London Bridges (Alex Cross 10)

No coherent theory about what had happened in the desert.

How could there be?

It was chaos, and that was the beauty of it. Nothing scared people more than what they didn’t understand.

Case in point, a local L.A. hot shit named Fedya Abramtsov and his wife, Liza. Fedya wanted to be a big Mafiya gangster, but also lead the life of a movie-star type in Beverly Hills. This was Fedya and Liza’s house that he was staying in now, but really, the Wolf thought of it as his house; after all, their money was his money. Without him, they were nothing but small-time punks with big ambitions.

Fedya and Liza hadn’t even known he was at their house. The couple had been at their place in Aspen and finally got back to L.A. at just past ten that evening.

Imagine their surprise.

A powerful-looking man sitting by himself in the living room. Just sitting there. So peaceful. Rhythmically squeezing a rubber ball in his right hand.

They had never seen him before.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded Liza. “What are you doing here?”

The Wolf spread his arms. “I am the one who gave you all of this wonderful stuff. And what do you give me in return? Disrespect like this? I am the Wolf.”

Fedya had heard enough already. He knew that if the Wolf was there, letting himself be seen, then he and Liza were as good as dead. Best to run and hope to God the Wolf is here alone, unlikely as that may be.

He took a single step, and the Wolf raised a handgun from out of the seat cushion. He was good with a gun. He shot Fedya Abramtsov once in the back, once in the back of his neck.

“He’s very dead,” he calmly said to Liza, which he knew to be a nickname of hers. “I prefer Yelizaveta,” he said. “Not so common, so Americanized. Come and sit. Come. Please.”

The Wolf patted his lap. “Come. I don’t like to repeat myself.”

The girl was a pretty one—smart, too—and apparently ruthless as a snake. She walked across the room and sat in the Wolf’s lap. She did as she was told, anyway. Good girl.

“I like you, Yelizaveta. But what choice do I have—you’ve disobeyed me. You and Fedya stole my money. Don’t argue. I know it’s true.” He looked into her beautiful brown eyes. “Do you know zamochit?” he asked. “The breaking of bones?”

Apparently Yelizaveta did, because she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“This is good,” said the Wolf as he grabbed the woman’s slender left wrist. “Everything is going so well today.”

He started with Yelizaveta’s little finger, just the pinkie.

Chapter 13

HAD A WAR STARTED? If it had, who was the enemy?

It was pitch-black, and it was freezing cold in the desert. Scary and disorienting, to put it mildly. No moon out. Was that part of the plan? What was supposed to happen next? Where? To whom? Why?

I tried to collect my thoughts and make a rough plan to take us through the next few hours in at least a semiorganized manner. Difficult to do, maybe impossible. We were looking for a small convoy of army trucks and jeeps that seemed to have disappeared, to have been gobbled up by the desert. But also a Ford Bronco with the Nevada license tags 322JBP and a sunset design.

And we were looking for Geoffrey Shafer. Why would the Weasel be here?

While we waited for something to break, maybe a message or a warning, I walked around what had been Sunrise Valley. Where the bomb had actually detonated, buildings and vehicles hadn’t just been flattened, they’d been practically vaporized. Little bits of death and destruction, sparks and ash, were still floating in the air. The night sky was masked by a dark and oily cloud of smoke, and I was struck by the unsettling idea that only man could create something like this, and only man would want to.

As I wandered through the mounds of debris, I also talked to agents and techs involved in the investigation and I began to make a few crime-scene notes of my own:

Bits and pieces of the mobile-home camp are scattered everywhere.

Witnesses describe canisters dropped from a prop plane.

One falling can seemed about to strike a trailer home, then exploded in midair above the town.

At first, the explosion was like a “white, undulating jellyfish cloud,” then the cloud ignited.