‘On foot,’ she finished.
He nodded. ‘Back up will probably have to come in from the sky. I’m going up to check the roof and if necessary, keep it secure until they get here.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Helen said.
‘No-one else is getting hurt on my watch tonight. That includes the rescue team.’
‘You can’t leave. What about us?’
‘I won’t be long. I want to make sure there’s nobody up there waiting, especially not the kid with the AK. No more surprises.’
Helen stared at him. Archer knew what she was thinking and feeling. Unlike Foster, this was the first time she’d ever been in a situation like this. As the obvious leader of the group, his presence was reassuring.
‘You can’t go out there,’ she said.
‘No better time than right now. They’ll be near the lobby, focused on getting people out and keeping the cops back.’
‘They’re armed.’
‘So am I. This is a big building and I’ve been in worse situations. And these idiots have no idea what they’re doing. They’re not professionals.’
‘They managed to shoot your friend,’ Helen said, indicating next door.
‘They got lucky. And that’s not happening again.’
Silence. The window reflected on-off flashes of red and blue from the police lights five floors down. In the quiet, Foster holstered his Magnum then pulled his Glock and replaced the magazine, tucking the back-up shooter back into the pancake holster on his hip. Taking one last glance out of the window, he checked the time on his wrist then drew the.44 again, ready to go.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Vargas said.
Foster shook his head, pointing at Jennifer. ‘I need you and Barlow here with her. I’ll go alone.’
Beside him, Archer shook his head.
‘No way. I’m coming too.’
Foster was about to say no, but Archer didn’t let him.
‘Think about it, John,’ he told him. ‘This entire building is made up of corridors. At every moment, you’re going to have your back turned to an access point. Someone needs to watch it for you.’
Foster stared at him, examining him like a road map. Then, without speaking, he moved next door and reappeared a few moments later with a black handgun, which he passed to Archer grip first.
‘Carson’s back-up weapon. He didn’t fire it on the street. Fifteen in the mag, one in the chamber.’
‘Thanks,’ Archer said, taking it. He pulled back the slide halfway just to check and saw a round already in the pipe.
There was a smear of blood on the grip; Archer wiped his palm on his jeans.
Meanwhile, Foster turned to Vargas, who’d taken Jennifer by the hand.
‘Get the girl next door. Once we’re gone, you and Barlow drag the refrigerator back. We’ll be back soon. I’ll tap four times quietly and say my name. If someone doesn’t do that and tries to come in, whoever they are, don’t hesitate. Drop them like a bad habit.’
‘Yes, sir. Be careful.’
Foster nodded, looking at Jennifer.
‘You too.’
Across the Hudson River, in a safe house on the outskirts of New Jersey, a response team had already moved into action.
There were ten of them there in total. After they’d learned of the Upper West Side gunfight and car chase, they’d been monitoring the situation on a television in the corner of the room. They’d watched footage of a ferocious gunfight between the NYPD and some gunmen inside a Hamilton Heights tenement block on 135th and Amsterdam. Now scores of residents were emptying out of the building and flooding into the street, the fire alarm that had prompted their exit dying off a few minutes ago. Despite a fleet of NYPD squad cars surrounding the building, the armed gunmen inside were managing to hold the officers at bay. NY ONE were covering the scene but so far they didn’t have specifics on what was happening.
The response team were carrying out final checks of their equipment, working quickly but methodically. They’d done this scores of times in the past, and this was what they were here for, after all.
The leader of the group slid a thirty round magazine into a black assault rifle then checked his watch. They were always prepared for any kind of situation but if their ideal plan was an alphabet this would have been Plan X, Y or Z. A tenement building, hostiles inside, unknown layout and access points. Even though residents were leaving, there were bound to be others still inside who hadn’t responded to the alarm.
He slapped forward the stock on the rifle, then whistled, jabbing his thumb at the door.
They didn’t have a moment to waste.
The ten man team scooped up their weapons and bags of equipment then followed him out of the room.
Outside, they loped across some tarmac towards a large black helicopter, the rotors gathering speed as the vessel warmed up.
The man pulled open the door and his team started climbing in, ready to go.
NINE
There was a scraping sound on the 5th floor corridor of the tenement block.
Then it stopped.
There was the soft click of a door being unlocked. The handle of 5B turned slowly and the door eased back an inch.
Foster listened for a moment then pulled it back further, not all the way but enough for him to check what he could see of the corridor.
There was no-one out there, hostile or otherwise.
It seemed the floor had been cleared.
He eased his large frame out through the gap, immediately followed by Archer, who felt his heart thumping like the bass drum on a dance track as he aimed the pistol in his hands. For Christ’s sake, get a grip, Archer told himself. It’s not like you’ve never done this before. Foster glanced back at him as the door was closed and secured.
Archer hid his uncharacteristic nerves and nodded, adopting his best poker face.
With Foster’s back turned, clearing the corridor ahead with his.44, Archer took a deep breath, angry at himself. Just three months out of the field and it was like starting all over again. The workout at the gym, the sudden ambush on the street and all that had followed since had taken more out of him than he realised. He felt like one of those video game characters with their life down to 15 or 20 per cent. It wasn’t pleasant. Telling Foster he’d join him had been an instinctive response but standing there outside the apartment, he hadn’t expected to feel so on edge. Particularly as they weren’t exactly dealing with high-level opposition here judging from the haphazard way their attackers had behaved since the ambush. Given their sloppy shooting and what he’d seen on the street, Archer figured the four gang members had to be coked up or on some other kind of substance, maybe angel dust. If so, their aim would be all over the place; shooting a gun with a heart rate that erratic was a recipe for disaster and increased the odds in his and Foster’s favour. However one of them still managed to hit Carson, he reminded himself. And handgun bullets didn’t offer a lot of second chances.
He forced the negative thoughts from his mind. They could get him killed. Shifting his focus from himself to the situation, he looked down the sights of the pistol at the empty stairwell behind them. The weapon in his hands was a Heckler and Koch USP 9mm, a German semi-automatic with a built-in recoil reduction system which greatly reduced the kick. He’d fired this weapon before on the gun range the ARU used in North London; it was a solid shooter and had good stopping power. A small blessing of the corridors in this building meant the enemy would be funnelled too if they tried another ambush, the confined space restricting their movement unlike the street, where they’d attacked from all directions. If Archer had a choice in a situation like this, a USP would be near the top of the list.
And unlike the enemy, he wasn’t a guy who needed luck to put someone down with a pistol.