James Patterson - Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

“But the freeway side is super-steep going down to the tracks,” I reminded him. “Fifty-five-gallon drum weighs a lot, and being up on the freeway is just too visible, even in a blizzard. I’m thinking they went in on the M Street side, big walk or not.”

“Hell, what do I know?” Sampson said. “I’m just along for the ride.”

The snowbanks along Eleventh Street were as high as I’d ever seen them, like in pictures of Anchorage or Nome. Sampson and I had to strain to spot the security fence where Eleventh Street crossed over the tunnel’s mouth.

I parked right in the middle of the street above the tunnel, threw on the hazard lights, told Sampson to move the car if someone came along. Before he could grumble about that, I got out, went to the snowbank, and crawled up it to the fence.

I got out my Maglite, shone it down through the chain links, and immediately saw footprints on both sides of the track where it entered the tunnel. Farther back on the bank facing M Street, the snow had been pounded down, leaving a path five or six feet wide.

I snatched up my cell phone, called Metro dispatch, and requested an evidence wagon and full team to join me at the corner of Eleventh and M Streets. Lucy, the dispatcher, a friend of mine, said it might be an hour before they could get the team there, what with all the snow.

“John Sampson and I will secure the scene and wait for them,” I said. “Thanks, Lucy.”

Snapping shut my mobile, I sat down on the snowbank and edged out, then started sliding. I hit the pavement, landed upright, and was walking back to the idling Subaru, cleaning the snow off the seat of my pants, when I heard a heavy engine backfire and then rumble to life southeast of me, toward M Street.

Praise Allah!

When the bulldozer had fired up after he’d found a can of ether under the seat and sprayed it into the fuel tank, Omar Nazad wanted to weep. Instead, he thanked God over and over for blessing him, eased off on the choke until the engine ran smooth, and studied the diagram of the control levers until he thought he understood them.

The Tunisian looked overhead, saw a toggle switch, and flipped it. Small spotlights on top of the bulldozer cab lit up the area directly in front of him. He pulled a lever back, and the blade came under his control, groaned, and rose. The Algerians, who’d been standing off to the side, began to cheer and shake their fists.

Feeling possessed now, Nazad studied the diagram once more and threw a second lever forward. He felt something engage. He pressed the throttle. The bulldozer bucked, broke free of the ice holding its treads, and began to grind forward through the snow, past the van and toward the hundred and twenty cubic yards of frozenness that separated them from M Street and escape.

“Saamad, get in the van!” Nazad shouted. “Mustapha, get up on the bank where you can see the road, make sure I’m aiming in the right direction.”

Saamad nodded and ran to the van. Mustapha seemed annoyed at the request Nazad had made of him, but he trotted along in front of the bulldozer blade, toward the wall of snow and the road.

Nazad slowed just shy of the huge snowbank, dropped the blade, and set the transmission in a lower gear. He watched Mustapha climb the snowbank. Then he saw headlights swing off Eleventh Street into the eastbound lanes of M Street.

Until that moment, the Tunisian had been nearly pathological about avoiding attention. He’d kept the van well back from the road, and as they’d dug through the night, every time a vehicle had approached, he’d ordered his men to dive down onto their bellies and wait until the headlights passed.

Now he did not care, especially when the Algerian informed him that the approaching car was a little white Subaru Forester, a commuter vehicle, certainly no police squad car. Nazad pressed down the throttle again after the Forester went by, focused on the blade as it struck the snowbank. It bit and pushed, and then the entire front end of the bulldozer began to climb, pushing snow ahead of it.

Here we go, the Tunisian thought. There is nothing that can stop us now.

“What the hell is that doing here?” I shouted at Sampson, looking over my shoulder as I tried to get a better view of the bulldozer that had surged up on top of the snowbank and was pushing snow out onto M Street.

As the bulldozer backed down the other side of the snowbank, Sampson said, “Construction company that’s building the off-ramp probably sent him out to clear the site before the rest of the crew arrives.”

“At four fifteen in the morning on the day after Christmas?”

“Didn’t you read that piece in the Post last week? They’re getting all sorts of heat on this thing. People say that ramp is way over budget and should have been done two years ago.”

“Well, we’ve got to get him to stop,” I said, driving into the traffic rotary by the Washington Yacht Club and heading back.

I pulled over and parked well away from the bulldozer, hazard lights blinking. Sampson and I got out just as the bulldozer crested the bank a second time, pushing more snow out across M Street and completely blocking the westbound lanes. Then it backed down until we could barely see the top of it.

The bulldozer’s spotlight beams lit up a guy standing on top of the snowbank who was dressed in a blue work jumpsuit of some kind. He seemed to be directing the machine operator and did not notice us coming down the street toward him. We plodded up to him through the rubble field the bulldozer was creating, punching through snow up to our shins.

I waved my hands at him, shouted, “Hey! Tell the driver to stop!”

The man stiffened, took a few steps toward us, put his hand to his ear. “What?”

“Shut off that bulldozer!” Sampson yelled, and he shone a flashlight on the badge he was holding. “Metro DC Police!”

The bulldozer surged up again. The man froze, and then nodded. He ran toward the cab. I couldn’t make out any details of the driver.

“Police!” the man yelled. “They said stop!”

The machine ground to a halt atop the snowbank. The engine dropped into an idle.

“What is the matter?” the man on the snowbank called.

“Sir, could you come down here?” I called back. “We believe this is a crime scene. Who told you to clear the construction site?”

The man hesitated, tapped his ear as if to indicate he could not hear me with the dozer so close, and then crouched as if he were going to butt-slide down the snowbank to me. I heard the whine of hydraulic lines engaging and glanced up and over at the bulldozer blade starting to rise.

“CSX?” Sampson said.

Sampson trained his Maglite on the chest of the guy sitting on top of the snowbank. The patch on the jacket said CSX. Why would train workers be clearing out a federal construction site at four fifteen in the morning?

I started reaching casually for my service pistol, wishing that I was not standing in deep snow, and readjusted the beam of my own flashlight until it shone up and through the windshield of the bulldozer. Just before the blade got high enough to block my view, I saw a man wearing a blue CSX coat. His right eye was covered in bandages.

“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 prone on the snowbank 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 snowbank just as the bulldozer engine roared. Both rounds hit left of the prone man, and he immediately returned fire. I was aiming the Glock when I heard the crack of his bullet passing an inch from my head. My shot hit beneath him.