No way back, p.1
No Way Back, page 1
part #7 of Sam Pope Series
NO WAY BACK
A SAM POPE NOVEL
Robert Enright
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
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Copyright © Robert Enright, 2021
For my girls,
Chapter One
‘Tributes have continued to pour in for those who lost their lives during the London Marathon Bombing.’
As the news reader’s calm and well-spoken words, lifted by the playful Northern Irish accent, filtered through the radio app on his phone, Sam Pope put down the block wrapped in sandpaper and reached for his phone with dusty fingers. The sun struck the screen, the spring morning offering a warmth that was usually snatched away by a chilling wind. Sam pressed the volume button on the side of the device, turning up the news report.
‘Today marks the three-year anniversary of the event, one which shook this city, this country and the world, to its core. With investigations still ongoing as to who was behind the bombing, the Mayor of London has proposed a two-minute silence at ten forty-five, in respect of the civilians and police officer who lost their lives three years ago. As rows of flowers line the streets that have now been fully restored since the explosion, it is clear that those who lost their lives will never lose their place in the heart of this city. Lynsey Beckett, BBC News.’
Three years.
That was a long time.
With a resigned sigh, Sam turned the phone off, cutting off a jovial Greg James as he offered some unfortunate member of the public a chance to be humiliated on national radio. With the phone silent, Sam shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Beyond the metal fences of the Bethnal Green Youth Centre, he could hear the London traffic, the eternal melting pot of roaring engines, frustrated yells and angry car horns. Beyond that, a few birds sang a song in one of the surrounding trees.
Three years.
So much had happened.
Sam looked down at the wooden bench which he had taken on as a project.
The bombing that had decimated so many lives had been a moment in time that would define him. Battling the eternal grief of losing his son, Sam had been hunting down criminals who had beaten the system and doling out his own brand of justice. It had been crude and offered nothing but a slight release from his pain.
The bombing was a catalyst for something so much more.
It had led to him going head to head with one of the most dangerous criminals in London, Frank Jackson, who had used his collusion with high-ranking members of the Metropolitan Police to build an empire that was untouchable by the long arm of the law. The ‘High Rise’, once seen as an impenetrable fortress of crime and debauchery, was brought down by Sam himself.
Floor by floor, Sam had eliminated Jackson’s army, sending Jackson himself to the afterlife and exposing a despicable alliance with a high-ranking police official.
Inspector Howell.
After his arrest, Howell had killed himself in custody.
That should have been it.
But Sam’s fight had come at a cost.
His best friend, Theo Walker, had given his life to protect an innocent woman caught up in the entire conspiracy, putting himself between her and a grenade blast. Theo had been one of Sam’s pillars through the destruction of his own life.
When Jamie, Sam’s son, was killed by a drunk driver, it was Theo who had been there to keep him afloat.
When Lucy, who had spent many years happily by his side, walked away when it was clear the depression would consume him, Sam had turned to Theo for support and guidance. Having served together in the armed forces, Sam and Theo had built a bond that had seen Theo stand beside Sam as Lucy walked down the aisle towards him.
If Sam had been a religious man, Theo would have been the only option as Jamie’s godfather.
But life had a cruel way of confirming a lack of God in the world, and watching his wife hunched over and howling in pain at the crumpled body of their dead son had told Sam clearly that there was none.
At least, not one he could ever believe in.
Theo’s death was a sign.
A sign that the world was a corrupt place. That good people were killed for doing the right thing and those who were entrusted to do the right thing simply didn’t.
So, Sam continued to fight.
After taking down Jackson’s empire, Sam continued his war against organised crime, eliminating those looking to step into the large shoes Sam had forcibly emptied. That turned Sam onto the Kovalenko crime family, who specialised in trafficking young girls out of the country and into a life of horror. Sam brought them down, building a lasting friendship with Detective Inspectors Amara Singh and Adrian Pearce in the process.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
Especially as since then, the paths they’d walked had been forged by Sam’s war and had seen Pearce retire under a cloud and Singh join a covert government operation. Pearce was now happily running the Youth Centre where Sam was working, continuing the legacy Theo had built once his deceased friend had stepped away from the armed forces. Their friendship, which had been built on trust and the unrelenting need to do the right thing, had only strengthened in the eighteen months since Sam had returned from America.
But whenever Sam thought about Singh, his heart ached.
In another life, they could have been happy. They could have made a go of it, but the world had placed them on either side of the line of right and wrong. And while their attraction and their commitment to justice had led to one tremendous romantic tryst, Sam and Singh both knew that there was no future to be shared.
Singh wanted to fight back just as much as Sam did.
Yet she was convinced that doing it behind a badge was the right way about it.
Sam’s fight had taken over not just his, but their lives too, and had damaged it beyond repair. Every time he saw Pearce smile, he could see the slight pain behind his eyes. It was a feeling he shared, one that he wished didn’t exist.
But they both understood why Sam had done it.
Why Pearce had helped him.
It was the right thing to do.
Sometimes, someone has to fight back against a system designed to keep the corrupt in power and the rest under their oppressive boots. That path inevitably had directed Sam towards General Ervin Wallace, his former commander during the hazy days of Project Hailstorm. Disguised as a secret, off-the-books operation, Sam and other elite soldiers eliminated targets under the pretence of liberty.
Of keeping the world safe.
Sam would soon learn the truth.
During a mission gone wrong, Sam was left for dead on the cold floor of a safe house with two bullet holes in his chest, with his life draining from him. Somehow, he was pulled out and Theo ensured he made it through. It brought a black curtain down on his sterling military career, one that would have made his long-since deceased father proud.
But things have a way of coming full circle.
As Sam had finished pulling the trigger on the final remnants of the Kovalenko family, he was accosted by a sinister American outfit known as Blackridge, tasked with bringing his former mentor, Carl Marsden to justice. The accusations of terrorism didn’t fit and Sam, along with the help of a woman named Alex Stone, soon found Marsden and managed to retrieve a USB stick that Blackridge was hunting him for.
A USB stick they killed him for.
It was only when he cradled Marsden’s dead body in his arms did Sam realise that Wallace was behind the entire operation, his determination to keep Pandora’s box closed long enough to kill an old friend.
Alex saved Sam’s life, when he was moments away from having his skull obliterated at point-blank range by a mysterious man with a grudge. Whatever Sam had been fighting for before, his motive changed.
Now he was fighting for everyone.
Fighting for Marsden and Theo’s memory.
Fighting for Alex’s life.
Fighting to expose the truth.
That fight led him to staging a daring abduction of Wallace on London Bridge in broad daylight, with Pearce offering his services under the strict instruction that Sam keep Singh safe. A brutal and bloody fight with Wallace’s hired gun nearly brought everything to an end, but Sam, as he had found out on numerous occasions, had a body built for survival and a mind equipped to fight till the very end.
The burning memory of his son’s innocent face was enough to haul him over the line.
It was enough to dig deep, finding the final remnants of soldier within him and Sam survived.
Farukh, the man Wallace had hired to eliminate Sam, was dead.
As was W allace.
The truth of Project Hailstorm was exposed and although Sam would have to live with the demons of his past, at least he now knew they existed.
With Singh trying her best to remove him from the crime scene, Sam‘s injuries had made it impossible. With the police closing in and a rabid assistant commissioner baying for his blood, Sam knew there was one last thing he had to do to keep Singh safe.
He allowed her to arrest him.
The UK’s most wanted man was behind bars and Singh was given a gold star and a promotion.
Sam knew she hated every second of it. Their undeniable feelings for each other only added to the guilt she carried on her capable shoulders.
But there was always a plan.
Sam’s inevitable sentencing was scuppered by a forged document, sending him to ‘The Grid’, a maximum-security facility that didn’t exist in any government book. Housing the most dangerous of criminals and the toughest of prison guards, Sam’s future was to see out the rest of his life in lockdown, several feet below the ground.
But it also led him to Harry Chapman, one of the most notorious criminals the UK had ever known, and the man who had pieced together the empires that Jackson and the Kovalenkos had ruthlessly run.
He was the head of the snake.
And after doing what he had to survive within ‘The Grid’, Sam soon put him in the ground, along with the dissolution of his entire enterprise.
The fight should have been over then and there, and as Sam reminisced about that moment, when Singh helped him into the car and they drove to freedom, he lifted the sandpaper from the wood and blew away the dust. The sun beat down from above, bathing the garden of the youth centre in a wonderful, bright glow. Ever since he took up the role as the handyman for the centre, he had enjoyed the quaintness of the job, his interactions with the wayward kids who had turned to Pearce for guidance as opposed to the constant offers of gang life.
There was a sense of pride and self-worth in dedicating his time to a different fight, one which didn’t involve death or bloodshed.
But not a day went by that he didn’t think about Mac.
With freedom at his fingertips, Sam had spent the evening with Singh and his friend Etheridge, the former soldier who financed his fight against crime. With plans being made for Sam to disappear, Mac played his hand.
Having come so close to killing Sam in Rome, Mac had bided his time and hit where it hurt. He had taken Lucy and an entire wing of a hospital hostage, threatening to blow it halfway to hell if Sam wasn’t handed over to him.
Sam had to go.
He had to face his past.
Over a decade before, Mac had been by Sam’s side on a number of missions. As talented a sniper as Sam had ever seen, Mac was just as capable a spotter. Working alongside a soldier of Sam’s ilk would only mould Mac into a valuable asset, one who would rival Sam for his effectiveness. As their reliance on each other for survival grew, so did their friendship, with Sam taking the young soldier under his wing.
Had shown him the life he could build for himself.
A life that they would value together.
Then, on a routine mission, they were spotted and, in a panic, Mac ran as an enemy chopper zeroed in on their location.
It opened fire.
The missile blew Sam from the edge of the cliff face, sending him spiralling to the town below. It should have been the end of the line but fortunately, Sam was nursed back to health by a local doctor. Mac wasn’t so lucky.
Sam believed he had died.
It had been much worse.
Mac had been taken prisoner by the Taliban and spent years in captivity, where he was brutally assaulted and tortured until Wallace had found him. Sensing the opportunity, Wallace turned Mac into a ghost, using his impressive skills and ice-cold vengeance to do his bidding.
All with the promise that one day, Mac would be able to have his revenge on Sam for leaving him.
Sam willingly gave himself up, demanding the hospital be evacuated before he confronted Mac for the first time in years. With his ex-wife looking on helplessly, Sam refused to fight the man he had considered a friend, taking a beating from him before Mac was shot dead by the Armed Response Unit.
Another person who Sam cared deeply for had been killed.
As Sam thought about Mac’s demise, he felt his chest tighten and suddenly, the toil of his fight rushed through his body with every injury he had sustained aching. Taking a deep breath, Sam lowered himself onto the bench, taking a few moments to collect his thoughts and allow his mind to clear.
Ever since he had returned from America, after helping Alex Stone reconnect with her family and dragging her out of an escalating drug war in South Carolina, Sam had been able to find a little peace.
Although the path he had forged was littered with the bodies of those he held dear, he at least found some solace in the fact that Alex was home with her family. It had been over eighteen months and Sam had decided not to reach out to her.
His fight was over and to move on from that part of his life, he had decided to cut ties. There had been the odd check on social media, where he could see that she had begun what seemed like a flourishing relationship with Joe Alan, the DEA agent who had helped Sam save her life.
But that was it.
Sam’s fight was over and everything pertaining to that part of his life was in the past.
Alan, with the help of a shady biker gang, had faked Sam’s death, allowing him to assume his identity as Jonathan Cooper and effectively hide in plain sight in London. The longer hair, dyed blonde and the thick greying beard that framed his strong jaw had done well to keep his identity safe.
It had been nearly two years since the UK had seen him marched out of the hospital in cuffs.
He was old news.
Now, he could help Pearce, try to give back to the kids that Theo had dedicated his life to and hopefully, find himself a little peace in the process.
With the sun beaming down, Sam closed his eyes and tilted his head back, allowing the warmth of the day to caress his face with its glow.
It was over.
All the pain he had put his body through, all the anguish that had racked his mind.
It was over.
‘Sleeping on the job, eh?’
Sam’s eyes shot open, and his gaze fell upon Adrian Pearce, who had a large, white grin across his face. Despite approaching his mid-fifties, Pearce still looked as fit and healthy as a man half his age. The only indication of Father Time’s input was the white beard that ran across his jaw line, made all the more prominent in contrast to his black skin.
‘I was just taking a break,’ Sam replied, shutting his eyes again.
‘I think you’ve probably earnt a few of these.’ Pearce chuckled. In his hands, he held two cups of coffee from the local coffee shop, and he handed one to Sam. Pearce was always immaculately presented, and his sky-blue shirt was tucked into his navy chinos. In contrast, Sam wore an old T-shirt that clung to his muscular frame and a pair of shorts that were scuffing slightly at the hem. Pearce lowered himself onto the bench next to Sam and took a sip of his coffee.
‘Thanks,’ Sam said, taking a sip of his own. They sat in silence for a few moments and Pearce looked across the patio area at the other pieces of furniture Sam had sanded down and varnished, breathing a new lease of life into them.
‘Looking good,’ Pearce said, pointing towards them with his coffee cup before breaking into another chuckle. ‘Do you remember way back when, what you said to me inside that Starbucks by Scotland Yard?’
‘Just a couple of good-looking guys grabbing some coffee.’
Both of them laughed.
‘If only they could see us now, eh?’ Pearce said, finishing his coffee. ‘At least one of us has kept up appearances.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ Sam joked.
