Cross the Line

87

THE SUN WAS setting as John Brown ended his briefing with a description of that evening’s goal and the plan beyond it.

Brown looked around at the fifteen men and women in his living room, seeing mild shock in some faces, profound concern in others. He understood. His plan was bold and audacious, so audacious that-

“It’s insane,” Hobbes said, arms crossed.

Fender said, “We’ll be either shot or hanged.”

“You knew from the get-go what this was,” Brown said coldly. “Wasn’t it you, Hobbes, who said people would have to clean house to make way for the revolution in this country?”

“I did, but-”

“But nothing. You’re in this to clean house and see the revolution sparked or you’re not in this at all. Fender, you also agreed with that strategy. Or am I wrong?”

Hobbes squirmed in his chair, said nothing. Fender glared at Brown.

Brown was about to ask the room for a vote when Cass said, “Shit.”

He looked over at her, saw her staring at the muted TV tuned to CNN. Special Agent Ned Mahoney was walking toward a bank of microphones with the big FBI emblem on the wall behind them. Low on the screen, the banner read FBI Raids Sex Club Believed Linked to Vigilante Killings.

“Turn that up,” Brown said sharply.

Cass grabbed the remote and punched off the mute. They heard Mahoney say, “I’ll get to the Phoenix Club in Vienna, Virginia, but first we’d like to release two photographs of people we believe are part of the vigilante group.”

The screen split in two, and images appeared of Hobbes and Cass without their hoods inside the late Antonin Guryev’s house on Mobjack Bay.

“Mother of God, we’re screwed,” Fender said, seething.

Hobbes and Cass had both gone pale and stony.

The screen returned to Special Agent Mahoney, who said, “As of now, the woman’s name is unknown. But the man is Lester Hobbes, a mercenary and an assassin. We are asking anyone who has any information on Hobbes or this woman to come forward and help us locate them.”

“How do you know Hobbes and the woman are part of the vigilantes?” a reporter shouted.

Mahoney said, “Elena Guryev used her iPhone to video the feeds of several security cameras in her house during the attack.”

That set off a frenzy among the reporters, all of them asking where Mrs. Guryev was.

The FBI agent turned stoic and reserved. “Gunmen broke into an FBI safe house this morning and killed four of my best men. They also severely wounded a DEA agent and shot Mrs. Guryev to death, leaving her deaf son an orphan. And, yes, we believe the gunmen were associated with the vigilantes, or the Regulators, as they evidently call themselves. Turning to the raid in Virginia-”

Fender grabbed the remote, punched mute. “Regulators?” he said, looking around the room. “How did they know that? Who used-”

“Doesn’t matter,” Hobbes said, looking at Cass. “We’re done.”

“The both of you did us all in,” Fender said, getting to his feet and looking like he wanted to smash things. “Taking off your hoods. Breaking the rules of engagement. What the hell’s with that?”

The room around Brown erupted with accusations and demands.

Brown stood up and roared, “Enough!”

The fifteen Regulators shut up, all of them red-faced and panting.

“It’s done,” Brown said sharply. “They’re coming after us. You knew they would eventually. So it’s done. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to turn on each other? Are you going to run? Or are you going to fight back, show some spine, believe in a better tomorrow created by your sacrifices and mine?”

He let that sink in for a while and then said, “Show of hands. Who’s with me?”

After several moments, hands began to go up, thirteen of them, including Cass’s. Fender remained livid but eventually raised his hand. Finally, Hobbes did too.

The television screen had switched from the FBI press conference to the weather forecast.

Brown grabbed the remote, turned the sound back on, and watched the forecast. The National Weather Service was calling for gale-force winds overnight.

“There, some good news for once,” Brown said. “Couldn’t be better. Get your gear strapped down, and your heads screwed on straight. We go at twenty-one hundred hours.”

88

NANA MAMA WAS cooking pancakes for Ali the next morning when I came downstairs.

“Pancakes?” I said, rubbing Ali’s head. “What did you do right this time?”

“He put that letter to Dr. deGrasse Tyson in an envelope,” my grandmother said, gesturing at a stamped, addressed envelope on the counter. “In my book, seeing things through is cause for pancakes and real maple syrup.”

Ali grinned as she set a plate before him. “You think he’ll answer me?”

“You never know until you try,” I said. “Where’s Bree?”

“Up and long gone,” Nana Mama said. “She’s got a pile of paperwork to plow through and wanted to get at it. You hungry?”

“Tempting, but I think I’ll skip the-”

“Hey, Dad, look!” Ali cried, pointing to the little TV on the counter.

I glanced over and saw the bizarre image of a bearded driver in an Amish buggy looking up at a low-flying, pale white blimp that was dragging a thick steel cable more than a mile long across fields and through trees.

The newscaster said that sometime during the night the blimp had broken free of its mooring at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where the military tested everything from cannon rounds to chemical weapons. The blimp was part of a top secret over-the-horizon surveil-lance system currently being evaluated. The army believed the blimp’s cable had snapped due to gale-force winds that had struck coastal Maryland overnight.

“I’ve seen that thing,” I said. “The blimp. A couple of times last week from the Eastern Shore.”

The newscaster said the heavy cable had already damaged multiple high-tension lines and several homes and buildings. The army had crews trailing the blimp and trying to figure out how to bring it down safely.

“Runaway blimp,” Nana Mama said, shaking her head.

“You don’t hear that every day,” I said, pouring myself some coffee.

Before I could take a sip, my phone buzzed, alerting me to a text, and then another, and then a third. Annoyed, I set the coffee down and dug the phone from my pocket.

Call me.

Kerry Rutledge.

Urgent.

A fourth text came in. A phone number.

I took my coffee, went out into the great room, and called the young woman who’d survived the road-rage attack.

“Dr. Cross?” she said.

“Right here, Kerry,” I said. “What’s so urgent?”

“You told me to call if I remembered anything more. I did. I mean, I do.”

She sounded breathless, almost panicked.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s calm down a little, and then you’ll tell me what’s going on. Where are you?”

“At a rehab center in… I can’t remember that,” Kerry said, and she took a deep breath. “But I do remember now that the motorcycle was a dark Honda, big, with a windshield and, like, a lit-up dashboard, you know?”

“How do you know it was a Honda?”

“It was on the gas tank. I could see it in the light from the dashboard.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, but it’s probably nothing.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” I said.

Kerry said, “There was something on the windshield, a decal, on the lower right-hand corner. It was square and I keep thinking that there was an anchor and a rope on it.”

“An anchor and a rope on a decal?” I said. And then a memory was triggered, and my heart began to pound a little faster. “A decal like a parking sticker?”

89

BREE SAT AT her desk drinking her second cup of coffee and reading over reports of complaints against one of her detectives. She tried to pay close attention to the details of the report and to the detective’s response, looking for differences and similarities. She hated second-guessing a cop who’d been acting in the heat of the moment, but if she was going to do the job right, she had to study the situation before rendering judgment.

For the most part, she stayed on task. But then her attention wandered and flickered over to what Katya Kravic had told her about Edita and McGrath. Had Tommy pushed her too far? Had Stavros or Bogrov shot them both and then-what, planted the gun at Terry Howard’s? Made his death look like a suicide?

Those unanswered questions only raised more unanswered questions, so she took a deep breath, told herself to compartmentalize, and tried to refocus on the disciplinary report.

A knock came at her doorjamb. She sighed and looked up. Kurt Muller was standing there with that goofy grin on his face again.

“I gather the date with Ms. Noble the other night went well?” Bree asked, sitting back in her chair.

“Better than well,” Muller said. “I’m smitten.”

Bree laughed. “I could see that the moment you met her. Is she smitten?”

“I get that feeling,” he said, the grin growing.

“Good for you. Now get back to work so I can get back to work.”

Muller sobered, said, “I actually wanted to tell you we may or may not have caught a break.”

Muller said he’d been checking on the status of Tommy McGrath’s life insurance policy every few days since his death, and the beneficiary had not come forward to make a claim. When he’d called that morning, however, he found that an adjuster with the insurance company’s claims department had learned of the chief of detectives’ murder and tried to contact the beneficiary but had been directed to the beneficiary’s attorney.

“So the beneficiary did not initiate contact?” Bree said, disappointed.

“Life ain’t neat,” Muller said, flipping through a reporter’s notebook. “The attorney’s name is… Lance Gordon… practices in McLean. The insurance adjuster said Gordon consulted with his client, who declined to make a claim at first. Then, three hours later, Gordon called back and filed the claim, saying his client was going to donate the money to a charity.”

“This muddies everything, doesn’t it?” Bree said, turning to her computer and doing an Internet search on Lance Gordon.

She found his law firm, looked at the partners’ page on the website, and clicked on Gordon. A picture popped up of a handsome man in his late forties, very long and lean and dressed in a well-tailored suit.

There was something about Gordon’s face that was familiar, but Bree couldn’t place him at first. Then she did, in another time and location, seeing herself turn after Gordon and sniff. He’d smelled like something, hadn’t he? What was it?

“Chief?”

Bree startled, looked at Muller.

“I was asking how you wanted to handle this.”

“Give me a second,” she said, making a possible connection in her head. She yanked open a desk drawer and rummaged around until she found what she was looking for: a small brown bottle with a yellow label. She opened the bottle and sniffed.

Bree saw Gordon again in her mind, clearer now. She sniffed again, and all sorts of distorted puzzle pieces shifted and came together.

Bree smiled at Muller and said, “Shut the door, Detective. We’ve got work to do.”

90

COLONEL JEB WHITAKER’S Honda Blackbird was in the same U.S. Naval Academy parking lot as before when Sampson and I checked around two that afternoon. Sampson walked past the powerful motorcycle, pretended to admire the bike, and planted a GPS tracking device under its rear fender.

We knew a whole lot more about Whitaker now, and, like Tommy McGrath had felt about the Phoenix Club, the more we learned, the more we wanted to know.

Colonel Whitaker had a stellar record, first off. He’d graduated from the Naval Academy in the upper quarter of his class and later won the U.S. Navy Cross for valor, risking his life repeatedly to bring wounded Marines off the streets of war-torn Fallujah. Then shrapnel from an IED nearly cut off his leg, ending his tour of duty.

The colonel had subsequently earned a doctorate from the War College and then joined the faculty of the Naval Academy, where he taught strategy and amphibious warfare. He was known as a charismatic teacher and was rated highly by students on several faculty-review sites we found on the web.

On paper, Whitaker did not seem like someone we should have been looking at. But then we found out his wife had died three years before in a car accident, hit head-on by a drunken, high twenty-two-year-old who had been not only speeding but texting.

Whitaker’s Honda Blackbird turned out to be the fastest production motorcycle available on the planet, capable of blowing the doors off a Maserati. And Whitaker knew how to drive it. He’d raced motorcycles earlier in his life.

Sampson and I had debated bringing the colonel in for questioning but decided in the end to hang back, follow him, and learn more before we got in his face. Whitaker helped us out by appearing forty minutes after we’d set up surveillance on the Blackbird. He limped to the motorcycle, put on his helmet, and set off.

We trailed Whitaker a mile back, watching his progress on an iPad connected via satellite to the GPS transmitter. We thought the colonel might go north to his home on Chesapeake Bay, but instead he headed west and drove to the George Washington University Medical Center in DC.

He parked in the visitors’ lot, and we drove into it just in time to see Whitaker walking toward the hospital. I jumped out and trotted after him.

Because of the limp, the colonel wasn’t hard to keep up with. But once we got inside the hospital, I had to hang back, and I lost Whitaker when he got an elevator. Before the doors closed, though, I heard him tell someone he was going to the ICU.

I waited a few moments. My cell beeped, alerting me to an e-mail from Judith Noble, the FBI gun tech. Subject: Remington.45.

I pressed the elevator call button, opened the e-mail, and read it. Then I read it again, trying to get my head around her conclusions. Sonofabitch, I thought. How was that possible?

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. I rode the elevator up to the ICU, thinking of all of the ramifications of the e-mail I’d just read.

Part of me wanted to back off, let Mahoney know, and stand aside, let the Feds do their job. Instead, I went to the nurses’ station, showed a nurse my badge, and asked if a Marine officer with a limp had come in. She said he was down the hall, third door on the right.

“Whose room is that?”

“That would be Mr. Potter’s,” she said. “George Potter.”

I squinted, said, “The wounded DEA agent?”

“That’s the one,” she said.

“George and I have worked together quite a bit lately. Think I’ll pay him a visit, see how he’s doing.”

91

SOMETIMES IT PAYS to hang back. Other times it pays to rattle a few chains.

I didn’t knock, just stepped quietly into Potter’s room. Colonel Whitaker sat at the DEA special agent’s bedside. The patient looked waxy and sallow, but alert. The two of them were deep in a heated conversation when Potter spotted me.

He tensed, said, “Alex?”

“Came by to see how you were doing, George,” I said, ignoring his reaction. “Last time I saw you, you were hurting pretty bad.”

“I’m still hurting pretty bad,” Potter grumbled as he shifted in bed. “Do you know my old friend Jeb?”

I looked at the colonel and acted like I recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t place him.

“We met once, Dr. Cross,” Whitaker said, getting up from his chair. “In a parking lot at the Naval Academy.”

I snapped my fingers, pointed at him, and said, “That’s it. Colonel…”

“Whitaker. Jeb Whitaker.”

“Small world,” I said. “You knowing George and all.”

“Colonel Whitaker was my commander in Iraq,” Potter said. “Best damned combat officer I’ve ever seen.”

Whitaker made a dismissive flip of his hand. “That’s the painkillers talking. George was the brave one, taking a bullet like that.”

“For all the good it did Elena Guryev,” the DEA agent said, crestfallen.

I said nothing, just looked at Potter and then at Colonel Whitaker.

Potter licked his lips and asked, “You found anything new?”

I thought about that and then said, “When that sniper, Condon, was killed? We found a forty-five-caliber Remington in his motorcycle saddlebag. We got a report back this morning that links the Remington to a series of road-rage killings.”

Whitaker was a cool character, battle hardened. He took the information in stride, even appeared uninterested.

Potter, though, suddenly looked lost in thought.

“Well,” I said, making a show of checking my watch. “I’ve got other appointments, but I wanted to see how you were doing, George.”

Potter broke from his thoughts, smiled weakly, and said, “I don’t think I’ll be running any marathons anytime soon. Thanks for stopping by, Alex.”

“Get better, and we look forward to seeing you back at work,” I said. “Colonel Whitaker? Until fate brings us together again.”

“Until then,” Whitaker said.

I showed them nothing but an expression of goodwill, shook their hands, and left.

Outside, I waited for Sampson to bring the car around and gazed up at the hospital, thinking how much I’d like to be a fly on the wall up there in the ICU.

92

JEB WHITAKER’S THOUGHTS became a blur after Alex Cross left the room. The master strategist’s brain sped through three different plans of response in the few seconds before Cross’s footsteps faded and George Potter spoke.

“Quite the coincidence,” Potter said.

Whitaker knew immediately what the DEA agent was talking about but acted as if he didn’t.

“How’s that?” the colonel said, crossing to the bathroom.

“We framed Condon with diagrams of the attacks and left a gun that turns out to belong to this road-rage killer?”

“Incredible,” Whitaker said, going inside. “Give me a second to piss.”

A few moments later, he flushed and then washed his hands. He was drying them on a paper towel as he exited.

Potter studied him, said, “You have a special agenda, Colonel?”

Whitaker balled the paper towel loosely in his hand.

“I’m not following,” he said, coming to the wounded agent’s bedside and studying the lines that connected Potter to various machines.

“You’ve been killing drivers like that shithead who killed Lisa,” Potter whispered harshly. “You stuck that gun in Condon’s motorcycle bag to throw them off you.”

Whitaker thought of himself as Mercury, said, “And what if I did? Isn’t that what we’re all about, George? Cleaning up things that need cleaning up and getting on with a better life for all?”

Potter sputtered, “Who’s to say Cross is not onto you because of these road-rage killings?”

“Impossible.”

“No, we have to assume Cross suspects,” the DEA agent said. “Order everyone to destroy phones and computers. Tell them to-”

Whitaker thought of himself as John Brown then and said, “Who gave you command of this operation, Potter?”

“I did, sir,” Potter said. “I took a goddamned bullet to make sure that the Guryev bitch shut her mouth. Your secret vendetta has threatened us all, the entire Regulator movement. From now on, I’m calling the shots, Colonel.”

Whitaker stared at Potter, blinking slowly for several moments, then passed the balled-up paper towel from one hand to the other and tossed it over Potter toward the wastebasket. The DEA agent’s eyes followed it as it went in.

Nothing but net.

When Potter looked back, Whitaker was gazing at him sympathetically.

Click. Click.

The colonel pressed the push-button device the DEA agent used to control his narcotic drip. Whitaker had used one of these hundreds of times after his war injury.

Click. Click.

The colonel said, “I’m giving you a monster dose of morphine here, George. It will help things go quicker.”

Potter looked puzzled until he glanced at Whitaker’s right hand. The colonel held a hypodermic needle attached to an empty syringe; he’d taken it from a medical-waste container in the bathroom. The colonel pulled the plunger of the syringe back and inserted the needle into the injection port of the DEA agent’s IV line.

“What the hell are you doing?” Potter asked even as the narcotic hit him in a rush and he started to swoon and slur. “What’s in that… syringe, Colonel?”

“Air,” Whitaker said, and he pressed the plunger down.

93

BREE STONE AND Kurt Muller pulled into the Fort Hill Rifle and Pistol Club in rural Cumberland, Maryland. After the winds the night before, it was a calm, late-summer day in the Mid-Atlantic, a perfect afternoon for the national combat-pistol championship regional qualifier.

The place was surprisingly packed. There were twenty or more motor homes parked at the Morningside Range. With the tents, flags, food vendors, and booths selling various wares, it could have been a county fair were it not for the irregular blasts of staccato gunfire coming from the range.

Bree and Muller pushed in foam ear protectors and donned sunglasses. Acting like spectators, they worked forward through the crowd to where they could see the competitors attack the course.

A shooter with a fancy custom pistol had just finished, and the score was going up on a digital readout by a judges’ table. Polite applause indicated it was only a so-so effort despite his tricked-out gun.

Next up was a Pennsylvania state trooper; he used his service pistol and shot well, knocking down two metal silhouettes at thirty yards and avoiding shooting a civilian target. When the course demanded the trooper move laterally while shooting, however, his weakness was revealed, and he turned in a score lower than the previous man’s.

Bree watched the competition with interest. She’d had combat-pistol training and scored reasonably well on yearly exams, but this course was set at an entirely different level. She saw several strong runs during the next forty minutes, but nothing spectacular, nothing close to perfection.

Then out stepped a tall, lanky guy wearing a Shooter’s Connection ball cap, black earmuffs, and rose-lensed sunglasses. Bree had been talking to Muller and missed the shooter’s name, but heard that he was using a CK Arms Hardcore pistol in.45 caliber with a holo sight.

When the buzzer went off, the shooter drew the pistol, leaped forward to the first line, and touched off two rounds. Two metal silhouettes tipped over at thirty yards. He killed the bad guy at the window of the next building. He held off on two civilian pop-up targets and hit everything else put in front of him clean and tight. When his pistol action locked open after the last target, the sign flashed a near-perfect score.

The crowd went wild, and even the shooter seemed amazed at his skill.

He walked back, smiling, his entire body balanced and fluid. Bree barely listened to the announcer’s remarks, just watched him and marveled at the shooting ability he’d just displayed.

“Best I’ve ever seen,” Muller said.

Bree said, “I think congratulations are in order.”

They angled through the spectators toward the tall shooter. He stopped at the judges’ desk, took off his sunglasses, and handed his weapon over for a brief inspection. Then he shook hands with one of the judges, joked with another, retrieved his gun, and left the area.

Bree and Muller followed, seeing him go to a pretty sandy-blond woman in the crowd. She patted him on the arm and smiled. They turned and walked away, heading toward the exit.

Bree and Muller waited until the couple had gotten to where the food and merchandise vendors were set up.

When they were in range, Bree called out, “Mrs. McGrath? I thought that was you.”

94

TOMMY MCGRATH’S WIDOW looked startled. “Detective Stone? Kurt? What are you doing here?”

“It’s Chief Stone now, Vivian,” Muller said.

Vivian smiled at Bree. “I heard you’d gotten Tommy’s job. He would have been proud.”

“Thank you for saying so,” Bree said.

“Are you both competing?” Vivian said.

“Just here supporting some friends on the force,” Bree said. “You?”

“I was here to watch Mr. Gordon. My attorney.”

“You’re a hell of a shot,” Bree said to Gordon. “Where’s that come from?”

He gave her an aw-shucks shrug and said, “My dad taught pistol at Ranger School, Fort Benning. I guess you could say I was a range rat.”

“That explains it,” Bree said before turning to Vivian. “Tommy’s insurance company notified us that you were claiming his life insurance policy.”

Vivian sighed, said, “I didn’t even know Tommy had that policy, Chief Stone, honestly. Not until Mr. Gordon called to say I was named as beneficiary.”

“Four million dollars,” Bree said.

“I had no intention of claiming the money at first,” she said, her chin raised. “Then Mr. Gordon had the idea I could use it to start a charitable foundation, something in Tommy’s honor.”

“Is there a foundation at the moment?” Muller asked.

Gordon said, “I have associates working on it as we speak.”

“Well, then,” Bree said, and she smiled. “That helps. But just to tie up another loose end, how much are you worth these days, Mrs. McGrath?”

Gordon said, “You don’t have to answer that, Vivian. That’s really none of their business.”

“It is if the answer is germane to a murder investigation,” Bree said.

“You’re asking if I need four million dollars?” Vivian said. “The answer is unequivocally no.”

“Perfect-asked and answered,” Muller said. “I’m sorry we had to ask.”

Bree said, “Mr. Gordon, you walked by me the day of our initial interview with Mrs. McGrath. You were just leaving as we were coming in.”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“I caught this strangely familiar scent trailing after you.” Gordon looked confused and said, “What?”

“I couldn’t name the smell until yesterday,” Bree said. “It was Hoppe’s Number Nine. Gun-cleaning solvent. It has a peculiar smell.”

“Okay?”

“The smell made me realize that you handle guns. But then a little research revealed you’re an incredible marksman. Right from the start, given the way Tommy and Edita Kravic were gunned down, we were thinking trained shooter, someone with mad skills. Someone, well, like you, Mr. Gordon.”

Gordon glanced at Vivian incredulously and then back at Bree. “What possible reason would-”

“You and Viv are secret lovers,” Bree said. “That’s the real reason for the lack of passion in her marriage and her decision to ask Tommy to leave the house while she considered divorce.”

“That is not true,” McGrath’s widow said. “None of it!”

“You hide it fairly well,” Bree said. “No public displays of affection. A lot of late-night calls and fervent secret trysts.”

“We don’t have to listen to this nonsense,” Gordon said. “We’re leaving.”

Bree stepped up and stood in the way, said, “Tell me, Mr. Gordon, what bullets do you shoot in that fancy gun of yours?”

The attorney frowned. “I don’t know. Whatever my sponsors send me.”

“Bear Creek moly-coated two-hundred-grain RNHBs?”

“No,” Gordon said, but his lower lip twitched.

Muller turned to Vivian, said, “And you’re lying about your financial situation. We got a court order and looked into your investments. You’ve lost more than nineteen million dollars since the Chinese economy tanked, which was right before you asked Tommy to leave.”

Bree said, “We figure you found out about the life insurance policy and decided that since Tommy was leaving anyway, you’d profit by making sure he checked out permanently. You’d hide that, of course, behind a foundation you could loot to build back your fortune. Sound right?”

The widow McGrath tried to maintain her poise, but her eyes got glassy. She moved her lips but made no sound before fainting dead away.

Vivian hit the ground hard, cracking her head on the cement walkway. Bree went to her knees next to her.

Gordon put his competition pistol to the back of Bree’s head and said, “We’re leaving real quiet, now, you and me, Chief Stone.”

95

GORDON GRABBED THE lapel of Bree’s jacket and jerked her to her feet, her body between him and Muller, who was going for his gun.

“Don’t,” Gordon said, keeping the gun on the back of Bree’s head. “Toss it.”

Muller looked pissed but did as he was told.

“Your backup gun.”

“I don’t carry one.”

“C’mon,” Gordon said, pushing Bree. “We’re moving out.”

He marched her into a maze of parked cars. She felt him relax a bit as they passed out of Muller’s sight.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Bree said.

“No, I’m not,” Gordon said.

Bree backed up fast and hard. She slammed into the attorney’s chest and grabbed for her service pistol. He pulled his gun away from her head, flipped it, caught it by its barrel, and used the grip like a hammerhead against her wrist.

The blow was excruciating. Her gun fell into the dust. Gordon flipped the gun again and had the pistol back to Bree’s head before she realized her wrist was probably broken.

“You’ll never get out of here alive,” she said, gasping.

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” he said, dragging her along.

“We have a SWAT team surrounding this place,” Bree said.

Gordon stopped short and jerked Bree tight to him.

“Bring on the amateurs, then,” he said. “I’ll watch them fall one by one, starting with you, Chief Stone.”

“You’re just going to shoot me in cold blood?”

“Just as you would shoot me.”

Bree felt the pressure from his gun barrel increase against her head, and she saw Alex and the kids and Nana Mama in her mind. It broke her.

“No,” she whimpered. “Don’t. Please.”

“To go out in a blaze of glory, you got to start somewhere,” Gordon said.

“Drop the gun, Gordon,” Muller shouted.

Bree caught the old detective in her peripheral vision, crouched in a horse stance between two cars fifteen yards away and aiming a.357 Magnum Colt Python revolver at Gordon.

“Now, I’m nowhere near the shot you are, Mr. Gordon, but I can’t miss from this distance,” Muller said calmly. “And I won’t hesitate to shoot a cop killer. So put the gun down, Mr. Gordon. Put it down real slow, and surrender.”

Muller would later say that he saw Gordon’s shoulders relax and his eyes turn peaceful then, as if he’d gone inside himself, preparing for whatever was to come.

Bree felt the pressure of the pistol muzzle increase, as if Gordon were squeezing the trigger. But then it eased, and Gordon dropped the gun slowly from her temple and then snapped it toward Muller.

The shots were so close, they were deafening and disorienting.

Bree staggered forward, her ears ringing. Several seconds passed before she realized that Muller was still on his feet and at her side and that Lance Gordon was dead on the ground, a bullet hole between his eyes.

96

NIGHT HAD FALLEN. A rainstorm was predicted. Sampson and I were sitting in a black unmarked Dodge pickup parked in a barnyard roughly a thousand yards down the road from Colonel Jeb Whitaker’s place. We’d followed the signal from the bug we’d planted on his motorcycle back to his property.

We called Mahoney and learned that George Potter had died of an embolism. Colonel Whitaker had been there and called for nurses, but by the time they reached him it was too late.

It took an hour and forty minutes for Mahoney to arrive with the first of twenty heavily armed FBI agents. During that time, ten different vehicles had come up the road and then disappeared down Whitaker’s driveway.

Mahoney’s men were now working their way into position around the colonel’s six wooded acres. Mahoney had asked two U.S. Navy CID investigators to participate, since they would have jurisdiction over the Marine colonel, and he’d even called for a U.S. Coast Guard cutter to block the way out of the Chesapeake backwater that adjoined Whitaker’s land.

“Gotta stretch my legs,” Sampson said as my phone rang.

“We got them,” Bree said. “Tommy’s killers.”

“Good for you,” I said, smiling. “Tell me everything.”

After Bree walked me through the events at the shooting range, I said, “Don’t you think you should have gone in with more force?”

“Muller was with me, and ten Maryland state troopers had the place cordoned off. I had the situation under control until Vivian keeled over.”

I didn’t push the point. “The important thing is you’re safe and you caught Tommy’s killers, and you’ll see Vivian behind bars. That’s a job well done no matter how you look at it, Chief Stone.”

“Thank you,” Bree said, the tension in her voice gone. “I love you.”

“Always and forever, sugar.”

“When are you going in?”

“Soon.”

“Be careful.”

“I’m not walking in there alone, if that’s what you mean. I’m going in with a big show of force all around me.”

She sighed and said, “Call me when it’s over.”

I set the phone down, wondering again if Bree and Muller had been foolhardy. Gordon was an exceptional pistol shot. God only knew the carnage he could have caused with his state-of-the-art gun and the six full clips they’d found on him.

Mahoney came to my window, said, “They’re in position. No activity in the yard. The powwow looks to be inside the house.”

“You trace the license plates we gave you?” Sampson asked, getting back in the driver’s seat.

The FBI agent nodded. “A few. The black Suburban? Hobbes. The Range Rover? Fender, who is a scary SOB.”

“So we heard,” I said. “When do I call?”

“Now,” Mahoney said.

I punched in the number of Colonel Whitaker’s cell, courtesy of the Naval Academy, and put the phone on speaker. He answered on the second ring.

“Whitaker.”

“This is Alex Cross, Colonel.”

There was a long pause before he said, “Yes. How can I help, Dr. Cross?”

“You can give yourself up, you and your followers, the Regulators.”

After another, longer pause, Whitaker chuckled softly and said, “Now, why would we ever do such a cowardly thing?”

“Because you’re surrounded, and we want to avoid unnecessary bloodshed,” I said.

“Always the noble one, aren’t you, Dr. Cross?” Whitaker said. “Well, the Regulators are not surrendering. We are prepared to fight to the last man.”

“Why?” I said.

“Ask John Brown,” Whitaker said. “His goals are our goals.”

“You’re wanted for murder and treason, Colonel. The arrest warrants have already been written and are ready to be served. It doesn’t have to end in a firefight.”

“Ah, but it does, Dr. Cross,” Whitaker said. “A fight to the death is how all slave rebellions begin.”

He ended the call.

Mahoney picked up a radio and ordered his tactical team to move closer, probe for booby traps, and try to get infrared on the house. Five minutes later, the same report came back from all sides of Whitaker’s home: The lights were on, but the shades and drapes were drawn. Infrared showed fifteen people in the house, fourteen sitting around the living room and one up front talking.

“No one’s moving inside and no one’s posted outside,” the tactical agent in charge said over the radio.

“All in one room,” Mahoney said. “Take them before they fan out.”

“Roger that. We are go.”

Mahoney’s blue sedan soon squealed out of the barnyard with us behind, tearing up the country road toward Whitaker’s place. We stopped in front of the driveway, barring any exit, and got out, drawing guns even as the first flash-bang grenades went off.

Sampson said, “I promised Billie I wouldn’t play cowboy.”

“And you’re not,” I said. “We’re doing the rational thing, letting the pros handle the rough stuff.”

We trotted down the driveway expecting World War III to erupt at any moment, but all we heard after the grenades was doors and windows breaking and voices calling “Clear.”

The wind had picked up again, and it was starting to rain as we followed Mahoney up into the house and saw the fifteen mannequins arranged around the room in various poses.

Every one of them was connected to electrical lines through sockets embedded in their heels. Their plastic skin was warm to the touch.

97

A RAPID SEARCH of the house revealed a fully equipped gunsmith operation in the basement, empty crates of ammunition, empty cardboard boxes for AR-rifle components, and the empty gun racks of a formidable arsenal.

Outside, in the building wind and rain, we figured out how they’d escaped. Whitaker’s fishing boat was still up on its lift when we went down by the dock, but in the barn we found large, empty raft trailers and empty ten-gallon gasoline cans.

“They went to the waiting rafts the second they got here,” I said.

Sampson nodded. “And they trolled out of here, probably by quiet electric motor and then by heavy outboard. They were probably out on the Chesapeake before the Coast Guard was even notified.”

“Where the hell do they think they’re going?” Mahoney said. “I mean, we’ll have Whitaker’s face everywhere within hours. He will be spotted. They can’t escape.”

“Maybe they don’t mean to escape,” I said. “Maybe we should take the colonel at his word: A fight to the death is how all slave rebellions begin.”

“Then why didn’t he stand his ground here?” Mahoney asked.

“He wants the fight to be somewhere else,” I said.

“What I don’t get is why,” Sampson said. “What did Whitaker say on the phone, Alex? About John Brown?”

“That they had the same goals.”

“Freeing slaves?” Mahoney said.

I thought about that and then did a quick Google search on my phone. After scanning the site that came up first, I said, “Brown was an abolitionist, a radical one who believed the slaves could be freed only through armed insurrection. He attacked a U.S. military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, trying to steal thousands of guns he planned to give to the slaves so they could start the rebellion.”

“So, what,” Sampson said. “Was Whitaker telling you he’s going to attack a military installation, steal guns, and give them away?”

“They already built enough guns for a small army,” Mahoney said.

“Any rebellion can use more,” I said. “So if that’s what their intent is, what’s the target?”

“Not Harpers Ferry,” Mahoney said. “There’s no arsenal there anymore.”

“The Naval Academy?” Sampson said. “The Coast Guard base? Or down to Norfolk? It’s not that far south, and a big Zodiac boat with the right engines could handle the waves.”

“Especially if there were ex-Special Forces operators driving,” I said. “Those guys are like ninjas. And we can’t go looking for them from helicopters with searchlights in an area as big as the Chesapeake.”

“We’ll have to wait for them to make a move,” Mahoney said. “At least until dawn. I’ll notify the Pentagon to beef up security at all military posts within five hundred miles.”

“Can’t they activate one of those surveillance blimps that got away the other day?” Sampson asked.

“All the blimps were grounded after that one got loose,” Mahoney said, dialing his cell.

In my mind I saw that image of the bearded Amish man in his buggy looking up at the sky and the pale runaway blimp. And then it hit me.

“Ned,” I said, feeling queasy.

“Hold on,” he said. “The Pentagon duty officer is coming back with-”

I pulled his hand and phone away from his ear and said, “What do you know about that army blimp that got free?”

Annoyed, Mahoney said, “The cable snapped in a high wind. Big embarrassment. Went way up north into Pennsylvania, took out electricity for three hundred thousand people before the army shot it down over a big field.”

“What if it was cut intentionally, Ned?” I said. “What if Whitaker or one of his followers did it so they could land on Aberdeen Proving Ground without being detected?”

98

THE WIND WAS gusting to fifty knots or more. Rain flew horizontally and lashed the windshield of the U.S. Army Humvee that Sampson, Mahoney, and I were riding in. Major Frank Lacey was at the wheel.

Major Lacey was the duty officer that night at Aberdeen. He’d been waiting with the Humvee at the main gate on Hartford Boulevard when we arrived.

“What do you think Whitaker’s after?” Lacey asked as we drove into the proving ground itself.

“What do you have here?” Sampson said.

“It’s more like what don’t we have here,” Lacey said. “We’ve got everything from small arms to ship cannons, and even some real nasty stuff in labs and storage facilities spread out over one hundred and fourteen square miles of terrain.”

I was riding in the backseat with Mahoney. “What’s the nastiest stuff you’ve got here?”

“The chemicals,” the major said without hesitation. “Left over from the old Edgewood Arsenal-the mustard gas, the chloropicrin, and the phosgene-all the way up to Agent Orange and the deadliest nerve agents.”

I thought about Whitaker following in John Brown’s footsteps, trying to arm a rebellion. He could be going for light automatic weapons,.50-caliber machine guns, maybe even rocket grenades and launchers.

But they were all awkward to move in any great quantity, and Whitaker and his followers wouldn’t be able to steal or carry enough of those weapons to make it worth infiltrating a U.S. Army facility. So the colonel must be going for something portable and-

“What’s the deadliest nerve agent here?” I asked.

Lacey said, “Probably a toss-up between VX and sarin.”

Then the major looked at me hard over his shoulder. “You don’t think he’s…”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling sick. “I do.”

“He’ll never get in. That place is a fortress,” Lacey said, but he floored the Humvee and grabbed the mike to a shortwave radio.

He asked to be put through to the shift commander at Edgewater 9.

A few moments later, Lieutenant Curtis, duty officer at base headquarters, reported, “We’re getting no answer from Edgewater Nine, Major.”

“They’re already in,” Sampson said.

“That’s impossible,” Major Lacey snapped, but then he triggered the microphone. “Curtis, ASAP move five platoons in chemical gear south to the Edgewater Nine access off the Old Baltimore Road. Call the Coast Guard. I want Romney, Cold, and Bush Creeks sealed. I want-”

The radio began beeping loud and long, sounding like the beginning of one of those emergency-alert-system drills.

The army major stared at it. “Sonofabitch!”

“What the hell is that?” Mahoney demanded.

The major ignored him. Wrenching the Humvee onto the Michaelsville Road heading south, Lacey barked into the radio, “Report.”

Curtis came back, “Storage bays one, three, and four at Edgewater Nine just opened without authorization, sir.”

Lacey hesitated, and then shouted, “Go to lockdown, Curtis. I repeat, go to lockdown. No one in or out. Alert command of breach and intrusion into chemical sector. Move MPs to block the Old Baltimore Road at Abbey Point and Palmer Roads. And all personnel in that sector are ordered to move north immediately.”

“Sound the general alarm, Major?”

“Affirmative,” Lacey said.

“What’s in those open bays?” I asked.

“The nerve gas VX,” Lacey said. “Think of it as a pesticide for humans.”

The Aberdeen Proving Ground’s alert system began to groan and bray around us. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, a two-tone blast and blare from the deepest and loudest trumpet you can imagine. Large amplifiers set up across the military base took up the alert. The sound seemed to vibrate through the Humvee and our bodies as we reached Palmer and then the Old Baltimore Road.

As we hurtled south in the Humvee, we were buffeted by building winds and rain. Blue MP lights flickered behind us as we bore down on Edgewater 9 and the country’s deadly reserves of VX.

Tasteless. Odorless. A weapon of mass destruction. A pesticide for humans. The most deadly substance on earth.

What in God’s name would compel Whitaker to take such a drastic step?

And why in God’s name was I going to Edgewater 9 to stop him?

99

WITH THE ALARMS blaring all around him, Lester Hobbes calmly peered through a jeweler’s loupe and dismantled a warhead built in the 1960s.

Three of the warheads had already been taken apart. Four sealed steel canisters containing a total of one gallon of VX were already tucked into Colonel Whitaker’s knapsack.

A gallon already, Whitaker thought. Consider the destruction a tenth of a teardrop of VX could cause. Consider what a quart could do in DC.

If they were going to clean house, they had to begin with the politicians and the lobbyists, didn’t they? K Street and Capitol Hill. The lackeys of the slavers, Whitaker thought. The den of the slavers. They’ll get a taste of their own weapons. By our sacrifice, the country will be forced to reboot and start all over-

“Got it,” Hobbes said, extracting the fifth canister of VX and lobbing it to Fender, who caught it and stuffed it into his pack.

Whitaker wasn’t happy. He’d planned to control every drop of the nerve agent himself, but he didn’t have time to argue.

“Move,” he said. “We’ve got a tide to catch.”

They left the army sentries bound and gagged on the storage facility’s cement floor and exited the building, coming out in the driving rain. Moving in a pack with Whitaker at its center, they ran hard. The colonel’s knee immediately began to throb. He gritted his teeth and hobbled on. Nothing was going to stop him now.

“Do you want me to take the pack?” Cass asked.

“No,” Whitaker said. “It’s mine.”

The first shot rang out from the woods back by the Old Baltimore Road access. One of Whitaker’s men fell. Two more shots. Another collapsed.

Hobbes, Fender, and Cass turned and opened fire, spraying bullets at their unseen enemies in the trees.

100

I SHOT. MAHONEY shot. So did Sampson.

We all hit our targets before a modern John Brown and his Regulators returned fire. I had to dive behind a log to protect my head. All we had were pistols and Major Lacey’s M4. They had rifles equal to Lacey’s as well as a weapon of mass destruction.

Major Lacey seemed unfazed at the idea of facing a WMD. He jumped up, aimed, and shot again, attacking the retreating Regulators with short bursts that took down three more of Whitaker’s people. Sampson and Mahoney broke out onto the lawn surrounding the facility.

I charged after them with Lacey just as the rain finally stopped. One of Whitaker’s soldiers turned and opened up. A bullet hit Mahoney’s left arm, broke bone, and knocked him down.

“Go!” he yelled when I got to his side.

I spotted an AR rifle by one of the dead Regulators, grabbed it, and kept on in a full sprint toward Sampson, who was peeking around the corner of the building. He had one of the ARs too and when I got to him he said he’d just seen the colonel and a woman running toward the sea marsh behind the storage facility.

As he swung his body around the corner, Sampson pulled the AR’s trigger. I jumped out after him in time to see Whitaker vanish into the swamp. The woman, however, lurched and stumbled before she disappeared after the colonel.

“I think you hit her,” I said.

I flipped on my Maglite and gripped it beneath the fore stock of the rifle. Sampson and Lacey joined me. We quickly spotted splotches of blood on the lawn. The blood flow was small but steady until we reached a maze of reeds, cattails, and towering marsh grass.

We lost the blood trail there. We cut back and forth along the edge of the marsh, seeing where the group had split up and gone in, breaking reeds. When we located the most pounded-down trail through the cattails, we took it and found blood again.

Mud sucked our shoes off in the first hundred yards, but we kept after them, Major Lacey calling in our location and direction of travel over a two-way radio.

“Coast Guard has birds in the air,” Lacey said with a gasp as we fought to stay somewhere in range of Whitaker’s band of fleeing Regulators.

“Here’s big blood,” said Sampson, shining light on a splash near a tan reed. “And more there. She’s really starting to throw it now.”

101

CASS WAS STRUGGLING. Colonel Whitaker could hear the liquid building in her lungs with every breath.

“Leave me, Jeb,” she said. “I don’t think I can make it.”

Squinting to adjust the fit of his night-vision goggles, Whitaker grabbed her under the elbow. He ignored the fire in his knee and fought forward through the muck, following their back trail through the reeds as well as Hobbes and Fender, who’d gotten ahead of them.

“We just have to make the Zodiacs, Cass,” Whitaker said. “Even if they bring in a Coast Guard cutter, they can’t cover the whole mouth of that creek. We’ll sneak out running electric. We’ll disappear in the storm.”

Cass stumbled and went to her knees. She coughed, and through the night-vision goggles, Whitaker saw black sprays of blood blow from her lips.

“Jesus,” he said, starting to panic. “Jesus.”

“Leave me, Colonel.” Cass gasped.

“Can’t do that, Captain,” he said, trying to get her up.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll find me. They’ll make sure I live.”

After a beat, Whitaker let her go. He took one long last look at Cass in the green hazy light of his goggles, pointed his rifle, and shot her through the head.

102

WE HEARD THE rifle shot loud and clear, so close it helped get us back on the track when we’d lost it. I cupped my hand over the Maglite to keep it from being seen and pushed on until I heard a sudden choked cry behind me.

I twisted around and saw Sampson about six yards back, struggling, his right leg buried to the thigh in the muck.

“I’m stuck,” he said, grimacing. “Shit. Some kind of root. Go!”

“We’ll come back for him,” Lacey said, pushing by me.

The rain began again, and the major and I forged on through the sea of reeds, seeing blood every six or seven yards until we came upon the woman we’d seen in the images from the Guryev massacre. Blond now. There was a bullet hole in her skull.

“Whitaker can’t be far,” Lacey said and took off in front of me again.

I wanted to tell him to slow down, not to let his headlamp dance so far ahead of him. But the major was a man on a mission, driven to stop that nerve agent from leaving his army base.

After another hundred yards of slogging on, Lacey disappeared around a dogleg bend in the stomped-down trail through the marsh.

I reached the turn and heard the major yell, “Put down your weapons, or I’ll shoot!”

I ran forward in time to hear close gunfire and see Major Lacey knocked off his feet. He landed in the trail ahead of me and lay there, unmoving.

I shut my light off and listened.

“Got that bastard,” I heard one of them say.

“Nicely done, Lester,” another said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Fender, I need that fifth canister,” Whitaker said.

“When we’re at the rendezvous, Colonel,” Fender said.

Keeping the light off, I groped my way forward as if reading Braille, feeling the walls of cattails to either side of me and almost tripping over the major’s body. A powerful outboard engine fired to life. Then another.

“Use the electrics!” the colonel said.

“Sorry, Colonel,” Hobbes said. “Fender and I are going for distance, not stealth. Come with us. Leave that raft for the others.”

“I’m right behind you,” Whitaker said.

The first raft roared off, and through the rain I could tell they were not far ahead of me. It sounded like Whitaker was stowing and strapping gear, and he was doing it with no discernible light source.

Night-vision goggles, I thought, and in my stocking feet I carefully stepped free of the reeds and onto a sand bar with an inch of tidal water on it.

The colonel grunted with effort. I heard the raft slide.

He grunted again, and I heard the raft slide a second time, gritty, like coarse sandpaper on soft wood.

Whitaker couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen yards from me, by the sound of it. So I eased into a crouch, raised my gun and flashlight, and whistled softly.

Then I flipped on the Maglite, trying to shine it right in his goggles.

103

COLONEL WHITAKER CRIED out in surprise and pain. He threw up his arms to shield the goggles from magnifying my already powerful light.

I charged into point-blank range then, still shining the beam on him as he cringed, tore off the goggles, and threw them down.

“I can’t see,” he said, bent over and rubbing at his eyes. “Christ, I’m blind!”

“Jeb Whitaker,” I said, taking another step closer. “Get on the ground, hands behind your head.”

“I said I’m blind!”

“I don’t care,” I said. “You are under arrest for murder, treason, and-”

Whitaker uncoiled from his position so fast I never got off a shot. He spun spiral and low toward me and delivered the knife hard and underhand.

I saw the Ka-Bar knife coming but couldn’t move quick enough to keep the blade from being buried deep in my right thigh. I howled in agony. My light and gun came off Whitaker long enough for him to continue his attack.

Two strides and he was on me. He grabbed my right hand, my pistol hand, and twisted it so hard, the gun dropped from my fingers.

The back-to-back shocks-being stabbed and then having my wrist nearly broken-were almost too much, and for a moment I thought I’d succumb. But before the Marine colonel could snatch my light from me, I swung the butt end of the flashlight hard at his head.

I connected.

Whitaker lurched and let go of my numb hand.

I kept after him with my good left hand, raising the flashlight to chop at him. The colonel dodged the blow and punched me so hard in the face I saw stars. Whitaker grabbed me by the straps on my bulletproof vest and punched me again in the face.

“You’re not stopping me, Cross,” he said, punching me a third and fourth time, breaking my nose. “Nothing’s stopping me from fumigating the bugs in DC that have destroyed this great country.”

My legs buckled. I sagged and began to swoon, heading toward darkness.

Fight, a voice deep down inside me yelled. Fight, Alex.

But I was barely holding on to consciousness, and I went to my knees in the water.

“You think you can stop a rebellion, Cross?” Whitaker demanded, gasping, after punching me a fifth time. “An uprising?”

The cold water against my legs roused me enough to mumble, “Using nerve gas?”

“It’s how you treat any cancer. Poison the body and cut out the tumors.”

“You’re insane,” I said.

He let go of my vest then and kneed me so hard in the face, I blacked out. I fell onto the flooded gravel bar, but even with the chill water against my skin, I lost time for a bit.

Then I was aware of Whitaker stepping over me. He stood there, straddling my chest. In a daze, I saw his silhouette above me in the beam of the flashlight I had managed to hold on to. He had my pistol.

“I’m tired of you, Cross,” the colonel said. “I’ve got to move on, stoke the next phase of the rebellion.”

He swung my gun up toward me.

I did the only thing I could think of.

I dropped the flashlight, wrenched Whitaker’s knife from my thigh, turned it skyward, and swung it in an upward arc, driving the blade into the back of his left leg, high under his buttocks, and burying it to the hilt.

I felt the tip strike bone and I twisted the knife.

Whitaker screamed and fired my pistol, missing my head by an inch. He flailed, attempting to pull the blade free.

I twisted the knife again. He dropped my gun and reached back, frantically trying to stop me.

I twisted the knife a third time, then wrenched it out of him and lay there on the flooded gravel, panting.

“Ha,” Whitaker said, stumbling back two feet, splashing to a stop. “See? I’m still standing, Cross. Artificial knee and I’m still standing.”

“You’re a dead man standing, Colonel,” I said with a grunt, dropping the knife and fishing for the waterproof flashlight still shining in the water. “I just put your knife through your femoral artery.”

By the time I got the flashlight beam back on him, Whitaker had gone from confident to confused. He was bent over slightly, his fingers probing the wound, no doubt feeling the blood that had to be gushing out of him. I thought the colonel would go for his belt to try to tourniquet his leg.

Instead, Whitaker went berserk. He charged, kicking me twice before diving on top of me and grabbing my neck with both hands.

As he throttled me, I tried to hit him with the flashlight again or trade it for the knife. But between my own loss of blood and the beating I’d taken, I couldn’t fight him. I just couldn’t.

My chest heaved for air and got none. Whitaker had this wild gleam in his eyes as my vision narrowed to blotchy darkness.

This is the end, I thought. The final…

The grip the colonel had on my throat started to weaken. I got sips of air, and my sight returned.

Whitaker was sitting on my chest, his head swaying to and fro right above mine.

“No, Cross,” he said. “John Brown, he… Mercury, he never…”

He panicked then, and tried to stand.

But halfway to his feet, Whitaker lurched off me, staggered, and then crashed into three inches of cold water, dead.

104

TWO DAYS LATER, my face was still swollen and bruised. The knife wound had been sutured but it hurt like hell. Bree had won a commendation for solving the murder of the late Thomas McGrath. And Jannie’s orthopedist had called to say that her latest MRI showed the bone in her foot healing nicely.

“We have lots to be thankful for,” I said as we sat down to dinner.

“Says a man who looks like he went four rounds with Mike Tyson,” Nana Mama said, and Ali giggled.

“A man who went four rounds with Mike Tyson and survived,” I said, smiling and wincing at my split lip. “Anyway, we’re all here. We’re all healthy. We’re all safe. And for that, I for one am grateful.”

We held hands and said grace and then dove into a chicken Nana Mama had roasted with Dijon mustard, pearl onions, and lemongrass. It was delicious, another triumph, and we showered praise on her.

My grandmother was pleased and in peak form as dinner went on, cracking jokes and telling stories I’d heard and loved long ago. As she did, my mind drifted to the aftermath of Colonel Whitaker’s raid on Edgewater 9. Five Regulators had died in the firefight trying to escape. Two had been taken into custody by army MPs and had lawyered up.

Hobbes and Fender eluded the Coast Guard and escaped with a canister of VX, which had the country in a heightened state of alert. The men’s photographs were everywhere, and Ned Mahoney, who’d come through surgery with flying colors, was saying it was only a matter of time before they were located and captured.

George Potter, the DEA SAC, was now believed to be the source of the Regulators’ intelligence regarding the criminal supercartel targeted in the massacres.

The U.S. Naval Academy had taken two black eyes. Colonel Whitaker and U.S. Navy captain Cassandra “Cass” Pope were both graduates of Annapolis and on the faculty. Whitaker and Pope left vitriolic letters on their work computers declaring that slavers were destroying the country and that it was time for the slaves to arm themselves, rise up, and fight.

I shuddered to think what might have happened to Washington and to my family if they had managed to release a gallon of VX in the nation’s capital. But the important thing was that the Regulators or the vigilantes or whatever you wanted to call them were no longer operating. The road-rage killer was gone too. And no one had died from-

Someone started pounding on our front door.

Then she started to yell.

105

“ALEX?” A WOMAN cried as she rang the doorbell. “Nana Mama? You in there?”

I got up and almost went for my gun before looking through the window and seeing Chung Sun Chung. She was in her down coat, despite the heat, and she was ringing our bell and knocking like someone playing a one-note xylophone and a bongo drum.

I limped down the hall and opened the door, expecting to find a traumatized woman or a woman in peril. Instead, Sun threw her head back and let loose with a real crazy cackle of a laugh.

“Sun, what’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” She chortled and then came to me and started beating her little fists lightly against my chest. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Sun stopped hitting me and cackled again. “Everything’s right. Where is your Nana Mama?”

“I’m right here, Sun,” my grandmother said, appearing in the hallway with the rest of the family. “God’s sake, the way you’re carrying on, you’d think I’d-”

There was a frozen moment when everyone was quiet. And then Sun howled, threw her arms over her head, and did a little jig.

“You didn’t see the drawing?” the convenience-store owner cried, pushing by me. “You won! You won the Powerball!”

My grandmother looked at Sun as if she had two heads. “I did not.”

“You did so!” Sun said, dancing toward her. “I’ve been selling you the same numbers for nine years. Seven, twelve, nine, six, one, eleven, and three in the Powerball. I saw the draw!”

Nana Mama scowled. “See there? You’re wrong, Sun. I always put a two in the Powerball, so I won something, but-”

“No, Nana,” I said, dumbstruck. “I changed half your tickets, added one to your last Powerball number. I asked Sun to put a three there.”

“Exactly!” Sun cried and started jigging again.

“Oh my God!” Jannie yelled.

My grandmother looked about ready to keel over. Bree saw it and came up to hold her steady.

“Well, I never,” Nana said, looking at all of us in total wonder and then at Sun again. “You’re sure?”

“I ran six blocks in a down coat in this heat,” Sun said. “I’m sure.”

“How much did I win?”

Sun told her. Jannie and Ali started whooping.

Nana Mama stood there a long moment, shaking her head, mouth slack with disbelief, and then she threw her chin sky-ward and cackled with joy.