by Tom Barber
‘Suspect located; he’s in the cab!’ he shouted as he pulled the other man down, his voice fighting to be heard over the wind now howling through the train. ‘But he’s got an automatic weapon; I’m pinned down!’
‘The driver?’
‘Still alive!’
‘Have you found the device?’
‘It must be in there with them. I can’t get near enough to find out!’
Up on street level, Josh and Vargas screeched to a halt at the top of Union Square on 16th Street, bailing out of their car and moving as fast as they could into the station, the place heaving with evacuating commuters coming the other way. Forcing a path through the crowd, the pair headed for the N/Q Uptown track where they knew the train would be arriving any second.
As they appeared, two cops standing with an MTA employee ran towards them, one of them holding a radio receiver.
‘Your guy on the train found the suspect!’ one of the cops told them. ‘But he can’t get near him. The son of a bitch is pinning him down with some kind of machine gun.’
As Josh grabbed the radio, Vargas heard the sound of the train approaching the Q rails below. Knowing they were out of time, she pulled her Sig Sauer and sprinted down the stairs that led to the middle of the platform.
As she reached the last step, the train roared into view and the brakes started to screech, the bomber arriving at his destination. Seeing the suspect in the cabin as the train ploughed along the track towards her, Vargas pushed two remaining members of the public out of the way and fired twice, straight at the driver’s windows, the sound of the gunshots and splintering glass lost in the noise of the approaching train.
Holding on as the train ground to a halt, Archer went to fire into the cab again but then realised the sub-machine gunfire had ceased. Peering round his cover, he saw the suspect was slumped on top of the cowering driver on the floor.
Standing up slowly and stalking forward, his sights never leaving the gunman, he saw the man had been shot twice in the head. Seeing the blond man approach, the driver wriggled his way out from under the dead gunman, crawling over shell casings and broken glass.
Reaching the cabin, Archer saw two bullet-holes in the front window, the train only stopping because of the dead man’s lever. The front of the Q train had moved through the 14th Street station and was now partially in the tunnel, dark gloom ahead illuminated by the occasional light; but Archer wasn’t here to admire the view.
‘Where’s his bag?’ he asked the driver quickly.
‘What?’
‘He must have had a bag. Where the hell is it?’
As the man stared at him, shocked and confused, Archer turned away to look around the cab. Fifteen feet behind him, the doors to the carriage were forced open, Josh and Vargas climbing inside with their weapons ready to fire and saw their team-mate in the cab.
‘Arch!’ Josh said urgently.
Archer didn’t respond; instead, he dropped down, turned the dead suspect over and pulled open his jacket; frisking him down, he paused, then pushed up a sleeve.
The guy had cylinders of ball bearings taped to his limbs.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Vargas said quietly, bending down beside Archer.
Working fast, Archer patted down the gunman’s torso and frowned. Quickly pushing up the man’s shirt, he froze.
‘What the-?’ he whispered.
The suspect had fresh, angry-looking stitches covering his stomach; the skin was lumpy and inflamed, dried blood visible from the crude needlework.
The explosives were sewn under his skin.
As the detectives stared at the man’s torso in disbelief, they saw a flashing green light just under the skin, accompanied by a quiet beeping sound.
And both had just started to quicken.
‘Go!’ Josh ordered the two MTA men, who not needing to be told twice, turned and stumbled away down the train.
Not wasting a second, Archer rose and pushed open the driver’s side door, which swung out into the dark tunnel. Turning back, he grabbed the suspect’s arms and pulled him towards the exit, Vargas and Josh picking up the man’s legs.
They manoeuvred him awkwardly out of the train, the flashing light on the man’s stomach getting faster, the three of them frantically searching for somewhere to dump the body before the explosives detonated. However, there were no obvious access doors, nowhere they could put the body, just dark dirty tunnel stretching onwards uptown.
Holding the dead man’s arms, Archer looked around, the speed of the beeping and flashing under the stitches increasing by the second.
‘Shit!’
Glancing down, he suddenly spotted a circular manhole cover a few feet in front of him on the lower level of the tracks, camouflaged with dirt and grime from the tunnel.
‘There!’ he said, Josh and Vargas following where he was looking.
Knowing they only had seconds, they quickly carried the dead terrorist towards the manhole cover; Archer lowered him gently to the ground, grabbed the cover with both hands and heaved it off.
The flashing was now going as fast as a drum roll.
Without ceremony, they stuffed the guy inside the hole, Josh and Vargas holding onto his ankles as they lowered the dead man onto several thick pipes, all three of them praying to God they weren’t gas mains. With him safely placed, Josh and Vargas stepped back.
‘Let’s go!’ Vargas said.
Grabbing the lid, Archer quickly lowered it back in place then sprinted back to the train behind the other two, taking care not to step on the tracks.
Pulling themselves up into the cab, they ran through the carriages, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the manhole as they could.
Suddenly there was an enormous muffled explosion, throwing the three detectives to the carriage floor. The whole station seemed to shake, dust and brick falling from the walls, the train rattling like a tin can caught in a tornado. Coughing, Archer looked up through the dust and to his relief, saw the other two moving.
A few seconds later the three of them slowly sat up and turned, looking towards the front of the train which had been annihilated, the wailing fire alarms accompanied by the sound of running water.
‘You good?’ Josh asked his colleagues over the noise.
Beside him, the other two nodded, Vargas giving a thumb’s up. On the far left, Archer exhaled and lay back on the floor in exhausted relief.
‘Next time I’m taking the bus,’ he said.
TWO
Two and a half hours later, Archer and Josh were standing on the street in Union Square, the entire area illuminated by the flashing lights of emergency services vehicles and the glare of news-camera lights. The place was full of activity, members of the public and MTA employees who’d been directly caught up in the drama being treated for shock and minor injuries by medical teams.
CSU were down in the cavernous station examining the damaged front of the train, the entire place shut down for the time being. The FBI and ATF had shown up too; both agencies were being brought up to date on the situation as news teams both national and international were filming the Square from behind hurriedly-erected barriers, reporters interviewing members of the public trying to get what information they could as they reported back.
Standing beside his detective partner, Archer watched it all unfold; as he stood there he was also very aware that the Square was being doused with a torrent of water, jets spraying up into the air and drenching those in the immediate vicinity. It turned out those pipes Archer, Josh and Vargas had laid the body onto had been water mains supplying much of downtown Manhattan.
He glanced over at the geyser erupting from a storm drain forty or so feet away, aware of several burly maintenance workers looking in his direction; now the situation was safe, word had quickly spread regarding who’d been responsible for the destruction.
‘Why are they looking at me?’ he said to Josh, noting the glares directed at him. ‘I wasn’t the one with the C4 next to my guts.’
<
br /> ‘Word’s got round that putting our friend down the manhole was your idea,’ Josh said, hiding a smile. ‘Apparently Vargas and I were just following your lead.’
Archer raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, it’s like that is it?’
‘Sorry buddy. You know I’ve always got your back.’ He nodded at the burly, blue-collar group. ‘But not with those guys.’
Archer smiled. ‘What happened to the driver, by the way?’
‘He’s OK. Bit shaken up; they took him to hospital. Said the gunman forced him to open up the cab at Atlantic then put a gun to his head.
‘Our boy must have seen me with the Sig on the camera and panicked,’ Archer said. ‘Guess he didn’t want to risk the train being stopped by us before it made it here and he could detonate.’
Before Josh could reply, the two men sensed someone approaching and turned to see Marquez walking towards them, pushing her cell phone back into her pocket.
‘Sergeant Hendricks and his team secured the other device,’ she said. ‘Just. They nailed him at 76th Street, heading for Times Square on the 1.’
‘Alive?’
‘Dead. He tried to run so Philips blasted him; head shot like Vargas, luckily for them. Same deal, ball bearings strapped to his limbs, explosives and a timer under his skin, loaded to the gills with crystal meth to numb the pain and pump them up. Bomb disposal managed to cut him open and defuse the charge before it blew.’
Archer grimaced. ‘How pleasant.’
‘What were estimated casualties?’ Josh asked.
‘Including down here, over a thousand. Times Square was packed.’
‘The motive?’
‘Same old shit; idiots with a so-called cause. But these bastards were inventive; they knew even if someone found them or put them down, they couldn’t get to the explosives and timer. Bomb disposal call it Franken-bombing; apparently it’s becoming increasingly common.’
As both men absorbed this, Shepherd joined the group, having wrapped up a conversation with two agents from the FBI and ATF.
‘Everything OK, sir?’ Marquez asked.
He nodded. ‘Just about. The Feds are saying we left it late to move in.’
‘We only just got this tip-off. Wasn’t our choice to cut it so fine.’
Looking at Archer, Shepherd smiled. ‘By the way, if you were ever thinking about running for Mayor I’d reconsider it. You’re not exactly flavour of the month with the Worker’s Union over there.’
He nodded towards the city maintenance guys, who now had the mighty task on their hands of repairing the damage, water continuing to gush up through the ruptured concrete.
‘Apparently they only finished work on that pipe last week. They’re suggesting sending you down there head-first to plug the hole.’
As the others laughed and Archer started to protest again, the group saw Vargas reappear, stepping out of a portable mobile command truck forty feet away, her pistol absent from her hip. Seeing as she was the one who put down the suspect, she’d been in there for almost an hour giving a statement. She’d had one hell of an evening; not only had she put two rounds in the bomber, but when they’d breached the suspect’s apartment in Brooklyn she’d been the one who’d found the schedules of those particular trains with the two stations marked.
She immediately spotted the rest of her team and walked across the Square.
‘You good?’ Shepherd asked as she joined them.
‘All clear. They took my Sig as evidence. I’ll get it back next week.’
‘They should give you a medal to go with it,’ Shepherd replied.
‘I’ll just take going home for the night.’
‘Me too,’ he replied, turning to his team. ‘I’ll head back to the Precinct and start on the reports. Go home and get some rest. You deserve it; good work, guys. I’m proud.’
The group nodded their thanks and Shepherd walked off through the Square, leaving his four detectives alone.
‘I need a beer,’ Josh said. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Not for me,’ Vargas said. ‘I’m spent.’
‘Arch?’
‘Not tonight, mate.’
‘Lisa?’
‘Right now I just want to go home and see my kid. Give me a ride?’
Josh nodded, turning to Archer and Vargas. ‘See you guys tomorrow. A night to remember, right?’
They both nodded. A beat later he and Marquez headed off through the Square towards one of the two NYPD Fords. Left alone, Archer and Vargas looked at each other, the events of the day starting to hit them both now the adrenaline rush had faded.
‘Think I’ve had enough for one day,’ Archer said.
Running her hand through her hair, Vargas nodded. ‘That’s for sure.’
‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
Glancing at the maintenance workers, she managed to raise a smile. ‘I’d say that’s the second best decision you’ve made today.’
THREE
Fifteen minutes later, Archer and Vargas crossed the Queensborough Bridge in a black Bureau Ford as the clock on the dash ticked past 9:45pm, the sun already gone for the day and a thickening veil of darkness drawing across the city.
Archer was behind the wheel, Vargas in the passenger seat beside him with her cell phone in her hands, checking for any messages. Leaving the Bridge and moving into Queens, Archer glanced at her. She still seemed wound up, which was natural, but as she looked at her phone, he saw a tiny shift upwards in her body language and guessed who’d be on her mind; her adopted daughter, Isabel.
‘Is she back yet?’ he asked.
Vargas smiled. ‘She’s downstairs with John. He’s asking when we’ll get home.’
‘We got anything in the fridge?’
‘Not much. Don’t think I could eat anyway.’
‘Neither do I but she’ll want to. Let’s get a pizza or something.’
She nodded and tapped in a reply as Archer took a right turn down 39th Avenue before swinging left into a parking lot, just a handful of cars sitting in the bays with a row of stores fifty feet away. As Vargas sent the message and put her cell away, Archer pulled to a stop in an empty space.
Switching off the engine, he reached for his door handle but then realised Vargas hadn’t moved. Turning, he saw she was staring at the dashboard, the momentary lift Isabel had given her already dissipating like mist in the sun.
He paused, his hand on the door. ‘Everything OK?’
She didn’t reply.
Withdrawing his fingers from the handle, he turned to her.
‘Hey. Talk to me. What’s up?’
‘We should have died tonight,’ she said after a few moments.
Archer paused for a moment. ‘I know.’
‘I feel like I end up saying that every couple of months.’
He smiled. ‘But you’re still alive.’
‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’
She continued to stare straight ahead, not looking at him.
Archer touched her hand. ‘I’m still here. See?’
‘Yeah, but only just.’
She exhaled sharply, obviously wound up and stressed; Archer turned all the way in his seat to face her.
‘I’m not going anywhere. Shit, Alice, even Wile E Coyote couldn’t get me.’
She suddenly smiled. ‘He couldn’t get anyone, Archer. That was the whole point.’
He grinned back and she laughed briefly, closing her eyes and keeping them shut.
When she opened them again, he could see a slight sheen of tears.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Archer repeated, squeezing her hand. ‘I mean it.’
Tears still in her eyes, she glanced at him.
‘You promise?’
He smiled. ‘I promise. I won’t leave you. I’m here for good.’
As he watched her, seeing his words having an effect, she suddenly leaned forward and kissed him, something she never normally did when they were on duty. A few seconds later she withdrew and smiled again, wiping he
r eyes.
‘Come to think of it, Josh was right. We definitely need some booze.’
‘I’ll get it. My treat.’
Shaking her head, she pushed open her door handle. ‘Stay put. This one’s on me, Road-Runner.’
With that she stepped out of the car and shut the door, then walked across the car park towards the stores. Watching her go, Archer’s own smile lingered for a few moments.
Then it faded as he watched her arrive at a deli and disappear inside.
He and Vargas had been working together since June, Alice brought into the Department from the US Marshals Service. However, they’d met a few weeks prior to that on a warm night in March, a first encounter neither was likely to forget.
Alice and a team of fellow Marshals had been attacked on the upper West Side by a group of armed gunmen. Happening to be passing by, Archer had raced to their aid and ended up taking refuge with the team inside a Harlem apartment block to find the trouble had only just begun, more killers arriving intent on wiping them all out. It had been a nightmarish few hours as they’d fought to survive; considering the odds against them, they should have died, but somehow they’d made it out and that night had forever changed his life.
He’d read a 9/11 anniversary article a few weeks ago focusing on the bonds that developed between survivors from that day, people from vastly different backgrounds brought together by the terrible experiences they’d undergone that no-one else, no matter how sympathetic, could ever truly comprehend. Although under far different circumstances, he felt he had more understanding of that sense of kinship than he did before. Twice in six months he and Vargas had been side by side thinking they were about to die, three times if they included tonight. Surviving those ordeals gave every second they were alive an intensity and clarity that he’d never previously experienced. When he thought back to the past, his life before he’d met her that night in March seemed to have been in sepia tone, like an old Hollywood movie. Her presence had given it colour.
Which earlier tonight had almost cut to black.
