The man tilted his head back and shot the mixture down like whiskey. Then his hands were on his wife’s, helping her to do the same.
The woman gagged, sobbing as she drank the milky liquid, but it went down. Enough of it, anyway. Right away, her lips went pink. Her breath started coming in sharp rasps. “I’m dying,” she whispered. “Why? Why must I die?”
The husband looked up at Hala with hatred in his eyes. “Assassin,” he said.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hala told him, and gestured at the empty glass in his hand. “You’re no murder victim, you fool. You’re a suicide statistic.”
Tariq took the two duffels and carried them to the door. Hala stayed where she was. There was pleasure in watching these people die, but it was also her job to see it through.
The wife was the first to spasm, violently, bucking and kicking until she collapsed to the floor. The husband, maybe twice her size, hung in longer. He watched Hala with huge bug eyes — as she calmly watched him. His sense of taste and smell would be gone by now, no doubt. The eyesight would fade next. Then the hearing, just at the very end —
“Hala!” Tariq raised his voice. “It’s done. Let’s go. Please, let’s go!”
She picked up the weapons case and slowly backed toward the door, observing all the way. With one last spasm, the fat man lurched forward. He landed facedown on the carpet and was still beside his wife.
“Now it’s done,” Hala said, and turned to leave. “I thought that went rather well. We’re getting better at this, don’t you think?”
I WOKE UP in a bad mood that morning. Grumpy, cranky, in need of caffeine. Unusual for me, but there it was.
Most days, Nana and I spend breakfast talking about the day ahead, or debating some foolishness from the headlines. But it was the headlines that were making me angry now.
I hid behind my Post and steamed, reading about how the “authorities” weren’t getting anywhere with the four-day-old Coyle kidnapping.
Somewhere around my second cup of coffee, I heard a little tap on the other side of the paper.
“You learning anything new in there?” Nana said. “Or just stewing?”
“I’m stewing. I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
“Talk about what?” said Jannie, coming in from the hall. I could hear her brother Ali bringing up the rear, thunk-thunking that backpack of his down the stairs. The kid had barely started elementary school. How much stuff did he need? Sounded like about fifty pounds of books.
“Ali, pick that thing up! Don’t scratch up my stairs!” I called out. “Please and thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he called back and kept thunk-thunking anyway.
My oldest, Damon, was away at boarding school — and I still hadn’t gotten used to having him gone. These mornings always felt just a little bit empty without all of our family.
“Talk about what?” Jannie asked again. She gave me a kiss good morning and pointed at a news photo of Ethan and Zoe. “That kidnapping?”
“Excuse me, but which part of ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ didn’t you understand?” I said. “And by the way, let’s make this a quick breakfast. The Alex bus leaves in fifteen minutes — sharp.”
Jannie made a face she probably thought I didn’t catch, then went to pour some juice for herself. I retreated back into my paper while Nana dished up cheddar eggs with whole wheat toast and cocoa for the kids.
For a minute or two, it was conspicuously quiet in the kitchen. I could feel them all staring at me through the paper, though.
Then Jannie piped up again. “Hey, Dad?”
“Yes?” I said, trying my best to be calm.
“The Seven Dwarfs called. They want their Grumpy back.”
What could I say? Ali roared with laughter and high-fived his sister across the table. I heard Nana snickering over by the sink. The FBI obviously had no respect for me, and now neither did my family. Damn it, though, I had a right to be out of sorts.
“Lord, let this man catch a bad guy today,” Nana said. “We could all use it.”
“No comment,” I said, and gave a little growl for good measure.
Then just as the mood was lightening up a little, Bree came charging down the stairs. Mussed hair, rumpled T, bare feet. Something was wrong.
“Alex! Turn on the news! Turn on the news right now!”
She never moves that fast before her first cup of coffee, so I knew this couldn’t be good. I hustled out to the living room, where she was standing in front of the TV. Channel 4 had a live report going.
“What is it?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Bree said. “Something bad happened at the McMillan Reservoir. There’s some kind of problem with the water supply.”
DISTRICT OFFICIALS CLOSED the DC schools. Bree stayed home with Ali and Jannie while I rushed to work. All the info I got from making a few phone calls on the way was that hospitals were overwhelmed with emergency admissions. Hundreds of people had been showing up with bouts of vomiting, blurred vision, trouble breathing, loss of consciousness, even a few heart attacks.
It wasn’t hard to go right to the worst-case scenario. Washington was under attack. But who was behind it?
Did it have anything to do with the Coyle kidnapping? Was that nightmare a real possibility?
It sure looked like it at MPD headquarters, the Daly Building. Police trucks and buses were double-parked out front, ready to go; cruisers were leaving the garage in a solid stream. I felt like I was going the wrong way down a one-way street.
Inside, officers and detectives were literally running up and down the halls. It was as close to an all-out mobilization as I’d ever seen.
I went straight to the Joint Operations Conference Center. More chaos on a very large scale. Phones ringing everywhere, briefings happening on a rolling basis. I found two guys from my squad, Jerry Winthrop and Aaron Goetz, standing off to the side, waiting for orders.
“Fatalities?” I said to Jerry. “You heard?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know, Alex. Everything’s nuts. As you can see. We’re waiting to hear where to go. Fucking water supply.”
At the front of the large room, Ramon Davies, the superintendent of detectives, was on his phone. Standing next to him were Jocelyn Kilbourn from MPD’s internal Homeland Security branch and Hector Nunez from Special Operations, plus a few other unfamiliar faces.
“Who are the suits up front?” I said.
“EPA on the left,” Jerry said. “Interior by the door. And don’t ask who’s in charge, because I don’t think anybody knows yet.”
As soon as Davies was off the phone, he waved his arms to get the room’s attention. “Listen up. We just got word from the Bryant Street Pumping Station over by McMillan Reservoir. They’ve found signs of tampering on one of their lines. Whatever happened over there, it was no accident!”
“What kind of tampering?” someone called out. It was the question I had.
Davies took a breath, then answered. “This does not leave this room. Handmade dispersal devices, presumably to leech whatever poison this was into the system. It seems to be contained in the second high-water district. That’s between Eastern Avenue and Rock Creek. The other districts are clear so far. We’ve got emergency testing going everywhere. Expanded security at all processing facilities.”
Davies handed it over to Assistant Chief Kilbourn. She pulled up a quick PowerPoint and ran everybody through a list of contingencies. Some were immediate and practical. Others were theoretical — from citywide water shutdowns to looting and riot control, even municipal evacuation plans and declarations of martial law. This sure looked like the “big one” that everybody was always worried about.
“No one’s saying any of these emergency protocols are going to become necessary,” Kilbourn told us. “We don’t even know if this is terror-related. But it’s essential that everyone knows what to do if, or when, things go south.”
In other words, we were on the verge of unchart
ed territory. On paper, we were ready for anything. All kinds of emergency preparedness systems had been put into place in the years since 9/11, with every work group, simulation, and special training the department could throw at it. But the thing no one ever wanted to talk about was that there were some emergency situations you couldn’t possibly prepare for.
Because you just couldn’t imagine them happening.
I LEFT THE room feeling like I was still basically unassigned – and also at a real crossroads on the Coyle case. I needed to know if I could accomplish something — and also, whether the kidnapping of the president’s kids could possibly be connected to the water supply emergency. The possibility had been raised by the FBI and the CIA. It was one of the first things I’d thought of when I heard about the reservoir problem.
I walked out to a stairwell for some quiet. Then I dialed Ned Mahoney’s number. When he didn’t pick up, I kept going down to the parking garage.
I got in my car and drove to Ned’s little Cape house in Falls Church, Virginia. If he was going to play hard to get, I was going to have to become more irresistible.
I’d been out to Ned’s for the occasional barbeque, but when Amy Mahoney saw me standing on her front porch, her eyes opened wide.
“Alex? What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said right away, which wasn’t exactly the truth. “I’m just trying to track Ned down. I need to talk with him, Amy.”
She looked relieved. Ned heads up the Hostage Rescue Team out of Quantico, and it’s not just him who lives with the stress of that job.
“Come on in,” Amy said. She pecked me on the cheek as I stepped past the screen door. “I’ll call him right now.”
I stood in their foyer, feeling a little awkward, a little embarrassed. This wasn’t exactly an aboveboard maneuver, but it had to be done. A minute later, Amy had Ned on the phone.
“Hey, hon, it’s me. I’ve got Alex Cross here. He’s looking for you. You have a second?”
I’m not sure what Ned said next, but I could hear the tone of it. It was Amy who looked embarrassed now. I held out my hand for the phone, and Ned was still railing when I took it.
“— kicking my ass, and I don’t need to tell you —”
“Ned,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Alex?”
“Sorry about this.”
“Jesus, you’re killing me here.”
“Then it’s mutual,” I said. “Just tell me I’m in the dark on the Coyle case for a good reason. I’ll trust your word. But I’m lost here, and there are plenty of other places I could be today.”
“Yeah, like someone else’s house,” he said.
“Ned, Washington is in the middle of an emergency. My kids are home from school. It’s scary as hell. They got to the water supply. Maybe to the president’s kids.”
At first he didn’t answer. Then it was just “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Not exactly what I was looking for,” I said. “I need you to tell me something, Ned.”
“Alex, what do you want me to say? They’re compartmentalizing the shit out of this thing,” he said. “I doubt I’ve got much more intel than you do at this point.”
Ned and I have known each other a long time. We’ve been through some impossible situations, and done some off-the-record favors for each other, too. So it was strange, and kind of hurtful, trying to gain his trust now. I told him as much.
There was a pause. I heard Ned take a deep breath on the other end. This whole thing was making me feel bad. Talking to him this way. Coming out to his house. Using Amy.
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” he said. “I have a conference call waiting.”
“Ned!”
“Just hang in there.”
“Don’t hang up!” I said, but he already had. If it had been my own phone in my hand, it probably would have gone sailing.
When I turned around, Amy was staring, looking like she might start to cry. “You looked like you wanted to reach right through the phone and strangle him,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Don’t mind me. I just …” Why was I ready to punch a hole in my friend’s wall? What was it that I wanted to do here?
“I just want those kids to be found,” I said. “That’s all I care about, Amy.”
HE WAS DEFINITELY going to write a big, fat book on this someday, when it was all far, far behind him. And not the way everyone and his brother-in-law says they’re going to write a book “someday.” He was really going to do it.
Record.
“It wasn’t that Zoe and Ethan did anything wrong, themselves. They just happened to be born into the wrong family, at the wrong time. None of this was their fault, any more than it’s your fault, or mine. Maybe it goes without saying, but someone has to play the sacrificial lamb. History tells us that much. Every tragedy has repercussions.”
Stop.
That actually sounded half-decent to him. Important. Had a ring of truth. He was getting the hang of this now. Maybe there was even a title in there. Sacrificial Lambs? Possibly, although he still kind of liked Suffer the Little Children, as in, “those who come unto me.”
But that wasn’t a decision he had to make today. The book wasn’t even written yet. Hell, the story wasn’t even told yet, wasn’t finished. There was still plenty of time for the peripheral details to work themselves out. So far, he had the beginning — and he had the end.
Record.
“The juice boxes come in a three-pack for a dollar ninety-nine at the Safeway, two blocks from my house. The Rohypnol’s a little harder to come by, of course, but not impossible if you know where to look. Two milligrams every twelve hours seems to do the trick beautifully. They’re so out of it, I’m not even sure they know what’s going on.”
Stop.
Maybe nobody would care about the Safeway part, but whatever. Tape was cheap as dirt. He’d just keep throwing everything down and sift through it later. The blank cassettes could live in the glove compartment of his vehicle. The used ones, he kept where no one would ever find them. Just like Ethan and Zoe.
Meanwhile, the light was getting long outside. He needed to start moving — if he wanted to be back to the car by dark, which he definitely did.
From the seat next to him, he pocketed two of the juice boxes, the ones with Scotch tape covering the tiny hole the syringe had left. The third box he’d drink on the way. It was an hour through the woods, and an hour back to his house, if he kept up a good strong pace, which he would. He was in excellent physical shape.
He got out and took the recurve bow from the trunk, along with a leather quiver of arrows. Deer season was still six weeks off, but rabbits and squirrels were always fair game. More than that, the hunting thing was a good excuse for being all the way out here in the first place. Not that anyone came around these woods much, but it didn’t cost anything extra to be careful.
Record.
“That’s another thing. The FBI hasn’t said word one about my little note. So just in case it’s not already clear, none of this has ever been about money. Not taking the kids, and not the book, either. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be able to collect royalties when this thing is done. I’ll just have to buy it at the Barnes and Noble or Walmart like everybody else.”
Stop.
Record.
“It’s going to be one hell of a story. It really is. Just you wait and see.”
Stop.
Book Two
ALPHABET SOUP
“AT FIVE HUNDRED and fifty-five feet, the Washington monument towers majestically over the National Mall. Completed in December of 1884, it was formally dedicated on …”
Hala tried to tune out the tremendously irritating, prerecorded propaganda and other drivel as their tour bus rolled down Independence Avenue. It sounded like the tires of the bus were sticking to the littered street. Everything seemed dirty. What a disgusting city! And yet everywhere you looked, there was another hulking monument to American arrogance and
power.
It was ironic, really. She hadn’t learned to truly hate this country until she’d come here for her education. Four years at Penn, and what had it taught her? Only that the United States was just about the biggest failed experiment in human history.
“As we cross the bridge toward Arlington, you can look back and see the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial …”
She looked down instead at the Tourmobile brochure on her lap. It had been slipped under their hotel room door with a few instructions. When the tour bus reached Arlington National Cemetery, they were to get off. And guess what? Here they were.
Tariq stood in the aisle, shifting from foot to foot. He looked odd, but oddly handsome this morning, with a Baltimore Ravens cap shading his freshly clean-shaven face. Hala’s own hair was now in a blunt cut around the nape of her neck and dyed as close to auburn as she’d been able to get it. She was still pretty, though, and she did like that about herself. Absolutely no ball cap for her.
“Please watch your step, and enjoy your visit to Arlington National Cemetery!”
They milled off the bus with the other tourists, onto a plaza in front of the white stucco and limestone Visitors Center. Hala looked around, unsure about what to expect next. Almost right away, a familiar face emerged from out of the crowd. It was the hippie girl from the museum. She was carrying the same brightly colored woven bag. Probably so that Hala would recognize her right away.
There was no dance this time, no slow approach. As soon as they’d seen each other, the girl came over and stood next to them, as if they were all waiting for the same bus.
“Hey, could I borrow your map for a sec?” she asked.
“Of course. No bother.”
This girl was good, actually. Very natural and fearless. Hala watched closely and still barely saw the disk as it came out of her bag.
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