good a place as any to live in the city. Apart from the benefits of the comparatively cheaper rent, the apartment’s location was also convenient for Archer’s work. The NYPD Counter-Terrorism Bureau HQ was across Queens on Vernon Boulevard, a hundred yards or so from the Queensborough Bridge, and he could be there in less than ten minutes if he needed to be.

Often, that was the case.

As the thought of recent operations crossed his mind, he looked down at the neat scar across the lower left side of his stomach, partially hidden by the side of the shirt, a reminder of that day back in March when he’d been caught on the street without his weapon. A shard of glass from a grenade explosion had sliced right into him; it was one of many injuries he’d acquired in the last few years, including breaking his ankle twice, his nose once and suffering from a serious bout of pneumonia which had hospitalised him.

Archer had only been a counter-terrorist cop for three years, but the level of punishment he took on the job hadn’t gone unnoticed.
You can take an ass kicking like no other,
his NYPD partner and friend Josh Blake had told him a few weeks ago. Archer hadn’t argued; it was a running joke in the Department that he was harder to put down than the Road-Runner. Twenty eight years old, blond haired, blue eyed and in the best physical condition of his life, Sam Archer looked like an oil painting which an artist had completed then for some reason decided to damage. All the scars, cuts and broken bones his body had experienced were like rips and tears to the canvas. He’d been stabbed, punched, kicked, choked and shot at more times than he could remember and he’d thought he was going to die on several occasions, his number finally up.

However, he was still here, and the people who’d inflicted the damage weren’t.

And that wasn’t a coincidence either.

Examining the fresh scar on his stomach, he remembered that day, those brutal few hours he’d been trapped in a Harlem apartment block; it had been one of the worst nights of his life but in another way, also one of the best. He’d almost died, and by all reasoning should have done given what had happened inside that building.

But he’d also met Alice Vargas.

Feeling the cold bottle of water start to numb his fingers, he placed it down as his eyes moved to the empty seat beside his where she would normally sit.
Vargas was Archer’s age, twenty eight, and apart from her dark looks and upbringing in LA, the two shared many similarities. She and Archer had fallen for each other hard soon after they’d first met that night in Harlem and once the situation in the building had finally been resolved, they’d spent more and more time together, particularly as they started working on the same team in the NYPD. Before long, what had been lying just under the surface between them had quickly caught fire. In the previous twelve months, Archer had struggled with the solitude that had started to define his life as a cop, but Vargas had completely changed that.

Three weeks ago, they’d taken a big step. Vargas had moved into his apartment here in Queens with her adopted daughter, leaving their previous place in Park Slope.

Sitting there alone, Archer’s smile faded.

That was when the problems had started.

Vargas was the girl’s adoptive mother, and before her guardianship the kid had been through some traumatic experiences in her short life, seeing things that most adults would never have to witness.

However, living with Archer seemed to be triggering issues for her, almost as if his constant presence somehow brought some of those dark memories flooding back. Since she moved in at the beginning of the month the girl had started having terrible nightmares, often accompanied by fits due to her epilepsy, resulting in Archer and Vargas having their sleep constantly interrupted by blood-curdling screams that echoed around the building. The neighbours had started to complain too, with good reason, and then Archer and Vargas had both started suffering bad dreams as well, almost as if the three of them being in close proximity triggered some kind of chain reaction.

As the nightmares continued and the hours of sleep decreased, the tension in the apartment had started to build, and things had finally bo
iled over a week ago just as Vargas was leaving for a week-long trip to Spain; what had started out as a disagreement about something completely trivial had grown into a full-on shouting match, neither of them backing down, the argument fuelled by tiredness and frustration. Both of them had been fired up, letting it all out, and what they’d built over the past few months seemed to disintegrate in moments right before their eyes.

The moment Vargas had left, slamming the door, Archer had immediately started to regret what he’d said, but the damage had already been done. He’d thought about calling her, but figured she’d contact him when she was ready to talk. He hadn’t heard a peep from her since, which told him she was still pissed.

Feeling the weight of his cell phone in the pocket of the shirt dragging the left side of the garment down, he took out the Nokia with his right hand and switched it on. Once it powered up, he saw he had several missed calls but no new messages.

He clicked onto the missed calls to see if they’d been from Vargas, but they were from Josh.

Shit.

Looking down at the phone, he suddenly focused on the present and frowned.

Josh’s missed calls had come less than half an hour ago.

Glancing at the time on the screen, Archer saw it was
2:32 am,
not to mention the fact that the team were on leave for the week.

What the hell is he doing calling me at 2 in the morning?

Confused, he started to scroll for his partner’s number. Maybe he’d pocket-called him by accident, or had had too much to drink.

But before he could find the number, Archer suddenly heard something through the balcony glass.

Three quick knocks on his front door.

He froze.

The raps were slightly muffled through the glass of the closed balcony door but still carried an unmistakeable urgency.

Rising quickly from the wicker chair and sliding the balcony door back, Archer moved rapidly across the apartment, past the front door and towards his bedroom. Opening his bedside table, he retrieved his Sig Sauer P226 pistol, checking the chamber by pulling back the top-slide half an inch and seeing a round resting there in the pipe. It was the middle of the night, not the time people typically came calling, and Archer had learned the hard way to always to be on his guard.

The three knocks came again, quiet but urgent, and louder now Archer was inside the apartment. He moved forward, keeping the Sig by his right leg just in case the child in the bedroom had woken up and was watching him.

Passing her door, he glanced in and saw she was still asleep.

He walked up to the front door, then flattened himself against the wall and turned his head towards the frame.

‘Who is it?’
he asked quietly.

‘
Josh.’

Instantly relaxing and shaking his head as he exhaled, Archer opened the door and saw his NYPD Counter-Terrorism Bureau partner standing there. Thirty years old, African American, happily married and a father of three, Josh Blake was a unique mix, built like a tank yet with a calm and gentle temperament, totally unexpected from someone of his intimidating size. He also lived in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, which meant he was a long way from home, especially at this hour.

Dressed in jeans and a grey t shirt that couldn’t have been smaller than an XL, he had a look of urgency on his face which Archer immediately noticed.