Cross the Line: (Alex Cross 24) Read online

  “We just have to make the Zodiacs, Cass,” Whitaker said. “Even if they bring in a Coast Guard cutter, they can’t cover the whole mouth of that creek. We’ll sneak out running electric. We’ll disappear in the storm.”

  Cass stumbled and went to her knees. She coughed, and through the night-vision goggles, Whitaker saw black sprays of blood blow from her lips.

  “Jesus,” he said, starting to panic. “Jesus.”

  “Leave me, Colonel.” Cass gasped.

  “Can’t do that, Captain,” he said, trying to get her up.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll find me. They’ll make sure I live.”

  After a beat, Whitaker let her go. He took one long last look at Cass in the green hazy light of his goggles, pointed his rifle, and shot her through the head.

  CHAPTER

  102

  WE HEARD THE rifle shot loud and clear, so close it helped get us back on the track when we’d lost it. I cupped my hand over the Maglite to keep it from being seen and pushed on until I heard a sudden choked cry behind me.

  I twisted around and saw Sampson about six yards back, struggling, his right leg buried to the thigh in the muck.

  “I’m stuck,” he said, grimacing. “Shit. Some kind of root. Go!”

  “We’ll come back for him,” Lacey said, pushing by me.

  The rain began again, and the major and I forged on through the sea of reeds, seeing blood every six or seven yards until we came upon the woman we’d seen in the images from the Guryev massacre. Blond now. There was a bullet hole in her skull.

  “Whitaker can’t be far,” Lacey said and took off in front of me again.

  I wanted to tell him to slow down, not to let his headlamp dance so far ahead of him. But the major was a man on a mission, driven to stop that nerve agent from leaving his army base.

  After another hundred yards of slogging on, Lacey disappeared around a dogleg bend in the stomped-down trail through the marsh.

  I reached the turn and heard the major yell, “Put down your weapons, or I’ll shoot!”

  I ran forward in time to hear close gunfire and see Major Lacey knocked off his feet. He landed in the trail ahead of me and lay there, unmoving.

  I shut my light off and listened.

  “Got that bastard,” I heard one of them say.

  “Nicely done, Lester,” another said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Fender, I need that fifth canister,” Whitaker said.

  “When we’re at the rendezvous, Colonel,” Fender said.

  Keeping the light off, I groped my way forward as if reading Braille, feeling the walls of cattails to either side of me and almost tripping over the major’s body. A powerful outboard engine fired to life. Then another.

  “Use the electrics!” the colonel said.

  “Sorry, Colonel,” Hobbes said. “Fender and I are going for distance, not stealth. Come with us. Leave that raft for the others.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Whitaker said.

  The first raft roared off, and through the rain I could tell they were not far ahead of me. It sounded like Whitaker was stowing and strapping gear, and he was doing it with no discernible light source.

  Night-vision goggles, I thought, and in my stocking feet I carefully stepped free of the reeds and onto a sand bar with an inch of tidal water on it.

  The colonel grunted with effort. I heard the raft slide.

  He grunted again, and I heard the raft slide a second time, gritty, like coarse sandpaper on soft wood.

  Whitaker couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen yards from me, by the sound of it. So I eased into a crouch, raised my gun and flashlight, and whistled softly.

  Then I flipped on the Maglite, trying to shine it right in his goggles.

  CHAPTER

  103

  COLONEL WHITAKER CRIED out in surprise and pain. He threw up his arms to shield the goggles from magnifying my already powerful light.

  I charged into point-blank range then, still shining the beam on him as he cringed, tore off the goggles, and threw them down.

  “I can’t see,” he said, bent over and rubbing at his eyes. “Christ, I’m blind!”

  “Jeb Whitaker,” I said, taking another step closer. “Get on the ground, hands behind your head.”

  “I said I’m blind!”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “You are under arrest for murder, treason, and—”

  Whitaker uncoiled from his position so fast I never got off a shot. He spun spiral and low toward me and delivered the knife hard and underhand.

  I saw the Ka-Bar knife coming but couldn’t move quick enough to keep the blade from being buried deep in my right thigh. I howled in agony. My light and gun came off Whitaker long enough for him to continue his attack.

  Two strides and he was on me. He grabbed my right hand, my pistol hand, and twisted it so hard, the gun dropped from my fingers.

  The back-to-back shocks—being stabbed and then having my wrist nearly broken—were almost too much, and for a moment I thought I’d succumb. But before the Marine colonel could snatch my light from me, I swung the butt end of the flashlight hard at his head.

  I connected.

  Whitaker lurched and let go of my numb hand.

  I kept after him with my good left hand, raising the flashlight to chop at him. The colonel dodged the blow and punched me so hard in the face I saw stars. Whitaker grabbed me by the straps on my bulletproof vest and punched me again in the face.

  “You’re not stopping me, Cross,” he said, punching me a third and fourth time, breaking my nose. “Nothing’s stopping me from fumigating the bugs in DC that have destroyed this great country.”

  My legs buckled. I sagged and began to swoon, heading toward darkness.

  Fight, a voice deep down inside me yelled. Fight, Alex.

  But I was barely holding on to consciousness, and I went to my knees in the water.

  “You think you can stop a rebellion, Cross?” Whitaker demanded, gasping, after punching me a fifth time. “An uprising?”

  The cold water against my legs roused me enough to mumble, “Using nerve gas?”

  “It’s how you treat any cancer. Poison the body and cut out the tumors.”

  “You’re insane,” I said.

  He let go of my vest then and kneed me so hard in the face, I blacked out. I fell onto the flooded gravel bar, but even with the chill water against my skin, I lost time for a bit.

  Then I was aware of Whitaker stepping over me. He stood there, straddling my chest. In a daze, I saw his silhouette above me in the beam of the flashlight I had managed to hold on to. He had my pistol.

  “I’m tired of you, Cross,” the colonel said. “I’ve got to move on, stoke the next phase of the rebellion.”

  He swung my gun up toward me.

  I did the only thing I could think of.

  I dropped the flashlight, wrenched Whitaker’s knife from my thigh, turned it skyward, and swung it in an upward arc, driving the blade into the back of his left leg, high under his buttocks, and burying it to the hilt.

  I felt the tip strike bone and I twisted the knife.

  Whitaker screamed and fired my pistol, missing my head by an inch. He flailed, attempting to pull the blade free.

  I twisted the knife again. He dropped my gun and reached back, frantically trying to stop me.

  I twisted the knife a third time, then wrenched it out of him and lay there on the flooded gravel, panting.

  “Ha,” Whitaker said, stumbling back two feet, splashing to a stop. “See? I’m still standing, Cross. Artificial knee and I’m still standing.”

  “You’re a dead man standing, Colonel,” I said with a grunt, dropping the knife and fishing for the waterproof flashlight still shining in the water. “I just put your knife through your femoral artery.”

  By the time I got the flashlight beam back on him, Whitaker had gone from confident to confused. He was bent over slightly, his fingers probing the wound, no doubt f
eeling the blood that had to be gushing out of him. I thought the colonel would go for his belt to try to tourniquet his leg.

  Instead, Whitaker went berserk. He charged, kicking me twice before diving on top of me and grabbing my neck with both hands.

  As he throttled me, I tried to hit him with the flashlight again or trade it for the knife. But between my own loss of blood and the beating I’d taken, I couldn’t fight him. I just couldn’t.

  My chest heaved for air and got none. Whitaker had this wild gleam in his eyes as my vision narrowed to blotchy darkness.

  This is the end, I thought. The final …

  The grip the colonel had on my throat started to weaken. I got sips of air, and my sight returned.

  Whitaker was sitting on my chest, his head swaying to and fro right above mine.

  “No, Cross,” he said. “John Brown, he … Mercury, he never …”

  He panicked then, and tried to stand.

  But halfway to his feet, Whitaker lurched off me, staggered, and then crashed into three inches of cold water, dead.

  CHAPTER

  104

  TWO DAYS LATER, my face was still swollen and bruised. The knife wound had been sutured but it hurt like hell. Bree had won a commendation for solving the murder of the late Thomas McGrath. And Jannie’s orthopedist had called to say that her latest MRI showed the bone in her foot healing nicely.

  “We have lots to be thankful for,” I said as we sat down to dinner.

  “Says a man who looks like he went four rounds with Mike Tyson,” Nana Mama said, and Ali giggled.

  “A man who went four rounds with Mike Tyson and survived,” I said, smiling and wincing at my split lip. “Anyway, we’re all here. We’re all healthy. We’re all safe. And for that, I for one am grateful.”

  We held hands and said grace and then dove into a chicken Nana Mama had roasted with Dijon mustard, pearl onions, and lemongrass. It was delicious, another triumph, and we showered praise on her.

  My grandmother was pleased and in peak form as dinner went on, cracking jokes and telling stories I’d heard and loved long ago. As she did, my mind drifted to the aftermath of Colonel Whitaker’s raid on Edgewater 9. Five Regulators had died in the firefight trying to escape. Two had been taken into custody by army MPs and had lawyered up.

  Hobbes and Fender eluded the Coast Guard and escaped with a canister of VX, which had the country in a heightened state of alert. The men’s photographs were everywhere, and Ned Mahoney, who’d come through surgery with flying colors, was saying it was only a matter of time before they were located and captured.

  George Potter, the DEA SAC, was now believed to be the source of the Regulators’ intelligence regarding the criminal supercartel targeted in the massacres.

  The U.S. Naval Academy had taken two black eyes. Colonel Whitaker and U.S. Navy captain Cassandra “Cass” Pope were both graduates of Annapolis and on the faculty. Whitaker and Pope left vitriolic letters on their work computers declaring that slavers were destroying the country and that it was time for the slaves to arm themselves, rise up, and fight.

  I shuddered to think what might have happened to Washington and to my family if they had managed to release a gallon of VX in the nation’s capital. But the important thing was that the Regulators or the vigilantes or whatever you wanted to call them were no longer operating. The road-rage killer was gone too. And no one had died from—

  Someone started pounding on our front door.

  Then she started to yell.

  CHAPTER

  105

  “ALEX?” A WOMAN cried as she rang the doorbell. “Nana Mama? You in there?”

  I got up and almost went for my gun before looking through the window and seeing Chung Sun Chung. She was in her down coat, despite the heat, and she was ringing our bell and knocking like someone playing a one-note xylophone and a bongo drum.

  I limped down the hall and opened the door, expecting to find a traumatized woman or a woman in peril. Instead, Sun threw her head back and let loose with a real crazy cackle of a laugh.

  “Sun, what’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” She chortled and then came to me and started beating her little fists lightly against my chest. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  Sun stopped hitting me and cackled again. “Everything’s right. Where is your Nana Mama?”

  “I’m right here, Sun,” my grandmother said, appearing in the hallway with the rest of the family. “God’s sake, the way you’re carrying on, you’d think I’d—”

  There was a frozen moment when everyone was quiet. And then Sun howled, threw her arms over her head, and did a little jig.

  “You didn’t see the drawing?” the convenience-store owner cried, pushing by me. “You won! You won the Powerball!”

  My grandmother looked at Sun as if she had two heads. “I did not.”

  “You did so!” Sun said, dancing toward her. “I’ve been selling you the same numbers for nine years. Seven, twelve, nine, six, one, eleven, and three in the Powerball. I saw the draw!”

  Nana Mama scowled. “See there? You’re wrong, Sun. I always put a two in the Powerball, so I won something, but—”

  “No, Nana,” I said, dumbstruck. “I changed half your tickets, added one to your last Powerball number. I asked Sun to put a three there.”

  “Exactly!” Sun cried and started jigging again.

  “Oh my God!” Jannie yelled.

  My grandmother looked about ready to keel over. Bree saw it and came up to hold her steady.

  “Well, I never,” Nana said, looking at all of us in total wonder and then at Sun again. “You’re sure?”

  “I ran six blocks in a down coat in this heat,” Sun said. “I’m sure.”

  “How much did I win?”

  Sun told her. Jannie and Ali started whooping.

  Nana Mama stood there a long moment, shaking her head, mouth slack with disbelief, and then she threw her chin sky-ward and cackled with joy.

  “ALEX CROSS, I’m coming for you – even from the grave if I have to.”

  Read on for an extract

  A LATE WINTER storm bore down on Washington, DC, that March morning, and more folks than usual were waiting in the cafeteria of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School on Monroe Avenue in the northeast quadrant.

  “If you need a jolt before you eat, coffee’s in those urns over there,” I called to the cafeteria line.

  From behind a serving counter, my partner, John Sampson, said, “You want pancakes or eggs and sausage, you come see me first. Dry cereal, oatmeal, and toast at the end. Fruit, too.”

  It was early, a quarter to seven, and we’d already seen twenty-five people come through the kitchen, mostly moms and kids from the surrounding neighborhood. By my count, another forty were waiting in the hallway, with more coming in from outside where the first flakes were falling.

  It was all my ninety-something grandmother’s idea. She’d hit the DC Lottery Powerball the year before, and wanted to make sure the unfortunate received some of her good fortune. She’d partnered with the church to see the hot-breakfast program started.

  “Are there any doughnuts?” asked a little boy, who put me in mind of my younger son, Ali.

  He was holding on to his mother, a devastatingly thin woman with rheumy eyes and a habit of scratching at her neck.

  “No doughnuts today,” I said.

  “What am I gonna eat?” he complained.

  “Something that’s good for you for once,” his mom said. “Eggs, bacon, and toast. Not all that Cocoa Puffs sugar crap.”

  I nodded. Mom looked like she was high on something, but she did know her nutrition.

  “This sucks,” her son said. “I want a doughnut. I want two doughnuts!”

  “Go on, there,” his mom said, and pushed him toward Sampson.

  “Kind of overkill for a church cafeteria,” said the man who followed her. He was in his late twenties, and dressed in baggy jeans, Timberland boots, and a big gray snorkel jacket.

 
I realized he was talking to me and looked at him, puzzled.

  “Bulletproof vest?” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, and shrugged at the body armor beneath my shirt.

  Sampson and I are major case detectives with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. Immediately after our shift in the soup kitchen, we were joining a team taking down a drug gang operating in the streets around St. Anthony’s. Members of the gang had been known to take free breakfasts at the school from time to time, so we’d decided to armor up. Just in case.

  I wasn’t telling him that, though. I couldn’t identify him as a known gangster, but he looked the part.

  “I’m up for a PT test end of next week,” I said. “Got to get used to the weight since I’ll be running three miles with it on.”

  “That vest make you hotter or colder today?”

  “Warmer. Always.”

  “I need one of them,” he said, and shivered. “I’m from Miami, you know? I must have been crazy to want to come on up here.”

  “Why did you come up here?” I asked.

  “School. I’m a freshman at Howard.”

  “You’re not on the meal program?”

  “Barely making my tuition.”

  I saw him in a whole new light then, and was about to say so when gunshots rang out and people began to scream.

  DRAWING MY SERVICE pistol, I pushed against the fleeing crowd, hearing two more shots, and realizing they were coming from inside the kitchen behind Sampson. My partner had figured it out as well.

  Sampson spun away from the eggs and bacon, drew his gun as I vaulted over the counter. We split and went to either side of the pair of swinging industrial kitchen doors. There were small portholes in both.

  Ignoring the people still bolting from the cafeteria, I leaned forward and took a quick peek. Mixing bowls had spilled off the stainless-steel counters, throwing flour and eggs across the cement floor. Nothing moved, and I could detect no one inside.