Blackout (Sam Archer 3) (12 page)

Jackson stood there in the ruined office in front of Cobb. The two men looked at each other.

'Hello, Ryan,' Cobb said.

‘Hello, Tim,’ Jackson said, ‘It’s been a long time.’

Over three and a half thousand miles to the west, it was early in the morning in the town of McLean, Virginia. The sun had just begun its slow climb at the base of the horizon, shielded by clouds, the air muggy and damp. Officially an unincorporated community on the map, Mclean was a town with over 48,000 residents, many of them diplomats, members of Congress, or high-ranking government officials. The reason for this concentration of population was that the CIA’s headquarters were actually at Mclean, Virginia, not Langley as so many people thought. Other major companies such as Capital One and Hilton Hotels were also based out of the area, adding to both its prestige and wealth, the affluence of the area evident in the high-end shopping malls, golf courses and spa retreats scattered all over the community. Residentially, the census in 2010 revealed there were just over 17,000 separate households in Mclean, and despite being a predominately
government
town as people put it, at that time in the morning most of the residents were still asleep. The buses for the high schools in the area weren't due to roll around until just after 8 am, so it was still that blissful last hour in bed just before everyone had to get up and get going for the day.

But one young man was already up and had been for almost two hours, riding his bike through a series of suburbs and maple tree-lined streets. He worked the paper-round five days a week, the easiest money he'd ever make, thirty five bucks per shift. He was
fourteen and hyperactive so he was usually up by this time in the day anyway, and much to the delight of his parents he figured he might as well make some money if he was already up and about.

He worked ten streets on his route, usually about twenty houses each side, so that added up to a lot of newspapers. Four hundred and four, to be exact. He'd worked out that he could carry eighty rolled up papers in the bag on his side, so he normally had to make a few stops back at the store to reload so he could finish his shift. When he'd started out, he had carefully tucked each paper in each letterbox or walked up to drop it on the porch, but lately he had started throwing them at the porches instead and had got pretty good. A friend of his who worked another route nearby for the same newspaper vendor had gone on vacation, so the kid on the bike had doubled up, offering to do his friend's route for an extra thirty five dollars. Seventy bucks earned by the time he ate breakfast and got on the school-bus.

He had just turned down 41st Street, a stretch not on his normal route but one he was covering for his friend, and was a third of his way along, slinging the papers left and right, each one landing on each porch, some of them not even hitting the front doors.  As he moved down the street, he slung a paper to his left. It twirled through the air and landed. He glanced over to see he'd hit the mark as he pedalled past.

Suddenly, he pulled on the brakes, skidding to a halt, planting his feet either side of the bike.

The houses on the street all looked quiet, everyone inside still asleep or already out the door, but something had caught his eye. Being a wealthy area and with residents constantly out of town or on vacation, his boss at the paper gave him a new list every shift of houses to miss on his route, people who had cancelled their paper whilst they were away. However, this front porch had a stack of newspapers on it. No one seemed to have noticed. It looked like there were over twenty there, hidden by the porch walls, heaped up by the front door.

The kid stepped off his bike, leaving it to one side, and walked down the path towards the house. It looked like most of the others on the street, a box-shaped, two floored brick house with a side garage to the left. The grass on the lawn was long, like it hadn’t been cut in a while, and most of the curtains were drawn.

Walking up the path, the kid arrived at the por
ch and looked down at the stack
uncertainly, pausing just in case whoever lived inside pulled open the curtains and started shouting at him.

But there was no movement from inside.

The curtains were still.

He knelt down and started rummaging through the pile. Eventually, he came up with a newspaper dated from March.

It was delivered three weeks ago to the day, Thursday.

What the hell
?

He was used to the odd heap, maybe six or seven papers for someone who had forgotten to cancel for the week, but he'd never seen a pile this high. Glancing back down the path, he saw the mailbox was jammed full of mail too, spilling out of the metal box.

Placing the paper back down on the pile carefully, the kid turned and walked back down the path. He'd report what he’d seen when he finished his route.

However, something about this place was making him uneasy.

Back in London, the second gunman who had attacked the ARU’s headquarters had made it to the edge of the River Thames. He was on the South Bank, not a hundred yards from where the politician had killed himself earlier that morning, the smell of salt from the water hanging in the air. Pedestrians were walking past him from both directions as he stopped and looked out at the water. He could hear the distant calling of gulls and the sound of the small waves splashing as they hit the stone walls of the riverbank.

He stood there for a few moments then climbed over the railings, causing several passing pedestrians to slow, watching and wondering what the hell he was doing. The man shuffled back and positioned himself so he had his heels over the edge of the brick, his back to the water.

He looked up to the sky. Fifteen years of planning and he had failed. 

He knew what was expected.

He pulled his Beretta from the back of his waistband and flicked off the safety catch, then put the gun in his mouth, feeling the harsh cold metal of the barrel, tasting grit and gun oil.

And he pulled the trigger.

As people watching screamed, the back of the man’s head blew apart and his body went limp as all brain function was instantly shredded by the bullet. He crumpled and fell back, his body tumbling towards the choppy water beneath him. As onlookers watched in disbelief and horror, the man's body hit the Thames with a loud splash. The current
started taking the body downstream immediately as it also started to sink. And within seconds it disappeared out of sight into the oily depths.

ELEVEN

‘How are you doing?’ Jackson asked, as Cobb passed him a cup of coffee, black, two sugars. He had sat down in the empty chair across the desk, the damaged glass behind him and nodded thanks as he took the cup and saucer from Cobb, placing it on the edge of the desk to let it cool.

‘I’ll live,’ Cobb said, taking his own cup of coffee from the stand and taking a seat behind his desk. ‘How’d you find me?’

‘Saw your report on the television. My assistant pulled an address.’

‘I thought you’d be back in Virginia?’

Jackson shook his head. ‘Not yet. Been in London fifteen years and counting.’

There was a pause, formalities over. Both men knew what was coming next in the conversation, but neither wanted to address it, as if not speaking about it would make it less real.

‘I don’t think I want to know why you’re here,’ Cobb added.

Jackson looked at him.

‘You already do though, don’t you?’

Another pause. Cobb looked up at the ceiling, cursing under his breath.

'Jesus Christ.'

'Earlier this morning, a Metro squad car found a guy strangled in his car outside a strip-club,’ Jackson said. ‘Looks like he got taken by surprise. Someone garrotted him with a wire from behind. And on the way here, I got a call from my secretary that another body has been found in New York City. Apparently someone broke into the guy’s apartment sometime last night and put one between his eyes as he slept. He was working as a bodyguard for an Arab Sheikh, but he didn't show up for work. They sent someone round to check on him and found him in bed, missing the back of his head.'

Pause.

'Their names were Jason Carver and Derek Spears. A former United States Marine Captain and an Army Ranger Sergeant, respectively.’

He paused.

‘Ring any bells?’

Silence.

Cobb didn’t speak. Instead, he put down his cup of coffee slowly.

‘Holy shit,' he said. 'I hoped I was imagining the worst. But that confirms it.’

Jackson nodded, leaning forward and taking a sip of his coffee. ‘Add their murders to Captain Adams’ suicide and the marks on the glass behind me and a pattern is emerging, I'm sure you'll agree.'

He leaned forward, returning the cup to the desk but never taking his eyes off Cobb’s.

'We're in some seriously deep shit, my friend.’

‘How is this possible?' Cobb asked quietly. 'I thought they were all in prison?’

'They must have got out.'

'So why the hell didn't we hear about it?'

Jackson looked at him wryly. 'C'mon, man. Places like the jails they were in don't officially exist. They don’t exactly produce a roll call.'

Anxious, Cobb leaned back and flicked his eyes back up at the television, which was running through the morning headlines
. Each one seemed to be related
to those in the know, and spelled serious trouble for the two men s
itting
across from each other.

‘Do we have any information on them?’ Cobb asked.

Jackson shook his head. 'Nothing. I contacted my man in Belgrade on the way here. He's saying the Serbian government are denying any knowledge of a jailbreak. They’re claiming the men don't even exist. And their story checks out. These guys have no records left, no identification. None of them have used their real names in years, and no one knows who or where they are.' 

‘No files?’

‘Nothing.’

Cobb swore, then thought of something.

‘But wait a minute,’ he said. ‘How the hell do they know anything about us? No one knew who we were. That was the whole point of the operation. You and I were here in London, for God's sake.’

Jackson shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, turning and poking a finger at the television. ‘But someone’s been talking to them, Tim. Because they’ve tracked us all down.’

He paused.

'And that means you and I are next on that list.'

At the command post across town, the big man in the darkness was still watching the two television screens with interest. He saw a new
Breaking News
report of a second suicide on a bank by the Thames and nodded. Good. Like any man of honour, Grub did what was expected of him.

He had known Grub since he was a boy. They had grown up together, and he was sad that the man had been forced to kill himself. But he had let himself and every other man in the team down. In a unit like theirs, such failure always came at a price. But the big man in the darkness had another bond with his now dead colleague. They had served time as cell mates together in the prison known as
Ferri
.

Or in English, ‘The Pit’.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years he and his seven men had been held there, in the filth and the grime, surrounded by death and fear, a hundred miles from anywhere and with no hope of escape, left to rot. The prison at full capacity held three hundred inmates, all of them forgotten men. Every day was a battle just to stay alive. Prisoners around them were dying every day from dysentery or some other disease, their bodies often left in their cells for days before the guards bothered to remove them, the smell unforgettable, the constant stench of death unavoidable. It was freezing cold in winter and as hot as a furnace in summer. Every man in that prison was sent there to die, and with most of the inmates that was exactly what happened. But in the midst of the total despair around them, the leader of the eight-man group had somehow kept his team going.

Stay alive
, he’d said.
Hold on to whatever will stop you from giving up
.
Every morning you wake up is another night you survived.

Another day closer to when we will escape.

And another day closer to when we get even.

Over the years they had tried to come up with an escape plan. For a host of different reasons, none had been feasible. Other inmates had tried, but none of them were ever returned to their cells. They were taken into the exercise area in the middle of the dark
cell block and shot in the head, the guards leaving the body there for a couple of days for the other inmates to see. They got the message. Any attempt at an escape would
only
end one way, your body left on that patch of ground to be picked at by the birds. A man only ever had one chance to break out of
Ferri.

The place was remote and well-guarded and the prisoners were deliberately kept malnourished and weakened to reduce the chance of any form of resistance. It had broken most of the other inmates.
The majority
of them died. And the ones who managed to stay alive often went insane. It had almost broken the man sitting there in the dark command post. Most mornings they would wake up and find another inmate being dragged from his cell, a length of fabric tied around his neck in a makeshift rope, his body quickly disposed of. Another man who gave up. The option of suicide was always there, and they would all be lying if they said the thought hadn’t crossed each of their minds.