Silent Night

FIFTY TWO

Five hours later, the dawn sun was just starting to rise over the horizon. At the New Jersey industrial estate, the leading doctor of a HAZMAT team finished testing the air. He removed his headgear and gave Hendricks the thumbs up. The toxicity had lowered, the strong wind disseminating the poisonous gas. They were good. The area was safe.

When Hendricks hit the propane it had triggered a huge explosion, all three meth trucks and the other tanks of propane going up. Unlike in the movies, propane tanks don’t explode unless they’re hit with an incendiary round or if there’s a source of fire to ignite them. Hendricks had done the latter; his shotgun blast had bled gas from the tank which came into contact with the lit cigarette on the ground. That was all it took. The blast had killed sixteen of the Chapter members on the spot, and most importantly Wicks, the blond-haired guy with the RPG. The shockwave had blown the remaining thugs off their feet, completely disorientating them, their eyes and ears bleeding, their senses scrambled. Hendricks and most of the other law enforcement were further back and using cover anyway, so aside from a serious ringing in their ears, they’d been pretty well unaffected by the blast. After the explosion, they’d immediately moved in, the handful of remaining Chapter members not putting up any resistance. They were locked into handcuffs, most of them still trying to work out what had happened. Four ATF guys had been hit in the gunfight and ambulances were already on their way, along with HAZMAT. Once the place was secured HAZMAT had ordered everyone off site, their team hosing down the flaming caravans.

As the team withdrew and the arrested neo-Nazis were dumped in the back of an ATF truck, there were reports coming in about a situation over the Potomac River. Apparently six canisters loaded with a deadly virus had been thrown from a crop duster over the water. A NYPD detective and a female doctor had jumped out of the plane just before it was blown out of the sky. A parachute had slowed their descent, but it hadn’t released early enough and both had sustained injuries. They’d been pulled from the water and taken to an army hospital. No one knew any more details other than the canisters had been retrieved from the water, intact and secure.

It was over.

Standing in the middle of the smoking estate, Hendricks looked around him. The dawn sun was giving the place a tangerine glow. The Latina detective Marquez was beside him, the embers of the dying campfire ten yards in front of them. Hendricks recalled her fearlessness in the gunfight. I wish I’d known about you when I’d selected my team, he thought, glancing at her.

The ATF agents Faison and Peterson walked over to join them. Hendricks and Marquez nodded to the two men and the quartet stood in silence.

Hendricks felt his cell phone purr in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the display. It was Shepherd.

He took the call.

‘Shep, where the hell have you been, man?’ he said. ‘You missed-’

He suddenly paused, listening.

‘What?’

*

‘Take it easy, doc!’ Archer said, as his leg was elevated in a sling. ‘Jesus!’

The army doctor gave him a look, then satisfied, turned and walked out of the room. The hospital sling was supporting Archer’s broken ankle, bound and wrapped in a cast.

He’d stayed conscious when they hit the water. Despite the parachute massively reducing their speed, they’d hit the surface hard. Archer had skydived once before. Chalky had bought him a skydive for his birthday a couple of years ago, but little to Chalk’s knowledge Archer had booked him onto the jump as well after he’d been told of the present. The night before the jump they’d been out on the town till four am and the two hungover officers had arrived at the airfield the next morning feeling very much the worse for wear. Leaping out of an aircraft was absolutely the last thing on God’s earth that they wanted to do right then. In the end, Archer had enjoyed the experience, particularly seeing the look on Chalky’s face before they dived and then hearing his yells and promises of retribution as they fell through the air.

However, Archer had remembered one vital piece of information from that day. It had come from the jump instructor when Archer had aired a concern about parachute reliability. The guy had told him that he’d only suffered dual parachute failure once in his career. He’d survived by signalling to another man he’d jumped with. Falling through the air, the two men had manoeuvred towards each other. The man without a chute had hooked his arms into the other guy’s parachute, legs around his waist and had held on as hard as he could as the other man pulled the cord. He’d dislocated his shoulder but they’d both survived.

Little did Archer know at the time that his question would save his and Maddy’s life a couple of years later.

Archer knew the duster’s low level of flight had saved them. If they’d been higher, they would have reached terminal velocity. The parachute would have ripped off or he’d have broken both his arms trying to stay hooked to Maddy. Or they’d have hit the water without a windbreak, which would have been similar to what Peter Flood experienced when he stepped off the Flood Microbiology rooftop. Nevertheless, they’d hit the water hard. So hard it had knocked the wind out of both of them and broken some bones.

Pitched into the ice-cold water, it had been suddenly dark and silent. Archer had still been holding Maddy who’d gone limp. Aware that the parachute was above them on the water he’d kept hold of her and kicked as hard as he could, aiming up and away.

They’d surfaced to the right of the parachute, Archer taking in a mouthful of air. But his joy at being alive was short-lived. In his arms, Maddy wasn’t moving and pieces of the flaming crop duster were starting to rain down around them. Minutes later, a DC Metro patrol boat came roaring up the River having seen the parachute landing. The pair were pulled from the water, sub-machine guns trained on them until it could be verified who they were. Then the adrenaline had worn off and the pain had set in.

Once safely on the boat, Archer had looked down and seen his foot was bent at a bizarre angle. Beside him on the deck, Maddy was still unmoving. They’d injected Archer with something that had to be morphine and the pain had disappeared. Then they’d taken him to a hospital in a painless daze. He was only just starting to re-gather his senses.

There was a knock at the door. It opened and a grey-haired man in military uniform entered the room.

‘Good morning, Detective.’

'Where am I?'

'Walter Reed Medical.'

The morphine was wearing off. Archer moved and grimaced.

‘Jesus. I feel like I got hit by a bus.’

There was a pause. The man in uniform stepped forward.

‘My name is Lieutenant Grant. I spoke to your boss, Sergeant Shepherd, at the NYPD. He explained the situation and told me who you are. I wanted to come here and thank you personally.’

Archer looked at the man. ‘Did it work?’

He smiled and nodded. ‘Everyone’s safe. Finn Sway, Bobby Rourke and Reuben Kruger are all dead. A diving team pulled the canisters containing the virus from the water. They’re on their way to a military lab where they’ll be destroyed.’

‘What’s the cover?’

The man smiled. ‘Farmer lost control of his crop duster. The Army were forced to shoot it down to protect an urban area. He parachuted out before it took the hit.’

Archer nodded.

Then he thought of something. ‘Where’s the doc?’

‘She’s in another room down the hall.’

‘Is she OK?’

He nodded. ‘Some bumps and bruises and a broken leg. Bit of mild whiplash. But she’ll be fine.’

Archer nodded, then struggled to get up and out of the bed.

‘Take it easy,’ Grant said, moving forward to help him.



She was lying in the bed when he entered, fast asleep. Wearing one of the hospital gowns, the same as him, her dark hair was draped over her shoulders. Sunlight was streaming in through the window. Hobbling in on crutches, Archer moved inside the room as quietly as he could, then shut the door. He watched her for a moment, then moved forward awkwardly on the crutches and sat beside her in an empty chair.

She stirred awake and opened her eyes.

For the first time, he noticed they were green.

‘Hey,’ Archer said.

She smiled. ‘Hey.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘My leg kills.’

‘Yeah. Mine too.’

She looked down at his foot. ‘Jesus, Archer, you should be resting.’

‘I am resting. And I wanted to see you.’

She looked at him for a moment. He watched as tears welled in her eyes. She struggled up, leaned forward and hugged him.

‘You did it,’ she said in his ear, her arms wrapped around him, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘You saved everyone.’

‘So did you.’

She withdrew and then noticed something on his forehead. Reaching up, she pushed his hair back gently and saw a jagged scar. It ran from the middle of his forehead down to his ear. She’d never noticed it before. It had always been obscured by his hair.

‘How did you get this?’

‘Someone tried to cut my face off.’

‘When?’

‘Earlier this year.’

She looked at him, and saw that he was serious.

‘How did you get him to stop?’

‘I beat him to death with a door.’

She scanned his face. He wasn’t lying.

She couldn’t help but laugh. ‘There’s never a dull moment with you, that’s for sure.’

He smiled.

And she leant forward and kissed him.



At the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, Shepherd was sitting with Rach and Hendricks in the briefing room, all three of them exhausted. Once he’d put Sway down, he’d run into his home and freed his wife and boy. Neighbours had already reported hearing shots fired so back-up had arrived within a couple of minutes and taken control of the scene. He’d made sure that Beth and Mark were OK and that Finn Sway’s body was removed. He’d had to leave them to close out the rest of the operation, but armed officers were staying at his house until he got back.

It seemed all hell had broken loose suddenly. He’d just got off the phone with an Army lieutenant at Walter Reed who’d filled him in on what had happened to Archer and Maddy. It turned out Dr Kruger had been the missing link. He’d been an extremist in South Africa and joined The Stuttgart Soldiers when he arrived in the States. He was the man who’d told Bleeker about the virus at one of the New York Chapter meetings, and together with Rourke and Sway the four men had planned to steal and sell the virus. But Bleeker had got greedy, kidnapped Kruger to gain access to the lab and stolen the vials. Archer had explained to the lieutenant that Sway and Rourke were planning to fly the canisters containing the virus back to Texas, but Kruger had always intended to hijack the crop duster and cover DC with it. Archer and the doc had stopped him just in time.

Josh was out of surgery; he was going to be fine. Shepherd had spoken to him on the phone and the detective was furious that he’d missed out on all the action. Once Shepherd had told Hendricks what happened with Finn Sway at his home, he got a full update of what had happened at the campsite. Apparently the neo-Nazis had almost an entire cache of stolen weapons, so Faison got what he wanted. Firing at a Federal agent was a serious crime so having fired at an entire Task Force, the remaining bunch were going away for a long time, joining their three friends who’d confronted Archer in the nightclub.

However, not all the news was good. The tallied dead at the lab in New Jersey had been eleven; a Dr Jonathan Bale, his entire team, his wife, a security guard and a woman called Melissa Slade who’d turned out to be Dr Frankie Glover’s girlfriend. Glover himself was dead, as was Jorgensen, joining the fifty nine who’d perished at the store by the Seaport. A New Jersey farmer had also been found, hastily buried beside a shed at his farm with a fatal gunshot wound to the head, much like Alistair Jacobs. And of course there was Luis Cesar. The puzzle of the murder weapon from Tonic East was solved when an attentive CSU investigator noticed a rectangular parcel in the lobby of the apartment building from where the shot had been taken. It was addressed to a company in Texas. They’d opened it up and found a Winchester 270 inside, a suppressor on the end, the weapon that had killed the English lawyer.

The phone on the desk suddenly rang. Rach took the call. She listened for a few moments, then thanked whoever was on the other end and put the receiver back on the cradle.

‘Good news. Metro PD confirmed the canisters are on their way to the lab.’

‘For research?’

She shook her head. ‘To be destroyed.’

Shepherd smiled. He went to speak further, but there was a quiet knock on the door behind him. He turned. And saw his wife.

Beth.

‘Hi,’ he said, rising from his chair.

‘Hi.’

There was a pause. Rach and Hendricks got the signal.

‘We’ll head out,’ Hendricks said patting his friend on the shoulder, Rach following him.

‘Thank you. I mean it. Outstanding work from both of you.’

They nodded, moving past Beth Shepherd, leaving the husband and wife alone.

‘Please. Come in,’ he said. She shut the door behind her. As it had done so many times in the past few weeks, a silence fell between them, both of them standing across the room from each other.

Only a few feet apart but an eighteen year old boy’s life separating them.

‘Thank you for what you did.’

Shepherd didn’t reply.

‘I heard what happened,’ she said. ‘Your team saved everyone.’

‘Yes, they did.’

‘Are they all OK?’

Shepherd looked at her. ‘No. Josh got shot. Archer broke his leg.’ Pause. ‘And Dave Jorgensen died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Pause.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m OK,’ he said.

Silence. He looked her in the eye.

‘I’m so sorry.’

She blinked and turned her head to hide the tears in her eyes.

‘I just miss him, Matt,’ she said, her voice trembling.

‘So do I,’ Shepherd said. She started to cry. He took a step closer. She didn’t withdraw. He moved closer still. She didn’t withdraw.

Then they embraced for the first time in months.

She cried quietly, her head against his shirt.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I know it was an accident. It’s not your fault.’

Then she leaned up and kissed him, all her anger and blame washing away.

He wasn’t a murderer.

He was a hero.