Into Focus Read online

  Into Focus

  By

  Tom Barber

  ****

  Into Focus

  Copyright: Archway Productions

  Published: 31st May 2022

  The right of Tom Barber to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by he in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For info on all new releases

  Contents

  Into Focus

  Into Focus

  The Sam Archer thriller series

  Dedicated to the memory of Neil Vaughn

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  TWENTY NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY ONE

  THIRTY TWO

  THIRTY THREE

  THIRTY FOUR

  THIRTY FIVE

  THIRTY SIX

  THIRTY SEVEN

  THIRTY EIGHT

  THIRTY NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY ONE

  FORTY TWO

  FORTY THREE

  FORTY FOUR

  FORTY FIVE

  FORTY SIX

  FORTY SEVEN

  FORTY EIGHT

  FORTY NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY ONE

  FIFTY TWO

  FIFTY THREE

  FIFTY FOUR

  FIFTY FIVE

  FIFTY SIX

  FIFTY SEVEN

  About the author:

  Sam Archer thrillers

  The Sam Archer thriller series

  by

  Tom Barber

  NINE LIVES

  26 year old Sam Archer has just been selected to join a new counter-terrorist squad, the Armed Response Unit. And they have their first case. A team of suicide bombers are planning to attack London on New Year’s Eve. The problem?

  No one knows where any of them are.

  THE GETAWAY

  Archer is in New York City for a funeral. After the service, an old familiar face approaches him with a proposition. A team of bank robbers are tearing the city apart, robbing it for millions.

  The FBI agent needs Archer to go undercover and try to stop them.

  BLACKOUT

  Three men have been killed in the UK and USA in one morning. The deaths take place thousands of miles apart, yet are connected by an event fifteen years ago. Before long, Archer and the ARU are drawn into the violent fray. And there’s a problem.

  One of their own men is on the extermination list.

  SILENT NIGHT

  A dead body is found in Central Park, a man who was killed by a deadly virus. Someone out there has more of the substance and is planning to use it. Archer must find where this virus came from and secure it before any more is released.

  But he is already too late.

  ONE WAY

  On his way home, Archer saves a team of US Marshals from a violent ambush in the middle of the Upper West Side. The group are forced to take cover in a tenement block in Harlem. But there are more killers on the way to finish the job.

  And Archer feels there’s something about the group of Marshals that isn’t quite right.

  RETURN FIRE

  Four months after they first encountered one another, Sam Archer and Alice Vargas are both working in the NYPD Counter-Terrorism Bureau and also living together. But a week after Vargas leaves for a trip to Europe, Archer gets a knock on his front door.

  Apparently Vargas has completely disappeared.

  And it appears she’s been abducted.

  GREEN LIGHT

  A nineteen year old woman is gunned down in a Queens car park, the latest victim in a brutal gang turf war that goes back almost a century. Suspended from duty, his badge and gun confiscated, Archer is nevertheless drawn into the fray as he seeks justice for the girl. People are going missing, all over New York.

  And soon, so does he.

  LAST BREATH

  A Federal manhunt is underway across the United States. Three people have been shot by a sniper, and he’s gone to ground somewhere in Washington D.C., his killing spree apparently still not over. As riots engulf the city and the manhunt intensifies, Sam Archer arrives in the city to visit his family.

  Or so it would appear.

  JUMP SEAT

  A commercial airliner crashes into the Atlantic Ocean with hundreds of people on board. When another follows three days later, Archer and the rest of the team are assigned the case. At any moment, they know another plane could go down.

  And to try and solve the case, Archer’s going to have to go 35,000 feet up in the sky.

  CLEARED HOT

  A female CT Bureau detective and colleague of Archer’s is shot in the head in an empty pool in Astoria. Archer learns she’s been re-examining a strange case from seventeen years ago. On the morning of Tuesday September 11th, 2001, a FDNY firefighter showed up to work and committed suicide.

  But no-one has ever figured out why.

  TRICK TURN

  At a pre-July 4th carnival in New York, an eleven year old girl is almost killed when a knife slams into a wall, missing her by a hair’s breadth. No-one saw who threw the blade, but Archer and his NYPD team can guess why.

  Her dead father was one of the most powerful mobsters in the city.

  And someone seems hell bent on reuniting the girl with him.

  NIGHT SUN

  As Archer is sent to a federal prison to help transport an old foe to another facility, a situation erupts that leads to the escape of some other, extremely dangerous prisoners. One of them is an inmate with just six days left on his sentence.

  But for a reason that quickly becomes clear, those are six days too many.

  INTO FOCUS

  Two VIPs from two very different worlds are attacked during a stay in New York City. Lives are lost, and the fear and the threat of more violence is increasing with every hour. Archer is ordered to find answers, and as he searches for clues, the shocking truth starts to become clearer. But no-one is safe as that truth comes into focus.

  No-one.

  Also:

  CLOSE CALLS

  In a collection of three stories, familiar characters from the Sam Archer thriller series look Death right in the eye and don’t blink first. Moments that forged the people they are today.

  Moments they can never forget.

  Their close calls.

  HAND OFF

  In this prequel novel, featuring two familiar characters from the Sam Archer thriller series, an investigation involving a dead famous athlete, another assaulted in a seedy strip club toilet and a vigilante going out at night delivering street justice draws the NYPD’s attention.

  Despite their junior status, Officers Matt Shepherd and Jake H
endricks are drawn into the case as quiet, unofficial investigators.

  But also, as suspects.

  Dedicated to the memory of Neil Vaughan

  PROLOGUE

  You could have heard a pin drop in the parole board meeting room at Wyoming State Penitentiary that morning.

  The sound of a key being inserted into the substantial lock leading from the prison’s inner blocks broke the silence; moments later the door swung back and an inmate in handcuffs was walked in, held by his arms on either side by a correctional officer in navy blue uniform.

  The prisoner had been changed out of State Pen orange into a medical gown and white slip-on shoes. His final meal the previous night had been chicken-fried steak and potatoes with a side of white turkey chili, no dessert. He’d asked for a T-bone but the warden had refused the request, thinking there was every chance the prisoner might use the bone to try and end his life fourteen hours too early. This particular inmate didn’t get to do that on his terms; following due legal process, the people of Wyoming had decreed that he would die by lethal injection, at 9am this Tuesday May morning. A relatively quick process. Very different from the experiences he’d subjected his victims to.

  The two officers standing either side of the inmate had him in a firm grip; Wohrburg was the name on the chest tag of the younger CO, a man not yet thirty but eighty pounds or so overweight, slightly out of breath after the walk from the prisoner’s cell. He pulled the inmate’s handcuffs up sharply before sliding a small key into the set. Their eyes met and as he undid the metal bracelets, Wohrburg muttered four words under his breath, so quietly only the prisoner could hear.

  ‘I hope it burns.’

  The other CO, a taller, leaner and slightly older man called Keene, cleared his throat, and Wohrburg stepped back, taking the cuffs with him. ‘I need you to get up on the gurney now, Lester,’ Keene told the prisoner, keeping a firm hold of his shoulder and elbow. The serial killer stepped forward and placed his hand on the leather backrest for support; it was cold to the touch and creaked as he shifted himself onto the gurney and lay back.

  Then Keene and Wohrburg started to strap his arms, legs and torso in place.

  Next door in an observation room, two more correctional officers, a licensed medic and the warden were watching. ‘Prisoner’s being installed, sir,’ the warden said, on the phone to the state governor, as the two COs beside him eyed up the loaded syringes laid out on a cart, while the medic carried out a final check of each. A heart monitor in the corner was turned on, two IV lines with long connecting feeds snaking out into the adjacent parole board room.

  Electrode pads were attached under the inmate’s gown to his chest, then Keene and Wohrburg moved back as the now-restrained prisoner shifted his head to look at a clergyman holding a bible who’d been waiting in the room when he was brought in, silently watching the process. A door to a room with a reflective one-way glass window opened with a slight creak and a man in a medical coat walked in, wheeling a cart with some equipment resting on the top. The guy was young and looked nervous.

  Pulling on some latex gloves, he swabbed the inside of the prisoner’s elbow; his hands were shaking slightly and it took him two attempts to successfully insert the IV line. The medic had left the door to the adjoining room open and the inmate strapped to the table could hear the beep, beep of what he realized was his heartrate on a monitor. It hadn’t changed rhythm yet, as slow and steady as a marching drum, and he looked across the room at the CO who’d whispered to him when removing the cuffs. The young man in the doctor’s coat who’d taped in the cannula needle to the prisoner’s arm finished connecting it to a long tube which ran into the room with the one-way mirror. The medic looked more anxious than the inmate about to die.

  ‘Primary attached,’ he said, before wheeling his equipment around to the other side and repeating the process on the prisoner’s right arm. He was more successful this time and had it hooked up in thirty seconds. As soon as he’d finished, the medic wheeled the stand over to the wall then moved back next door. Wohrburg stepped forward to stand behind Lester, but Keene intervened and shook his head.

  ‘I got it,’ he told the younger CO.

  ‘I want to-’

  ‘Step back, Glen.’

  Wohrburg did as ordered by his sergeant after a moment’s hesitation, and the prisoner felt the gurney start to tilt upwards into a more vertical position, CO Keene winding a handle underneath. When he was done, Keene retreated and a third prison officer who’d entered the room pushed a button.

  With a slow electronic whir, a white screen on the wall in front of the inmate started to rise, and Lester saw shoes, shins and then the bodies of people sitting in three lines in an observation room.

  The witnesses assembled to watch him die.

  ‘Lester Shayne Creel, you have been sentenced to death by a jury of your peers in the State of Wyoming for the murder of eleven people,’ Keene said, the words spoken loudly so everyone could hear. ‘You now have the opportunity to make a statement before we proceed.’

  Instead of speaking, Creel ran his eyes along the lines of people waiting for what was to follow. Some he recognized from the courthouse during his very publicized trial, a few from when they’d been given the opportunity to take the stand and address him directly. Creel saw a young man who’d attempted to rush him in the courtroom before officers of the court intercepted him just in time, Creel having had the guy’s twin brother decomposing in the walls of his house for almost a year. The luckier twin was at the back of the observation room right now, looking strained, standing beside another man in a suit who Creel didn’t recognize.

  Lester made slow eye contact with each of the people there, going down the lines.

  ‘Mr Creel?’ CO Keene prompted.

  He didn’t answer, and Keene looked at the warden who’d appeared in the doorway of the observation room; the prison’s most senior official nodded and the gurney was wound back down until it was horizontal again. The beeping next door was now the only sound to be heard, but then it started to go faster as Creel flicked his gaze back to CO Wohrburg who was grinning at him; he was hearing the quickening pulse.

  Creel’s mouth had gone dry, and as he felt the first stirring of panic at his imminent death, the clergyman stepped forward, holding his bible.

  ‘May God have mercy on you, son,’ he said quietly.

  As he lay there, the sound of his rapidly increasing heartbeat echoing around the parole room, the last thing Creel did was make eye contact with Wohrburg.

  I hope it burns.

  Then the mass murderer’s eyelids suddenly felt too heavy to keep open and everything turned black.

  ONE

  ‘We’re getting penalized for being good at what we do?’ Detective-Sergeant Matt Shepherd of the New York Police Department asked, as he stood in his boss’s office, the head of the NYPD’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau, Lieutenant Jim Franklin. Franklin was in the chair behind his desk, looking at his own ranking officer, a captain whose visits were rare. And this one today had brought some very unexpected news.

  ‘I wouldn’t describe getting the first shot at these cases as a penalty, Sergeant,’ the captain told Shepherd, who’d just celebrated his fortieth birthday. A fit 6’2 and two hundred and twenty pounds, Shep was born to lead and as a detective-sergeant, had over the course of many investigations proved to have been the right choice to head up one of the elite investigation squads at the Bureau. He’d been an NYPD cop for almost twenty years.

  ‘You’re assigning us double the workload,’ Shepherd answered, looking at Franklin and then the captain. ‘We don’t get the luxury of extra time with the sort of cases we’re handed here. What happens if we miss a threat because we’re focusing on something else?’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of talented people in this Bureau. They can handle it.’

  A brief silence followed, as Shepherd considered the captain’s response. ‘Just say what you’re thinking, Shep,’ Franklin prompted, recognizing the lo
ok on his sergeant’s face. ‘Open floor. We’re listening.’

  ‘This is how things go wrong real fast. We’re spread too thin, it’s the city we’re supposed to protect that could suffer the consequences.’

  ‘We become aware of a serious threat, of course that’s gonna become the priority for you,’ the captain said. ‘But things have changed since we set up this Bureau. Our intel gathering’s more sophisticated. We’re more prepared for all kinds of attack.’

  ‘So why are we being asked our opinion?’ Shepherd asked. ‘Seems pretty clear the decision’s already been made.’ Standing beside him, his fellow squad leader in the Department, Jake Hendricks, was listening intently. He was a more reserved man than Shep, built on similar lines but darker in looks and temperament. The lieutenant and captain glanced at him, both knowing the fact he hadn’t added anything meant he agreed with everything Shepherd was saying. The two men were the closest of friends, Hendricks having been in the NYPD almost as long as Shepherd.

  ‘You scored a lot of points solving your two most recent cases and it’s got you some positive attention,’ the captain told Shepherd and Hendricks. ‘This division was set up to counter terror threats, but in the last few years that’s pulled your detectives into other areas. And their performance has been a knockout. They’ve kicked ass.’

  ‘Because their attention wasn’t split,’ Franklin pointed out.

  ‘We’ve got ten of the best detectives in this city working in this building, including you two, but who are right now limited to one field of focus,’ the captain replied. ‘We need to make better use of all your skills.’

  ‘What’s that saying, chase two rabbits and both escape?’ Shepherd said.

  ‘With the people you’ve got, that’s not gonna happen. This wouldn’t have been suggested otherwise.’

  ‘Major Case Squad are pissed at us already, Cap,’ Franklin said. ‘The information Shep and his people got out of one of their former lieutenants at the end of summer has put three of their top guys now facing twenty years-plus inside. Won’t they see this as taking their lunch too?’