Tom Barber - One Way

‘There’s always a choice.’

‘These people aren’t who you think they are.’

Pause.

‘How much do we make a year, Alice? Forty five grand? Before tax? And for this? You’ve been doing this for weeks. I’ve been doing this for years with no reward. You should see the amount they offered me. I couldn’t say no. Putting my life on the line every day for this shit? No; not anymore.’

‘You son of a bitch,’ Vargas repeated, keeping Isabel behind her.

‘I’m not going to die here. If I take you all out, they’ll leave me be.’ He focused on Vargas. ‘I didn’t want it to come to this, Alice. Really. I thought this would have been ended sooner.’

They all heard the noise of the mob getting even closer.

They were now on this corridor.

‘It was supposed to be smooth as clockwork out there on the street,’ Barlow said. ‘No-one else was meant to get hurt. Especially not Jack.’

‘And Foster. You killed him, Barlow.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘It’s your fault. You may as well have pulled the trigger yourself.’

‘Shut your mouth!’ he screamed. He shifted his gaze to Archer. ‘You had to stick your nose in and screw it up. You’re going to die for that, asshole. I hope it was worth it.’

Archer didn’t reply. He’d slid a hand behind him very slowly while Barlow had been distracted by Vargas.

He grabbed a handful of curtain and bunched his fist.

‘Anyway, I’m doing you a favour,’ Barlow said. ‘This’ll be quick. You don’t even want to think about what they’d do to you if they found you alive.’

He looked at Vargas and shook his head.

‘I’m sorry, Alice. You just weren’t cut out for this.’

Archer suddenly swept his arm across and dragged the curtain open. Pushing the others to one side, he dove to the floor.

Standing in the middle of the room, Barlow watched in bemusement, staring incredulously at him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked, chuckling. ‘You think that’s going to help?’

Then he realised. He looked up and out of the sitting room window.

His smile vanished.

Eighty yards away, Joker had seen the sudden movement in the 8th floor window.

Looking down the scope, he saw one of the Marshals standing there, a gun in his hand.

Barlow.

He was their inside man but he needed to be eliminated.

He centred the crosshairs on the man’s face and squeezed the trigger.

Barlow took the slug in the forehead, a small hole smashing through the window from the bullet, his head blowing apart. Vargas had pulled Isabel close and covered her so she missed seeing the impact, but she still screamed at the sound.

Barlow collapsed onto the carpet, spilling his weapon, and ended up splayed out in a heap on the rug. Not wasting a second and staying low, Archer belly crawled forward and dragged Carson from the sofa again. He retrieved his weapons whilst Vargas grabbed hers, keeping their heads well down and out of sight from the window.

Outside the apartment, the thumping and shouting was so loud it had to be only a few doors away.

With Carson’s USP in the back of his belt, the M4A1 in his hands, Archer crawled as fast as he could through to next door until he was out of sight of the window and then ran across the room, listening to the noise beyond the door and refrigerator. The kitchen curtains were drawn, protecting him from the sniper’s vision, but he stayed to the side just in case the shooter tried his luck. He heard a gang of people outside, shouting and smashing their way down the hallway. A dollar opportunity . The response team must have put a bounty on them and found some recruits from inside the building, doubling or tripling their numbers.

He spun and looked at the group waiting there, who’d followed his example and crawled out to the kitchen then got back to their feet, protected from the sniper’s vision by the kitchen curtains. Helen and Vargas were dragging Carson, who was supported between them, hanging limp, Isabel standing beside Vargas and looking terrified. A helpless child, an innocent nurse, a critically wounded doped-up man and a US Marshal. Behind the door, the whooping, shouting and smashing was so loud it was almost in the room with them.

‘They’re coming for us,’ he said.

Vargas lowered Carson then unslung her M4A1 and took off the safety catch, aiming the weapon at the door and keeping Isabel behind her.

‘Get back,’ she ordered.

‘Oh my God,’ Helen said, sheer terror in her eyes. ‘We’re trapped!’

The horde kicked open 8H and poured inside. A black guy was lying on the couch, asleep with a bottle of whiskey on the floor beside his hand. The noise woke him and he stirred to find a gang standing over him, staring, two knives and a pistol shoved into his face. As he obviously wasn’t who they were looking for, they turned away and left him alone, searching the rest of the apartment. The guy stayed where he was, blinking, totally confused.

The pace was picking up all the time; their initial cynicism and distrust of this offer had vanished, replaced by mob fever and money lust. Twenty grand a head was a hell of a lot of cash and they all wanted a piece of it. They’d almost cleared the corridor. Although they’d encountered a few people in the apartments they’d barged into, most of them were abandoned and empty. There was no sign of the targets. They’d find them though. There was nowhere to hide. They knew their own building better than anyone else.

They piled back out of the door, heading for the apartment opposite. A big guy took the lead and didn’t hesitate, kicking the lock off 8F as hard as he could. The door was no match for him and it splintered back. There were five apartments left to search on this floor. Some of the mob decided to give them a miss and ran into the south stairwell, heading up to 9 and getting a head start.

As he checked 8F with the rest of the gang, Castle’s earpiece started going off. It sounded like Joker. He was shouting something, but with the noise of the gang, Castle couldn’t make out what he was saying.

‘What?’ he shouted back. ‘Say again?’

Inside 8A, Archer and Vargas checked their magazine and stepped back from the door, ready to go down firing. Behind them, Helen and Isabel stood there unprotected and terrified.

Archer flicked the firing mode to fully automatic, knowing this was it, their last stand.

C’mon, you bastards. Let’s see how many of you I can take with me.

‘Wait!’ Helen said. ‘What about the old laundry chute?’

‘What chute?’ Vargas said, not moving her aim from the door.

‘I think there’s a chute in the bathroom. It used to drop down to a laundry room somewhere below. All the apartments have them. They haven’t been used in years, but it might still be there.’

Archer ran into the bathroom and saw she was right. There was an old grille covering a chute just above floor level, to the right of the bath. He hadn’t noticed it before. He tried to rip off the cover but it wouldn’t budge. He kicked it as hard as he could twice and it loosened enough for him to get his fingers around the top. He wrenched it off, tossing it to one side.

The chute dropped down to a faint light a couple of floors down.

It was their only option other than to stay and die.

‘Let’s go!’

Behind him, Vargas and Helen carried Carson into the bathroom, shuffling in awkwardly under his weight . ‘C’mon, honey!’ Vargas said to Isabel, who followed them into the room, frightened and looking back at the front door of the apartment.

Hearing the mob so close they had to be just next door, Archer ran out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. Reaching behind the stove, he grabbed a pipe and pulled with all his might.