James PATTERSON: Cross Fire

“Don’t mean nothing now. You just soak this shit up for a minute and enjoy it. I’ll get us ready to go.”

Denny stepped back and started securing the clasps on Mitch’s pack while Mitch watched, transfixed.

“Not bad for a night’s work, right, Mitchie?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said, only half out loud, more to himself than anything. “Kind of awesome, actually.”

“And who’s the hero of the story, bro?”

“We are, Denny.”

“That’s right. Real live American heroes. Nobody can ever take that away from you, no matter what. Understand?”

Mitch didn’t even answer this time, except to nod. It was as if, once he’d gotten a glimpse, he couldn’t tear his eyes from the scene.

A second later, Mitch was dead – with a bullet in his head.

The poor guy probably didn’t even hear Denny’s muzzled Walther go off, it happened that fast. Just as well. It was a goddamn awful business sometimes; the least Denny could do for him was make it quick and professional.

“Sorry, Mitchie. Couldn’t be helped,” he said.

Then he picked up Mitch’s pack, left everything else, and headed for the stairs without looking back at the evening’s third homicide.

I’D BEEN WORKING at the Daly Building when the first terrible report came in, and this time I was on the scene within minutes of the gunfire. I tried hard to ignore the chaos in the street, tried not to think about the victims – not yet – and focused on the one thing I needed to know most.

Where did the shots come from? Was it possible they’d made a mistake this time?

An MPD sergeant on the sidewalk had an initial report that Cornelia Summers had gone down first, and that she’d been on George Ponti’s left as they headed into the Harman. Two Supreme Court justices – even now, it seemed unbelievable!

I looked to the left, down F Street. The Jackson Graham Building was a possibility, but if I’d been the gunman, I would have gone for the National Building Museum. It was a couple of blocks up, well clear of the scene, and had a flat roof with plenty of cover.

“Get me three more uniforms,” I told the sergeant. “Right away. I’m going to that building – the National.”

Within minutes, we were down the street and pounding on the museum’s front doors. One very alarmed-looking security guard came running to let us in. The Federal Protective Service had jurisdiction here, but I’d been told it would be a good half hour before they could get a team on-site.

“We need to get to the roof,” I told the guard. His tag said DAVID HALE. “What’s the fastest way up there?”

I left one patrol officer behind to radio in for a full lockdown of the building, and the rest of us followed Hale through the museum’s central hall. It was a huge, open space with Corinthian columns all the way to the ceiling, which was several stories overhead. That’s where we needed to go.

Hale brought us to an emergency exit at the far corner. “Straight up,” he said.

We left him there and took the stairs in rough formation, leapfrogging one flight at a time, with flashlights and weapons drawn.

At the top, we came to a fire door.

It should have been alarmed, but the metal housing was on the ground and the mechanism itself was hanging loose by a couple of wires.

My heart was already pounding from the run. It notched up again now. We’d come to the right place.

When I opened the door, an empty expanse of roof was in front of me, with the top of the Accountability Office visible across G Street beyond that. The rain was coming down hard, but you could still hear the sirens and shouting coming from the Harman.

I signaled for one officer to go right and the other to follow me out in the direction of the street noise.

As we came around toward the southwest corner, a row of raised skylights was blocking our view.

I saw the shadow of something by the farthest one – a pack of gear, or maybe just a garbage bag – and pointed it out to the cop next to me. I didn’t even know the guy’s name.

We worked our way along the roof with our lights off, staying low just in case.

Once we got close enough, I could see that someone was still there. He was on his knees, facing the Harman and not moving.

My Glock was up. “Police! Freeze!” I aimed low for his legs, but there was no need, as it turned out. As soon as the other officer hit him with a flashlight beam, we saw clearly the dark hole at the back of his head, washed clean by the rain. His body had lodged in the corner of the half wall that ran around the roof, holding him up that way.

One look at his face, and I recognized Mitch Talley. Now, suddenly, my legs were like Jell-O. This was too much, it really was. Mitch Talley was dead? How?

“Jesus.” The patrol officer with me leaned in for a better look. “What is that, nine millimeter?”

“Call it in,” I told him. “Get an APB on Steven Hennessey, aka Denny Humboldt. He couldn’t have gotten far yet. I’ll call CIC. We need to shut this neighborhood down – now. Every second counts.”

Unless my instincts were way off here, Hennessey had just broken up the Patriot sniper team, for whatever reasons of his own.

If I were him, I would have been running like hell. I would already be out of Washington and I’d never look back.

But I wasn’t Hennessey, was I?

DENNY DROVE AROUND for hours. He stayed north and stopped at a couple of different drugstores in Maryland. He bought a Nationals ball cap, a shaving kit, a pair of weak reading glasses, and a box of chestnut-brown hair dye. That should do it.

After another stop, in a Sunoco bathroom in Chevy Chase, he made his way back down to the city. He parked in Logan Circle and walked the two blocks over to Vermont Avenue, where the familiar black Town Car was waiting.

Zachary gave a rare unguarded smile as Denny slid into the backseat.

“Look at you,” he said. “All set to fade into the woodwork. I’ll bet you’re good at it, too.”

“Whatever,” Denny said. “Let’s get this done. So I can fade away, as you say.”

“It sounds as though things went off well enough, assuming the news reports are to be believed.”

“That’s correct.”

Zachary stayed where he was. “They didn’t say anything about an accomplice, though. Nothing about Mitch.”

“I’d be surprised if they did,” Denny said. “This lead investigator, Cross, likes to keep his cards close to the vest. But, believe me, it’s taken care of. And I don’t really want to talk about Mitch anymore. He did his job well.”

The contact man studied Denny’s face a little longer. Finally, he reached over the front seat and took the pouch from the driver. It seemed right this time, but Denny unzipped the bag and checked, just to be sure.

Zachary sat back now and seemed to actually unclench a little. “Tell me something, Denny. What are you going to do with all that money? Besides getting a new name, I mean.”

Denny returned the smile. “Put it somewhere safe, for starters,” he said, and tucked the pouch into his jacket as if to illustrate the point. “Then after that–”

There was no rest of the sentence. The Walther fired from inside his pocket and caught the driver in the back of the head. A spray of blood and gray matter hit the windshield.

The second shot took care of Zachary, right through those pretentious horn-rims of his. He never even got to reach for the door. It was over in a matter of seconds – the two most satisfying shots Denny had ever taken.

Except, of course, not Denny. Not anymore. That was a pretty good feeling, too. To leave this all far behind.

No time for celebrations, though. The car had barely gone quiet before he was out on the sidewalk and back to doing what he’d always done best. He kept moving.