Silent Night - By Tom Barber Page 0,69

taking deep breaths. He checked his watch.

9:59 pm.

One minute until the trade.

But as he looked up, he met an arcing elbow an inch from his face. It smashed into his nose, taking him by surprise just as his punch had done to the neo-Nazi behind him a few moments before. Stumbling back and falling to the floor, his eyes watering from the pain, he tried to make out who’d struck him as blood started to pour from his nose.

Seeing double, he could just make out a dark-haired woman walking fast to the stairs, pulling a cell phone from her pocket.

Drexler.

Partygoers knelt down to help him to his feet. Archer wiped blood off his face, trying to recover his senses.

But by the time he looked over at the stairs again the woman was gone.

Upstairs and unaware of what had been happening immediately below, Jacobs was standing in front of the bar on the roof. Although it was a cold night, the roof top had several burn heaters and walls on three sides acting as windbreaks. There were people standing and sitting everywhere, but none of them paid him any attention.

Jorgensen was on one of the benches to the right, his left hand in his pocket on the pressel switch, his other resting on the bench within easy reach of his pistol under his jacket. Given that he was dressed in plain clothes, he blended right in with everyone else. He pushed the pressel.

‘Jacobs is in place,’ he said quietly.

Releasing the switch, he glanced to his left, towards the stairs, then scanned the level around him.

Sway, Rourke or their hit team could be here already, making sure Jacobs had come alone.

Where are you, assholes?

Eight yards away, Jacobs suddenly felt his phone purr in his inside breast pocket.

He reached into his jacket and withdrew it, taking the call.

‘Yes?’

‘I told you to come alone. You just made a big mistake.’

At that moment, Archer arrived on the third floor, joining Josh. Jacobs had his back to them, standing straight ahead facing the west.

They saw he had his phone to his ear.

What happened next occurred in a heartbeat. Jacobs was standing perfectly still, then suddenly jolted backwards, like someone had hit him with a strong uppercut. A pink cloud appeared in the air behind his head. There was a thump beside Archer as a young woman chatting with her friends took a bullet in her upper arm. Her body carried the momentum from the round, knocking her over. Jacobs hit the ground at the same time, but he was already dead, shot through the forehead.

One bullet, two impacts, two casualties.

Then about thirty screams.

Outside in the van, Shepherd and Marquez heard the screaming. At the same time, both their earpieces started going off.

‘Jacobs is down!’ Jorgensen said. ‘Jacobs is down! Someone took him out with a rifle!’

‘Shit!’ Shepherd said, as he and Marquez pulled the door back and jumped out of the van, running around the corner. As they arrived outside the club, they saw people starting to spill out of the doors screaming and shouting in panic. Both detectives had to clamp a finger to their ear to hear what the trio upstairs were saying.

‘Is he alive?’ Shepherd shouted.

‘He’s gone, sir,’ Jorgensen said. ‘Shot between the eyes.’

‘What direction was the shot?’

‘From the west.’

A hundred and thirty one yards from the roof of the nightclub was a newly opened apartment building. It was an ideal location for precision shooting. Many of the apartments inside were yet to be filled or rented and CCTV was yet to be installed.

The shooter was already on his way down in the lift. He was alone and carried nothing with him save for a rectangular brown box with a stamped address and a cell phone in his pocket.

It couldn’t have gone better.

He’d taken a call, learning that the trade was a set-up, then fired from inside a bathroom through a gap in a window that was half open, set up deep inside the room to avoid detection. The rifle was a Winchester 270, a suppressor in place to dampen noise and muzzle flash. He’d also used sub-sonic ammunition so no one heard the shot that killed the lawyer. The bullet had hit the man right through the centre of the forehead. The moment he’d seen Jacobs take the round through the scope, the rifleman had exhaled, then placed the rifle back into its case. The spent cartridge was still inside the weapon which meant he didn’t have to fumble around looking for