Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross Kill

I joined her and we held hands and begged our savior for mercy.

Hours passed like days as we waited outside the surgical unit. Bree showed up before noon.

“Anything?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Billie,” Bree said, hugging her. “We’re going to find who did this to John. I promise you that.”

“You didn’t find Soneji?” I asked in disbelief. “How could he have gotten away if you’d cordoned off the area?”

My wife looked over at me, studied me. “Soneji’s dead, Alex. You all but killed him yourself.”

My mouth hung open, and I blinked several times. “You mean you didn’t send his picture out? You didn’t look for him?”

“We looked for someone who looked like Soneji,” Bree said defensively.

“No,” I said. “He was less than thirty feet from me, light shining down on his face. It was him.”

“Then explain how a man who all but disintegrated right before your eyes can surface more than a decade later,” Bree said.

“I can’t explain it,” I said. “I... maybe I need some coffee. Want some?”

They shook their heads, and I got up, heading toward the hospital cafeteria, seeing flashbacks from long ago.

I put Gary Soneji in prison after he went on a kidnapping and murder spree that threatened my family. Soneji escaped several years later, and turned to bomb building. He detonated several, killing multiple people before we spotted him in New York City. We chased Soneji into Grand Central Station, where we feared he’d explode another bomb. Instead he grabbed a baby.

At one point, Soneji held the baby up and screamed at me, “This doesn’t end here, Cross. I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.”

Then he threw the infant at us. Someone caught her, but Soneji escaped into the vast abandoned tunnel system below Manhattan. We tracked him in there. Soneji attacked me in the darkness, and knocked me down and almost killed me before I was able to shoot him. The bullet shattered his jaw, ripped apart his tongue, and blew out the side of one cheek.

Soneji staggered away from me, was swallowed by the darkness. He must have pitched forward then and sprawled on the rocky tunnel floor. The impact set off a small bomb in his pocket. The tunnel exploded into white-hot flames.

When I got to him, Soneji was engulfed, curled up, and screaming. It lasted several seconds before he stopped. I stood there and watched Soneji burn. I saw him shrivel up and turn coal black.

But as sure as I was of that memory, I was also sure I’d seen Gary Soneji that morning, a split second before he tried to shoot me in the heart and blow Sampson’s head off.

I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.

Soneji’s taunt echoed back to me after I’d gotten my coffee.

After several sips, I decided I had to assume Soneji was still dead. So I’d seen, what, a double? An impostor?

I supposed it was possible with plastic surgery, but the likeness had been so dead-on, from the thin reddish mustache to the wispy hair to the crazed, amused expression.

It was him, I thought. But how?

This doesn’t end here, Cross.

I saw Soneji so clearly then that I feared for my sanity.

This doesn’t end here, Cross.

I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.

“Alex?”

I startled, almost dropped my coffee, and saw Bree trotting down the hall toward me with a wary expression.

“He made it through the operation,” she said. “He’s in intensive care, and the doctor’s going to talk to Billie in a few moments.”

We both held Billie’s hands when Dr. Kalhorn finally emerged. He looked drained.

“How is he?” Billie asked, after introducing herself.

“Your husband’s a remarkable fighter,” Kalhorn said. “He died once on the table, but rallied. Besides the trauma of the bullet, there were bone and bullet fragments we had to deal with. Three quarters of an inch left and one of those fragments would have caught a major artery, and we’d be having a different conversation.”

“So he’s going to live?” Billie asked.

“I can’t promise you that,” Kalhorn said. “The next forty-eight to seventy-two hours will be the most critical time for him. He’s sustained a massive head injury, severe trauma to his upper-left temporal lobe. For now, we’re keeping him in a medically induced coma, and we will keep him that way until we see a significant drop in brain swelling.”

“If he comes out, what’s the prognosis, given the extent of the injury you saw?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you who he’ll be if and when he wakes up,” the neurosurgeon said. “That’s up to God.”

“Can we see him?” Bree asked.

“Give it a half hour,” Kalhorn said. “There’s a whirlwind around him at the moment. Lots of good people supporting him.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Billie said, trying not to cry again. “For saving him.”

“It was an honor,” Kalhorn said, patted her on the arm, and smiled at Bree and me before returning to the ICU.

“Damage to his upper-left temporal lobe,” Billie said.

“He’s alive,” I said. “Let’s keep focused on that. Anything else, we’ll deal with down the road.”

Bree held her hand and said, “Alex is right. We’ve prayed him through surgery, and now we’ll pray he wakes up.”

But Billie still appeared uncertain forty minutes later when we donned surgical masks, gloves, and smocks and entered the room where Sampson lay.

You could barely see the slits of his eyes for the swelling. His head was wrapped in a turban of gauze, and there were so many tubes going into him, and so many monitors and devices beeping and clicking around him, that from the waist up he looked more machine than man.

“Oh, Jesus, John,” Billie said when she got to his side. “What have they done to you?”

Bree rubbed Billie’s back as tears wracked her again. I stayed only a few minutes, until I couldn’t take seeing Sampson like that anymore.

“I’ll be back,” I told them. “Tonight before I go home to sleep.”

“Where are you going?” Bree asked.

“To hunt Soneji,” I said. “It’s what John would want.”

“There’s a blizzard outside,” Bree said. “And Internal Affairs is going to want to hear your report on the shooting.”

“I don’t give a damn about IA right now,” I said, walking toward the door. “And a blizzard’s exactly the kind of chaotic situation that Gary Soneji lives for.”

Bree wasn’t happy, but sighed and gestured to a shopping bag she’d brought with her. “You’ll need your coat, hat, and gloves if you’re going Soneji-hunting.”

Outside a blizzard wailed, a classic nor’easter with driving wet snow that was already eight inches deep. It takes only four inches to snarl Washington, DC, so completely that there’s talk of bringing in the National Guard.

Georgetown was a parking lot. I trudged to the Foggy Bottom Metro station, ignoring my freezing-cold feet, and reliving old times with big John Sampson. I met him within days of moving up to DC with my brothers after my mother died and my father, her killer, disappeared, presumed dead.

John lived with his mother and sister. His father had died in Vietnam. We were in the same fifth-grade class. He was ten years old and big, even then. But so was I.

It made for a natural rivalry, and we didn’t much care for each other at first. I was faster than him, which he did not like. He was stronger than me, which I did not like. The inevitable fight we had was a draw.

We were suspended for three days for fighting. Nana Mama marched me down to Sampson’s house to apologize to him and to his mother for throwing the first punch.