James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

Hala whipped the two grenades underhand, one left, one right, both at ninety-degree angles to her position, toward the rottweiler and toward the raised loading platform. Pressing her face against the back of the train car, digging out the pistol and the remaining grenade, Hala felt outside of herself, already spirit, no longer tethered to the husk of her body, an avenging instrument of heaven.

The grenades went off within a second of each other, throwing dust and debris, leaving a caustic smell in the air and making a sound so deafening that for a beat, Hala could hear nothing but the echo of the dog’s bark that had come the instant before the first grenade exploded.

The dog had been to her left. Closer than she’d expected. Almost on her.

Fight, Hala.

She saw herself as that little girl going after the dogs with the stick, saw the whole scene as if it were playing on screens all around her.

Hala suddenly threw herself to her left, up to the loading platform and onto her knees, the pistol in her left hand, the grenade in her right.

A female police officer covered in dust knelt next to a whimpering white German shepherd with a growing red stain on its side. Hala’s instinct was to shoot the cop and the dog and save the grenade to take as many enemy lives as she could. But then she spotted a large figure crouched in the lingering dust behind the policewoman and the dog.

Alex Cross was aiming a pistol at her.

“Drop it, Hala!” he roared.

“Catch, Cross,” Hala said, and lobbed the grenade at him.

I saw the grenade leave Hala’s hand and turn end over end, its safety lever flipped, and everything about me seemed over.

My life did not pass before me. I did not see Bree, the kids, Nana, my friends, or my Lord and Savior. There was just the grenade and the end of things somersaulting toward me at last.

I’ll never know why my body did what it did then. There was no thought involved, no voice screaming at me to act in a certain way. My only explanation is that my subconscious was hyper-aware of my surroundings, saw things that my conscious self did not. It took control and made me do something approximating a move I’d seen only once, at a jai alai game Sampson had dragged me to in Atlantic City a few years before.

It all seemed to go down in slow motion then, the way I accepted the grenade with my right hand as if I were catching a fragile egg, the way my feet pivoted hard left, the way my legs uncoiled, hurling my upper body away from Hala, Officer Carstensen, and the wounded dog. My right arm whipped over. My fingers released. The grenade flew fifteen feet into the open door of the train car. I flung myself down on the cement platform, threw my arms up over my head.

I heard a gunshot before the explosion blew out windows on both sides of the Crescent, the sound almost rupturing my eardrums. I felt glass shards slicing into my scalp and hands but knew I had been saved from the brunt of the blast. I lay there no more than a beat before the adrenaline in my body surged again, and with my service pistol leading, I swung myself up into a sitting position, ignoring the tiny streams of blood dripping down my face and off my slick hands.

Hala was gone.

Officer Carstensen lay in her own blood, shot through the right shoulder. She looked at me, dazed, released her hold on Jasper, and gestured weakly with her left hand as she tried to speak. I couldn’t hear, but I understood. Hala had rolled backward off the platform the same way she’d rolled on.

Jasper sniffed at the blood on his handler’s shirt, got to his feet with his hackles rising, and lunged away from Carstensen. The wounded dog took two bounds and then leaped off the loading platform.

Sound began to return to me, a dull roar, and then ringing, and then the thud of another gunshot, terribly close. The sound of Jasper yipping in pain was followed by the most terrified screams I have ever heard.

These things all brought me to my feet. I jumped from the end of the loading platform, gun drawn, spotting the tracking dog and the HRT operators moving swiftly toward us.

I went down on my knees and aimed the Maglite beam under the railcar, searching for the source of the screaming. Jasper had been shot again, this time in the back leg. I could see broken bone and torn sinew.

But he had Hala pinned on her right side, and she was screaming in Arabic. Jasper had bitten deep into her left biceps and was shaking her as if trying to tear her arm loose from its socket.

Omar Nazad found antibiotic cream and bandages in the freight train’s first-aid kit. And he’d eaten a few of those pills Hala had insisted they all carry, so his face and blinded eye throbbed less.

In fact, the Tunisian felt like he was on top of things once more, doing Allah’s work, as he sat astride the train engineer, pinning the man’s back and shoulders to the floor of the cab. Aman was on the floor as well, bracing Tony’s head between his knees and pressing his gun to the engineer’s temple.

From the floor, the Tunisian picked up a cup of coffee. It was fresh and scalding hot; he’d just taken it out of the microwave at the back of the cab. He held it with his right hand, feeling warm and fuzzy as he reached toward the engineer’s horrified face.

“No! What are you doing?” Tony yelled.

Nazad smiled. “What’s that saying from your Old Testament? An eye for an eye?”

“No! Please!” Tony screamed as the Tunisian pried up his right eyelid.

“It’s either this or death, infidel,” Nazad said, and he poured the boiling-hot coffee onto the engineer’s eye, saw it turn gray and then milky as Tony went insane, bucking and screeching out pleas to God and his mother.

Now the Tunisian felt better about losing his sight in one eye, and he got up off the engineer. Tony rolled around, hands covering the wounded eye.

“He needs a hospital,” said Pete, the other engineer, who’d watched in shock. “And so do you.”

“I need only God’s blessing,” Nazad snarled. “You take him to the hospital when you finish your trip.”

“What?” Pete said.

“What is your destination?” the Tunisian asked.

“New Jersey. Freight yard on the west side of the Hudson.”

“When you get there, you may take your friend to the hospital,” Nazad said, and then he looked at Aman.

In Arabic, he said, “This is your destiny, brother. You will stay on the train until you reach New Jersey, and then make your escape. Go to the Syracuse house.”

Upset, the Turk said, “But that’s not the plan. I won’t be there to see the blow struck.”

“And I lose an eye to see the blow struck,” Nazad snapped. “These things are the will of God, brother. The will of God.”

They rushed both officer Carstensen and Jasper out on stretchers from the Union Station terminal. They took Hala Al Dossari to Captain Johnson’s office on a stretcher too that Christmas night. Plastic ties bound her wrists and ankles. Straps pinned her flat to the board. She’d be kept in Johnson’s office until the roads were clear enough for the Feds to transfer her.

As the EMTs worked to clean up my cuts, I called home. Bree answered.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s done. I’m good. Couple nicks, but good. Well, a lot of nicks, but still good.”

I heard my wife exhale gently. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day, Alex. When will you be home?”

“Before midnight,” I promised. “Just a few things to take care of now.”

“You gonna tell me what happened?”

“Full disclosure,” I said. “After I open that present you were telling me about at dinner.”