Merry Christmas, Alex Cross Part 24

"I don't know," she said. "I didn't need to know. It's better that way."

"So the van driver meets the freight barge, and then what?" I asked.

She smiled. "He places the barrels in his van, triggers the system, puts on a gas mask, and drives around the city letting the gas escape, starting with Wall Street right after the markets close."

I flashed on the freight train that I'd seen after Hala was caught, coming from that tunnel and heading toward the Ivy City Yard, and remembered how it had made me think that some semblance of normalcy had returned to Union Station.

Actually, I'd been watching a chemical weapon pa.s.s right under everyone's nose.

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I CHECKED MY WATCH: 12:31 A.M. CHRISTMAS HAD COME AND GONE, AND SO had my promise to Bree, along with an innocence that I had not known I had left to lose. But of course, although I'd heard testimony about it, had gathered evidence in its wake, I had never personally seen children tortured before.

The freight train had gotten at least a three-hour head start. But it was traveling in the wake of a nor'easter barreling toward New York. We'd catch the train, stop it, and disarm that triggering device.

Mahoney seemed to think the same thing. He got up and left the room to arrange for the Critical Incident Response Group to mobilize while he made plans to intercept the train.

I studied Hala, who was staring at the table as if she couldn't believe she was in this position: a traitor to her cause.

I said, "Which freight car carries those organophosphates?"

Hala looked at me as if she had one last card to play. "Twenty-ninth behind the engine," she said. "It's green with CSX and C. Itoh markings. You can't miss it."

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FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, AT A QUARTER TO ONE IN THE MORNING, I STOOD IN the snow on the roof of the detention center with Ned Mahoney, waiting for a U.S. Marine helicopter that was coming in from Quantico loaded with members of the Critical Incident Response Group.

"We've got a location on the train," Mahoney said. "It's almost to Trenton. We'll stop it somewhere north of there, someplace rural."

"What if it's b.o.o.by-trapped?" I asked.

"Believe me, we'll be wearing full HAZMAT gear," Mahoney said. "Sounds sporty, doesn't it? I can't believe you don't want to be there to see this through."

I'd known Mahoney for nearly fifteen years, worked side by side with him for several of those years, had been to his home too many times to count, knew all the doings of his wife and children. And yet right then, he seemed a stranger to me.

"I didn't like what went on in that room, Ned," I said.

"You think I did, Alex?" he shot back.

"It's beneath us."

"It is," he agreed, pain rippling through his face. "Shows you that you've got to meet people like that on their own turf, using their rules. It's a sad thing to say, but true."

"They were kids."

"They were leverage against an insane scheme."

I heard the thumping of the helicopter coming, saw the spotlight on its belly. "What if her attorney finds out, Ned? Demands to see a tape of the interrogation. Everything Hala told us will be fruit of the poisoned tree, disallowed in court."

"Not everything has to play out in court," Mahoney replied coldly. "Besides, when I raised my hand there just before we began, the battery pack on the camera in the observation booth mysteriously fell off. Anything that went on beyond that is baseless hearsay on Dr. Al Dossari's part, her word against ours, and who is a judge going to trust, Alex? A twenty-year veteran of the FBI and the legendary Dr. Alex Cross, or a madwoman willing to send nerve gas into Manhattan?"

I gazed at him as if he were transforming before my eyes, seeing new dimensions to his character. "I never pegged you as a master strategist, Ned."

He raised his arm to block the snow being thrown up by the helicopter, yelled, "I have my moments. You can take my car home if you're good to drive."

"I'll make it," I said and accepted the keys as the chopper settled into the snow. "Ned?"

"What's that, Alex?"

"Be careful," I said. "You've got a lot of people to come back to."

Mahoney locked gazes with me, understanding. He shook my hand. "Thanks, Alex. It means a lot."

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I MADE IT HOME AT TWO IN THE MORNING ON THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. Everyone had gone to sleep, though the lights on the tree still glowed in the front window, a beacon left on for me, I guessed. Where had the holiday gone?

I kicked off my shoes, climbed the stairs, listened at the doors of my children and my grandmother, and felt drowsy at the rhythm of their breathing. Not even Nana's gentle snoring could keep me awake.

I slipped into my room, dropped my pants, and slid into bed, feeling the heat of Bree's body. Her smell was there too, all around me. She rolled over, laid her head on my chest, murmured, "You okay, baby?"

"I'm good now," I said, and closed my eyes, telling myself to compartmentalize, to take refuge in my own bed with my wife holding me, and rest.

But as I hugged Bree, my mind slipped back and forth between images of the Al Dossari children under torture and the details of the story Hala told us.

Just before I plunged into sleep, I remembered something I'd said to Mahoney the evening before: Confessions made under torture can't be taken seriously. They're half-truths mixed with what the tortured person thinks the torturer wants to hear. Confessions made under torture can't be taken seriously. They're half-truths mixed with what the tortured person thinks the torturer wants to hear.

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FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF, I SLEPT WITH NO DREAMS OF ANYTHING. BUT THEN, from the inky depths of my brain, images began to roll. I saw Hala lobbing the grenade at me. I saw Henry Fowler holding a gun to his ex-wife's head and kicking at his children, who became Hala's kids strapped to the torture chairs.

The Saudi secret policemen in their hoods were there as well, one carrying the battery, the other holding the ends of the jumper cables. The one with the battery pulled off his hood, revealing himself as Mahoney. The second hooded man tried to get away, but Mahoney grinned grimly and tore the hood off his head.

It was me. I was the one who held the jumper-cable clamps. Mahoney and I were laughing, enjoying ourselves the way we'd done dozens of times at backyard barbecues and other family get-togethers.

My dream self opened the red clamp's jaw wide, looked at the children, and seemed fascinated by the terror they displayed. I clamped the cable to Aamina's chair, expecting the arch and trembling I'd seen her exhibit during her torture before.

Instead, I heard a rhythmic buzzing noise that broke the spell and roused me from sleep. I was drenched with sweat. Bree rolled over and slept on. I looked at the clock groggily: 3:40 a.m. I needed at least ten, fourteen more hours, but my bladder felt full. And what was the noise that woke me?

I slid out of bed as carefully as I could, stood, felt wobbly, and then noticed the message light blinking on my mobile. I picked it up, staggered to the bathroom, and sat down on the toilet because I did not think standing was such a good idea. Before I could check the message, the phone began buzzing in my hand, the sound that had wrenched me from sleep.

It was Mahoney.

I accepted the call, peed, and grumbled, "You a vampire or something? Never need sleep."

"Yeah, I'm a new character in that Twilight series my kid's always reading," he replied, and I could hear wind blowing hard.

"Get the nerve gas?"

"We got in a firefight with one of Hala's coconspirators," Mahoney said. "He'd been holding engineers at gunpoint. Sniper got him, and we freed the rail workers. One had been mutilated, his eyeball boiled."

That got me more awake. "What? An engineer's eye?"

"In revenge, because the engineer had done the same thing to the dead guy's partner, with hot coffee. It's a long story for another time. But they, the engineers, said the partner left the train in the First Street tunnel and went back toward the entrance, where the third man in the rail crew, a Robby Simon, had disappeared."

"You find the organophosphates and the triggering device in car twenty-nine?"

"There were three blue barrels with Pinkler Industries labels in car twenty-nine," Mahoney replied. "But when we opened them, we found sand and gravel."

I remembered the enthusiasm Hala had shown when she'd described the plot.

"She fed us half-truths mixed with what we wanted to hear," I said, furious at myself for wanting to believe her confession so much that I'd set aside my suspicions.

"My instincts were right," Mahoney said. "She stopped the train so other Al Ayla members could steal the chemicals."

My hand shot to my temple. "And they're here. In DC."

"Last known whereabouts: two miles from Congress."

"Jesus Christ," I said.

"We're going back to Hala," Mahoney said.

I flashed with dread on the image of her kids being tortured.

"You're going, Ned," I said. "I'm done with that."

I ended the call and shut the ringer off. I intended to return to bed. But then I realized that I was no more than fifteen blocks from where Hala's accomplices had stolen the organophosphates.

So was my family.

My first reaction was to wake them all, move them from the area until the three barrels were found and neutralized.

But then old habits rea.s.serted themselves. Snow on the ground, Snow on the ground, I thought. They had to have left evidence around there somewhere. I thought. They had to have left evidence around there somewhere.

I picked up the phone and called the man I trusted more than anyone in my life.

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