James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

“I don’t know how else to explain that the grate’s been wired shut from inside. So where do they go?”

Johnson looked confused. “I don’t know. And I don’t think there’s anyone from maintenance who can tell us until-”

“Wait, why don’t you know this?” Bobby Sparks asked incredulously.

“We control the gate areas and the tracks,” the Amtrak cop retorted hotly. “The station’s interior is the responsibility of a private management firm in Virginia, but everyone there’s got the night off. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake.”

I gestured angrily at the duct. “Where could it go? Or, better, what places would be vented by this ductwork?”

Captain Johnson thought a second, said, “Sbarro, the pizza place that’s around the corner here, and then the U.S. Postal Service facility, I guess.”

“How big is that?” Bobby Sparks asked.

“Big enough to handle everything coming off Capitol Hill, House and Senate side, and all the federal agencies around here.”

“There’s no chance anyone from the U.S. Postal Service is working on Christmas,” Mahoney said.

“As a matter of fact, there’s a skeleton crew in there right now,” Johnson said. “I saw them on the loading dock. They’re on until ten.”

I thought about that a second, then said, “Does the loading dock face First Street or the terminal?”

“Both,” the Amtrak officer said. “There’s a single steel roll-up door facing the street, and a double that allows access to the tracks.”

“She’s either escaping to the street or trying to get to the trains,” I said, moving toward the door. “Get men to the west end of that terminal, inside and outside. Tell them she’s dressed as a male, an Amtrak worker, and should be considered armed and dangerous.”

Captain Johnson began to sweat again as he barked orders into his radio. So did Mahoney and Bobby Sparks and I as we all sprinted to the security entrance that led down to the terminal, the loading platforms, and the train tracks.

Fewer than four miles to the south, across the river in Anacostia, a white panel van sporting a sign that said CSX TRANSIT SUPPORT crept through the snow toward the Eleventh Street bridge, heading north into Washington.

The driver was dressed in work boots, a blue one-piece work suit similar to the one Hala wore, and a dark blue insulated Carhartt coat. There was a patch on the chest of the coat that said CSX MAINTENANCE SERVICES. Below that patch, the name HERB had been embroidered.

His real name was Omar Nazad, but he carried the Maryland driver’s license and employee ID of Herbert Montenegro of Falls Church, Virginia. A Tunisian who looked more Eastern European than Maghrebian, Nazad had entered the United States on a student visa to study for his doctorate in chemical engineering at Purdue University. But he had left the school almost immediately, disappearing into this new identity courtesy of Al Ayla and Hala Al Dossari.

They’d met six months before in a safe house run by a theater major at Syracuse University. Hala was older than Nazad by almost ten years, but she captivated him with her beauty and her passion for the cause. This plan had been their idea, conceived during the long, wet upstate New York spring and expanded and refined during the summer and early fall. Tonight they and the others would see it through, no matter the consequences.

“Brother?” came a male voice from behind Nazad, back in the interior of the van, which was dark but for the glow of a computer screen.

“I hear you, brother,” Nazad answered.

“Six minutes,” the man replied.

“We’ll just make-” Nazad stopped, cursed.

“What is wrong?”

“Police ahead. They’ve blocked off the left lane to the bridge. Quiet now.”

Nazad pulled shut dark drapes that separated the front seats from the van’s rear. He rolled slowly by a police officer waving a flashlight.

“Officer,” he called. “Is the exit plowed down onto Twelfth Street? I have to check the tracks as it enters the tunnel.”

“Exit’s plowed, but nothing beyond it,” the officer replied. “Hope you’ve got chains. It’s a mess down in there.”

“I take my chances,” Nazad said, and drove on.

The painkillers had kicked in. Hala pocketed the spool of thin, ultra-strong fly-fishing tippet line, picked up the tool bag, and limped in the dark shadows on the other side of the suburban MARC trains, heading toward two longer Amtrak trains that were sitting dead and barely lit in the middle of the huge terminal.

She heard screeching and rumbling at the east end of the station. A freight train was leaving the First Street tunnel, which ran under Capitol Hill toward the CSX tracks and the Navy Yard. She felt a thrill go through her at the idea that this might all proceed according to plan, snow delay or not.

Hala made it to the northernmost end of the first dead Amtrak train, more than one hundred and fifty yards from the U.S. Postal Service loading dock. She rested for a second against the snub nose of the massive locomotive, watching the last few cars in the freight train disappear through the terminal mouth, heading toward the Ivy City Yard that was somewhere out there in the snowy darkness. Another train approached the station now.

The Crescent, bound for Atlanta and the Big Easy, Hala thought, feeling the narcotic buzz building and a moment of regret that she would never get to see where jazz was born. Still, she was alert enough to know she needed to duck beneath one of the locomotives so she would not be caught in the southbound train’s headlamp.

At 7:02:46, according to her phone, Hala thought she heard something above the din of the approaching train. Crawling to her right, she peered along the platform, catching glimpses of men with guns way back toward the security gates, maybe ten of them, all spreading out and moving east and west of her location. Was that Cross with them? She couldn’t tell for sure. Were they on to her? They had to be. They were going toward the MARC trains and the postal facility.

It was 7:03:10 now.

The southbound Crescent squealed into the bay between the F and G loading platforms. There were hardly any people on board, at least not in the rear cars. But after all, it was Christmas night.

Hala crawled back to the tool kit and fished out two of the remaining seven hand grenades, nestled like eggs in the ripped Christmas paper. She held them, looked up at the giant steel roof supports high overhead, and prayed that the infidels would not set off one of her booby traps before it was time.

We reached the U.S. Postal Service loading dock with just over a minute to spare. Bobby Sparks took one look at the three dead bodies and signaled his men that they should spread out again, move north and east through the terminal, and get to hunting.

Captain Johnson, rattled by the sight of the bodies, called over his radio to tell his men to guard the rear platform while the FBI team went to work. Mahoney and I climbed up on the loading dock. A small television, a portable device probably belonging to one of the postal workers, sat on an overturned crate. It was playing the local news, which had been delayed by the Lions football game, and the broadcast featured a recap of the hostage crisis in Georgetown.

The video showed Henry Fowler in cuffs and leg chains. Fowler’s former wife was climbing into the back of an ambulance with her new husband. I was being interviewed by some newswoman. Below me it said:

DC DETECTIVE ALEX CROSS

GEORGETOWN HOSTAGE-CRISIS HERO

I shut the TV off, then noticed my reflection in a window. I sure as hell didn’t look like a hero. My hair was wet and I had some ugly stubble on my face. My clothes were soaked with perspiration, and my eyes were red with fatigue.