Merry Christmas, Alex Cross Part 25

OMAR NAZAD SAT IN THE CAB OF THE VAN, FEELING HIS STINGING HANDS AND feet begin to thaw, and stared through the windshield at the one hundred and twenty cubic yards of snow and ice that still lay between him and M Street.

He and the Algerians had broken up and removed at least that amount in the past three hours. They were still only halfway to the road. They hadn't eaten in twelve hours. And they hadn't had anything to drink for six. The snow they put in their mouths seemed to make them even thirstier.

"Inshallah," the Tunisian kept muttering to himself. The will of Allah. It is G.o.d's will that we must suffer and sacrifice and suffer again in order to defeat His enemies. This is a gift, somehow. A blessing. The will of Allah. It is G.o.d's will that we must suffer and sacrifice and suffer again in order to defeat His enemies. This is a gift, somehow. A blessing.

"We should leave, brother," Mustapha said from the pa.s.senger seat.

"I agree," Saamad said. "Leave while we still can."

Nazad looked at them like they were mad. "Leave the best weapon the Family's ever had? No. That is not what G.o.d wants."

"But what if Allah wants us to get caught and sent to prison?" Saamad demanded.

"Shut up," Nazad said. He was sick of the Algerians, how quick they were to cut and run. It had to be the French influence.

"I have to eat something, drink something," Mustapha complained.

"I can't help you."

"Maybe there was food in that shed," Saamad said. "Water too."

Nazad looked at him again. "You didn't search the entire place?"

Mustapha shrugged. "The shovels and picks were right by the door."

Moments later they were all following the path the Algerians had taken to the toolshed earlier. The door hung open on its hinges, flapped in the wind. They went inside, flashed their lights, and saw a portable generator, half a dozen power tools, a jackhammer, three sledgehammers, more picks, a row of hard hats, a surveyor's transom, and a cooler. Mustapha and Saamad went straight to the cooler, yanked it open, and cried out in delight.

Saamad grabbed a granola bar and a frozen bottle of Gatorade, shook them at Nazad. "Allah be praised! Food and drink, brother."

"And a jackhammer!" Mustapha cried.

But the Tunisian paid them no mind. He was staring at a metal box attached to the wall and sealed with a Master Lock. On instinct, he retrieved one of the sledgehammers and tried to break the lock, but he couldn't. He looked closely at the other tools now at his disposal and smiled.

Nazad started the generator. Then he plugged in a Benner-Nawman rebar cutter. He fit the hasp of the lock into the jaws of the cutter and flipped it on. The jaws bit and snapped it in less than a second.

The Algerians had been gnawing on frozen granola bars while he worked. Only when Nazad set the cutter down and pulled open the door to the box did Mustapha become interested.

"What do you find in there, brother?" he asked.

The Tunisian was beaming already, feeling blessed once again by G.o.d. The first thing his headlamp had revealed in the box was a row of keys hanging on hooks, all neat and orderly and tagged.

The first key on the right said CAT D6K CAT D6K.

CHAPTER

103

"YOU WOKE ME OUT OF A PERFECTLY GOOD SLEEP TO RIDE IN A SARDINE CAN?" John Sampson groaned, trying to get his ma.s.sive frame into Mahoney's Subaru at around four in the morning. He wore a snorkel jacket, hood up, and peered at me blearily from inside the fur trim. He took the travel cup of coffee I offered him.

"Need help checking out a potential crime scene before I call in an evidence team," I said, putting the Forester in gear. All-wheel drive and weighed down with Sampson's and my combined four hundred and thirty pounds, the car moved like a mini tank into the tracks other cars had made going up and down Sampson's street.

"Potential crime scene?" Sampson asked, annoyed.

"I don't know exactly where the crime scene is, John," I explained. "That's why I need you. To help find it."

He groaned, drank the coffee. "Why do I feel like I'm two hundred moves behind you, Alex?"

"Because in this case you are," I said, and I filled him in, finishing with the information that members of Al Ayla had likely pulled nerve-gas components off a freight train stopped near the entrance to the tunnel system.

"I know where that is." Sampson grunted. "Remember running out of there when we were kids?"

"Probably the only time I've ever beaten you in a race," I said.

"Found a body in the right-of-way there six or seven years ago."

I'd forgotten, but now I nodded and said, "Emily Rodriguez."

"Poor little thing," Sampson said. "What was she, seven? Son of a b.i.t.c.h tortured her something awful before he killed her."

I flashed on Hala's daughter, also seven, arching against the electric current, and said, "But what do you think? Freeway side of the tracks, or M Street?"

"Freeway," Sampson said. "M Street, you're gonna need boots. It's a good walk to the tracks and they've got construction going there on that off-ramp they've been building forever."

"But the freeway side is super-steep going down to the tracks," I reminded him. "Fifty-five-gallon drum weighs a lot, and being up on the freeway is just too visible, even in a blizzard. I'm thinking they went in on the M Street side, big walk or not."

"h.e.l.l, what do I know?" Sampson said. "I'm just along for the ride."

The s...o...b..nks along Eleventh Street were as high as I'd ever seen them, like in pictures of Anchorage or Nome. Sampson and I had to strain to spot the security fence where Eleventh Street crossed over the tunnel's mouth.

I parked right in the middle of the street above the tunnel, threw on the hazard lights, told Sampson to move the car if someone came along. Before he could grumble about that, I got out, went to the s...o...b..nk, and crawled up it to the fence.

I got out my Maglite, shone it down through the chain links, and immediately saw footprints on both sides of the track where it entered the tunnel. Farther back on the bank facing M Street, the snow had been pounded down, leaving a path five or six feet wide.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up my cell phone, called Metro dispatch, and requested an evidence wagon and full team to join me at the corner of Eleventh and M Streets. Lucy, the dispatcher, a friend of mine, said it might be an hour before they could get the team there, what with all the snow.

"John Sampson and I will secure the scene and wait for them," I said. "Thanks, Lucy."

Snapping shut my mobile, I sat down on the s...o...b..nk and edged out, then started sliding. I hit the pavement, landed upright, and was walking back to the idling Subaru, cleaning the snow off the seat of my pants, when I heard a heavy engine backfire and then rumble to life southeast of me, toward M Street.

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104

PRAISE ALLAH!

When the bulldozer had fired up after he'd found a can of ether under the seat and sprayed it into the fuel tank, Omar Nazad wanted to weep. Instead, he thanked G.o.d over and over for blessing him, eased off on the choke until the engine ran smooth, and studied the diagram of the control levers until he thought he understood them.

The Tunisian looked overhead, saw a toggle switch, and flipped it. Small spotlights on top of the bulldozer cab lit up the area directly in front of him. He pulled a lever back, and the blade came under his control, groaned, and rose. The Algerians, who'd been standing off to the side, began to cheer and shake their fists.

Feeling possessed now, Nazad studied the diagram once more and threw a second lever forward. He felt something engage. He pressed the throttle. The bulldozer bucked, broke free of the ice holding its treads, and began to grind forward through the snow, past the van and toward the hundred and twenty cubic yards of frozenness that separated them from M Street and escape.

"Saamad, get in the van!" Nazad shouted. "Mustapha, get up on the bank where you can see the road, make sure I'm aiming in the right direction."

Saamad nodded and ran to the van. Mustapha seemed annoyed at the request Nazad had made of him, but he trotted along in front of the bulldozer blade, toward the wall of snow and the road.

Nazad slowed just shy of the huge s...o...b..nk, dropped the blade, and set the transmission in a lower gear. He watched Mustapha climb the s...o...b..nk. Then he saw headlights swing off Eleventh Street into the eastbound lanes of M Street.

Until that moment, the Tunisian had been nearly pathological about avoiding attention. He'd kept the van well back from the road, and as they'd dug through the night, every time a vehicle had approached, he'd ordered his men to dive down onto their bellies and wait until the headlights pa.s.sed.

Now he did not care, especially when the Algerian informed him that the approaching car was a little white Subaru Forester, a commuter vehicle, certainly no police squad car. Nazad pressed down the throttle again after the Forester went by, focused on the blade as it struck the s...o...b..nk. It bit and pushed, and then the entire front end of the bulldozer began to climb, pushing snow ahead of it.

Here we go, the Tunisian thought. the Tunisian thought. There is nothing that can stop us now. There is nothing that can stop us now.

CHAPTER

105

"WHAT THE h.e.l.l IS THAT DOING HERE?" I SHOUTED AT SAMPSON, LOOKING over my shoulder as I tried to get a better view of the bulldozer that had surged up on top of the s...o...b..nk and was pushing snow out onto M Street.

As the bulldozer backed down the other side of the s...o...b..nk, Sampson said, "Construction company that's building the off-ramp probably sent him out to clear the site before the rest of the crew arrives."

"At four fifteen in the morning on the day after Christmas?"

"Didn't you read that piece in the Post Post last week? They're getting all sorts of heat on this thing. People say that ramp is way over budget and should have been done two years ago." last week? They're getting all sorts of heat on this thing. People say that ramp is way over budget and should have been done two years ago."

"Well, we've got to get him to stop," I said, driving into the traffic rotary by the Washington Yacht Club and heading back.

I pulled over and parked well away from the bulldozer, hazard lights blinking. Sampson and I got out just as the bulldozer crested the bank a second time, pushing more snow out across M Street and completely blocking the westbound lanes. Then it backed down until we could barely see the top of it.

The bulldozer's spotlight beams lit up a guy standing on top of the s...o...b..nk who was dressed in a blue work jumpsuit of some kind. He seemed to be directing the machine operator and did not notice us coming down the street toward him. We plodded up to him through the rubble field the bulldozer was creating, punching through snow up to our shins.

I waved my hands at him, shouted, "Hey! Tell the driver to stop!"

The man stiffened, took a few steps toward us, put his hand to his ear. "What?"

"Shut off that bulldozer!" Sampson yelled, and he shone a flashlight on the badge he was holding. "Metro DC Police!"

The bulldozer surged up again. The man froze, and then nodded. He ran toward the cab. I couldn't make out any details of the driver.

"Police!" the man yelled. "They said stop!"

The machine ground to a halt atop the s...o...b..nk. The engine dropped into an idle.

"What is the matter?" the man on the s...o...b..nk called.

"Sir, could you come down here?" I called back. "We believe this is a crime scene. Who told you to clear the construction site?"

The man hesitated, tapped his ear as if to indicate he could not hear me with the dozer so close, and then crouched as if he were going to b.u.t.t-slide down the s...o...b..nk to me. I heard the whine of hydraulic lines engaging and glanced up and over at the bulldozer blade starting to rise.

"CSX?" Sampson said.

Sampson trained his Maglite on the chest of the guy sitting on top of the s...o...b..nk. The patch on the jacket said CSX. Why would train workers be clearing out a federal construction site at four fifteen in the morning?

I started reaching casually for my service pistol, wishing that I was not standing in deep snow, and readjusted the beam of my own flashlight until it shone up and through the windshield of the bulldozer. Just before the blade got high enough to block my view, I saw a man wearing a blue CSX coat. His right eye was covered in bandages.

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106