Merry Christmas, Alex Cross (Alex Cross 19)

“We need the feeds of all cameras in the station in the ten minutes or so after LaMonte died,” I said, heading out of the restroom.

Two minutes later, an FBI technician was running a swab test on the Macy’s bag, and I was looking at a long-angle shot of the northeast end of Union Station, the feed from the only camera that gave us a reasonable view of the area around the restroom. I sped it up, checking out everyone walking west of the McDonald’s.

“There we are,” Mahoney said, pointing to the image of the four of us hurrying toward the McDonald’s.

But I was staring at the man who’d glanced at us as we’d passed, a slight figure with sandy-colored hair who was wearing a workman’s jumpsuit that said AMTRAK and carrying a canvas tool bag.

“That’s off,” I said.

“What?” Mahoney asked.

“That tool bag,” I said. “It’s the kind of thing plumbers used to carry. Or masons. I don’t see a modern workman with something like that.”

The figure disappeared from view.

“Where’s he going?” Mahoney asked.

We were standing back out in the main hall by then. I looked around, orienting myself to the camera’s angle, and let my eye travel in the direction the workman had taken, seeing the tail end of a line of people clearing security and climbing down the stairs to Amtrak gates A through L.

“There’s an Acela leaving soon,” I said, running toward the line while Mahoney called out to the command center out on Louisiana Avenue, asking for all footage of the security gate since it had opened for boarding.

We had it in less than thirty seconds. I replayed it at four times the normal speed and quickly spotted the workman with the canvas bag. But he wasn’t in line for the Acela. He skirted the gate and walked all the way to the other end of the station, where he entered the men’s restroom.

We began to run. My phone rang. Bree.

“Alex?”

“I can’t talk,” I said. “I want to talk. More than you know, but I can’t.”

“What’s going on?”

“All I can say is that there is a very, very bad person in Union Station.”

“Give me a great Christmas present. Stay away from him.”

“It’s a woman, and I promise you I’ll try.”

CHAPTER

57

HALA TOOK A SLOW, DEEP BREATH, DROPPED THE TENSION FROM HER shoulders, and dwelled within the sight picture she had over the barrel of the suppressed pistol. The big Hispanic postal worker with the muttonchops turned from the open railcar and took two steps before she squeezed the trigger.

The pop the suppressed gun made going off seemed loud to her in the duct. But neither of the other two postal workers reacted until Muttonchops fell to his knees, hands trying to stop the blood from gushing out of the hole she’d put through his windpipe.

The second postal worker was bald. His pale skull made an easy target for her next shot, which went through the back of his head. The third worker, a thin black guy, seemed to have figured out he was next, because he ducked and ran zigzags across the loading dock, screaming for help.

He didn’t get any. Hala’s third shot shattered his pelvis as he tried to climb the stairs leading to the main postal facility. His legs buckled, leaving him howling at the bottom of the steps. Her fourth shot hit him in the chest, and he sagged forward.

Hala returned the gun to the tool bag and got out a power screwdriver fitted with a tungsten-coated drill bit. In less than two minutes, she’d reamed out the mounts holding the four screws and gripped the grate by the slats.

She felt the grate come free of the wall, moved it out, and then flicked it hard to her right. It clanged to the floor. After grabbing the tool bag, she wriggled her arms and shoulders free of the duct, looked right below her, and realized she wouldn’t need the thin rope she’d brought along.

Hala tossed the tool bag to her left, saw it land in one of the mail hampers. She focused on the hamper fifteen feet directly below her and squirmed free of the hole up to the top of her hips, then rotated so her back faced the wall. She let herself hang down it, felt her hips and legs begin to slide free of the duct.

The instant Hala felt the edge scrape the backs of her calves, she arched her spine, pushed her belly forward, and then let all that tension go in a snapping action. Her legs flipped her out and over the duct. As she fell, she rotated her legs around, as if she were dismounting off the balance beams of her childhood; her head glanced off the wall before she landed in a jolting squat that pulled something sharply in her left hip.

Hala grunted, fought the pain, rolled over the metal rim of the hamper’s frame, and got to the floor. A moment later, she had the tool bag. She winced as she went by the dead postal workers, trying to compensate for a torn muscle; the psoas or the iliacus, by the feel of it.