Target: Alex Cross Read online

  I’m not much for premonitions or gut instincts. For me, for the most part, it’s all about the facts and the way they fit together or don’t.

  Standing there, however, sweating and shivering in the cold in the middle of the night and seeing that black horse so vividly in my mind, there was no denying the ominous sense I felt all around me. I couldn’t point to its source, and then, suddenly, I could.

  Kristina Varjan. Senator Walker’s sniper. The gangbanger Romero. The strangled guy, Thomas. And Sergeant Moon’s killer.

  What if they were all connected? What if every one of them was a professional assassin, including Thomas, the one Scotland Yard was keeping under wraps? What if they were cooperating? What if someone was directing them?

  The sense of menace and apprehension kept building the more I thought about those questions, and finally I decided that a prudent man had to go forward on the assumption they were all trained professional killers.

  Five professional killers, maybe more, and they were all within a hundred miles of Washington, DC. What they were here for was unclear, but the fact that one of them might have assassinated a U.S. senator came front and center in my thoughts.

  This isn’t over .

  I heard horse hooves in my memory and felt at a deep gut level that something bad was about to happen. Something very bad.

  I pivoted and started sprinting back home.

  I could feel the threat in my muscles and in my bones.

  CHAPTER

  47

  AT 4:30 A.M. , Pablo Cruz encountered heavy security at the Washington, DC, arena that was the main venue for the World Youth Congress, which was opening that morning.

  Cruz had shaved his head and the goatee and wore a blue work coverall embroidered with the DC arena’s logo. He carried a District of Columbia driver’s license and an arena employee ID card that identified him as Kent Leonard, a member of the setup and maintenance crew assigned to work the three-day event.

  Cruz put thirty dollars, a cheap wristwatch, a key ring, reading glasses, sunglasses, a pack of gum, and three alcohol wipes in small foil packages in a tray and then turned to a U.S. Secret Service agent standing there. He gestured to his ears.

  In a nasal, almost Donald Duck voice, he said, “I’m wearing bilateral hearing aids. Do I take them out?”

  “If you don’t mind, sir. No cell phone?”

  “They said no phones, and besides, I can’t hear for nothing on those things,” Cruz said before removing the hearing aids, placing them in the bin, and walking through a metal detector.

  He’d used the IDs and worn similar hearing aids when entering the arena three times in the past two days, and he fully expected the venue’s security guards, DC Police, and members of the U.S. Secret Service to wave him through.

  But after he’d cleared the metal detector, he was met by a Secret Service agent carrying a wand. Special Agent Crane, according to his ID, told Cruz to extend his arms and spread his legs.

  Cruz acted as if he didn’t hear the order. Agent Lewis, Crane’s partner, went to the bin and got out his hearing aids.

  The assassin put them on and this time followed Crane’s orders as the agent moved the detection wand over him. He ignored the cheeping noise when it passed the two hearing devices.

  When he was done, Crane handed the wand to his partner, who had been typing on an iPad, and said, “I’m going to have to pat you down, Mr. Leonard.”

  “Whatever,” Cruz said.

  Agent Crane checked the assassin’s legs and pockets.

  Lewis said, “He checks out.”

  Crane nodded before patting both of Cruz’s arms. His expression changed.

  “Please pull up your sleeves, sir,” he said.

  Cruz calmly rolled back the sleeves of the jumpsuit, revealing the translucent spiderwebs wrapped around both forearms.

  “What are those?”

  “Braces for a repetitive-strain injury,” Cruz said in that quacking voice. “My cousin invented them. Did the same design for knees.”

  “I could use one of those,” Agent Lewis said. “They on the market?”

  “The website’s going up and the knee brace is coming out I think, like, next month? Spiderweb Braces,” Cruz said. “These are prototypes.”

  “Work well?” the agent said, stepping back to let him pass.

  Cruz smiled. “First day. I’ll let you know on my way out, even before I tell my cousin.”

  “Have a good day, Mr. Leonard.”

  “God willing, sir,” Cruz said, and he walked on.

  Feeling like he’d already won a major battle and remembering the schematic maze he’d taped to the abandoned factory floor, Cruz worked his way through the perimeter corridors surrounding the arena and then used a key he’d stolen, copied, and returned to a janitor two days before to unlock an unmarked door.

  He looked around, saw the hallways largely empty at that hour, and slipped into a utility stairwell. He clambered quickly down two flights of steel stairs, exited into a subbasement with narrower halls, and went through them confidently until he reached a T. He turned left and, to his relief, found the passage in front of him empty.

  Cruz went straight to a door marked with an electrical warning symbol, unlocked it, and went through it into a small, very warm space with meters running on the wall, recording the energy the facility was consuming.

  He removed his left hearing aid and tugged the ultrathin wire that linked the amplifier to the earbud. Four more inches of wire came out of the amp. He wound the cord around a connector that joined the largest electrical meter to the big power line feeding the facility. Then he opened one of the alcohol wipes and carefully cleaned the aid and everywhere he’d touched the meter.

  He did the same to the doorknob in and out of the room before moving back toward the stairwell. Just shy of it, Cruz used his key to open a door on his right and went into a storage closet that held toilet paper, napkins, coffee cups, and the like.

  Behind a stack of paper towels, he found the things he’d smuggled in two days before beneath his work clothes: the disassembled parts of his graphite derringers, a sandy-blond toupee, contact lenses, a set of clothes, and an ID.

  Cruz stripped out of the jumpsuit, folded it, then assembled the weapons and attached one to the belly of each spiderweb. He put the contact lenses in; they made his eyes a dazzling blue. Then he donned black pants, black shoes, a black dress shirt, and a black V-neck sweater.

  He set the white cleric’s collar and the toupee next to him on the floor at the back of the storage unit and sat on several rolls of paper towels in total darkness, meditating and dozing while he waited for his moment.

  Anxiety was not allowed to enter his brain.

  Neither was fear. Or thoughts of the plan. Or dreams of the future.

  Cruz became like death: nobody, nowhere, in no time.

  CHAPTER

  48

  AT 4:50 A.M. on Friday, Kristina Varjan got in an empty elevator in George Washington University Hospital and pushed the button for the fourth floor.

  Wearing hospital scrubs, glasses, hazel contact lenses, and a long auburn wig gathered into a ponytail, she carried a blood-draw kit in her left hand and sported an excellent fake GW badge that read TERRI LE GRAND, PHLEBOTOMIST . A near-perfect forgery of an official GW employee pass hung from a clip at her waist.

  As the elevator began to rise, Varjan was still debating whether she’d done the right thing by lighting two M-80 fire-crackers taped to two smoke bombs and dropping them in a trash can at the Victorious tournament.

  She’d gotten out of there clean, hadn’t she? There was that, and more. Those were FBI agents in the tournament hall, the same FBI agents who’d gone to her motel room. She’d known that the second she’d laid eyes on them.

  But what else was she going to do? She’d had to send a message, hadn’t she?

  Yes, of that Varjan was certain. She’d been smart to use the smoke bombs for many reasons. But how had the FBI agents gotten t
here?

  Before she could dwell any longer on the thought, the elevator slowed and dinged. The doors opened, and she exited.

  Varjan ambled down the hall, yawning and covering her mouth with her sleeve.

  She saw a nurse working at a computer at the dimly lit nurses’ station.

  “Hi,” Varjan said, smiling at the nurse. “I’m here for Jones and Hitchcock?”

  The nurse, a Filipina in her forties, wore a white sweater over her scrubs and a badge that said BRITA . She cocked her head. “You’re kind of early.”

  “I’m working an early shift,” Varjan whispered. “Moonlighting. I’m usually at Georgetown Friday afternoons and I needed a double.”

  Brita put on reading glasses, typed on the computer. “Who’s the draw for?”

  Varjan looked at a clipboard, said, “Meeks for Jones. Albertson for Hitchcock.”

  The nurse nodded. “Shame to wake them. Hitchcock had a rough night.”

  “I could go upstairs and do my business and swing back if that would help.”

  “No, go ahead. I have to deal with our shift change in five.”

  “Thanks, Brita,” Varjan said, and she moved down the hall toward Hitchcock’s door. When she looked back, she saw the nurse busy at her computer again.

  She went past Hitchcock’s door and the next one, took a deep breath, and used her elbow to push open the third door to a private room occupied by Arthur Jones.

  Jones lay in bed, his gray skin lit by various monitors around him. In a chair on the far side of the bed, covered in a blanket, an older woman snored softly. Varjan swallowed. It could have been worse, but the woman did complicate things.

  Varjan was flexible and adaptable, however. As she slipped toward the bed and the tangle of medical lines hooked to the old man, she was already spinning lies to use should the woman wake.

  But the old woman showed no sign that she heard Varjan setting her kit on a table and opening it. Jones, however, stirred when she slipped a device on his finger to check his pulse ox and then put the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm.

  “What the hell time is it?” he whispered grumpily.

  Varjan held his gaze, smiled, whispered, “Little before five, sir.”

  “Couldn’t this have waited a couple hours?”

  The assassin acted sympathetic as she pumped the cuff. “I’m just following doctor’s orders.”

  Varjan put on a stethoscope and took Jones’s blood pressure.

  “Don’t tell me how bad my numbers are,” he grumbled. “Don’t mean a damn thing anyway, I’m going under the knife this afternoon.”

  “People live through cardiac surgery every day,” she said, removing the cuff.

  “That’s what they say. Where you poking me now?”

  “Inner left arm.”

  Without responding, Jones closed his eyes, adjusted the IV line sticking in the back of his left hand, and exposed the inside of his elbow. Varjan wrapped a length of tubing around his weak upper arm and felt for a vein.

  She took a needle, attached it to a vacuum tube, and—

  “Who the hell are you?” the woman in the chair said.

  CHAPTER

  49

  VARJAN STARTED, SAID , “Sorry, Terri Le Grand. The phlebotomist. You?”

  “Eddie, the sister,” the woman said, studying her critically. “He had blood taken last night.”

  The assassin gazed at her. “And I’d think there’ll be more drawn before surgery.”

  Eddie sniffed. “You’ll drain him before he can get on the table.”

  “Surprise,” Jones said, his eyes still shut. “Dear sister woke up on the positive side of the bed again.”

  “They’re taking a lot of blood, Arthur,” his sister said.

  “Some of it’s being stockpiled for surgery,” Varjan said as she slipped the needle toward his arm. “Little pinch.”

  “Ow,” Jones said, his eyes flashing open. “That hurt!”

  Varjan, flustered, said, “I … I’m sorry. That never happens.”

  “Torture him, why don’t you?” Eddie said.

  “Eddie,” Jones said, looking away from Varjan. “Please.”

  His sister sniffed again. “Just saying.”

  Varjan watched blood flow into the vacuum tube and got a second tube ready. This one was not a vacuum but the barrel of a syringe. She set it into the back of the needle and pressed the plunger. The syringe contained a high dose of propranolol, a drug used to slow the heart rate and lower blood pressure.

  Once the full dose was in, Varjan tugged back on the plunger until it was partially filled with blood. She slid out the needle, put cotton on the wound site, and taped it in place.

  “There,” she said, smiling brightly. “Not so bad.”

  Eddie said, “Do you get off on sticking people like that?”

  “That’s it,” Jones said. “Can you have the nurse call Rebecca, my wife? Tell her to come early before I’m driven mad?”

  Eddie acted offended. “What? I slept in a chair for you, Arthur.”

  Varjan did not know what to make of the siblings and didn’t much care.

  “Well,” she said awkwardly, “I hope surgery goes well.”

  “If I don’t die from my sister’s bleak outlook on life,” Jones said.

  “Rational outlook on life,” Eddie said. “The cold hard facts.”

  Varjan smiled halfheartedly and left. She could hear them bickering softly as she walked down the hall toward the nurses’ station, where the shift change was under way. Brita, the Filipina nurse, looked up from her chart.

  “Good?”

  “Better than good,” Varjan said. “Have a nice sleep.”

  She walked directly to the elevator and pushed the down button. Several moments passed before alarms began to sound in the hall.

  Eddie ran out of her brother’s room, yelled, “He’s not breathing!”

  Nurses and orderlies from both shifts grabbed crash carts and raced toward Jones’s room. The elevator doors opened.

  Varjan took one last look at the team racing past Eddie, who trembled at the doorway. She looked in at the doctors and nurses and then glanced down the hall at her brother’s assassin. “You bled him dry!” she cried. “I knew that would happen!”

  Varjan vanished inside the elevator, keeping her face turned away from the cameras while the doors slid shut behind her.

  CHAPTER

  50

  I WAS DRENCHED when I ran back up the front steps to my home. Inside, I didn’t bother taking off my jacket or watch cap; I just went straight to the kitchen and punched Redial on my cell.

  “C’mon, Ned,” I said. “Pick up.”

  I’d tried to call Mahoney six or seven times on the run home, but every call to his personal phone immediately jumped to voice mail. And every call to his work phone ended with a federal robot telling me his voice mail was not yet set up.

  That was impossible. Mahoney had had the same work number for eight years. We talked all the time on the work phone.

  Five assassins, I thought as I started making coffee. No, three. If Thomas was an assassin, he was a dead one. So was Romero.

  Were there more than the three left?

  It could have been just the three at that point, but that seemed unlikely to me. If there were three, there could be four or five or even six.

  Five or six. I knew those numbers were a pure guess, but that didn’t matter. A prudent man should assume the worst and prepare for it.

  Was five or six the worst-case scenario? Or were there even more than that?

  Or was I just imagining this? A tired, frazzled brain searching for answers?

  Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I decided to go with my instincts because I did not have enough facts. After trying both of Ned’s phones again, I poured coffee into a second cup and took it and mine upstairs to our bedroom, where I flipped on the lights.

  Shutting the door, I said, “Bree, wake up.”

  She groaned and pulled the
pillow over her head. “Go away. I need to sleep.”

  I walked over and grabbed the pillow away.

  “Alex!” she shouted angrily. “Bree needs to—”

  “I know Bree needs to sleep,” I said. “But I need to talk to Chief Stone. Or do you want me to leave you out of the loop and go straight to Chief Michaels?”

  Her brow knitted and she squinted at me and some of the stiffness in her shoulders eased. “What time is it?” she grumbled.

  “Just after five,” I said.

  “You’ve been out running already?”

  I put her coffee on the night table. “Couldn’t sleep, figured I’d go for a run and think some things through.”

  Bree yawned and struggled to sit up. “Okay?”

  “I think there’s a conspiracy going on,” I said. “A conspiracy of assassins.”

  She sipped the coffee, listening and saying nothing as I tried to explain the fractured logic of my theory.

  “Something bad is about to happen. I know this doesn’t sound like me, but I can feel it.”

  Bree was quiet for several moments before saying, “This doesn’t sound like you at all, Alex. Seeing riderless horses. How much sleep have you been getting?”

  “This has nothing to do with sleep, and I didn’t see the horse. I just remembered it. This really has to do with Senator Walker getting killed, probably by Thomas, who was then killed either by Varjan or whoever beat Sergeant Moon to death.”

  “Alex, there’s a lot of conjecture in what you’re saying. Especially the idea that there are more assassins than we know about.”

  “I’m saying we should be proceeding based on that assumption. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.”

  Bree was quiet again but studying me. “What do you think these assassins are going to do?”

  “I … I don’t know. But if they were part of a plot that begins with the killing of a sitting U.S. senator, draw your own conclusions.”

  “I can’t draw any conclusions,” she said. “We don’t have enough facts.”

  “I’m telling you, something brutal is going to happen in the District, maybe today.”