Target: Alex Cross Read online

  “I’ll go with him,” Agent Crane said.

  “No,” Reamer said. “I need you here. The Secret Service may not be in charge, but we are involved.”

  “I’ll go,” Sampson said.

  “I need you here,” Bree said. “I’ll get a uniform to go with him.”

  “I’m off,” Reamer said as he turned away. “I’m still looking for an eyewitness to the shooting.”

  CHAPTER

  63

  IN THE CONFERENCE room off the hangar at Joint Base Andrews, I looked at the president and the country’s leaders and saw them all studying me.

  I said, “If I had unlimited resources, I’d bring in the best investigative coordinator the FBI has to oversee four distinct teams. One team should focus on forensics and generating swift, accurate test results. The second team should be composed of the Bureau’s best investigators dispatched into the field, starting at the three assassination sites. Intelligence analysts from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security should staff the third team and should have an eye on every piece of evidence that comes in.”

  President Larkin nodded. “And the fourth?”

  I said the last team should be composed of a smaller group of elite investigators, analysts, and forensics specialists assigned to look at the crimes from a loftier perspective. What was the purpose of the assassinations? Why did they have to happen? Whom and what did they benefit? Whom and what did they destroy?

  Mahoney agreed with my rough design but added, “That fourth team should also be charged with identifying and arresting the person or persons in government who helped coordinate the attacks.”

  There was dead silence in the room.

  Finally, Director Sanford said, “You believe there’s a traitor, Agent Mahoney?”

  “Without question, sir,” Ned said. “Probably several.”

  An older man with a professor’s manner whom I later learned was NSA director John Parkes leaned forward and said, “Or whoever is behind this has completely compromised our cybersecurity system. You’ll want to consider this as well.”

  Parkes typed on a laptop. A screen on the wall flashed, then showed a map of the world with continents and countries connected by strands, streams, and rivers of tiny shimmering lights.

  Parkes said, “You’re looking at the data flow on the dark web forty-eight hours ago, then twenty-four hours ago, and now.”

  The lines of sparkling light ebbed and flowed. Roughly thirty-six hours ago, a big dense river of data connecting the United States, Russia, North Korea, and China had appeared, then widened and deepened, building toward a flood.

  Linda Johnson, the Senate minority leader, said, “Are we looking at the start of World War Three?”

  Before anyone could reply, Director Sanford looked at his phone, said, “Abbie Bowman’s assassin was killed ten minutes ago. New York rookie cop shot him. He was carrying perfect forgeries of Treasury Department IDs. They’re fingerprinting him and checking dental records as we speak.”

  Mahoney said, “That’s a big break.”

  “Here’s another,” Felix White, the CIA director, said, gesturing at his laptop. “We’ve picked up satellite chatter, Russian satellite chatter. Three-quarters of the Kremlin think the motherland is behind the assassinations.”

  “Maybe it is,” I said. “Maybe through Viktor Kasimov.”

  “Son of a bitch,” White said, and he threw a pencil on the table. “We keep an eye on Kasimov when he’s not here assaulting women. We were alerted this morning that his pilot filed flight plans to London. Kasimov and his crew took off around nine.”

  “Right before the shooting started,” General Hayes said.

  President Larkin said, “Have our agents waiting for Mr. Kasimov at Heathrow. I don’t give a damn about his diplomatic status. The second he touches down, grab him and put him on a return flight in handcuffs and ankle irons.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” the CIA director said. “With great pleasure, Mr. President.”

  There was a soft knock at the door. It opened, and a flustered air force captain said, “Excuse me. There’s a Keith Karl Rawlins, an FBI contractor, who just landed from Quantico. He says he might have figured out who shot the president.”

  CHAPTER

  64

  KEITH KARL RAWLINS, Aka Krazy Kat, entered the room a few moments later. Rawlins usually worked in a subbasement at Quantico; he was a very highly paid contractor who offered his unique expertise exclusively to the FBI.

  Rawlins had dual PhDs from Stanford, one in physics and a second in electrical engineering. In his spare time, he was working on a third doctorate from MIT in computer science.

  The last time I’d seen him, he’d cut his hair in a Mohawk and dyed it flaming red. That was all gone now. He’d shaved his head, grown a beard and braided it, and he wore camo fatigues, sandals, and two new nose rings.

  You could tell from the expressions on the faces of the people in the room that they didn’t know what to make of Rawlins, even if Director Sanford had described him before he came in as “possibly the smartest person on earth when it comes to harnessing data.”

  Rawlins nodded to me, said, “Good idea, Dr. Cross.”

  “It worked?”

  “Well enough,” Rawlins said as he got out a laptop and started typing.

  “What are you talking about?” President Larkin demanded.

  “Dr. Cross asked if I could harvest pictures and videos from cell phones in the DC arena being posted on social media. The challenge was putting it all together in a meaningful way. But even that wasn’t like learning to speak Cantonese in ten days.”

  Rawlins hit a button and looked up at the screen on the wall. The NSA director’s map showing the ballooning dark-web activity among the U.S., Russia, North Korea, and China vanished.

  In its place we saw a digital, somewhat disjointed, almost 3-D rendition of the inside of the DC arena and the crowd of excited youngsters as President Hobbs came down the rope line surrounded by Secret Service agents.

  Rawlins slowed it after Hobbs took a selfie with a young boy, then spun the view around so we were looking over shoulders and around heads at the president, who shook hands and talked with three tween girls.

  A grinning blond man, camera left, reached over the girls to shake President Hobbs’s hand. Hobbs smiled at the man, who wore a cleric’s collar and tinted glasses.

  President Hobbs released the blond man’s hand, moved toward the next person, and then suddenly fell backward into his bodyguard. The blond man’s smile turned puzzled and then alarmed before the screen froze.

  “I didn’t see a gun,” Chief Justice Watts said.

  “Swing us around,” I said. “Let’s see him from the front.” Rawlins gave his computer an order. The media swept back in time and went around again before zooming in on the blond man reaching for the president’s hand. We watched the same events unfold: the handshake, the release, President Hobbs stumbling.

  “I still don’t see it,” the chief justice said.

  “I think I did,” I said. “Take us in super-slo-mo. Watch his right hand, his loose shirt cuff, and the belly of his coat sleeve right after the president ends the handshake.”

  They all leaned forward as Rawlins rewound the footage and stayed on President Hobbs, still smiling as he released the blond man’s hand. When their fingers had drifted ten, maybe twelve inches apart, the minister arched his hand backward as if to wave. The belly of his sleeve billowed. The cuff distorted.

  A split second later, President Hobbs staggered back into his Secret Service agents. Rawlins froze the image.

  “No one heard a gunshot,” Director Sanford said.

  “Because there was no gun,” I said. “No conventional one, at least. Can we see him shoot the secretary of defense?”

  Rawlins said, “I didn’t look.”

  He stayed with the suspect as he moved with the crowd past the fallen president. Then the shooter shifted his hips toward the stage and raised his left hand towa
rd Harold Murphy.

  The footage got a little jerky, but you saw the blond man’s hand arching again, and the secretary of defense going down.

  “What’s he doing with his hand?” President Larkin said.

  “I think he’s triggering an air gun of some sort,” I said.

  Sanford looked up from his phone. “Which explains the pieces of bullet they took out of President Hobbs twenty minutes ago.”

  The FBI director forwarded an image to Rawlins, who put it on the screen: a photograph of dark gray pieces lying in a steel pan.

  “It will have to be analyzed, but I’ll bet that’s graphite or carbon,” I said. “His weapons were probably made out of polymers that are undetectable by current methods.”

  Rawlins typed again. The screen filled with a clear shot of the blond man in the tinted glasses.

  He said, “I’d get this picture in the hands of all law enforcement at that arena and everywhere else in the country.”

  “Wait,” I said, studying the picture. “He’s posing as a cleric, presumably. Who says he really has blond hair and wears glasses?”

  Rawlins smiled. “I’m barely a half a step ahead of you, Dr. Cross.”

  CHAPTER

  65

  BREE AND SAMPSON were still working outside the main entrance to the DC arena, interviewing kids, parents, and guardians, when Bree’s phone buzzed.

  After she had finished talking to a young girl from the Philippines, she got out her phone and found a text from Alex. He’d sent a link labeled Hobbs’s shooter.

  She clicked on it, saw the blond minister, and remembered Leonard, the guy found beaten in the basement. He’d said he was hit by a blond man.

  But how did that work? Did the blond have time to shoot Hobbs and the secretary of defense and then go down to club the maintenance man?

  Or were there two assassins, both dressed similarly? One in the basement cutting the lights, one upstairs trying to kill a president?

  Her phone buzzed; another link from Alex: Shooter in left profile.

  She clicked it, saw the same blond minister reaching out his right hand toward President Hobbs. The next link showed his right profile, but it was blurry. Bree tried to blow it up, but the resolution got too grainy.

  The fourth link showed him from behind, arm stretched out toward Hobbs.

  The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth images came in with a note that read Shooter with disguise digitally removed courtesy of K. K. Rawlins.

  She thumbed the first new image. The blond hair and glasses were gone, leaving the man bald and blurry about the eyes. The two profile pictures were of interest, but it wasn’t until she opened the eighth link that she really paused.

  With the blond hair gone, as she looked at the shooter from behind, she could see something odd about his right ear. She zoomed in on it and felt her stomach drop.

  It was a hearing aid. No doubt.

  Feeling confused, then certain, and then panicked, Bree yelled at Sampson, “We’re leaving, John!”

  Sampson apologized to the woman he was interviewing and ran after Bree as she barked into her radio. “This is Stone! An ambulance left the arena forty minutes ago. Where’d it go?”

  “GW,” the dispatcher said. “EMTs handed him off twenty-five minutes ago.”

  “Who’s the officer with him?”

  “Pettit. You want me to raise him?”

  Bree stopped at the car and tossed the keys to Sampson, weighing the pros and cons of alerting a young patrol officer that he might be sitting on a would-be presidential assassin. And what if the shooter was with Pettit and heard her warning?

  “Chief?” the dispatcher said.

  “No,” Bree said, climbing into the front seat. “Get me Pettit’s cell phone number.”

  Sampson threw a bubble on the roof and hit the siren. They roared off across town, running red lights in virtually zero traffic as they closed in on George Washington University Hospital in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of the District.

  “What’d he do?” Sampson said. “Beat the snot out of himself? Knock out his own teeth?”

  “It worked,” she said, furious. “His own mother wouldn’t have recognized him.”

  “And being deaf?”

  “No idea.”

  The dispatcher came back with Officer Pettit’s cell phone number.

  “Good,” Bree said. “How many patrol cars available to respond?”

  “Four. FBI’s using the rest to keep the city tied down.”

  Bree gave orders to move the four cruisers to the roads that formed the perimeter of the medical center, and then she called Pettit.

  It went immediately to voice mail. She tried again. Same thing.

  Bree still didn’t want to call the officer on the radio for fear he’d be in range of Leonard, or whoever the shooter really was. After trying a third time, she called Alex.

  “Hi,” he said, sounding out of breath. “Where are you?”

  “About to get on a military jet at Andrews.”

  “Going where?”

  “West Texas.”

  “Why? The president was shot here.”

  “We want to see every crime scene.”

  She heard the heavy whine of a jet engine on his end.

  “When are you coming back?”

  His voice was almost drowned by the noise. “I don’t know.”

  “I think we’ve got Hobbs’s shooter,” she said. “He’s at GW.”

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

  The engine roar got worse and the connection died just as Sampson pulled over at the entrance to the GW emergency room. It had started to rain again.

  “Chief,” Sampson said. “You need to tell the FBI he’s here.”

  Bree had intentionally delayed, but now she nodded and told dispatch to notify FBI command that she and Sampson were investigating a possible suspect at the hospital. She didn’t give any more than she had to, figuring if she and Sampson made the collar on Hobbs’s shooter, she’d never hear another discouraging word from Chief Michaels—or anyone else, for that matter.

  Inside, they showed their badges and IDs to the charge nurse and asked where Leonard was being treated. The nurse looked it up, said, “Multiple facial cuts and fractures. He was stitched, bandaged, and moved to radiology. He’s getting a CT.”

  She gave them directions to the CT scanner, which had been temporarily moved to a lower level in an older part of the complex while new facilities were being built.

  Bree and Sampson followed her directions, getting off an elevator just as a male doctor in scrubs, Crocs, a surgical cap, and a hooded rain jacket entered the elevator next to theirs. Bree caught a glimpse of an older man with gray, loose skin, wavy dark gray hair, and glasses.

  He wore headphones but was also talking on his cell phone. Bree heard him complaining about the number of autopsies he had to do before he could go home.

  “They’re stacked like cordwood in there,” the pathologist said as the elevator doors shut.

  Walking down a hallway with an industrial feel, Bree and Sampson passed pathology and the morgue. They pushed through double doors at the far end of the corridor and took a right into an empty passage with a small sign that read RADIOLOGY .

  Bree got her badge out and loosened her service weapon in its holster.

  Sampson opened the door.

  “No!” Bree said, staring in disbelief at Metro PD Officer Walter Pettit who was lying on the floor with a neck that looked broken and his service revolver missing.

  They tore out their pistols. In the room where the CT scanner was still running, they found two female techs in hospital scrubs sprawled on the floor, dead.

  Bree called dispatch for backup from the FBI and all available law enforcement.

  “Surround George Washington University Hospital,” she said. “The president’s shooter is in here somewhere.”

  CHAPTER

  66

  BREE LISTENED TO the radio chatter as FBI and Metro Pol
ice descended on the medical center.

  Sampson said, “They’re going to have to clear every room in this place and get all nonessential personnel out of here before they do it.”

  “We can get that started down here,” Bree said.

  She took a long look at Pettit before she followed Sampson, feeling her stomach churn at her role in the young officer’s death. There would be time for regret and guilt later, she told herself. Once the man who’d killed Pettit and shot the president was caught.

  With pistols still drawn, they exited the radiology suite and retraced their steps. They went into the pathology department and found no one at the front desk.

  They went around the desk and into a short hallway with autopsy rooms to either side. All were empty, and the stainless-steel equipment inside was spotless.

  They reached the door at the end of the hall and found it locked with an electronic key-card slot.

  “Probably goes to the morgue,” Sampson said.

  That made sense to Bree, and she led them in the opposite direction, past the autopsy rooms and into a separate hallway with office doors on both sides. The first three were empty.

  As they headed toward the fourth office, a woman in surgical scrubs crawled out of the door, bleeding from her ears and nose. Bree and Sampson ran to her and called for help from the ER.

  A name tag identified the woman as CHRISTINE WILLIS, MD, DEPARTMENT OF PATHOLOGY . She was rambling and in pain, but they figured out that while listening to music, she had been attacked by someone from behind and knocked out.

  She said she came around and saw her attacker, who had bandages all over his face, leaving her office with her key card.

  “He’s gotta be hiding in the morgue,” Sampson said. “Or was.”

  Dr. Willis told them where to find another pass key in a drawer at the front desk. On her radio, Bree heard that nurses and a doctor were arriving from the ER.

  Only then did she leave the pathologist and follow Sampson back to the morgue door. He slid the key card in the slot and heard it click.