a strap looped around his shoulder.
It was a sawn-off Ithaca.
He grabbed the stock and the pistol grip and aimed the weapon, his hands steady as a rock, the weapon still and already loaded. He momentarily ignored Gerrard. He was wearing full body armour.
But Siletti wasn’t.
Archer aimed the weapon straight at him and pulled the trigger.
The weapon exploded, and the shell hit Siletti like a cannonball, throwing him back. Blood and bits of his torso and clothing sprayed in the air as the shell tore him in two. He splayed back on the concrete, dead in an instant.
Gerrard looked to his right, seeing this happen, shocked. He turned back to Archer and raised his Glock, safe behind his body armour. Archer racked the pump on the Ithaca, crunching another round into the barrel. He aimed it straight at Gerrard’s chest and fired.
The weapon boomed, and there was a clunk as the round hit the steel body armour.
It didn’t get through. But the force of the blast knocked Gerrard back.
Archer fired again, and again, and again.
None of the shells were getting through. But the force was pushing Gerrard backwards.
Towards the rear of the helicopter.
Towards the spinning, razor-sharp rotors.
Archer fired twice more. Gerrard was thrown back, inches from the spinning blades. Archer paused, as Gerrard looked at him, his eyes wide through the visor of the helmet. He saw his eyes narrow and he recovered his balance. He thought he was safe. The Ithaca only carried seven shells. But Archer had also loaded one in the chamber.
Which made eight.
Archer racked the pump and pulled the trigger for the last time. The weapon exploded and the shell rocked Gerrard back into the rotors.
And the blades did the rest.
He screamed under the helmet as the spinning blades tore into him. They were spinning so fast, they shredded him into pieces, blood and flesh spraying into the air. What was left of him dropped to the floor, a severed and sliced mix of clothing, body armour and shredded flesh, dead, bits of him scattered on the runway.
Katic pulled Jessie upright and hugged her, both of them crying. Behind them, there was a sudden clanging on the gate and Archer turned, seeing a fleet of NYPD squad cards and black vehicles from the FBI pouring into the empty airport. He loosened the shotgun from the strap around his shoulder and lowered it to the ground, his hands in the air. As he dropped to his knees, he looked over at Gerrard’s shredded body.
His father’s old friend. The man who betrayed and murdered him.
But now it was all over.
The killer was gone.
TWENTY-FOUR
Once the NYPD and FBI arrived at the crime-scene, two things happened. Archer was arrested and taken back into Manhattan to Federal Plaza in handcuffs. The three hostages were freed and cleaned up and taken downtown as well. The officers who arrived were shocked, the same as the officers who had arrived in Flushing Corona Park. Both crime-scenes were absolute bloodbaths. The total body-count in the half-hour was fourteen dead. Three of the most wanted bank robbers in the state, six NYPD cops, three SWAT team officers and two Federal agents.
Debriefing had taken another twenty four hours. Archer’s story checked out, and every cent from the MSG heist was returned in the two black bags he’d brought to the airport. Sanderson and Katic had immaculate records with the Bureau and they backed up every word of Archer’s story, each telling the interviewing detectives their version of events. To strengthen the case, detectives at the scene also found a playing tape recorder inside one of the two money bags Archer had bought from a hardware store on the Upper East Side. They had rewound the tape and heard confessions from both Siletti and Gerrard, total admissions of guilt, before the noise of the helicopter drowned out their voices. Archer admitted to killing the two Federal agents, but together, the pair of them had murdered four other Federal agents, including his father. Thankfully, the detective heading up the investigation was sympathetic and on his side. He said it was unclear what had happened due to the noise on the tape. It seemed that Farrell and his team had been in a shoot-out with Gerrard and Siletti, and the two sides had end up killing each other.
A call from Atlantic City P.D reported that a man booked into the hotel under a false name had been found dead in his room, shot through the head. They checked out his I.D