Cross the Line

by James Patterson

  Then I flipped on the Maglite, trying to shine it right in his goggles.

  Chapter

  103

  Colonel Whitaker cried out in surprise and pain. He threw up his arms to shield the goggles from magnifying my already powerful light.

  I charged into point-blank range then, still shining the beam on him as he cringed, tore off the goggles, and threw them down.

  “I can’t see,” he said, bent over and rubbing at his eyes. “Christ, I’m blind!”

  “Jeb Whitaker,” I said, taking another step closer. “Get on the ground, hands behind your head.”

  “I said I’m blind!”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “You are under arrest for murder, treason, and—”

  Whitaker uncoiled from his position so fast I never got off a shot. He spun spiral and low toward me and delivered the knife hard and underhand.

  I saw the Ka-Bar knife coming but couldn’t move quick enough to keep the blade from being buried deep in my right thigh. I howled in agony. My light and gun came off Whitaker long enough for him to continue his attack.

  Two strides and he was on me. He grabbed my right hand, my pistol hand, and twisted it so hard, the gun dropped from my fingers.

  The back-to-back shocks—being stabbed and then having my wrist nearly broken—were almost too much, and for a moment I thought I’d succumb. But before the Marine colonel could snatch my light from me, I swung the butt end of the flashlight hard at his head.

  I connected.

  Whitaker lurched and let go of my numb hand.

  I kept after him with my good left hand, raising the flashlight to chop at him. The colonel dodged the blow and punched me so hard in the face I saw stars. Whitaker grabbed me by the straps on my bulletproof vest and punched me again in the face.

  “You’re not stopping me, Cross,” he said, punching me a third and fourth time, breaking my nose. “Nothing’s stopping me from fumigating the bugs in DC that have destroyed this great country.”

  My legs buckled. I sagged and began to swoon, heading toward darkness.

  Fight, a voice deep down inside me yelled. Fight, Alex.

  But I was barely holding on to consciousness, and I went to my knees in the water.

  “You think you can stop a rebellion, Cross?” Whitaker demanded, gasping, after punching me a fifth time. “An uprising?”

  The cold water against my legs roused me enough to mumble, “Using nerve gas?”

  “It’s how you treat any cancer. Poison the body and cut out the tumors.”

  “You’re insane,” I said.

  He let go of my vest then and kneed me so hard in the face, I blacked out. I fell onto the flooded gravel bar, but even with the chill water against my skin, I lost time for a bit.

  Then I was aware of Whitaker stepping over me. He stood there, straddling my chest. In a daze, I saw his silhouette above me in the beam of the flashlight I had managed to hold on to. He had my pistol.

  “I’m tired of you, Cross,” the colonel said. “I’ve got to move on, stoke the next phase of the rebellion.”

  He swung my gun up toward me.

  I did the only thing I could think of.

  I dropped the flashlight, wrenched Whitaker’s knife from my thigh, turned it skyward, and swung it in an upward arc, driving the blade into the back of his left leg, high under his buttocks, and burying it to the hilt.

  I felt the tip strike bone and I twisted the knife.

  Whitaker screamed and fired my pistol, missing my head by an inch. He flailed, attempting to pull the blade free.

  I twisted the knife again. He dropped my gun and reached back, frantically trying to stop me.

  I twisted the knife a third time, then wrenched it out of him and lay there on the flooded gravel, panting.

  “Ha,” Whitaker said, stumbling back two feet, splashing to a stop. “See? I’m still standing, Cross. Artificial knee and I’m still standing.”

  “You’re a dead man standing, Colonel,” I said with a grunt, dropping the knife and fishing for the waterproof flashlight still shining in the water. “I just put your knife through your femoral artery.”

  By the time I got the flashlight beam back on him, Whitaker had gone from confident to confused. He was bent over slightly, his fingers probing the wound, no doubt feeling the blood that had to be gushing out of him. I thought the colonel would go for his belt to try to tourniquet his leg.

  Instead, Whitaker went berserk. He charged, kicking me twice before diving on top of me and grabbing my neck with both hands.

  As he throttled me, I tried to hit him with the flashlight again or trade it for the knife. But between my own loss of blood and the beating I’d taken, I couldn’t fight him. I just couldn’t.

  My chest heaved for air and got none. Whitaker had this wild gleam in his eyes as my vision narrowed to blotchy darkness.

  This is the end, I thought. The final…

  The grip the colonel had on my throat started to weaken. I got sips of air, and my sight returned.

  Whitaker was sitting on my chest, his head swaying to and fro right above mine.

  “No, Cross,” he said. “John Brown, he…Mercury, he never…”

  He panicked then, and tried to stand.

  But halfway to his feet, Whitaker lurched off me, staggered, and then crashed into three inches of cold water, dead.

  Chapter

  104

  Two days later, my face was still swollen and bruised. The knife wound had been sutured but it hurt like hell. Bree had won a commendation for solving the murder of the late Thomas McGrath. And Jannie’s orthopedist had called to say that her latest MRI showed the bone in her foot healing nicely.

  “We have lots to be thankful for,” I said as we sat down to dinner.

  “Says a man who looks like he went four rounds with Mike Tyson,” Nana Mama said, and Ali giggled.

  “A man who went four rounds with Mike Tyson and survived,” I said, smiling and wincing at my split lip. “Anyway, we’re all here. We’re all healthy. We’re all safe. And for that, I for one am grateful.”

  We held hands and said grace and then dove into a chicken Nana Mama had roasted with Dijon mustard, pearl onions, and lemongrass. It was delicious, another triumph, and we showered praise on her.

  My grandmother was pleased and in peak form as dinner went on, cracking jokes and telling stories I’d heard and loved long ago. As she did, my mind drifted to the aftermath of Colonel Whitaker’s raid on Edgewater 9. Five Regulators had died in the firefight trying to escape. Two had been taken into custody by army MPs and had lawyered up.

  Hobbes and Fender eluded the Coast Guard and escaped with a canister of VX, which had the country in a heightened state of alert. The men’s photographs were everywhere, and Ned Mahoney, who’d come through surgery with flying colors, was saying it was only a matter of time before they were located and captured.

  George Potter, the DEA SAC, was now believed to be the source of the Regulators’ intelligence regarding the criminal supercartel targeted in the massacres.

  The U.S. Naval Academy had taken two black eyes. Colonel Whitaker and U.S. Navy captain Cassandra “Cass” Pope were both graduates of Annapolis and on the faculty. Whitaker and Pope left vitriolic letters on their work computers declaring that slavers were destroying the country and that it was time for the slaves to arm themselves, rise up, and fight.

  I shuddered to think what might have happened to Washington and to my family if they had managed to release a gallon of VX in the nation’s capital. But the important thing was that the Regulators or the vigilantes or whatever you wanted to call them were no longer operating. The road-rage killer was gone too. And no one had died from—

  Someone started pounding on our front door.

  Then she started to yell.

  Chapter

  105

  “Alex?” a woman cried as she rang the doorbell. “Nana Mama? You in there?”

  I got up and almost went for my gun before loo
king through the window and seeing Chung Sun Chung. She was in her down coat, despite the heat, and she was ringing our bell and knocking like someone playing a one-note xylophone and a bongo drum.

  I limped down the hall and opened the door, expecting to find a traumatized woman or a woman in peril. Instead, Sun threw her head back and let loose with a real crazy cackle of a laugh.

  “Sun, what’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” She chortled and then came to me and started beating her little fists lightly against my chest. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  Sun stopped hitting me and cackled again. “Everything’s right. Where is your Nana Mama?”

  “I’m right here, Sun,” my grandmother said, appearing in the hallway with the rest of the family. “God’s sake, the way you’re carrying on, you’d think I’d—”

  There was a frozen moment when everyone was quiet. And then Sun howled, threw her arms over her head, and did a little jig.

  “You didn’t see the drawing?” the convenience-store owner cried, pushing by me. “You won! You won the Powerball!”

  My grandmother looked at Sun as if she had two heads. “I did not.”

  “You did so!” Sun said, dancing toward her. “I’ve been selling you the same numbers for nine years. Seven, twelve, nine, six, one, eleven, and three in the Powerball. I saw the draw!”

  Nana Mama scowled. “See there? You’re wrong, Sun. I always put a two in the Powerball, so I won something, but—”

  “No, Nana,” I said, dumbstruck. “I changed half your tickets, added one to your last Powerball number. I asked Sun to put a three there.”

  “Exactly!” Sun cried and started jigging again.

  “Oh my God!” Jannie yelled.

  My grandmother looked about ready to keel over. Bree saw it and came up to hold her steady.

  “Well, I never,” Nana said, looking at all of us in total wonder and then at Sun again. “You’re sure?”

  “I ran six blocks in a down coat in this heat,” Sun said. “I’m sure.”

  “How much did I win?”

  Sun told her. Jannie and Ali started whooping.

  Nana Mama stood there a long moment, shaking her head, mouth slack with disbelief, and then she threw her chin skyward and cackled with joy.

  It’s easy to go missing

  in the middle of

  nowhere.

  Never Never

  by

  James Patterson

  For an excerpt, turn the page.

  “IF YOU REACH the camp before me, I’ll let you live,” the Soldier said.

  It was the same chance he allowed them all. The fairest judgment for their crimes against his people.

  The young man lay sniveling in the sand at his feet. Tears had always disgusted the Soldier. They were the lowest form of expression, the physical symptom of psychological weakness. The Soldier lifted his head and looked across the black desert to the camp’s border lights. The dark sky was an explosion of stars, patched here and there by shifting cloud. He sucked cold desert air into his lungs.

  “Why are you doing this?” Danny whimpered.

  The Soldier slammed the door of the van closed and twisted the key. He looped his night-vision goggles around his neck and strode past the shivering traitor to a large rock. He mounted it, and with an outstretched arm pointed toward the northeast.

  “On a bearing of zero-four-seven, at a distance of one-point-six-two kilometers, your weapon is waiting,” the Soldier barked. He swiveled, and pointed to the northwest. “On a bearing of three-one-five, at a distance of one-point-six-five kilometers, my weapon is waiting. The camp lies at true north.”

  “What are you saying?” the traitor wailed. “Jesus Christ! Please, please don’t do this.”

  The Soldier jumped from the rock, straightened his belt, and drew down his cap. The young traitor had dragged himself to his feet and now stood shaking by the van, his weak arms drawn up against his chest. Judgment is the duty of the righteous, the Soldier thought. There is no room for pity. Only fury at the abandonment of honor.

  Even as those familiar words drifted through his mind, he felt the cold fury awakening. His shoulders tensed, and he could not keep the snarl from his mouth as he turned to begin his mission.

  “We’re green-lit, soldier,” he said. “Move out!”

  DANNY WATCHED THE SOLDIER disappear in the brief, pale light before the moon was shrouded by clouds. The darkness that sealed him was complete. He scrambled for the driver’s-side door of the van, yanked it, pushed against the back window where a long crack ran upward through the middle of the glass. He ran around and did the same on the other side. Panic thrummed through him. What was he doing? Even if he got into the van, the keys were gone. He spun around and bolted into the dark in the general direction of northeast. How the hell was he supposed to find anything out here?

  The moon shone through the clouds again, giving him a glimpse of the expanse of dry sand and rock before it was taken away. He tripped forward and slid down a steep embankment, sweat plastering sand to his palms, his cheeks. His breath came in wild pants and gasps.

  “Please God,” he cried. “Please, God, please!”

  He ran blindly in the dark, arms pumping, stumbling now and then over razor-sharp desert plants. He came over a rocky rise and saw the camp glittering in the distance, no telling how far. Should he try to make it to the camp? He screamed out. Maybe someone on patrol would hear him.

  Danny kept his eyes on the ground as he ran. Every shadow and ripple in the sand looked like a gun. He leapt at a dry log that looked like a rifle, knelt and fumbled in the dark. Sobs racked through his chest. The task was impossible.

  The first sound was just a whoosh, sharper and louder than the wind. Danny straightened in alarm. The second whoosh was followed by a heavy thunk, and before he could put the two sounds together he was on his back in the sand.

  The pain rushed up from his arm in a bright red wave. The young man gripped his shattered elbow, the sickening emptiness where his forearm and hand had been. High, loud cries came from deep in the pit of his stomach. Visions of his mother flashed in the redness behind his eyes. He rolled and dragged himself up.

  He would not die this way. He would not die in the dark.

  THE SOLDIER WATCHED through the rifle scope as the kid stumbled, his remaining hand gripping at the stump. The Soldier had seen the Barrett M82 rifle take heads clean off necks in the Gaza Strip, and in the Australian desert the weapon didn’t disappoint. Lying flat on his belly on a ridge, the Soldier actioned the huge black rifle, set the upper rim of his eye against the scope. He breathed, shifted back, pulled the trigger, and watched the kid collapse as the scare shot whizzed past his ear.

  What next? A leg? An ear? The Soldier was surprised at his own callousness. He knew it wasn’t military justice to play with the traitor while doling out his sentence, but the rage still burned in him.

  You would have given us away, he seethed as he watched the boy running in the dark. You would have sacrificed us all.

  There was no lesser creature on Earth than a liar, a cheat, and a traitor. And bringing about a fellow soldier’s end was never easy. In some ways, it felt like a second betrayal. Look what you’ve forced me to do, the Soldier thought, watching the kid screaming into the wind. The Soldier let the boy scream. The wind would carry his voice south, away from the camp.

  The cry of a traitor. He would remember it for his own times of weakness.

  The Soldier shifted in the sand, lined up a headshot, and followed Danny in the crosshairs as he got up one last time.

  “Target acquired,” the Soldier murmured to himself, exhaling slowly. “Executing directive.”

  He pulled the trigger. What the Soldier saw through the scope made him smile sadly. He rose, flicked the bipod down on the end of the huge gun, and slung the weapon over his shoulder.

  “Target terminated. Mission complete.”

  He walked down the embankment into the dark.

  IT WAS CHIEF MORR
IS who called me into the interrogation room. He was sitting on the left of the table, in one of the investigators’ chairs, and motioned for me to sit on the right where the perps sit.

  “What?” I said. “What’s this all about, Pops? I’ve got work to do.”

  His face was grave. I hadn’t seen him look that way since the last time I punched Nigel over in Homicide for taking my parking spot. The Chief had been forced to give me a serious reprimand, on paper, and it hurt him.

  “Sit down, Detective Blue,” he said.

  Holy crap, I thought. This is bad. I know I’m in trouble when the Chief calls me by my official title.

  The truth is, most of our time together is spent far from the busy halls of the Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills.

  I was twenty-one when I started working Sex Crimes. It was my first assignment after two years on street patrol, so I moved into the Sydney Metro offices with more than a little terror in my heart at my new role and the responsibility that came with it. I’d been told I was the first woman in the Sex Crimes department in half a decade. It was up to me to show the boys how to handle women in crisis. The department was broken; I needed to fix it, fast. The Chief had grunted a demoralized hello at me a few times in the coffee room in those early weeks, and that had been it. I’d lain awake plenty of nights thinking about his obvious lack of faith in me, wondering how I could prove him wrong.

  After a first month punctuated by a couple of violent rape cases and three or four aggravated assaults, I’d signed up for one-on-one boxing training at a gym near my apartment. From what I’d seen, I figured it was a good idea for a woman in this city to know how to land a swift uppercut. I’d waited outside the gym office that night sure that the young, muscle-bound woman wrapping her knuckles by the lockers was my trainer.