by Tom Barber
Trick Turn
By
Tom Barber
*****
Trick Turn
Copyright: Archway Productions
Published: 30th July 2019
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.
Includes short extracts taken from ‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller
First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press 1953
Copyright Arthur Miller 1952
‘You’ve just walked on ahead of me,’ by Joyce Grenfell.
Taken from ‘Hats Off: Poems and Drawings.’
Published London: John Murray (October 1 2000).
For info on all new releases
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 it appears she’s been abducted.
GREEN LIGHT
A nineteen year old woman is gunned down in a Queens car park, the latest victim in a brutal gang turf war that goes back almost a century. Suspended from duty, his badge and gun confiscated, Archer is nevertheless drawn into the fray as he seeks justice for the girl. People are going missing, all over New York.
And soon, so does he.
LAST BREATH
A Federal manhunt is underway across the United States. Three people have been shot by a sniper, and he’s gone to ground somewhere in Washington D.C., his killing spree apparently still not over. As riots engulf the city and the manhunt intensifies, Sam Archer arrives in the city to visit his family.
Or so it would appear.
JUMP SEAT
A commercial airliner crashes into the Atlantic Ocean with hundreds of people on board. When another follows three days later, Archer and the rest of the team are assigned the case. At any moment, they know another plane could go down.
And to try and solve the case, Archer’s going to have to go 35,000 feet up in the sky.
CLEARED HOT
A female CT Bureau detective and colleague of Archer’s is shot in the head in an empty pool in Astoria. Archer learns she’s been re-examining a strange case from seventeen years ago. On the morning of Tuesday September 11th, 2001, a FDNY firefighter showed up to work and committed suicide.
But no-one has ever figured out why.
TRICK TURN
At a pre-July 4th carnival in New York, an eleven year old girl is almost killed when a knife slams into a wall, missing her by a hair’s breadth. No-one saw who threw the blade, but Archer and his NYPD team can guess why.
Her dead father was one of the most powerful mobsters in the city.
And someone seems hell bent on reuniting the girl with him.
Also:
CLOSE CALLS
In a collection of three stories, familiar characters from the Sam Archer thriller series look Death right in the eye and don’t blink first. Moments that forged the people they are today.
Moments they can never forget.
Their close calls.
This one is for my brother-in-law, Neil. Thanks for showing me all the sights, sounds (and pubs) of Oxford.
Also, Trick Turn features a half American/half British protagonist, with scenes set in both the United States and the United Kingdom. As such, I’ve tried to make the corresponding spellings correct according to the scene/protagonist, but writing a book series with such a dual identity continues to present unique challenges. Whatever your nationality, the goal has been to accommodate American and British readers while not jarring your enjoyment of the story.
I hope this has been successful.
Best wishes, and enjoy…
ONE
Her face was criss-crossed with old scars, seamed with collagen. She was panting heavily, her breath coming out as white vapor, her chest rising and falling.
But her hands were steady.
She pushed up a set of ski goggles until they were resting against her woollen hat, her lank blonde hair spilling over the collar of her coat. Her snowmobile was lying on its side to her right, where it had ploughed to a stop in a snowdrift after she’d been forced off the road. It had dark smoking holes in its sides but the front shield had protected her from the bullets.
Pools of blood had already started to leak out of the bodies of the two men slumped in the snow in front of her. It should have been her lying there, but the heavily falling snow had saved her life. The pair who’d come to kill her clearly weren’t used to a harsh climate and hadn’t been prepared for the sudden change in the weather. Neither of them had been wearing goggles, and the horizontal wind-driven snow from a passing storm had obscured their vision as they’d opened fire when she sped into view.
The moment she’d realised she was driving into an ambush, she swerved into the pile of snow at the side of the road which threw her off her transport. She’d scrambled behind the cover of the snowbank, the men continuing to fire on her position, as she used the drift and poor visibility to flank them. Looping her way around, and sliding open the knife she always carried in the pocket of her coat, she’d crept up behind one guy as he moved in on the drift where he thought she was. She’d slashed open his throat in one fast movement and then shot the other with the dead man’s weapon, a pistol, before he’d had time to sense he’d been outwitted.
The weapon hadn’t been silenced and the gunshots echoed like thunderclaps around the wintry landscape, but
there was no-one to hear them; they were miles from anyone and anywhere. The shell casings from the rounds the men had fired and the two shots she’d just made had burned little black holes in the white snow, the falling white flakes already beginning to cover them.
It had been just over a year since she’d last killed a man. On this occasion, the bad weather and remote location meant there was little risk of cars passing, but she’d learned from her time in this country that guides took the more adventurous tourists anywhere and everywhere, the weather proving no barrier.
She pictured passing strangers suddenly stumbling onto the scene, seeing the red blood stark against the white landscape, with her standing there holding a gun and knife.
Time to move.
She could still just about make out the tracks the two men had made when they’d arrived to lie in wait for her, but the falling snow was quickly masking them, so she knew she had to hurry. She checked their pockets for keys and found a set in the coat of the man who she’d shot. Neither was carrying identification, but she had a pretty good idea where they were from and who’d sent them. Leaving their bodies lying there, she put her goggles back in place and started to retrace the men’s footprints.
Ten minutes later and out of breath, she came upon a Toyota Land Cruiser with snow-chains fitted parked behind some trees, and found paperwork inside identifying it as a rental from Keflavik Airport. The key worked, confirming it was their vehicle and she drove it back the way she’d come, stopping beside the two dead men, their bodies already partially covered with snow. Carefully tucking every strand of hair inside her hat, she tried to drag the bodies into the two front seats, but they were too heavy. Dead man’s weight. Frustrated, she thought for a moment, then opened the rear door of the Toyota. She knew from her time here that cars in Iceland were stocked with gear in case they got stuck in snow or had to pull someone else out, and after a quick search, she found a pair of towing straps inside. She clipped one side of each onto the Toyota’s recovery hooks, then lassoed the others around the dead men’s ankles, double-looping the cord before pulling and clipping them tight.
Once that was done, she looked down at the frozen lake ahead, which was spread out below the slightly higher slope she was on. The car beside her was of European design, the parking brake located in the centre console. She’d already checked the Toyota’s gear was in neutral and that the wheels were pointing directly ahead; she then reached in, ensuring she wasn’t snagged on anything or had left any hairs she could see on the seat. Nothing a forensic team could use later.
Releasing the handbrake, she pulled back, and after a hard shove with her gloved hands to get it going, the car started to roll down the gradient, dragging the two bodies with it.
She watched the Toyota gather speed and glide out onto the frozen water, having enough momentum to keep going even with over three hundred pounds of dead weight fixed to its wake. Stop, she willed the car as it kept sliding.
Eventually it slowed, spinning slightly as it reached the centre of the lake.
She waited.
Nothing happened.
It’s not January or February, she thought. The sheet must’ve thawed some by now.
She considered firing the handgun she’d retrieved to try and break the ice, but then heard what she’d been waiting for, a cracking sound as the ice sheet finally started to give way around the heavy vehicle. The car sank into the lake. It bobbed on the surface for almost a minute, but then water achieved the inevitable and the Toyota disappeared under the surface, dragging the two bodies with it, the hole in the ice a dark outline in the swirling snow.
Just like that, the rental vehicle and the men who’d driven it here were gone.
The woman went back to where she’d killed the pair and smudged the snow to hide the blood stains, which fresh layers of white flakes had almost covered anyway and would then wash away when melted. In the unlikely event an isolated tracker or guide found the stains, she hoped they’d assume they belonged to an animal, and in turn anyone who found any shell casings she’d missed would think they were from a hunter. The hole in the lake would freeze back over, and by the time it thawed, she’d be nothing but a memory here.
She gathered up her knife and the guns the men had brought with them, and stored them in her snowmobile after righting it and reversing out of the drift. The engine was making a strange noise but to her relief, it was still working. It took her twenty minutes to get back to her place, and she scoped out the small house thoroughly before edging inside, the pistol she’d stolen ready to be fired, just in case more of them were lying in wait.
No-one was there. Keeping hold of the handgun, she went to a small locked plastic box hidden in the cistern of the only toilet in the house. She took it out, opened the box with a key she took from around her neck and withdrew a cell phone. Removing the device from its two protective plastic bags, she powered it up then called a nine digit Maryland number, preceding it with a +1, the international code for the United States.
‘What’s going on, boss?’ a voice replied. ‘You all good?’
‘They found me again,’ she said. ‘I’m done with this. Set it up. I’m coming home.’
*
A week later, two men stood by the fireplace in the woman’s home. The place was freezing, the hearth cold, wind whistling mournfully around the building.
One of the strangers had a pistol he’d been given by a local contact, while the other was holding a metal baseball bat bought from a sports store in Reykjavik. They’d just checked every inch of the small house; it hadn’t taken long. ‘You think it’s worth waiting?’ the guy with the bat asked, in Italian.
‘No, se n’e andata,’ the other man replied, putting away his weapon and heading for the door, hitting the frame with his fist as he left.
No.
She’s gone.
He was right. Around the same time the two men were searching the house, two thousand seven hundred miles away a freighter ship arrived at the Port of Baltimore. US Customs carried out their standard search, finding nothing of interest or anything to concern them, including the credentials of the crew which had all been checked to satisfaction.
If someone had been watching carefully however, they would have noticed a normally-diligent officer tasked with searching the accommodation quarters hadn’t checked a particular cabin. He’d volunteered to inspect the area, his colleagues spreading out to look over the rest of the freighter, but what they didn’t know was he’d been paid a healthy five figures to make sure that cabin wasn’t entered. He’d also been left in no doubt what would happen to his family if he mentioned the instruction or the payoff to anyone, likewise with the two crew members who’d smuggled the extra passenger on board at the port of origin six days ago, in Algeciras, Spain. None of them had any intention of talking; they were already on the gang’s payroll anyway and were well aware of the consequences if they did.
An hour later, a vehicle with one of the dock workers behind the wheel drove through the exit gates before pulling in around the back of an abandoned gas station a mile away, where a Cadillac four wheel drive was waiting. The longshoreman stopped the car, got out and opened the trunk, two large men from the Escalade helping the smaller figure inside to climb out.
For the first time in four years, the woman with the badly scarred face who’d killed the two ambushers on the mountain in Iceland set foot on American soil. She allowed the pair to support her for a moment, then walked slowly over to the Cadillac while one of the men pulled a banded roll of money and handed it over to the dock worker.
‘You say a word to anyone-’
‘I won’t.’ He looked past him. ‘That who I think it is?’
‘Beat it.’
The longshoreman turned and quickly returned to his car before driving off. Inside the 4x4, the woman sat in the center of the back seat, while the two men got into the front. ‘Welcome back,’ the man riding shotgun said, passing her a brown, grease-stained bag from Burger King. ‘F
igured you’d be hungry.’
‘Get me outta here,’ she said, tearing open the bag and starting to devour the Whopper and large fries it contained. They took her to an establishment they owned in the city which was checked for surveillance and swept for bugs each day. The woman showered, then put on a change of clothes they’d brought her. She walked into the real estate building’s office and sat down behind the main desk. A group of her men had gathered in the room; one of them shut the door and windows, the noise from a bar two doors down immediately muted.
‘We’re clean,’ one of them said, completing the latest sweep, one extra carried out today due to this woman’s return. She pointed to a liquor cabinet and one of her men went over, fetched a bottle of scotch and a tumbler then placed them in front of her.
Pouring herself a double, she looked at the gathered faces. Some she recognized, others were new. The older ones were smiling, seemingly pleased she was back. The younger ones were studying her with interest, and she could sense them trying to weigh her up.
‘We can’t risk you checking into a hotel or going to your house, right now,’ one of her top guys said. ‘We set up a rental for you in Riverside.’
‘Tell me what I missed,’ she said, nodding at him as she leaned back in the chair and took a sip of the Macallan. ‘Things you couldn’t say over the phone.’
TWO
Twenty five days later, the July 4th holiday was just around the corner, and across the United States, preparation for the celebrations were underway, summer now having fully arrived. It was forty eight hours before Independence Day, and kids had been out of school for a couple of weeks; touring shows around the nation were cashing in on that, and tonight was the last of the Eisenhower Park Summer Carnival in the Nassau County portion of Long Island, New York.
