Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

“Not even you, Colonel?”

“Especially not me,” he said, and laughed. “Hell, I'm a college professor.”

I glanced up into the rearview mirror and saw a single pair of headlights approaching. I hadn't noticed much traffic so far and most of it had been speeding in the opposite direction, heading south.

Suddenly Sampson raised his voice and turned to Handler. “Why don't you tell us what's really going on, Colonel? How many more have to die? What do you know about these murders?”

That's when I heard a gunshot, then the sound of glass breaking. The car behind was already on us, and passing on the right shoulder.

My eyes darted and I saw a driver, then a gunman leaning out the window of the backseat.

“Get down!” I yelled at Handler and Sampson. “Cover up!”

More shots came from the pursuing car. I swerved the wheel violently to the left. We skidded hard across double-yellow lines, heading for the cliffs, and the Hudson River far below. Handler yelled, “Watch it, Jesus! Watch it!”

We hit a straight part of the highway, thank God. I stomped on the accelerator, picked up some speed. But I couldn't lose the other car.

He was in the right-hand lane now.

I was in the wrong lane, the one meant for oncoming traffic.

Sampson had gotten to his gun and returned fire. More shots struck our car.

The other sedan stayed right with us. I couldn't shake loose. I was doing over ninety on a twisty road built for fifty or sixty. On my right side was a shoulder and then the mountain wall; on my left, a sheer drop down toward the Hudson River and certain death.

I was going too fast to see faces in the other car. Who the hell was it?

Suddenly I stomped on the brakes and our car skidded badly. Then it fish tailed! We wound up facing in the opposite direction, south.

I took off that way. Back toward West Point.

I floored it again, got back up to ninety in an awful hurry.

I passed two cars heading north, both blaring their horns at me. I couldn't blame them. I was over the double line and racing at about forty miles an hour over the speed limit. They must have thought I was drunk, or mad, or both.

When I was sure no one was following, I slowed down.

“Handler? Colonel?” I called out.

He didn't answer. Sampson hung over the backseat to check on him. “He's been hit, Alex.”

I pulled to the side of the road and turned on the interior lights. “How bad? Is he alive?”

I saw that Handler had been shot twice. Once in the shoulder. And once in the side of the head.

“He's dead,”Sampson said. “He's gone.”

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I wasn't the target, and that boy in the car could shoot. He was after Handler. We just lost our first real lead.”

I wondered if we had lost Foot Soldier as well.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Seventy

There's nothing like an attempt on your life to get you properly focused and to get the blood boiling.

It was an exercise in futility, but Sampson and I rushed Owen Handler to the ERat West Point Hospital. He was pronounced dead at around nine. I'm certain he was dead when we brought him in. The shooter in the other car was a chillingly good marksman, a professional killer. Had three men actually been in the pursuing car? I didn't think so.

We were questioned by the local police and also CID officers from West Point. Captain Conte even came to see us, spouting off his concern for our safety, but also playing twenty questions with us, almost as if we were suspects. Conte informed me that the commanding officer at West Point, General Mark Hutchinson, was personally supervising the investigation now. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Then General Hutchinson actually showed up at the hospital. I saw him speaking to Captain Conte, then a few other grim-faced officers gathered in the hallway. But

Hutchinson never came over to see Sampson and I. Not a word of condolence or concern.

How goddamn strange, and inconsiderate. It was maddening. The gray wall of silence, I thought, remembering Owen Handler's words. General Mark Hutchinson left the hospital without making contact with us. I wasn't going to forget that.

All the while I was at West Point Hospital, I couldn't get one thought out of my head: There is nothing like an attempt on your life... to get your blood boiling. I was shaken by the attack on Colonel Handler, but I was also angry as hell.

Wasn't that part of the motive behind the massacres at My Lai and others like it? Anger? Fear? The need for retribution? Unthinkable things happened during combat. Tragedies were inevitable. They always had been. What was the Army trying to cover up now? Who had sent the killers after us tonight? Who had murdered Colonel Handler, and why?

Sampson and I spent the night at the Hotel Thayer again. General Hutchinson decided to put MPs on the second floor to protect us. I didn't think it was necessary. If the gunmen had been after us, they wouldn't have driven off and left us alive.

I kept thinking: two men had been in the car that attacked us.

There had been three men involved in the earlier killings.

I couldn't get that fact out of my head either.

Three, not two.

Eventually, I called Jamilla and shared everything that had happened with her. Detective to detective, friend to friend. She didn't like the actions of General Hutchinson and the Army either. Just talking it through with her helped tremendously.

I was thinking about doing it more often, like maybe every night.

Finally, I fell asleep on that thought.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Seventy-One

The following morning the New York papers were filled with a story about the murder of four call girls, a madam and a bouncer on the East Side of Manhattan. The women were Vietnamese and Thai, and because of that I talked to the detective in charge of the investigation in Manhattan. So far, the NYPD was nowhere on the grisly case. I thought about going to New York, but there were other pressing things on my mind.

There was an important lead I hadn't even begun to satisfactorily check out. The Foot Soldier. Who the hell was he? Or she? And why had Foot Soldier contacted me by e-mail? What was the mystery person trying to tell me?

Owen Handler had given me a few names, and once I returned to Washington, I dug around until I tracked a few of them down. The most interesting to me was Tran Van Luu, a former Kit Carson scout who was now living in the United States.

There was a catch, a big one. Tran Van Luu was on death row in Florence, Colorado. He'd been found guilty of murdering nine people in Newark and New York City. I knew a little about the federal prison at Florence and had even been there once. That was the second catch. Kyle Craig was imprisoned there, my old nemesis. Kyle was also on death row.

The Florence ADX was one of the so-called super max prison facilities. Thirty-six states now had them. Death row was located in the Security Housing Unit, a kind of prison within a prison. It turned out to be a bland, sand-colored building with extraordinarily heavy security inside and out. That was comforting, since Kyle Craig was being held inside, and Kyle had nothing but disdain for prison security.

Two heavily armed guards accompanied me to death row. As we walked down the otherwise empty, fluorescent-lit hallways, I heard none of the usual chaotic noise of a prison. My mind was somewhere else anyway.

I had arrived in Colorado around noon. Everything was running smoothly on the home front, and hopefully I'd be back in DC that night. Nana wasn't missing any opportunities, though. Before I left the house she sat me down and told me one of her story-parables. She called it The story of the thousand marbles. “I heard this on NPR, Alex. It's a true story, and I'm passing it along to you for what it's worth. Seems there was this man who lived in Southern California, around San Diego I believe it was. He had a family, nice family, and he worked very hard, long hours, lots of weekends. Sound familiar?”