Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

It had taken them sixty-nine minutes on the way in, but only twenty-eight minutes had passed when they reached the truck and trailer. Five minutes after that, they pulled out on the country road and headed north.

Ten miles farther on, Potter drove through another BLM gate, this one open, and again stopped out of sight of the road at the back of an escarpment overlooking a big dusty flat. He and Mary gave the horses water before walking down onto the flat carrying two milk jugs filled with a special punch.

Using range finders, they placed one jug at 512 meters and the second at 526.

Back at the truck, they took out the components of their ultralight rifles from their packs, put them together, and finished the process by attaching bipods and screwing in matte-black sound suppressors.

They walked to the edge of the escarpment, extended the bipod legs, and lay prone behind the rifles before finding their targets. Potter settled the crosshairs of his telescopic sight on the jug at 526 meters.

“Green?” he asked.

“Green. On five,” she said. “Four, three, two—”

Both rifles went off in unison, making thumping noises, and the bullets smashed into the jugs. They erupted into thin, billowing pillars of flame.

Inside a large storage unit in Fairfax, Virginia, the man calling himself Pablo Cruz smiled when a bell dinged. He reached into an Ultimaker 2+ desktop 3-D printer and retrieved an appliance made of translucent high-detail resin that looked like a spider’s web that was about nine inches long and six wide.

The long edges of the appliance were turned toward each other, forming a shape that failed to connect by two inches. The resin was warm to the touch, and as he flexed the web he found it strong but malleable in all directions.

When it had cooled more, he squeezed open the edges and slipped the entire web onto his right forearm. It extended from just below his elbow over and around his wrist and fit snug, as if it had been crafted specifically for him, which it had.

Cruz slipped it off and set it beside its twin on a workbench he’d brought in to the storage unit the week before. There were two small, translucent brackets on the bench that were made of Kevlar-reinforced nylon, a material stronger than block aluminum and neutral when scanned with a metal detector.

The underside of the brackets held swivel balls in sockets attached to tiny, T-shaped valves. The brackets fitted to the underside of the forearm appliances.

Cruz put on reading glasses to attach small hoses made of translucent carbon fiber to the T-valve. An inch long and three-eighths of an inch in diameter, the hose was designed to handle sudden and extreme pressure.

He picked up a piece of clear Kevlar-reinforced nylon the shape and size of a.25-caliber bullet. Cruz placed the projectile in the head chamber of a clear three-inch barrel, then screwed the barrel into the free end of the T-valve. To the other end of the hoses, he attached Kevlar-reinforced nylon canisters the size of small cigarette lighters that fit snugly in the webbed appliance as well.

His burn phone rang. He answered.

The man he knew as Piotr spoke Russian. “We are good, Gabriel?” he asked.

Cruz replied in Russian. “Actually, there is a problem with compensation.”

A cold silence followed. Cruz waited him out.

“We had a deal,” Piotr said at last.

“Until I knew the subject.”

“I thought you were the best.”

“I am the best. It’s why you came to me.”

There was another long pause.

“How much?”

“Thirty-five million. Ten now, twenty-five when the job’s done.”

“I can’t authorize that.”

“Then get it authorized. Now.”

Piotr, sounding furious, said, “Hold on.”

Cruz switched the phone to speaker and set it on the bench. While he waited for a reply, he squeezed the appliances onto his forearms and fitted the crowned ends of the barrels through loops on the webbing below his wrists.

Piotr came back on the line. “Deal,” he said. “Final payment upon deed accomplished.”

Cruz hung up the phone, put it on the bench, and took a deep breath before picking up a hammer and crushing the device.

Only then did he turn his attention to the fashion mannequin he’d set up at the other end of the storage unit. He walked to within ten feet, raised his right hand, and flicked his hand sharply back, arching his fingers toward his upper forearm.

He felt the webbed appliance stretch. The ball pivoted in its socket and tripped a trigger in the valve that, with a thud, released a powerful burst of highly pressurized helium from the carbon canister.

The gas drove the nylon bullet out of the barrel at fourteen hundred feet per second. It hit the mannequin in the chest, blew through the foam, and disintegrated into shards that hit the steel back wall of the unit.

Cruz smiled, raised his left arm, and flicked that hand back, triggering the second of his hybrid, undetectable derringers. This bullet struck the mannequin on the bridge of the nose and blew out the back of its head.

Nina Davis was right on time. She knocked on my basement door at half past one and swept in with a smile that was, well, beguiling, not at all the troubled woman who’d showed up yesterday.

“Hello, Dr. Cross,” she said pleasantly as she moved by me toward my office.

Nina wore a hint of jasmine perfume that lingered in the air as I followed her. Inside, she shrugged off her trench coat, revealing a clingy black cashmere turtleneck sweater and snug matching slacks and heels. Gold earrings dangled from her earlobes.

When she sat, she looked at me with a sparkle in her eyes. “I must say, you lead an exciting life, Dr. Cross.”

“How’s that?”

She adjusted her position, crossed her legs, smiled, said, “Last night. Chad Winters and a Russian honcho?”

“Winters told you about the Russian?”

“It was all he talked about, how he and the Russian were tight.”

“He told us the Russian had been very sick.”

Nina studied me in amusement, as if she knew something I did not.

“The honcho was sick. But not his men. They come and go all the time. Chad’s seen them do it.”

“Okay?”

“They have disguises. Makeup. Latex prosthetics.”

“Why?”

“To fool the CIA. Chad says they’re watching the honcho and his men.”

I didn’t doubt it but said, “You’d swear to the FBI about that? What Dr. Winters told you?”

She gave me a look that suggested I was daft and said, “I do work for the Justice Department. If it helps, of course I’d swear.”

“I’ll have Mahoney — the agent you met last night — call you after we’re done.”

“Sure. After we’re done.”

“What am I going to find if I look into Winters?”

She paused. “I believe there was an issue with overprescribing pain meds that he managed to beat.”

I let that sink in. “Okay, can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Nina cocked her head. “You said this is a safe place. No judgments, right?”

“Correct,” I said. “Last night, before Special Agent Mahoney approached you, was I seeing Nina or Kaycee?”

The barest of smiles crossed her lips. “Guess.”

“Kaycee.”

“She hadn’t decided,” Nina said. “Kaycee, I mean. She hadn’t decided she wanted him. Winters.”

“Because?”

She laughed. “He’s easy. Kaycee stalked him a long time ago.”

“So no risk, no reward?”

“What’s the point to anything if there is no real challenge?” she said, and she shifted again so her sweater moved across her breasts.