Merry Christmas, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 19)

SEEING THAT THE GRATE ABOVE THE STALL IN THE MEN’S RESTROOM HAD NO screws holding it to the wall, I stepped up on the toilet and yanked at it. It was exactly 6:57. It had taken us that long to clear the restroom and search it.

The grate didn’t budge. I used Mahoney’s flashlight and shone it through the slats before looking back at him, Bobby Sparks, and Captain Johnson. “Where do these ducts go?” I asked Johnson.

The Amtrak cop squinted at me in disbelief. “You think she got in there?”

“I don’t know how else to explain that the grate’s been wired shut from inside. So where do they go?”

Johnson looked confused. “I don’t know. And I don’t think there’s anyone from maintenance who can tell us until—”

“Wait, why don’t you know this?” Bobby Sparks asked incredulously.

“We control the gate areas and the tracks,” the Amtrak cop retorted hotly. “The station’s interior is the responsibility of a private management firm in Virginia, but everyone there’s got the night off. It’s Christmas, for God’s sake.”

I gestured angrily at the duct. “Where could it go? Or, better, what places would be vented by this ductwork?”

Captain Johnson thought a second, said, “Sbarro, the pizza place that’s around the corner here, and then the U.S. Postal Service facility, I guess.”

“How big is that?” Bobby Sparks asked.

“Big enough to handle everything coming off Capitol Hill, House and Senate side, and all the federal agencies around here.”

“There’s no chance anyone from the U.S. Postal Service is working on Christmas,” Mahoney said.

“As a matter of fact, there’s a skeleton crew in there right now,” Johnson said. “I saw them on the loading dock. They’re on until ten.”

I thought about that a second, then said, “Does the loading dock face First Street or the terminal?”

“Both,” the Amtrak officer said. “There’s a single steel roll-up door facing the street, and a double that allows access to the tracks.”

“She’s either escaping to the street or trying to get to the trains,” I said, moving toward the door. “Get men to the west end of that terminal, inside and outside. Tell them she’s dressed as a male, an Amtrak worker, and should be considered armed and dangerous.”

Captain Johnson began to sweat again as he barked orders into his radio. So did Mahoney and Bobby Sparks and I as we all sprinted to the security entrance that led down to the terminal, the loading platforms, and the train tracks.

CHAPTER

61

FEWER THAN FOUR MILES TO THE SOUTH, ACROSS THE RIVER IN ANACOSTIA, A white panel van sporting a sign that said CSX TRANSIT SUPPORT crept through the snow toward the Eleventh Street bridge, heading north into Washington.

The driver was dressed in work boots, a blue one-piece work suit similar to the one Hala wore, and a dark blue insulated Carhartt coat. There was a patch on the chest of the coat that said CSX MAINTENANCE SERVICES. Below that patch, the name HERB had been embroidered.

His real name was Omar Nazad, but he carried the Maryland driver’s license and employee ID of Herbert Montenegro of Falls Church, Virginia. A Tunisian who looked more Eastern European than Maghrebian, Nazad had entered the United States on a student visa to study for his doctorate in chemical engineering at Purdue University. But he had left the school almost immediately, disappearing into this new identity courtesy of Al Ayla and Hala Al Dossari.

They’d met six months before in a safe house run by a theater major at Syracuse University. Hala was older than Nazad by almost ten years, but she captivated him with her beauty and her passion for the cause. This plan had been their idea, conceived during the long, wet upstate New York spring and expanded and refined during the summer and early fall. Tonight they and the others would see it through, no matter the consequences.

“Brother?” came a male voice from behind Nazad, back in the interior of the van, which was dark but for the glow of a computer screen.

“I hear you, brother,” Nazad answered.

“Six minutes,” the man replied.

“We’ll just make—” Nazad stopped, cursed.

“What is wrong?”

“Police ahead. They’ve blocked off the left lane to the bridge. Quiet now.”

Nazad pulled shut dark drapes that separated the front seats from the van’s rear. He rolled slowly by a police officer waving a flashlight.