And the girl was gone.
THIRTY EIGHT
Inside the elevator shaft, Archer and Vargas climbed as fast as they could, gripping the steel bars of the service ladder on the wall, moving up and up. On Archer’s back, Isabel clung tight like a small limpet, her eyes squeezed shut as she held onto him. The rungs of the ladder led all the way up to 22. Aside from weak light from the panels in the doors on each floor, the shaft was pretty dark save for one source of light from above, the doors on 14 which had been dragged open all the way.
Archer knew that they’d have both stairwells covered, waiting for Vargas to appear. He was never going to let her walk to her death. The tears in her eyes and the satisfaction in the voice of the man on the intercom as he described what he was going to do to the child had lit something in him, a fury he’d only ever experienced once before. When it had struck him back then, he’d beaten a man to death with a door. No mercy, no other emotion except white-hot rage.
As the voice counted down, Vargas preparing to go to her death, Archer remembered Helen’s voice from earlier when Foster had asked her about the building.
The elevator’s been busted for weeks.
With just over three minutes to go, he’d raced into an open apartment on 14 and reappeared moments later with a thick knife he’d found in the kitchen. Sprinting down the corridor to the elevator shaft, he’d worked the blade in between the doors, opening them a fraction and releasing the lock, then put his fingers into the gap and prised them all the way apart.
Tossing the blade to the floor, he looked down into the darkness, all the way to the basement.
He’d turned back to Vargas who was watching him; she realised what he was thinking.
Inside the shaft was a service ladder to the right of the doors that seemed to lead all the way down. Slinging his M4A1 over his shoulder, he’d swung onto the ladder and started to climb down rapidly, Vargas following him and doing the same. The voice on the intercom was muffled but still audible inside the elevator shaft as they headed down into the darkness.
The elevator was lodged in the basement, left there gathering dust until they got round to repairing it. That meant when they reached the bottom of the ladder and stood on the top of the elevator, they were looking directly into the lobby.
Through the dirty glass, they saw Isabel and one of the anonymous men holding her by her hair. Both of them were close to the elevator, less than six feet away.
The man had a pistol in his other hand.
But he also had his back to them.
Placing his weapons down quietly, Archer had gently released the interior lock. Then he and Vargas had each grabbed one of the manual handles fitted to the inside of the static doors and eased them open slowly. They’d slid apart easily with the locks disabled, but the cop had heard something behind him and turned.
Archer had been already been making his move. He’d hit the guy with a huge uppercut that took him completely off guard and lifted him to his toes. The force and surprise of the blow meant the man let go of both his pistol and Isabel, the punch knocking him to the floor. Archer didn’t give him a moment to recover. He’d leapt on him, clamping a hand over his mouth as Vargas moved forward and grabbed Isabel, hurrying her towards the elevator. The anonymous corrupt cop was dazed but fought back; Archer buried his forearm into the man’s throat and suffocated him, the countdown from the intercom echoing around the lobby, the man’s boots scrabbling and slapping on the floor as he thrashed and choked.
Once all movement ceased and he was sure the man was dead, Archer rose and ducked back into the elevator shaft, joining the other two, less than a minute to go. He and Vargas had pulled the doors back and secured them. Vargas then swung both M4A1s over her shoulders and started to climb the ladder as quickly as she could. Archer knelt down, hoisting Isabel onto his back, and had started to follow her up, scaling the ladder fast, knowing it was just a matter of time before they were discovered.
Right now he was almost at 11, his body exhausted but adrenaline giving his arms more strength than he’d had in months. He glanced down and saw a small pair of arms, one across his neck, the other under his armpit. He also noticed the shirt bandage on his right bicep and remembered that first fight in Helen’s apartment hours ago.
Above him, Vargas had already made it to 12, pushing off the interior lock and dragging open the doors with the handles one by one. They weren’t going back to 14. Carson was down this hallway and they needed to get back inside the apartment with him. Vargas quickly checked the corridor and then stepped out onto the floor. The moment she did, she turned back and watched the other two, willing them closer.
‘Don’t look down, honey,’ Vargas whispered to Isabel, who was clinging to Archer’s back.
Two rungs later, he was within arm’s length. Vargas reached down and took hold of the little girl, helping her up to join her on the 12th floor corridor. Archer realised the countdown on the intercom had ended.
It had gone quiet.
Suddenly, he heard shouting and the elevator doors down below in the lobby being wrenched open.
‘Shit!’
Clenching his teeth and using every fibre of muscle in his arms and back, he raced up the remaining three rungs, hurling himself into the corridor as gunfire suddenly lit up the dark shaft, the men below firing straight up, bullets tearing into the brickwork. Knowing they couldn’t waste a second, Archer staggered to his feet. Vargas had taken Isabel’s hand and the two of them were already running down the corridor to the apartment holding Carson. Archer went to follow.
Suddenly, plaster sprayed from the wall behind him from two gunshots within a hair’s breadth of him, followed by a click as a weapon clicked dry. A man had burst from an apartment beside the elevator, a pistol in his hands, having heard the gunfire from down the elevator shaft. The slide was back, the clip empty. Archer’s hand flashed for his USP but the guy charged and smashed back him into the wall, knocking the pistol out of his hand. Turning and grappling with the guy, Archer saw he was one of the original attackers who’d jumped the Marshals on the street.
The guy was clawing at his face, trying to gouge his eyes, but Archer gripped his arms, pulled them apart and head butted him with the top of his head but didn’t have enough room to really do any damage. The man reeled but hit Archer back with a wild right hook and they smashed back into the opposite wall, the fight not clean or smooth, a life or death brawl.
Fighting to stay on his feet, Archer saw that the lift doors were open behind the man. Clutching the back of the guy’s head with his left hand, Archer fired two hard right uppercuts into his face, the man’s grip loosening enough for Archer to break free and push him back a step.
The ambusher gathered his balance and launched himself straight back.
And Archer kicked him in the chest as hard as he could.
The force of the blow knocked the guy backwards into the elevator shaft. He scrabbled in the air as he tipped back into nothing, desperately trying to save himself, but with his back to the steel lift cords, there was nothing to grab.
He plummeted down twelve floors of dark emptiness, his screams echoing in the shaft as he fell.
King and his team were still firing up the shaft when they heard the noise.
‘Get back!’
The body hit the top of the elevator hard with a hard thud, a cloud of dust punched into the air, the response team momentarily recoiling. The impact killed him instantly.
Nevertheless, Knight aimed with his M4A1 and put three rounds in his chest.
They looked closer and saw it wasn’t Vargas or the guy she was with. It was one of Braeten’s crew, his body smashed from the impact, his head lolled to the side and blood spilling out of his mouth.