Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,21

was. Next door the intelligence team were working away as hard as ever, but part of being a response team often meant a lot of time was spent sitting around, waiting for a call, and in the meantime finding stuff to keep them occupied but which could be dropped immediately if a call came through. Usually some of the guys went downstairs and oiled and cleaned the weapons, plus the shooting range was pretty close by, so often members of the task force would go down there and fire off some rounds, ready to abandon at a moment’s notice if they got a ‘shout’. It was a fun way to stay sharp on the trigger and kill some time. In the field however, the weapons were rarely used. It wasn’t like the James Bond films, where 007 went around shooting everything in sight. That made for a good movie, but in reality the legal ramifications and paperwork involved whenever there was a shooting meant each officer had to be accountable for every single bullet he fired. The wrong trigger pull could cost any one of them their jobs. Behind every bullet was a mountain of potential paperwork and an inquisition.

Archer scooped up his cup of tea and walked over to the window. Glancing left, he saw someone had brought in some biscuits and some left-over cake that their wife or girlfriend had probably baked, but he passed. He never felt hungry in the morning and the tea was just about the only thing he could handle before lunch. He put the foam cup down on the windowsill and looked out at London through the glass, the sun shining down, reflecting off the glass windows of the buildings around him. The clock on the wall to his left had just ticked to 10:10 am, and the city was wide awake now, going about its business, the cogs and pistons of the great machine working hard. His mind started to wander and inevitably, as it had done so often in the past eight months, his thoughts turned to Mina Katic, the FBI agent an ocean away.

He missed her. A lot. He had met her last summer when a turn of events had taken him on an unexpected week-long trip to New York City. Third-generation Serbian but born and bred in Chicago, she had dark brown eyes with long brown hair that had a hint of crimson in the sunlight. Feminine and beautiful, she was also just as tough as any man in the Bureau she worked with.

Although just turned thirty, she was already a widow. Her husband had died of cancer a couple of years previously, leaving her with a young daughter to look after. She and Archer had worked together on a case when he was out there and they had become close. And ever since he got back he couldn't get her out of his mind.

But they lived different lives. She was now head of the FBI's Bank Robbery Task Force in New York and he was an integral part of the ARU counter-terrorist team here. Two people, the possibility of a life together separated by an ocean and two careers both had worked extremely hard to forge. Archer was half-American through his father, so he had a US passport and the option to live there whenever he pleased. No one else knew it, but since he had got back from New York last summer he had toyed with the idea of moving there and applying to join the NYPD, just like his father before him, a fresh start in a place that had always fascinated him. Although his dad had been born and bred in New York, Archer had only gone on brief trips there as a child, growing up predominately in the UK, so hadn’t experienced any real exposure to the city as an adult. But that trip last summer had planted a seed inside him and it had been growing ever since. He loved the UK, but he was also half American, and in a way half a New Yorker too.

And though he'd never admit it, ever since he'd got back last September he'd felt like a pair of thick shackles had been firmly attached to his feet.

He glanced over his shoulder at his team-mates. For now, London and the Armed Response Unit was where he needed to be. He had a good thing going here, a career he had worked hard at, a good spot in