Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 50

I recognized the vehicles in an instant. Both were FBI mobile command centers, probably brought over from the parking garage beneath the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Jeep stopped beside the forward command center and I climbed out.

The wind was picking up, penetrating the blue police parka and Washington Redskins wool hat I wore, and I hustled to the door of the mobile command center. I happened to glance beneath it and saw barely any snow there at all. The door opened with a whoosh, distracting me. I climbed up the stairs and found Ned Mahoney waiting.

Lean, intense, with distinctive gray-blue eyes, Mahoney had once run the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, which also served as the Bureau’s domestic counterterrorism unit. Until recently, Mahoney had been in charge of specialized training for agents up and down the East Coast; now he ran a new rapid-response operation that the Bureau activated in times of crisis, like this one. Beyond him stood Bobby Sparks, taller than Mahoney, early thirties, and currently the East Coast HRT leader. Both men were dressed casually.

I shook hands with them, said, “You know for sure she’s in there?”

“If it’s not her, it’s her twin,” Mahoney said. “She paraded through the main hall, gave the cameras a show. Since then she’s shown a fairly sophisticated understanding of the cameras, their positions, and their limitations. She’s in the food court downstairs.”

He gestured over his shoulder at three FBI agents working a bank of screens. “We’re tied into every camera in the station, and the memory banks.”

I followed him and stood behind the agents, looking at screens that showed various scenes inside the train station, including one in the lower food court. “Where is she?”

An agent, a woman with close-cropped reddish hair, tapped the food-court feed, said, “She went there, to the right side of the escalator, just outside of range. There’s no way out of there, and she’s in plain sight of everyone else.”

“How long’s she been there?”

“Five minutes, tops,” Bobby Sparks said. “Twenty-three inside total.”

“And you guys are already here?” I asked.

Mahoney did not answer for a moment. Bobby Sparks said, “We’re quick.”

I squinted, realizing what I’d seen outside. “No, you’re not. There’s no snow under this bus, which means it was parked here before the storm started.”

The FBI agent looked annoyed. “Nothing gets by you, does it?”

“Rarely,” I said. “Level with me, gentlemen.”

Sparks appeared conflicted, but Mahoney said to one of the agents working at the screens, “Call up the Mokiri interrogation. Fast.”