Target: Alex Cross Read online

  I could see her getting more frustrated by the moment. “What do you want me to do? Put all my detectives on the streets? Ask Michaels to double the shift? Put every cop on patrol because your gut says so?”

  “That would be a start,” I said.

  She threw up her hands. “Well, I’m not in a position to do that.”

  “You should at least tell Michaels.”

  “Tell him what? That a consultant to the department wants a small army to take over the District of Columbia because of a gut feeling?”

  I could see I was getting nowhere fast. “Okay,” I said, heading toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my office to see what patients I can cancel and then to find Mahoney to see if he can understand what I’m saying.”

  “Alex,” Bree said as I opened the door. “Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

  I felt the skin around my temples relax. “I know. I love you too. Go back to sleep.”

  “That’s not happening,” she said ruefully, and she took another sip of coffee.

  I went out the door and back down the stairs, feeling confused and wondering whether this was just a theory cooked up by my tired mind. But by the time I reached the kitchen, I was certain again that I was right.

  After pouring another cup of coffee, I went down the stairs, hitting Redial on my cell. Again I heard that infuriating recording about the voice mail not being set up.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs and I was about to dial Ned’s personal phone again when I noticed an envelope on the floor below the mail slot. I picked it up, saw my name and address and a stamp but no postmark and no return address.

  I slit the envelope open as I walked to my office. There was a single piece of white paper inside. Across the page, scrawled in lurid red crayon, it said:

  CHAPTER

  51

  TWO TIME ZONES to the west of DC, Mary Potter whispered, “Dana?”

  Hearing his wife’s voice in his earbud, Potter jerked awake, saw the hillside and the valley floor below in a pale gray light. A rooster crowed.

  “Shit,” he said. “Time is it?”

  “Time to get ready,” she said. “There’s lights on in the hacienda.”

  Twenty minutes later, the winter sun crested a hillside to the east and behind them. Warmth swept in over them and continued across the valley to the terrace they’d watched two days before.

  It was broad daylight before the first person appeared, a young man wearing a sweater and apron who laid out dining service at the four tables on the terrace. He also switched on a tall portable heater. They could see the steam rising off the top of it through their scopes.

  “Let’s go hot,” Potter said. He extracted from his pocket three 6.5mm Creedmoor cartridges that he fed into the magazine of his rifle and a fourth that he seated in the chamber before closing the bolt and engaging the safe.

  Only then did he reach in his pack for the signal jammer. The device was anodized black, about the size of a paperback, and made of some light alloy. Potter didn’t know where the jammer had come from or how it worked, and he didn’t much care. It had been with their briefing package in the ranch house when they arrived.

  He set it in front and to the left of the Ozonics, where his forward hand could reach it in a hurry. Eight minutes later, the first to breakfast, a polished, fit blonde in her late thirties, came out onto the terrace wearing dark sunglasses and canvas bird-hunting gear that she made appear stylish.

  Potter reached into a side pants pocket, retrieved his cell phone, and thumbed it on. No service. Excellent.

  “Here comes my baby,” Mary sang softly. “Here he comes now.”

  Her target, a man in his sixties wearing canvas pants, a vest, and a ball cap, walked to the now-seated woman, engaged in some pleasantries with her, and then moved on to a table closer to the heater. He settled into a chair facing the length of the valley.

  “Green,” she said. “Five hundred and nine meters. The right ethmoid bone.”

  The ethmoid bone. The perfect aiming point if you meant to shatter a skull and drop a man in his tracks. Or in his chair, as the case may be.

  “Adjust your turret four clicks and stay right there,” Potter said. “No drift in this tailwind.”

  They waited fifteen minutes while five more people, all middle- to late-middle-aged men, came slowly streaming onto the terrace for breakfast. Two sat with the polished woman. Two sat by themselves. One sat to the left of Mary’s target.

  He was peach-skinned, heavyset, and gregarious. Mary’s target seemed to enjoy the man’s presence and threw back his head to laugh twice.

  Then a tall woman in her forties, big-boned with short dark hair, appeared. She was wearing a green down vest over her canvas jacket.

  “That’s the missus,” Mary said. “You’re on deck.”

  CHAPTER

  52

  THE MISSUS SEEMED to know everyone, and she worked the terrace before taking a seat at the empty fourth table with her right shoulder to the heater and in full profile.

  Potter instinctively didn’t like her in that position and had to ponder why before he understood that her husband was likely to sit to her left, facing the full view of the valley, obstructed by his wife.

  Potter’s target, who was five six in his hunting boots, ambled onto the terrace and greeted the eight folks already drinking coffee and giving their breakfast orders to the waiter. Potter had his crosshairs on the man from the second he appeared and he kept them there as he moved across the terrace to shake the hand of Mary’s target. The crosshairs stayed with him even as he went over to his wife, kissed her forehead, and took the exact wrong seat.

  The missus was so tall and broad-shouldered that her husband was all but blocked. Depending on the angle at which she faced him, Potter could only find small parts of the man’s body to aim at, none of them lethal.

  “Red,” he said.

  “Change angle?” Mary said.

  “Wait.”

  He deliberately tensed and relaxed his shoulders, calmly watching through the scope as the waiter brought espresso to his target’s table. The wife took a sip and sat back, crossing her legs and exposing the left side of her husband’s body and head.

  “Green,” he said. He reached forward and flipped the switch on the jamming device.

  Mary said, “Same.”

  Potter adjusted his upper body and the gun. The crosshairs of his scope found the bridge of the man’s nose and settled there.

  He pushed forward the three-position safety on the rifle to fire and brought the pad of his right index finger to the curl of the trigger. No pressure. Not yet.

  “Green,” he said, and they both went into a pattern of thinking and action that had been pounded into them.

  “Breathe,” Mary said.

  Potter took a deep breath and let a quarter of it out, saying, “Relax.” He dropped all tension in his body. “Aim.” His crosshairs were exactly where he wanted them.

  “Sight picture,” Mary said.

  Potter’s attention leaped from his target to his target’s wife and behind them. He was about to say Squeeze when the missus leaned forward for her espresso, blocking the shot.

  “Red,” he said, and he exhaled.

  “Still green,” Mary said.

  Potter said nothing until the wife reclined in the chair again, though not quite as far. Still, he had a clear look at the target’s frontal bone just above his left eye.

  “Green,” he said.

  They went back into that sequence again, both of them in sync: breathe, relax, aim, sight picture …

  “Squeeze,” Potter said.

  Their triggers broke crisply. Their bullets made thudding noises leaving the suppressors at the same instant the wife sat forward. Seeing the vapor trails of both their projectiles rip over the fields and the treetops, Potter knew even before impact that Mary’s shot was true, and that he had screwed up big-time.


  The 127-grain bullet smashed into his target’s wife’s lower right cheek. Her head and torso whipped around left and seized up. Beyond her, Potter’s target was half on, half off the chair. There was blood on his right chest wall, but he was very much alive and looking dumbly around.

  People were screaming and shouting. Their voices carried to the assassins.

  But Potter paid them no mind. He cycled the bolt on his rifle, thinking that the bullet must have gone through the wife’s mouth, ricocheted, exited, and slammed into her husband’s chest.

  Those thoughts vanished when he found his target’s sternum in his crosshairs, skipped shooting protocol, and tapped the trigger. The Creedmoor cracked. He stayed on the scope, watching the vapor trail all the way to the center of his target’s chest.

  “Dead man,” Mary said.

  Potter came off the gun, took his spent cartridge, pocketed it, then grabbed the gun, pack, and camo netting. He scooted backward, still hearing faint shouts, dragging his rifle, pack, and netting with him. Mary was already out of sight of the hacienda and pulling a spray bottle full of bleach from her pack.

  After stuffing the camo net in the pack, she took the bottle, crouched, and duck-walked forward right in her tracks. She got to where she’d lain for the shots and sprayed pure bleach on the Ozonics device, which she left running in place to keep destroying scent after they left. Then she retreated, spraying the whole time.

  Potter took his Ozonics but left the signal jammer to keep all communications with the ranch cut off as long as possible. He sprayed the jammer and where he’d lain and all along his exit path, sweeping his gloved hand back and forth through the loose dirt, mixing it with the bleach.

  Back over the side of the mesa, they shouldered their packs and guns before scrambling down and to the arroyo. They swept their way up the dry riverbed, jumped on the horses, and kicked them up hard.

  They rode northeast toward the truck and trailer as fast as they could go, their jobs done, and already thinking of home.

  It was 7:32 a.m. mountain time.

  CHAPTER

  53

  AT 9:40 A.M. eastern time, Martin Franks whistled as he glanced at his reflection in the window of a car on South End Avenue in Battery Park, Manhattan. Franks looked nothing like the man who’d checked out of the Mandarin Oriental the morning before and taken an afternoon Amtrak train to Penn Station.

  Franks’s hair was cut military-short now. His dark blue suit, white shirt, and tie fitted him well, but not impeccably. Aviator sunglasses and the bud in his ear screamed law enforcement. On a chain around his neck, he carried the badges and identity cards of a U.S. Treasury Department special agent.

  He had makeup on to tone down the bruising he’d received when the trooper had punched him, and a story to explain that bruising.

  Carrying a cardboard tray with three Starbucks coffees and a stack of napkins beneath, Franks walked to the Gateway Plaza Garage and entered just as it started to rain. He took an elevator to the third floor and got out with every bit of badass, walking-boss bravado he could muster.

  To his right, he saw a custom black Chevy Suburban parked sideways across three spaces. Two men dressed in dark suits and wearing earbuds stood outside and immediately fixed their attention on Franks, who balanced the coffee with one hand and held up his agent’s badge with the other.

  “You Penny and Cox?” he said in a soft Southern drawl.

  “Cox,” said the redhead.

  “Penny,” said the thick-necked guy.

  “Kevin Stoddard,” Franks said, dropping the badge and holding out his free hand. “On temporary assignment to the New York office. My boss said I should come out to spell you if you need to take a leak and at least get you some coffee.”

  Penny shook his hand, took a cup, looked Franks in the eye. “Who’s your SAC?”

  “Warner,” Franks said. “I’m on the assignment sheet.”

  Cox pulled out his phone, started typing with his thumbs. Franks acted serene but inside he was praying the hacker had done his work the right way. Otherwise, Franks was going the wrong way and fast.

  Cox looked up and nodded. “Where you based usually, Stoddard?”

  “Big Easy,” Franks said. “Past nine years.”

  “Counterfeiting?” Penny asked.

  “Mostly,” Franks said. “But you get threats now and then you have to investigate. Some of those backwoods-bayou boys got tempers and go spouting off about killing the Fed chairman. That kind of thing.”

  Penny laughed. “I’ve heard a few of those. What’re you doing up here?”

  “There’s a flood of well-crafted bogus fifties down our way,” Franks said. “Two months ago, the same quality bills started showing up in Queens. We’re trying to trace the common denominator.”

  Cox took a coffee, said, “Those guys are getting damn good with the digital stuff.”

  Penny said, “What happened to your cheek?”

  Franks made a show of looking disgusted and amused. “My eleven-year-old nephew, my sister’s kid, he’s been taking tae kwon do? He asked me if he could show me some moves the other night. I wasn’t expecting a spinning roundhouse to the side of my head. Almost knocked me cold!”

  Penny and Cox started laughing.

  Franks did too, said, “So much for my badassery.”

  He set the cardboard tray and napkins on the hood of the Suburban, took the third cup of coffee for himself. “What time are you boys in the air?”

  Penny looked at Cox, said, “Wheels off the ground at eleven.”

  Franks said, “Helps when you have a motorcycle escort clearing the way to JFK.”

  Cox shook his head. “No escort. Bowman doesn’t like them, prefers to blend in.”

  Penny said, “I think she’s right. Once she’s in and we’re rolling, we’re just another mobile master of the universe heading toward the corporate jet.”

  Franks drank from his coffee. He liked these guys. Salt of the earth, as his mother used to say. Ex-military. Wife. Kids.

  Deep down, however, he felt no pity, just building anticipation and thrill.

  At four minutes to ten, the agents put their hands to their earbuds.

  Cox said, “Roger that.”

  Penny headed toward the passenger door. “Thanks for the designer mud, Stoddard.”

  “Glad to be of service,” Franks said. He picked up the empty coffee carrier and stripped off a .25-caliber Ruger pistol taped to the bottom.

  He shot Penny through the skull from three feet away, then turned the gun on Cox and said, “Don’t.”

  CHAPTER

  54

  COX’S HAND FROZE in mid-reach for his weapon.

  “Both guns on the hood,” Franks said. “Don’t screw around. I can do this with you living or dying. Doesn’t matter to me.”

  Cox reached in, got out his service weapon, then took a backup from his ankle. He put them on the hood.

  “Steady,” Franks said, still aiming across the hood as he took the smaller weapon and put it in his pocket, then squatted and tore Penny’s earbud and radio off his corpse.

  “Get in,” Franks said, opening the passenger-side door. “You’re driving.”

  Cox said, “Whatever you’re planning—”

  “Save it for someone who cares.”

  Cox hesitated but then climbed behind the wheel.

  Franks got in, nudged aside a closed umbrella on the floor, and shut the door.

  “Drive.”

  “Where?” Cox said.

  “Don’t be cute,” Franks said. “I know the plan. Follow it.”

  The Treasury agent made a show of putting the Suburban in gear and then tried to backhand Franks.

  The assassin anticipated the move and swatted the blow away, then put the Ruger against Cox’s temple. “I’m so far ahead of you, Agent Cox. Do what I say, and you get to live to see the wife and kids. One more dumb move like that, you won’t.”

  The agent was furious but put both hands on the
wheel. He drove. His service weapon slid off the hood and clattered onto the parking-garage floor.

  They exited the garage into drizzle that had turned to steady rain by the time Cox turned on Broadway, heading south into the financial district.

  In Franks’s earbud, a man said, “This is Thomas. Shamrock wants to move.”

  “Roger that,” Cox said.

  “Minute out,” Franks said.

  “Copy.”

  Franks said, “When you get there, pull over smooth, put it in park.”

  “What the hell are you going to do?”

  The assassin said nothing as they rolled to a stop in front of Trinity Episcopal Church. The second Cox put the SUV in park, Franks put his finger in the agent’s free ear, aimed behind Cox’s jaw, and shot him through the top of his spine, killing him instantly.

  The shot sounded loud to Franks, but it was buffered by the bulletproof glass; people on the sidewalk, rushing to get out of the rain, didn’t seem to notice. He grabbed the umbrella, stepped out, shut the door, and put the umbrella up just before the front door to the church opened.

  A big black man in a suit and trench coat came out, carrying an umbrella above a short, dark-haired Caucasian female in her fifties wearing a long blue rain jacket and pumps. The muscle was taking pelting rain to his eyes.

  Franks kept his umbrella tilted to block his face. As the pair crossed the sidewalk, he reached as if to open the rear door and then swung toward the woman and shot her in the face at point-blank range.

  The agent exploded toward Franks, slashing the umbrella at him and then getting his shoulder into the assassin, driving him back against the SUV. Franks went ragdoll, as if he’d been stunned.

  The second he felt the agent go for the submission, he aimed through the umbrella and fired. He heard a grunt before the man fell at his feet, wounded but not dead and going for his weapon.

  Franks aimed at the middle of the agent’s forehead.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Click .

  Franks whipped the empty gun at the wounded man’s face, hitting him. He pivoted, raced around the SUV to the driver’s side, pulled Cox’s corpse out, and left him there sprawled in the bus lane.