Blackout (Sam Archer 3) (2 page)

He barely even blinked.

He just stared straight ahead, the letter and pair of photographs resting on his lap.

Not long after he read the letter, Jamie stepped out of the building across the street and locked up, but she didn't notice him sitting there in the car. She headed off down the pavement, turning the corner and disappeared out of sight, as the man sat motionless in the Volvo, staring
unseeingly
through the front windscreen.

After just over an hour had passed, he made a decision and twisted the keys, firing the ignition. He drove straight home, on autopilot. The next thing he knew he was parked outside his front door, in a quiet neighbourhood in the west of the city.
He got out of
the car and shutting the door behind him, he
walked up to
at the front door and sliding
his
key into the lock, he twisted it and walked into the house.

He entered quietly, listening, waiting. There was nothing. The house was silent and dark. He placed his keys gently on a table by the door, and then headed straight upstairs. After a few moments, he came back down again slowly, in a daze, walked to the kitchen and took a seat at the table in the dark, all alone, a still black figure silhouetted by the moonlight from the open curtains behind him.

He sat motionless for some time. Then he rose and walked into his den next door. Pulling open the top drawer of his desk, he retrieved two separate items and tucked
one
into
each
pocket.

Then he walked
back
into the hallway, grabbed his coat and left the house.

He sat on a bench on the South Bank until morning. He watched the sun rise on the horizon, bathing the London skyline in an orange glow, the air fresh, the smell of salt from the Thames in the air, the city waking up from a deep slumber in front of him. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He felt unaccustomed tears well in his eyes as he looked at the view, the sun slowly bringing light to the city and the start of a new day. He checked his watch. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the letter and
the
two photographs. He
took
a lighter from another pocket and sparked a flame. He set the paper and photos on fire, watching them curl and burn away between his fingers, eventually dropping the smoking edges of what was left on the ground by his foot, twisted, black and destroyed.

He then reached into his pocket
again
and pulled out something else.

It was an old revolver, six bullets inside, the second item he had retrieved from the desk in his den.

He put it in his mouth and pulled back the hammer with his forefinger.

He took one last look at the city in front of him.

And he pulled the trigger.

TWO

At the same moment that the old revolver fired, Officer Sam Archer of the Armed Response Unit also had his hands on a gun
,
twenty two miles across the city. He was snuggled in tight to the stock of a long sniper rifle, his breathing slow and smooth, his heart-rate as even as a slow-ticking clock. His left eye was shut and his right was looking down the scope, the fingers of his right hand curled around the brown pistol-grip of the weapon, his forefinger resting gently on the trigger.

A hundred and fifty five yards away his target was still, unmoving. The morning air was cool and clean, with no crosswind to worry about.

He was aiming the crosshairs of the scope on the man’s right eye.

The average length of a human head and torso is thirty six inches. The head alone is normally about ten. Archer had heard snipers talk about the
fatal T
, the region on a target’s head where any impact from a bullet would be an instant kill. From the chin to the nose and either side on each eye, any round that went through that area would instantly sever the brain stem and spinal cord. A target would be dead before he hit the ground, and nine times out of ten before he even heard the shot that killed him. With a moving target, a torso shot was more reliable, as the target area was larger and any hit to a vital organ was effectively a kill-shot regardless.

But the man on the wrong end of the scope that morning was stationary.

And he was about to get shot.

The rifle in Archer's hands was a Heckler and Koch PSG1A1. The abbreviated name came from the German word
prazisionsschutzengewehr,
or
precision-shooter rifle
in English. Heckler and Koch had been commissioned to create the weapon by German law-enforcement after the Black September Munich disaster at the 1972 Olympics, whe
n
the Israeli Olympic team were ambushed by armed terrorists in the Olympic Village.

The West German police had been unable to engage the armed gunmen with their short-range weapons and eleven hostages had died, to the shock and horror of millions watching around the world on television. The heads of the German police force had ordered a long-range shooting weapon be designed specifically for their police teams, and Heckler and Koch had consequently come up with, still to this day, one of the most accurate sniper rifles in the world.

The weapon was dark and sleek, supported at the front for stability by a tripod. It had a side-folding, adjustable, high-impact matte black plastic stock with a vertically-adjustable
cheek-piece to accommodate the varying body-types, heights and builds of different shooters. Older versions used to have a Hensoldt scope, but this latest model had an improved Schmidt and Bender 3-12x 50 Police Marksman II tactical scope, mounted on 34 mm rings. It was new and more up to date, with increased accuracy and further range than the Hensoldt, effective in all elements, rain or shine. The sight showed four lines coming together then narrowing into thin cross-hairs which were at that moment in Archer’s hands
,
aimed on the iris of his target’s right eyeball.

The rifle held a five, ten or twenty round ammunition box or could be loaded manually bullet-by-bullet, but Archer had gone with the five. It didn't disrupt the weight and feel of the rifle too much, and gave him sufficient reserve ammunition without having to manually load each bullet or weigh the rifle down unnecessarily. Inside the magazine were five polished NATO 7.62 x51 mm rounds, devastating rifle ammunition. Each bullet was a 175 grain, fairly heavy, but was the perfect blend of stopping power and accuracy. At 1000 yards, the fired bullet would contain more kinetic energy than a .357 Magnum round fired point blank. Dirty Harry would have approved.

Once the trigger was pulled, a bullet would leave the rifle at over 2500 feet per second, just about twice the speed of sound, and rotated at about 200,000 revolutions per minute. With longer shots a sniper had to worry about
spindrift
, where the constant turning of the bullet would carry it off course, but the target wasn't far enough from Archer on this occasion
for that
to be a concern. Each bullet was a hollow-point, boat-tail cartridge, designed to mushroom upon impact and create irreparable damage. Through a human head, the bullet would enter the cranium and expand, destroying brain tissue and rupturing the spinal cord, resulting in instant death. With terminal ballistics, a rifleman always knew what both the
crush
and
tear
factor of each round he put into his rifle would leave. Basically, what the round would destroy in the body and the damage it would leave behind. And in both regards, the NATO round was the pick of the bunch. If there was a better common rifle ammunition out there, no one had discovered it yet or at least
, had
advertised it.

The PSG1A1 really only had one disadvantage. Once a shot was fired, the spent cartridge that had housed the fired bullet jumped out of the ejection port to the right, sometimes as far as ten metres away. In certain situations, retrieving the cartridge could be both a potential nightmare but a necessity for a sniper, especially if on a covert operation. However, for the police, that wasn’t a concern, and aside from that very minor issue the PSG1A1 had a solid reputation as the most accurate semi-automatic rifle in the world. It was an outstanding weapon and the sniper rifle of choice for many police and law enforcement groups around the world, including the Spanish police, the Mexican army and the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. And the latest inclusion to that group was Archer’s London-based counter-terrorist team, the Armed Response Unit.

The young blond police officer held the sight on the target’s eye, his breathing barely noticeable. He was on the second of three final deep breaths. He inhaled slowly and exhaled for a third and final time, emptying all the air from his lungs. His heart-rate was slow and he felt calm, not a thought in his mind. He had already taken the slack out of the trigger, halfway towards the two and half pounds of pressure it would need before the rifle fired.

And he gently squeezed all the way.

The weapon kicked back into his shoulder as it fired. The bullet took less than a second to reach the target and it hit him straight through the nose, a half-inch to the left of where Archer had aimed, right through the centre of the
T
of the
fatal T
.

An instant kill.

Down the shooting range, a hole appeared in the paper target, the sheet billowing back just a tad from the impact of the bullet, and Archer smiled, racking the bolt on the rifle. He glanced back over his shoulder at his best friend Chalky and two other officers, Porter and Fox, who were
standing
watching him, each with a set of binoculars in their hands. Chalky had his face covered by his palm whilst the other two laughed.

Archer removed the magazine by pushing the release catch with his thumb, then did a dry click to make sure the weapon was unloaded. He re-racked the bolt and applied the safety catch
,
then rose, taking off his ear defenders and walking over to the trio of officers behind him. As he approached, Porter and Fox were still chuckling as Chalky shook his head, swearing under his breath. He had taken a shot with the rifle just prior to Archer, but he had only
managed to
clip the paper target’s left ear. A painful injury for sure, but not a kill. And that meant this morning Archer was now eleven to nil up in their contest.

‘I’ll take cash or cheque,’ Archer told Chalky, grinning at him and joining the trio. With his head still down, Chalky pulled a twenty pound note from his pocket and held it up. Archer took it with a wink and a smile.

The four men were an integral part of the ten-man task force of the Armed Response Unit, one of the two premier counter-terrorist squads in the city along with CO19.
F
or the sake of operational ease
t
he task-force was split into two sections, First and Second Team, and these four men comprised First Team, the quartet typically charged with the most important tasks in the field. Porter and Fox were both in their mid-thirties, experienced guys and as tough as they were professional, Porter solidly built and dark-featured whilst Fox had a more wiry build and sandy hair. Both men had been policemen for over a decade, and they were at that stage in their careers where they were in their physical and mental prime, experienced and seasoned officers.

Archer and Chalky were both still twenty seven, ten years younger than the other two but just as deserving of their spots. In the United States, an FBI agent could be as young as twenty six, and it was much the same in the UK for the counter-terrorist police force. They had both been with the Unit for over two years and in that short time had proved themselves to be invaluable members of the squad, quick-thinking, fit and decisive. They were similarly built, both six feet and about a hundred and eighty five pounds, but Chalky had dark features whereas Archer had blond hair and blue eyes. The two friends were pretty evenly matched with the pistol and sub-machine gun that the Unit used in the field, but the recent arrival of the sniper rifle had seen Archer take
not only
a considerable amount of Chalky's money
,
but
serious bragging rights in their contests.

Just before Christmas last year, the head of the Unit, Director Tim Cobb, had ordered every officer in the squad take a sniper course with the newly- arrived PSG1A1, at this range. A siege and hostage situation at a townhouse in Tottenham earlier in the year had left Cobb with the realisation that the task force was only really equipped for close-quarter confrontations.

In the field, each officer was armed and proficient with an HK MP5 sub-machine gun and also a Glock 17 pistol, but Cobb had requested and been
given official authorisation
for the
use of two PSG1A1 sniper rifles. In the army, snipers were the ultimate force-multiplier. One sniper could hold down an entire area for days at a time. In the U.S, their forces and statisticians had come up with the estimation that snipers in their army averaged 1.3 rounds per kill. But in the police, sharpshooters gave them the distance advantage. Any emergency that called for a sharpshooter normally meant the enemy was at a single location, usually a bank or a hostage situation, and meant the shooter could engage the enemy unawares from a distance, not coming in through the front door. The arrival of the rifles had taken a real weight off Cobb's mind. He didn't want to get caught short as the German Police had.