Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 71

Nazad and the three other men strained against two nylon straps he’d wrapped around the second barrel that had come down from the truck. They pulled the heavy, awkward load over snow that was becoming packed down and more navigable despite the flakes still falling all around them.

Grunting, they made one last heave, slid the barrel up against the green railcar, and tipped it upright. It had to weigh three hundred pounds, at least.

“Third one comes out first,” the Tunisian said with a gasp as he climbed up onto the buckles that held the train cars together and then up over the transom into the container itself. He flipped on a headlamp and saw three blue barrels that looked almost exactly like the substitutes he’d brought to the door. They were sitting up on a pallet.

Each barrel had a plastic sleeve glued to its side that held documents identifying its manufacturer as Pinkler Industries, and its contents as organophosphates. Nazad carefully stripped the sleeve label off the far right barrel, set it aside, and then, together with his men, muscled the barrel to the door. They wrapped the nylon moving straps beneath the barrel and then eased it out of the container car, two men holding the straps, two men guiding the barrel down.

When they had it sitting upright beside the container, Nazad said, “Hurry. We rest when we are finished.”

In seconds they had the straps beneath the first substitute barrel from the van, and then they reversed the process and loaded it inside. Feeling like he’d soaked his clothes with sweat despite the cold weather, the Tunisian nevertheless pushed on, dancing the replacement barrel up beside the two on the pallet. He got out glue, smeared it on the back of the plastic sleeve, and affixed the sleeve to the substitute barrel.

And so it went, Nazad and his men moving each barrel loaded with organophosphates out of the railcar and putting in its place a look-alike barrel filled with sand. With the lading documents attached to the containers, no one would figure out the organophosphates were missing until it was far too late.

Nazad gestured with his chin toward a cardboard box at the rear of the pallet and said, “Take that one too. Then we’ll lock up and leave.”

One of the men picked it up with a grunt and waddled toward the door.

The Tunisian checked his watch. They’d been working nonstop for almost an hour and a half. Hala had done the impossible, he thought. Hala had stood up for God, and the One had rewarded her for her boldness, rewarded all of them for their boldness. Their purpose was, clearly, a sacred-

The light nearly blinded him.

“What the hell’s going on in here?” a man’s voice demanded in English. “And who the hell are you?”