Merry Christmas, Alex Cross Part 26

"GUN!" SAMPSON ROARED. HE LEAPED TO HIS RIGHT AND GOT DOWN INTO A combat shooting crouch, clawing for his weapon.

My Glock came free of its holster and I saw the man lying p.r.o.ne on the s...o...b..nk just before he shot. The round hit low in front of me and sprayed chips of ice everywhere.

Up to our knees in that chunky snow, vulnerable due to the high ground, Sampson and I were the proverbial fish in the barrel. But Sampson didn't seem to feel that way. He squeezed off two shots at the gunman on the s...o...b..nk just as the bulldozer engine roared. Both rounds. .h.i.t left of the p.r.o.ne man, and he immediately returned fire. I was aiming the Glock when I heard the crack of his bullet pa.s.sing an inch from my head. My shot hit beneath him.

The bulldozer clanked into gear and came straight down the s...o...b..nk at us, blade up, blocking any shot at the windshield.

Both Sampson and I are tall. I'm six two. He's got three inches on me. Which means we have long legs, which we used to run in opposite directions. Sampson went straight at the one shooting at us, firing nonstop, driving back the man on the s...o...b..nk.

I tripped and sprawled in the last deep snow before the plowed road. My shoulder smashed hard against an ice boulder, and I felt bones break and things tear apart.

The pain of the impact and the shock that blew through my system were indescribable. Eyes closed, gritting my teeth, I moaned and felt my pistol fall from a hand that no longer worked.

"Alex!" Sampson yelled above the roar of the bulldozer.

I forced open my eyes, peered through the spots that danced there. Sampson was sixty feet from me, less than ten feet from the bulldozer blade, scrambling toward the plowed road to Eleventh Street.

He slipped, stumbled. The blade closed the gap.

"John!" I croaked, trying to get to my feet, realizing that my entire right arm was useless and dangling at my side.

My oldest friend had been a great athlete in his day, a man with deceptively fluid moves and an uncanny sense of balance. But Sampson was DC through and through, not used to running in snow. When the blade was less than three feet from him, he stumbled again, and I thought he was about to take the hit of his life right there on M Street.

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107

THE GUY UP ON THE s...o...b..NK SHOT AT SAMPSON WHEN LESS THAN A FOOT separated Sampson from the bulldozer blade. The bullet hit the upper back part of the blade, ricocheted, and shattered the bulldozer's windshield.

The machine lurched hard left, as if the driver had ducked and pulled the steering wheel. Now the blade was coming right at me from about fifty feet away. I got to one knee and then up to my feet, gasping at the pain shooting everywhere around my right shoulder.

Gun.

The b.u.t.t of my Glock was right there in the snow, the barrel buried all the way to the trigger. I grabbed at it with my left hand and pulled it from the snow as the bulldozer closed on me. I heard someone shoot, and someone scream.

I stood unsteadily, my right arm swinging stupidly at my side. But my survival voices were taking over: Wait until he's right there, and then jump to the side, just off the blade. Clear the steel treads, and you'll have your shot at him. Left-handed, but you should be close enough. Wait until he's right there, and then jump to the side, just off the blade. Clear the steel treads, and you'll have your shot at him. Left-handed, but you should be close enough.

But then a louder voice screamed, Snow! You've got snow in your barrel. Pull the trigger, and your barrel explodes! Snow! You've got snow in your barrel. Pull the trigger, and your barrel explodes!

The bulldozer was right on me then, no more than ten feet away, and I was sure my entire body was about to feel like my right shoulder. But then it dawned on me that the driver could no longer see me, that the blade was blocking him, that he was driving blind.

I jumped. The upper corner of the blade just missed my head. I landed, jumped again, pivoted, hoping to aim the gun at the driver and tell him I'd shoot if- Sampson's gun went off behind me. I heard the bullet ping inside the cab. The driver did what I absolutely did not expect. He jumped out of the cab, landing awkwardly in the snow about three feet away, while the bulldozer kept on, climbing the s...o...b..nk on the median strip, headed toward an office building across the street.

I raised my gun at the one-eyed man even as he raised his gun at me.

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108

OUR WEAPONS WERE LESS THAN TWO INCHES APART. THE ONE-EYED TERRORIST and I were in a Mexican standoff that looked like a no-winner for me any way it went down. If he pulled the trigger, I was dead. If I pulled the trigger, my barrel would explode and I was dead. Maybe he was dead too, but I was definitely in a black body bag with a grieving wife and family.

The man's uncovered eye was wide and glistening. "Inshallah!" he whispered to me.

I got it. We were both in the hands of G.o.d now, about to discover His will.

The sound of the bulldozer crashing into something was followed by a gunshot that came from behind and above me. Both the driver and I instinctively cringed and ducked, but I recovered much quicker.

My arms were longer than his. I probably had three, four inches of reach on him. My right arm was useless, but my left had been bent as I aimed my plugged gun at him, not extended at all.

My left hand jabbed at him, setting him up for a straight impossible-to-deliver right cross. Instead, I slapped the side of his pistol hard to his left with the barrel of my gun and then stepped into his very, very large blind spot.

The terrorist shot wildly. Sampson fired at virtually the same time, and I heard the sound of a hit and the cry of a wounded man somewhere up on the s...o...b..nk before I chopped down with my pistol, hitting the man right in the bandages, right on the bone above the socket of his scalded eye.

His knees left him, and so did everything else. He crashed onto his side, out cold.

CHAPTER

109

A WEEK LATER, IT WAS RAINING AND WARM; THE DEEP FREEZE THAT HAD gripped the city so severely was gone, and the snow had turned into slush and puddles. But that would not stop me from taking my wife out for dinner and dancing on New Year's Eve. We were going to double-date with John Sampson and his wife, Billie. We'd done it up right, rented a car and driver to chauffeur us to our dinner at the rooftop-terrace restaurant of the W Hotel-best view in the city-and then across the river to the Havana Breeze Latin Club in Fairfax for a little salsa, a little merengue.

Why not? We were all in a mood to celebrate, and a jazz club just wasn't going to do it. After all, we'd not only put Hala Al Dossari and her coconspirators in prison, we'd also foiled their ultimate plot, which was a doozy.

Doc.u.ments that we'd discovered in the terrorists' van laid out the plan: The stolen chemicals were to be held for twenty-six days in a bas.e.m.e.nt apartment Nazad had rented on Capitol Hill. Early on the morning of January 20, Nazad, a trained chemist, would mix the organophosphates in a rented five-hundred-gallon water tank. Then he and his accomplices would put the tank full of the crude nerve-gas agent in the back of a pickup truck and skirt the closed roads in the city until they got upwind of the Capitol.

Then they would all don masks, do the final mix, and spray the chemicals up into the prevailing winds, in the hope that the toxic vapor cloud would drift over the ma.s.sive crowds gathered on the National Mall and across to the back steps of the Capitol, where the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would be swearing in the president of the United States.

It was so crazy, it might have worked. Hundreds, maybe thousands might have died. The president might have died, and the justices, and every member of Congress. It was so crazy, I didn't want to think about it anymore, I decided at around six that New Year's Eve as I waited in the kitchen for Bree to finish with her hair and finally choose the dress she was going to wear for our big night out on the town.

My younger son, Ali, and Jannie and Ava were devouring a plate of fried rabbit, one of my grandmother's specialties. Ava had balked at the idea at first, but once she saw Jannie and Ali tearing into it, she'd tried it, and now she was on her second piece.

"Good, huh?" I asked.

"Better than good," Ava said. "I had no idea rabbit could taste this amazing. Like chicken, but way, way better."

"It's the b.u.t.termilk," Nana Mama said, looking pleased as she scrubbed out the cast-iron skillet she'd used to fry the rabbit. "I soak the meat in b.u.t.termilk overnight to make it tender like that."

"Damon's gonna be mad when he hears you made fried rabbit after after he went back to school," Jannie remarked. he went back to school," Jannie remarked.

"Damon could have stayed home until tomorrow," my grandmother responded. "He chose to go back early."

"To get ahead on his studies," I reminded her.

"Can't fault him for that," Nana Mama allowed. "But even the best choices sometimes have adverse consequences."

"Like missing fried rabbit," Ali said.

Nana smiled and pointed at her great-grandson. "See there? Always said you were a smart, smart boy."

Ali grinned from ear to ear and reached for the last piece of rabbit, but Ava got to it first. He groaned.

"I'll split it with you," Ava said.

My grandmother squinted in my direction. "How you doing?"

"Twenty-four hours since my last pain pill and it doesn't bark at me unless I move it," I said, glancing down at my right arm, which was in a sling.

I'd broken my clavicle, dislocated my shoulder, and cracked the head of my humerus bone falling as I tried to get out of the way of the bulldozer. A surgeon had put me back together four days ago. In three months, he'd said, I'd be good as new.

Bree came into the kitchen wearing a very flattering black c.o.c.ktail dress and a pair of black stiletto heels.

Nana Mama whistled at her. So did I.

"You really going to go out with Alex looking like that?" my grandmother asked in a playful tone.

Bree's face fell. "What's wrong with it?"

"There's nothing wrong with that outfit," Nana Mama replied. "Everything's right with that outfit. But look at the man who's going with you to ring in the New Year. Arm in a sling, looking all beat-up. People'll think you got to be his nurse. That's not the kind of man you want holding your hand when you're dressed like you're in a movie or something."

Everyone was laughing, including me.

Bree threw her arms around my neck, kissed me on the cheek, and said, "Honey, from where I'm standing, you're looking fine."

"Even with a busted shoulder?" I said.

"You wear it well," she a.s.sured me, and she kissed me again before looking at my grandmother. "Am I right?"

Nana Mama tried to look skeptical, but then she cracked up.

The doorbell rang. The driver had come for us. Nana Mama and the kids watched us through the front window as we were driven away. Dinner was off-the-charts great. So was the Chilean wine Sampson ordered.

We got to the Havana Breeze around ten thirty, took a booth, and ordered mojitos. Billie told Sampson she wanted to dance right away.

"Who can argue with that?" he replied.

They went out on the dance floor. I was nursing my drink and having a good old time watching my towering best friend try to samba with Billie, who even in high heels barely reached his chest.

"You're something, I ever tell you that, Alex?" Bree asked.

I glanced over at my wife, who looked dazzling.

"What nonsense are you talking now, woman?" I asked.

Bree smiled, shook her head, said, "No, seriously. I don't know how you do it, but despite all the chaos you get yourself into and out of, you find a way to keep your balance. I love the fact that even though you're called into these horrible situations where you see the worst in people, you somehow manage to remain a fundamentally good person."

I flashed on the hooded men behind Hala Al Dossari's children. I felt my expression darken, and I looked away from her, saying, "I don't know about that sometimes."

She took my chin, turned my face back to her. "Listen to me. You, Alex Cross, are the best man I know."

I looked into her eyes, hating the fact that I had to keep things from her, hating the fact that I had already secretly met with Father Harris twice so I could try to make sense of what Ned and I had done to prevent a nerve-gas attack on Inauguration Day.

I kissed Bree, said, "And you're the best woman I've ever known."

A hip-moving salsa tune came over the speakers.

"So let's dance," I said.

"You want me to dance with a man in a sling?" Bree asked.

"Uh, you said I wore it well."

"Did I say that?" she asked, watching me.

"You did," I said. I slid from the booth and held out my good hand for her.

My wife took it, smiled, and got up. But she hesitated at moving to the dance floor, leaned into me, and said over the pulsing music: "Alex, are you all right?"

"I have the s.e.xiest, most beautiful woman in the club with me," I replied. "It's almost twelve. And we're about to ring in the New Year in each other's arms. How could I not be all right?"