‘He must have told them everything,’ Archer said. ‘They knew all your plans, your movements, everything. You might as well have painted a red target on your chests.’
‘That son of a-’
She stopped herself, remembering Isabel.
‘Bitch?’ the child finished.
Vargas smiled, nodding. ‘Correct.’
‘Are you OK?’ Archer asked the little girl.
She nodded, coughing, and gave a double thumbs up.
On the street, the gathered cops and Feds stared up at the south side of the building. Thick black smoke was billowing out of an apartment on the 8th floor, pouring out of the windows and drifting up the walls of the tenement block. The building’s fire alarm had just been cut off.
Casting his eyes further down and now more than anxious, Shepherd looked over at the entrance. At that moment, an NYPD hostage negotiator securely protected in a bulletproof vest and helmet was approaching the door slowly, keeping to the wall. He’d started making the walk just before the explosion, but after a momentary pause he’d continued on his way. He had a metallic case in his hand, about the size of a slender shoebox, attached to a long cord; it was a phone. They needed to get talking to these people and try to resolve this issue without anyone else being killed.
Everyone on the street watched his progress.
Suddenly, there was a muzzle flash and a burst of automatic gunfire from the lobby windows. The negotiator shouted in pain as he was hit and went down, people ducking for cover. He collapsed onto the concrete then tried to drag himself away, leaving the phone. Another man from his team moved forward, behind a protective shield, as more assault rifle gunfire burst from the window, hammering into the shield and knocking the man behind it back a step. Despite the onslaught, he made it to his buddy and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him back and keeping them both protected behind the riot shield.
Shepherd examined the entrance but couldn’t see anything apart from another flash of gunfire. They were keeping away from the windows, firing from an angle well back inside. He wondered if the response team were working with the men who’d ambushed the Marshals on the street, or if they’d been taken out. Whatever the scenario, whoever had the entrance secured was making it as clear as daylight that they didn’t want to talk. There were twelve dead cops and a dead pilot who were proof of that.
If the NYPD or Marshals were to get inside they’d have to do it by force, not negotiation.
Shepherd turned to Hobbs and Dalton standing beside him. Their earlier differences were long forgotten, a distant memory from when the course of the evening and resolution had seemed far more straightforward. Hobbs was still stunned after losing his entire team. Both men had been watching the negotiator approach and seen him go down; their eyes followed him as he was dragged safely back behind cover and attended to immediately by two medics.
Shepherd caught Dalton’s eye; he motioned to one side with his head and the two men moved away.
‘We’ve got to get in there,’ Shepherd said, lowering his voice. ‘Right now. We gave them the opportunity to talk.’
‘I agree,’ Dalton said. ‘But not from above. We can’t afford to lose another team. I’m not sending any of my Marshals up there into that.’
One of Dalton’s people, a female Marshal, approached. The two men saw her coming and turned.
‘What’s the plan, sir?’ she asked.
Dalton looked at Shepherd. ‘We’re going in.’ He paused. ‘I could use your opinion.’
Shepherd nodded, walking forward with him to join the Marshals’ task force. The group were engaged in conversation concerning their next play, all of them keen to take action but broke off when Shepherd and Dalton approached.
Observing this but feeling frustrated and helpless, Josh turned to Marquez who was watching the smoke pour up the tenement block, like water spilling out of a tipped glass in reverse. He voiced what they were both thinking.
‘You think he’s still alive?’
She didn’t reply, staring up at the building. After a long moment, she responded.
‘On the call, Vargas said one of their Marshals had been killed by this response team. The lead Deputy, Foster. Did she mention how?’
Josh thought for a moment.
‘She said they’d been taken off guard and he’d been hit,’ he said. ‘But two of the enemy went down too. It was a fire fight; you heard the gunshots in there. Why?’
Marquez didn’t reply, turning her attention back to the building. She looked up at the south-east corner.
Then she shifted her gaze downtown.
‘What is it?’
‘Dalton told me about Foster. He was in the Army for over two decades, finishing as a Major, then was a US Marshal for the last eleven years. He was highly experienced; one of the best men they had.’
‘So?’
‘So, he was armed and ready. Expectant, prepared. They were barricaded inside an apartment, a handful of guns on the entrance, all of them poised to pull the trigger. If someone tried to come in, he’d grease them like baking paper. So how the hell did someone get the drop on him?’
She looked away, her eyes narrowing as she examined the city landscape south of the tenement block. Josh started catching on to her train of thought.
He looked down the street. There were a series of other tall buildings, staggered down through Harlem and the top of the Upper West Side.
‘You think there’s a shooter?’
‘You saw the way this response team arrived. They’re professionals. What do you think?’
Josh looked at the buildings.
‘OK, so they wouldn’t be too far away,’ he said. ‘Not with the city wind and thermals. They’d be close.’
‘Far enough to get a complete look of the building, but near enough to counter the city elements.’
Both sets of eyes settled on what looked like an office building on West 133rd, about eighty yards away. It was the only place nearby with enough elevation and proximity.
The perfect position for anyone with a rifle.
Marquez nodded.
‘That’s where I’d be,’ she said.
Without another word, the two of them turned away and started walking down the street, heading downtown.
As they left, a car suddenly screeched to a halt by the barriers ten yards away, and a stern-faced, dark haired man with five o’clock shadow climbed out, slamming the door behind him. He pulled his badge and showed it to the cop on the tape without even looking at him, and stepped through a gap in the barriers. His name was Jake Hendricks; he was a Sergeant in the Counter Terrorism Bureau.
Hendricks was close to becoming a legend in the NYPD; he was just as well known to scores of criminals as to the rest of the Department. Built like a club doorman or a line backer, Hendricks didn’t see things in shades of grey; he was fair but totally uncompromising, both judge and jury. If you did wrong or if he even thought you had, you were going down. He’d been a cop for over fifteen years and had worked out of Precincts all over the city. One of the most well-known stories about him was his time working out of the 75th in Brooklyn, regarded as the most dangerous and challenging place for a cop to work in all of New York. Most officers only went there under orders, but Hendricks had put in a transfer requesting to go. His view was that if you were a cop you never backed down, you never took the easy way out and you fought criminality with a sledgehammer, giving no quarter. Some men were born to crunch numbers, or excel at sports, or work blue collar. Hendricks was born to be a cop; there were many criminals currently behind bars who would grudgingly agree with that statement. Some of them still walked with limps.
That particular Sunday, Hendricks had been off duty; he’d just been settling down to supper with his family at his house across the Hudson when they’d flicked on the television and seen the news. The reports were saying a gunfight had broken out in the street on West 89th between a team of Federal Marshals and five other gunmen. Apparently there’d been a car chase uptown and they were now cordoned off in a building on West 135th and Broadway, the gang members successfully holding the doors. A helicopter of reinforcements had arrived, but rumours suggested they weren’t part of the rescue effort. Efforts to take back the building had been resisted and countered; an ESU team had abseiled in, but police reports were saying they’d been all been killed.