Detective Cross (Alex Cross 24.50)

Mickey read for an hour, studying the diagrams until he understood how to build the triggering mechanism, and how best to trip it.

Glancing at the clock on his dresser, he stifled a yawn. It was eleven o’clock.

Opening a drawer in the nightstand, he retrieved one of six burner p

hones he’d bought online in a package deal from a dealer in Oklahoma. Then he called up the Voice Changer Plus App on his smartphone. Mickey started the burner, activated it with a paid-minutes card, and dialed Chief Bree Stone.

They’re not listening, he thought as her phone rang. Time to raise the volume.

Chapter 19

Bree was fighting to stay awake for the eleven o’clock news when her phone started buzzing and beeping in her purse. She struggled out of the easy chair in the front room at home, and said, “Mute it.”

I thumbed the Mute button and said, “Speaker.”

Nodding, Bree got her phone and answered the call.

The odd, soft, almost feminine voice spoke. “Chief Stone?”

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

After a long pause, he said, “Nick. Nick the Avenger.”

Bree glanced at me, pointed at her watch. I started timing. The FBI was monitoring and tracing all calls to her number. If she could keep him on the phone for just over a minute, they’d be able to locate him.

She said, “Nick, what’s it going to take to stop the bombings?”

That question was part of a plan we’d talked about in anticipation of his next call. We both believed we needed to draw the bomber out, get him talking about more than just his next target.

After several moments, he said, “It’s gonna take changes on Capitol Hill, Chief. Congress needs to get off its collective butt, and start treating the people who fight their wars right. Until they quit kicking vets in the balls, it’s time for everyone to feel what vets have suffered, what they still suffer. I’d clear the Washington Monument if I were you.”

The line went dead.

“Son of a bitch,” I said. “Forty-four seconds.”

We grabbed raincoats and headed out into the pouring rain. I drove. Bree started making calls to once again close off the National Mall, and summon sniffer dogs and bomb squads. Ned Mahoney called me as I turned onto Independence Avenue.

“You hear it?” he asked.

“Yes. The trace?”

“Bomber’s within five miles of Capitol Hill. Closest we got.”

“Any luck with the surveillance tapes from Union Station?”

“I have four agents watching footage from the twenty-four hours preceding the explosion, working backward from the actual blast. So far, nothing.”

“Quantico?”

“Initial reports on the first two bombs came back,” Mahoney said. “The detonators are simple, the kind you might see on an IED in the Middle East. But the explosive wasn’t taggant-free C-4. That’s why the dogs were able to locate them.”

“So what was the explosive?”

“Black powder, like for muzzle loaders, but tricked out, made more powerful. A company out in Montana makes the stuff.”

“So we can trace it?” Bree said.

“Not as easy as you think,” Mahoney said. “There are no real restrictions on the stuff. You can order it from dozens of websites online, or buy it off the shelf at hunting and fishing stores. Surprising, but the company says they make and sell thousands of pounds of the stuff per year.”