James Patterson - Kill Alex Cross

But she never got to answer the insolent man’s question. Before anyone realized it was happening, three stun grenades skittered across the cement floor and went off in a shattering volley of noise.

Suddenly men in gas masks and dark uniforms were streaming out of the stairwells, carrying M16s and AR15 assault weapons.

Two more flash bangs went off almost right away. One of them detonated at Hala’s feet, and she was completely deaf before she’d even started to run away.

It was a huge, coordinated operation. swat units from three different agencies made up the first line of attack. Mahoney and I were pressed into the parking garage stairwell, waiting for our go-ahead from the unit commander. Once the suspects were contained, we’d go in as part of a second wave and take it from there — arrest, transport, and questioning.

I heard three flash bangs go off like giant firecrackers!

Then a rush of pounding footsteps and shouting as the SWAT teams moved in. The whole idea was to catch these people off guard and contain them before anyone could reach for the cyanide. If there was one thing we knew about Al Ayla by now, it was that they had no regard for human life — including their own people. These operatives were just disposable garbage to them.

A second round of stun grenades echoed off the concrete walls, ceiling, and floor. Even in the stairwell, the sound hurt my ears. My heart was thudding.

Mahoney was champing at the bit, waiting to go like a horse at the starting gate. It wasn’t in his nature to hold off at times like these.

Then suddenly I heard the distinct, percussive pop of gunfire. A single shot came first.

Then a fast double tap.

“Suspect down!” someone shouted.

Two people flew by the stairwell door, sprinting away from the action.

It was a man and woman in American business dress.

Mahoney didn’t hesitate. He was out after them. And I was right behind.

The couple raced down a long row of parked cars toward the circular ramp at the far end of the garage. The woman had a pistol in her hand and fired blindly back over her shoulder as they went. Even firing like that, she was accurate, skilled.

We took cover behind the nearest parked car, an Audi A6. A bullet ricocheted off the hood and took a divot of shiny silver paint and metal with it. Too close.

Gunfights are never fair game for the police. The bad guys have no rules whatsoever. We have to know exactly what we’re shooting at and what’s beyond it. The best strategy is to stay as unpredictable as possible.

I kept to a low crouch and ducked around the back of the car. Once I reached the far end, I popped up, squared my feet, and got off one fast shot before they even knew I was there.

My vision tunneled around them like a spotlight. There was a flash of red.

I’d caught the man in the right hand. He yelped, but they didn’t slow down. The woman returned fire, pushing him ahead of her now. She was very good with a gun.

They cut between two cars and scrambled over a concrete barrier. A second later, they’d dropped down to the level below and disappeared.

Already, Ned Mahoney and I were up and running again.

“Careful, Ned, she can shoot lights-out.”

I threw myself over the parking barrier after our two runners and jumped maybe ten feet. The cement landing was a vicious jolt to the bones. I had to drop and roll before I got up again, just to save my legs.

There were several dime-size red blotches on the ground where I landed, but nothing to indicate which way they’d gone. The guy might have wrapped his hand.

All I could see from here were lots of parked cars, concrete, and a dozen ways out.

“What the hell?” Mahoney came running up behind me. Several more SWAT officers were sprinting down from the level above as well. “Where’d they go?”

“Any sign of them?” Command radioed down.

“Negative,” I said. “Get all the exits covered. And shut down the block if it’s not too late.”

We all fanned out, checking the adjacent rooftops, throwing open doors, looking under cars with any kind of clearance. But it was no good. They were gone. Somehow, they’d gotten past us. The woman was a professional. She didn’t panic and she could really handle a gun.

There was still a chance someone could pick them up on the street. Their faces were a matter of record now, and every unit in the city would go into high alert.

Homeland Security could even shut down the bridges and put checkpoints on the highway if they wanted to, but that wasn’t my call.

By the time Ned and I got back up to the top level, everything on that end had been contained. One of the SWAT sergeants, Enrique Vaillos, was sitting on the bumper of the same Audi where we’d taken cover. The back of his hand was up against his mouth. It looked like he’d gotten a nasty pop in the face during the takedown.

“What’s our status up here?” Ned asked.

“Five in custody, one dead,” he said, “and two—?”

“Still missing,” I said.

Farther up the row of cars, a tall Saudi man in a gray suit was laid out flat on the ground. His head was turned our way so you could see the open, glassy eyes — also, the perfectly round black hole in his forehead. Even now, it sent a chill rolling down my back.

“What happened?” I asked.

Vaillos shook his head. “It was the damndest thing. That chick? The one who got away? Just before she ran, she turned and put a fast one in the guy’s head, point-blank. I don’t know why she did it, but I’ll tell you what. It’s all she had time for. Probably saved one of my guys’ lives.”

He turned away and spit a mouthful of red on the cement.

“Whatever. I ain’t going to lose sleep over it. These people want to act like a bunch of cannibals, I say let ’em. Just makes our job easier.”

I was thinking about the woman again, and how she wasn’t going to make our job easier.

The “Al Ayla Five” were transferred to a U.S. Marshals holding facility at the DC Jail on Massachusetts Avenue. A wing of eight-by-ten soundproof interview rooms was cleared, and the suspects were brought in one by one. Above all, there would be no exchange of information between them.

We worked in teams, rotating from suspect to suspect. I was with Mahoney, along with a forensic psychiatrist from the CIA, a ranking rep from Homeland Security, and an FBI field office supervisor, Corey Sneed, who took the lead. That was fine with me. I kept my focus where I needed it — on the Coyle kids.

Presumably, these people were Saudi nationals, but none of them was carrying any identification, and none of them would talk to us. Nothing. Not even to ask for a lawyer, though we suspected they spoke English.

Our strong assumption was that the whole eight-member group had been composed of four couples, given Al Ayla’s m.o. up to this point. If that was true, then one of these women had just lost a husband. Maybe that was something we could use.

After two hours of getting nowhere, I took my best guess and asked to speak privately with the one woman who had seemed most on edge.

“Go for it,” Sneed told me. It almost seemed like a dare.

I stopped at the vending machines on my way back in and bought a bottle of water. It wasn’t much, but I wanted to bring something in with me besides files and questions.

When I opened the interview room door, the woman’s head jerked up as if I’d caught her off guard. Her dark hair was pulled back in a French braid, and her magenta silk blouse and gray pinstriped skirt looked wrong on her somehow, like someone else’s idea of American dress.