Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,27

back out of sight before he had a chance to aim and pull the trigger.

To the left, Archer was thinking about the whereabouts of the second gunman and took off across the car park, running to the left, headed around the building, his boots crunching on fragments of smashed glass and empty shell casings as he sprinted across the parking lot.

‘Fire exit!’ he shouted.

Porter, Fox and Chalky knew where he was going and the three of them were already following close behind. They sprinted around the building then slowed, all four of their weapons tight to the shoulder and in the aim.

Archer was the first man to reach the corner. He whipped round the corner of the brickwork, his MP5 aimed straight down the building and whoever might be standing there. But all he saw was a smoking Kalashnikov on the ground, jammed in the doorway of the emergency exit, the air stinking of cordite and oil from the hot weapon. Archer ran over to it, then swore and looked around. The back of the ARU's headquarters didn't have the same space as the parking lot at the front, and surrounding buildings and streets were only fifteen yards away.

He looked over, seeing frightened pedestrians across the street, most of them looking back at him from behind makeshift cover, but there was no sign of the gunman dressed in black.

He was gone.

Meanwhile, Second Team had entered the building the other side, moving into the reception area. Leading the squad, Deakins saw bloodstains on the wall and spotted Clark's body slumped on the ground behind the desk. Feeling his throat tighten, Deakins held his finger on the trigger, and led his team up the stairs.

On the second floor, the six-man squad moved cautiously down the corridor towards the ops room, the men silent, each with his forefinger on the trigger of his MP5.

Deakins glanced to the right and saw the terrified tech team huddled in Cobb’s office, the glass on the windows damaged from gunfire but still intact, Cobb standing in front of his people. Deakins nodded to Cobb and keeping his MP5 in the aim, turned left into the briefing room.

The wounded gunman was writhing on the ground, two bullets in his shoulder, blood spattered on the floor behind him. He was lying amongst the debris of empty cartridges, smashed glass, spilt coffee, and scattered polystyrene cups and newspapers. His Kalashnikov was lying out of reach across the floor, the barrel smoking, but Deakins saw the man had a pistol in his hand, a Beretta 92.

‘Drop it!’ Deakins said, his MP5 in his shoulder, the hair-trigger on the man’s masked face. ‘Drop it!’

Coughing, blood pooling under him, the man shouted something at him in a foreign language and spat a mixture of blood and saliva at Deakins through the mouth-hole of his balaclava.

Then he put the Beretta to his head and pulled the trigger.

NINE

An hour later, Archer finished making three strong cups of coffee and stepping past a group of forensics detectives in white uniforms, carried them out of the briefing room. He walked into the operations area and passed the cups to three members of the tech team, who were sitting together, their eyes wide, many of them nauseous from shock and spent adrenaline. They all took the drinks without responding and he stood over them protectively, his MP5 slung over his shoulder. Turning, he looked at the scene around him. It was one of utter devastation.

The briefing room was a sea of smashed glass, empty shell casings, spilt tea and coffee, and bloodstains. To his left, the glass on Cobb's office windows, despite being irreparably damaged, was still fully intact. It had done its job, saving the life of everyone who had been on the level. A forensics team had arrived, snapping photographs of the crime scene and zipped the corpse of the gunman who had shot himself up in a body-bag, dumping him on a gurney. They'd wheeled him outside to their van and the vehicle was already headed to their lab. The team had also bagged and sealed the man's two weapons and magazines and were now taking every shell casing from the ground which they would run for prints and DNA to try to trace the weapons and the two men who had fired them. Outside, a pair of their detectives were examining the car the two men had arrived in. They had run the plates through the DMV and Met log, and it had come