Merry Christmas, Alex Cross ac-19 Read online

  “Mr. Holt,” I said. “Read my lips. I would like to have you out of here in the next half hour, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”

  Holt smiled a standard candidate’s smile and said, “If anyone can do it, you can. After all, you’re Alex Cross.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be impressing many people these days,” I said as I turned and walked away.

  Yeah, I was Alex Cross…without a lead, without a clue, without Hala.

  And everywhere I looked, there were angry, frightened people trying to get their needs met:

  “My little boy has medication he has to take.”

  “My cell phone isn’t getting any reception. What is this, Nazi Germany?”

  “This is exactly the kind of shit I expect from the Metro police. You guys hate black people. You hate us.”

  “Just stay calm, dear. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “That’s always your stupid advice, Barbara. Stay calm. Just stay calm.”

  I rubbed my temples, tried to find a place of quiet, a moment of sanity, so I could call home again.

  Nana answered on the first ring. “You coming home, Alex?”

  “Soon as I’m able.”

  “You okay?”

  “I am. I just wanted you all to know that. Bree there?”

  “She and Jannie have gone to the corner for milk and eggs.”

  “I’ll try her cell.”

  “You be safe now,” my grandmother said. She paused, and then added in a worried tone, “Alex, I don’t feel good about whatever you’re doing.”

  “Having visions these days?”

  “I’m telling you what I am feeling,” she said, hurt. “What we’re all feeling.”

  I hesitated, willing myself not to fall into the trap of thinking too much beyond the task at hand. When someone is lobbing grenades, you want to be single-minded, even if it hurts the people closest to you.

  “I promise you I’ll be safe, Nana,” I said at last. “And I’ll call again when we’ve wrapped this up and I’m coming home.”

  “Please do that, Alex. I mean, come home.”

  “Always,” I said, and I hung up.

  CHAPTER 69

  Snow began to fall again as one of Nazad’s men set down his bolt cutters after clipping out an entire section of the chain-link fence that separated them from the train tracks. He and the other two members of the Family were all wearing the same fake CSX repairman uniforms as their leader.

  “Get the substitute barrels,” Nazad hissed to two of them, and he told the third, “Bring the tank.”

  The Tunisian charged down the steep bank in the knee-deep snow as the flakes grew thicker and fell faster until it was almost as if he were in one of those Christmas movies that the infidels so adored and he so despised. Almost there, he glanced to his left along the boxcars. He was unable to see the two locomotives at the head of the freight train, which was good: he wanted them deep inside the tunnel, blind to what was about to happen twenty-nine cars back.

  He reached the green C. Itoh container car and went to its rear doors, which were locked. To ensure the integrity of the cargo, whoever had loaded the car had sealed the locks with heavy-gauge steel cables and crimped metal plates that bore the date and time the doors were closed.

  One of Nazad’s men appeared, lugging what looked like a scuba tank. Nazad reached inside his coat and pulled out an apparatus that included two rubber hoses, a brass connector, and the thin neck and head of an acetylene torch.

  They had it attached in seconds. Nazad glanced up the north bank toward the freeway. No one would ever see them down here. Who would look anywhere but the road in a crazy storm like this?

  He got out a flint striker, turned the gas on, and lit the torch with a sound like a cork popping. With three slow, deliberate slashes, he severed the cables from the sealing plates. They fell, hissing, into the snow at his feet.

  Nazad shut the torch off and handed it to his helper, who set it aside and started to claw his way back up through the snow toward the repair van. Nazad retrieved the sealing plates and pocketed them. It was snowing so hard now that he kept blinking at the infernal flakes as he opened the door.

  “Brother,” he heard one of his men say with a gasp. “It is too much!”

  The Tunisian grimaced, looked around the door, and saw the other two men with him at the bottom of the bank, a blue fifty-five-gallon drum half submerged in the snow between them.

  “We can’t lift it!” the other man said. “Without the snow, yes, we could use the dolly, but it’s too much.”

  Nazad lost it. Livid, he ran to them, down the path that had begun to form. “Too much?” he said, slapping one man and then the other. “It’s too much for you to get six barrels one hundred feet through the snow, and not too much for Hala to risk her life to stop this train for you? Think of where she is, brothers. Think of what she’s doing for you and for Allah right now.”

  CHAPTER 70

  Hala shifted uncomfortably. Her hip was throbbing again, and she’d just taken another painkiller, since she’d been forced to adopt an incredibly awkward position in order to remain up on the axle housing of the rear passenger car of the Crescent.

  Melting snow and water dripped all around her. The axle itself was greasy and slick, and it stank of oil. But the metal was surprisingly warm, and she’d been able to straddle the axle, the gun and the tool bag stuffed on a flange above her. She held tight to what looked like part of the brake.

  They might come and shine their lights up under each carriage, she thought. But that would take awhile, certainly long enough for Nazad and his men to complete their part of the mission. She could almost hear Alex Cross and the FBI men thinking, She’s booby-trapped the place. Who knows how many devices she’s set up?

  They would be slow now, methodical. Hala closed her eyes, praying that Nazad and his men would have enough time.

  CHAPTER 71

  Nazad and the three other men strained against two nylon straps he’d wrapped around the second barrel that had come down from the truck. They pulled the heavy, awkward load over snow that was becoming packed down and more navigable despite the flakes still falling all around them.

  Grunting, they made one last heave, slid the barrel up against the green railcar, and tipped it upright. It had to weigh three hundred pounds, at least.

  “Third one comes out first,” the Tunisian said with a gasp as he climbed up onto the buckles that held the train cars together and then up over the transom into the container itself. He flipped on a headlamp and saw three blue barrels that looked almost exactly like the substitutes he’d brought to the door. They were sitting up on a pallet.

  Each barrel had a plastic sleeve glued to its side that held documents identifying its manufacturer as Pinkler Industries, and its contents as organophosphates. Nazad carefully stripped the sleeve label off the far right barrel, set it aside, and then, together with his men, muscled the barrel to the door. They wrapped the nylon moving straps beneath the barrel and then eased it out of the container car, two men holding the straps, two men guiding the barrel down.

  When they had it sitting upright beside the container, Nazad said, “Hurry. We rest when we are finished.”

  In seconds they had the straps beneath the first substitute barrel from the van, and then they reversed the process and loaded it inside. Feeling like he’d soaked his clothes with sweat despite the cold weather, the Tunisian nevertheless pushed on, dancing the replacement barrel up beside the two on the pallet. He got out glue, smeared it on the back of the plastic sleeve, and affixed the sleeve to the substitute barrel.

  And so it went, Nazad and his men moving each barrel loaded with organophosphates out of the railcar and putting in its place a look-alike barrel filled with sand. With the lading documents attached to the containers, no one would figure out the organophosphates were missing until it was far too late.

  Nazad gestured with his chin toward a cardboard box at the rear of the pallet and said, �
�Take that one too. Then we’ll lock up and leave.”

  One of the men picked it up with a grunt and waddled toward the door.

  The Tunisian checked his watch. They’d been working nonstop for almost an hour and a half. Hala had done the impossible, he thought. Hala had stood up for God, and the One had rewarded her for her boldness, rewarded all of them for their boldness. Their purpose was, clearly, a sacred-

  The light nearly blinded him.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” a man’s voice demanded in English. “And who the hell are you?”

  CHAPTER 72

  “Can you get him to speak when we get in there?” I asked Jennifer Carstensen, the officer who handled Jasper, a huge white German shepherd. Jasper was one of three police dogs who, along with their human partners, had responded to my call, the officers leaving their homes and families on Christmas to help us track down a terrorist.

  We were on the stairs that led down to the terminal. Above us, people who an hour before had been standing in line frantic to get tickets were now standing in line frantic to be released from the station.

  “We can absolutely get Jasper to speak,” Officer Carstensen replied. “He’s been taught to vocalize an alert bark, an attack bark, and a gathering howl. Which one do you want?”

  Jasper panted with excitement. He could tell a hunt was about to begin. With every breath the dog took, his powerful shoulder and neck muscles rippled. It almost felt unfair to turn a beast like Jasper loose on someone who was deathly afraid of dogs.

  But Hala Al Dossari had killed seven people, two of them FBI HRT specialists. Unfair did not even begin to describe the lengths we’d take to apprehend her and make her face justice. We had the terminal surrounded. We had also sealed off the opening into the Ivy City Yard and the First Street tunnel. We had two bomb teams on hand as well, one Metro DC Police, the other FBI. And we had Jasper and his two eager pals.

  “I want him howling,” I told Officer Carstensen. “I want all three of them howling like a pack of wolves when it’s time.”

  “Ready and waiting, Alex,” she said, and she slipped Jasper a treat.

  “Al Dossari really that scared of pooches?” Mahoney asked.

  “I’m counting on it,” I said.

  An ironic smirk appeared on his face. “You know, Alex, what you’re about to do could be construed as psychological coercion.”

  “Torture?” I replied skeptically. “No. This is just a way to flush her out quicker and prevent further bloodshed.”

  “Exactly,” Mahoney said.

  I was too damn tired to argue the point. “We ready, Ned?”

  “Five minutes,” Mahoney said. “Bomb squads are moving into final position at the east and west ends of the terminal.”

  I glanced at my watch. Half past eight. With luck, this would all go smoothly, and I’d get home in time to kiss my wife good night before Bree put on her kerchief and I put on my cap and both of us settled down for a long winter’s nap.

  CHAPTER 73

  For a second, with the brilliant light shining in his eyes, and the commanding voice of a stranger he could not see ringing in his ears, Omar Nazad felt bewildered, foiled, perhaps a martyr for nothing.

  Where had the man come from? Who was he? Police?

  Then training took over. He and Hala had gamed almost every scenario, including being spotted in or around the train.

  “CSX Nashville asked us to check on this shipment,” Nazad said, holding his hand up to block the light, seeing the silhouette of a burly man standing in the doorway. “Could you put that down?”

  The light was directed down, and the Tunisian saw a bearded male in his late forties wearing a snowy CSX coat not that dissimilar from his own. The rail worker held a flashlight in one hand, a radio in the other.

  “We didn’t get no call about a shipment check,” the man said, scowling.

  “The storm,” Nazad said, walking casually toward him. “It has affected everyone. Everything. Can you believe they make us work in this shit?”

  The man seemed to relax, asked, “Where you out of?”

  “Benning Yard,” Nazad said, referring to the local CSX rail maintenance facility. He glanced at footprints behind the man and saw that he’d come down the opposite side of the train, from the direction of the tunnel.

  The real CSX employee scrunched up his nose. “They sent a mechanic to do a cargo check?”

  The Tunisian smiled like they were allies. “In times of crisis, my friend, each man must do his part. Is that not true?”

  The CSX man scratched at his beard, said, “Guess so. Hell, what’s in there they got you out in the middle of a blizzard?”

  “A potentially unstable chemical,” Nazad said. “But I have checked the shipment. Everything is fine. Quite stable.”

  The man’s eyes shifted from the Tunisian, drifted across the floor of the container, focused on the cut plastic strapping that had held the three drums together on the wooden pallet. He said, “No problem. Lemme just check on this. What’s your name?”

  “Herb,” Nazad said. “Herb Montenegro.”

  The man nodded, raised his radio, clicked Transmit, and managed to say, “Tony, you by the channel?” before the steel toe of Nazad’s boot viciously connected with his windpipe, crushing it.

  The rail worker choked. Eyes bugging out, he dropped the radio and the flashlight, reached for his throat, and then crumpled to his hands and knees, fighting for air. Nazad jumped out of the container, landed square on the man’s back, and drove him face-first into the deep snow, making sure he would never be by the channel again.

  From somewhere in the snow next to the suffocating man, the Tunisian heard a voice with a Boston accent say, “This is Tony. How the hell’s it looking back there?”

  CHAPTER 74

  Hala still straddled the axle of the railcar. The dripping from the underside of the train had all but stopped, but she shivered in the north breeze coming into the terminal from the Ivy City Yard and against the greasy steel that had gone cold beneath her. Though her fingers and toes stung, she was somewhat grateful for the cold; it had penetrated her pelvis and calmed her hip as much as the drugs.

  But would she be able to run if she had to? Fight if she had to?

  Despite the narcotics, Hala knew, she was still mentally able to fight, and she still had three grenades and twenty-five more rounds for the pistol. But would she be able to move the way she needed to if-

  The howls rose from behind her, at the station, somewhere on the terminal’s rear dock: one, two, and then three; left, right, and center. The baying triggered an involuntary shudder that rolled through Hala head to toe and instantly hurled her back in time.

  She saw herself at four, at her grandfather’s place in the desert, petrified by a pack of wild dogs that were tearing into a young goat that had gotten out beyond the fence. Horrified and angry, Hala had gone to help the goat. The dogs turned on her, mauled her legs and arms, tried to kill her.

  Twenty-nine years later, hiding beneath the train and listening to the police dogs howling, Hala was enveloped by the same terror she’d felt when the pack in Saudi Arabia had tried to tear her limb from limb. Shaking now, sweating, she had to use everything in her power to keep herself from collapsing and curling into the fetal position.

  A voice in Hala’s mind, her late husband’s voice, told her she had to fight. She could kill the first dog, and maybe the first dog’s handler. But the police that followed them? And the second dog? And the third?

  Despite Tariq’s voice commanding Hala to focus and figure out a way to escape the dogs and join Nazad, she kept thinking about that baby goat from her childhood, how it had bleated in fear as the pack circled and snapped at its legs. She kept seeing the dogs turn on her, feeling their teeth ripping at her skin.

  Hala fought off the urge to puke and shook her head, willing herself to conquer a fear that felt primitive and instinctual.

  The howling stopped. She gasped, feeling smashed up in
side and somewhat embittered at the method Allah had fashioned for her martyrdom.

  My greatest fear becomes my sacrifice? My deliverance?

  “Hala Al Dossari.” A voice that echoed through the terminal came from the public address system high overhead. “This is Alex Cross with Metro DC Police. You are surrounded. You have no chance of escape. And we have your jacket and boots from the ventilation duct. You have one minute to lay down your weapons and reveal yourself.” A long pause. “Or we’ll release the dogs.”

  Cornered, up against the wall, she considered giving up, surrendering herself so Nazad and the others could complete their mission and put Al Ayla, the Family, at the front of the fight against the great Satan. She might not share in the blessed experience, but she would live to hear about these great things. She would live to rejoice at God’s will on earth.

  Or she could buy Nazad even more time. He had not yet called her or texted her to say the transfer had been completed. And it was still snowing, was it not? It was. Her duty, her obligation, was to the overall mission.

  Hala made herself slide down off the axle, forced herself to go back once more to that day when she was four and the dogs had tried to kill her. In her mind, she rewound the tape of the attack, finding her little-girl self watching the baby goat die, and feeling an injustice and a rage like no other begin to boil.

  If they send dogs, she thought, then dogs will die.

  CHAPTER 75

  “Robby? you by the channel?”

  Frantically, Nazad dug in the snow around the rail worker.

  “Robby?”

  “Brother?”

  The Tunisian looked back and saw the three other Family men, eyes wide at the sight of the body. “Not now,” he barked, feeling something in the snow.

  An antenna!

  The Tunisian jerked it up, brought the radio to his lips, triggered Transmit, coughed, went nasal, and said, “Dropped the goddamned radio in the snow and I think I’m coming down with a frickin’ cold. Come back.”