Detective Cross

Chapter 16

Bree’s phone jangled at five minutes to three in the morning.

I groaned and turned over, seeing her silhouette sitting up in bed.

“Bree Stone,” she answered groggily.

Then she stiffened. Her free hand reached out and tapped me as she put the call on speaker.

“A city on edge,” the voice purred. “A third bomb found. Fears of more to come.”

The diction and tone of the bomber’s voice was as Bree had described it. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman talking.

“Are there more to come?”

“Every day until people start to feel it in their bones,” the bomber said. “Until there’s a shift in their mind-set, so they understand what it feels like.”

“What kind of shift? Feel like what?”

“Still don’t get it, do you? Look in Union Station, Chief Stone. In a few hours it will be packed with commuters.”

The connection died.

“Shit,” Bree said. She threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, already making calls as she moved toward the closet.

I was up and tugging on clothes when central dispatch answered her call, and she started barking orders as she dressed.

“We have a credible bomb threat in Union Station,” Bree said. “Call Metro Transit Police. Clear Union Station and set up a perimeter outside. Get dogs and bomb squads there ASAP. Alert Chief Michaels. Alert FBI SAC Mahoney. Alert Capitol Police. Alert the mayor, and Homeland Security. I’ll be there in nine minutes, tops.”

She stabbed the button to end the call and tugged on a blue sweatshirt emblazoned with METRO POLICE on the back. I was tying my shoes when she came out of the closet.

“What are you doing?”

“Going with you,” I said. “Mahoney will be there soon enough.”

Bree hesitated, but then nodded. “You can drive.”

Eight minutes later I slammed on the brakes and parked in front of the flashing blue lights of two Capitol Hill Police cruisers blocking Massachusetts Avenue and 2nd Street in Northeast.

Bree jumped out, her badge up. “I’m Metro Chief Stone.”

“FBI bomb squad and a Metro’s K-9 unit just crossed North Capitol Street, heading toward the station, Chief,” one officer said.

“The station clear?”

“Affirmative,” another officer said. “The last of the cleaning crew just left.”

Bree glanced at me, said, “Dr. Cross is an FBI consultant on these bombings. He’ll be coming in with me.”

The officers stood aside. We hurried along deserted Mass Avenue toward the now familiar vehicles of the FBI bomb squad, and two Metro K-9 teams parked out in front of the station. Three men walked toward us wearing workmen’s coveralls.

“You with the cleaning crew?” I asked, stopping.

The men nodded. Bree said, “Catch up.”

I asked them a few questions and found Bree at the back of the FBI’s Bomb Squad vehicle, where Peggy Denton was suiting up.

“Do we have a deadline?” Denton asked.

“It wasn’t put that way,” Bree said. “Just a suggestion to look in Union Station because at six a.m. the station will be packed with commuters.”

“Awful big place to sweep in two hours and twenty minutes,” Denton said, checking her watch.

“You can narrow it down,” I said.

“How’s that?” Bree asked.

“Your bomber likes trash cans. Three of the four IEDs were in them. The cleaners I just spoke to said they were working from the front entrance north. They swept, vacuumed, and picked up trash bags in the main hall and on the first level of shops. Those garbage bags are in cleaning carts. Two are in the shopping hall and food court. One in the main hall. I’d take the dogs to those carts first, and then sweep the second floor of shops and the Amtrak ticketing and the train platforms. Metro station after that.”

The FBI bomb squad commander looked to Bree. “That work, Chief?”

“It does,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Cross.”

“Anytime,” I said.

Ned Mahoney showed up, along with two FBI bomb-sniffing canines and the entire Metro bomb unit.

“We’ve got to stop meeting this way, Chief,” Mahoney said, bleary-eyed and drinking a cup of Starbucks.

“Our secret’s out,” she said.

“He’s escalating,” I said. “The interval between attacks is getting shorter. Twenty-four hours between the first and the next two. And now fifteen hours since then?”

“Sounds right,” Mahoney said, nodding. “How much time did he give us?”

“Two hours eighteen minutes,” Bree said. “Six a.m.”

Denton said, “If Dr. Cross is right and he hid it in a garbage can, we’ll find it a lot sooner than that.”

“Unless he’s using Yugoslavian C-4 again,” I said.

“Which is why we’ll treat every garbage bag or can as if it’s a live bomb.”

The first dogs went inside at 3:39 a.m. We went in after the bomb squads entered, and stood in the dramatic vaulted main hall of the station, listening to the echoes of the dogs and their handlers.

None of the K-9s reacted to the garbage carts the cleaners had abandoned. But Denton prudently had them turned over, dumping the trash bags, which she covered with bomb mats.

She couldn’t do that to every remaining trash bag in the station. Instead, she told her agents to don their protective cowls. They would retrieve every public garbage bag left in the rest of the building and put them in piles to be matted.

They cleared the second floor of the shops first. I noticed and pointed to a Washington Post newspaper box. The headlines read: A CITY ON EDGE. FEARS OF MORE TO COME.

“He was reading from the paper,” Bree said.

“Following his own exploits,” I said. “Enjoying himself.”

The dogs cleared the Amtrak Hall.

“It has to be out on one of the platforms then,” I told Bree and Mahoney. “The cleaners said they almost always do them last.”

Mahoney ordered the search personnel onto the platforms. We went through a short tunnel to Platform 6 and watched as the German shepherds loped past dark trains, flanking Platforms 1 and 2 to our far left, going from garbage receptacle to garbage receptacle, sniffing at the open doors to the coach cars.

Bree checked her watch.

“We’ll find it,” she said. “There’s only so many places he could have—”

The tracks to both sides of Platforms 4 and 5 were empty. There was nothing to block the brilliant flash of the bomb exploding in a trash can at Platform 4’s far north end, or the blast that boxed our ears and forced us to our knees.

It was 4 a.m. on the dot.