Blackout (Sam Archer 3) (13 page)

But finally, just over three months ago, they had escaped. From his cell the leader had co-ordinated a mass riot. It had taken time and patience, but he'd got the word out and it had
quickly
spread. His reasoning was that the prisoners had absolutely nothing in their favour except one thing. Weight of numbers. If the other inmates did as they were told, together the mob could overrule the guards and have a chance at freedom. For too long every man in there had been looking out for himself, trying to escape alone or in a small group. There was strength in numbers.

If they all worked together, it was possible.

And it had worked. There were no showers in
Ferri,
so once a week, twenty prisoners at a time were walked out of their cells and taken to a dry wall where they were given one piece of soap between five of them and hosed down for just over
a minute by a guard, two other guards
standing there with sub-machine guns. It should have been eight prisoners at a time, but the guards had become lazy, eager to get it over with so they could head back to the comfort of their mess room. They were complacent, figuring the prisoners were too physically weak and
demoralised
to be a threat.

But the leader and one of his men, Spider, had taken the guards by surprise as they led them from their cells. Mustering all their strength, the two men killed them both with their bare hands as two of the others worked the mechanisms to open all the other cells. A mass riot had followed, the remaining guards beaten to death or hanged by the baying mob as the place was set on fire.

Leaving the other prisoners to wreak havoc in the prison, tearing it apart, the leader had gathered his men and headed straight to the guards hut, raiding their clothing stores and stocking up on food and water. The prison was a five day walk from anywhere, and it would be freezing cold at night. If they didn't prepare, they would die out there on the plains, and every day they had survived inside that prison would have been for nothing.

And so, almost fifteen years after they had arrived, the eight men had escaped.

They made their way across the biting cold of the valleys and plains towards Belgrade. The leader of the group had planned ahead. It was the main reason why he was still alive. Before they had all been imprisoned he had accumulated a significant amount of money, which he had stored in a secure bank account no one knew about. After they got to the capital, the leader worked out a deal with a hotel owner on the outskirts of town, paying the man a handsome bonus on the condition that he tell no one, not even his own family, that the eight men were staying there. The leader and his men had spent the first month eating and slowly regaining their strength as best they could and living like human beings again. They had recovered fast, the benefits of good nutrition, plentiful water and soft sheets to sleep on, and before long all of them were at a level of fitness which was sufficient for what would come next, all of them fuelled by a burning desire and appetite for revenge.

Once they’d eaten and slept enough, their bodies nourished and cleansed of the evils of
Ferri
, the leader had gathered his men and told them of his intentions. He still had a small fortune saved in that anonymous bank account, untouched in over fifteen years. It was enough to supply them with everything they could need to execute his plan. Food, clothing, weapons, fake documentation, plane tickets. He outlined what he was going to do personally, and had asked them if they were willing to follow him on the path he was taking, giving them the opportunity to leave and move on and enjoy a second chance at life. But it was a redundant question. Every man in the room had instantly said
yes.
They had entered that prison as comrades, but the fifteen years of hardship and ill treatment in
Ferri
had forged them into brothers.

The next step was acquiring information about the men who had ruined their lives, which had actually been relatively simple. Once they had fake passports and eight plane tickets, they had flown to Washington DC and from there taken a bus out to a town called McLean in Virginia. Laying low and scouting out an information source, a few weeks after they had arrived they hit the jackpot, a CIA employee with access to everything they needed.

Once they’d obtained what they were wanted, after some direct persuasion, they had examined the data closely and realised the team would have to separate to get the job done. If they were systematic, taking down each target over a period of time, the word would surely spread and the others on the list would be alerted, making the team’s job of killing them much harder. At that moment, they still had the element of surprise, the most useful tactic in combat. The men on the list had no idea they were coming.

No idea that they were all going to die.

Once weapons and plans of attack had been arranged, the eight man team was split in
to
two groups, four staying in the United States, the other four travelling across the ocean to the United Kingdom.

And they had begun to work through the list.

The leader had sent Bug to Washington to kill the doorman, the man called Carver. They had a number of options on where and how to do it, but the leader figured late at night outside the strip club was the best choice. No one was around at that time, removing any potential witnesses, and no one would discover his body until Bug was out of the country. Carver should have counted himself lucky. It was a blissfully swift death for him. In other circumstances, the commanding officer would have made it last for weeks.

He had sent Spider to New York City to take out the bodyguard, Spears. That was just as straightforward. The guy had recently put his name down on a lease on a new apartment in Manhattan. He lived alone and had no partner. Spider would do the job late at night, taking the right precautions, then get out of the country after dumping the evidence in the River. And Bird had been sent up to Connecticut to kill the man who owned the software company. Out of some bizarre injustice, the exact same cruelty that had left the eight man team to rot in
Ferri
for fifteen years, it turned out that the man was now a major success, living a rich and prosperous life. Unlike the other two men, he had a family and a business so he constantly had people around him. Bird wasn’t a marksman, but he was good with explosives, and had rigged up a charge under the man’s car during the night. Once the guy stepped in and put the key in the ignition and twisted, the C4 took care of the rest.

All evidence that the three killers were ever at the scene was either covered or destroyed. Bug and Spider would ditch their weapons, and Bird’s would be destroyed when the car exploded. Right then, all three were already on their way across the ocean to London to reunite with the rest of the group. And once his job was done in DC, the fourth member of the US quartet, Flea, would join them.

However, on this side of the Atlantic, the operation had had mixed success. Adams' suicide was a tick in the box. It had been one of his men's ideas to give the politician no other choice than to kill himself. They could easily have stormed his office or bombed his car, but Worm had wanted him to suffer. Not the physical kind of pain, but mental, the same kind of desperation the group had suffered every minute of every day in
Ferri
. Out of the eight-man team, Worm was the most inventive at this kind of thing. He liked his enemies to be in pain. If he was going to kill you, he wouldn’t just do it there and then, he’d tell you a week in advance and let you think about it every night before he did it. The leader of the group knew bad things had happened to the tall, gangly soldier as a boy, his father and uncle abusive both physically and sexually, and he guessed the cruelty he
possessed as a man had something to with those scars he carried. For most of his men, killing a man was something they needed to do to ensure victory or stay alive, but for Worm, it was a pleasure.

The envelope delivered to Adams’ office had contained a hand-typed letter and two Polaroid photographs taken by Worm, up close, taken in this very room. Worm, Grub and Crow had come for Adams’ wife and the kid last night at their home, just before 11 p.m. They had restrained and gagged the two, the boy pissing himself with fear, then brought them back here and tied them to two chairs. Worm had snapped a Polaroid of each, and scrawled in his best English a letter ordering Adams to kill himself, or his family would die. He told him why this had to happen.  And the threats that followed were extremely specific and detailed. Surgery would be performed on the boy, and they would send Adams Polaroids during the long operation. Then the same would happen to his wife, an extensive, long procedure, documented with photographs that would all be sent to Adams in a neat pile, showing him all the pieces. And if he told a soul, especially the cops, or let anyone else see the letter and the photographs, surgery on the kid would begin regardless. He would never find them in time. There was only one way this was going to end.

Worm had given the letter, the photographs and envelope to Crow and told him to handle the rest. Crow had sealed them all inside then delivered the letter to Adams' office late last night, knowing he was upstairs. The message inside the envelope was very simple.

If he wasn't dead by 8am, surgery on the boy would begin.

The commander of the group was somewhat taken aback when the man had gone ahead and killed himself. He was expecting him to put up some sort of fight or at least contact the police. But he was pleasantly surprised, and would congratulate Worm when he saw him next. Worm’s predictions had proved correct. It gave the leader of the group great comfort to know that Adams died in agonising mental anguish, still not one hundred per cent sure his family would be safe. No bullet from an enemy would be more painful than one the man fired into his own head.

So Adams had killed himself but Crow and Grub had screwed up at the police station. They had let the man called Cobb escape. An operational setback, but not a disaster. Both men had paid the ultimate price for their failure. The remainder of the team would get it done and kill the man, but it would take some extra planning now that Cobb knew there were men after him, much as it would with Jackson. Jackson’s assistant had called ahead earlier to what she thought was the Syrian ambassador’s office but was in fact speaking to Worm, and she had asked if they could reschedule Jackson's noon appointment, seeing as something had come up today.

She had unwittingly saved her boss’s life.

So Cobb and Jackson were still alive for the time being through sheer luck. But they would die soon. He was as sure of that as he was that the sun would go down at the end of the day. At some point in the next forty-eight hours, Director Tim Cobb and CIA agent Ryan Jackson would both be killed. In a way, it would be even sweeter revenge as now they both surely knew it was coming.

In the dark room, the man flicked his gaze to the CNN newsroom, where Breaking Reports were just coming in of a man killed by a car-bomb in upstate Connecticut.

A concerned-looking reporter was already on the street, the charred remnants of a car behind her, police tape pulled up and crowds of concerned residents gathered alongside the news vans and police cars. He read on the screen that the deceased had been named as David Floyd, former US Marine Corps, and he left behind a wife and three children.

The commanding officer took the pen on the desk in front of him and drew a line through the man's name, nodding. Six down.

Five to go.

The two McLean P.D officers who took the call to check out the house with the stack of newspapers were called Beckman and Vasquez. They'd been partners for almost two years and were a good team, Beckman a Sergeant, cool and calm of Polish-German heritage, Vasquez still just an Officer but with an energy and Latina fire for justice that would change that soon enough. McLean was a relatively quiet place, a good town to be a cop. Crime stats were low in the area. Pretty much everyone who lived here was either wealthy or on their way to be, or they worked for the CIA or Congress. Murders and homicides were minimal, usually less than ten a year, and the crimes that took place were normally financial, money-laundering or tax-evasion, not violent or physical. Beckman had been a cop for twelve years and had only ever drawn his piece three times, never having to fire it. Vasquez was coming up to her third year, but had only drawn hers once. There was no soaring murder rate or any turf wars between different gangs here, and the sense of community in the area meant the locals knew most of the officers by name.

The two cops worked five days a week, weekends off, and drove their beat in a squad car kept spotless by Beckman, covering an area of about eight square miles. They'd just taken a call from dispatch concerning a domestic enquiry. Apparently
a
kid who did
one of
the paper round
s
had told his boss about a stack of papers on the front step of
a
property, and as the squad car pulled up outside, the two officers could see he hadn't been exaggerating. 

Beckman applied the handbrake and killed the engine. Down the street, both cops saw the beginnings of activity from pretty much every house on the street. It was a family area, lots of people walking down paths and headed to cars, firing engines and driving off to work. The muffled noise of kids being rounded up before they were packed off to school, the yellow school-bus pulling up along the street, the activity that took place in most households across the country at that time in the morning.