Green Light (Sam Archer 7) Read Free Page B

barriers,
reporters interviewing members of the public trying to get what
information they could as they reported back.
    Standing
beside his detective partner, Archer watched it all unfold; as he
stood there he was also very aware that the Square was being doused
with a torrent of water, jets spraying up into the air and
drenching those in the immediate vicinity. It turned out those
pipes Archer, Josh and Vargas had laid the body onto had been water
mains supplying much of downtown Manhattan.
    He
glanced over at the geyser erupting from a storm drain forty or so
feet away, aware of several burly maintenance workers looking in
his direction; now the situation was safe, word had quickly spread
regarding who’d been responsible for the destruction.
    ‘ Why are they looking at me?’ he said to Josh, noting the
glares directed at him. ‘I wasn’t the one with the C4 next to my
guts.’
    ‘ Word’s got round that putting our friend down the manhole was
your idea,’ Josh said, hiding a smile. ‘Apparently Vargas and I
were just following your lead.’
    Archer
raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, it’s like that is it?’
    ‘ Sorry buddy. You know I’ve always got your back.’ He nodded at
the burly, blue-collar group. ‘But not with those guys.’
    Archer
smiled. ‘What happened to the driver, by the way?’
    ‘ He’s OK. Bit shaken up; they took him to hospital. Said the
gunman forced him to open up the cab at Atlantic then put a gun to
his head.
    ‘ Our boy must have seen me with the Sig on the camera and
panicked,’ Archer said. ‘Guess he didn’t want to risk the train
being stopped by us before it made it here and he could
detonate.’
    Before
Josh could reply, the two men sensed someone approaching and turned
to see Marquez walking towards them, pushing her cell phone back
into her pocket.
    ‘ Sergeant Hendricks and his team secured the other device,’ she
said. ‘Just. They nailed him at 76 th Street, heading for Times
Square on the 1.’
    ‘ Alive?’
    ‘ Dead. He tried to run so Philips blasted him; head shot like
Vargas, luckily for them. Same deal, ball bearings strapped to his
limbs, explosives and a timer under his skin, loaded to the gills
with crystal meth to numb the pain and pump them up. Bomb disposal
managed to cut him open and defuse the charge before it
blew.’
    Archer
grimaced. ‘How pleasant.’
    ‘ What were estimated casualties?’ Josh asked.
    ‘ Including down here, over a thousand. Times Square was
packed.’
    ‘ The motive?’
    ‘ Same old shit; idiots with a so-called cause. But these
bastards were inventive; they knew even if someone found them or
put them down, they couldn’t get to the explosives and timer. Bomb
disposal call it Franken-bombing ; apparently it’s
becoming increasingly common.’
    As both
men absorbed this, Shepherd joined the group, having wrapped up a
conversation with two agents from the FBI and ATF.
    ‘ Everything OK, sir?’ Marquez asked.
    He
nodded. ‘Just about. The Feds are saying we left it late to move
in.’
    ‘ We only just got this tip-off. Wasn’t our choice to cut it so
fine.’
    Looking
at Archer, Shepherd smiled. ‘By the way, if you were ever thinking
about running for Mayor I’d reconsider it. You’re not exactly
flavour of the month with the Worker’s Union over
there.’
    He
nodded towards the city maintenance guys, who now had the mighty
task on their hands of repairing the damage, water continuing to
gush up through the ruptured concrete.
    ‘ Apparently they only finished work on that pipe last week.
They’re suggesting sending you down there head-first to plug the
hole.’
    As the
others laughed and Archer started to protest again, the group saw
Vargas reappear, stepping out of a portable mobile command truck
forty feet away, her pistol absent from her hip. Seeing as she was
the one who put down the suspect, she’d been in there for almost an
hour giving a statement. She’d had one hell of an evening; not only
had she put two