James PATTERSON - Cross Country

Then he plucked the gas nozzle out of her SUV. He definitely was mad. He locked it in the on position, then left the gas running on the ground.

Then he stepped over to the next car in line and did the same thing.

His team of boys was getting clear of the area, running and shouting as if this were some kind of out-of-control sports match. His pistol was pointed at the pooling gas, and that was all the warning I needed.

“Hold fire! Hold fire!” I yelled, then pulled up short of the pumps. “Bree, take Brighton. Go around the other side. Nicolo, get somebody to shut those things off.”

The large man held a third nozzle in his hand now, just letting the gasoline flow onto the pavement. I could smell the vapors, even at this distance.

What the hell was he thinking?

“Just put it down. Walk away!” I shouted. “We won’t fire on you.”

He didn’t move, just stared back at me. No fear in him. A second later, someone shouted behind him. Then came three short blasts of a car horn.

Finally he did what I’d asked. He kept his gun pointed my way, but set the gas nozzle down. He backed away slowly, moving out of the light of the canopy.

We were clear – he was leaving!

Then several shots were fired out of the darkness. It was him – the bastard!

A wall of flame burst from the concrete. It almost seemed like a magic trick. In seconds, the forecourt was burning, flames licking under and around the empty cars.

A white Corolla went up first. It exploded right where the large male had been standing a few seconds ago. Then a black pickup on the other side of the pumps caught fire.

“Clear! Clear! Clear! Clear!” I was shouting and waving both arms over my head, trying to get everybody, civilians and police, away from there.

That’s when the first pump head blew.

And then – Armageddon in Virginia.

THE PLAZA WITH its lines of gas pumps exploded from underneath, the pavement rising like a carpet being rolled. Flames shot at least eighty feet into the air, a ball of bright yellow and orange, followed by a heavy black coat of smoke. Burning vehicles rolled around like toy cars; truckers and families fled screaming from the restaurant, where the fire had already spread and with it the panic.

I was running as close to the blast site as I could. Heat singed my face, my eyes, and my hearing felt like it was half gone.

Up ahead I could see two SUVs speeding out toward Route 50. They were getting away!

I spotted Bree coming around from the far side of the building and breathed a sigh of relief. She was all right. She ran toward my car and so did I.

I got in the car and punched it up to ninety in a hurry.

For a few uneasy seconds, there was nothing ahead of us, nothing I could see.

“There!” Bree pointed at the two SUVs. They must have spotted us because just then they peeled off from each other.

The first Land Cruiser went left. The second SUV turned right. I followed the lead vehicle, hoping I had made the right choice.

I BARRELED DOWN a dark two-lane road, gaining ground quickly on the Land Cruiser. A deep drainage culvert curled along our left side. I came up on the Cruiser’s taillights, and the driver appeared to panic. Suddenly it flared to the right, then cut back nearly ninety degrees without slowing. Then the Land Cruiser flew straight toward the ditch.

For a second I thought he’d make it across. The Land Cruiser had air under it, but the front end came down too fast. It crashed hard and loud, the undercarriage fracturing.

The front wheels were lodged into the far bank. The rear tires continued to spin fiercely.

Bree and I were already out of our car and crouched behind the open doors.

“Out of the vehicle! Now!” I yelled across the ditch.

Finally, I could see bodies moving inside the Land Cruiser.

The adult was in the driver’s seat. Next to him was someone barely tall enough to be seen.

The smaller figure reached through the passenger-side window. He put one palm on the roof, then the other. He started lifting himself up and out.

“Down on the ground! Now!” Bree shouted at him. “Get down, I said!”

But he didn’t! He torpedoed himself up onto the roof, skinny and cat-quick. His gun was out now, pointing our way. He slid across the roof, firing three quick shots at us.

We fired back. A round caught him and he dropped to the ground. But not before he’d given the adult enough cover to get outside. The driver’s door was open. I couldn’t see the large man, but I knew he was getting away.

Bree stopped beside the kid; I kept going. Down into the ditch, then up the other side.

I’d thought there were woods beyond the gulley, but now I saw there was just cedar screening and tall weeds.

Suddenly I heard the rattle of a chain-link fence. The large male was climbing it. By the time I pushed through the trees, he was over the top and running across the rear yard of some kind of storage facility.

I leveled my Glock against the chain link, then emptied the magazine. He was too far away. I didn’t think I’d hit him and then he turned. He waved contemptuously, then disappeared like a cat into the darkness.

I called in the location and then ran back to see about Bree. She was still crouched near the ground, right where I had left her. She’d put her jacket over the dead boy’s face. It was an odd thing for a cop in a shoot-out to do, but Bree liked to go her own way.

“You okay?” I asked.

She didn’t look up. “He was maybe twelve, Alex. Maybe that old. He ran suicide for the prick adult.”

“Was he alive when you got to him?” I asked her. Bree nodded.

“He say anything?”

“Yeah.” She finally looked up at me. “He told me to fuck myself. His last words on this earth.”

I DIDN’T SLEEP more than a couple of hours that night. An officer and two civilians were dead – not to mention one of the boy killers, the “world’s youngest terrorist,” according to a Washington Post headline the next morning. On top of everything else, I had an eight o’clock psych client to see at St. Anthony’s.

Ever since the Tyler Bell case the year before, when I was literally stalked in my own office, I’d had to seriously reevaluate my life. The upshot: I’d decided my criminal cases were too high-profile too often for me to keep the private in private practice anymore. Now, I saw only two or three patients a week, usually pro bono, and I was satisfied with that. Most days, anyway.

But I didn’t want to see this particular patient – not today.

It was ironic that I had a session with Bronson “Pop-Pop” James that morning. He was eleven years old and probably the most advanced sociopath at that age I’d ever seen. Four months before, he’d made headlines when he and a seventeen-year-old beat two homeless men half to death. They had used cinder block. It was Pop-Pop’s idea. The district attorney hadn’t figured out how to try the case yet, and Bronson was being held in juvenile custody. The one thing he had going for him was a very good social worker from Corrections, who made sure he got to his appointments with me.

At first I thought it best to keep the events of the last night out of my head. Once the session got going, though, I changed my mind.

“Bronson, you hear about what happened at the service plaza in Virginia last night?”

He sat across from me on a cheap vinyl couch, fidgeting, the whole time, hands and feet always in motion. “Yeah, right, I heard. They was talking ’bout that shit on the radio. What of it?”

“The boy who died… he was twelve.”

Bronson grinned and put two fingers to his head. “Heard he got X-Boxed.”