Patterson, James - Alex Cross 3 - Jack and Jill

A soldier-hero known only to God.

He probably believed he'd gotten away with several murders -- in a just war.

Well, he hadn't. He was about to go down.

He dropped the two children off at the Bayard-Wellington School. It was a beautiful place: fieldstone walls and rolling, frost-slicked lawns; the sort of school I would have loved to send Damon andJannie to; the kind of school where Christine Johnson ought to teach.

You could move out of D.C., you know, I told myself as I watched Jack kiss each of his children good-bye.

So why don't you? Why don't you take Damon and Jannie away from Fifth Street? Why don't you do what this rotten piece of shit son of a bitch does for his kids?

Jay Grayer spoke into the hand mike again. “He's leaving the Bayard-Wellington School now. He's turning back onto the main road. God, it's pretty out here in Jackville, isn't it? We'll take him down at the stoplight up ahead! Just one imperative: we take him alive! We'll have four cars at the light with him. Four of us to get Jack. We take him alive.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” I said.

“What the hell are you saying?” Jay Grayer turned to me and asked.

“Just getting it out of the way He doesn't have any rights. He's going down.”

Grayer offered up a crooked smile. We both understood why The good part was coming now. The only good part in this whole affair. “Famous stuff, huh? Here we go. Let's get this son of a bitch.”

“Absolutely I want to have a nice long talk with Jack, too.”

I want to kick his ass from this stoplight, all the way back to Washington.

I want to meet the real Jack.

NOBODY had figured out the assassination plot until now. Not one of us had even been close. No one had been able to solve the mystery of Jack and Jill until it was too late. Maybe we could unravel the whole mess now. A retrospective on Jack and Jill.

We were less than a hundred yards away from capturing Jack.

He was heading down a steep, rolling hill toward a stoplight.

It was a very picturesque scene. Long lens, like in expensively made movies. The light turned red and Jack stopped like a law-abiding citizen. Unconcerned about anything.

A free man.

Jay Grayer and I eased up right behind his trendy, off-road vehicle.

I could read the sticker on the rear bumper of the Bronco: D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs.

Beartrap was the code for our operation. We had four mainline vehicles. Another half-dozen cars and two helicopters for backup. I didn't see how Jack could escape. I was thinking ahead to the massive ramifications of the assassin's capture, and the even more shocking surprise still to come.

This was going to get worse, much worse.

“We take him down on three,” Jay Grayer said into his hand mike. He was extremely cool now, the consummate professional, as he had been from the beginning. I liked working with him enormously. He wasn't an egomaniac; he was just good at his job.

“We take him real easy,” I said.

The beartrap was sprung.

I was one of the six who jumped out of the intercept cars stopped at the innocent-looking country-road light. It was an honor.

There were two civilian cars waiting at the light as well. A gray Honda and a Saab.

It must have looked like utter madness to them. That's because it was, and much worse than it looked. The man in the Bronco had killed the President. This was like arresting Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan,John Wilkes Booth. An ordinary stoplight in northern Maryland.

I was there] I was glad I was there. I would have paid a huge admission price to be there for this.

I got to the passenger door of his vehicle as a Secret Service agent yanked open the driver's door. The two of us happened to be the quickest on our feet. Or maybe we were the ones who wanted Jack the most.

Jack turned toward me -- and he got to look right into the wide-eyed barrel of my Glock.

He got a real good look at death in an instant.

Execution-style!

Very professional!

“Don't move. Don't even breathe too hard. Don't move a millimeter,” I said to him. “I don't want to have an excuse. So don't give me one.”

He hadn't been expecting us. I could tell that by the shock spread across his face. He thought he'd gotten away clean with the murders. Thought he was home free.

Well, he had it all wrong for once.

Jack had finally made his first mistake.

“Secret Service. You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, and that's a real good idea!” one of the agents barked at Jack. The agent's face was bright red with anger, with outrage at this man who had murdered President Thomas Byrnes.

Jack looked at the Secret Service agent, and then back at me.

He recognized me. He knew who I was. What else did he know?

At first he'd been startled, but now he became calm. It was astonishing to see the calmness and cool take hold. He's calm as death, I thought.

I shouldn't have been surprised. This was the real Jack. This was the President killer.

“Very good,” he finally said, commending us for doing a good job, for our professionalism. The son of a bitch nodded his approval.

“I'm proud of you. You did your jobs extremely well.” It made my blood boil, but I knew the order of the day: we take him real easy. The gentle beartrap.

He slowly got out of the spit-shined red vehicle. Both his hands were held up high. He offered no resistance; he didn't want to be shot.

Suddenly, one of the Secret Service agents sucker punched him. The agent threw a hard roundhouse right that connected with the killer's jaw. I couldn't believe he'd done it, but I was glad.

Jack's head snapped back and he dropped like a stone. Jack was smart. He stayed down. There was no provocation for the agent's punch, no excuse whatsoever--except that the freak sprawled on the ground had murdered the President in cold blood.

Jack shook his head and worked his jaw as he looked up at us from the pavement. “How much do you know?” he asked.

We didn't answer him. None of us said a goddamn word. It was our turn to play games. Now we had a few surprises for Jack.

JACK WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING. We knew he was only part of the puzzle we were attempting to solve. We had decided to take him down first, but now came the second crucial stop.

As we rode back to his house on Oxford Street, I felt distant from the scene, almost as if I were watching myself in a dream. I remembered the few meetings I'd had with Thomas Byrnes. He'd told us all to have no regrets, but that advice didn't work out in the real world. The President was dead, and I would always feel partly responsible, even if I wasn't responsible at all.

I wasn't thinking only about the President's murder. There was thirteen-year-old Danny Boudreaux. I felt an unsettling connection between the two cases. I had from the very beginning. The murders and unprecedented violence were everywhere. It was as if a strange, crippling disease were spreading across much of the world, but especially right here in America. I had already witnessed too much of it. I didn't know how to make the nightmare stop. No one did.

It wasn't over.

We were finally at the beginning of the awful mystery.

This was where it had started.

At this house just coming into view.

Jay Grayer spoke into the car's hand mike. "Dr. Cross and I will go the front-door route. Everyone cover us like a blanket.

No shooting. Not even return fire, if you can help it. Everybody clear on that?"

All the other agents were clear on the procedure and knew the stakes. Beartrap wasn't over yet.

Grayer pulled the black sedan up beside the front walk to the house. “You ready for one more shitstorm?” he asked me. “You okay with how this is going down, Alex?”