Tom Barber - One Way

He started his brief but then heard something that made him pause.

The noise was faint, yet increasing in volume.

Seeing him halt, Shepherd frowned, then turned his head. He also heard the sound.

It was getting closer.

Other people on the street started to look up. Dalton realised what was happening. Swinging from his group of Marshals, he stalked towards Hobbs standing by the ESU truck.

‘You son of a bitch!’

Eighty yards downtown, an office building elevator dinged on the 13th floor. The man in the black t-shirt and blue jeans with the briefcase stepped out, looking left and right, making sure he was alone. The lights were off, the place deserted, a dark stillness filling the offices that would be a distant memory tomorrow morning.

He walked through the aisles, eventually arriving by the windows facing uptown. The tenement building was straight ahead, less than a hundred yards away. The street to the right was packed with squad and Federal vehicles along with a crowd of cops, detectives and curious bystanders.

He stood still for a moment, examining the building’s exterior, all of its windows and the roof. His position on 13 meant he was halfway up the other building, giving him a total view of the entire south side.

Then he laid his briefcase on a desk and clicked it open.

In the 5th floor apartment, Helen was just administering the dose to Carson. He had an old belt wrapped up tightly by his elbow, the needle jabbed into a prominent vein in his arm. She’d opened one of the foil packs of brown powder, tipping it onto a clean spoon with a touch of water which Foster held for her. She’d warmed the underside with a lighter, and used the syringe to suck up the resulting liquid. She pushed the substance into Carson’s bloodstream, Foster, Archer and Barlow observing in silence. Vargas had her back to the room and was looking out of the window with Jennifer by her side, pointing things out in order to distract both the child and herself.

The effect of the opiate was immediate. Carson’s face, screwed up with pain, suddenly softened like butter in a pan. It was extraordinary but also disturbing. His body relaxed. His mouth opened, sucking in air like a fish, his movements slowing right down as if he’d been dropped in a vat of treacle. Everyone else in the room save Vargas and Jennifer watched, their feelings most definitely mixed. The instant release of pain was clear and a relief to everyone, not just Carson. However, what they’d just had to do went against every instinct they had.

Withdrawing the needle slowly, Helen pressed a pad against the puncture on his arm, staying silent. Carson’s groans and whimpers of pain had stopped.

‘How long will it last?’ Barlow asked, breaking the quiet.

‘Depends on the quality,’ Helen said. ‘Around a couple of hours I guess.’

‘At least he’s out of pain,’ Foster said, patting Carson on the leg.

Helen nodded. Wrapping the needle in the tissue, she took it next door and headed for the trash. On the couch, Carson’s mouth was open, his eyes somewhere else and focusing on something nobody else could see, probably Pluto.

As Helen disappeared into the kitchen, a sound they’d all been vaguely aware of outside suddenly became much louder. Everyone in the room looked towards the window; the noise was easily heard above the humming from the street below and was increasing by the second.

It was unmistakable, familiar and totally reassuring. Standing beside Carson, Foster smiled.

‘Here comes back up.’

The helicopter pilot had approached across the Hudson River and entered Manhattan over West 100th Street. He swept over the Upper West Side and Harlem, flying fast and low over the buildings. Coming in from downtown, the helicopter slowed and hovered over the Hamilton Heights 135th Street tenement block. The rotor wash blew away all the dust, dirt and trash on the rooftop, sending paper cans and other detritus swirling in all directions.

The doors were wrenched open. Five black ropes were slung out, tumbling down out of the vessel and hitting the roof.

Five figures slid down the ropes, followed by five more.

The group were dressed in grey, black and white fatigues and tactical vests, their sleeves rolled up as it was still warm, and wore black leather gloves to prevent rope burn. They descended quickly, their boots wrapped around the cord, their bags of equipment and weapons slung over their shoulders. The moment after the tenth man released the rope, the helicopter rose and pulled away, the noise of the vessel instantly decreasing.

As the chopper headed back across the River towards New Jersey, eight of the men ran for the door to the floor below.

The other two knelt down and began setting up some equipment on the roof.

On the street, everyone gathered was watching with interest. Everyone except Dalton.

He strode towards Hobbs; some of the ESU men saw the look on his face and stepped forward, keeping him back.

‘You son of a bitch! ’ Dalton said. ‘I ordered you to hold back!’

Shepherd and Josh hadn’t moved. They’d both watched the chopper arrive like everyone else and were replaying in their minds what they’d just seen. Marquez had rushed twenty yards to the left, watching the helicopter flying across the Hudson and examining the vessel carefully. She headed back quickly, making eye contact with Shepherd and shook her head, concern on her face.

They’d all caught a glimpse of the figures abseiling onto the roof. They were dressed in camo fatigues, not police or Federal clothing. They were wearing balaclavas. The chopper was black and unmarked.

Something wasn’t right.

The moment the eight men made it to the 22nd floor, they split up. Four went to the north stairwell, four the south and they started moving down the flights quickly.

With combat vests holding spare ammunition, a knife and several grenades, the men also had a pistol in a holster clipped to their right thigh. They were each holding a Colt M4A1 Commando carbine assault rifle, thirty 5.56 mm rounds in the magazines slotted into the underside of each weapon. A descendant of the M16, the manufacturer designed this specific variant of the rifle for special operations use and to exploit firepower capability in confined spaces where lightweight mobility, speed and violence of action rule. Each one of those circumstances was certainly ticked off the sheet given their task at hand inside the building. Unlike other sub-machine guns and assault rifles, the M4A1 didn’t have a three-round burst option. It was either safe, semi-automatic or fully automatic. Capable of unleashing anywhere from 750–900 rounds per minute, the weapon was effective at 500 to 600 metres and devastating closer. The US Rangers, Navy SEALS and the Brazilian counter-terrorist team BOPE used it with very good reason. It provided ruinous and destructive firepower at close quarters and only weighed less than six pounds.

The north stairwell team worked their way down quickly, establishing the geography of the building. On the 21st floor, two of them split away and headed down the corridor, beginning to clear the apartments one by one. The other two, including the leader, pressed on down the stairs.

On 18, a resident from an apartment a third of the way down the corridor opened his door and peered out, catching the leader’s attention as they passed in the stairwell. Without a word, the armed man moved down the hallway towards him, his compatriot beside him. Dressed in a vest and some old sweats, the guy frowned when he saw the two men in balaclavas approaching. It wasn’t unusual to see cops in the tenement block and the residents had become accustomed to it, but he noticed these two were dressed in different clothing from the usual police gear.